Being threatened that I'll have the worst week of my life!

[FrankT]

So as you might've guessed, I'm unfortunate enough to be a Tumblr user. Every so often an image appears on my dashboard that says, and I quote, "Since you have read this, you will be told good news tonight. If you don't repost this, your worst week starts now."
And I have to do it, because every time I ignore it, bad things start happening to me! Why, in just the last two days, my depression got worse, my dad's still drinking heavily, and I just got a complaint that an item I sold on eBay arrived totally destroyed! I have to do it to "dispense with the bad vibes", as it were! I know it's superstitious chain letter garbage, but I really, really can't take the risk, not now when I'm such a nervous wreck! Is there anything, anything I can do to banish the cursed image from my dashboard forever or something?

[jray23]

You must be pretty young, as those things aren't new to the era of Tumblr and social media. They've been around ever since the Internet started and were around via physical copy before that (called 'chain mail')

It's all nonsense. If you saw one that said you'd win the lottery by ignoring it, would you believe that one too? Doubtful. Your brain is latching on to the negative superstition.

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[MyNameIsTerry]

Something we can struggle with is Magical Thinking. I had loads of this in mine. It's part superstition, part the super powers you thought you had as a child playing a game. You feel your mind can impact on the physical world but it really can't unless you choose to perform an action to do so.

The way to disprove these things is to stop yourself performing the compulsion and observing how nothing happens. Also, in therapy you may do Behavioural Experiments where the therapist asks you to perform one to show you nothing happens even when you choose to create such a chain of thoughts.

They can be tricky though because there is often an element of no end date involved or not understanding what will even happen. I had these problems with some of mine.

You can also challenge it logically. How does some unknown internet random cause your week to get worse? How do they even know who you are? Isn't the message sent out to tons of people in a scattergun approach so how can the sender know who has even clicked on it or singled you out, etc (I realise there may be programs to track that).

[FrankT]

Ever since I ignored that message things have been getting worse. Last night I had a power cut in my home, and today, not only did I wake up with a headache from eye strain, they started deleting blogs suspected of being bots, and I completely forgot I had a trip to go to! I think I really have been cursed.

[nomorepanic]

It doesn't work like that Frank - just coincidences and nothing more.

[FrankT]

Well... if you're sure...

[MyNameIsTerry]

What evidence do you have to prove that these things have only happened to you because of that chain letter not being answered?

Those things can just be spam sent by bots anyway. So, not even a mythical person on the end of it, just a program.

Since I've worked in the electric industry for quite some years before my anxiety I can easily know for sure that no one is going to influence a power cut on you. And a targeted strike on you only would mean pulling fuses at your property to simulate it unless they fancied ramming a rubber spade through your incoming cable. :winks:

[FrankT]

Yeah, that'd actually be pretty stupid.

[nomorepanic]

You should see the emails I get every day to the NMP "contact us" email address.

[ankietyjoe]

Ever since I ignored that message things have been getting worse.

No they haven't. They are unconnected, coincidental and completely nonsensical.