Did you have any weird beliefs as a child?

[Pacific_Loner]

I've been thinking about starting this thread since a while because I had some strange ones myself and I'm curious to know at which level they are recurrent among kids. So here's the main examples that come to my mind:

I had this phase when I thought maybe my house was in fact somebody's aquarium, and I was their pet, and they could see everything I do. So for months I was hiding myself in the closet or under the blankets when I was changing clothes.

I also had this weird phase when I thought every night, my bed would go one level down in "another dimension" or something, and when I would wake up, everything was the same though it was not, it wasn't the same house, and it wasn't my original family anymore. And I thought that at midnight there was a lever that would appear on the wall next to my bed and if I would manage to stay awake until midnight to turn it up, I could stop going down one level everynight. But I never could :sad: So every morning for months I would wake up completely confused thinking I was surrounded by impostors and that I would never see my real family ever again. ???

it was like... between 5 and 8 years old. So I wonder if anyone else had weird beliefs like this and if you would want to share it ?

 

[WishingICould]

Well, my OCD started when i was a child so i had some pretty weird beliefs. I'd always have to have things facing a certain way or do things a certain number of times otherwise i was convinced something bad would happen.

 

[GraybeardGhost]

I once believed briefly that all the people around me were crazy and I was the only sane one. Silly me.

 

[Hellhound]

I thought God was out to get me.

 

[Lamb]

Let's see.

For awhile I thought that a ventriloquist dummy was going to kill me everytime I set off to bed at night alone. Despite there being no dummy in the house I had a pattern of sprinting from the living room (turning off the light at the same time) to the bathroom. Then I would stay stuck in fear locked in the bathroom, convinced he was on my trail. I'd look under the door for feet. When I gathered enough balls I'd make a sprint for my room. This happened every night, always believing I'd see feet or shoes..


Another was that Batman lived on the rooftop across from my house. It was a chimney that I interpreted being shaped as a human shadow.
I'd wait up in hopes of seeing his bat sign.

Don't think that was weird though. Your beliefs were much more creative and cool.

 

[GhastlyCC]

When I was a kid,I thought that if I walked past the microwave and there was still time on it because somebody didn't zero it out,That something bad would happen to me in that amount of time if I just ignored it and didn't clear it myself.
But If I did....I was safe.
It wasn't a game that I played.
It was irrational,OCD induced fear.lol

My dad told me that if I put a penny in each of my shoes, I would run faster and jump higher.
So I did......all the damn time.
Sometimes having multiple pennies in each shoe.

My parents always used to buy doughnuts from this place called Winchell's when I was little.
There were these two old ladies that worked there for a long time.
And I for some reason that the doughnuts we were buying from them were made of old lady skin.

I thought the leprechaun lived behind this little door in my parents room.
It was like...maybe 4 foot tall.
2 foot wide.
But it was just a way to access the plumbing to the bathroom on the other side of the wall.

 

[jaim38]

I used to think everything runs from electricity, including the water faucets.
My mom told me that if I saw somebody of the opposite gender naked, I will develop needles in my eyes. I actually believed that.
And this is probably OCD: for a time, I avoided stepping on sidewalk cracks. Instead, I skipped over them.

 

[squidgee]

And this is probably OCD: for a time, I avoided stepping on sidewalk cracks. Instead, I skipped over them.

Haha, I did that all the time as a little kid. But I don't think it has much to do with OCD, probably just one of those weird things you do as a little kid, like playing the floor is lava and jumping from couch to couch.

 

[IntheLabyrinth]

I believed that Freddy Kruger from Nightmare on Elm Street was real, and no one could convince me otherwise. Thanks to him, I had insomnia from age 9 to 18. I stopped believing around 13 or so but the damage was done. At 18 I found what would now considered medicinal, and that cured my insomnia.

 

[kilojoule]

I had this phase when I thought maybe my house was in fact somebody's aquarium, and I was their pet, and they could see everything I do. So for months I was hiding myself in the closet or under the blankets when I was changing clothes.

yup, I thought this except I thought that all the people who had ever lived and died were watching me all the time. I also thought that any other life out in the Universe was watching me. And I thought that, the whole world, we were just all ants in a maze to them.

I obsessed about the size of the Universe and the concept of infinity.
I remember crying about this in the first house I lived in , so 5 or 6 years old. I started freaking out about that early on.

and that hasn't really changed lol


The only cute weird belief I had; I would always be smaller than my older sisters because they would always be older.

 

[Kiwong]

I believed I was an orphan from Planet X. Sometimes people seem so alien to me, maybe I was right.

 

[KiaKaha]

I used to think there were 24 minutes in a day.

I could never say the word properly properly until I was about 8

I used to think the aliens from war of the worlds were real and was terrified of them for years.

