Hello, I’ve struggled with POCD in the past and I’ve been going to therapy for it, and I feel that I have fought it off for now. Although, just about 30 minutes ago I was watching a movie that had a scene of a guy killing his father. I have been angry with my mother the past few days and after seeing that movie I started to have terrible intrusive thoughts of myself strangling my mom. My anxiety has passed but at this moment I’m feeling very hopeless. I feel like a psycho.

I’m having a very bad evening with my intrusive thoughts. I was doing really good dealing with them but tonight one hit me hard. I’ve been having a lot of different intrusive thoughts but I’ll have one occasionally about hurting my mom or my dog who I love and they’re the only family I have in my life. They’re my world. I was helping my mom put away the dishes and I had the big kitchen knife in my hand and my intrusive thought was you could stab your mom. And then my brain said I had a twitch in my hand and that meant I wanted to do it. Let me just say that I wouldn’t hurt a fly. I actually caught a fly in a glass and put it outside instead of killing it this evening before this intrusive thought happened. I’m such a gentle and compassionate and caring person and these thoughts instantly cause me to have a panic attack. And I have no one to talk to them about. I know they’re hard for my mom to hear and I don’t want to be any more of a burden than I already am. I do desperately want to tell her and have her reassure me that I’m not crazy or a psycho. Then my thoughts wander to if your hand did flinch could you be a psychopath. Is hurting someone in you. I know it’s not but I feel like my mind is out to get me and hurt me. I’m working so hard and I thought I was doing so good but I need to know why I have these thoughts. They’re not ok. I need someone to help me make sense of why. I know we aren’t supposed to ruminate but I shouldn’t have thoughts like this about people I love and care about the most in the world.

Since I developed ocd as postpartum my ocd has mostly always targeted my kids. It started as harm and then switched to pocd. Both are equally very painful. For years I was mostly able to keep my ocd at bay but when it comes back it’s so bad. I have a son and a daughter and my ocd switches back and forth from kid to kid with horrible intrusive thoughts and now even intrusive ocd dreams. With each thought I get past and start to feel relief another one pops right up. The thoughts feel so real and true even though I know it’s just the ocd and not how I think or feel, the ocd always makes me doubt myself and question everything I think or do. I know other moms/dads go through this too. Please anyone who has or is going through this please tell me how you deal with this. 😪

This might contain triggering content, but I'm also wondering if others have dealt with this similar thought, and if so, how to deal with it? Overall, I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm able to eat again, which I hadn't been able to do because of how much anxiety I'd been experiencing. I'm spending time around loved ones and not just rotting in my room, and I've been able to wake up without immediately being bombarded by intrusive thoughts. When things first got really bad, I'd wake my mom up every night for reassurance, but I haven't done that in a while either. I'm really proud of myself, but there's still this nagging thought in my mind... While looking through others posts on here, hoping to find advice that'd fit my situation, I ended up making things worse. Someone mentioned how they had a fear that they'd purposely search for illegal content (related to POCD). I panicked, and "what ifs" flooded my thoughts. "What if the intrusive thoughts affect who I am as a person, and I do that?" I'm terrified that I'll search for those things, which I know means I wouldn't do it. But then, another person on here said they'd actually looked for those things, and that freaked me out even more. Does that mean it's possible for that to happen to me? I don't want to do that, but I keep having intrusive thoughts surrounding it. I've been doing so well these past few days. I'm just... stuck. I don't know what to do. I've spoken with other people who have the same fears, but how do I manage this? It's not something I've even thought about before seeing those posts. I've been practicing accepting the uncertainty, but I'm really struggling with this one. I hate this. This morning, I woke up, and the intrusive thoughts were back. It's just disheartening.