All of my intrusive thoughts feel so real and I’m having daily panic attacks over them. I’m so scared all of the time and I don’t know what’s going on or why it’s getting so much worse all of a sudden. I hate this so much, I just want to feel normal. Can someone please give me advice on what to do? I am going to a therapist but I’m really hesitant to even bring up the content of my intrusive thoughts.

Hi everyone. I’ve been doing therapy for about two months now and I would say it’s slowly helping me a lot. I explained to her the breathing techniques and “sitting in the anxiety for a bit” and I feel like those are helping. But then my therapist said “don’t sit in the thought because then you might act on it”. I don’t “sit in the thought” but rather i sit in the anxiety to comdition my brain into thinking it’s not a threat. But ever since yesterday, my therapy appointment, I’ve been really shooken up. Even though I don’t “sit in the thought” I feel like a bad person that she even had to bring it up even though I explained it wrong. I’m so upset I feel like I just took 3000 steps back from my progress and this little thing is really scaring me. Am I a bad person? I don’t want to act on any of my thoughts and it scares me so bad I hate living.

Starting in high school, I became very suicidal, and it became my “safety net” of all went wrong. I know it’s dark, but I was in a really bad head space and I saw suicide as my escape if I couldn’t fix my life. It got to the point where I was constantly thinking about suicide (literally every day, multiple times a day). Over the last year, I’ve gotten better and I think about it less. But then my OCD grabbed hold of it…. Now, if I do something wrong or embarrassing or if I struggle in a social situation (which is often 😅), my mind says “kys”, “jump off a bridge”, and so on. It’s like an automatic response with my OCD and it makes me so uncomfortable… I’m trying to get better. I don’t want to die. Sure, I still get pretty low, but I always push the thoughts away now instead of welcoming them like I used to. But with the intrusive thoughts being nearly constant now, it’s kind of scary. I dont know what to do to make them stop since the intrusive thoughts are just so automatic at the slightest feeling of discomfort. I have a therapist, but I dont know how to bring this up with her. I’m too nervous to even admit to suicidal thoughts, not to mention the intrusive thoughts they’ve turned into. It kind of feels like it’ll never go away.

I was doing so much better with my OCD. I thought I finally figured it out. However, the last two weeks have been a nightmare. It’s like I went from 0-100 all over again. And it’s become scarier than it ever has been. Every other thought is either causing me anxiety or turning into an intrusive thought. Any headache or feeling of derealization, and I start to spiral. My thoughts are becoming more gruesome and feeling more real. The intrusive urges are so bad it feels like at any moment I could actually just snap. It feels like I am about to go crazy. Another hard aspect is when I’m getting these intrusive urges it feels like I want to do it or I don’t care if I do it. I don’t feel like myself. I feel like this disgusting monster who is just going to lose it and I want it to be over. Why is this happening when I was finally better? It makes me feel like it’s not OCD and I’m actually this person and I’m just holding my true self back. I’m sick to my stomach.