...to think this woman was being ridiculous

[MrsCosmopifairylight]

I was out shopping yesterday in a small local branch of a chain store. The store has a lift and a flight of stairs.

I was coming up the stairs with my 3 year old (who was a bit ahead of me), and there was a woman at the top of the staircase.

Woman at top of staircase was peering down, anxiously, holding onto the rail. I assumed she was nervous about falling, so asked DD to stop and move aside so the woman could come down the stairs.

Woman remained at the top of the stairs, and then a young boy passed me and DD, and started to go up. Woman appeared even more anxious.

I said we'd stop to let her pass, so she could come down.
Then she said to us, and to young boy (who was headed to where she was) "I'm very superstitious. Please can you go back downstairs so I don't have to pass you?"

I rolled my eyes and stomped past her, with DD. Woman shot me nasty glares.

There was a shop assistant upstairs, about to approach the woman, but as the stairs were now "safe" she'd headed off to leave the shop.

If she was that bothered why the fuck didn't she use the lift? Or why didn't she just wait for other people to come up the stairs?

I don't understand superstition and I find it incredibly frustrating when there is no rational explanation for this sort of behaviour.

Before I get totally flamed, I've a friend with a number of mental health issues including OCD. She advises me that she has issues with things, and I accept these. However, she would NOT ask other people to go out of their way to accommodate her needs. If she needed to not pass people on a staircase then she'd get in a lift.

I'm also with MrsDevere there's a world of difference between anxiety/mental illness and superstition.

I think someone who is that anxious about a superstition IS likely to have MH problems, sadly. Poor woman. :(

OP you have no idea what type (if any) mental illness this woman may have been suffering from. Your one friend with mental illness doesn't make you an expert and mean every other mentally ill person has to adhere to that stereotype you have in your head!

My MIL is schizophrenic and has always refused medication. In the past there have been many a trying time when we've been in the supermarket or another public place and she's had a turn. She would say, "the gas has taken all of her money" or "the British kitemark on those toliet rolls is part of a secret government agency out to brainwash you" etc.

YABU to judge the woman. I appreciate she was rude, but hell so are loads of people I come into contact with on a daily basis, such is life. I would say you sound like you would be an incredibly difficult person to be around, I don't understand superstition and I find it incredibly frustrating when there is no rational explanation for this sort of behaviour. There is no rational explanation for hundreds of different types of behaviour! There's no rational explanation for extremists who kill people in the name of some woo person in the sky, there's no rational explanation for paedophiles and the shit they do, etc etc. I find your whole outlook incredibly bizarre as well as this thread.

I think you are right about some people just being rude dicks, MrsDeVere - but in a similar situation, I think I would rather act kindly, in case there was a good reason for her behaviour, and for the sake of my own karma. If I was horrible to someone, because I thought they were being a dick, I would go away worrying that maybe I was wrong, and that would niggle away at my peace of mind.

i have anxiety and wouldn't class it as MH problem, just because I have low self esteem and i do believe in superstition. it's not a MH problem.
I become very depressed thanks to the weather (have SAD) which is a MH problem, I cannot get out of bed without panic attacks most days.
the fact I have to say "bread and butter" when I walk under a ladder or salute a magpie isn't a mental health problem, or an OCD thing, it's just I feel like I have to do it even if I didn't say it out loud or even if i just nod at the magpie.
none of this is associated with MH and you are ridiculous and VU to think so.

If I knew it was because of a mental illness than I'd make allowances, but since people are saying it's a common superstition then tough. If your beliefs inconvenience you then maybe you should consider discarding them.

I'm not going to assume that every bit of behaviour is a symptom of mental illness unless the person says it is.

JingleBell I disagree. I think anxiety is a mental health issue and if superstitions are controlling your life to the extent that you have to work around it, ie order strangers to walk back down the stairs (in the OPs example) then I think most health professionals would class this as disordered thinking and would be concerned. Just because you don't want to accept that you are anything other than totally normal doesn't mean you are correct - and I say that as someone who has MH issues (anxiety/social phobia/pacic attacks) caused by a chronic health condition.

I have all those things - caused by the fact i'm a disgusting human being, thats not a MH problem in my eyes, thats years of people putting you down, thats what I'm saying.
it's compulsive behaviour which can be seen as a MH issue. Another way of seeing it is the fact she might be wiccan? Pagan? it might be her religion and might be a practising wiccan. I am also a practising wiccan and i'm very superstitious. it all depends. It might be a MH problem for someone else but to me, for me, i don't see my anxiety as something going wrong in my head. I see SAD as something going wrong in my head.

It is so sad to hear you say such a thing about yourself, JingleBellSniffer. But I know what it feels like, to believe that you are worthless - I had a long series of cognitive behavioural therapy sessions this year, to help me learn how to be kind to myself. I wish you could be kind to yourself too.

Oh come off it, ffs. Of course this behaviour is atypical enough to suggest mh issues. Anxiety is a normal feeling and part of life, but anxiety DISORDER is where you cross a line into a sphere where you literally cannot control your behaviour to accommodate it without treatment/intervention.

