- Date posted
- 3y
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
I’ll give you my story, hoping it provides you with some perspective, but not reassurance: I struggle with several emotional issues, like low self-esteem, inadequacy, worthlessness, people pleasing, not feeling good enough, etc. On Christmas Day, I was scrolling through social media and just saw nonstop pictures of happy families, whether they were related to me or just friends. Due to my issues I described above, it was prime time for an intrusive thought to sneak in, and it did. I had a thought pop in my head that said, “why don’t you just hurt yourself? People will care about you then if you’re in the hospital.” I immediately rejected this thought, knew all of the reasons why it was wrong, but it didn’t matter. Because I was at a vulnerable point emotionally, and I have issues pertaining to relationships, that intrusive thought caused my heart to sink, cause an alarm bell in my head to go off, because I could sense that this was going to cause me a lot of stress. I had been here before so I knew this feeling. After a couple days of compulsions: like Google searching the difference between Suicidal OCD and actual suicidal ideation, stories of people who actually committed suicide, and so on, my mind was trying to convince me to do just that, even though I’m morally opposed to it AND I can acknowledge all of the positives in my life, too! But the thought kept festering, more intrusive thoughts kept coming. Eventually, I had one that said “your mom has a gun in her room” and my mind ran wild with that. Now I know that automatically sounds alarming, and it did feel terrifying, there were a few issues with this notion: 1. I don’t know where my mom stores her gun. It’s also locked in a case, idek what the case looks like or how to unlock it. It’s also unloaded inside the case, and the rounds are kept elsewhere. 2. I’ve never fired a gun or know how to use one really. 3. No other means of harm really bothered me, like I was fine using knives at dinner, taking my own meds, driving my car, etc. but because my mind said, “your mom has a gun” my mind saw it as a threat and gave it meaning. Now I told her about this, told friends, and my therapists, and built a strong network of support. I even constructed a pretty good exposure for ERP with my NOCD therapist. However, my other non-OCD therapist knew about this ERP, despite not being certified to treat OCD or know what ERP was, and she automatically grew concerned with my exposure, said that there’s been people in history, like school shooters, who have shared similar emotional issues like mine, were around guns, then went out and committed atrocities. She also then began asking me about my history with guns (which was next to none really) and ended the session with saying “just close your eyes and ‘delete’ the thoughts when they come in” I was naturally scarred from this, ended any further sessions with her, but it didn’t matter. She managed to cause me to switch from suicidal ocd to harm ocd now by implying that my situation was comparable to school shooters. I found myself comparing my life to those of other known criminals. I would remember, “I’ve watched a lot of documentaries on serial killers, school shooters, and violent criminals. I’ve seen alot of horror movies. One of the shooters once said that he couldn’t stop his thoughts, does this mean I’m going to become a violent criminal now too?” And I’ve been stuck in this cycle for a couple weeks now. It’s been awful. But at the end of the day, no matter what the fear, obsession, or compulsion is, OCD is OCD. It attacks what you value most, causes you to doubt your most concrete viewpoints. In my case, it stems from how I’ve viewed myself the last several years as not being good enough. I’ve also had a lot of life changes since my original onset of OCD started in 2020 (my first ever theme was SOCD) In 2020, I: 1. Was sent home from college my senior year due to COVID. I was away from my job, friends, and social activities, and I absolutely thrived being around others. 2. I was uncertain about my job future since I was graduating college soon. 3. The lonliness factor again creeped in, which then caused the intrusive thoughts pertaining to the SOCD theme to creep in. Through ERP, I was able to manage my SOCD obsession after a few months. However, these new related themes I’ve been dealing with lately, pertaining to harm, I had a lot of big life changes AGAIN these last couple months. I: 1. Transitioned jobs for the entire month of November. And even today, I’m still trying to figure out what my day-to-day duties are. I’m on video calls with dozens of people a day, compared to only a few people at my previous job. 2. During the time I was switching jobs, the deadline to leave my previous home was coming up. By the time I had gotten the job situation sorted out, I had roughly 2 weeks to find a new place to live. Not exactly something that should happen in two weeks, right? 3. Once I was able to find my own place, the first night there, I realized I had never lived alone before, and anxiety immediately settled in. I truly felt alone, didn’t have many friends around in the area I live in, and felt isolated. 4. I had to buy a ton of stuff for my new home, along with Christmas presents since it was approaching at the time. 5. I’m going to circle back to my original trigger I mentioned at the top: I felt even MORE lonely while scrolling through social media and boom, I’m at where I’m at today.
- Date posted
- 3y
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain your story and reply to my post ❤️ I’m so sorry you went through all of that, and that your therapist invalidated you and compared your situation to something so horrible and unrelated. This really helps me feel more normal about my situation! I also thrived on social connections and then after college (I graduated 2018) everything just fell apart and the loneliness set in and my health declined. My depression also got worse and I always found myself thinking am I actually suicidal? And I just recently started googling the difference between suicidal ocd and ideation and I know I’m not actually gonna do it, but I would just like to tell my therapist for once that I actually have these thoughts! I am getting a new one so maybe this is my chance. But yeah 4 years of thinking I’m a horrible person and wondering if I lie everytime a therapist or psychiatrist asks me if I have thoughts of harming myself. Thank you so much again, this really helped!!! 💕😊
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 3y
Sorry for the insanely long post, but I want you to know that whatever happened to you, know that you’re not alone. I’ve felt so alone lately so I understand completely where you’re coming from: having thoughts that you know don’t reflect your character. But there is and always is hope. You already made one good choice by coming to this app. You’re already in the right direction.
