

Our practice has been helping people for over thirty years overcome their problems. By using scientifically-based interventions, we can help people learn to overcome the problems that fear has caused in their lives. These include phobias, obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders, life stressor and marital issues, and children’s anxiety disorders such as separation anxiety and school anxiety disorder. We are a specialty practice serving children, teens, and adults who suffer from general and specific anxiety, mood and stress disorders. For more information, contact us or call us today at 56. If you are concerned about your violent thoughts or worried that you may harm yourself or someone else, seek help from the OCD-trained therapists at The Center for Treatment of Anxiety and Mood Disorders in Delray Beach, Florida. Trying to get past intrusive thoughts on your own can keep you stuck because it can be difficult to stop “testing” yourself to see how you are reacting – which is a ritual that could reinforce your false beliefs. Over time, consistently avoiding the use of compulsions while remaining nonviolent helps break the cycle of doubt.įor the best chance of overcoming Harm OCD, find a therapist who specializes in treating classic OCD. This leads to learning to trust that their thoughts are simply thoughts. The idea is to confront what they fear, but to refrain from using their compensating compulsions (ritual prevention).īy resisting the urge to complete a ritual after the exposure and then finding that they do not act on the violent thought, the person builds self-confidence and begins to retrain their brain. The first part of the therapy – exposure – happens when the individual allows themselves (with the help of their therapist) to encounter the triggering object, image, or environment that begins their cycle of intrusive thoughts.

Worry they are hiding their true nature from themselves and others and that they are really a vicious, aggressive person who will act out someday because they will lose control.Be terrified that they will hurt someone (or themselves) on impulse – whether intentionally or not.Fixate on the idea that they could inadvertently be responsible for causing harm and not realize it (for example, they may worry about running someone over by accident, and then leaving the scene because they were unaware of what they had done).Have aggressive thoughts or see images in their minds of violence and worry that this means they will carry them out.Once they complete the ritual, they feel less anxious, but then the intrusive thought comes again, setting up endless cycles of doubt and fear. Having these intrusive thoughts leads to engaging in compulsions and rituals to decrease the anxiety the person feels about the thought.
#Violent intrusive thoughts examples full
As a result, they want full assurance that they won’t act on the thought. Wherein someone without OCD could have a violent thought and recognize that it is simply a thought, a person with OCD who has the Harm OCD subset worries that just having the thought is somehow meaningful. OCD makes the individual feel that they can’t trust their own mind. The condition is characterized by having aggressive, intrusive thoughts of doing violence to someone, as well as the responses the person uses to cope with these thoughts.

Harm OCD is a subset of classic obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
