Instrusive thoughts of a harmful nature

I’ve not spoken about this topic to others before now for a few reasons. Lately, the experience has been intensifying and feeling less like ‘me’ as I’ve been doing pretty well. So I figured, heck, why not open up to you guys…

What are intrusive thoughts you might ask?
They are thoughts that are usually damaging in some way, that occur out of context. They can become obsessive and can pop into your head at any time. I’ve had intrusive thoughts for a long time (years). However, I’ve never felt like they went against how I was feeling before. They feel like monsters of my past trying to lure me back into my old ways. It feels like they are trying to snap me back to being self destructive. The urge to give in to them is so hard to overcome. There is some comfort in being back in touch with the creativity of my thoughts. There is often so much detail that accompanies the thought, and as a visual person there is always an image in my mind’s eye.

‘Give us examples’ I hear you say. Well….
– For instance, I’ll be driving the car, singing along to the radio when suddenly I get the thought and the urge to crash the car into a building.
– Or I will be washing the dishes and suddenly I think of a bridge in an area of woodland I don’t go to very often and wonder whether it would be high enough to kill me or just maim.
-I’ll boil the kettle and wonder what it would feel like to pour it over my arm and what the pain would be like.
-A frequent thought lately has been to set my arm on fire. When the thought pops in my head it comes with a mental image of me stood with my arm in flames.
-A reoccurring one that I’ve had for years is to drive to Blackpool and if I haven’t crashed on the way there, then to simply swim out to sea til I drown…usually this one occurs in winter as I know the hypothermia will make me tired quickly…
-Today I saw the GP for my 3 weekly update and medication pick up. (We’ve been increasing the amount of pills I can have at home following the overdose in August). She said she would give me 4 weeks this time and didn’t want a repeat of last time. I was going to tell her I still had a strip at home when this little inside voice said ‘no don’t do it, you can add them to your stock pile for the next time.’ I am not planning a next time, but yet images of where I had random strips of medication flashed in my mind and automatically counted how many that would be and whether I should double my dose or just stockpile them. I’ve been taking an increased dose for the past week, so I could carry this on for a while. P.s I’m not sure why I have so many left over. I’m fairly confident I take them every night…

The list is never ending. They are totally intrusive of my everyday life. I honestly don’t think I would carry any of them out as I’m not actively suicidal right now. The pull of those thoughts is alluring and its exhausting to repel. Often the instrusive thoughts cause anxiety as people worry that they may act on them. My thoughts don’t come with an anxiety or a sense of doom.  Rather they come with a pang of excitedness, of curiosity and calm. Sometimes I am apathetic towards them and other times they are like the sirens of the sea, leading me towards the rocks to my impending doom.

What do the thoughts mean? Where do they come from? From my subconscious? In which case I want to die. Are they pointing towards suicide or are they pointing towards the feeling of excitement, peace, calm, curiosity instead. Are the thoughts actually keeping me safe from self harm as they allow my brain to visualise without having to carry out the act? I have so many questions about these intrusive thoughts that I’m not quite sure what to think.

Any answers more than welcome and I hope I will be writing soon to give you some solutions I’ve managed to find – Violet x