Anticipation/Knowing the future

[Chart]

Hello, just curious if anybody else also suffers from Extreme Anticipation Capacity (EAC) (And to be clear I've no idea if this concept exists as a formal term or acronym, nor if so what it's actually called!)

So EAC... That is to say, seeing and knowing what is going to happen before it happens. And I mean from a mundane level, like my daughter spilling her drink all over the gameboard, to knowing that something won't work out but it takes years to confirm...

I have this. I'm not 100% right all the time, but it's starting to really bug me, and in a more and more negative manner as I become conscious of it.

I know this is almost certainly a result of my Cptsd, trauma in infancy, and came from a need to predict what was coming as a protective tool.

My problem is the growing realization that it doesn't really help anything, then or now. Often it just brings me stress as there is zero I can do to prevent the future event.

I'm noticing it especially with my youngest daughter. And I'm wondering how much I suffered from this with my two older kids. To the point I probably traumatized them to a certain extent by trying to control the outcomes of things I perceived as about to happen and trying to avoid them by controlling them. My reaction is almost always stress and frustration which would inevitably lead to anger. Especially when I was confirmed in my anticipation.

Now that I've explored this a little, I'm better at letting go. Certainly the control factor is important to release. I think I'm doing it more and more.

But I feel now this ability has been for the most part a curse... Detrimental to me AND my relationships. Time will tell if I can "transform" it somehow into a strength, but for now I'm curious if others relate.

Thanks for your feedback.
-Chart

[Little2Nothing]

I have never experienced those kinds of premonitions before, but I can see why it would be disturbing over time. 

[NarcKiddo]

I have noticed that sort of thing myself. Not for things that might happen in the far future. In my case I am not sure if it is a true prediction thing (although I have had many, many instances of things like hearing a song in my head moments before a radio station plays it, and it's not a chart hit) but feels more like an enhanced processing ability. So I know the child is going to fall or my husband is going to drop something or my mother is going to scrape her car before the person themselves realises something is going wrong for them. It does indeed feel like it stems from a need to predict what is going to happen as a protective tool.

In my case the protective tool was not so much in preventing a bad thing (I would not dare to tell my mother to slow down, for instance) but in running through the reactions I might need to display so I could get this right in advance. When the predicted mishap (or even good thing) happens I can then slot into autopilot for my immediate reaction and all my processing power can then concentrate on how the other person is behaving so I can adjust for that as necessary. As time has gone on I am sure I have got more annoying, though, because I do try to prevent my clumsy husband from spills. In his case I am scared of his angry outburst at his own clumsiness (which may trigger an EF) but because he is a safe person I am prepared to stick my neck out and try to prevent calamity.

Because we notice things that confirm our suspicions and may not scientifically monitor all the examples when we don't successfully predict something I have no idea how extreme my ability is, but I am completely sure this happens to me at least a bit more than it happens to Joe Public.

[dollyvee]

Hey Chart,

I have been reading a bit about highly sensitive people and there's an overlap and/or some differentiation between hypervigilance and HSP. The thinking is that being in a heightened state for most of our lives allows us to see danger before it happens. It's something we learned for survival.

However, in Healing Developmental Trauma, Laurence Heller talks about those with a connection survival strategy acquired through preverbal trauma as having access to esoteric states because of their failure to embody. So, it's my understanding that perhaps those with trauma/connection survival strategy have access to the kinds of information you talk about. However, no matter what you see you aren't able to control the actions of others, which is understandably frustrating. I guess the challenge may be to trust yourself and what you know, even if other people don't understand. At least this is how I experience it when there's things I can't explain to other that I "know."

Sending you support,
dolly

edit: I should say allows us to be prepared for what might happen, and evaluating what might happen, so we can anticipte what might happen, and not see things before they happen. For me, I think there's also a gathering of evidence subconsciously of things that have happened in the past that points me in the direction I think things are going to go.

[Papa Coco]

Chart

I, my wife, my children, all have this. Like you say, it's not something we can control. It comes on us when it comes on us. I've many times had a dream about someone I haven't seen in 20, or 30, or even 40 years, only to run into them the very next day. I've been triggered to change directions in my car, only to find out a horrific multicar accident happened on the route I was on before I changed it. I've known about deaths of my friends before anyone called to tell me about their passing.

