Self Full-filling Prophecies

How Beliefs Can Shape Our Reality

Photo by Kimberly Eschenbauch on Unsplash

When my husband, Dan, was in his 50s, he had two angioplasties - the medical procedure used to widen blocked or narrowed arteries in the heart. After that, he constantly worried about his health, conducted extensive Internet searches regarding possible health issues, and determined that he had many of them. He became somewhat of a hypochondriac, had several emergency room visits, kept copious health records, and visited the doctor often over the years.

Experts say that people perceive reality and the world through the lens of their beliefs. If they believe they’re depressed, they look for things to be depressed about; if they feel they are happy, they find things to be pleased about, and people who believe they’re successful will see the successes they achieve. Dan believed he had health issues and was vigilant about monitoring for them.

Doctors know that patients find comfort in having a medical diagnosis because it allows them to make sense of what are frightening symptoms. A diagnosis can gauge symptoms, direct them toward the correct treatment pathway, offer a sense of relief that their struggles have a valid cause, reduce self-blame, and help them understand their behaviors, challenges, and emotional patterns.

However, beliefs can also lead to self-fulfilling prophecies—people predicting or expecting something, and their prediction or expectation coming true because they believed it and acted in ways that fulfilled it.

25 years after the angioplasties, the minor memory issues that Dan was experiencing increased dramatically during a nine-day hospital stay for surgery. Knowing of his propensity to identify with illnesses and my understanding of self-fulfilling prophecies, I worried about how he would respond to a diagnosis, particularly because his sister and father died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

I was concerned about self-imposed and other-imposed prophecies.

• Self-imposed prophecies occur when a person’s expectations influence their actions and decisions. I feared Dan would

  • Research the disorder, self-diagnose, and give up.

  • If the diagnosis said he had dementia, he would read the symptoms and find them in himself.

  • Use the diagnosis as an excuse not to do things or to get others to do things for him that he could still do. He wouldn’t even try.

• Other-imposed prophecies occur when the opinions of valued family members and friends foster the prophecy. My concerns included the following.

  • They would look for symptoms of the disease and treat Dan differently, lumping him with other people who had dementia and making assumptions about what he could and couldn’t do. He would believe them.

  • A medical diagnosis given by a professional would strengthen his beliefs, and he would find evidence in himself that supported the diagnosis.

  • He would read articles on the Internet or in the news and identify symptoms that he recognized.

With that in mind, we didn’t have him diagnosed immediately - his memory was declining, there was no cure, we would deal with the issues as they arose, and he could have a normal life for as long as possible.

In retrospect, given Dan’s personality and health concerns, I’d make the same decision, but with modifications.

1. Even though I’m a psychologist, I couldn’t care for him on my own. So, I would insist on getting help sooner, before his behavior became unmanageable.

2. I’d find a way to get him to a doctor for medications to ease his anxiety and aggressiveness, making life easier for both of us. Having said that, I did try to give him vitamins, and he threw them out or hid them, so that might not have worked.

3. I’d be looking for viable advancements in treatment options.

I’ve often wondered if I would want to know that diagnosis if it were me. Would you?

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Janice Walton is a psychologist, a widow, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother, and a writer. Her book, Aging Well: 30 Lessons for Making the Most of Your Later Years, is available on Amazon, and she has written articles for Substack for the past four years.