Thoughts of harm

[vencedora]

I love cooking for my boyfriend and the people I love and lately OCD has been tormenting me with horrible thoughts of poisoning the food and offering it to them and then eating it too. It's been very distressing these days, I can't stop thinking about these dark and absurd things. Has anyone here ever gone through this?

[deValentin]

I don’t have harm OCD, but I thought I would nevertheless respond to your post because thought content is irrelevant as far as OCD is concerned. Whether you’re afraid of the possibility of falling sick, contaminating others, having done something irreversibly wrong in the past, or causing harm to others doesn’t matter. You’re afraid of losing self-control and do irreversible wrong to your family because you love your family. You said it yourself before. If you were afraid of causing harm to strangers, the fear wouldn’t be as disturbing. OCD picks a theme from a domain you value. Next year it could be something else.

The bottom line is you’d like for your fear to disappear. It’s normal. What’s important is the means we choose to appease our fear. Are you looking for absolute certainty you won’t harm your loved ones in order to appease your mind? Are you obsessionally trying to find a way to eliminate the possibility of hurting others? What about observing yourself for a day and noting all the means you use to appease your mind?

Once you list all the means you use to appease your mind, you could examine them objectively and decide whether they're sensible or not, and if there are more sensible ways than others to quiet your fears.

[vencedora in reply to deValentin]

In fact, what I really wanted was not to even consider or think anything so bad about them, I feel horrible and sick about it. I wish I could eliminate these thoughts forever. I have several questions such as: Is this really OCD or do I have some other illness? Is there anyone else who has these same symptoms?

[deValentin in reply to vencedora]

There is around 1-3% of the general population who suffer from OCD, and the most common OCD themes are contamination, harm, checking, and perfection. Harm OCD can be particularly distressing, like, for instance, when parents are obsessionally afraid of being sexually inappropriate with their children.

If you're not sure whether you have OCD, a qualified mental health professional could make a diagnostic. If you don't have access to one, you can find OCD-tests online like the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) often used to measure the presence and severity of OCD symptoms.

I understand your wish to suppress "bad thoughts" forever, but, as you probably know, trying too hard to do it has often the opposite effect: it's a sign of a lack of trust in yourself in a particular domain, and further undermines your self-confidence in that domain. It's a trap from which one doesn't easily escape.

[vencedora in reply to deValentin]

I wanted to try not to suppress these thoughts and make them irrelevant but I still can't, do you have any tips for doing this?

[deValentin in reply to vencedora]

You’re on the right track. Not trying to directly suppress “bad thoughts”, but considering them irrelevant is a good start. Weeping_Willow has excellent suggestions in that regard. Let me add one or two.

If you could help it, you wouldn’t ruminate over the meaning of your “bad thoughts”. So, keeping OCD at bay is only a matter of maintaining your normal abilities .

1. It’s good to recognize that it’s normal to lose normal abilities in some circumstances. For instance, if I were lost in the desert and dying of thirst, I couldn’t help but being obsessed with the need to search for water. That’s normal. The boys who were trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018 started to believe at one point they had a chance to escape by digging a tunnel with their bare hands. What sounds like a "foolish belief" to an independent observer makes sense in the eyes of someone in a desperate situation.

2. TomFed made an excellent point in his response to yeaimhere13 today: “It is much easier to do ERP immediately at the start of the new spike, then to get sucked into the ocd whirpool and then try to survive with the same ERP tools days later.” So, in order not to get sucked in the ocd whirlpool it’s important, when “scary thoughts” pop into our heads, to stay calm and collected from the start. If we find other ways (like ERP or a cooling off period) to appease our mind than doing ruminations or compulsions, then we’ll not become desperate, and our judgment will stay clear. I know it takes time and efforts, but that’s the price to pay in order not to fall in the “OCD rabbit hole”. If you go on the internet and type “How to Not Go Down the OCD Rabbit Hole”, you’ll probably find other suggestions.

[Weeping_Willow]

So many great responses. I have also suffered from intrusive thoughts sometimes that completely disgust me and it is absolutely possible for them to go away and manage them if they ever do arise in the future.

The key here is when you stated "...tormenting me with horrible thoughts of..."

The thoughts are anathema to who you are. THAT is the key. SO next time you have them then just know in your heart that the fact that you find them distressing means that they are NOT who you are but only thoughts that have floated in and then by worrying about them you have given them power (but not reality).

This works, I promise you.

So next time you have a thought then just know that it isn't a thought coming from your personality. They are not a part of you and let them pass. Think about something else and take away their power. They are NOT YOU!!!

Just like you might have a passing thought about something else benign. Unless it is something you are working on or need to think about for a task, it usually just floats away again and you don't give it a second thought.

So when you think it then just let it be, don't fight it and then change your thoughts and what you are thinking about. They may come knocking again because when I have gone through times with these they are persistent, but eventually, if you dismiss them as not a part of who you are then they will become less and less and you may go through months or longer without such a thought and if they do occur then just letting them go immediately as just a stupid, meaningless thought, they won't try again for a while.

Apparently everyone has these thoughts and most don't worry, but with OCD the brain wants to attach itself and worry about them.

You are a good person and brains think about things because of things we hear about, books we read, movies we watch, but that doesn't have anything to do with who we actually are.

I just know that working this out was such a relief and was so effective that it was my main OCD conquer. Now if I could get my main OCD theme (contamination but without feeling anything bad will happen as a consequence as it is not germ related) then I would be very happy.

Take care.

[vencedora in reply to Weeping_Willow]

Thank you for your answer and explanation, I wish you all the best too and that we one day recover from all this.

[joleb]

I definitely has self harm and also harming my children by not being" alive" or having a mother around. It sounds horrible but OCD gets to what matters the most in our case, the people we love. Otherwise, the thoughts would not scare us and get stuck. You are not alone in this struggle. Medication has really helped me tremendously. I also do my exposures.

I wish you the best and always reach out for questions

[vencedora in reply to joleb]

Thanks for the message, I feel much better when I talk to everyone here.