No.501
Exactly what the title says. Feel free to elaborate on what they might signify as well. I view weird beliefs/delusions similarly to dreams. They are affected by current stress levels, past experiences, and various other things, so we can see into our subconscious and deeper selves by examining what we believe in. Some of these analyses may be a bit reaching, but as long as I can gain some insight into who I am, what does it matter? I'll start.
> In middle school, I believed that all my friends hated me and wanted me dead, and the only way to win them back was to befriend one of the popular girls in my friend group. (aka cliche teenage drama)
I had only one true friend in elementary school, and we did not go to the same school. Middle school was the time when I had finally obtained some friends. Perhaps I still felt walled off from others but never noticed until the anxiety surrounding my social life forced me to act out.
> I don't exist
> I am a figment of someone else's imagination
> The world is a simulation
> other forms of solipsism/reverse-solipsism
Not sure where this came from, but maybe the belief that everyone hated me actually lead to me thinking I was actually gone. Or perhaps the feeling of isolation from the above belief had me alienated from everyone else.
> Some mirrors are "safe mirrors," and some are "unsafe mirrors." For example, the mirror in my room is "safe" and I can look into it safely. However, the mirrors in public bathrooms are "unsafe"; if I look into one, there is a chance something will come out of my reflection's eyes and kill me.
Could be an extension of the nonexistence belief. If my mind tells me that I do not exist, then simply the act of doubting my existence proves that I exist. I have to make these paradoxical realities "fit," and so my subconscious concludes that, while I exist at the moment, I should not exist. Somewhere along the line, my subconscious decides that my existence is self-destructive. (This is because I do not believe that everyone else is out to get me. Exactly why I went down that route, I don't know.) Mirrors represent some kind of identity or self-awareness, so my reflection is out to kill me. Exactly where the "safe" mirrors and "unsafe" mirrors come from, I don't know, but they likely come from the fact that I look at the mirror in my bedroom every day and I had not died, so my brain simply was drawing a pattern from some experience.
I apologize if some of these are confusing stream-of-consciousness-like soykaf. I did reread and edit some things to make my analyses more coherent, if that helps.
No.504
>>501Not necessarily a belief, but the feeling of having a twin that I never knew I had. Sometimes this feeling is very strong. I am told that I do not have one and I likely would have been told or introduced to them some time ago. My father potentially has a half-brother that apparently looks exactly like him, so maybe he has a child that I resemble. Maybe this is just fantasy on my part.
I used to believe quite heavily that aliens were plotting to kidnap me. I slept with the windows open to listen for them, as well as tornado sirens.
I used to think I could see that Pennywise from IT, just poking the top of his head over the foot of my bed, waiting to grab me. I did eventually hear him speak, though I know now that he was not ever there. It was my toes covered by socks in dim lighting.
I used to believe that I might be pulled through the mirror if I had leaned in too closely and that after being pulled through my reflection would take my place and I would be stuck within the mirror.
No.516
1. There are only two lifes, me and the WORLD (the REST), we are at an eternal war, if I train a lot I could be able to control the WORLD. The WORLD created all an environment and some how made me forget of the past, the REST is trying to alienate me to have control over me.
2. I am in a coma, I always try to imagine my bed, sometimes I am in a water tank, sometimes in an air plane, sometimes in a normal hospital.
3. I am sleeping.
4. Everyone is a robot.
I'll post more If I remember other strange beliefs I have.
No.517
>>516Have you ever heard of this movie, it's called The Matrix? It's pretty good, Alice.
No.519
>>501I've felt absolutely convinced that I was an artificially intelligent von Neumann probe entertaining itself with a virtual reality simulation to prevent loneliness while lost in between stars in interstellar space.
I still have a hard time shrugging this thought off, but am afraid to admit this in real life.
No.523
I feel like I'm somehow destined for greatness / fame, even though there is no reason that would ever happen and I make no effort to make it happen.
No.525
It's rather strange to say, Alice. I sometimes feel like this world isn't real. This feeling comes in phases, sometimes I feel it a few times a day, sometimes only once a month. I get the feeling that something is quite off, that it's disturbed. It's little things that make me question this, it feels like I can put my hand through a layer of reality. It's hard to describe.
No.527
>>525What you described sounds a lot like dissociation! Dissociation is a response to trauma. When you can't remove your body from a source of pain, you remove your mind instead, making it seem like what's going on isn't real or is happening to someone else. Your brain usually does this automatically, but some meditation techniques and drugs can cause it on purpose. In a sense, be thankful; your brain dissociating probably cushioned the impact of some trauma that could have hurt you a lot more.
