I often joke that, as long as I am asking this question… I am probably alright.

The dilemma stands though.  I have stopped asking the question. I hear voices in my head, I listen to them (selectively), and I no longer ask the question.

My sister-in-law had the best quote from when she first started hearing things… “I’m a doctor! As soon as I started hearing things, I went through the [92?]* diagnoses, and accepted that I am not crazy.” *She said the right number, I don’t remember what it is.

As I am not a doctor, ow do I know that I do not seriously have a mental disorder? Great Question! Glad you asked!

Confirmation.

Little bits of intuition that guide you in the right direction. A gut feeling that tells you that walking down the alley is not a safe thing right now. A memory that sparks in your mind like Deja vu, just in time to prevent you from making a mistake.

How many things can we push off onto the easy term, conincidence?

One Example: I set a plate on my Ancestry Alter. My grandfather thanked me for the offering and commented about how it was a shame that I couldn’t eat the same… I questioned him further.  He informed me of the wheat content. (Wheat is something I avoid). I didn’t believe him, so I went to check the package.  And it WAS an ingredient. I don’t know how I missed it.

So, this example has flaws.  if I were a skeptic, I would challenge that I could have noticed the ingredients subconsciously and slipped them into my delusion.

* Note: When I say skeptic, I mean someone who is willing to believe, but needs some evidence. Not the kind where there could never be enough evidence.

Second Example: I was joking with my wife and she snapped at me about something. I heard a response and said it out loud to her. She laughed really hard and commented how she didn’t realize she had told me about ‘that’.  I asked, and the response I had given her had a double meaning, and at once it was a great come back, and made fun of her for what she had done earlier.

Third Example: Walking with my wife after dinner, and we got to the edge of the woods.  I got a horrible chill and a feeling that it was not the place to be right then.  We turned away from the woods and walked home.  The next day, I read about how there had been an assault in those woods the evening we had been walking, if we had gone in, it might have been us.

Funnily enough, small confirmations happen all the time.  Warn me before I do something stupid, remind me to do something I was forgetting, or even give me a clue to a problem I am stuck on.

Perhaps I am just so smart that I know everything and can’t remember it all at once, maybe I have impressive intuition, maybe., I see dead people. But am I crazy? No.