Intrusive thoughts how to make them stop???

I don’t know how to make them stop they are running my life and I feel so messed up and ashamed of myself and an awful person. I can’t talk to any friends or family about them, they wold probably hate me and never speak to me again. I also can’t speak to a doctor I feel so ashamed and beyond help. I feel like I’m going mad I feel so unwell, I either cry of just feel nothing and numb.

Do medications make them stop? Or just reduce the anxiety symptoms? But if I take meds it means I have to tell a GP and I don’t think I can. And seeing a therapist will be the same. I can’t say what they are because writing them down or saying them out loud will only make them more real.

I sometimes think I enjoy having these thoughts but I really don’t, but it’s like my mind is playing tricks with me and I feel like I need to move away and be alone because I feel like I don’t deserve the people in my life because I’m not a good person.

Hey Marie89, you've pretty much explained exactly what I'm going through...seriously, if I'd started a post about my most recent ocd episode, I would have written all of the above, including being too ashamed to talk to people about it, being an awful person, switching from crying to feeling numb and back again. It's all the OCD...but you already know that and I think it's important to recognise that these thoughts arise from slight biochemical and structural abnormalities in our brains and do not reflect who we really are, no matter how real it all seems.

Medication has helped me a great deal in the past and in my experience, the right antidepressant will over time pretty much eliminate OCD symptoms, but yeah, you would have to talk to your GP. I'm not on antidepressants at the moment. Are you sure you can't discuss this with him/her, whilst keeping it fairly vague? An alternative or additional treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy - is this something you've come across or tried before? I think that CBT over the long-term is usually considered to be the most successful treatment option for OCD. For what it's worth, my therapist was so understanding, but please remember that you don't have to tell anyone anything that you don't want to - a GP or therapist would be OK with that.

The OCD mind will play the cruellest of tricks and will make you question everything. Right now, it will feel like there can be no end to this. I've believed this so many times, but you will overcome this. If you don't mind me asking, are you in the early stages of a new obsession or is this something that has been an OCD 'theme' for a while?

PS There are a few online OCD questionnaires that can evaluate your symptoms. Maybe you could fill one of these out, print it, and take that to your gp? Also check out Mind's OCD pages - they deal with a lot of the issues you have raised: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-...ocd/about-ocd/

You've got OCD and you need to see a therapist for some CBT.

This won't go away by itself and medication is the support act - meaning you need therapy to address the issue at it's core to truly control this.

They're just thoughts. Writing them down won't make them 'real'. Make the call today lovely. X