I’ve never been the type of person to open up about myself but these last 3 months have been the hardest, worst time of my life. I’m 16 years old, and I’ve been anxious and had anxiety my whole life. Over the last couple years I’ve learned how to cope with my anxiety and be a happy person. But one night in January, i was watching random videos on YouTube, and a video about serial killers came on. I’ve always been interested in crime shows/documentaries, so I didn’t think twice before deciding to click on it. In the middle of the video I had this intrusive thought that said “why do people murder loved ones or innocent people” and “what does it feel like to kill somebody” I am not aggressive, or have ever caused harm, but these thoughts scared me to death. I felt a instant shock of anxiety and panic immediately. I thought something was wrong with me. I turned my phone off and went to bed hoping the next day I would forget about it. Unfortunately I never forgot about the thoughts, and still have intrusive thoughts that affect my day to day life. I feel so hopeless, even after seeing a therapist, and being on Prozac for 5 weeks I don’t feel a difference. Every time I try to be positive and tell myself “they’re just thoughts” ocd tells me, “yeah sure, but what if you did these things”? “What if you WANT to do these things”? I stress that I might actually want to do these horrible things secretly and am convinced that one day I will commit these crimes. I don’t know what to do anymore, I feel so hopeless, and even being around my girlfriend who used to bring me so much joy, I still can’t be my regular self. Please I feel so hopeless and sad I can’t even do the things I used to enjoy, remembering I have these thoughts is with me 24/7 from the second I wake up to the second I fall asleep. Anybody have advice? Sorry for the rant I just needed to get this off my chest. I just want to be normal again and enjoy being around my family and my girlfriend again

Right I need some serious help. Well where do I begin, I have been doing rituals since 4 years ago. I started doing rituals because I think I was having a really bad week at school and when I started doing the rituals they seemed to be making things better, and gradually I just started doing loads of them and I just lost track of how many I had, it was unbearable. Fast forward 4 years and here I am, I was upset anyway because I was feeling anxious because someone looked at me funny and I started panicking and I was thinking stuff like, what if they hate me and why were they looking at me. At the time I was opening up to my mum and we was watching a series at the time I was opening up to her. Then suddenly, a scene came on where there were terrorists and I just froze, what if I am a terrorist, and since then I haven’t been able to get out of my head the thought of being a terrorist and my mind convincing me that I am one even though I know I am not. I am still struggling with these thoughts now and your mind really does a good job in to thinking you are an evil terrorist even though deep down you know you’d never do something like that. I have managed to stop the rituals now but I still suffer with the thoughts which makes me think “maybe it isn’t OCD then as I don’t do any compulsions, maybe I am just evil” and then I always get stressed out and reply with “No, I am not” which I know isn’t good and I try to not reply and just let them be there but I just don’t know how to, it’s so hard. I’m really impatient with meditating. When I first started having the thoughts I couldn’t eat, I can eat now and go out but I am always getting the thoughts. The only time I don’t get the thoughts is if I am really busy doing stuff like work etc, I also get the same thing with like school shootings anything to do with that sort of terrorism stuff, I hate it so much. I have been to the doctors and I am on antidepressants and I am also getting therapy for it but will it help me? Would you say I have OCD? My intrusive thoughts always seem to target the things I like most so for example they target when I go to football games, my brain tells me I am going to commit an attack here and it makes me upset and it also happens when I go to college and my brain tells me I am going to commit an attack there which also upsets me. My brain also tells me when I start working (which I want to do) I am going to spend all of my money on weapons which therefore prevents me from wanting to get a job which means I can’t buy stuff that I want or start driving as I need money for it. Lately, my OCD has been weird because I have been getting the thoughts but I don’t get as anxious which makes me feel like, maybe it is just me, maybe I am a terrorist, maybe I will act on it which therefore makes me feel weird and scares me a bit but doesn’t scare me as much as it should do because I want to be really scared of the thought of acting out on it (which I used to be) but now I don’t react to it with as much anxiety but the thoughts are there and I feel like I should be reacting to them in a way where I shut them down