- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
I completely understand this. I don’t really have specific advice but just letting you know I’m going through the exact same thing. My strategy at this point has been to label them as OCD thoughts - I will certainly let you know if I come up with something more effective.
- Date posted
- 5y
Glad to know not alone - it’s just hard to try to do erp or anything when not afraid of something dangerous ??♂️..
- Date posted
- 5y
Well, sounds like suicide OCD, but tbh the "classifications" we use aren't a clinical thing anyway, they're not distinct, they're all OCD, and they're all treated the same way as any other OCD. Honestly, as much as you want to remind yourself of all the reasons you want to live and don't want to die, that's pretty much just the kind of resistance which reinforces the threat level you feel from the intrusive thoughts. I don't have OCD about this, because when I (quite often btw) think or say to myself "kill yourself" (intrusive thoughts I suppose), I don't take it very seriously: I don't wonder why I thought it, I know people think weird things a lot and even if it's only me that thinks this stuff.... Well, never mind. You're not going to kill yourself without making a conscious decision to do it. If you're unlikely to do that, because you enjoy being alive, then that's just the way it is, OCD or no OCD. The only thing the OCD does is to give you a big layer of stress. I guess for you it goes intrusive thought -> adrenaline -> what if this means something? Best tip is the same as for every OCD out there: let yourself be adrenalised. You can survive being adrenalised. It goes away. Don't follow the urges to analyse, question or argue against the idea of "this might mean that I want to kill myself". You don't need to know.
- Date posted
- 5y
Hi! Suicidal OCD is usually the same classification as Harm OCD, but OCD varies between everyone! Maybe a script would be a great way to practice ERP! You can start small- write out some statements/imagined scenarios that trigger minor anxiety & repeat them or listen to them until the anxiety lessens, then work your way up to a more triggering script. I hope that helps!!
- Date posted
- 5y
Awesome thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for.. appreciate it
Related posts
- Date posted
- 19w
I'm new to NOCD and have been dealing with harm/suicidal, and Pure OCD for some time now. It started off being healthy related anxiety that led to compulsion where I would research information on an uncommon illness or something I thought I had. Now it has snowballed into intrusive thoughts and images of me killing myself in various ways or my wife. The former is what has been the most debilitating and hardest to shake. Recently I seem to find triggers almost every where I look. "What if I killed myself this way" if I see a kitchen knife or a bottle of pills. A friend talked about going to a gun range a while back and an image popped up of me being there and turning a gun to myself which is something I dont want to do. I love life and its so painful to go through thoughts that try to tell me otherwise. That particular image/thought has really stuck with me. I know about ERP and my therapist said I could rip the bandaid off and go to a gun range but it terrifies me. I don't own any weapons but I often think, "what if I buy one and im actually suicidal?" Just typing it makes me anxious. I'm wanting to start a low dose of Prozac which opens up another can of worms about worried my "overdose thought" will come true, on top of potential side effects. This is long winded but im looking for any advice to get through this. I know others are worse off than me but considering I've never been like this and it only started 6 months ago, I'm really struggling. Thanks everyone.
- Date posted
- 19w
Hey y’all. I have suicidal OCD and I feel that it manifests in a strange way. I feel like my brain often encourages me to kill myself. Like my most dominant thought isn’t ’what if you kill yourself’, it’s ’you should kill yourself.’ It tends to amp up every time I make some mistake, even if it’s small. And it definitely gets worse during times of stress. I don’t want to kill myself and I wouldn’t consider myself depressed. But if these thoughts are OCD, and are my brain trying to keep me safe from killing myself, why would it tell me to? I’d appreciate any insight.
- Date posted
- 16w
Hello. I joined this app because I realised my experiences might be due to OCD. I often have these really disgusting and terrible pictures of me becoming someone horrible, doing horrible things to others. These ideas really disturb me, and often in my mind, and physically sometimes, I literally scream quitely to myself, "Shut up!" Over and over until the image goes away, but unless I distract myself with something else immediately after, it comes back and gets worse. I also end up looking back on these thoughts, and being terrified that maybe I am thinking of this because it is what I truly want, so I end up desperately trying to filter my thoughts, and this ends up carrying into something like SO-OCD, even though I am confident that I am a straight male, and there is no evidence that I am not, I keep trying to prove to myself that I am straight to make the thought go away. I also get the fear that after I maybe do something and say something I know I maybe shouldn't have to someone, that when they leave, or I can't find them for a bit, they have gone to commit suicide. Likewise, I also get intrusive thoughts of me killing myself, even though I have no desire to, and this scares me a lot as well. I used to occasionally get these thoughts in chunks like maybe for 2 weeks and then I wouldn't for another few weeks, but they have gotten worse and more frequent this past semester. They are still not bad enough to actively effect my daily life and routine, but they definitely come frequently enough to distract me, disrupt what I'm doing and make me take a break, and it has dramatically effected my mood and mental state lately. Do you guys recommend any ways to deal with this, is this really severe enough to even call OCD? Would love to hear, thanks! ❤️
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