On “Fleeting Prophecies”
If only life felt this good (or good at all) more often | ~1019 Words
{Disclaimer: Maybe I don’t experience these more than anyone else and I’m just subclinically somatic-delusioning it. Maybe these are a side effect of medication (60-80mg Fluoxetine and/or 40mg Latuda). I think there’s a 5% chance these are somatic delusions, and a 20% chance these are side effects from medication. I say these %s to keep myself accountable when it comes to beliefs of mine, since I wish to find patterns in my delusions if there are any to find, not because I would prioritize agreeing with any of my conjectures.}
I.
I haven’t heard a word for something I’ve begun noticing in the past few months that I experience.
In 2024, there definitely have been times (a unhinged guess of >50 times, without recording the times) when I’ve briefly thought of extremely improbable (99-100% not going to happen, according to me, both during, immediately before and immediately after the thought) scenarios, often about obtaining something desirable that holds personal significance to me (e.g., acceptance, acknowledgement, social recognition, close friendship, or wealth).
These kinds of thoughts hold greater belief in what will happen than thoughts during daydreams, in which one realizes that one is imagining a reality different from the current one; the former lack that awareness, and hold a certainty of belief closer to the certainties one would have during a psychotic delusion; e.g., for a moment thinking there is a 90-99% chance (unhinged guess) of something happening.
Unlike delusions, during these thoughts, you realize that the odds are improbable, and the situation is unlikely – but you somehow think the thing will happen to you anyway.
Unlike delusions that are believed during idiopathic psychosis, these beliefs do not last hours a day (and across days, weeks, months, and/or even years), and unlike daydreams, which last for minutes to hours, these beliefs last for less than one-to… five? seconds. (I haven’t timed.) They’re as brief as typical intrusive thoughts. There’s not enough time in which one believes in them for more than approximately “one-to-four sentences worth” of thoughts to develop; these thoughts are thus “fleeting” and also lacking in floridity.
They describe what-ifs, e.g., “What if my super-enthusiastic-about-neurodivergence professor really likes my presentation on severe mental illness, and I send them a personal email about my experiences with schizophrenia, and they become my personal friend, and read my blog, and comment on it?”
(This is something I’ve thought as I walked from a school building to the bus stop one day.)
They can also be framed as times of jumping to conclusions in which you believe those conclusions for less than one-to-five (again, I dunno) seconds, after which you immediately dispel the conclusion.
II.
…as of now, I’m going to call these kinds of thoughts “fleeting prophecies”.
(I’m actually not sure what a “prophecy” IS. I realize that what I’m referring to are predictions that probably won’t happen, and originally I thought of calling them “fleeting delusions” - but I don’t want to conflate the already overused IME term “delusion” with one more thing that might not be caused by idiopathic psychoses. I’ve also thought of the term “fleeting beliefs”, which might have the downside of being too general-sounding, which could produce higher false positive rates. And I’ve also thought of “fleeting salvation”, which might be too spiritual-sounding, which could produce higher false negative rates among the non-spiritual.)
So, how does having a “fleeting prophecy” feel?
Well, it feels good.
Personally, it feels like a stronger high than an “I-haven’t-slept-for-24-hours high” (which I personally experience and will describe as a strong feeling of relaxation), and than a “I haven’t eaten in a while high” (“a feeling of gratification”), and than an “I-just-ran-10-kilometers high” (“a strong feeling of satisfaction”, and which I think is a stronger high overall than an “I-haven’t-slept-for-24-hours high”), and a stronger high than a self-induced vomiting high (“a strong feeling of relief”, and think is the strongest of these three non-drug induced highs).
Having a fleeting prophecy feels like what I, someone who’s never used illicit drugs, would describe as euphoric. It feels like you’re celebrating something, and your mind is saying, “Things will be so fine forever and ever, and easily so: what a wonderful world!
It does not merely feel like “getting your hopes up”; it feels easily, noticeably more euphoric than that.
The feeling starts when the belief arises, and lasts for some seconds longer after the belief is dispelled. After about an estimated, the feeling begins to dissipate, and at about ~30 seconds, I’m returned to feeling similar as I did before having the initial belief.
As for visual representations, these are visuals that represent how the euphoria from this phenomenon feels like to me.
With a false belief that lasts for less than one-to-five seconds, there usually is no opportunity to behave in ways supported by the belief, and what stands out to me is the euphoric feeling accompanied with the belief (I don’t know which comes first, if one does).
((I’ve also considered calling the condition “fleeting euphoria”, but as someone who’s never used illicit drugs recreationally, I don’t know if that’s conflating the term with something that’s too different to be mentioned.))
III.
At other times, this natural high lasts for minutes – in which my mind is consumed by fantasizing about a made-up scenario that tends to get more florid the longer I fantasize about it, and that isn’t absurdly impossible, but that I at some realize and become aware that is 99.999% sure not going to happen.
I find these distracting; they can happen when I’m in the middle of schoolwork, and the feeling is overwhelming enough to disengage me from activities such as comprehending standard sentences or from typing sentences I was in the midst of typing.
I’m not sure if this is subclinically associated with any named psychiatric conditions; I know I have them still at 40mg Latuda, a dosage at which florid delusions calling for urgency and ending up with appalling social results have stopped happening for me.
(If so, I guess schizophrenia? Hypomania? Schizotypal PD? OCD? ADHD?)
