I have intrusive thoughts of many kinds. They haunt me and make me want to stop living
I have intrusive thoughts and they consume me. My mind runs 100 mph and I can’t stop it. Thoughts or images stick. And my mind adds horrible things to them and makes me feel like a psycho.
I wonder if it’s OCD or if I’m really just crazy. It is also especially hard because a lot of the time it involves people I care for more than anything in the world. My spouse or children.
I feel like a bad person for thinking these nasty thoughts but I can’t make them stop. I can’t distinguish if the thoughts are of touching or not. I know that word runs a race in my brain. And when a child crosses my mind after it it’s like my brain combines them.
I’m scared to tell my spouse because I fear they will leave me and judge me. But all I really want is for them to know everything so that they can be there for me and comfort me, understand I’m going through something. Something torturous. They think that the anxiety and OCD is not a big deal. And that I really don’t need medication to help me.
I am not a bad person and I fear that these thoughts will become actions if they do not go away. Everything I read or see about this my brain uses against me, and I have thoughts about it that get twisted and manipulated. I just want to feel normal.
I remember when I was younger checking on loved ones 3 times in 5 minutes to make sure they were still breathing. Touching things over and over. Different little things. I really don’t do that anymore. It’s these thoughts and a racing mind. Sometimes I don’t want to live. If this continues I cannot go on. I would rather die than live with this everyday. I’m scared of what everyone will think of me.
Is it OCD or am I a monster?
Categories: The Wall
The Secret Illness 
There is a clinic in Massachusetts called the OCD Institute, which is part of McLean Hospital. I went there 2 years ago for a 90 day stay. This place is wonderful & you will meet other people with the exact same experiences. They accept almost all forms of insurance. I urge you to get help, either here or some place closer. This is a real disorder what you have & it’s not your fault. Hang in there.
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OCD is a mental health disorder. Disorder means it affects your work and life. OCD is treatable. When you take that extremely hard but brave step to reach out for help, it will help you and your family. As you start to feel better, you will become a dad and husband you isn’t plagued by intrusive thoughts. And yes, I too compare my racing, intrusive OCD thoughts to mph. And when my therapist asks, sometimes I can’t tease any particular intrusive thought since so many get stuck so fast in my ‘sticky mind’. Thank you for your post. It makes me feel less alone with pure OCD.
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No, you’re not a monster. It sounds just like Pure O, the smae kind of OCD I’ve got. It’s just plain old OCD really, but the bulk of it is intrusive thoughts surrounding things that arent true, opposites, things you fear being or doing.
This is particularly telling:
“It is also especially hard because a lot of the time it involves people I care for more than anything in the world. My spouse or children.”
Pure O makes a beeline for what holds the most emotional significance for you, be it things you love, or things you hate, and it starts to probe those things by tossing you the worst ideas it can spin out of them. You’re naturally compelled at some point to do something to right the wrong ideas- alas this just cuts the grooves deeper and what was a mole hill, evolves into the Himalayas and it can consume your waking days.
But rest assured it’s just OCD, and you;re not a monster – you’ve just got a fault in your brain.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I would not share the worst of it with your wife and family, nor anyone else for that matter(with the possible exception of a psychologist doing CBT with you). While your family may have the will to understand and accept the worst of it, it may simply be beyond their grasp, or worse still, they may get the wrong idea and think you are into some of those things when you’re not at all. It’s a tricky subtle thing to explain to someone who’s not experienced it. So if you share it with your family, I would advise you to just share it in the most superficial non-specific terms, or giving the more palatable examples, but refraining from mentioning the worst stuff. Perhaps giving them a book to read like Brain Lock is a good idea too. Sometimes it’s re-assuring to them hearing it from someone else who’s qualified, instead of from someone familiar.
But of course, ultimately, you should go get a diagnosis and see what a trained psychologist says(which I am not, I’m just a fellow sufferer, so my opinions don’t count for too much I’m afraid).
Good luck man.
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I completely understand what you are going through as this happened to me, your story is so similar to mine and it was a truly horrendous time, I was so frightened I would act on my thoughts because they were on a loop that wouldn’t stop and I thought I was going crazy, I kept thinking I was going to hurt someone my mind kept saying things like ‘what if I stab my son’ ‘what if I push my daughter out into the traffic’ and so many other horrific thoughts that would not go away, my life stopped for a while because I was in this dark dark place. Please go and seek help, I went to my GP I got some CBT and medication, because nobody should live like this, I am better now I still take a low dose anti depressant to ward it off but life has got so much better and it will get better for you too. Believe me you are not crazy, people that are going crazy aren’t even aware that its happening to them. Good Luck to you, I very much hope things get better for you soon. Take Care Lucy.
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