I hate when ocd does this

Okay, so for the most part, if you have harm ocd/intrusive thoughts, you’ll understand (hopefully). If you haven’t seen, everyone is talking about the Netflix documentary “Dahmer”. Most harm ocd sufferers (myself included) that I’ve gotten to know all struggle with fears of being evil in any way (like a sociopath/narcissistic, etc). Do we need to make ourselves watch it? Even some of my friends without OCD say they couldn’t do it. The reason I don’t want to watch it is because I’m afraid it’ll trigger me. I’ll look for any common traits (this is what I do) and it’ll send me into a panic attack. But aren’t we SUPPOSED to on purpose watch things that bring us distress? The series has everyone talking about mental health and it SUCKS because OCD is considered “mental health” and I feel like it lumps us all into a giant category. Everything true crime triggers my harm ocd. I don’t even want to know humans are capable of such things because then it reminds me “it’s all possible”. I don’t know if I explained it well, but does ANYONE understand where I’m coming from 🥺🥺🥺🥺

It started a month ago on vacation. I started getting intrusive thoughts about harming my loved ones in their sleep and it scared me so bad. I thought it would stop but it only got worse. Here I am a month later and things have changed drastically. My thoughts have now shifted to becoming some serial killer. I am so worried it’s all I think about. I can’t stop thinking about the things I did as a kid and how it could validate all my thoughts. I don’t wanna hurt anyone or anything at all. I am so scared of the thought of the notorious serial killers that I’ve heard about in the past and I can’t stop comparing myself to these horrible people. I’m scared because I used to be mean to animals as a kid and people say this is the first thing to look for in serial killers. I remember still having a lot of empathy for them when I was young too. I look back and cant at all understand why I was like that. It makes me wanna breakdown and punch myself. All of that stopped a really long time ago and every since I have done nothing but helped and empathized with animals. I am every surrounded by them and consider them to be more family than pets. I get extremely upset over anything or anyone who is suffering. I just can’t get that memory of me doing that stuff out of my head and I’m afraid it means it validates my thoughts I’ve been having even though this is not what i want to happen. I’ve been completely avoidant of alcohol and refused to take a medication I was prescribed because irritability was a side effect and I’m afraid of snapping and hurting someone. I just can’t stop thinking about my past and how it could correlate to now. Even though I have grown up to have morals and respect for everything I have a fear that it’s all been a lie. I get so much anxiety from thinking about this stuff. I haven’t eaten in almost 3 days because my stomach is in a constant knot and when I do eat I feel too guilty to do so because I’m not paying attention to these thoughts and sometimes it makes me question whether I secretly want to do bad stuff which I don’t and that scared me so bad. I made an emergency appointment right after I started having these thoughts and they diagnosed me as having schizotypal personality disorder. They said I have been having ocd “tendencies “ because I have the thoughts and constantly googling everything which I guess would be a compulsion. I have been looking on forums for people with past actions similar to mine to see other peoples reactions. I’m not sure what this is anymore. Idk if this is ocd or I’m just using it as an excuse. All I know is that I’m extremely scared. I vowed if this stuff as everything something I would even think about doing I would take myself out before I ever hurt anyone else. It’s scary but it’s what I always tell myself when I doubt any of this.

Anyone else get triggered by seeing true crime stories on tiktok of people who k*lled family members and worry that they could become like that or are secretly like that? It’s horrible and just the worst to think about. I really hope I’m not the only one. I wasn’t always afraid of things like this. I don’t know what happened. It’s like my brain wants me to believe I’m capable of something like that but I know I’m not and obviously I don’t want to do that. I love my family and my greatest fear is losing them. Please tell me I’m not alone. I know many people struggle with harm ocd I just always feel so isolated when my situation is not described exactly. If you’ve recovered from this form of ocd what helped you the most?