I’m scared this isn’t ocd…

It started a month ago on vacation. I started getting intrusive thoughts about harming my loved ones in their sleep and it scared me so bad. I thought it would stop but it only got worse. Here I am a month later and things have changed drastically. My thoughts have now shifted to becoming some serial killer. I am so worried it’s all I think about. I can’t stop thinking about the things I did as a kid and how it could validate all my thoughts. I don’t wanna hurt anyone or anything at all. I am so scared of the thought of the notorious serial killers that I’ve heard about in the past and I can’t stop comparing myself to these horrible people. I’m scared because I used to be mean to animals as a kid and people say this is the first thing to look for in serial killers. I remember still having a lot of empathy for them when I was young too. I look back and cant at all understand why I was like that. It makes me wanna breakdown and punch myself. All of that stopped a really long time ago and every since I have done nothing but helped and empathized with animals. I am every surrounded by them and consider them to be more family than pets. I get extremely upset over anything or anyone who is suffering. I just can’t get that memory of me doing that stuff out of my head and I’m afraid it means it validates my thoughts I’ve been having even though this is not what i want to happen. I’ve been completely avoidant of alcohol and refused to take a medication I was prescribed because irritability was a side effect and I’m afraid of snapping and hurting someone. I just can’t stop thinking about my past and how it could correlate to now. Even though I have grown up to have morals and respect for everything I have a fear that it’s all been a lie. I get so much anxiety from thinking about this stuff. I haven’t eaten in almost 3 days because my stomach is in a constant knot and when I do eat I feel too guilty to do so because I’m not paying attention to these thoughts and sometimes it makes me question whether I secretly want to do bad stuff which I don’t and that scared me so bad. I made an emergency appointment right after I started having these thoughts and they diagnosed me as having schizotypal personality disorder. They said I have been having ocd “tendencies “ because I have the thoughts and constantly googling everything which I guess would be a compulsion. I have been looking on forums for people with past actions similar to mine to see other peoples reactions. I’m not sure what this is anymore. Idk if this is ocd or I’m just using it as an excuse. All I know is that I’m extremely scared. I vowed if this stuff as everything something I would even think about doing I would take myself out before I ever hurt anyone else. It’s scary but it’s what I always tell myself when I doubt any of this.

Username: anonymous8850anonymous8850

Date posted: 33w ago

Hey there I’m sorry that you feel like this.. but I can totally relate to ur story.. it happened to me awhile ago, i got so stressed out in my head of all those negative, unwanted and harmful thoughts. I also got pictures in my head of me killing my family or strangers with a knife. I was so scared and I had so much anxiety. I really panicked I couldn’t find peace in my mind.. I had a feeling that I was about to loose control.. Im feeling much better fortunately And here’s what helped me In the beginning it really helped to write all my thoughts and worries down. I started every line with “what if” first, and then my thoughts or worries after. It helped me a lot to get more piece In my mind and head. When I got one of those thoughts I’ve wrote down, I kept telling myself that my thoughts and worries are now in the book, and it should stay there. And then some of my thoughts or worries kinda faded, (not all) but most of them. Also remember not to listen to your thoughts, it’s the OCD and the anxiety that keeps bullying u! Just remember that thoughts are just thoughts, your thoughts has nothing to do with u as a person or you as a child.. The reason why u keep getting those thoughts all the time is because of your anxiety.. The anxiety tells ur brain that this thought is important, (because it’s a danger to u and ur afraid of it).. and remember that everyone gets wired, unwanted thoughts, sometimes. it’s also normal to react on your childhood, and questioning everything.. i did too! In my childhood I once hit one of my classmate with a book in the head, for no reason. That memory made me doubt myself so much, and I was afraid that I actually would kill someone because of that memory.. But remember that everyone does something wired in their childhood, and the only reason why we get those memories back is because of the OCD. I will recommend u to go on YouTube and watch some of (OCD and ANXIETY)s videos, his videos really helped me, and I’ve got some great tips from him! Here’s one of his tips ‘ I’ve leaned that when I get a thought, I should not try to ignore it, push it away, or distract myself.. it only makes my unwanted thoughts stronger and more powerful. instead I act like i don’t care about the thoughts I get, even tho it’s the worst thought ever.. I keep reminding myself about that OCD and Anxiety are just bullies. So when I get unwanted thoughts I say something like this out loud “ay thanks ocd, I love this thought” “ok OCD it’s just a thought I don’t care” “Alright then, come with more of those thoughts OCD it doesn’t bother me at all” Then you kinda beat the OCD. Then the OCD don’t find it funny to bully you. You could also do some [mindfulness exercises] to get more peace in your mind, when you feel stressed out, Og read a book before you go to bed. That also helped me! I really suggest, you to take the medicine you got! It helped me so much, and I was also afraid in the beginning, trust me! I also got symptoms, like anxiety, and I was really fighting with the OCD, but I made it. The symptoms was over after a week, and it was totally worth it! I

Username: mehdismehdis

Date posted: 33w ago

Typical ocd, i have the same patterns but with sexual orientation stuff... My advice to you watch some ocd help vidéos on YouTube and try to minimiza or change your approach to triggers . Like whenever a feeling or urges pop up just sit with it and dont react until there is no more anxiety and theb move on , at fitst you will gind it so diffucult but with practice you will be better . Good Lucky and realize that its not you Being à bad person but indeed you having a mental bully named ocd that wont leave you live life peacefully until you confront it ans ignore it .