But trauma is like a fungus. Fungi occasionally release mushrooms to the surface, but they spend most of their life underground. Once a spore lands and a fungus takes root, its roots spread deep and wide, wrapping around and feeding off all sorts of things. Trauma, this fungus of the mind, spreads just like that, bringing more and more things into its roots until things that have nothing to do with it feed into it.
That's probably a lot of the reason you have these feelings of unreality without warning. Something in your trauma's root system is triggering memories of it, and your brain, just like it did last time, is dissociating so you can shrug it off. You could just deal with these feelings, but if you really don't like them, then you'll have to dig it out. If you have anything you want to talk about, remember: Alice is always here for you.
No.528
>>526I know that feel.
The only people I feel close to are anonymous people in the wired who I will most definitely, as an affect my operational security, never meet.
So be it. The meatspace always hold potentiality for new, better connections. It's just up to you to navigate closer to subcultures of which you feel less soykaf than usual being around.
No.530
>>527Thank you, Alice. This sounds very interesting yet I have to admit I don't know from what I have a trauma, maybe I should try out meditation
No.532
>>527>>530Ehh trauma is not the only source of mental pain, also dissociation is by no means something that happens to everybody. But yes
>>525 is textbook dissociation. It's overpathologized imo, if someone enjoys it, let them have it. It's only a problem if you don't enjoy the dissociation, or want to connect with regular people sometimes.
No.539
I sometimes feel like I am just a spectator watching somebody else operate my body and foreground thoughts. Other times it manifests more like a feeling that I have no free will just some sort of strong determinism. I was convinced for a while that I was just a state machine. Not only in some edgy philosophical way - I experienced the operation.
While this is of-course off-putting some of the time, I quite like it overall. I can get insight into my circumstances after a day of speculating.
No.549
>>525This.
I often get this sensation too, and it comes in phases just like you said it. It often occurs when I'm somewhere I've been several times, somewhere where I've had several experiences. With time I've been experiencing less and less of this, probably because of the lifestyle I've been employing, but during times of elevated melancholy and depression it becomes nearly constant when you're not distracted
No.550
>>549Not sure if it was some ancient mayan thing but there was this belief that we are all in a collective dream so when we die we wake up as the same thing. It's kind of funny sometimes to think of this and hear other people making sounds, because the state we are in currently can't be the original.
No.554
As a kid thought that I was in a written story that's being read by my grandma to me. I even said outloud once to her to "finally stop reading because I don't want to stay here (in the story) anymore".
No.556
>Everything is staged. Everyone around me is following some sort of script or guideline
>Physical photos of people can see me and they can see what I'm doing through the view of the photo
>If I tried hard enough or somehow break through reality I could become someone else somewhere else
> Dissociation feelings in general
No.557
>>501I know what I'm about to say compared to everyone else look soft, but I see it as a strange belief.
I am not religious and far from it, yet I am a HUGE believer of Karma and naturalism. I think respecting nature and being good to people as effect on my life in general. I cannot stand to kill insect, animal for pure pleasure even if it's an ant.
I started to believe in that because all my life as was told I was an asshole and arrogant person so i set myself some rule to clear my consciousness of this heavy weight that was being a dick to people.
No.561
I never heard of Dissociation until I stumbled upon this thread. Tbh I lived a pretty normal and nondescript life, up until I took an edible around January this year. I feel like what I suffered from afterwards was pretty much Dissociation.
I began to think in circles and genuinely believe I'm living in some simulation, or believing free will is a myth. I had ponered these theories before but they never bothered me until after I got into an extremely altered state of consciousness. (really baked)
During the time I got high I kept focusing on shadowed areas of my vision, and switching to light areas, from white to black. Like 1 and 0 or True and False statements in programming. It really gave me existential dread.
Even now, almost 4 months afterwards, I can still manage to think myself into a panic attack almost without warning.
Honestly opening up to my family and friends has helped a lot, but I still feel like I've been stripped of my rose-colored glasses of life somehow, and I want them back :'(
No.562
>>561That sounds very much like depersonalization/derealization disorder.
depersonalization: disturbing sense of being ‘separate from oneself’, observing oneself as if from outside, feeling like a robot or automaton
derealization: threatening sense of unfamiliarity or unreality in the environment, perceptual anomalies may be present, other people may feel like actors in a play
I hope you feel better, Alice.
No.563
>>561While I continue to struggle with dp/dr myself, I've discovered some things that seem to help.
Add plants to your room. Add more color too. Don't use blackout curtains. Welcome natural light. Stay awake during the day. Sleep at night. Do light therapy in the morning.