but I am not. This all stemmed from when my doctor asked me, “am I planning something” and I said no but since then it has just stuck in my head and it has been like, “what if I am planning something” or what if I do plan something. Lately, I’ve been talking to a girl that I really like and my thoughts targeted her because I really like her, like when I met her my brain was telling me I was going to hurt her or her family when I obviously wasn’t going to and I’ve tried to just let the thoughts be there but sometimes it just gets too much for you and you can’t not get emotional. I cried a lot the other day about it. I’m starting therapy tomorrow so hopefully I can get some help. I also seem to get triggered by reading about what other people experienced because I read about other people’s experiences with their OCD and some had paedophilic OCD and I was like what if I am one of them? And then I looked at a young girl and my brain told me I was attracted to her but I obviously wasn’t but that one came for like 2 days non stop and then stopped. When I hear loud noises I also think about terrorism things like, gun shots or bombs and it really scares me. I also have horrible thoughts like, what if I get angry and act out on any thoughts and it really stresses me out or what if one of my close family members pass and I act out in a bad way due to not coping with the grief. I also get quite worried because I never see anyone with my sort of intrusive thoughts and it makes me feel like it isn’t OCD which stresses me out and makes me overthink. That isn’t even getting started on my relationship with my girlfriend. I have been booked in for CBT therapy in 3 months, but will it actually help me? Will it actually improve my life? Sorry for the really long message, I just really need some help.

HARM OCD MY LONG STORY. I wanted to post my story just incase someone else can relate to my intrusive thoughts. I’m am 16 years old and I suffer with anxiety but lately I’ve had intrusive thoughts to do with harming myself and others on and off for about a year now but they are really bad at the moment. I remember I had my first set of intrusive thoughts when I was around 11. I was on Instagram ( I know you are not supposed to have it till you’re 13 but all my friends had it at 11 so I felt like I had to haha ) I remember I read a post about someone commiting suicide and I quickly googled to check what that meant as I didn’t know and as an 11 year old that freaked me out as I had never thought about suicide before and I thought to myself “that’s awful what if that happened to me and I wanted to kill myself” I remember this thought scared me and I thought that just by thinking that maybe I did want to and I remember I kept getting thoughts that said “I wanna kill myself” in my head and they scared me so much so I told my mum and she told me these thoughts were just triggered by a scary post and I quickly forgot about them. It first started around a year ago when I was on summer break from school and when I was at my friends house and we was watching a documentary on YouTube about a serial killer as my friends and I found them quite interesting. I remember suddenly as I was watching it I got a random thought “what if I became crazy and wanted to kill everyone”. I remember my heart skipped a bit and this thought terrified me as I had never thought about anything like this before and I thought “Oh my god no you’d never want to do that” and I quickly forgot about it as I was with my friends and I got distracted. The next day I continued that documentary at home by myself as we didn’t completely finish it and they thought returned “what If I wanted to become a serial killer” and again I was completely terrified. I was terrified that this thought meant something and I kept asking myself why do you keep thinking about that and I couldn’t get it out my head. I then kept thinking about this thought for about a week and I kept wondering why I was so obsessed and kept thinking about it. I remember thinking to myself “what if you are thinking about it so much because deep down you actually want to do it?” I remember this made me burst into tears because I’ve have always been such a caring and kind person and I’d never want to hurt anyone I can’t even hurt a spider if it’s in my house I have to remove it careful lol! After obsessing over these thoughts for about a week I returned back to school where I got completely distracted and didn’t have these thoughts for about 4 months! I then remember getting a scary thought again 4 months later when I was watching the news with my mum, dad & brother and on the news was the story about I think terrorist attack in London where someone had stabbed a couple of people and I remember watching it thinking “oh my god this is awful, I can’t believe things like this happen” etc. I then remember a random thought popped into my head and it was “what if that happened to me and I went crazy I went round and stabbed people” I remember this thought made me cry and I had to leave the room and my family and I went up to