If you knew how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think negatively: How do predictions and beliefs about them affect our lives and mental health?

Over the past few months, the already high interest in astrology in general, divination and esoteric tendencies has prompted you to ask, “What’s next?” It looks like it might provide an answer to your question. Space.

In search of an explanation for what is going on in our lives and how the world will function in a week, month or year, people turn to the stars, higher powers, tarot cards, and even magic.

According to statistics, 71% of Russians believe only in horoscopes (according to a survey by Rabota.ru in 2021). And why?” If the answer to his question is generally clear (which gives a person at least the illusion of control over his own life), then it is not customary to talk about the consequences of such wishes on the Universe.

Ekaterina Maslova, clinical psychologist and psychotherapist at Zigmund.Online online psychotherapy service, talked about how predictions and belief in them affect life and mental health.

Ekaterina Maslova

It is difficult for a person to live in uncertainty, and our consciousness is always looking for the easiest way to solve problems. Clarification of the future situation provides a reduction in anxiety and the ability to plan, create a semantic framework for oneself and create life strategies based on predicted scenarios.

Belief is one of a person’s special circumstances and helps to give meaning to what surrounds him. A small child trusts his parents, then believes in teachers, idols, then chooses the object of faith for himself. This choice depends on the formation of a basic trust in the world in early childhood, the level of development of thinking and the stability of our psyche. As a result, estimation demands are increasing due to the growth of changes in the effect speed of environmental factors.

With excessive belief in predictions, a person gives responsibility for his life to one or another sect. After all, everything was predicted, nothing depends on me.

That is, a person regresses to a childish state, becomes more childish. Interdependent relationships are established with the object of belief. In especially acute cases, the onset of dissociative disorders is possible – periodically there are feelings of alienation from the surrounding reality and one’s own life.

Any form of addiction involves a person in a “triangular relationship” – a victim, a savior and a persecutor – reduces faith in oneself, in one’s own abilities, transfers support from internal processes to external processes, worsens contact with oneself. There is also a certain programming of further life and a search for confirmation of facts and events in the surrounding world. But if going to predictors reduces your anxiety and does not deprive you of the ability to analyze and make decisions on your own, if you leave the responsibility to yourself, then everyone decides for himself the appropriateness of such actions.

Learning to take charge of your life without relying on false guesses is work that aims to connect and maintain contact with your thoughts, body, and emotions. Creating inner support through awareness of your values, self-confidence, and open communication with others. In order not to get lost in the world of Sufism, it is important to stop and keep quiet. It can help you become aware of yourself, your emotions, and your body. Align yourself with yourself. Remember that the most valuable thing a person has is himself. And he is a miracle revealed on earth and has all the possibilities, resources and power to live his life on his own.

Many people, after receiving a prediction about their future (especially if it’s good), try to do anything to make it happen. But extremes are unsafe in most processes, including mental ones. It is important to see the environment as realistically as possible, recognizing the distortions and pitfalls of our perception. Fatalism and fanatical belief are also an extreme outside of other interests. A positive attitude gives it its stabilizing effect and the ability to look at an event or prediction from as many perspectives as possible for you. Thus, it is possible to broaden your vision of resources, opportunities and possibilities.

In real life, almost each of us lacks the positive.

A person really wants to know and believe that everything in his life will be fine.

From positive predictions we get support and support, as well as a vision of the desired happy future. Hope gives confidence to the future, reduces anxiety and stress. We believe what we want to believe.

I remember the anecdote: “If a person wants to live, medicine is powerless.” It works with accuracy and vice versa.

The power of thought supported by belief creates a strong link between our beliefs and psychosomatic illness, as it is closely linked to our bodily thought and emotional processes.

Living in the moment means taking responsibility for yourself, your situations, and events in your life. And this is an adult position. Living in the past is an opportunity to step away from reality and not make decisions or justify what is going on in your life.

The desire to know the future is an opportunity not to take any action, but to believe in an omnipotent parent, nature, the universe, higher intelligence and foresight.

And both of these positions are psychologically childish.