- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
I think you have to trust your therapist and just be honest with them. They’ll be able to assess you for true suicidality versus suicidal ocd. My NOCD therapist did a safety plan with me on our first session but has also helped me understand my intrusive thoughts. I think you have to have some amount of uncertainty but also trust your therapist and others to know what to look for.
It’s like this: I understand the pros of life, why suicide is wrong, that I have so much to live for, and that my original intrusive thought was “you should harm yourself to get people to care about you” to now it’s “grab a gun and just kill yourself” but both give me extreme anxiety. However, besides me acknowledging the positives in my life, my thoughts are also of hopelessness, telling me “this will never change” or “you’re not allowed to do things you like because you’re just avoiding your thoughts” and such. This is so much worse than my last OCD theme and scarier.
Well I think that for all of us with ocd, there’s always a possibility something we fear could happen. But people don’t usually decide to do things they don’t want to do. Even people who aren’t upset by suicidal thoughts and welcome them don’t always choose to do so. As a counselor, I’ve worked with a lot of genuinely suicidal individuals who still chose not to kill themselves. I think focusing more on utilizing skills than what the thoughts are saying is important for ocd recovery. It’s easy to get caught up in thought, but as we know, they’re just thoughts and have no meaning until we assign something to them.
I know right, and I’ve been through this battle before. It’s like if I conjure up an exposure related to suicide/harm, my mind tells me I’ve accepted it and it’s a plan and I’m done for. But I’m so hard-skulled that I refuse to actually give it consideration.
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@Recoverer Well I think it’s good to just try to let the thoughts come and go. Suicidal ocd is my primary and most severe theme so I totally understand how upsetting the thoughts can be. I’ve cried many, many times and even vomited because of the thoughts, because they are so scary. But I’ve found that utilizing erp skills has actually been very helpful. I know it really sucks, but we have to realize we’re more than likely suffering from ocd.
@MCT Can you really separate intrusive thoughts like “I don’t want to be here anymore” as ocd from something else?
ocd = doubt
I can’t tell if there’s doubt in me or not though. Sometimes the anxiety doesn’t feel high enough over such a sensitive topic. There’s depression involved and negative thinking and I can’t get it to stop.
@Recoverer what you just said is a doubt. The fact that you don't know whether is a doubt or not is a doubt.
I can understand, I get thoughts like that too. I think if we get so caught up in them it can be very depressing and in turn can theoretically lead to depression. If you think you’re unsafe, like if you’re planning to hurt or lull yourself, it’s good for anyone to reach out to emergency services, like 911. But if they’re just intrusive thoughts, we all have to treat them as such and not give them content. Utilizing skills like sitting with uncertainty will help in the long-run, even though those thoughts are difficult to sit with.
*kill
@MCT Is it weird I only obsess over guns though rather than any other means?
@Recoverer I mean in my experience I only have a couple means that I get thoughts about, and others that I don’t and don’t trigger me. I think for me there’s some trauma behind it.
@MCT I hate this so much, I really do, it’s like it’s back and forth between ocd and depression or just both. And if it’s depression that means I could do something, even though I’m spiritually repulsed by it. I thought SOCD was bad until this happened a few days ago.
I think you can. I also think we have to be genuine with ourselves, even if we’re scared. A reason I believe I’m susceptible to anxiety and depression is because I avoid my emotions and try to control them too much. It’s hard to know my true feelings because I often don’t accept them. I have to work on being honest with myself and not trying to control my thoughts and feelings. Ask yourself if that’s how you truly feel, and if it isn’t and you don’t plan or intend to kill yourself, talk about it with your counselor and continue to check in with yourself. If you ask yourself if you truly feel that way and you really do, then reach out to emergency services, someone who can help you, etc. Let’s say you get that thought and realize you mean it/agree with it. That doesn’t mean you’ll just kill yourself that instant. It can open the door for you to get the help you need. At the least, you’re someone who may not want to live but seems very motivated to help yourself. Otherwise, you’re someone with suicidal ocd, like so many of us.
