- Date posted
- 4y ago
- Date posted
- 4y ago
hello! first off - the fact that you're so worried and distressed about these things means they're not your true intentions / you wouldn't do them. many people (mental illness or not) deal with intrusive thoughts related to harm. it's just people with anxiety or ocd (even if u haven't been diagnosed) think that these thoughts mean something about them, when they don't. the fact that you're distressed is a clear sign that they're not your values💗 you're not alone in this. intrusive urges and images are also very common! the thing with intruisve urges is that they're not the same as a real urge. for example - you may have an impulsive urge to cut your hair & this is an urge that you WANT to do. intrusive urges are urges that you don't want - hence why they're called intruisve. they can be scary, especially when you don't know much about them. but they're common! @windsor.flynn on instagram (i recommend following her or looking at her page) has a post specifically for "how intrusive thoughts can feel like urges" and it's related to harm ocd / harm thoughts, i recommend checking it out! as for you avoiding people - that will just make your anxiety worse. you see - our brains don't know real danger from danger we create in our brains. you may think that avoiding people is helping but it's really fueling your thoughts (fueling them as in they will become more frequent not that you'd act on them). don't give power to your thoughts! they're just thoughts. hangout with your friends or family!<3 i promise you you're not a monster or whatever else you may be thinking you are. many people deal with this.
- Date posted
- 4y ago
i also recommend mindfulness. it helped me with my intrusive thoughts and anxiety! there's many books you can buy. what helps is when you get an intrusive thought, don't pay attention to it but also don't push it away. don't try and figure out what it means bc it doesn't mean anything. just let it flow by, eventually if you keep doing this the thoughts will become less and less. and then when you do get an intrusive thought (bc everyone gets them!!), you would've developed a new and better relationship to it, and you'll let it just pass by because you'll know it doesn't mean anything about you!! and do the same for urges, let them pass by and don't try and figure out what they mean.:)
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Thank you so much!! Yes, these thoughts feel very real sometimes, it’s scary, it’s like I have something disturbing stuck in my mind following me 24/7!! I will follow the ig account! And also I feel like this is not OCD, like this is something real, but I guess it’s part of OCD. Yes I feel urges sometimes, like if I could go and act on my thoughts, but I really don’t want to, and it feels like an urgency. Thank you so much :)
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@Anonymous that's totally apart of ocd & anxiety! i'm not diagnosed but i have bad anxiety and get intrusive thoughts, so i know what u mean! but that's normal<3
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@coucou Thank you! It makes me relieved <3 I hope I cope this, because it’s really uncomfortable :(
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@Anonymous you will get through!! <3 theres always blue sky after a storm :)
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@coucou Thank youuu that’s so sweet🥰
- Date posted
- 4y ago
I have Harm OCD and this sounds pretty textbook. OCD can feel VERY real. And I second mindfulness. A good rule when it comes to thoughts is this: If you didn't choose it, let it be.
- Date posted
- 4y ago
Did this happen to you too? And thank you for the advice!!
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@Anonymous Yes, I believe it happens to most people that have OCD, and it can be especially scary with Harm. I've definitely felt the urges along with thoughts and images. It's all part of OCD which is how it latches on. It is so scary. Everyone with OCD has questioned whether or not they have OCD or if this is who we've always been. I had that thought just this morning. But honestly, you know who you've always been? Right? You know it. Psychopaths would not have distress over these thoughts. I've been there too. Afraid of schizophrenia, psychosis, turning into a psychopath, sociopath...all of these fears are also common in conjunction with Harm OCD because its like a brain hijacking. OCD loves to ask you what if, what if, what if. I recommend Ali Greymond on YouTube, and listen to a few talks from Jeffery Schwartz as well. Also, Dr. Michael Greenberg has a great interview on the OCD Stories podcast, also on YouTube. It sounds like you're ruminating a lot, and his methods might help!
