Post by saraandmichael on May 9, 2013 12:08:50 GMT -5
i hate when i do this. and its all a mind game, so fixing it isnt the easiest when you're battling your own brain.
I was at goodwill a little while ago. About halfway home I realized that two of the displays in my car had been changed. I thought that it was possible for me to have changed one of them and not realized it, but to have changed both would have required pushing different buttons on the steering wheel and pushing them each a few times. And then I thought it was possible for me to have knocked the button accidentally with my purse or something, but the car would have had to have been on at the time and I always put my purse in the passenger seat before I start it.
So I guess maybe I forgot to lock the doors before I went in and someone tried to take my car? I remember pressing the lock button, but didn't push it multiple times until the car beeped. And since I have the keyless system perhaps I was close enough so that they could push the car to turn on and try to mess around but not get it to start?
I can't stop thinking about this and how bothered I am by it. I even pulled over to make sure that nobody was in my car and I just hadn't noticed.
no, but if you are i am too. i catch myself thinking about worst-case scenarios all the time, especially when i'm alone. my head often fills with "what-if"s and it drives me nuts.
then i reach for another piece of chocolate and i'm all good.
last week i came out to my car from the grocery store and my hazard lights were on. i KNOW i didn't turn them on before i got out of the car. i would have noticed. i called my husband with this highly logical scenario: someone unlocked my car, turned on the lights to toy with me and they are probably hiding in my trunk right now, where they will leap out and murder me once i am home alone.
so no, you are not nuts and yes, i do this all the time.
Post by walterismydog on May 9, 2013 12:23:12 GMT -5
I do this all the time. I have too much time alone all day, working from home. Scenarios that come out of my head all day are really dark sometimes. It's not a good thing. I will be really thankful when I am no longer working from home full time, it's too much time alone and too much time to think about all kinds of ridiculous things. It's driving me mad.
So, you definitely know they weren't changed on the way there? Any chance E was playing with it?
To be honest, my first thought was that someone was in your car, but thinking rationally, they wouldn't take the time to fuck with your settings.
no, they were for sure not changed on the way there. and i dropped e at school at 7:50, so he wouldn't have been able to touch them.
there are buttons on my steering wheel that change the display for the screen to show things like tire pressure, how long you've been driving, mpg, range of miles left to empty...shit like that. i always have it on the mpg screen and it was at the range to empty screen which you have to toggle through about five times to get to.
then on the same screen (again, accessed by another button on the steering wheel) you can see the mileage on the car...on for trip a, one for trip b, and one for overall mileage. i always have it on trip a and it was set to show trip b.
you can just push the engine start button once and not hold it and the car will turn on, giving you access to mess with these things. in order to start the car the key has to be within a certain range and then you push on the brake and hold the button in and it starts.
I think I remember an old Oprah where the guest explained that we're genetically programmed to do this sort of thing. Like, survival prepartion mind-games. My own disaster scenarios didn't begin until after my first was born, which I think is pretty common.
Also, I don't think this counts as creating a bad event in your head. Clearly something happened in your car - either you switched the displays or a mechanical / electrical thing happened. Or a crazy kidnapping murdering rapist was staking out your car:) There has to be an explanation, and you're just trying to figure out what it is. I was thinking about when people invent bizzare horrific scenarios out of the blue.
Post by margotmacomber on May 9, 2013 12:27:17 GMT -5
The other day I was reading about mercury poisoning and then became convinced I had it because I ate too much tuna in close intervals while dieting. So yeah.
Post by underwaterrhymes on May 9, 2013 12:29:45 GMT -5
I do this. All the time I do this.
I'm a huge worrier and I think about awful things happening more than I would like. I'm usually able to push them away, but it's gotten harder since K was born. It's not to a point where it affects my happiness or my ability to cope, but I hate that these scary thoughts pop into my head and mess with me.
Yep. The night that someone was shining flashlights in my apartment window and after he walked down our stairs I realized the doors were all unlocked. I couldn't help but think what would have happened if they had tried to open one of the doors. What would I have done since I was sleeping on the couch and my H and E were in the bedroom sleeping.
This last weekend we went drove to Tenn. I left my car at my brothers. We rented a van so SIL took me to pick it up Thursday morning.
Monday I picked my car back up and I noticed the clock was four hours off, my clock always runs slow. So every couple of months I fix it., but never this slow.
I was convinced that someone had switched out my battery or had tried to steal my car but gave up.
