To ask what your 'secret' thoughts...

[Smotheroffive]

....are? I have been watching Pure. It's got me thinking. For any not aware, its pure O, as in ocd, but without necessarily enacting compulsions (like repeatedly washing hands, opening/closing doors, routinely associated with OCD)
So, people have all sorts of fantasies they wouldn't want to act out IRL.
Also, think things that they wouldn't actually do, or want to see, like in Pure, seeing intrusive images of people naked, or erotically engaged.

Would IBU to ask yours?

I can't remember what word was meant to be there but it wasn't slipped it was about the cheating dbro sleeping with his DBro's ex dodging his part in that hurt of his dbro to do that. HTH

You dont disappoint me. I think you should forgive yourself and allow yourself to move on. I think you believe you have a greater impact on others lives than you do, so you don't really have this negative effect, but ibhear that you believe you do, and I hope someone can help you with that. You don't want to spend your life thinking about yourself this way, only one life, I hope things improve for you.

Oh, Yeah, okay, I understand now. Well, I don't really have any empirical evidence that my ex has forgiven him. It's just a feeling I get. So, maybe he hasn't I don't know. I mean, I couldn't forgive my sister if she did that tbh. But, I just thought, if he really didn't love me, and I was just a for now type girl, then he probably doesn't give a fuck. I don't know. There are days when I think he truly loved me. But those days are few and far between. Even though I don't want to be with him now, I wish that I had proof that he actually loved me. I think I would be able to move on if I knew that. In some ways he was a substitute for my father. Always trying to win his approval, his affection, his love. Always feeling that I came up short. That I was a colossal disappointment to him. Whatever. It's over now. I will never know how he truly feels or felt. So it goes.

Thank you, I hope things improve for me too. I think that I have a positive effect on people when I'm anonymous, like here. But, I think the people I've met, especially those I formed relationships with are the ones that really got screwed from me meeting them. I see my new therapist next month. She's supposed to be brilliant as is trained in trauma cases. We'll see.

Yeah, the whole you only got one life, one ticket on this ride. I used to say that all the time when I was younger. Maybe, that's why I'm attracted to Buddhism, cause' it gives me more chances now. This life is fucked. At least I've got my DH though. Best decision I've ever made. But, it doesn't make up for the fact that I am nothing but a filler. Fairly insignificant. I just wish I was too dumb to know it. Unfortunately, I am smart enough to know how worthless i truly am.

I have thoughts re the places I've earmarked as somewhere I'd kill myself: & have done since age 11.There are 4,all very rural & where its highly unlikely you'd be found. Which is why I chose them I think. I also get the urge to jump every time I go on the pedestrian bridge over the flyover.

Everytime I am running or I see someone running I immediately think “run foreeeest ruuuuun”

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to drink bleach. Weird
Oh my, someone else has this!
I regularly wonder this. Also boiling hot water. We have a hot water tap at work (no kettle) and I have to fight myself to not drink straight from it, or wash my hands under it.
Random eh.

Never get used it it, OP, but luckily for me I don't swear/say offensive things! It is more manageable as an adult though as it is easier to explain! But i do sometimes worry about intrusive thoughts even more just in case i act them out! (ie using all of my willpower not to hold the hand of the old lady beside me on the train etc!!)

not hold the hand of the old lady beside me... so sweet! I'm sure it doesn't feel it though! Are you watching Pure?

If I'm sitting in the front passenger seat of a car I'll sometimes have the urge to fling the door open and leap out. It never happens when I'm in the back seat though.

Also I get really twitchy if people stand really close behind me in a queue. Or if say I'm looking at stuff on a supermarket shelf and someone leans across me to take something down themselves. I want to swivel round and yell at them to back the f* off. Happened yesterday in Argos with this family standing really close behind me in the queue.

It's not that I feel threatened. It could be a tiny little old lady nudging up against me and I'll still feel absolute rage.

Walking round corners with a low wall I always visualise slipping and smashing all my teeth out on it...I don't have the best balance and I'm always thinking worst case scenario.

@Momo18 how did you do that?

I started loosely planning suicide earlier this year and every time I feel low or that I have disappointed someone, I pad my plan out a little more. I always thought (and still think) that I’d never do it but then I wonder if I imagine it enough, would it seem like a good idea?

@anitagreen it was a combination of a few things tbh. I went to a triage appointment for the NHS therapy, the lady was telling me all her intrusive thoughts and how they are normal. Before that I'd read they were normal but to hear from her she didn't think I was odd I realised the thoughts meant nothing, that I had just sensitised myself to my imagination. It took about 8 weeks to really calm my nerves down, but the more I allowed myself to really think anything I just eventually let them go and realised they were meaningless. I spent ten years trying to accept the thoughts to get rid of them, I would try allow them but the ultimate goal was to try repress them as I was ashamed. I think when I lost the shame, lost the tug of war with them, they faded. I still think random crap, some sinister and even very strange thoughts at times, but they don't make me anxious and I don't feel a drive to be free of them. The only difference between making yourself Ill and in my case OCD is the anxious reaction Nd protective behaviours to struggle free of the thoughts. Basically any form of trying to wrestle with them to prove they are false, any shaming yourself, any trying to force them out your head.. it has to stop. It takes practice but I was well ingrained with ten years of habits and I managed it, once you get to grips with exposure and letting them go they really do become meaningless and go away anyway.

I find mine meaningless but still have unwanted weird ones!

