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Hi everyone, So I've had the worst time since Wednesday, my depression spiraled out of control which lead to self harm and suicidal thoughts. In this state of mind I took it out on my dog who I love the most in this life. She really means the world to me, but I did get violent (that was Friday morning) by Friday night I was feeling like the worst thing on this earth. I cried so much, felt so much remorse and even selfharmed in order to pay for the damage I had done. Went to bed feeling better. This morning I woke up feeling like crap again so lost and helpless which I can try to deal with but now I have very graphic intrusive thoughts about harming my dog. I'm so terrified since I can be very violent, I am not a bad person. I love all animals especially my dog who I adopted with so much illusion. Now I'm devastated and so scared. I don't know how to get through this, about three years ago I had really bad intrusive thoughts about death, but never about harming one of the beings I love most in my life. I'm scared some sick part of me got awaken since I want to be violent again with my dog. Anyone has been through this before? I have appt with my doctor by EOY, but in the meantime I want to find some peace of mind and of course not hurt my dog. I'm sorry for this awful post, I'm so sad, I love animals, do lots of activism and charity for them, I'm even vegan how did I end up in this situation with someone I consider my baby girl. I have 2 other dogs, but only my favorite one is triggering me to do bad things. Help please! Again I apologize for being such a disgusting human being.

I am 28 years old and I am facing these symptoms for some time now. I have been told that these symptoms fall on the OCD spectrum. I never thought OCD would be like this. I just wanted to know if anyone has been facing these symptoms- 1) I have a tremendous fear of going mad. In fact my symptoms started because I thought I was going mad. This was a year ago. I always think I might hear or see something, or lose touch with reality. As a result, I am constantly scared. 2) I have very vivid dreams and at times get confused as to whether they actually happened. As a result, it happens that when I wake up, I am confused as to whether the dream actually happened or not, and it is only after sometime that I convince myself that it did not happen. When I wake up, I feel completely helpless and think that I have lost my grip on reality. 3) I have an overactive imagination. As a result, I often act out scenarios in my head. When someone says something, I imagine that they will say this or that next. As a result, I am constantly berating myself and scared, as to why am I imagining stuff? I try to hold my imagination back as I am scared I will confuse it with reality. 4) Usually in the morning, I feel extremely anxious and feel I have lost my grip on reality, so much so that my teeth chatter from morning to afternoon. 5) I keep on getting mental images of things that happened long ago. For instance I will get images of things or incidents from the past that happened about 10 years ago or more. I do not want to think about these things or incidents, and yet I get these images. For instance I will get the image of my house that I used to live in 10 years ago. Since I have not visited these memories in a long time, I have forgotten how I used to feel about these things from long ago, and as a result, I feel extremely unnerved and spooked out when I get these images. 6) I also get images of things and places from my imagination/dreams out of nowhere. These also cause me to get taken aback and be startled and unnerved, as I think that I can no longer distinguish between reality and dreams/fantasy. I try my level best to distinguish these images from reality, question as to why am I getting these images, and somehow put them in a category that will reassure me that I am not going mad. 7) Sometimes I get distorted images of past memories. As these things never happened, they cause me to get startled and think I am losing touch with reality. 8) There are period of time when I am extremely confused and cannot make sense of things. During these times, I will catch myself, and think I am losing touch with reality. I will think that my thinking has become illogical. 9) I am scared of my imagination running away and causing me to lose touch with reality. I will often try to imagine "what happens next" in a scenario, and then get scared and think, why am I doing this? This is delusional thinking. I am losing touch with reality! For instance, if a person is sitting in the room next to me, I will think "they are probably doing this or talking to someone" This causes me discomfort and panic as I think that this is my imagination and causing me to lose my grip. 10) I also get memory problems. This is probably because I am thinking of my mental problems and not paying attention to things. But can this be a symptom of OCD? Do oCD sufferers get mental problems? Is this OCD or something worse? This has been happening for a year now. There are period s of time (1-2 weeks) when I am completely fine though.

Three months before Christmas last year, one of my dogs acquired what is referred to a 'doggie aids.' The actual disease is a tick borne illness. He lost over 40 pounds in three months and died a horrible death on Christmas Day. During my dog's protracted illness, I was triggered and had frequent flashbacks and intrusive thoughts and images come to me about my father's abuse. One of the symptoms of the tick borne illness was bleeding. This triggered me the most with disturbing images of my father using knives. I cringed whenever the images bombarded me. After my dog's death, I slipped into a suicidal depression and slowly went down hill. I was not even aware of how bad off I was until I decided it was necessary to see a pdoc. It was the first time in my life to see one. It took three months to see the pdoc during which time I thought I would go off the deep end. My dog's death and how he died reminded me of the abuse and deaths my father forced me to watch. It struck a chord deep within me about the intense emotions I carried inside me. I kept repeating to myself, 'this will be my undoing.' I understood what that meant. I would start to grieve everything which happened to me. Though... I feel stuck in the muck and mire of depression and I hate it. I hate that feeling of not being able to move past this. My therapist asked me to write down my feelings. I thought I had none. Tons emerged. Mostly rage and sadness. I misunderstood his assignment. He wanted me to write down how I felt when a memory emerged. So the next week I tried that and found I could not shut off the memory. Once the door opened up I was forever reliving bits and pieces of the memories and not being able to shut the door again. The feelings kept coming; terrified, overwhelmed, anxious. Those feelings left me depressed again. My assignment this week is to write a grief letter about my mother. Now there's a huge ball of crap to write about. After she died over three years ago, I started to remember more abuse my father perpetrated on me. She was a narcissist and had OCPD. She was anal to the max about many things in her life and therefore my life. My mother had to control everything around her and everyone around, especially me. I was her scapegoat. I don't have to do any of these assignments. However, they would help me heal from my childhood abuse and that is my goal in therapy. I am the one who set that goal, to express my emotions, to deal with the helplessness I feel. It is almost Sunday and I have not even sat down in front of my journal software to write a thing. Half of my week gone and I rotate on it avoiding that assignment. And I am a prolific writer and I journal daily but not since this assignment. Yesterday, I expressed some of the things I learned from my mother with my two granddaughters. This rings a familiar bell though: the ability to express good things about the people who raised me and the inability to express the bad things about those people. I can tell anyone all the horrible things my mother and father did to me BUT... then I am stuck. I cannot express the horrible feelings I have for those people who violated me in so many ways. I am stuck in the depression I hate so much. The only way out is through those yucky feelings.