Turns out my SIL was going to drive it and the battery died so she jumped it, but never mentioned it to me. ()
I also get freaked out if I'm following H in cars for whatever reason. I always picture seeing him in a horrific crash and not being able to save him.
I do this sometimes when he's late from work and I can't get a hold of him.
Post by game blouses on May 9, 2013 12:46:12 GMT -5
I do it all the time. Like if I'm holding the baby and walking down a flight of stairs, I have a sudden glimpse of falling down the stairs and landing on the baby. I often have to take a second to get back to reality. I've done it all my life. When I was a kid I though that it was a time travel thing, like I got a second chance in that instance to not do it again.
Post by snipsnsnails on May 9, 2013 13:02:18 GMT -5
Only with a certain bug that I have a phobia about. I have some prepared, conscious totems almost that I know I can think about to veer my mind back into not thinking about the bug. It sounds stupid, but my "safe images" are kittens. When I think about the bug and imagine horrific things about it, I start to purposely think about kittens and even verbalize it aloud if I have to and that helps to distract my mind. It's taken some time and practice to get to where it works consistently.
A lot, unfortunately. I've even had entire arguments in my head. I think she'll say this, then I'll say that, then she'll say this, and I'll say that...
My brain equals a squirrel cage sometimes! IF I catch myself thinking crazy thoughts, a simple "stop it!" usually works. I can turn it off, but it's more difficult to start the crazy thoughts in the first place.
I would be willing to bet it was mechanical / electrical related rather than someone going into your car and toying with it. Especially since it was daylight. However, I do not blame you, and I think that sometimes it is almost better that we think the worst of situations, because it is likely to be a wake up call for us so we pay more attention in the future. I am careless a lot of the time, and I need these reminders often, so they serve me well. I hope you can relax a little.
Sara, that would bother me too. I still think about that one time I came home to find my H's cat w/ an Elizabethan collar on, sitting on the bed. I am almost positive that collar was in a place she couldn't have gotten to, and she can't jump onto stuff when she's wearing it. But why would someone break in and put a that thing on my cat and put the cat on the bed? lol. H swears it wasn't him, but I still wonder. But then.. why would he have done it and lied? ugh.
I try not to think about it.
I read this post no less than 5 times to see if I understood it. And I'm still not 100% sure.
It's so bad it is one of the things I am in therapy for, I tend to catastrophize a lot of things. It blows my mind when I learned that not everyone self talks, never mind negative self talking.
Post by shostakovich on May 9, 2013 14:41:27 GMT -5
I do this too.
Last Friday, H left for the gym around 1pm, and I headed out to run some errands. When I'd finished up my last errand, I texted H (who'd been at the gym for about an hour at that point), seeing if he wanted me to pick him up in the car. He responded that no, he had a few more sets to do, so he'd see me at home. An hour passes. Then two. I start calling his cell, no answer. I text him, no answer. Then I'm hearing sirens on the street outside (pretty common), and start picturing him as dying on the street after getting hit by a bus on his walk home.
Turns out he just decided to do a super long day at the gym, and his cell phone battery died. Yeah. I should probably drink more or something.
Small scale and big scale and I have been this way since I was little.
My dad was in corrections and apparently ticked off a psycho that killed 4 people. I was 8 at the time. He had a serious sit-down with me and told me "If someone ever comes to the door and starts trying to hurt me or your mom.... I want you to have a plan of escape and know what to do once you escape...." Pretty sure that's when it all started.
I used to sail through life, oblivious that anything bad could happen to me. In fact, I was confident that nothing bad WOULD happen to me, just because I was me. Now, I believe that was a massively stupid attitude to have. Still, since probably nothing bad is going to happen at any given time, it is a useful attitude if one wants to be happy.
These days, I'm always certain that, for example, if I've left the front door unlocked, there's a bad guy lurking somewhere in my house waiting to get me or my kids. I have to check EVERY SINGLE place a person could hide, and I mean ridiculous places like in the refrigerator, before I can let it go.
Post by coribelle26 on May 9, 2013 17:01:37 GMT -5
Okay @tambcat I think I have discovered why I was so confused and no one else was. I have never heard that term used for a "don't bite at yourself" cone. So you were talking about this:
And I was picturing this:
Only on the cat. And on the heels of the bib and bowtie photos it didn't seem all that implausible.
I need a nap. Now that I understand what's going on, that's messed up and I would still be curious about it years later, too.