On the 2nd anniversary of my little sister's passing, I was being driven to suicide by my narcissistic sister: the same one who'd driven my little sister to her suicide. Now that I was the baby in the family, I was the new target for her gossip and lies. My whole FOO was believing her lies and I was being vilified in ways I couldn't even grasp. I had been a good son my entire life and I was being vilified so cleverly that I didn't know who to trust or how to survive one more hour in this abuse.

For the entire day, the Grim Reaper was standing behind me. He kept getting bigger and more solid as the day progressed. I was on my computer, working. I knew I was about to die. My big, huge, Catholic family was too horrible for me to live any longer. I could see, in my mind, death getting closer and closer to my feet, like the gentle waves of a slow incoming tide. When the waves reached about 4 inches from my toes, I knew I had 15 minutes left to live. I was being pulled into my own end. I shut down my computer. As I picked up my car keys so I could drive to the bridge I was going to jump off of, my cell phone rang. It was someone who's known me her entire life, but lived on the other side of the US from me. When I answered, she did not say "Hi" she screamed "JIMMY! WHAT'S WRONG?" I fell apart. I blubbered my intentions to her. She said, "You've been on my mind all morning. My stomach was getting sicker and sicker as I thought about you. A few minutes ago I got a call from a man I haven't spoken to in 2 years who told me, 'You have to call the west coast. Something horrible is about to happen.'" She knew exactly who he meant, and she called me immediately.

As she then calmed me down and forced me to turn the computer back on and find the number for the suicide hotline, the Grim Reaper vanished. My strange pull into death was broken. She saved my life by answering her premonition. In fact, her friend saved it too by answering his premonition to call her. 

It took that, plus one more event for me to finally go 100% no contact with my Dad, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and any family friend that was still connected to them. That was June 30, 2010, and I remain No contact to this day, and hopefully for the rest of my natural life. That premonition was an intervention that should have never had to happen. It proved to me that my FOO is too dangerous to ever get near again.

So yes. I have a very strong belief that premonitions are real, and that if we will answer to them, we can change our fate. I can tell you there have been many, many times, when I've ignored the premonitions, and all I could say later was, "Dang! I should've listened to my gut."

[Chart]

Thanks everybody, L2N, Narco...
Dollyvee I've got that book, hoping to read it soon.
PapaCoco, sounds more like a guardian angel than esp. Your story brought tears to my eyes. I know that feeling of hopelessness too. It's so hard to shut people out... it's just not in our nature.

[Blueberry]

Chart, Idk if it's the same thing but I've occasionally had dreams that turned out true. In one case, very mundane: cycling to school and then another cyclist came out of somewhere cyclists would never come out of. Lo and behold, that morning a cyclist came out of there. That was it. Never had contact with the cyclist, had no affect on my life that I knew. Never noticed a cyclist coming out of there again. 

Another time I dreamed of a situation, words, people, place very exactly months before I was in that place with those people. In fact, I know that I had no knowledge of the main person in the dream at the time of the dream, nor any of the others hanging around. I may have known the name of the village, that's it. I almost fell over when it all came to pass as it had in the dream. That was a good place for me.

There was a time when I had a dream but it might have been coincidence. I no longer know what the dream was - just that it could have been coincidence.

I haven't had dreams like that for a long time - that was all late teens/early 20's. I know that I eventually noticed the dreams had a peculiar clarity about them and when they were about the immediate future I sometimes acted on them to avoid something bad taking place. Like when I dreamt I went to a particular bike rack and my bike was no longer there, I locked my bike to a different rack that morning. I remember telling F and he laughed because he thought that was ridiculous. My M said her mother had dreams that turned out true and the dreams had a particular 'quality' to them shall we say. They were 'different' in some way and at least one turned very bad, tragic IRL. According to M, GrM grew to fear those types of dreams. GrM was traumatised medically as a small child, I know that from what was said about her and her reactions.

For myself, I've never thought in terms of a name for this 'talent' or whatever you want to call it.  There have been reports of 'seeing' into the future across cultures and across the ages so I guess it's part of the human condition some way. Or maybe it really is particular among people who've been traumatised? I had an accident at 20 with bad concussion and it was after that that long-suppressed trauma started coming up and/or especially brain fog presumably to keep old stuff at bay.

The only time ESP was suggested to me by Ts was to downplay the possibility of my having cptsd.

[AphoticAtramentous]

@Blueberry: I also had similar dream experiences, though not anymore for whatever reason. I only recently discovered this phenomenon has a name: déjà rêvé | https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/deja-reve
It has a few explanations, some believe it to be spiritual, others believe it to be psychological. But I thought you might find it interesting to know.

Regards,
Aphotic.