Suicidal ocd

Suicidal OCD is characterised by intrusive UNWANTED thoughts, images or urges about ending one’s own life. To be perfectly clear, someone suffering with this has ZERO intention or desire to do so and can be INCREDIBLY anxiety inducing, but because it can be so scary for the sufferer to have these thoughts it can feel incredibly irresponsible not to do compulsions. As someone who’s dealt with this theme these were some of my intrusive thoughts and compulsions and some that you see regularly. Thoughts: “What if I’m actually suicidal? I don’t think I am but how can I be 100% sure?” “What if I’m secretly depressed and I just don’t know it and want to do this” “I don’t feel quite as happy as I did yesterday, is this a sign that I’m developing clinical depression?” “I can’t ever be sad or angry otherwise there’s a risk of following through with this.” *mental images of using objects to harm yourself even though you don’t want to. These are just a few examples, intrusive thoughts about this can take many forms Common compulsions: Spending hours ruminating about whether one’s intrusive thoughts could be true or not. Avoiding objects that could be used to harm yourself Compulsively smiling all the time to ensure you’re happy all the time to ENSURE you’re never sad. Googling the symptoms of clinical depression to ensure you don’t fit the criteria. Always being active because someone who was really unhappy with life would not want to be active all the time. Not wanting to laze around as this could be a symptom of clinical depression (Niche one but I had this): compulsively exercising because someone with bad depression would not want to exercise and saying to yourself “phew ok I still have the desire to go exercising that means I must be ok”. Reassuring yourself that you’d never do this or asking others for reassurance that you wouldn’t. Plus many more. The best treatment is ERP and maybe medication if you need a boost to be able to do ERP. In ERP you’re asked to confront these thoughts and feelings and not do anything to try and neutralise them with compulsions. You start off small and go up the ladder to gradually expose yourself to things that make you more anxious to learn that you can tolerate that. Over time, you learn that you can handle these thoughts and that they don’t actually have to mean anything about your wishes or wants and gradually OCD is triggered less and less by them. Like every OCD theme, eventually you’ll be able to just live life despite what pops into your head. :)