Sorry if someone’s already said it, have only skim read the thread, but intrusive thoughts are not the same as fantasies or actively wondering what it would be like to do something, or feeling murderous rage at criminals etc. I suffer from pure O and honestly at times it makes me want to die, or to cut out the part of my brain that torments me with this stuff. It is NOTHING like fantasising about sleeping with a colleague, or thinking you could happily cave in the head of a convicted child killer or something like that. It’s completely unwanted and all consuming and it’s always bad, and makes the sufferer question whether they are a terrible person. I don’t want to go into detail about mine but they’re mainly depraved and disgusting sexual ones, like images of having sex with my dad, stuff along those lines. I wouldn’t wish pure O on my worst enemy

It must be awful snout and its clear from the show that the sufferer struggles to stay with whats going on around them.

Obvs Pure O is not about just feeling angry for justifiable things, but many do get very uncomfortable thoughts, and I think the pp who suffered horrendously has managed to let them go as a result of her therapists description of realising what they are but its different for everyone, different degrees, and I am truly sorry they are so overwhelming for you.

Many pp do describe similar, and feel free by 'owning up' or realising others have them too helps.

Thing is, having sex with your dad 'images' must be extremely uncomfortable is all I know, no-one wants that in their head, but its meaningless, as in it doesn't mean you actually want to, but you probs know that better than any.

Yeah I’ve had therapy before and it was helpful but I can’t help feeling that even by them being in my head it makes me a flawed and unworthy person. I often wish my OCD was just about germs or tidiness or even thoughts about something more ‘vanilla’ like stabbing people as that wouldn’t be as bad as what I’m dealing! I realise that sounds silly. I’m also really quite scared of opening up to mental health professionals as I’ve found the NHS in particular really has no idea about this. I hinted to a doctor my intrusive thoughts were about ‘bad things’, didn’t give any detail but said I had previously been diagnosed with OCD, but I watched him type ‘possible danger to self and others’ on the screen. That’s on my medical notes forever now. It’s not true, but it absolutely devastated me and made me wonder if I really was the depraved sicko my thoughts were making me think I was. OCD is really misunderstood I think

Oh! bloody hell! How awful, how ignorant of him! Just great!
Well I think you're probably the expert here, and its been the common theme really on the thread that it's that terror of actually being those thoughts that brings the horrendous terror and anxiety. Realising people have all sorts of weird, crazy, sick shit going through their heads and it doesn't mean it means something, is what stops its overwhelming. Did you see the pp description of her therapy and its benefits?

I wouldn’t say im an expert but I have read a lot about it. I think I must have skimmed past that post but I’ll go back and have a look at it. It is definitely reassuring to know other people have weird thoughts as well, what my therapist said is that people with OCD fixate on them and find them harder to shrug off, and that it’s all about learning not to ascribe any meaning or significance to them. I still can’t help but feel I’m harboring a terrible grubby secret though. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you can easily disclose to people without them getting the wrong impression like the doctor did!

I know,but your doctor did the absolute worst thing and compounded it even further for you.

It's precisely because you fear that you are harbouring something so utterly awful that it haunts you this way, from what I've been realising.

If all the gpa you'd ever called on said they wouldn't want to share their darkest thoughts with anyone...but they are there...you might have felt a lot less condemned by yours?

I used to worry about some of the intrusive thoughts that I had until I went through an Eckhart Tolle phase years ago and realised that I am NOT my thoughts. I now liken them to watching a movie rather than identify with them.

Fantasizing is different though, I used to fantasize about a woman I am no longer in contact with, who deliberately tortured me for bloody years. She would be clinging onto a cliff edge by her fingernails, holding one hand up to me for help her and I just stand there watching the terror in her eyes with my head tilted and an "aw hun" look in my eyes. I thought I was an awful person until I realised that if she actually ever knocked on my door and asked for help I would.

@Momo18 thanks for that, that's quite helpful I mean mine is bizzare its all since I read an article about a young woman ending her life because she had anxiety and depression so it said, and I began having intrusive thoughts like what if that happens to me? And it went on and on and still goes on now for about 9 months now, I have no compulsions or urges so my doctor and therapist thinks it's not ocd, that it's just a stuck thought where I'm petrified of it happening. But weirdly I'm not suicidal at all I have no intention of dying if anything every day I strive to love life but it really does get me down because I'm always thinking what if? Oh what if that does happen? Shall I do that? And then I'm like woah what the fuck no way and then I'm in the cycle of being scared again. Some days it doesn't bother me but I've noticed it is triggered by stress I'm hoping cbt will teach me how to just get better at handling it. But it's so good to know that we are not our thoughts x

@anitagreen I had that thought too, always triggered by the news with it. It pretty much spiralled like yours, I think we feel unique with them but these thoughts follow a script. We even imagine the desire to act on them, but imagining the desire and not acting isn't the same as actually having suicidal ideation.

@snoutsandab0ut I too had those type of intrusive thoughts, about anybody and everybody. Even my children. It took ten years for me to let go of the shame, like you I couldn't shake the idea that these thoughts made me a monster even though rationally I knew they were intrusive thoughts. I always thought I would suffer from them but once it finally sunk in that it really was ok to imagine absolutely anything I let them go and they went away.

If you haven't checked out Dr Steven Philipsons articles on the OCD centre website they are definitely worth a read. He has some amazing pod casts floating around Google too.

@Momo18 your literally a lifesaver thank you so much cause I worry Oh god do I want to do that? Course I don't but still I'm so fearful what if I do argh horrible

YABU OP- they are secret.!!!