A hallucination arc is the narrative chapter where someone spends an extended period deeply, confidently wrong — not just about facts but about their situation, their relationships, or themselves. The arc framing makes it retrospective and structural: you can only recognize a hallucination arc after you've snapped out of it and looked back at the person you were. It might be a whole year you spent convinced a situationship was serious, a project you believed in with zero market signal, or an identity you performed until reality intervened. The 'arc' gives shape and even dignity to the period of sustained delusion.
Looking back, that entire job was a hallucination arc — I genuinely thought I was thriving while the company was collapsing.
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