 

[bozo]

I was petrified that vampires would attack me while I slept at night. I would set alarms at my door so that when they came into my room they would trip the alarm and awaken me (as if I could have done something to defend myself against the undead). One morning I woke up to find that someone tripped the alarm, and the family dog was curled up next to me on the bed. So much for my alarms, so much for the vampires, and what a nice dog.

 

[NathanielWingatePeaslee]

I've been thinking about starting this thread since a while because I had some strange ones myself and I'm curious to know at which level they are recurrent among kids. So here's the main examples that come to my mind:

I had this phase when I thought maybe my house was in fact somebody's aquarium, and I was their pet, and they could see everything I do. So for months I was hiding myself in the closet or under the blankets when I was changing clothes.

Frontier Institute Research Schizophrenia

"Positive symptoms — Hearing voices, seeing or smelling things that others cannot, suspiciousness, feeling under constant surveillance, paranoia, or delusions."

I also had this weird phase when I thought every night, my bed would go one level down in "another dimension" or something, and when I would wake up, everything was the same though it was not, it wasn't the same house, and it wasn't my original family anymore. And I thought that at midnight there was a lever that would appear on the wall next to my bed and if I would manage to stay awake until midnight to turn it up, I could stop going down one level everynight. But I never could :sad: So every morning for months I would wake up completely confused thinking I was surrounded by impostors and that I would never see my real family ever again. ???

it was like... between 5 and 8 years old. So I wonder if anyone else had weird beliefs like this and if you would want to share it ?

Capgras delusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hmm. :thinking:

 

[Pacific_Loner]

Let's see.

For awhile I thought that a ventriloquist dummy was going to kill me everytime I set off to bed at night alone. Despite there being no dummy in the house I had a pattern of sprinting from the living room (turning off the light at the same time) to the bathroom. Then I would stay stuck in fear locked in the bathroom, convinced he was on my trail. I'd look under the door for feet. When I gathered enough balls I'd make a sprint for my room. This happened every night, always believing I'd see feet or shoes..

My mom told me that if I saw somebody of the opposite gender naked, I will develop needles in my eyes. I actually believed that.

That is just... cruel.

Frontier Institute Research Schizophrenia

"Positive symptoms — Hearing voices, seeing or smelling things that others cannot, suspiciousness, feeling under constant surveillance, paranoia, or delusions."

Capgras delusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hmm. :thinking:

Hey don't you dare tag me with new mental health issues :bat:

This is all very interesting though

 

[NathanielWingatePeaslee]

Hahah! Yeah, those would only count as symptoms of a mental illness if you had them now, as an adult. It is interesting, yes. :bigsmile:

 

[BamanPiderman]

I didn't have very strange ones, I think.

My mum used to tell me that there was an octopus in the drain in the bathtub to keep my hands away from it as a kid, because I used to like sticking my hands there while the water drained.

I used to think that every object had a mind, feelings and a way of sensing, so it made me very uncomfortable and guilty doing everything. I had a Dorothy the Dinosaur cereal bowl and when I ate my breakfast my dad used to say if I didn't hurry and eat everything she would suffocate. But I felt bad for the food too!

My parents are awful.

I also thought that maybe the only real person was me, and everyone else was just an apparition, because I used to think it was weird how I'm only one perspective of a human life. Very selfish, I know. But I thought it would make more sense if humans all shared one mind and one consciousness.

 

[Klonoa]

I thought the zombie apocalypse could happen at any given moment. If things were a bit too quiet, the thoughts of the End of the World would flood my mind.

I got terribly scared of zombies thanks to this [insert any insult of your prefference here] when I played Zelda as a child. I more-or-less got over it... And then the Miami zombie thing happened...

 

[Lamb]

I didn't have very strange ones, I think.

My mum used to tell me that there was an octopus in the drain in the bathtub to keep my hands away from it as a kid, because I used to like sticking my hands there while the water drained.

I used to think that every object had a mind, feelings and a way of sensing, so it made me very uncomfortable and guilty doing everything. I had a Dorothy the Dinosaur cereal bowl and when I ate my breakfast my dad used to say if I didn't hurry and eat everything she would suffocate. But I felt bad for the food too!

My parents are awful.

I also thought that maybe the only real person was me, and everyone else was just an apparition, because I used to think it was weird how I'm only one perspective of a human life. Very selfish, I know. But I thought it would make more sense if humans all shared one mind and one consciousness.

Lol! Oh my god with the dinosaur bowl. Good way to start anxiety early on. Those are some amazing beliefs, I must admit.

 

[drganon]

When I was younger, I was pretty paranoid about doors being locked. Before I went to bed I had to check to make sure they were all locked.