magical thinking...does anyone else find they engage in this and get depressed when it doesnt go the way it should

[zippitippitoes]

....i have had a run of bad luck and have read some signs aka magical thinking to show that things were changing but now my latest sighn has done a reversal and i am struggling to feel positive again

You need to not do this. It's natural to try to find patterns and reasons but the truth is, things just happen, one after the other, and magical thinking just sets you up for misery really.

ie 'sign done a reversal' - nothing has actually happened to change your situation - much likle when I frump into weight watchers feeling fat, get weighed, discover I have lost weight and float out. I'm the same weight as I was when I walked in - my perception of my weight has changed.

If you can level your perception to realistic in the first place, you won't feel so bad when things change.

i can see that is rational

but i seem to have a pull towards magical thinking

specifically

at the moment i am potentially at a life changing crossroads and everything seems to be tied into magical thinking

it is happening not because i am trying to see it but it is like a pattern that is staring me in the face

Ple4ase don't be offended by this question, because I am the last person on Earth to judge someone in this situation - but do you have any mental health conditions, and if so, how are you managing those currently?

I only ask because a friend of mine suffers from bipolar disorder and magical thinking is something he gets when his medication isn't managing his condition very well.

funny you should say that

i didnt know until i read something just a few minutes ago on wiki that there was any connection between magical thinking and bipolar disorder and now you have mentioned it

ill tell you a story

go back a few weeks i posted on mn that iwas really happy and thanked everyone who had been nice to me

lots of replies

it felt like it was the start of something nice

that night i drove my car

i was on the m40 driving very fast looking forward to a wonderful weekend

i was in the outside lane

it was busy

and my engine blew up

now i was very fortunate

somehow i avoided a big accident and stepped out of the car on the hard shoulder

my car was in the garage for 5 weeks and cost £3000 thats more than its value to repair

i posted on mn when the cost went up and someone posted a link to a website

through magic

i happened to look at the job page on the site and it had one job and that job seemed to exactly fit my experience and is in a different part of the country but exactly where i would choose to go

so i just had time to send an application before i went on holiday

anyway i also apllied for anopther job aty the same time

i missed getting a voicemail for the other job until a couple of hopurs after the interview should have happened

so i was disappointed but the very next morning i got an invite to an interview for the brilliant job

so magivcal thinking says i was meant to miss the voicemail to leave me ready for the job i am supposed to get

now i play scrabulous with my bf and usually lose but i started a game after this and i got my highest ever opening score

then i got my first ever 7 letter word

so magical thinking tells me that winning this game will be a sign that i can be confident of getting the job

i have been winning by miles all through

but now right at the penultimate go he has suddenly overtaken me by a couple of points

so i am distraught because if i ,lose i wont get this job

and now even worse i have told him that magical thinking was operating so i am afraidf that either i will lose anyway or he will try and lety me win both scenarios will be bad for magical yhinking but if i do win i wont know if i should have done or not

Zippi .... magical thinking is precisely that. THINKING.

It's not real, and i think treating as real is unwase. Try to think rationally. The scenario you describe is not magical - it's just a sequence of events.

Anyone who suffers with bipolar disorder who is experiencing magical thinking to the extent that you are should really contact their mental health team.

interesting

you think i sound like a loon then

a loon - that goes without saying zippi

I'd say present moment would be better for you than magical thinking, whatever it is

I didn't get a job this week but it wasn't connected to anything, I just didn't get a job

I don't think you can connect disparate elements like scrabble with your boyfriend and a new job

what would happen if you stopped playing scrabble? would you cease to exist?

not heardo f magical thinking zippi, but tend to go more with synchronicity.

I had a phase some years ago, when i became very very obsessed with sychronicity. Now i like to see signs, that uplift me but back then there were too many signs. At the time I was very depressed, but i was also adamant to come thru this stage, wihout taking antidepressents, as i felt there was a shift going on. A shift in my perception of myself, my life etc...

I think you are giong thru a shift, an 'emergence'

in fact I myslef went thur something called a spiritual emergency. There is avery fine line between the scientific bipolar explanation for things, and the more humanist, and searching we have to do to get somewhere emotionally and mentally.

A run of bad luck, well i think you have to put that into perspective, and 'think' these are things that have happened, as pointers for me.

Yuo are experiencing a time of self awareness and change. Don't get embroilled in the magical thing. Think of it more as norma, as a chain of events. Life IS magical, but thee is nothing weird happening just what NEEDS to be happening.

and yes the very fact you are even asking on here is part of the process.

now where's my spliff

JOKE!!!!!!

Nope, not at all - but although magical thinking in itself is not a problem, the causes of it are sometimes a problem.

I talk to myself. A lot. Especially when stressed.

Sometimes I can't stop.

Now, schizophrenics do this too, and my mental health team asked me a lot of searching questions about various things to establish WHY I talk to myself. They decided (and I think they're right) that it's a hyper-sociable person's response to stress and lonliness!

Your magical thinking might be perfectly innocent and normal for you. But I think you should talk to someone if you've ever had mental health problems, because it can be a symptom.

well i am too much in my head at the moment im living on my own i dont have a job i have finished my course

my bf lives a long way away

i have to get a job desperately

and the getting a job quest started two years ago and has been rumbling along since

now it is imperative before everything goes totally pear shaped

i am reading a lot too and i get very book minded

i have a big VAt reclamation form to fill in and submit wrt the house i built so i should get on with that too maybe VAT will rationalise my thoughts

hi zipp how are you today?

the weathe ris drving me nuts, its psiing down in devon and the grockles are out in force!!

well i have done my job interview

by strange hapenstance i have my first ever psych appointment since i left those things in 1999 on monday

artranged urgently

it is when i dont feel like it

ie 3 months ago ok

now im not sure