About testing yourself - harm ocd

Common posts on here are "i had a thought" "why am i thinking this" "what if" and these are all OCDs way of making you doubt yourself while taking you round and round in never ending circles at the same time. Regardless of the theme you are facing, there is no "figuring out" or "making sense" of a thought, because it isn't a real situation - it's a passing word or image or scenario without any meaning attached. You can't control your thoughts and the more you "don't want to have them" the more they will appear. For instance, tell yourself not to think about "apples", it will be the first thing that comes to your mind, because that's just how our minds work. Once you categorise a thought as "bad", every time it comes into your mind, your anxiety level will go up and this makes the thought seem real. Because if it "Feels" this bad, surely it must mean something or must have happened - But none of this is true. All we have to do is naturally notice thoughts as they come up, and rather than try to assess or ruminate over the content, we can almost shrug them off. It's the only way to accept thoughts as simply thoughts and nothing more. Anxiety drives the intense feeling and the more attention you give to thoughts, the more power they have over you. No random thought can change your real intentions. OCD is never ever satisfied, so the only way forward is to accept the uncertainty of never knowing "for sure" and to class the unwanted thought as irrelevant. OCD says "quick..bad thought..feels horrible.. what does it mean.. fix it". But in reality there is nothing bad here or nothing to be fixed, it's a false alarm. Once you learn to respond to a thought calmly by working on anxiety, it gets easier over time. It's your perception of your thoughts that needs to change, you believe they mean something about you, but random things pop into our heads all the time - both things we like and things we don't. OCD also latches onto what we care about most and it always comes with a feared consequence, so think about what yours is, e.g "what happens if my worst fear comes true" you can then practice imaginal exposure which is imagining your worst case scenario over and over until you become desensitised to it and no longer fear it - therapists use this technique in sessions. Everyone in the world has thoughts, the thoughts are not the issue, you just get more of what you focus on, up until the point that you can change your attitude towards the thought. If I asked you if you went upstairs today you would have an answer straight away, however if I asked you a question related to your OCD theme, your anxiety would increase and you would doubt yourself, because that's OCD doing the thinking for you. Once you give it less power it becomes a less significant part of your day. It's so easy to give into compulsions as they feel like a "quick fix".. but as I mentioned, ocd is never happy, which is why it wants us to continue to check and seek reassurance. Once you start reducing and gradually stopping compulsions, whether this is rumination, checking, or a physical action (whatever you falsely believe is "keeping you safe" from your feared consequence) you will see it's not necessary to do them, and that the time consuming little things you have taught yourself to do have no effect on what actually happens in real life. Thoughts prompt feelings and feelings prompt actions - meaning - thoughts cause anxiety and anxiety drives unnecessary actions. As a side note, I overcame contamination ocd (I was in a very very bad way and now the theme doesn't bother me anymore). I still have OCD and it can affect me slightly at times, but i can manage it in a way that it doesn't interfere with my day and without the need to carry out compulsions. Please practice, because I promise it helps, it's super scary at first and extremely difficult but the end result is worth it. ERP therapy is also very helpful.

Suddenly I started ruminating again but I no longer get bad anxiety over the thoughts but it feels like the ‘urges’ are still there and it’s making it seem more real that these are true. Why am I having urges without the anxiety or it’s weird like i don’t even know when im anxious maybe i got use to the feeling of being anxious but it feels too real and I get these weird thought that are like ‘imagine you was evil anyways’ or ‘imagine you want to be but your in denial’ or the worst makes it feel like you would like acting on the thoughts even if you choose not to do it and it feels really real. The thoughts are about stabbing and it felt so real and I started imaging it on purpose to ‘test’ myself but it doesn’t ever feel like I hate it enough or don’t want it like I feel numb to everything and it feels really real like I want it or do want to do it but I’m just choosing not to and it’s scary but I use to get so much anxiety over this and now nothing now it feels like I don’t even feel like I ‘hate’ it or I should know that I don’t want to do that? Instead of sitting there experimenting with the thoughts to see. I want it to feel like I don’t want it and don’t like it I constantly feel like I’m lying about not wanting this, but it’s concerning me a lot because it feels so real that I like it or want it and there was one point where it felt like it was about to happen and that I wanted it and now that’s made me think there is something wrong with me or that I want to give in to it 🙁 please I don’t belive anything I don’t even belive I am sad it feels so real that it was about to happen or I wanted it and I don’t know what to do I was fine before and suddenly I started ruminating and now this

I feel like this time I can’t pick myself back up. It felt too real like I don’t even belive it wasn’t real I fully feel like it was my own feeling and I genuinely felt that. I had stabbing intrusive thoughts, I imaginined it on purpose to test my reaction and then it felt like I know how it feels to physically do that action (stab someone) and I like how it feels then I was getting these urge feelings and it felt like I wanted it and then I was imagining the thoughts again about stabbing someoneI care about multiple times and then It suddenly felt like I was really happy about the thought and almost like I really enjoyed it and realised why evil people enjoy doing these things like I felt what they felt like I’ve discovered a ‘thrill’ feeling of doing that evil thing and I can’t get over it I can’t figure out why it felt like that and now I’m thinking because it felt like I liked it and it felt good I will be curious about being evil or want to be evil to feel that feeling again and it’s really messed up and I don’t know what to do everytime I think about it it feels like there is actually something wrong with me I no longer have anxiety or feel really worried about the thoughts I feel numb and that feeling is really making me feel bad like I can’t live normally now it feels like I am actually evil now and I don’t even know if I have morals or if i would be evil or not. Normally with my thoughts no matter how real it’s felt I’ve managed to convince myself why I had a certain feeling and why it’s not real and why I’m a good person but this time it actually feels like that feeling was from me and I actually felt really happy and enjoyed or got a thrill from the idea of doing that horrible thing like I can’t even say it feels real because I’m thinking it is real I don’t know what to do 🙁🙁I’ve had ocd for a few years but don’t get anxious anymore and this feels like I’m actually bad or would want to do it because of that feeling