Related posts
- Date posted
- 25w
Basically long story short, ive been dealing with anxiety for a very long time all my life I'm 23 now but about 5 months ago my anxiety started to get really and I overthink a ton and get worried to easily. So my chest hurt for a while from stress at work made me worry why it was hurting, then me worrying and thinking worse case scenarios was making it worse. So i and to go to the doctor and got diagnosed properly with anxiety and I have a med now that I take when I really need it called hydroxyzine but I also have another med that is Zoloft that I have been taking for a about a month now, to help with my intrusive thoughts I have sometimes i only get them when im stressed or when I'm by myself or when i just overthink in general, my loneliness depression is one of the reasons for my anxiety because I wish I had someone as in partner wise to love me and for me to love them. But anyways I've had intrusive thoughts about possibly hurting myself and family, or even my dog. Ive never acted on any of my thoughts in the past and I don't want to but I have had anxiety attacks when everything feels to real and really scares me. I constantly have the thought of am I crazy or am I becoming crazy and stuff and I've done a lot of looking stuff in the past about symptoms but most of them are identical to what anxiety is so it's hard to tell the difference. It's been probably 2 weeks since we last talked. I've been mostly doing good. But I just was wondering if had a little Harm OCD intrusive thought happen yesterday that targeted my Aunt at work she was complaining all day and when it got closer to the end of the shifts for us. I was already annoyed with a situation that happened earlier in the work day. But she came into my department and then went back over to hers and I said it out loud to myself and said you better get back over there or I'll, I tried to say something else because the word I was going to say was kill you. Obviously I don't but that's what my intrusive thought wanted me to say. And made me think thats why i got to hurt her to stop her complaing So the rest of the night I was saying she is safe I am safe I'm control, like this is just anxiety lying to you, it's just because I'm tired and got annoyed earlier. I can't tell if it was working or not because I was so tired and just wanted to go home. But after work her and I spent time together at our house she was on the one couch and I was on the other with a bunch of our dogs in the living room. I tried to keep my mind off of what happened, and I was fighting some stomach achyness already. But I obviously don't want to hurt her and we had conversations just fine. But I went to my other aunt house at night after work to go to bed because she has to watch my aunts dogs because my other aunt and family is on vacation. But anyways I'm trying to get over that word Kill, that word is what is scarring me and sticking. Like my anxiety is lying saying kill, or basically do harm. I don't want to do anything bad but I'm trying to shake that feeling and stickiness of that word. I'm just so scared and worried.
- Date posted
- 23w
i’m back in a cycle of having harm related OCD thoughts and feelings and urges and i get these episodes where it’s like i’m disassociating and feel like i’m about to snap and go crazy violent. does anyone else experience this? i need help
- Date posted
- 23w
Hi Everyone! I hope whoever is reading this is having a good day so far :) So for years now I’ve had very bad intrusive thoughts about things that I have done or embarrassing things that I’ve said or have happened and it’s mortifying and debilitating on a daily basis. Specifically these thoughts are mainly things that have occurred from 2018-2020 and some are more simple just as a stupid joke I made or being way too loud on calls while my family was trying to sleep and others being way more complex such as past relationships and how I’ve hurt some of the people I care the most about and when I have acted on intrusive thoughts and these thoughts will appear with no triggers at all I’ll just wake up and already have something I did just nagging me. I don’t want to live like this anymore and I’ve tried working through it with self compassion but sometimes the things I said or did back then it’s very hard to forgive myself for and I’ll reminisce on it for hours on hours, gaslight myself into believing that’s not how it happened and try to change the memory itself, or just suppress it entirely. I know those habits aren’t healthy and truly I want to get better but I don’t know how to overcome some of these thoughts. I have talked to my fiancé about this a few times and even today we talked about it and he fully supports me and is helping me work through it. I might also contact my sister too, I don’t talk to her overly too much but ever since I was little she’s thought I’ve had ocd and was one of the people who made me consider that I might have it (I’m still undiagnosed but I’ll try to when I have the money and time) and I know she could maybe provide some insight. Another thing that is troublesome about the situation is my other family members specifically my mom aren’t the most helpful and can trigger thoughts. To put it in perspective on how her thought process is and some background info she is an ER nurse and has been for 30 years due to this she believes she knows mainly everything there is about mental health and she gets extremely upset when I don’t take her advice or set boundaries. She’ll force me to talk to her about my problems and when I don’t want to she’ll pin me in a corner where I’m forced to and last summer I had a really bad episode and was really overstimulated and I just finished taking a shower and due to the water on me, my hair being wet (my hair is naturally curly and it takes forever to dry and it’s very draining taking care of even with a keratin treatment) and all the intrusive thoughts I was having and she forced me to talk to her and I did open up for the first time about my thoughts and brought up how sometimes I have thoughts of hurting my animals and it makes me physically sick. Her response to this was threatening to call the cops on me saying it was a behavioral thing and I was doing it for attention. I have never hurt any of my animals but later that day my cat came into my room and a few minutes later she comes up just gives me the death stare and after a few seconds just asks me “are you going to go kill snickers?” In the most condescending tone and she’s always like this daily where she’ll force advice onto me or get upset and yell and then reinforce thoughts I’m having. I just want to know first how to stop the thoughts from so frequently and how to heal in an environmental where it keeps reopening wounds despite trying to place boundaries? I’m sorry this is really long I usually do go really in detail about things and it’s just how I’ve always been. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability. I really appreciate the time you took to read this and thank you for your help! 🥰
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