Username: ElChavodel275ElChavodel275

Date posted: 33w ago

Im sorry you’re going trough this everything you have described I have been going trough this whole week. I can’t offer any tips on how to exactly overcome this but just know your not alone.

Username: biglillinbiglillin

Date posted: 33w ago

This was reassuring to me (especially slide 5 of the post) as someone whose had intense thoughts that went against my current morals and values. https://www.instagram.com/p/C5g8343oJ_U/?igsh=MW43aGl3MGw0aG42eQ== Just know, as kids, we tended to experiment with and on things just out of curiosity. What happened then doesn't define you now ♡

Username: Purpleb34nsPurpleb34ns

Date posted: 33w ago

I'm no expert, but this certainly sounds like OCD to me. I have experienced similar thoughts, even with my treatment of animals as a child. Please know that you are not alone and that it can get better. It is possible for you to enjoy a vacation without this terrible worry.

Username: AnonymousAnonymous

Date posted: 33w ago

Hey there. I will definitely try. Just all these thoughts and rumination has literally consumed my life. I’m even questioning of this is ocd or I’m just using it as an excuse. I’m scared because it’ll make me question myself and ask if I really wanna do this stuff even though I don’t. I just visited my 3rd Dr today and I still haven’t been formally diagnosed. I feel like nobody is wanting to tell me anything. The only diagnosis I’ve gotten so far is schizotypal personality disorder but the thing is I’m not at all delusional. I’m fully aware of all of this and it’s threatening to me. Also the provider I saw today said I don’t meet the criteria for that diagnosis but still hasn’t given me a formal ocd diagnosis. All they say are ocd tendencies so idk if that means yes or no. I’m just really afraid because it’s almost like I’m questioning my entire life and character. I question if this all just a lie and I’m not really a good person. This takes up my entire day. The minute I wake up I’m bombarded by all of this and it doesn’t stop until I go to sleep.

Username: Anonymous

Date posted: 4y ago

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

Harm OCD

Username: Allier792

Date posted: 1y ago

I’m scared

Hi. I’m just really scared and I want to ask questions. I have been ocd and have been really suffering since December. The intrusive thoughts come like I want them now and it’s more of a “ well oh yeah you want to do that, and it’s gonna happen” and I start panicking and can’t focus and it scares the shit out of me. Is that ocd? Or is there something wrong with my brain and I’m actually some psychopath you see in a movie? I’m terrified. Im scared to be around my family, I’m scared to be around everyone. But I’m scared to be alone as well because I’m alone with the thoughts. What if these aren’t intrusive thoughts and I’m actually some terrible person who’s gonna hurt someone or is actually some psychopath who’s crazy? I hate this so much because I use to be so happy and not have any of these intrusive thoughts or worried that I was going to to hurt someone and now I’m so scared all the time. Can someone please answer some of these questions? I just want to make sure that this is ocd and I’m not a terrible person.

Username: Anonymous

Date posted: 33w ago

I’m so scared rn

I’m so worried about being a literal psychopath. I keep reading that psychopaths start out hurting animals. I made some mistakes a kid. I was mean to my animals and for some reason it didn’t register that they felt pain. I never killed any animal I was just rough. I haven’t done anything since i was a kid. I get very emotional anytime I see an animal in pain and suffering. I even consider veterinary school after I graduated high school but chose not to pursue that because I have such strong emotions towards suffering animals/euthanasia. I could never see myself taking an animals life even if it was for the better. I currently live surrounded by animals and see them more as family than pets. They are my literal babies. I’m worried because I at times looked back to the things I did and wish I never did it but it’s never stuck so much with me until recently. It’s all I think about and I literally wanna punch myself and wish someone would’ve just beat me when I did that stuff. I’m worried it means I’m a psycho just waiting to break. I’ve been having harm ocd type stuff and have been ruminating and it’s all I think about is being a psycho. I feel like everything has been a lie since my childhood. I’m questioning my own emotions and everything and now I feel numb. I don’t wanna hurt anyone or anything but I constantly feel like a psycho and it feels so real. I always enjoyed watching true crime stuff with my bf and now that I know about all this I’m freaking tf out. Everything feels so real like it’s already happened or is gonna happen if I try to forget about it.

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