Seeing the world in HD - distressing

[Adviceplease991]

I dont know if any one feels like this / if it is maturing or its my own life expierence or what?
but at certain times in my life I feel like I see the bullshit of situations in all their accuracy and no one else does. I sometimes want to scream!! I had a childhood in trauma and poverty and I wonder if its caused some sort of change in my brain where I can predict the outcome of things without all the smoke and glitter as a trauma response?

examples from the past 7 days…

at a wedding and see a ‘happy couple’ - he is acting the doting DP and he entirely avoids me. Because he knows I know he slept with my friend ‘for a bet’ with a group of guy friends and included getting to know her daughter in that. So I know he is a pig. Everyone else including his partner appears to think he is a professional nice guy. I spend the wedding knowing what a class act he is where everyone else is taken in by his status and grin. I told one of the girls why I refused to speak to him and she gasped. I told her when I first met him at work he was an utter slimeball.

seen a friends partner on a dating app as a ‘just joined’ - I told her and she said he would never do that and he said I was ‘causing trouble’. From the second I met him I knew from his eye contact he was trouble - the hairs on my arms stood up.

had a second date this weekend where he tried to get me back to his flat afterwards; I immediately realised he was a chancer and thats all he was after from the get go and felt a bit sick as I got in my taxi as he was trying to protray the opposite. my friend said to not be dramatic and he seemed nice. As I predicted to her he did send me a wishy washy thanks but no thanks message the next day.

my friend called me yesterday to tell me her relationship of two years was ending as she found out he was married abroad already - I already suspected this could be the case when she met him when she first mentioned it to me on the phone. I thought he is married - despite it all being good things she is saying about him.

I have multiple other examples of consistently predicting the outcome of situations with very little evidence. It makes life very uncomfortable seeing through the bullshit. I am exhausted.

Is anyone else like this?
Should I give up my day job and become a professional psychic?

I know
but dont you find it exhausting?

You’re not psychic OP you’ve just got shit friends.

I have distanced myself alot over the past couple of years and have met nicer ones who are amazing thankfully

Your friends are unlucky/have bad taste in men. How many people do you know who are in healthy relationships that you don't think about?

Your date is nothing unusual sadly. I'm glad you were able to see he just wanted sex if you wanted more though but it doesn't sound like he was being subtle about it.

I have good instincts too OP. I had no trauma and a happy childhood. I'm happily married and have good friends. I've always known from a first meeting whether someone is good or not. If I take an instant dislike to a person, I'm always eventually proved right....my dad is the same.

I seem to see the reality of their behaviour while others don't. To be honest, it's caused some problems in work over the years, where I got frustrated with managers / bosses not seeing how others were behaving, but even then their true colours showed through and they were fired.

He tried every trick in the book though - it was game 101
future faking
saying he wanted to see me again asap after second date
said he was looking for relationship / children
he also mirrored a trauma I had specifically which was very entertaining to watch how he tried to create false intimacy (the lengths these men will go to to get their dick wet is beyond me)

on our first date I had mentioned my dad had been ill at the end of last year but being so busy with work I rarely spoke to my friends about it and just spoke to close family - so it was something quite personal
on our second date he gave me the exact same script saying ‘his dad had been in hospital most of the past 3 years’ and he did not want to discuss it with me any futher as he only spoke to his sister and mum about it. My stomach flipped 🤯 it was basically what i had said word for word regurgitated. Thankfully that was towards the end of the date - you could also see his eyes looking for my emotional response to that. Something very off about him. Although on paper was a ‘catch’ - phd, good looking, sporty, played the bumbiling geek. I seen straight through him.

@Adviceplease991

How do you know they were “tricks”? Perhaps he wanted sex with you and a future. You really have no idea what his motivation was - you’ve just made up a scenario in your head of him “future faking” for sec and decided that what you think about him is true because you believe in your own special powers of perception.

In reality you could be totally wrong and he could want a future with you and also have wanted to have sex.

It is true but its pattern recognition
I didnt stay over despite him asking to see me the next day - all very flirty and went well otherwise
when i woke up in the morning already i knew energy was off
by 3pm ‘thanks but no thanks text’

It can be exhausting to see what others cannot see at the time; however, I view it as a positive that I have a 'head start'.

I've learnt over the years (decades) to keep a lot of my thoughts to myself, or to just voice them to my safe person, my DH. When I was a lot younger, I would often speak out and there would be consequences. For example, as a teenager I told my mother that her long-term partner and 'love of her life' (her words, not mine) was seeing someone else. Instead of responding appropriately she beat me up, literally. It didn't alter the fact that she was in a relationship with a lying, cheating, scumbag with multiple women on the go. That was a painful lesson - emotionally and physically.

I am naturally introvert and I try to spend my time with people I like. That helps.

