Really suffering a lot

Alllll this thinking, analyzing and checking is a clear sign it’s OCD. But I can tell you that until I’m blue in the face, your OCD will not believe it. It wants certainty about something that doesn’t even exist. The OCD is the enemy here, not you. The thoughts are not the enemy here, the lies OCD is throwing at you because it wants that certainty is the enemy. You took the thoughts and assigned meaning to them. (What if I want this, what if this is who I am etc.) Your overanalyzing has now made you numb which makes you afraid you like the thoughts. But even if you did (which you clearly don’t, very obviously, or it wouldn’t distress you) then that doesn’t mean you’re going to act on anything. The only way out of this is to stop compulsions. When you start making the thoughts unimportant they will eventually lessen. Try and put off rumination, analyzing your feelings and thoughts etc. until a certain time. Every time fear and thoughts pop up say “that’s nice, thanks for the info, but we’re not going to spend time and energy on this until tonight 8 pm.” When the time rolls around, if you feel ok-ish, still try to not compulse. Try and contain the compulsions more and more until you’ve trained yourself not to react at all. Then do more exposures like standing close to someone with a pillow. Ask someone to lay on the bed with their face upwards and you standing there with a pillow. This feels scary but it’s a way to show to ypur brain that it can throw whatever thpughts at you, it doesn’t make them reality.

And I’m literally believing I ‘like the feeling of doing that’ - something I’ve obviously never done but from imagining it feels like I know what it feels like and ‘like how it feels to do that action’ I just want a normal life and now I’m worried I’ve discovered I like something horrible and I’ve gotten in a habit of deliberately imagining the thoughts and I do it all the time to ‘test myself’ and now I’m imagining it and I don’t get anxiety and it’s just weird I don’t know what to do

I’ve had harm OCD as well. Just the other day I was standing on the train platform and I had just read a lot of posts on here on harm OCD. So I was curious and I deliberately thought up some thoughts (because I hardly ever have harm intrusions spontaneously anymore) to see if they would still scare me. They didn’t. Now, do you believe that makes me capable of acting on the thoughts, just because I don’t feel absolute terror or even unease, anymore? I know my brain is making these up and it’s a fictional scenario. I fully, 100% believe that these thoughts don’t “make me” do anything. It’s just a thought. They can come and go. They don’t bother me at all. What really helped me was realizing that intrusive thoughts are normal and that everyone has them. The reason they multiplied and terrorized me so much was because I became scared of them and started gripping them with both hands, staring at them. My brain was making sure I wouldn’t forget these thoughts because it was trying to protect me from doing bad things. Because I believed the thoughts were saying something about me. They don’t. The brain just has weird associations or false perceived dangers sometimes and then throws up an intrusive thought. Nothing more.

Remember OCD is ego dystonic. Meaning it goes against one’s morals and values. Because if it’d didn’t feed you with the things you fear, you wouldn’t engage in compulsive behaviour. It’s known as the doubting disease because it does whatever it can to trick and manipulate you into believing it. In your case, you’re saying you don’t have anxiety from it when you’re thinking it, yet and you may even think you aren’t doing compulsions. But what you’re actually doing is reassurance seeking which is a compulsion. It sounds like what may be happening is you have Harm OCD which is very scary (I have it too). You’re having the thoughts for long enough without obviously doing anything that your mind is desensitising to the thought. But not in a sense of accepting that the contents of the thought is possible, but in a sense that it is learning that the thought is just an intrusive junk Mail thought that you don’t need to be paying attention too. The trouble is you obviously hope to get rid of the thought, so when it is gone, you’re naturally checking in your mind if the thought is still there. And then when you put that thought there and realise there’s no anxiety with it, you start doubting yourself as OCD makes you. You then start questioning if you like that thought by making yourself think of it (reassurance checking). And then when you don’t you feel compelled to keep thinking it in the hope of getting a reaction. You need to trust yourself. Your mind knows your not a bad person. You’re not going to act on any of the thoughts and your mind is not triggering that anxiety anymore because it knows that the thought isn’t worth your attention. You think you’re not worrying about the thought, yet you’re worrying about not worrying about it… which means you are still worrying about the thought. So trust yourself. The doubt is from OCD trying to keep yon engaged. But your mind is smarter and is trying to tell you things are fine. The questioning you’re doing and the worrying you’re doing is OCD creating a new obsession ‘I must like these thoughts now’ and a new compulsion ‘I must do reassurance checking’. You’ll find if you just try to accept the thought no matter how scary and trivialise it, make fun of it ‘haha yeah guess I’m a murderer then’ as impossible as it feels, the worry that you will harm someone will start to fade away. Your rational mind knows you’re sane and wouldn’t harm anyone. That’s why the idea of liking these negative thoughts is so disturbing. But once the anxiety goes away completely you’ll start to develop a more humour and logical way of thinking about it. You’ll realise ‘what the hell was I thinking of course I’m not a murderer’. I know it’s scary and it’s not easy, OCD is sooooo manipulative and it’s so hard to trust yourself when your OCD is telling you such horrible things.