Hello everyone, I'm glad I found this thread and I've just registered.

I'm 17 and I've been having these obsessive thoughts recently, mainly about hurting other people, people that I love, for example my girlfriend or a family member. It's quite tough but at the moment I'm just trying to ignore these thoughts and I tell myself that "I'm not going to hurt anyone". The thoughts make me quite scared and I'm not really sure what do do but it's nice to know that other people are going through the same sort of thing at the moment.

Does anyone have any advice for me in terms of what I can do to get rid of these thoughts? I don't have OCD as far as I know or any other disorders, just recently, whilst near knives or sometimes even pens- sharp/pointy objects, I get thoughts about harming people near to me, can someone tell me what I can do to help with this problems.

Thanks for any replies.

Hi seveneight,

Welcome to the thread and forum.

Based on your description, it does sound like you have pure OCD/obsessive scary thoughts or obsessions.

Ignoring the thoughts is a very good step. It's when you give them attention that they get stronger. It's a paradoxical ailment. And keep in mind, this ailment is an ugly form of anxiety.

Do you have the program? Are you seeing an OCD specialist?

Perhaps you might want to get this outstanding book on obsessions, The Imp of the Mind by Lee Baer. http://www.amazon.com/Imp-Mind...id=1257121906&sr=1-2

Take comfort: you are not only, you are not your scary thoughts, and you can overcome!

Yes I have definitely experienced the knife thoghts and they were quite frightening, but now my scary thoughts seem to be about health
matters. I imagine the worse and I realize whenb something is bothering me I let these
thoght entertan me, they actually scare me to death, but we are bigger than them and I call them boogy man thoghts. Hope this helps, but you are fine and will be fine. Do a crossword puzzle, paint a picture, read a book or listen to music, relax.

Hi Charlie, Hi all,
It’s been a few weeks now and I just want to give an update on my OCD treatment progress. First of all my therapist has an aggressive approach in my treatment and was able to guide me through the exercises.

I’m now able to have the thoughts and experience reduced anxiety. From time to time if don't have the thoughts I’m able to invite it and say OK - it’s possible. Sometimes late at night when I’m with my baby I will spike with a moderate anxiety and say let me have more anxiety provoking thoughts.

Lastly, this is one of the hardest thing to accept – If see myself concerning about a spike, I’m now able to accepted the idea that if it happens it happens and I have to live with the ambiguous feeling. As with most of the advises here in this thread the main objective is not to seek relief from the thoughts but to be desensitized to it where the anxiety drops down to a very low level and the thoughts just becomes a normal passing thought.

i know what you are going thur have had them for 23 years and mine are always about the people i love the most hope you all and this program can help me beat this have new grand baby on the way and want to be able to stay alone with it

Hi Dixie,

Yes it’s typical for OCD folks to have this thoughts and also normal thinking people. The difference is we make it worst by trying to seek relief or by blocking it. Like water pressure in a hose, the more you try to squeeze the nozzle the higher the pressure goes and in our case the anxiety goes higher each time.

A good OCD therapist will definitely help but also deciding to follow the exercises and face the fear and anxiety no matter what goes a long way.

Another thing I learned to do is that if I spike on something instead pushing the thought away, I will focus my attention to the risk and accept that it's possible. Once you learn this technique the loop thoughts fades away. “Important” make sure you consult a therapist first, because if you do the hard thing right away you might end up ruminating more.

Heraldrex1,

Great messages, as always.

I was glad to see this website and have seen others, stuck in a doorway and ocd tribe. I have had ocd since I was 22 and reacted to an image of a naked girl in my mind. A harmless image to most but to someone as sensitive as me the reaction was huge and took off from there, life changed instantly. The image I think had ties to earlier events in my life that I had tryed to block out when they came up, this one I could not catalogue so I had nowhere to put it and reacted with complete fear and anxiety. thats where it all begins,our reaction. I now have tryed numerous methods of recovery but never sought help for years and developed a huge story and fear around all of this, I have not had an ocd free day for 16 years. I now am scared of words like pedophile and molester as well as anything of that nature, the problem lies in the fact my mind will attach more the scarier the words, then it will repeat it over and over and over. If I said peanutbutter 10 times I could stop, because there is no fear, when there is fear ocd kicks in and does not let go. It really is that simple we are scared of these thoughts and most likely come from a background that was not healthy and this promotes sensitivity to these themes. The best thing I have done is recognize these thoughts are ocd and not my nature, but the opposite. So people with ocd can be assured they are good people with a over sensitive reaction to scary thoughts and realize this on a cognitive level. May you see your true self and love that person.

