harm ocd TW i’m usually quite an empathetic person i’d say. especially with physical pain. like if a friend told me they fell over, i can almost feel that? i’ve never been someone who enjoys those ‘funny’ videos of people getting hurt etc. and i’m a bit queasy with pain and blood. but i remember a few years ago being told that evil is defined as ‘suffering for the sake of suffering’. and i was just watching a tv show where they were basically torturing people for the fun of it, and i felt excited? i think it might have been adrenaline and nerves (because i feel that when i’m anxious, so i felt their anxiety and then felt ‘excited’). but i’m just super worried that i would find doing cruel things exciting or pleasurable. i’ve worried this for a while now. even though i’m the kind of person who moves snails on the road so they don’t get squashed. like as a kid whenever i did something rebellious or sneaky, i’d feel this wave of excitement and adrenaline. or with chaos or drama i feel excited. and i’m ultimately scared i’m a psychopath who would feel that excitement torturing people! it’s causing me a lot of distress. i know i can’t be a psychopath because there are so many parts of me that don’t fit with the description of one. and i hope what i described above isn’t actually sadistic. i hope it’s just adrenaline.

Around 10 years ago when I started getting violent OCD intrusive thoughts, I also started fearing that I was a sociopath. I began overanalyzing everything — especially my emotions. It's like if I could prove I had emotions it proved I wasn't a sociopath. I care deeply about my family — I worry about them, I want them to be safe and happy, I want them to get theit deepest desires — but I don’t know what love "feels" like, if its supposed to feel like anything. People describe love as this warm, obvious, fuzzy emotion, but I don’t experience it the way I think I’m supposed to. Is it supposed to be intense? Constant? Loud? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that. My family isn’t very emotionally expressive either. I cherish hugs from them when I get them, I initiate most hugs with my parents (but I don't like hugs from other people, like co workers) but overall my family doesnt show affection much, and that’s made me question if I’m even capable of love. I overanalyze my feelings constantly — especially after realizing I don’t feel connected to God in the way my old church said I should. I don’t love God. I don’t feel anything toward Him — we’ve never met obviously so I just never got a connection with Him. But growing up, that felt like a sin in itself. As a teen, I felt ashamed knowing I cared more for my parents than for God, especially when church messages said God had to come first. There’s a song by Mary Mary that says, “I love you more than my mother, my father…” and it used to make me feel broken. My feelings were in direct contradiction with what I was taught, and that shame never fully left me. OCD latched onto that hard. It’s only after a coworker passed away — and I found myself crying multiple times over it — that I realized I do care deeply for people. But even that realization felt pathetic. Why did I need such an extreme moment to feel something “real”? & why didn't I care for another creepy bigoted co worker when his son was sick? I felt nothing. I’m scared my OCD is convincing me that I’m heartless, even though I want connection. I crave love. I like hugs. It’s exhausting and terrifying to doubt my own humanity like this. I hate this fear. I hate that I don’t trust myself. I hate that OCD makes me question my morality, my emotions — everything that makes me me. Has anyone else experienced anything like this? How do I even explain this to a therapist

I’ve always struggled with maladaptive daydreaming I’ve stopped but I have harm ocd and my brain would hook onto a true crime story and I’d pretend to be a family member/loved one/victim of a k*ller and would make up elaborate stories abt it. That feels so disgusting I’m so scared this shows in a horrible person doesn’t it? And now my brain is telling me I have found k*llers attractive in the past I don’t think I ever did but what if I did I’m scared

Guys I feel a bit bothered. I fear I liked a thought bc my sister was showing me this video about a robbery and right before she was going to show me I was thinking "no... tsk this is not what I want to see. Dont think of anything." But i had to watch bc my sister was already playing the video. I tried to not pay as much attention. I hate watching videos that have stuff related to harm bc ocd loves to latch on. I got so many thoughts. But when I saw the person pull out a weapon and the cashier jump extremely high, I felt like laughing??? But not bc of what was going on but bc "why did he jump like that? It was so high! You know what? I would've jumped liked this too. That's scary!" And then I felt angry for the cashier bc why do evil people commit such things? How the heck? But ocd says i laughed bc I felt a sense of superiority and liked seeing people scared and want to feel a distorted sense of power. Like.. no? I knew I felt like laughing bc I didn't expect him to jump so high and I wanted to point it out but decided not to bc the video is serious, and it's not a movie. But I feel kinda guilty like why tf did I feel like laughing. I didn't even smile or actually laugh irl but it's bothering me. Then my sister showed me some other video and explained a specific weapon and I kept getting thoughts like "ohhh i want that! I wanna scare people too! I want to test the thoughts to double check if i actually like them" And it gave me an image of me doing something crazy like robbing a store as well! AND IT FELT REAL! I WASNT EVEN WANTING TO THINK THIS! Im worried this means its real or that i enjoyed the thought and fantasized, but at the same time ik im not actually interested nor do I have plans but what if I WANTED to for those few seconds?! Bc why did it FEEL like I enjoyed it??? I know I wouldn't, i dont have plans to nor do i want to think about making plans and I'm genuinely not interested but WHAT IF??? Did i enjoy this thought?! It felt like I wanted to bc I didn't immediately reject it like usual and for some reason felt "happy" (i didnt smile or anything but it FELT like i was happy???) Literally right after the thought came i was thinking to myself "OMG is that true?" And couldn't focus on anything else! How do I know I didnt genuinely enjoy and dont have some weird sense of power??? It's been bothering me so much, this happened a couple hours ago and I managed to fall asleep in the middle of my compulsion of mentally reviewing how I reacted to my thoughts.