AIBU to feel uneasy about little superstitions despite not believing?

[Tribellor]

I’m an adult human being. I don't believe in god, the supernatural, the afterlife, ghosts, horoscopes, mediums, spiritualism, or superstitions.

Yet if someone puts new shoes on the table or puts up an umbrella indoors, I get strangely uncomfortable and can’t relax. Objectively, I know it’s bollocks and it’s not ruining my life or anything, but I just don’t understand why it would make me slightly uncomfortable.

Am I the only person who gets this?

No you're definitely not alone.

I could have written your OP word for word even though as you say, it makes no sense 🤣

Were your parents superstitious?
My mum nearly faints if someone puts even new in the box, shoes on the table.
It's an old fashioned belief 'shies on the table, corpse on the table'

I quietly salute magpies and hope nobody noticed (apart from the magpies, obviously).

I don't salute but I mentally say 'Hello Mr or Mrs Magpie'.

Just as well because we're overrun with the fuckers here!

Those who don't believe in God, don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything (or whichever version of the phrase you like). Most people do seem to have some sort of belief system/ideas of vibes or intuitions being reasonable/ karma/everything happens as it should/something beyond everyday reason. No harm unless it's extreme, like if you were really panicking if there were 13 of you at dinner or whatever.

Maybe your upbringing OP? Although I remember my dad freaking out about new shoes on the table and I just thought he was a nutter tbh.

I think it's natural for people to try to find meaning in things though because much of life is so beyond our control.

New shoes on the table freak me right out and I'm the least woo person you've ever met

I’m the same.

I also wonder if my late parents are trying to connect with me whenever a white feather appears, even though I don’t believe in angels or the afterlife.

I don't like tempting fate. So if saluting magpies, throwing salt over my left shoulder or touching wood helps ward off the bad things, then I'll continue to do it. But then I guess that does actually does make me superstitious doesn't it. Maybe we've all got a bit of DNA trauma from the black death or witch trials, so it's ingrained in us.

The only one that bothers me is touch wood. I feel compelled to do it.

Everyone is discussing the shoes on the table one, but I've never heard this before!

I totally get this! My mum had been brought up catholic too and I’ve got all sorts of things like magpies, new shoes on the table, umbrellas, red & white flowers and most irritating not doing washing on Good Friday! It’s all rubbish but I can’t not do them!

ive also got the white feathers thing - definitely my mum! (I live in the countryside a lot of things have white feathers). Xx

You're not alone or in any way unreasonable. Perhaps if it's bothering you it might help to think about where it comes from. Social conditioning is powerful and these types of thing are deeply engrained in a lot of us, passed on through family and culture to the point where it's a knee-jerk reaction that we can't seem to help, even if rationally we don't agree. It's also pretty much impossible to 'disprove' the beliefs because bad things always happen and we can always use logic to find a way to link those events back to violations of these rules.

Humans are connection makers and it's understandable that we look for ways to give us a sense of meaning and order and control in a world of so much random unpredictable chaos. No wonder our ancestors looked for patterns and signs and created systems of belief like this. I don't think any of that makes us silly.

Plus I often reckon there is some common sense built into superstitions. Shoes on the table or an umbrella up indoors are impractical and messy and violate what is often a common human preference for nice practical divisions, eg separating the place where we eat from the places where we trample mud. Sure, it seems ridiculous to me that we wash our hands and then go back to using our phones with screens we have touched with dirty hands - arguably handwashing is therefore an equally empty silly ritual - but feeling cleaner and feeling like we've done what we should is still powerful.

And for people who are very anxious or emotionally dysregulated, some of the sorts of therapeutic techniques that are often recommended, like touching a grounding object, have a lot of similarity to 'touch wood' to my mind - a sense of reaching for something comforting and solid to help a person to cope. Yet I would never see that as ridiculous.

There's a lovely / disturbing Inside Number 9 episode on the theme that I'd recommend if you want to explore a humorous, dark take on it all.

In general though I'd say that some degree of logical inconsistency is inevitable as part of life and that we only need to try to change ourselves if we find that what we're doing is really abhorrent to us / the people we care about.