I have been told i have a ‘head start’ too
i am a natural introvert and can spend long periods of time alone
i used to scatter my energy to fit in with others
not so much now
i keep myself to myself
i do like dating, seeing friends and notmal things but i can literally be exhausted following weddings or holidays with people whose energy is off

I'd be scared stiff you can look into my mind!

The scariest one I had was at uni
my friend had been seeing a guy for a couple of years he seemed besotted by her
anyway she went on holiday and i had not heard from her in a few days
not unusual given no smart phones at that time
i had this dream where he cheated on her
the next day we were all sitting during kate and wills wedding and i was telling my other friends what a weird dream I had that he had cheating on her
everyone was laughing being like how did you make that up
anyway we get a phone call her from her on holiday crying because he had called her that morning to say he had met someone else and it was over
the whole room went deadly silent 😭😭😭

I feel the same as you OP. We see the truth. I think some people are happier to live a lie. I just cannot go along with fake facades.

@Adviceplease991

You couldn’t feel any kind of energy. The reality is perhaps he just wanted sex - or perhaps he wanted more and took you knocking him back for sex as an indication you weren’t that into him.
You don’t know.

It’s easy to believe you have some kind of special power of perception when your basing that on you reading into situations then deciding your right about them without really knowing one way or another.

What do you think it is that most people are bad or you have a power?

A lot of long term depressed and very negative people get the idea that only they see things as they really are, it's a coping mechanism, helps them to feel a sense of superiority when they have so little else and keeps them from seeking help and treatment. It's very wearing for everyone around people like this and they tend to alienate even the most tolerant friends and family eventually.

It's confirmation bias you are looking for the negative and finding it sometimes as anyone would and focussing on those moments, mulling them over and over and remembering them and forgetting all the times you were wrong. We are all susceptible to confirmation bias but it sounds like you're stuck in a negative spiral OP.

I'm a bit like you, OP. I tend to see the bad in everything and I'm quite sharp at predicting negative outcomes. I think several bad experiences have made me negative and paranoid.

Sometimes I'll be surprisingly accurate and friends will as me "how do you do it?!". But they just don't notice all the times where I predicted something terrible and it turned out fine!!

I think it's also a matter of personal standards. My bar is now set quite high with the level of honesty and decency I expect from others. When other people allow themselves to be treated badly and lied to, they often do a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid "noticing", but I don't. You might be similar.

OP, I don't think there's anything seriously wrong with you, but I get why you're worried. I hope you find something to feel positive about x

Deep down
i think alot of people are bad
and i just notice it as I was surrounded by negativity as a child

i dont actually believe that i have a superpower but i think i pick up on the subtleness of clues that someone or something is not quite right which renders me to make a decision on them based on pattern recognition

Do you think people can have faulty pattern recognition, for example due to hyper vigilance?

Yep and I think it is exhausting living the way I live in all honesty

Yes I grew up in a violent household so from a young age had to watch what I said and watch facial expressions before my parents blew up etc. It’s taken me a few years to relax and realise not everyone that huffs and puffs is going to throw me down the stairs but it’s good to be alert.

The way you describe yourself reminds me of how someone with general anxiety might feel about life.
I suffer from general anxiety and before realising that I did, I know that I "risk assessed" any situation also without realising. I would consider others stupid to have not thought of the 101 bad things/ outcomes of any situation and when bad things happened I would automatically feel, when what did they expect to happen, it was so obvious, kind of thing. I would feel not superior but that others just weren't thorough enough in noticing dangers.
Once I realised how this makes me ill I feel sad that unfortunately I don't think I'll ever be as carefree as many people around me. I think they are lucky to live life without seeing " dangers" round every corner. Personally I feel that my anxiety is due to not only some difficulties that I have faced but passed on through the generations in my family, and that it will take multiple generations to erase it completely.
I think you are living your life due to your past experiences, and have to live with that burden. I sometimes feel that my over cautious nature is what keeps my family safe and without it they could be in danger, in reality I wish to relax and not carry this mental weight around because it does nobody any good.

It’s a double edged sword OP because you have great insight & a highly tuned radar to detect (without even wanting to) dynamics & power imbalances etc. Is it a trauma response & part of always being vigilant to threat & self preservation /protection or a negative bias in how you perceive things where another counterbalanced perspective may help mitigate the impact it has on you - as it does sound like a heavy burden at times.
I think it’s a tough one - our experiences can’t not inform how we operate & enable to make shortcuts in how we perceive & see patterns & through the BS. I also think it can be an occupational hazard as well - as many in the human services roles will attest. I can see how it can feel isolating & frustrating - when people don’t want or can’t see what you see & shoot the messenger instead of the perpetrators. I think it’s hard to have a positive take on the human race when you’ve seen a lot of adversity & trauma. I wish I had the answer. That’s why animals are the best! 🐶

It's horribly embarrassing that you fell for these very obvious lines.

But you are clearly extremely vulnerable to the right type of flattery.

"Are you Pisces?"

Fuck me 😜