My name is Tom. My first intrusive thought was related to sexual orientation. It haunted and traumatized me for 4 weeks until I finally spilled the beans to my wife after she came home from work ti find me in tears from having panic attacks related to my intrusive thought. The relief was immediate but so was my first harm ocd intrusive thought which came as soon as I told her, and it was aimed right at her. I lived with that repetitive violent intrusive thought for 4 years, starting every morning I opened my eyes. It morfed from harm ocd to sexual orientation to pedophile ocd but always came back to harm ocd which manifested itself as a command " kill her ". It just about ruined my life and my marriage which is when I finally reached out for help. I was finally diagnosed with ocd. It was a relief as like many others who have gone threw this, I thought I was schizophrenic or a very bad person... it took several more months for me to accept trying medication. Escitalopram was for me a life saver. I was on 10 mg for about a month and upped it to 20 mg. I was on that dose for 8 years. It made my ocd close to 90% gone. It was gonna for so long that I pretty much forgot why I was on the medication in the first place. About 8 years later, I had an incident at work and tested positive for thc. I was forced into a rehab program. As soon as I wasn't able to medicate with Cannabis, all my ocd intrusive thoughts came back with a vengeance. Left me wondering why I was on this medication in the first place, so I decided to qeen myself off. After doing research on how to successfully tapper off, I started using cbd to eliviate the discontinuation symptoms which totally worked. Unfortunately the ocd didn't go away as I hoped. I did a lot of work on exposure and excepting my intrusive thoughts. It did help with making my intrusive thoughts less potent. I decided 6 weeks ago to go back on the SSRI. Life is too short, and if I can get relief from my ocd then it's worth it. I've only been back on 10 mg, half the dose I used to take and I find it really helps my intrusive thought unlatch. I've also accepted that the thought " kill her " will always be a part of me and that's ok. I'd rather live with it and accept it then live the rest of my life in misery fighting it. Acceptance is defenetly the answer here. I know I'm a good person, a lover, a husband, a father of two wonderful little girls. I'm not ever afraid of following threw with my intrusive thought, I might have been in the beginning as I didn't know what was going on. But now it's more about just having the intrusive thought itself. So I accept that it's gonna be there, it's just a part of me, it doesn't mean anything about me or my wife, it's just OCD. I hope to grow old with my wife and get to meet my grand kids, I have lots of life to live, my girls are 7 and 11 years old, so lots of road ahead. I've stopped wondering why me, why it happened, why that thought, I'm over it. It's OCD and it's as much a part of me as my arms or legs are and for that I accept it for what it is. When my intrusive thought chimes in, usually when I open my eyes, I just agree with it and say totally and go in with my day. I love my life. OCD has been my biggest teacher. I am probably better off with what ocd has taught me over the years. I feel like I wouldn't be as mature as I am today if I hadn't gone threw all this suffering. So to all out there, keep your chin up and be fearless in the eye of anything life can throw at you. Choose to be your best self every minute. Be here now.