So I have had a good four weeks roughly, not really allowed myself to get stuck on my intrusive loop of harming my daughter, (this is my obsessional thought) what if. Anyway this morning has been horrendous, lying in bed I started to think what if I actually want these thoughts what if I can't stop thinking about them because I actually want to act on them. Well I feel terrible and hate my brain, why woukd I even think like this? Bearing in mind I have two older children who I have never had a thought like this before.

It's very normal to think about and imagine the bad thing as a way of testing how it feels. People with POCD and homosexuality OCD do the exact same thing and it just makes you feel ashamed, question if you want the thoughts more etc and doesn't bring an answer. And it's all caused by the OCD need to know. I can tell you that thinking about it for long enough isn't going to change your values, your wants or your personality and cause you to WANT to do the thing. The worst it can do to you is give you urges to not just think it but to DO it to test the thoughts. But you are in control, you have much more control than you think, and those urges wouldn't say anything about you either, they're OCD. Even if you get urges to do it just to know for sure/make the OCD stop, you will not have to follow through on them, and you clearly love your children and if you felt that it was ever actually coming close to that, you would take actions to make sure you didn't. That's the real you! Your values, your love. It really is torture. I know you feel like a monster but I really have to emphasise again, what you're going through is so common. It doesn't say anything about you as a person, and nobody who knows anything about OCD or post-partum depression or psychosis is ever going to believe that it does. And those are the informed opinions you need to care about. Plenty of people out there aren't going understand harm OCD or POCD because they don't know anything about it, but those opinions don't matter. You're doing absolutely nothing wrong, you're just suffering horribly from OCD. Everything you're experiencing is normal for OCD. Keep doing any methods you can for not engaging with the thoughts. Not worrying about it isn't going to mean you suddenly do it, even if you don't fully trust that that's true. Everything with OCD comes down to needing to know for sure, and feeding that feeling of needing an answer is going to steal a lot of energy, self esteem and time with your daughter. You have to work on letting go of all of your "what ifs", that's all. You've managed to do that before, this is just a simple bump in the road of new thoughts and your OCD trying to take a different angle to worm its way in with the doubts framed in new ways, in response to your refusal to engage with the original thoughts. It's a feature of OCD, all you have to do is keep fighting it the way you have been, and you can feel the relief again. Eventually with long enough periods of not doing the OCD analysing-habits, you build an organic confidence again of *knowing* that the fears are unrealistic. OCD also can be triggered by hormone changes which means when they settle down it can also go away. You won't have to fight or feel very anxious and wobbly forever.

@Louw Also the fact that you feel you need an answer in order to keep your daughter safe is another loud and proud indication of how much you love her. Unfortunately you have to fight the need, though. It's not unethical to think "maybe I'll do it and maybe I won't" and "maybe I want it, maybe I don't" and put the thoughts down and get on with other things. It's just what you need to do to treat the OCD unfortunately. It's not going to leave your daughter in danger and it's not going to make the future any more unknown than it was the last time you had a young child when you didn't have the harm OCD. It just FEELS more scary.