I am not NUTS!

Posted by cbjam on July 23, 2007 9:08 AM PDT

Recommend this? YES NO

I have no idea what category this falls under but i just wanted to talk about something that i was never able to verbalize because i always thought it was to weird to say out load. However these last couple weeks i finally found a very normal word for it so now i can talk about it without being embarrassed. Finally!

What i thought was possibly multiple personality disorder is really just Visualization:)
Basically i spend a lot of my free time thinking about all kinds of random shit in my life. It's usually related to work but sometimes it spills over into other aspects of my life. But the way i think about them is that i play everything out in my head before it happens...Literally!! i will sometimes be in the shower, in my car, totally tuned out at some boring dinner and I'm thinking about an important meeting i have in a couple days, an email i need to write, an idea i need to develop and sell and I go through the entire process in my head. If it's a meeting, I will go over all kinds of different scenarios from what i will say to how i will say it to what the other's person reaction will be. I will think about what t-shirt i will wear that I know they will ask about which will segway into some great story (i'm in the production business so we're casual).
But i tend to do this for everything...so for example on sunday night when i can't sleep i will think about the different subway options i could take to get a meeting the next morning. Believe me sometimes all of this is a royal pain in the ass and creates more stress than i need. The real positive, however, and this outways all the negatives is that there are very few things that i dont think i can accomplish because of it. By constantly and incessantly going over all the variables and making them work out in my head gives me the utmost confidence that i will get the end result that i need. And while it doesn't happen exactly how i imagine it i usually get a similar end result that i am happy with. I also think this is why i tend to have a few too many de ja' vous moments in my life. I swear in the last few years i've had four or five really bizarre situations where i literally knew what someone was about to say before they said it.

I'm glad I found a word that makes all my neurotic behavior sound appropriate because this was definitely something i never have shared before.

Just like Ty Webb in Caddyshack...."be the ball, Danny"

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7 Comments

You totally found the right category! And a term to prove your sanity!
I love that you were open to share this. Coaches have been using Visualization with athletes for Peak Performance for YEARS. Why this never really made it over to main stream, everyday life, I'll never know. Sounds to me like your on the right track. Now that you're obviously skilled, let's see if you can take it to the next level and visualize something happening that you know nothing about.. that'll really freak your mind! Happy Visualizing.

Posted by beth on July 23, 2007 6:27 PM PDT

Sounds like you've discovered that thoughts shape our reality! I agree with Beth. Can you post a goal here and apply the technique?

Posted by Richman on July 23, 2007 10:15 PM PDT

There are some pretty fantastic books out right now about visualization and intention like Lynne Mctaggert's book The Intention Experiment. There's a great community around the whole thing as well.

Posted by Berit on July 24, 2007 5:40 PM PDT

So I 'suffer' from the same thing but it manifests a bit differently. I visualize the moment, but I also write letters, emails, have the full back and forth conversation, but then can't recall if it was real or only in my own mind.

To friends, employees and co-workers, I have the insane ability to ask them about something literally as they are about to send me a note on it. And its often not something top of mind but something that has long been forgotten or put to the side. Its almost comical.

So thanks for giving me a new way to look at it - and maybe a better way to apply it for good instead of freak-out value.

Posted by bpalmer on September 24, 2007 1:42 PM PDT

Hey cbjam, sounds like you may have a "bad" case of awareness. I always tell my coaching clients that they already have the answers, they just haven't been asked the right questions. Seems like you ask the questions yourself. If that's a split personality, you picked a couple of good ones!

Posted by John Robinson on September 29, 2007 8:20 AM PDT

I prefer to call it intuition. We all have it to varying degrees, but most folks are afraid to use it. They get the intuitive "hit", don't understand it, can't believe it's real, so they ignore it. It can take real courage to interpret and speak your intuition - I acknowledge you for that.

So, bpalmer, aka "Intuitive Woman", I send you off into the world to use your superpowers to spread awareness and raise consciousness.

Posted by John Robinson on September 29, 2007 8:36 AM PDT

I read through your story twice and was trying to read between the lines. What was written didn't seem to justify the confession. Nothing about what you wrote suggested "multiple personality disorder" as you mused, but perhaps a little dash of A.D.D. or O.C.D. when your mind starts to speed up at night when it would possibly be better to have the mind slow down at that time. I used to eat about an ounce of dark chocolate at 10 at night and then wonder why I couldn't get to sleep at midnight.... :)

But you are in good company. Many, many creative and highly intelligent people have some psychological traits or tendencies which either make them feel "nuts" or get labeled as such by others. I once read a book which talked about how when people "jump to conclusions" that sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes a spark of genius. Sometimes we just know things. And being able to anticipate what someone is going to say a moment before they say it is really validating that we all connect on other levels. Be happy and creative. Just don't lose sleep over it!