Intrusive thoughts help!

[ExhaustedJ]

I started getting intrusive thoughts when my baby was 5 weeks old he is not nearly 5 months. I have been on stertraline 100mg for 3 months now and also do talk therapy.

As a whole things have improved massively but I am still haunted and feel a lot of guilt over previous thoughts. When my anxiety is higher this does not help at all and allows my brain to spiral.

This is extremely hard for me to write but one intrusive thought that haunts me everyday is that I can’t wait for my baby to die because of the other thoughts I’ve had.

I want to elaborate that this baby is my entire world and not one bit of me wants anything to happen to him.

It is extremely distressing as this little baby is all I have ever wanted. I suffered two miscarriages and a traumatic birth to get to where we are today and I am debased that this is now happening.

Has anyone had thoughts like this and what strategies worked for you? Did you eventually stop having them?

Will the I can’t wait thought stop repeating in my head?

This sounds like PP OCD to me. Have you been offered any CBT? I had quite bad magical thinking OCD after the birth of my daughter (eg. convinced if I deleted a photo of her that she would die) and intrusive thoughts (also related to her well-being, eg. imagining accidentally falling down the stairs and hurting her). It’s awful and exhausting when you just want to enjoy your baby and love them so much. Sending love and solidarity- it will get better and you won’t have these thoughts forever.

@RubyBirdy thank you so much for replying. Yeah I have been diagnosed with borderline ocd 😩 I did get offered CBT but got discharged because they said I’m already doing it. Not sure how when I’ve never had it before. How long did it take for yours to go away completely? Or at least not let them takeover!

It started to improve slowly for me when she was about 7/8 months old. I still get the occasional intrusive thought but they’re no longer crippling and constant. I tried my best to get into a routine, going walking with the baby every day and try to arrange coffee dates etc as often as possible to distract my brain! I found it got worse the more I was home alone. Is your partner offering support?

Hi yes mine started with my first born who is now 5, it took me a long long time to even admit to myself what thoughts I was having and only then was I able to fully understand that they were intrusive thoughts and not really me or what I wanted to happen. Well done for acknowledging it so early on. I was on citalopram for about 8 months which did help however they made me so tired I gradually came off them after feeling better for a while.
I have to say I do occasionally still get intrusive thoughts, more so when I'm sleep deprived or stressed. I also realised that I had low level ocd before my kids were born but never really thought about it because it didn't negatively affect me (I do subconscious counting when I'm doing certain activities)

i think the fact you've caught it early on means you can deal with it and please dont feel ashamed, that's why I took so long to get help. Not sure how true it is but I've heard it can be our brains way of dealing with stressful events and the scenarios are things that we want to actually protect our children from.

@RubyBirdy yes I am the same I’m better being busy and taking the baby out. My partner is amazing and so supportive I’ve been very lucky to have such a good partner and family during all this.

@pawpatrollerr yess thinking about it since I definitely had slight ocd beforehand but like you it never affected me negatively so I never thought anything of it.

thank you so much! I try not to feel ashamed but it is so hard not too isn’t it? I try my best not to argue with the thoughts and hoping one day soon they will fade away or at least not bother me so much where I can acknowledge them and let them go quickly.

I have an anxiety flare up the last few days not 100% why but hopefully that passes too I was starting to think did I need to change my medication but I’m going to stick it out for longer.

Heya, sorry you're finding things tough right now. I had similar. It's really weird and awful and I don't know why there hasn't been more research done to help. Anyway, keep talking to your GP and make sure you're getting sleep and at least 30 mins a day to yourself - if possible. To do whatever you want. I found relaxing to music with a face mask helped a lot. It sounds silly but it was 30 minutes where I had to trust my husband with the baby. I had to build up from 5 minutes.

Have you tried giving your thoughts a name? Again sounds silly but say I'd have one thought I'd call that one Bob, and then another one I'd call Leonard or something and then when they come to my head I could say ahh it's Bob. And it made it easier to recognise that thought as what it was, the intrusive thought.

I’m so glad you have a supportive partner and family, having them to talk to is such a huge step towards feeling better. Keep talking to them about it when you need to, things will get better the more your hormones level out too.

This is such a genius idea! I’m going to use this too!

It sounds a tad silly I know but it really helped me get a grip on the whole "acknowledging the thought" thing

I think the element of silliness could be helpful in this situation, as it makes the intrusion of quite scary thoughts feel less scary/helps you to not see them as seriously if that makes sense.

Yes that makes perfect sense!

Best of luck to everyone struggling right now xxx

@RubyBirdy how long does it take for hormones to level out?? First time mum here and this has all come as a shock to me. I honestly thought I’d love every minute of it.

@stripybobblehat i love the idea of giving them a name. I’m trying that today and so far so good 👍🏻

By about six months. It was a shock to me too, but everything will get better xx

@RubyBirdy thank you! My little on is 5 months next week. Yesterday was definitely a much better day. I was being a bit delusional to think I’d wouldn’t have a bad day again.