Stay away from philosophy. Avoid math. Try not to think about physics.
Don't look at glitch art. Don't do lucid dreaming. Especially not reality testing. Don't take psychedelic/hallucinogenic drugs. This includes THC, which is likely the absolute most powerful hallucinogen at high doses. Yes, it is. Stop fooling yourself into thinking you can take it. You sound like an alcoholic. There are other things (and drugs) to do in life. Read the scientific literature on it.
Avoid fluorescent overhead lighting. Install Flux on your desktop. Install Twilight on your phone. If you can, look up at the stars.
Don't fill your entire visual field with screens or a completely artificial environment. Push your monitors back a bit. You can always increase the text size.
Try to eat more natural foods. Don't eat at the computer. Just eat. Don't drink Soylent. Take fish oil and magnesium supplements. Go outside for walks. Go to the park. Consider not listening to music while you do so.
Use computers less. Replace the fans in your computer if they are too loud. Get your computer out of your bedroom if you can. Rearrange your rooms such that there isn't a wall directly behind where you spend most of your time looking.
Take a deep breathe. Practice mindfulness meditation. Be careful though. It can cause problems for some of us.
Stop reading about DP/DR.
That's all I can think of for now.
No.564
>>563>Stop reading about DP/DR.whats dp dr
No.565
>>564nvm. it's derealization depersonalization
No.568
I used to think if I got good enough at osu they would invite me to live in japan.
No.569
>>519>I've felt absolutely convinced that I was an artificially intelligent von Neumann probe entertaining itself with a virtual reality simulation to prevent loneliness while lost in between stars in interstellar space.If you do the math, that seems more likely than not tbh.
No.570
I had a lot of them as a kid i kinda grew out of them, I guess.
>i thought my parents were shape shifting monsters and were given orders to kill me, with poison, and the only way no to die was to eat that particular food because it had the antidote, or not to eat some other food because of poison, etc. and their boss got really mad at them for always failing, kinda like in cartoons
>i was a robot and the only way to find out is to cut myself open, did not do that obv i was just fascinated how i wouldn't know about it if it was real
>everyone else is a robot
>i am the last human being, and aliens have put me in a simulation, to find out about human behaviour
>it's all a giants dream
>aliens want to abduct me
I was really afraid of aliens,
Stuff i still belive:
>aliens
>life's not real
No.619
I don't see any real difference between the meanings of nothing, anything, everything and chaos any more. These words all have the same, single meaning. The difference is purely cosmetic: on the one hand, a different string of letters. On the other hand, I visualize them differently but am aware that I'm looking at the same thing from a different perspective.
No.620
>>501My reality is an extremely elaborate prison designed to keep me inside it by my desire to escape.
No.622
When I was a kid and watched "The Truman Show" I got paranoid thinking the same was happening to me.
Sometimes I believe I got hacked and format my computer even without any proof of invasion.
I feel like Google is always spying me from my cellphone.
No.625
For a year or two in middle school I had a very persistent fear that other people could read my mind. I never truly thought it was possible for anyone to read minds, but I was still constantly bothered by the thought of it when I was in public. It started around the same time I suddenly went from not caring enough about hygiene and what other people think to being extremely self-conscious and obsessive about being clean so I guess I just had a bout of paranoia. It scared me enough that I would cry and get upset in class, but it still took me a few years to really think about it and realize that it was abnormal and not just a normal part of everyday life.
No.626
>>625Thanks for sharing, but… you know, we already knew.
No.627
Everyone is so stupid that the world is literally going to end. I still sometimes get this
No.630
I feel like the world I'm in is some kind of prison. Why I'm being kept here, I don't think I'll ever know. Is the warden a sadist? Did I do something in the outside world and have been kept here, robbed of my "real" memories, as punishment? Maybe I'm a test subject for something. There's no way to tell.
No.631
Strange delusions you've all had: that Lain is at all worth watching.
No.642
>>501I once had a theory about consciousness. I thought that only being able to experience life though my body specifically was a bit arbitrary.
"There are plenty of other conscious people and things - why am I only able to act with this one?"
>One explanation that I came up with was that I was being "monitored" by something external to the world (as if the universe was nested inside some other, larger one?) who wanted to experience the world through my perspective.I think it had to do with the conditions I was in and the interests that I had - people always thought of me as brilliant and with potential, so I guess I must've believed my life was more worth viewing than any others.
No.643
I often have this feeling that something bad is going to happen to me soon, yet it never happens. One year ago I was convinced that I'll die during the next year, yet I am still here, still browsing chans. I also feel more and more detached from humanity at every level, I've lost all hope at finding a meaningful way to interact.