Hey everyone, I am so glad to know I'm not alone in these thoughts. This all started about 2 weeks ago. I had recently started a new job which was really stressful. I was working in a call center, and anyone that has worked in one / works in one can tell you it's hell. I was getting verbally attacked on the phones all day, and they were working me really weird hours, and it seemed like my whole life was consumed by this job. I was also working ANOTHER job part time AND doing online classes for college. Needless to say I was under a lot of stress. Anyway, one day I had a mental breakdown pretty much and just quit. Lately I've been having panic attacks, really strange thoughts, and most recently thoughts of hurting / killing my family, and it is driving me crazy. I have no violent history, and I love my family more than anything, and if I hurt or killed them I couldn't live with myself.

I keep having detailed thoughts about killing them, and when I'm around a knife or gun I get freaked out that I'm going to pick one of them up and act out on these thoughts. What's weird is I didn't start having these thoughts until my mom said "You haven't had any thoughts of hurting or killing someone have you?" and that IMMEDIATELY caused me to start thinking those thoughts. I feel like there are days that I am able to deal with it and it doesn't bother me, and in fact I went 2 days in a row without these thoughts really even entering my head.

I recently started therapy, but I've only been to one session so far, and that was kind of a "Get to know you" session, so we really didn't go over any of these thoughts or anything like that.

It's weird like I tell myself in my head "these thoughts are stupid, and you're not going to act on these thoughts", but it's like the thoughts creep back in and start bothering me even while I'm telling myself that they are stupid. I'm also a Christian, and I have done A LOT of praying, and I have a lot of people praying for me as well, and I believe in the power of prayer, but I feel like I need some other help as well. I feel like maybe God just doesn't want to "take these thoughts away" instantly, and that maybe God is guiding me to receive help from someone / something else as well. Either way, I need some help to not necessarily "get rid" of these thoughts, but to experience them less frequently and to have less fear of them so I can get back to my normal life. Just for reference, I'm a 22 year old male, and I really want to take care of this now instead of waiting further down the road in life to do something about it.

quote:

Originally posted by seeking joy:
I was glad to see this website and have seen others, stuck in a doorway and ocd tribe. I have had ocd since I was 22 and reacted to an image of a naked girl in my mind. A harmless image to most but to someone as sensitive as me the reaction was huge and took off from there, life changed instantly. The image I think had ties to earlier events in my life that I had tryed to block out when they came up, this one I could not catalogue so I had nowhere to put it and reacted with complete fear and anxiety. thats where it all begins,our reaction. I now have tryed numerous methods of recovery but never sought help for years and developed a huge story and fear around all of this, I have not had an ocd free day for 16 years. I now am scared of words like pedophile and molester as well as anything of that nature, the problem lies in the fact my mind will attach more the scarier the words, then it will repeat it over and over and over. If I said peanutbutter 10 times I could stop, because there is no fear, when there is fear ocd kicks in and does not let go. It really is that simple we are scared of these thoughts and most likely come from a background that was not healthy and this promotes sensitivity to these themes. The best thing I have done is recognize these thoughts are ocd and not my nature, but the opposite. So people with ocd can be assured they are good people with a over sensitive reaction to scary thoughts and realize this on a cognitive level. May you see your true self and love that person.

I am sorry you have these ugly thoughts but it definitely sounds like you have a good grasp of dealing with them.

quote:

thats where it all begins,our reaction

the problem lies in the fact my mind will attach more the scarier the words, then it will repeat it over and over and over.

It really is that simple we are scared of these thoughts and most likely come from a background that was not healthy and this promotes sensitivity to these themes. The best thing I have done is recognize these thoughts are ocd and not my nature, but the opposite. So people with ocd can be assured they are good people with a over sensitive reaction to scary thoughts and realize this on a cognitive level. May you see your true self and love that person.

JohnnyX87,

I too have worked in a call center. It's definitely a negative enviornment.

It sounds like you probably have pure-OCD. The thoughts or anything related to them really bother you. Have you considered seeing an OCD therapist?

My friend is also a Christian and has no violent history.

You are on track when you say you want to fear them less! That's key in effectively dealing with them.