My problem is, I had an intrusive thought as it relates to me feeling lonely and internalizing that notion for years. I had never obsessed over this theme ever until this week. I’ve had thoughts like this before during my life but they came and passed. But now, since it’s attached to feeling alone, that’s why I fear it’s not just ocd. Because deep down I know this thought originated from a notion that I’m lonely and no one cares about me, despite me being aware that that isn’t true logically. But because I’ve felt lonely, and then the intrusive thought comes, that means it is real, despite me being diagnosed with ocd already. And technically my last theme originated from loneliness too, although that theme wasn’t suicidal or harm. I’m just so confused on what to do. I can’t really ask myself how I feel because I know what’s wrong and right but in the same instance sometimes I feel like I want to be an elderly person close to the end of their life and die peacefully. So idk, all of this is very conflicting, I feel like the only way to help me is to somehow erase this thought from ever entering my mind because then I wouldn’t be in this mess. Or some kind of brain surgery to increase my serotonin levels. Even when I say that though, my mind tells me, “no you’d just rather not be here”
Well like I said, I think you need to be honest with yourself and your therapist and get more intensive help if you think you need it.
I’m afraid of getting strapped to a bed too though at a hospital 😭
I’ve recently been struggling a lot with OCD. I have had OCD for a long time I just didn’t realize it until more recently. About seven months ago I developed panic attacks one day randomly at work. I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital where they told me it was just a panic attack and I assumed I would snap out and be better within a few days. However it didn’t. Here’s where it gets scary, I was staying at my then boyfriends house while dealing with blurry vision, anxiety attacks everyday, and more (unsure of what was going on). But at some point I saw my bfs (pew pew 🔫) on his table and it sent me into an anxiety attack after sudden thoughts that I was going to hurt myself with it. I begged him to put it away when I’m not looking so I didn’t know where he put it. He did. These thoughts lasted for about four days but began to go away. (I thought that was it and I would be back to normal). Unfortunately though I ended up moving back in with my family when we couldn’t get my panic attacks under control in time for me to get back to work and pay bills. However, coming home brought up a lot of trauma from when I was kid. My anxiety got worse but I didn’t have those thoughts again. About two and half months ago though, I got sick and went to the hospital where they gave me steroid pills and a steroid shot but sent me into some kind of psychiatric event. Ever since then though, I have been suffering from harm OCD, I have had moments of intense anger that I usually have to completely walk away and go on my own because of how intense they are, and it feels like it’s getting worse. Today I felt fine until about and hour and half ago where I started to dwell on the fact that my suicidal thought was influenced by my OCD and at the moment my OCD is at the worst it’s been. This caused me to get suddenly really depressed and I started crying thinking about how I can’t handle this. I then saw a post talking about how suicide rates are high for people with this form of OCD and it made me question if I am mentally strong enough to pull through this. I fear that at times I’m getting worse. I have good days but I have a lot of bad days. Unfortunately this sent me into such a bad panic attack I went over to my nanas crying about how I can’t deal with this. I took a 0.25 mg Xanax which helped calm down the panic attack portion of it but my brain is still uncomfortably active. I guess I just need hope. I’m so saddened by this. It’s like my life took a total 360 in 10 months and got even worse since the steroid shot. Idk what to do about it. I can’t stop the spiral. I talk to two different therapist weekly and start more next week, making it 5 times a week. I feel no improvements…
I’ve been triggered so bad this week I’ve had bad anxiety and feel depression coming on. Last night I had a thought oh let’s plan it and I immediately thought why would I think that and started crying bad. I’ve had these thoughts for 7 months I really don’t know why I’m having these thoughts, if I knew I would work on it. Like people say has something happened in your life for you to have these thoughts and nothing has happened, it all started off from what if thoughts , like “what if I’m a psycho” because I saw this fb post saying introverts are more likely to become psychopaths and it all spiralled from there I started getting thoughts about harm towards others and myself. What do you think guys should I treat it like ocd or do you think there’s something seriously wrong with me.
I'm new to NOCD and have been dealing with harm/suicidal, and Pure OCD for some time now. It started off being healthy related anxiety that led to compulsion where I would research information on an uncommon illness or something I thought I had. Now it has snowballed into intrusive thoughts and images of me killing myself in various ways or my wife. The former is what has been the most debilitating and hardest to shake. Recently I seem to find triggers almost every where I look. "What if I killed myself this way" if I see a kitchen knife or a bottle of pills. A friend talked about going to a gun range a while back and an image popped up of me being there and turning a gun to myself which is something I dont want to do. I love life and its so painful to go through thoughts that try to tell me otherwise. That particular image/thought has really stuck with me. I know about ERP and my therapist said I could rip the bandaid off and go to a gun range but it terrifies me. I don't own any weapons but I often think, "what if I buy one and im actually suicidal?" Just typing it makes me anxious. I'm wanting to start a low dose of Prozac which opens up another can of worms about worried my "overdose thought" will come true, on top of potential side effects. This is long winded but im looking for any advice to get through this. I know others are worse off than me but considering I've never been like this and it only started 6 months ago, I'm really struggling. Thanks everyone.
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