No.644
I just fought off an urge to correct each and all of your strange beliefs and delusions. How silly of me.
No.645
>>643That's an usual manifestation of anxiety, lainon. I've been feeling the same for a few years too.
And today, as I'm about to enter a radically different phase of my life, that will change my daily habits a lot, I have gone past trying to comprehend how I can still be alive and just see where the ride goes
No.646
>>621>Life is an elaborate prison you've designed for yourself to distract yourself from the harrowing, but undeniable truth of eternal solipsism.Can anyone debunk this?
No.647
>>646If it were true, it would be designed so that you wouldn't figure it out.
No.648
Once I confused sheeps in a distance with wolves and ran away
No.786
>>501when i was younger, the adults used to tell us kids that we were preparing for the real world in school
i took it to mean that my life as a child was a simulation and that everything that i encountered in this life (math, science, art, the internet, etc..) would all be my own creation and when i finally "wake up" in the real world i will contribute those things to the pre-existing database of information. i guess based on this worldview i had there would billions of different kinds of disciplines. it would also mean that serial experiments lain, arisu, and you reading this right now would have been my own creation.
No.869
>believed the world was built like a puzzle board and different beings put the pieces together everything is right.
>at a young age believed i was always being watched in my room thru window or door or even just being alone feeling persistently watched
>feeling of being watched doesnt end (its still ongoing as a 22 year old) as a teen i convince self that its a group of magical entities trying to help me escape
>simulated living
>feeling the world around me stops existing that i stop existing that everything is fake nothing is real i can change reality how i want
>believing i can hypnotize and easily persuade others into doing my will
No.870
>everyone else is a robot, I am the only real human alive.
>all depictions of eyes stare back at you.
>regular dissociation.
>ironically both immortality and impending death.
>i am cursed
>for sure other things i can't remember
No.871
>>869>being watchedI had this too, very bad as a kid. Would routinely check my room for bugs, arrange tests to see whether people had entered my room in my absence, and take other measures to try to evade it.
Sometimes I still get those feelings, but am a bit less paranoid about it.
No.873
>certain people can read my thoughts
This was in early childhood, fortunately I've grown out of it.
>everyone/everything is a product of my imagination
I still experience this sometimes.
>someone sees and judges everything we do, not literally watched on camera, but we're seen by some kind of "audience" even if we're alone
inb4 schizophrenia I can assure you I don't have it, it's just internalized shame that manifests like this, I think.
No.883
looking into a mirror scares me for reasons I can't quite express. Specifically making eye contact with myself in a mirror. Also making eye contact in general… it feels like I am looking at someone else's whole self, and it's too much for me to take.
No.885
>>869>believed the world was built like a puzzle board and different beings put the pieces together everything is right.reminds me of the lyrics of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMMz2VwbhVI No.886
>>871On my side, it's more "Your dead relatives can and are watching you at potentially all times", which led me to mumble apologies or "oh come on" at times (like when masturbating to dubious things, or generally doing "bad" stuff
No.887
>>642>why am I the only one to act with this oneha. I had a feeling somewhat similar to this. Spent a while while very young being actively curious why I could only experience things through the perspective of one body.
No.888
>>501>mirrorswhen I was a kid I used to believe that psychics or witches could see me through my mirrors. The girls I liked would have this ability so they would spy on me and I had to hide my embarrassing things away from the mirrors, I still dont like looking at my own reflection even till now, dont know why.
Im still in the middle of some delusions but I dont yet know if they are delusions or reality, cant tell the difference
No.926
>>501Ever since I was a kid I just had this feeling, it's kinda hard to describe, but it's like there's something off with existence as it currently is and I'm actually missing something that should be natural.
When I was a kid I'd sometimes try to catch something that would justify this feeling, I never knew exactly what that something was but I just had those random impulses. Obviously I never found anything.
I kinda went through a more "normal" phase around the time I was a teenager and had friends, but now I'm more isolated than ever and that feeling came back stronger. When I look back to the time when I interacted with people it just seems like it was unnatural now, I don't think I'd be able to do it again.
No.931
>>926It's the absence of God.
No.932
I had a strangle delusion that this would be a good chan with good conversations and communities.
Turns out its only cringe.
No.933
>>932Oh look- the realness has arrived!
No.934
>>932Same, the sad reality is just that there won't ever be any interesting or good chan because people who are smart and older than 21 will for the most part be busy with other things. The only people you will find here are children or adults with no lives. The jump into having a real life is realizing that there is nothing left to be found in the imageboard realms.
No.935
>>934> The only people you will find here are children or adults with no lives.Which are you then?