Hi everyone, it has been very comforting reading everyones posts and realizing that I am not alone in suffering with intrusive thoughts. I started suffering 8yrs ago after the birth of my son. I had fears of drowning him while bathing him. Life subsided a bit and things were back to normal. Than 2 years ago due to a number of stressfull events I started to feel thoughts entering my life again. It started with just a thought or urge to smack my girlfriend in the face. Then the turned more violent. It seems that I focus the negativity on my children since they are the two I love and fear losing more than anything. I was also wondering if anyone else is ever obsessed with their children being abducted or hurt by others. I lay in bed at night agonizing the idea of someone coming into my home and taking my children from me. It has gotten to the poing where I make them sleep with me to ease my fears. So it seems my thoughts are constant and its either me hurting them or someone else. Also is anyone affected by books, movies, tv etc. I can read or watch something, insane or not and totally convince myself that it is going to happen to me!

yes janel my scary thoughts are always about my kids they are grown now but now have grand kids mine are so bad i didnot stay by myself with my kids when they were little now i cant keep grand kids alone thats why i am praying this works i love them so much could not understand why i would even think about hurting them its so helpful to know i am not aloan i never told anyone and tis been 22 years i was afraid they would take kids away or take me away this is a great peace of mind for me to be able to read about others who are the same god bless you all

I am a 35 yr old stay at home mom here in PA. For yrs I've had anxiety on & off-anxiety attacks when I was in my 20s but haven't had one in years. In the past I had obsessional thoughts about killing my husband or my son. I read online that they were part of OCD which would make sense because I've done some OCD things in the past-checking doors over & over etc, but haven't done the latter that much lately, just the thoughts. The thoughts of hurting my husband or son have been waning & lately I've been having thoughts that have bothered me almost more than thinking of hurting my loved ones. I don't know why but I've thought about hurting other babies that I see, in a similar fashion as to how I would think about my husband or son. If I see a baby on TV or in the store or wherever, I think about hurting it, I don't know why but I do. I would never do this but when I was a kid my friend's sister had her baby over their house & I was playing with the baby & squeezed the baby's finger making the baby cry, for curiosity's sake, I felt bad about this for years afterwards as it's not something I'd do now. As I got old another friend had a baby & I did the same thing, to me it was curiosity's sake seeing how the baby would react to it. Now as an older adult, now as a mother, I find doing that appauling & would never do it however I have these thoughts of hurting babies, babies that aren't my own. It bothers me to no avail, that's not the type of person I am. As a mother now I find it horrible to think of. I worry that the act I did as younger person, squeezing the baby's finer, means I would actually hurt a baby now in the present. I realize now that what I did was wrong & I wasn't a parent yet & I was younger & since then as a parent I've developed a maternal thing & the thought of ever hurting a baby just scares the hell out of me. Terrifies me. I don't know if it's part of OCD connected to the thoughts of hurting my husband or son-which I'd never ever do, or what. Sometimes I worry that maybe I'm psychotic. Honestly, I'd never hurt another baby, but I sometimes think about it. Almost as if I'm not thinking about hurting my husband & now I'm turning it to babies, why babies I don't know. Last year I had my 4th miscarriage & I'm not sure if it's related somehow or what. I'm just petrified that I'm nuts & I'm ashamed I'm having these thoughts, this isn't me I never used to be like this. This is the first time I've ever mentioned these thoughts to anyone, been suffering in silence & I'm just scared, is this OCD???? Or am I losing it.

quote:

Originally posted by Charlie Brown:
JohnnyX87,

I too have worked in a call center. It's definitely a negative enviornment.

It sounds like you probably have pure-OCD. The thoughts or anything related to them really bother you. Have you considered seeing an OCD therapist?

My friend is also a Christian and has no violent history.

You are on track when you say you want to fear them less! That's key in effectively dealing with them.

Yes, I told my therapist that I was having these thoughts, and she referred me to a specialist that could help me further. I'm not 100 percent sure if he works with OCD, but if there's anyone who would know where I could find an OCD specialist, it's him. I have hope about the situation, because the thoughts have subsided a little since my original post, and maybe with the combination of some cognitive behavorial therapy and possibly medication I can get through this.

I'm DEFINITELY going to ask him about OCD though, and I know as long as I keep hoping and praying that I WILL conquer this. If I do have pure-OCD and have to undergo exposure therapy or anything like that, then I'll do whatever it takes to make sure no one else gets hurt.