My OCD Types: Harm OCD...It's okay, you can hug your husband...

Sorry for the delay my mysterious audience, I was gone for quite some time back east for the holiday season. But I am back and ready to write!!!

I have decided, the time has come for me to discuss my Harm OCD. It is the most prevalent aspect of my OCD. It is often referred to as Pure O, because many folks who suffer from Harm OCD do not exhibit outward signs of OCD compulsions. However, most folks with Harm OCD still carry out compulsions, they are just mainly done in their own mind. For instance, if they think a thought about hurting someone, they will compulsively think a reverse thought about hugging that person. Or if a person thinks a thought about harming their husband, they must quickly recite three Hail Mary prayers in their head. Thus, with these folks, myself included, you might not see the outward signs of OCD.

Getting back to the type of OCD. Harm OCD is rather widespread within the OCD community. It is a horrid form of OCD to deal with, not that any of them are very fun. However, I would have to say, for me, the Harm OCD is the hardest for me to deal with and the part of my OCD that brings me the most pain.

With Harm OCD, the person will think images of harming others, such as hitting someone with their car or touching someone inappropriately or hitting their girlfriend. These images are not images that the person wants and they will generally create an enormous amount of fear, anxiety, guilt, and depression. Why is it that people get these thoughts if they don't want to think them? Unfortunately, everyone in the world gets bad thoughts. They might not even recognize the thoughts, because the majority of people, if they get a bad thought, can filter out the thought just as quickly as it entered their brain. Those of us with OCD have ZERO filter for our thoughts. We can not simply let a bad thought slip on through our thought process and not worry about it. Our brain, our OCD brain, snatches each and every bad thought we have and rotates it in our brain like a broken record. One mights ask, why in the world would someone feel guilty about something if they don't want it to happen and didn't want to think it in the first place? Well, the problem is that these thoughts don't just hit once and then go away. These thoughts, images, words, etc. continuously bombard the brain of someone suffering from Harm OCD. There often seems to be no escape. For me, it often feels like a machine gun is firing off bad thought bullets. So, when you have thoughts constantly bombarding you, you worry that you are somehow a bad person, even though you are far from it.

Harm OCD is painful both physically and mentally. Actually, all OCD is painful in this way. Mentally we have the pain of near constant fear and anxiety at times. The pain of obsessive guilt over things we should have no guilt for at all. The pain from the depression that many of us suffer from due to OCDs endless attacks. Physically, we have the pain of constant muscle tension from the anxiety and fear. Many of us have headaches often. Our hearts race and we often feel breathless, due to panic attacks. For me, when I have a bad thought, I can feel my entire body tense up to a point where I want to sometimes cry. Well, I do sometimes cry. Also, when I have a particularly bad OCD day, I will often have horrid headaches. It is an exhausting disorder to have and deal with every day, every hour, every minute.

One of the most disagreeable aspects of Harm OCD, is that many of us folks who have it will find ourselves avoiding the folks we have the thoughts about, for fear that the thought might happen. For instance, a person who has unwanted Harm OCD thoughts about stabbing their roommate with a knife might avoid touching knives altogether and may avoid any close contact with their roommate. It may even lead to them having to move somewhere else, for fear they might inadvertently harm their roommate. It's maddening, mainly because we all know we would never hurt that person that is present in those thoughts. But, yet, we might uncontrollably fear their presence near us. It can lead to the ending of friendships, romantic relationships, good parenting, etc. Just imagine for one minute if you were bombarded with unwanted harming thoughts about your spouse or children, how well would you get through the day?

Needless to say, even though I suffer from this form of OCD, I triumph over its devastating effects time and time again. It is hard, it is painful both mentally and physically, but it is something I know I must combat each day of my life and I have started, luckily, to learn the skills to do that.