The child in front of my car

Hello! So this is a form of harm ocd i suppose. Recently I have developed a theme that when i leave a drive way, residential street, parking lot, or school zone that i may have ran over a child and didn’t know. It started slowly, from rechecking in my mind, to getting out and looking, to turning back and going to check if anyone is there, to finally installing a dash cam to record the areas above. The image in my head for some reason is always a little kid, because my mind out that thought there. I tried ERP myself without a therapist and it is soooo hard to do. My sibling has OCD thats how i was diagnosed. Had it my whole life, misdiagnosed once for adhd, as a kid then finally OCD as an adult. The doubt and anxiety is paralyzing. 😤

Evoorhee

Date posted: 1y

Also let me add that driving is second nature for most of us. We do things on auto pilot and that’s bad for people with OCD especially when you’re trying to recover from this type of thing. But there is hope, it can be beat, but it takes work.

Evoorhee

Date posted: 1y

All right guys, I know this can be harder for some people than it is for others, but I followed some advice and did more ERP today with myself and it was successful. With OCD you cannot let it get the upper hand for too long because once you are in a chronic state of anxious thinking, you are no longer in control of you, the OCD controls you and it will keep you there if you let it. Your body is not meant to be in a constant state of panic and stress because it starts to change everything. You will remain vulnerable to attack. I’m crossing my fingers here, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. You have to be willing to accept the negative consequences of this fake theme to beat it. Do you want to live like this for the rest of your life or do you want to risk it? I’m still going to do therapy, this is a lifelong thing, but my strong strong advice is to be willing to do whatever it takes with ERP. You will get out!

Ty Dela Cruz

Date posted: 1y

Right there with you. Mine is just anyone though and cars. Right when I sit down in my car I’m plagued with anxiety. I can’t even leave my house right now

Evoorhee

Date posted: 1y

@Safariland I have to check everywhere around my car before I feel that it’s safe to leave, then once I’m already going and I’m out of neighborhoods and stuff usually on main roads and highways I feel safer because there is someone behind me. I drive for a living so this is a tough spot for me, I got a dash cam which kind of broke the illusion of needing to check and I felt really stupid watching the videos after because I knew I wouldn’t find anything but without it, I felt naked. I can’t let this destroy me because I will lose my job so I’m going to fight it!

staystrong_

Date posted: 1y

I have huge anxiety and OCD when it comes to driving a car. It's debilitated to the point that I don't want to leave my house anymore.

Evoorhee

Date posted: 1y

@staystrong_ Exposure and response prevention is the hardest with this stuff because you can’t go back to what you think you may have run over, and your mind will tell you you’re going to be arrested now because you left the scene that’s why it’s so hard. People with OCD forget about odds, we tend to focus mainly on whats at stake. In this situation, it’s the stakes would be very high if you hit somebody because you would be risking a lot, but we forget about the odds. We don’t do well with odds the truth is the odds are that you whatever hit somebody in real life is very very slim, I am 40 years old now and I’ve been driving since I was 16 and I have not once hit anybody and I have been driving perfectly fine until about two weeks ago exact thing so how in the hell is this so different now? It doesn’t make sense. We were probably all driving normally at one point in time without ever worrying about this.

AnonymousAnx...

Date posted: 22w

My OCD experience

I’ve always had OCD, and for most of my life it was little things that seemed manageable at the time or something that would phase out of my head within a couple days/weeks/months. But, the older I got the more severe it became, I’d find myself collapsing deeper and deeper within my own head trying to out think the thoughts that bothered me. About a year ago I had a thought that rattled me to my core. My brothers and I were watching a movie in our mother’s room when my youngest brother turned to me to say something. His close proximity to me triggered a fleeting sexually explicit image in my head and that thought caused me to spiral. Asking questions like, “are you attracted to your minor brother? Are you attracted to minors? Are you gay? Etc.” a couple days went by and my mental stability continued to crumble until I broke down to my mother, she was understanding and we found a a psychiatrist. I got on medication and for a while everything was slowly but surely trending in a positive direction. The thoughts would still pop into my head but they were becoming more manageable. As we all know OCD and mental illness comes in waves. Currently my OCD has been pretty severe. I feel those intrusive thoughts latching on in my head and it’s been very hard to kick them. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself being uncomfortable being in close proximity with my little brother because I feel as though I am capable of harming him in any way. And the more uncomfortable I become being around him the more I find myself lashing out in anger towards the people I care about the most. Those moments of anger cause me to spiral even farther as my head fills with ideas like “what if you are capable of hurting someone or even murdering them?” There’s times where these thoughts rattle me so much that I feel like it would be better to be in prison where I couldn’t harm someone or that even being dead would be a better solution than possibly running the risk of hurting someone in my life I care about. This is about the jist of it, a majority of the OCD I have is centered around the idea that I am capable of harming my little brother physically, mentally, sexually. It’s been exhausting and it feels like there is no end in sight.

Relationship OCD

Brian.Hope

Date posted: 17w

Harm ocd

Hey, I suffer from harm ocd and I feel as if it’s non stop everything I do everyday I believe I killed someone I believe it’s harm ocd and false memory but like today I went to the store and saw a older lady and my head thinks of images of me pushing them or killing then and right after that thought I feel as if I done it then the rest of the day I ruminate replaying everything. I know erp and I should just accept the thought and let it go but it’s not easy and I feel as if i really hurt or killed someone and I don’t want to go to jail for something I don’t want to do . Any tips would be appreciated I don’t know how to accept and move on when it feels so real that I did something!

addyourname

Date posted: 15w

Hit and run OCD

I was driving when I passed by 2 kids playing with a ball in their front yard, their ball made it to the street, I slowed down and continued my route and looked back to to make sure they’re ok and when I got home I started getting intrusive thoughts that I ran over the kid 😢

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The child in front of my car

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