my room and I started crying and I thought to myself “why the hell would you think of that” and I kept telling myself “it’s just a thought you know you’d never do that” and the thought actually passed and I didn’t think of it again. I then didn’t have any harm intrusive thoughts until now. I hadn’t had bad obsessive thoughts for about 5 months since now. About a month ago I watched a video called “reacting to the scariest 999 calls” and I really wish I hadn’t but it didn’t even enter my head that this could trigger my intrusive thoughts. One of the calls in the YouTube video was a serial killer who after every kill rang the police to tell them he couldn’t help it but he just kept killing people. This again absolutely terrified me and I straight away thought to myself “what if that happens to me and I can’t help myself and I just want to kill people” I straight away turnt off the video and my heart was beating so fast. I remember I straight away burst out crying and I just kept thinking to myself “what if that happened to me” and “what if I become a serial killer” and “what if I want to do that deep down but I don’t want to admit it”. That last thought was the one that triggered my anxiety the most because I believed that if I’m thinking this it just mean something and maybe I actually want to do it even though these are genuine fears and things i fear happening so much. The next day I woke up and straight away these thoughts popped into my head again and stayed through out the whole day and the whole next week. As the weeks past and I kept worrying and obsessing over these thoughts the worse and worse they got and I literally could not get them out of my head. After a week of worrying about becoming a serial killer my thoughts then moved on to another set of worries. As we are in a global pandemic and we are in quarantine I am quarantining with my mum, dad and brother I remember I got a thought “what if I just went downstairs and grabbed a knife and just stabbed all my family isn’t there stories of teenagers doing that? What if that happens to me and I do that” This thought made me feel so sick and I literally could not stop crying and again I started to obsess over it. I then started to feel weird when I picked up knives because I was having these horrible intrusive thoughts about stabbing family members that literally disgusted me. I also had thoughts about “what If I just took a knife out with me without even thinking and I stabbed random people when I was out.” I literally couldn’t touch knives for a week straight and if I didn’t I felt extreme anxiety because I had fear I was going to act out these thoughts and I just felt so so so scared I can’t explain. The more I worried and obsessed the worse they got and quickly. I remember I’d just be watching a video on YouTube of a random girl and I’d think “omg she is so pretty” and then out of nowhere my brain would go “I wanna kill her” and then I’d think “NO YOU DONT WHAT THE HELL AND WHY THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING THAT THATS HORRIBLE AND DISGUSTING”. I could also just be talking to my mum and having a normal conversation and my brain would go “I wanna kill her” out of nowhere which made me feel physically sick as I’d never want to do that and I love my mum and these thoughts honestly just made me cry straight away. I also had a fear I would just randomly snap and hurt someone so I worry that I’d argue with my mum and just out of nowhere lose control and hurt her. I argued with my mum over something and I got angry and I thought “what if I got angry and I hurt her” which made me so upset and then straight away again after that thought I got another random out of now where “I wanna hurt her” thought which just I don’t even know to explain but those are the intrusive thoughts that scare me the most. I then turnt to my dad as he is always so understanding and he knows I’ve always struggled with really bad anxiety. I opened up about these thoughts and worries and fears I was experiencing and he laughed at me. He said these thoughts were simply irritational and did not at all fit with who I am and my character. He reminded me that they were just triggered by the scary video I watched and that just because it happened to someone in a YouTube video does not mean it’ll happen to me. He said I also don’t have it in me to kill or hurt someone as I am caring and kind and that not to let these scary thoughts get to me. Opening up about seeking reassurance actually made these thoughts a lot worse and more obsessive. I thought by opening up about these thoughts I’d feel better and reassurance from my dad would help but it only helped for about 3 hours then the thoughts came straight back and they started to come back worse. I was out with my mum and there was police near by and I remember thinking “what I’m an awful person for having these thoughts and I need to go and confess them to the police so they lock me up.” and when I was out I remember thinking “what if I have a knife on me and I don’t know” and “what If I brought a knife out with me