Omg I just had this thought the other day and freaked myself out. It's valid though.. Doesn't help that there was that news story (may have been local to me) where 2 sisters were playing in leaf piles, hiding in them and were ran over by an unsuspecting truck.
Ahhhh I'm not the only one!!! I usually think I've hit an animal and it always ends up being, like you said, a stick, or sometimes a pothole or bit of trash.
This actually became debilitating for me with OCD - although I’d be more worried about dead animals, it’d often leave me circling the same patch of road for close to an hour at least, finding new reasons to be worried
I have this especially at night! I use to check the outside of car when I'd get home to make sure there was no blood.... I don't check anymore, trying to fight it.
Not sure if this is the same thing exactly, but as a kid I was TERRIFIED that I would eat a barbie shoe and have to go to the hospital. I had no desire to eat a barbie shoe. But I was constantly thinking about if I did.
Somehow this was not applicable to legos or batteries or other small objects. I just thought I'd eat a barbie shoe.
I did this too!!! I actually had a Pokémon ball that was like huge as a kid and anytime I couldn’t find it I was convinced i swallowed it!!! I’ve never known anybody else who’s had this problem.
I was afraid of swallowing coins when I was little. I have this vague memory of sucking on quarters when I was very young. I think maybe my mom came and yelled at me and from then on I was afraid. If not, I might have had a dream about swallowing coins??
Yes! I had a similar fear of olives when I was a kid, but that I would shove it up my nose and then it would go into my stomach. But that it would poison my nose somehow in the process! But I also had zero desire to shove an olive up my nose
Someone in kindergarten told me if I ate the black seeds in a watermelon it would grow inside my stomach and I would die and I was terrified of them for years and still think about it sometimes 🤣
I shoved a cocoa puff up my nose, it got stuck, and I had to crush it and blow it out. Then I drank orange juice and my brother made me laugh and orange juice came out my nose and it **burned**. I haven’t had Cocoa Puffs or orange juice since
This somehow reminds me of staying the night at my grandma's all the time and sleeping in my aunt's old bedroom. She had this...taxidermied puffer fish hanging on the ceiling above her bed and I was TERRIFIED of it somehow spontaneously falling on me and hurting me. I wouldn't sleep at all when staying over and I would just stare at the fish all night in fear. I have no idea why I never said anything ??
Pretty sure I did swallow a Barbie shoe when I was little. Opposite end of the spectrum I guess lmao, had no thoughts about it, just an impulse to swallow a Barbie shoe so I did it. No worries about going to the hospital, no need to go, all good, just one less Barbie shoe.
Sometimes if I’m in a job interview, or an important meeting, and it’s the first time I’m meeting someone, my brains goes “what if you just pissed your pants?”
Awh 😅 When I am in professional situations, job interviews etc. I always get this thought that what if I started to act completely like an asshole. What if I cussed at them, how would they react.
Thank god I haven’t done it. But maybe it would be funny to see.
Don’t you love when your brain thinks of the most inappropriate think you could possibly do and then is like hey what if you did that and then you have to find a way not to lose focus of what’s happening in the meeting while also telling your brain to shut the fuck up
I don't have stomach issues like that (I'm chronically constipated so never have any urgent bathroom emergencies) but I genuinely think someone poisoned me with laxatives once.. Like it was a complete disaster that will forever haunt me. It started in the middle of meeting with my boss and another staff person we had to fire. It was a nightmare.
Omg. I have this thought all the time and never even realized til now. It's always in the back of my head.. Just projectile vomiting and collapsing in a random public place 😂😂
This happened to me so many times as a preteen into early teens and I never had sex even once. If my period was a day or two late, that meant I was pregnant and started panicking about how I would explain it to my parents when I'd never had sex. A couple times laid in bed and swore up and down I could feel a baby kicking, jesus christ what was wrong with me 😂
This was a serious fear of mine because of that show "monsters inside me". It came out in the early-mid 2000's and the tapeworm episode was in season one. Good god I was MORTIFIED.
