Question of the Week: Uncanny Experiences

Sure.  When I was young, 14, I had two rather strange psychic experiences.  I had a dream that my mother was telling me about what happened coming back from the hospital for a hysterectomy.  They'd given her something that made her have to pee frequently.  She ended up in a car accident, and the cop had to drive her to a gas station so she could use the bathroom.  The next day, my mother came back from the hospital and told me this very story. Kind of hard to consider that a coincidence.

The other one was when I was in a small group in my high school English class.  The group was discussing the debate we were preparing, and I said, why are we going over this again?  We said all this last small-group meeting.  Nope.  It was the first time we'd met in group. My classmates already thought I was weird, and I'd just confirmed it.

Years later, Saturday Night Live ran a skit about a psychic who predicts trivial events.  I nearly died laughing, because for a short time, I was such a psychic.

For years, growing up, I had this dream of traveling through a particular town and then traveling home down a certain long and winding road through "the country".

I had this dream over and over throughout the years from the time I was very little until about a year ago (and I'm 43).

The reason why I no longer have the dream is:  because I actually DID travel through THAT particular town and then headed home down that EXACT long and winding road through "the country". 

I recognized everything instantly, as if being hit by a thunderbolt.

I had never been to this town before - NEVER in all my years literally and yet, had dreamt of it since I was wee little.

Thankfully, I had my older sister actually driving me that day because when I recognized the town square, the courthouse, the shops, etc... I couldn't breathe, tears came to my eyes, my knees left me, and I almost passed out.

De ja Vu - most definately.

I have had lots of experiences both psychic and paranormal. I first started noticing that I was sensitive to spirit activity and having premonitions when I was about 12yrs old. For the past 10 years I have been getting visits in my dreams from friends, family and people that I know family that have passed over. They bring me messages to give to their loved ones, most of them do not make since to me but it does to the family member that the message is directed to. My paranormal experiences started with shadow figures in my room and being physically touched and just knowing when a spirit presence was near by. I have to many to list here. These unexplained phenomena have led me in the search for more answers, I have been a paranormal investigator for the past 15yrs. and have been doing the research and study of the Supernatural and Paranormal for longer. I have my own parnormal research team called Louisiana State Paranormal Research Society. If you or your readers would like to see and hear the evidence we have captured in Haunted locations please visit our website LSPR-Society.com if anyone has questions on the Paranormal you can email me at bernadine@lspr-society.com.

When I have been psychotic I have thought I was having lots of paranormal experiences, so this is one I just can't touch- I'd be in to see my doctor if I thought I was having a psychic experience. Sorry guys.

Hi John,

I had generic intuitive experiences until two weeks before my first manic episode. A premonition dream, complete with voice, told me I would have a major event in two weeks that would change my life. It also said it would be difficult but I was a strong person and I would transcend the experience. I called my sister to tell her about the dream, then promptly forgot about it. Exactly two weeks later I was admitted to the hospital, euphoric and certain God had spoken to me personally. Putting the religious aspects aside for a moment, this experience happened twenty years ago and its message has certainly proven to be true. Today, I feel like a success despite my diagnosis and quite possibly because of it. What I do find unfortunate, however, is most of my paranormal or psychic experiences have come on the heels of a manic episode. What I choose to believe is my abilities are enhanced during the manic phase. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water and negate my experiences because I have a mental health diagnosis. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me unusually strong intuition is part of the package.

OK, Elizabeth here, again.  Reading the responses gives me the major willies.  You know, not so long ago leading psychologists gave just such occult experiences credence--people like Carl Jung and William James.  Now we're called nutjobs for recounting these experiences, and don't you dare mention them to your psychiatrist unless you want a stay in a psych ward complete with an ECT session or two.  Or three.  Well, probably not: the insurance companies probably won't allow you more than two.  If you can't get insurance for a pre-existing condition, like mental illness, you have nothing to worry about.  Thank heaven for small favors. 

The two prescient dreams I recounted are worth noting because they were so jarringly unlikely to be coincidence, as silly as they were.  I've had lots of deja vu experiences about things that have actually been important, but they were fuzzy and vague.  Worse, I've had a couple of dreams that weren't really like dreams: they were more like a confrontation with pure evil, and didn't feel like dreams at all.  But again, fuzzy and vague.  They touched me deeply in a place I really don't want to go, and f@cking scare me when I think of them.  And they don't even seem to be aligned with mounting mania,  although it seems undoubtably true that mania brings on intuitive insight that would sure as hell scare the bejesus out of the likes of Kant.  And depression brings on a kind of hell that would make Dante need to create a new circle or two.  

When you have a prescient dream, it really messes with your ideas about orderly time.  Hey, John, didn't you write a piece about how time warps in mood disorders? 

To my thinking, it's all part and parcel of the bipolar experience.  If I had my way, I'd have nothing of it.  But then, I just wouldn't be.

I've had many intuitive and psychic experiences over the years.  Naturally, I didn't connect them to having Bipolar- I'd never even heard of the thing, although i was vaguely aware of Manic Depression.

Now I can see many events in my life that mark the illness, but that isn't to say that my intuitive and psychic experiences were the product of delusional thinking.  Well, maybe some of them were...

I agree about the overlapping of heightened perceptions and delusions, and also the fine line that can shift ever-so-subtlely into a symptom of the illness.  I'm not so sure of myself now.

I think that people with MI may be inherently more perceptive, as our sense of reality is more plastic- less rigid and confined by logic.  But the health pros are most likely to blow us off if we dare to talk of these things, and that can be harmful too.  I hate that look of patronizing scepticism on my tdoc's face and it makes me want to smack her.  ok, I know I have skills to work on there about not being taken seriously etc....