I hate magical thinking. I most especially hate magical thinking around mental illness and mental health. And that’s because magical thinking actually harms people with mental illness, people like me. And many, people believe in magical thinking without realizing it. In fact, whole bestselling books have been written and devoured that posit magical thinking (the Secret, anyone?). So let’s dismantle magical thinking and stop it from harming people with mental illness.

What Is Magical Thinking?

Step on a crack, break you mother’s back.

A black cat is a sign of bad luck.

Breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck.

Most of us understand the ridiculous nature of the above statements. We can recognize them as superstitions and illogical. Of course, stepping on a crack doesn’t break your mother’s back. Of course, randomly seeing a black cat doesn’t mean anything. Of course, breaking a mirror doesn’t do anything to you for seven years. Those things are ridiculous. If you truly believe any of those things, that would be an example of magical thinking.

Modern Examples of Magical Thinking

But if magical thinking is so ridiculous and obvious, then how can it be harmful? After all, if you decide to throw salt over your shoulder in the kitchen, who are you really hurting?

In that case, no one, of course. The problem is the more modern forms of magical thinking. The one that comes up all the time is the law of attraction. It’s the idea that like attracts like. It’s been called the “most powerful law in the universe.” Many people buy into many aspects of it but it’s based around positive thinking attracting positive things into your life.

But there are other forms of magical thinking too. For example, have you ever heard of a vision board? It’s this idea that if you envision something that you want, put together a board that represents that thing and then look at that board every day that thing will “manifest” in your life.

Want a Ferrari? No problem. All you have to do is put a bunch of pictures of a Ferrari together, maybe a picture of you standing next to a Ferrari, and then “the universe will provide.”

Why People Believe in Magical Thinking

What it comes down to is that people want to believe they have control over their lives. They want to believe they can “put something out into the universe” and the “universe will provide.” Similarly, they want to believe by never putting something negative out into the universe, that negative thing will never happen. They want to believe they have control over their future so that it’s a good future and so that bad things won’t happen to them.

How Magical Thinking Harms People with Mental Illness

The worst thing about it is that magical thinking puts the onus on others to think magically and if they don’t then the bad things that happen are their fault. This automatically leads to blaming people with mental illness for not thinking magically. They obviously aren’t doing it or aren’t doing it right if they got a mental illness.

So it’s not bad enough to have a life-threatening illness like bipolar disorder, now it’s my fault for not believing in superstition. This is a huge amount of harm. Feeling like you’re to blame for a devastating illness is horrific.

But on top of that, it’s all the little things. It’s the idea that if you “thought positively” your medications would work. It’s the idea that if you had a vision board, you would get better. It’s the idea that not only the illness is your fault, but so is your lack of recovery.

People truly believe that their positive thinking, their magical thinking, will protect them from things like mental illness. But here’s a wake-up call: it doesn’t matter what you believe. Anyone can get cancer. Anyone can get a mental illness. Anyone can die a horrible death. It doesn’t matter how positively you think. It doesn’t matter how much “like” you try to attract.

Stop Magical Thinking from Hurting People with Mental Illness

I believe that magical thinking hurts everyone. It can stop people from taking real steps that can help get what they really want, while they just faithfully believe in magic.

But, regardless, what I really want is for people to stop forcing that false, magical thinking on people with real mental illnesses. We need better. We need science. We need medicine. We need doctors. We need things that will actually help us and not crappy Oprah-isms that help no one except the author of a 15-year-old book.

If you insist on believing in the tooth fairy, Santa Clause and the danger of stepping on cracks, that’s your business, but keep that nonsense away from people dealing with illnesses that could actually kill them. It’s not our fault that we have these illnesses. Positivity had nothing to do with it. And positivity won’t fix the situation either.