Superstitions

Why are some people so afraid? Ladders, a certain colour cat, flights of stairs, cracks in the sidewalk...I had an aunt who would never walk up or down a flight of stairs while someone was coming or going the other way. She would never cross paths with anyone on a flight of stairs - that was not good.

Superstitions are the beginnings of OCD: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder -- not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, avoiding black cats or omens of any kind, eating things in threes, or double-and-triple checking all kinds of habits that have no logic to them -- only to sedate phobias.

A superstition makes people walk around ladders, throw salt over their shoulder and be extra sensitive on a Friday the 13th.

OCD makes sufferers do those things but on a more severe level, making them look odd in their behaviour, showing actions that attempt to control or master the rising anxieties ever-present in their chest.

While superstitions have slightly faded out with the times; OCD seems to have come in with a vengeance.

A common modern superstition shows up often in our inbox which is utterly ridiculous but people buy into it anyway "in case, this might be true.." A friend forwards an email to 10 friends because if they do, they'll be very rich soon, or if they don't all hell will reign down on their lives. If anything like that were true, we could all quit our jobs and keep tragedy away forever. How an email message of text built with binary code is going to determine your life's next phase is beyond me, and yet, all kinds of rational, well-educated people do this on a regular basis. And nothing ever happens. If it does, it's a complete coincidence. Somehow this makes me see why religion can have impact and sticks to people -- because people want something to believe.