You’re not psychic, you just have anticipatory anxiety: Why it seems like you’re able to predict horrible events

The figure of the witch has always been tied to the gift of seeing the future: the three witches from Macbeth, the powerful völvas (Viking witches), Galadriel the elf in Lord of the Rings, all endowed with a special intuition which — in a society that is turning to esotericism on social media to deal with great uncertainty, as evidenced by accounts like @charcastrology and @horoscoponegro — it is possible to start thinking you may have these powers as well. Curiously, this ability to predict the future often manifests itself when one receives bad news and exclaims: “I knew it.”

Although it can be stimulating to believe you have magic powers a là Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic, chances are that you can’t predict the future. A case of anticipatory anxiety is much more likely. Meaning — in the words of Silvia Vidal, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety and trauma and who is the author of the Spanish-language book Abraza tus miedos (in English, Embrace your fears) — excessive worry and malaise felt in the anticipation of a potential future event that can be perceived as threatening. “The function of anticipatory anxiety is to prepare us for everything terrible that can occur. The more prepared we feel we are, the more control we think we have. The thing is, when our mind imagines everything horrible that could take place — even if there’s a low probability of it — it goes from being an adaptive resource to something extremely limiting and painful.”

A crystal ball

Polish sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, author of the book Liquid Modernity, talks about how, given the socioeconomic, cultural and emotional instability of our time, uncertainty is the only certainty.

But conflict arises because it is the nature of human beings to not be very good at dealing with the unknown. “Every time something unexpected happens, our body can perceive uncertainty as danger, because we understand that if it happens once, it can happen again. Dealing with this insecurity requires a great deal of tolerance for discomfort,” says Vidal. Perhaps that is why, in times of uncertainty, people tend to seek answers and self-knowledge by any means possible, including esotericism. Millennials and Generation Z have made ancient divination techniques like tarot and horoscopes, as well as terminology related to the universe of energies, the talk of the town. Today, it is common to hear someone say, “I’m going to manifest it” in an attempt to attract a desired reality, or “I’m going to light a candle for you” as an act of generosity that replaces the classic “I wish you luck.” If someone gets back together with their ex, it is automatically assumed that they may have decided to give it a second chance because Mercury is in retrograde. Years ago, people at most knew their zodiac sun sign, but today it is common to be familiar with one’s entire chart — at the very least, your ascendent and moon sign. Having your cards read was a practice once seen as extravagant and limited to very specific circles, whereas today, it is common to see groups of friends discussing the meaning of the major and minor arcana, the cards turned face up on a table full of empty beer glasses.

Such a context is fertile ground for the idea that one has been endowed with a special gift that explains why you had a bad feeling that preceded an inclement event. “If one’s environment backs up certain magical beliefs, there is a greater possibility that you will hold onto those beliefs. We live in a culture that reinforces certainty over doubt, in which magical belief systems can act as escape hatches, momentarily relieving anxiety caused by not being in control,” says Desirée Llamas, who holds a PhD in psychology.

There’s another important issue to consider here, which is that when you suffer from anxiety, physical sensations and thoughts seems so real that that it can truly feel like disasters are right around the corner. “You may feel that the strength of what you are thinking and feeling is precisely the sign that it is going to happen in real life. And that’s not the case. It is simply anxiety, not powers,” says Vidal.

What didn’t happen

Anticipatory anxiety can be summed up as fear of suffering. It clumsily tries to prepare us for the worst with the false sense that if misfortune strikes, a foreseen blow will not hurt as much. “It is a form of covert avoidance behavior. Instead of exposing ourselves to the event or uncertainty, we start planning or worrying in an attempt to prevent future discomfort. Paradoxically, that anticipation becomes the main source of present discomfort,” explains Llamas.

To avoid such suffering, Llamas advises breaking this pattern of false control and reducing our approval-seeking or sign-seeking behaviors. In addition, she advocates for the usefulness of gradually exposing oneself to uncertainty to see how nothing catastrophic happens, or focusing not so much on what one thinks, but why. “If the purpose is to avoid feeling anxiety, then we are reinforcing the problem,” she explains. After all, no matter how hard we try to predict the future and dodge its low blows, reality always unfolds with unexpected nuance.

In Joachim Trier’s film The Worst Person in the World, the protagonist Julie hits a classic thirty-something crisis. With her erratic actions, emotional ups and downs, and all the other ingredients of a process of finding oneself, the movie can be understood as a Millennial version of a literary hero’s journey, in the style of Joseph Campbell. After a scandal that provokes a complete change in Julie’s life and decisions, she arrives at the conclusion that, “I always worried something would go wrong, but the things that went wrong were never what I worried about.”

Traverse the vast spectrum of possibilities, imagine the worst — but suffering will never go away. As such, it makes sense to put away the crystal ball and avoid dwelling on everything that could ultimately go wrong while ignoring all the times that your worst-case-scenario predictions failed and things didn’t go so bad after all.

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