- Date posted
- 2y
Pattern in harm ocd + my story on ocd
I wonder if there is a pattern in the people that have ocd’s lives. For me since I was young I had an excessive fear of death. I remember being as young as 4/5 and being extremely depressed because I was worried about my parents dying, I remember not being able to swallow anything and my mum made me soup and cut up chicken and vegetables into micro pieces hoping I would eat it but I still couldn’t swallow it, I remember her taking me with her to shops and being like a zombie toddler who was really extremely down and zoned out. And then that eventually went and when i was around 11/12 I suddenly went into that phase again where I was ruminating and severely worried about dying for weeks it was like that. I would go through these phases of worrying about it a lot and would become so fixated and depressed about it. When I was younger my step dad would buy newspapers and I would sit there and read all the articles about death and I was traumatising myself without even realising, also my mum and step dad would watch crime stories and they would stick with me and scar me a lot. I remember the first time I had an intrusive thought I was around 12/13 and I had an intrusive thought about a fork going into my mums leg and I was shaken up by it l went to school and I was scared to tell anyone but I met this new girl that went to my school and I thought I would try telling her since she was new I told her ‘I have this friend who had a thought about ….’ (I didn’t tell her it was me) And told her the intrusive thought and I asked her does she think my friend is bad and she said ‘well I wouldn’t have a thought like that about my mum because I love my mum’ and then I was worrying about that answer but eventually I forgot all about it. The main intrusive thoughts I would have though were about someone killing me. I couldn’t sleep with the light off and I was worried about leaving plastic bags in my room or that thing long thing you tie your bath robe with because I was scared if someone broke in they would strangle/suffocate me with it. Or while brushing my teeth I would have a thought of someone stabbing me from behind, for years just scared of someone attacking me. But I did have the occasional harm ocd thought now and then but i didn’t obsess over it. So February of this year I decided it would be a bright idea to watch a crime documentary not one but three of them, thinking ‘I’m 19, I can handle it’ (after avoiding watching scary things my whole life because I know how much it affects me) once I was on Netflix I literally just saw a cover of a crime documentary with the evil persons face on it and for weeks and weeks her face was haunting me and when I would dance for exercise I would suddenly have an it riduce thought that she was in my room and I would have this horrible imagination her running up to me with a knife or following me around the thoughts were so vivid I would imagine her breathing on me as she ran up to me I would get so scared and then a thought would come, say if this evil person takes over your body? Or sometimes the evil persons name would pop into my head and I would think ‘what if by constantly thinking of there name it’s summoning them and there going to appear as a ghost’ idk I would just think weird things. Anyway so feb of this year I watched three crime documentary’s in one day I even remember when I started watching it I deliberately left my bedroom door open because I was scared and it was the last one i watched that caused all this turmoil in my life. It was about a man who was married and had kids and one day suffocated his kids and wife with a pillow. I was utterly mortified, my whole life I thought ‘evil people are just evil’ but this made me think ‘he was married and had kids and suddenly TURNED evil’ there was even vids of him playing with his kids on the beach and making cookies and things and tbh I’m not sure but I think I may have even incurred trauma from that documentary or that’s what people around me think. Basically after it announced ‘how’ he killed them (suffocating them with a pillow) I suddenly had a flash back and remembered an incident when I was younger where I was messing around and squeezed my cats neck for 1.5 seconds thinking ‘imagine I was evil’ but I quickly stopped because obviously I didn’t want to do that, I long forgot about that incident because I knew it didn’t mean anything but after watching that documentary and being shocked that someone seemingly ‘good’ turned bad, combined with the sudden flash back I got sent into the biggest shock of my life In that very moment my whole body started vibrating and I was shivering with the most fear I have ever felt in my life, from that day on I started thinking that I Vincent meant something and started having intrusive thoughts about strangling people and it was so bad I went to work everyday with my mum and followed her around everywhere, I remember sitting with her at work and shivering for days and days on end, my body was vibrating and shaking with fear my teeth were chattering, I’ve never experienced being so consumed with fear In my life. Constantly in fight or flight mode couldn’t look at peoples necks and terrified did being at home, my mum would drive up and down and go to shops and round my grandparents to avoid me being at home because I was so scared and we would go home at 10/11 at night just to sleep and in the morning we would leave the house straight away. Do you think I got trauma from that documentary? For days and days I couldn’t calm down and my body was constantly shaking in fear and crying. But from feb of last year till now everyday has been a battle. Constant rumination and intrusive thoughts 2022 was the worst year of my life, I’ve never been so frightened in my life, I so wish I hadn’t watched those documentaries. But now it feels like I’m having rumination more than intrusive thoughts because some how when it tested myself by imagining an intrusive thought of smothering someone with a pillow it felt like ‘I liked the feeling of doing that’ when I imagined the thought and I have been obsessing I’ve this for months because it feels so real that I know how it feels to do that and that I ‘liked the feeling of doing that’ it’s been horrible and scary but here we are still dealing and suffering. I wish I had been more grateful and enjoyed life more before having this problem, now I feel like my future is doomed and I’m worried that sooner or later the intrusive thought will become reality or I will give in and become evil. It’s been a terrible time I wouldn’t wish this in anyone. I’ve even worried about so many crazy things like ‘imagine in the future I’m evil but then I don’t even turn myself in and like it and do more evil things Covering them up’ and then I think to myself what the hell are you thinking?? You would never be evil why’s re you even thinking that, this problem goes you plays you and terrorises you with all kinds of frightening thoughts. I hope one day it will just be a distant memory and all these worries will go and I can live normally like before, happily. To everyone suffering with this, I am so sorry i wish we could all give each other the biggest hug, we are probably the most kind hearted people and don’t even know it because of this problem blinding us and trying to trick us into thinking we are bad. I’m so sorry. This is my story anyways, sorry it was so long feel like I could talk and talk about this forever.