I can't even believe people get uppity about this. It was not a normal thing to do, let's face it. It took a few minutes out of your day, big deal.

As for people who have friends with OCD who are managing it, well whoop de doo. When I had OCD I could manage it like your friend. However, it was not because I am a wonderful, polite reasonable human being: I simply wasn't ill enough for it to control my behaviour to such an extent.

She probably had OCD. It takes many different forms.

I saw a woman on tube station who had to touch each pillar and also had to do a kind of rhythm and tap step thing going up the stairs and if she got the pattern wrong she kind of tsked and went down a few stairs and did it again.

But in OP's situation if I was halfway up the stairs with a toddler I would have just kept going.

No one is DIAGNOSING anything. The woman isn't even a party to this thread.

I said that the behaviour was atypical enough to suggest mh issues.
That's not a diagnosis, it's a consideration.

Does it really matter, honestly? The choices here are to decide someone doing something is a rude, terrible person and ridiculous blah or that there might be an underlying reason for unexpected behaviour that we could choose to have consideration for ahead of rushing to AIBU to have a rant about how someone should or shouldn't behave. Nobody was really that put out, in reality. It's a non-event.

Nasty judgemental thread. Lovely to hear about the "considerate" mentally ill who don't expect others to accommodate their difference.

It's sad for the lady that she has anxiety issues about stairs but really you can't go around getting complete strangers to change their behaviour because of it.
Just imagine something like that happening in a busy tube station. It would be ridiculous.
I would have done the same as the OP.

No, the vast majority of people with MH issues who are well treated, have insight, are aware and/or whose difficulties are not acute or severe go about their business without needing accommodations or considerations of others.

This doesn't mean that all people with MH issues behave appropriately at all times, but more than that, it doesn't mean that behaving inappropriately in small ways such as that outlined in the OP is really that big a deal and means something terrible about that person.

It is not helpful, in real terms, when it comes to mental health needs to need to sanitise and minimise the impact of having such an illness the whole "oh but they're normally so LOVELY and NORMAL and CONSIDERATE of others and JUST like YOU and ME".

I know when I was unwell there were times that my behaviour, being unexpected, would have led others to judge me as being unusual at best and rude, entitled and horrible at worst. I didn't choose it, I got treatment for it, you'd never even know now, I was never like that before being ill.

The woman very well may be just rude/entitled/bossy blah blah but so what? Wouldn't it be better to give the benefit of the doubt when you're talking about something that really is as meaningless an encounter as you could ever imagine in the context of the OP's day?

And for the record, I fully appreciate when it comes to anxiety disorders that the rest of the world ticks on and in this situation the OP needed to pass on by. That's the way these things go, it is life and in real terms what makes an anxiety disorder disabling but there's not much to be done about it.

What is being unreasonable is needing affirmation that someone behaving unusually is [rude/ridiculous/entitled/bossy/a git/unreasonable] just because you don't understand their behaviour, and what's even more unreasonable is basing this on the fact you know a perfectly LOVELY person with OCD who would NEVER be so odd.

Cannot agree about the link between being superstitious and adhering to routines being a sign of MH issues.

For some people this might be the case. For others the two things can and will be totally separate. Not everyone with MH issues is superstitious and not all superstitious people have MH issues.

This woman expected other people to stop their climb up the stairs, to turn around and go back to the bottom because she was superstitious. Was that a reasonable request to a other with a small child who was half-way up the stairs? Probably not. At least OP was kind enough to notice her distress and to suggest a very reasonable compromise, which unfortunately the woman was not able to do.

Yes, OP shouldn't have done the eye-rolling bit, but heck, she's human and as it could have been quite some time before the stairs were totally clear (as shoppers have an inconvenient habit of wanting to visit other shop departments) she wasn't at all unreasonable to finish her journey up the stairs.

I am only going on what was written. Being anxious is absolutely part of everyday human experience, it's part and parcel of what we all experience as human beings. Having some superstitions like waving at magpies or avoiding going under a ladder is also pretty commonplace.

What was described was a woman who was so incredibly anxious about passing someone on a stairs that she literally couldn't make herself move, even when accommodated. She then made a very unusual and unreasonable request. The fact she said "superstitious" means nothing here, to my mind. The description is of a level of anxiety above and beyond what is considered "normal" behaviour.

I honestly don't see how this relates to your queue skippers, MrsDevere. That's everyday stuff we all encounter all the time. What happened in the OP is pretty uncommon and unusual, I have never encountered a similar situation. As soon as a superstition causes you to behave unreasonably and in socially inappropriate ways, it tips into a clinical category, especially if the person is experiencing subjective distress which the OP reported observing in this woman's demeanour and behaviour.

I know a few people who say they are superstitious, but I can't think of one who takes it seriously enough to let it inconvenience them. They say things like 'breaking a mirror is 7 years bad luck' or 'if you spill salt you have to do so and so', but it's just something to say mostly.

I don't know anyone who'd cancel a trip on the 13th or refuse to enter a building because they'd have to step under a ladder. So is there anyone left who is seriously superstitious without it being a side effect of something else?