I keep getting this feeling of anxiety that I hate & it won’t go away. I have Harm OCD, so I’m sure that the anxiety is centering around the feeling of knowing that I have had these harm intrusive thoughts. How can I alleviate the anxiety or potentially get rid of it? My intrusive thoughts won’t go away and I’ve been trying to accept them as just thoughts, but it still doesn’t stick with me how we should just accept them and know that they’re just thoughts when they keep popping up. The feeling in my stomach still sits with me and it doesn’t go away. I’m tired of this.

I’ve bounced back and forth between thoughts of harming others and harming myself when I’ve been alone the last few weeks. It’s incredibly dehibilitating and I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I believe getting the anxiety under control is a good step but it’s also hard because to an extent you can’t really control it. Because as a result, it’s not the thoughts that cripple us but the anxiety that comes with it. But anyways, talk to a friend, get out of your home, go for a walk, exercise, play a video game, those are my first recommendations. Medically, I’d say an antidepressant combined with therapy will help lower the anxiety, but some people can find relief in doing just one or the other. However, with antidepressants, they can make you feel worse at the start before you get better as your body is adjusting to the medicine. And it can be a game of cat and mouse trying to find a medication that works for you because there’s so many meds out there and our bodies can have reactions or side effects to any of them. Lastly, for the thoughts, as much as they suck and as terrifying as they are, the more you try to run away from them and tell yourself “they’re not me, I don’t want to do anything bad” the more the thoughts will keep coming in and attacking you worse. And with harm, trust me, accepting these thoughts is extremely tough, I just was dealing with this and I still am to an extent, but it’s less about actually “agreeing” with the thoughts that you’ll do them and more about just acknowledging their presence in your hand and then remembering and saying, “hey, I can’t control the future, but I’m just gonna keep it moving anyways. Maybe something terrible would or could happen, but I’m not there and I can’t predict it” and also get yourself into an activity or routine everyday. The more you shift your focus to other things, the less time you’ll spend ruminating. In doing this, you may even hit a point saying, “well I haven’t been thinking the thoughts as much lately, so does this mean I want to do them now?” And in essence, that’s just your mind telling you to keep focusing on the fear when you know deep down it’s not a threat because thought doesn’t automatically equal action. If you hit this point, you’re already improving because you’ve already been taking less time obsessing over the intrusive thoughts and ruminating. You’ll get there, it’s hard for me to say those words to myself even but we will.