Intense fear that I fell asleep on a cat

This morning I had the realisation I might have fallen asleep on a random stray kitten that snuck into my house, obviously I can’t find it anywhere in my house nor can I find any bodies of a dead hurt kitten anywhere home neither did my family, but each of these scenarios can be explained by either the kitten leaving my house in agony and dying outside or my family just lying about finding one as to not hurt my feeling. How does one go aout such unverifiable thoughts, how can I know I didn’t fell asleep on a kitten when I can’t really feel it on a soft bed when under me? Or that it might have jumped on my bed last second when I’m laying on it after I checked there was nothing on it? I know it’s unlikely but I can’t keep living like that... I spend several hours not sleeping yesterday night vecause I kept checking under me while in bed never being satisfied and sure I haven’t falle asleep on a cat and just forced myself to fall asleep regardless but I feel guilty now...

Username: AnonymousAnonymous

Date posted: 48w ago

I'm listening, and I hear you. I would lose a lot of sleep due to OCD too. It's not a pleasant concept, but you may never know the answer to your question. It's not easy, but the best thing to do might be to not continue to check. If you need anything, I'll be here :)

Username: realeventwitsendrealeventwit...

Date posted: 48w ago

I know I shouldn’t check but I’m struggling with the moral dilemma of checking or not, after all isn’t it the least you could do to check if you’re not hurting anything or anyone? I feel like it’s such a tiny action that has so much power not to do it, I feel guilty not to...

Username: AnonymousAnonymous

Date posted: 48w ago

@realeventwitsend I understand. That's the kind of questioning OCD is good at making us do. But it doesn't matter how much you check, OCD won't be satisfied. One of the things that is important to have with OCD is grace with yourself. I do understand what you're saying

Username: realeventwitsendrealeventwit...

Date posted: 48w ago

@Anonymous Problem is I can’t justify it, how do people go to bed or lie on them or sit in chairs confident the haven’t sat on anything? Because let’s say some day I don’t check and end up killing a small kitten, I go to class the next day, my parents find it and don’t tell me, I would have killed a precious little life because of my carelessness whe it could have been avoided, like to me there’s is no other choice but to check, when do people value their own comfort over the hinderance checking something brings, where’s the limit between normal checking and compulsion and where do I stand?

Username: AnonymousAnonymous

Date posted: 48w ago

@realeventwitsend The things you say make a lot of sense. And I agree, and have felt the same way about my own obsessions. "It's easy enough to do such-and-such, it is more reasonable to just do it than let the bad thing happen, it'd be bad of me to not do it and to let the bad thing happen." But I realized that, yes, I would do just about anything to prevent harm and to protect the things I value, but the things I was doing simply wasn't helping anything -- there was no threat. It's truly good to be willing to do these things for other lives, but if you're doing all this where there is no threat, you're just stressing yourself out. For example, it's good to want to take care of your family and friends, but constantly checking on them and stressing yourself out isn't really helping that goal. Still, not doing the compulsions are never easy, OCD is always nagging you when you try.

Username: EstridEstrid

Date posted: 48w ago

We always feel guilty and wrong when we decide to not listen to OCD. No one here can convince you, you have to make a decision to treat it as an obsession. Obsessions live in a world of imagination where every catastroph is possible. The only way out of these thoughts is to stop checking, ruminating, asking for reassurance. I absolutely get you - this thought could have been mine. Search ERP treatment ifbpossible!

Username: JenniesOCDBrainJenniesOCDBrain

Date posted: 48w ago

hey there, i can only imagine how tough it must be dealing with those obsessive thoughts and the distress they bring, especially when it feels like nothing has helped so far. i've got my own tangle with pure o, different obsessions, but i totally get that sense of isolation and the weight it puts on your shoulders. just want you to know i'm here to listen and you're not alone in this struggle. 🤗 now, i'm not big on promoting stuff, especially apps, but there's this free ai ocd therapy tool called "unstuck" that my therapist pointed me to, and honestly, it's been a game-changer for me. check it out at www.AIOCDtool.com. given the uniqueness of your situation, i think it could be really helpful because it's like having a trained ocd therapist in your pocket. it's designed to guide you through the tough moments with your ocd by having you type in what's bugging you, and then it provides step-by-step guidance just like an actual therapist would with erp strategies. it's not a cure-all, but it's been a lifesaver for me and i genuinely hope it can offer you some relief too. if you have any questions or just want to chat about it, i'm all ears. take care.