and I didnt realise and I just stabbed someone” and “what if I brought a knife out because I secretly want to do it” and I remember I started crying so much in public and I thought I needed to confess my scary and horrible thoughts to the police because I couldn’t be trusted and I’m an evil person. I then remember coming home and I just thought to myself “why do you keep thinking of such horrible things” and “do I actually want to do these things?” I also remember thinking “I must want to do these things if I’m even thinking about it” and I then got a rush of thoughts like “I wanna kill someone then I’m horrible person if I’m thinking this” and these thoughts kept telling me “I wanna kill someone” I then decided I couldn’t take any more so I contacted my therapist and told her all the thoughts I was having. She reminded me these thoughts were normal and it was just my brain getting all of my fears out. She said the more I think these thoughts mean something and that deep down they have a meaning or deep down I want to do them the worse and scarier they will get. She said to remind myself I can not control the first thing that pops into my head and when I get these scary thoughts I should write them down on a piece of paper then throw it away and just think these don’t meaning anything. She also said “Your wild imagination is normal its what enables us humans to be creative but sometimes this can be scary.” This calmed me down and I felt reassured as it was coming from my therapist. After talking to my therapist I started to feel better and everytime I had a thought I would just laugh write it down and bin it and remind myself they are normal and everyone gets them. But intrusive thoughts are like bullies so they came back worse and this time I could see myself doing these horrible thoughts in my head but I still tried to stay strong and reminded myself of what my therapist had told me. I then started googling these thoughts and it led me to intrusive thoughts and harm OCD which I literally relate to everything I have read online but of course I don’t want to self diagnose but I’ve already been diagnosed with anxiety and ocd comes under that. Dealing with these scary intrusive thoughts are so so hard. I will tell myself “I don’t want to do these things they just intrusive thoughts and my anxiety will make me worry that mean something but they don’t” but then my Anxiety and OCD will tell me “ maybe deep down I do want to do these things and I’m awful person” and “I want to kill someone these thoughts must mean something” I read online and my therapist has told that everyone has these thoughts but most people just don’t think they mean anything but no matter how hard I try I can’t help but think these thoughts mean something even though I’ve been told by my therapist my dad and online therapists that they don’t. I am so worried that deep down I want to act out these thoughts and that’s why I’m thinking about them. I’m so so worried that I’m a psychopath and a disgusting person and that I need to be locked up. As soon as I wake up I worry and it only goes away for a certain amount of time and these thoughts and worries come straight back. Please tell me there’s people out there that deal with this stuff too!! I’m here for you

I’m so sick of my mind it’s so cruel, I want to feel happy again I’m so over this. The past 3 weeks I have been stressing over multiple things/mental issues. At first I remember I saw a video about someone saying if u see shadows you have schizophrenia and I didn’t see shadows but I went into a freak out and started searching around looking if I saw anything of course I didn’t but this led me to feel paranoid and not leave my room sitting and crying in bed, then I worried about how I saw a video on the internet about how some people go mental over the fact the world might not exist and everyone might be a figment of our imagination so I went into a spiral and started questioning everything, once again stayed in my room crying. Then I worried about harm ocd since I had a scary dream and I thought omg what if I wanna do those things and my mind tries to think about bad peoples perspectives and of course I felt grossed out and thought omg I must be insane, and now then I worried about DID ( dissociative identity disorder ) and now I’m convincing myself I have evil alters when I don’t even hear voices or anything. I feel insane, I’ve also got depersonalisation to add to that which makes it worse. I’m so over it I’m sick of everyone saying I’m going to get better because I don’t feel like I will it’s just getting worse I’m only young and I had so many things I was looking too this year but I feel like my mind just wants me to be miserable. I want to be happy. I’ve been taking Effexor for 2 days now and I feel worse, that may be normal but the intrusive thoughts keep coming and they are scarier. Im sick of being paranoid it’s annoying my family now and I feel bad because I also want to happy for them and not cause them stress but I have no idea what to do. Is this normal with ocd or am I going insane?