how many have you killed without knowing?

[thytheban]

I'll be upfront, I'm a little obsessed with playing cards. I do sleight of hand magic and I study blackjack seriously, so odds, probability, and statistics are my jam. Blackjack is the only form of gambling I do, besides occasionally ignoring the five-second rule and just eating the chip off the floor anyway. And here's something blackjack taught me that most therapists haven't figured out yet: fixating on the harm you might have caused is just the gambler's fallacy wearing a guilt costume.

Gambler's fallacy = The belief that past random events affect future ones. Flip heads five times in a row and feel sure tails is "due", it isn't.

For every disaster you've conjured in your head, there's an equally plausible miracle you never thought to take credit for. You drove too slow and the guy behind you was furious, and that exact delay kept him from being the car that t-boned a minivan at the next light. You showed up to work sick, infected Janet from accounting, she went to the doctor, they ran a blood panel, and now Janet's lymphoma is caught at stage one instead of stage four.

You're basically Janet's guardian angel and you spent that whole week feeling bad about the sneezing.

Probability doesn't do guilt. That's a strictly human invention.