- Date posted
- 4y ago
@CB6236 Thank you! Yess it’s the fear of turning into a psychopath, or going schizophrenic, or the fear that you might act on your thoughts and not knowing if that will happen or not. Yes I ruminate a lot, so thank you for your recommendations, I will check those out!
- Date posted
- 4y ago
I fear I might have psychopath characteristics, I really feel like I could be one :(
Related posts
- Date posted
- 22w ago
I haven't been officially diagnosed with OCD but when I learned more about it, I never related to anything more. A little back story: when I was younger, there were a couple of youth suicides in my area and the schools felt the need to have someone come in and talk about suicide. Well the person they had come in did a horrible job teaching it and basically made it seem like the smallest negative emotion or feeling or change in behavior made you suicidal. This ended up scaring me so much that I got horrid anxiety. Fast forward to now, Everytime I feel anxiety and panic, I fear I'm going to kill myself. Everytime I feel down and depressed, I fear I'll end it all. I'm scared to be around anything sharp because the "What if" I hurt myself comes into my mind. There are always intrusive thoughts at almost every point of the day. And it's not only for me. Everytime I hear someone being negative, I fear they will be suicidal. I know in my heart that none of this is true but it's terrifying me that it's stuck around so much that it makes me scared that maybe it is true. I've had a lot of death in my family in the past year and a half and a lot of other family drama that I'd never had before that is now also bringing up existential intrusive thoughts. And I'd never questioned anything about life before but now I get the "why is life like this?" and "does anything we do matter?" and I hate it. I don't want to think like that. I just want to go through life being able to handle things normally again. It terrifies me even right now going "what if you give up?"
- Date posted
- 18w ago
I am so so so anxious, I cant even describe it. I have this horrific anxious feeling going through my body where it feels like im about to do something terrible. I feel incredibly sick, shakey, panicky. Due to this harm ocd episode. I am so scared that I might act on a disgusting horrific harm intrusive thought. I dont wanna be near knives, go to the kitchen or even get up. As im so scared that Im going to act on it. I know I dont want to but this anxiety and horrid feeling makes me feel like i do. I am petrified the anxiety is terrifying. I sat in the kitchen earlier while my brother was close and I was scared because it feels so real even typing this im starting to panic. Please respons please and please say if your uk based it brings me a bit of comofrt as I know im not alone in this country! What makes it worse is my family were talking about their aspirations and dreams then i felt even more scared of the intrusive thoughts because if i did act on them they would be destroyed and then I also feel so much guilt cos i get scared my bf is scared of me has anyone had this does it go.
- Date posted
- 17w ago
I’m really struggling with something related to me ocd, and I would appreciate kind and supportive advice. If you can’t relate or don’t think anything you have to say would be helpful, I kindly ask pls refrain from commenting this is a really sensitive topic for me. Recently, I’ve noticed a pattern that feels something extremely new and distressing. The first time it happened I remember telling myself before self pleasuring that I am in control no matter what thought comes into my mind because I wanted to prove to myself that these thoughts are just from OCD and I know who I am and an intrusive that came out of no where, and i suddenly felt an intense fear that I was acting on it. In the moment I genuinely felt like I did. And afterword, I panicked and started questioning myself. This SAME FEELING has happened three times in a row each time, the intrusive thought was unwanted and random, and completely against my morals most recently it involved pocd and it feels even worse because it generally felt like I acted on it the thought in the moment while I was self pleasuring the panic doesn’t hit until afterwards when I stop :/ I start thinking that maybe I generally made a mistake and I’m now just realizing that it’s wrong because it generally feels like that :( but when I actually think about it again goes against my morals and values doesn’t make sense it feels incredibly real, and I can’t seem to shake this feeling off that I may have acted on it I’m terrified because I never wanted these thoughts in the first place. And I definitely didn’t choose them. If I had known, I would’ve had these intrusive thoughts I wouldn’t have self pleasured in the first place but it’s extremely hard to convince myself that this may be OCD because I feel like I have no other reason to believe that I didn’t act on it :/
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