Username: myocdstory

Date posted: 4y ago

"zOCD false memories" HI... I'm so sorry for bothering you... I'm not looking for reassurence, not at all. Just some sympathy? I have the strangest and ugliest feeling that I may have done sexual things to my pets but I just forgot about them. I truly don't remember ever doing anything wrong or weird to them, but that feeling doesn't vanish... Everytime I look at them, that feeling resurfaces. I continue to interact with them (exposure i guess) but this feeling doesn't get any smaller... Am I the only one? It helps me a lot to know I'm not alone... Or that this is normal in ocd. I feel that feeling similar to "whenever you leave the house, you feel like you forgot something but you go through your belongings and nothing is amiss but that feeling doesn't vanish" I guess the reason why I am so worried about it is... If something actually happened, I have to kill myself... I keep thinking about about possible scenarios and see if anything could have happened but I remember nothing...

"Pure" OCD

Username: lu22

Date posted: 1y ago

Please please need advice 😞

Today I woke up and told myself I wasn’t going to engage with the intrusive thoughts, I went downstairs and I was trying to avoid having intrusive thoughts about suffocating my cat with the pillow, but I kept feeling tempted to have the thoughts and thinking ‘maybe you do like the idea’ and I started worrying and thinking what if Through the thoughts I know how it feels to do that (because when your having the thoughts/ruminating it feels very real, almost like it’s already happened or I’ve lived through that) and now I’m desperate to do that or what if I’m secretly curious about how it feels to do that that’s why I can’t ignore the thoughts and keep feeling tempted to think about them. Or I was thinking what if through the thoughts I like the feeling of doing that but I have a conscious so now I have evil desires but I’m a good person so I don’t want to do it. I feel awful I don’t know what to do, I feel like I’m believing this notion more and more everyday, I hate this and don’t know what to do

Username: m1ch3ll3

Date posted: 47w ago

Idk anymore.

Today I woke up with the intrusive thought „did I harm my dog sexually during the night?“. My brain is specifically relating to the time of 3:57 when I woke up once. From what I remember I only woke up and thought abt going to the toilet but being too lazy and scared of the night so I went back to sleep. But I keep being worried I might have actually been up before that time and done sth. Like I seriously have no Memoires of doing so. Only things that I know were produced by my imagination bc they’re not really possible. I’ve already asked my mother if she had heard me go downstairs at night (we have like some kind of door that keeps you from falling down the stairs which is quite loud to open) but she said she doesn’t know and she hadn’t heard anything and said she’s 100% sure nothing had happened due to how my dog doesn’t seem to care at all and seems to not be scared of me. I’ve also thought abt asking my father and sister but they can’t actually hear anything. Maybe at like 3 am they were up tho for a snack? I know my father often goes to the kitchen at night to eat sth and my sister too. I guess I’ll ask both of them tomorrow. And the thing is that we actually have a camera in our garden which captures a bit of the door where my dog always sleeps and we have a light there so I could’ve been able to check up for my dog in the cameras. Turned out that my parents had turned the camera off at some point. Seems like they only wanted to capture stupid animals hopping onto our car and watching our own family go into the house. Wonderful. I don’t know what to do. The only thing I could now do is either trust my memories and let it go or check for the logic. Last time I was scared I might’ve hurt my dog, I realised that it wasn’t possible for that to have happened and that all of my memories were false. But to be honest, I’m so tired I don’t want to fill 5 days of my life with checking the logic of my obsession. I’ve had multiple su!cide thoughts by now. I’ve spent almost half my day crying. This is my lowest point. I can’t accept the uncertainty. I’m so far in this rn I actually today decided to lock my room from now on and hide my key, take a picture of it to remember it’s exact position and then close the door of the wardrobe I’m hiding it in and putting tape around the openings of the doors from the wardrobe. I seriously don’t want to keep living if this is the life my brain chose to give me.

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Intense fear that I fell asleep on a cat

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