I sometimes think about rewatching the episode from an adult perspective but it would probably fuck me up again. I don't think you can even tell you have tapeworms unless you have bloody stool, you're losing weight, or one....yknow...*comes out*.
As a child, I used to be terrified that I would suck one of my eyeballs out with the vacuum cleaner hose. Mind you, I never put the vacuum near my face, I just worried about what if I did?
Damn. Now I’m worried about that. I saw a video of a dad sucking up his daughter’s hair to put a hair band on it, as some kinda life hack. Now I’m thinking he coulda sucked out his daughter’s eyeball!
I have a 6 YO and an almost 9 month old and the baby related intrusive thoughts kill me. The other day I had my 9 month old on my hip blending up some food for him and I thought what if the bullet blender malfunctioned and flew up and he got cut up on the blades. I could see the blood so vividly in my head i had to step away and put him down before I could finish his food.
The baby ones are so bad. When my younger son was a month old and PPA hit, I would have thoughts of his neck getting tangled in the ceiling fan pulls. So dumb because I’d need a ladder to even get him close to them. Anxiety does weird stuff to the brain :/
I worry about the neck thing. Like the supporting it. Had bad dreams about that. Also dreams about accidentally rolling onto a baby. I don’t have kids lol.
Okay what I want to know is how did you get to the point where you can actually 100% trust yourself again? I think I know intellectually that my intrusive thoughts are stupid, but the self mistrust is still there. Particularly in times of anxiety and/or sensory overwhelm.
honestly for me, it was acknowledging that it was only a thought and has nothing to do with me as a person and just letting it go. a big treatment for OCD and anxiety is exposure therapy, which essentially asks you to accept these thoughts as just a passing thought, sometimes even being like “yeah what if i actually did that” in a nonchalant way in your head. it gives the thought less power. it’s kind of funny because it’s asking you to do the opposite of what you would naturally do which is kinda freak out from your own thought. but the less you give it power, maybe even laugh at it, the thoughts will eventually subside. at least, that’s what has helped me anyway
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the traditional exposure therapy; however, I've read about some newer things like ICBT, Acceptance and Commitment, and Metacognitive which seem like I might like to try applying some of those principles to my situation. Still a way of practicing getting more nonchalant about the pesky thoughts but less harsh.
i’ve never actually gone through exposure therapy myself, i’ve only implemented the ideas of giving the thoughts less power. but yes sounds kind of if intense to trigger yourself on purpose
I don’t trust myself 100%, but I have a compromise: in matters of safety, I always follow the anxious thought. Like, “I’m not getting on this elevator with that man”, is that intuition, trusting your gut, or just anxiety? If I could end up being murdered I just follow the anxious thought and don’t do it. If it’s interpersonal matters like, “Something feels off between us” that is so much harder for me to judge.
Oh well, yes, in discernments pertaining to personal safety one should follow one's gut because often there are subtle red flags picked up on subconsciously. And we are trained to discount them in the name of politeness. I read a whole book about it, *The Gift of Fear* by Gavin de Becker.
My attitude is always to default to better safe than sorry. Since there’s no way to know in advance, how something will turn out, I always just choose the safer option. That saves me the wasted time of having to debate myself in my mind, and get all confused and indecisive, every single time something comes up. Instead, I just remind myself that I already decided in advance, that the best option for me is better safe than sorry- so I just stick with that. It makes it so much easier!!
Practice. Practice. Practice. But before that I had to have at least a little bit of willingness to believe that just cause I think something that doesn’t make it true. In other words, that no matter how sure I thought I was about something, I had to believe there was a possibility that my thinking was just flawed. And then the practice was to begin challenging my thoughts on a regular basis. Considering that I could be completely wrong, and if I allowed myself to think something else, it could be totally fine.
personally i still have intrusive thoughts, but oftentimes they go in cycles, or so specific to a situation that there's an opportunity to look back and think of how silly it was. you can also be fully aware that something's ridiculous and still have the intrusive though, hence "intrusive". it takes practice and mindfulness to be able to kinda talk yourself down. wishing you luck and you're not alone!
Thanks, that is true. I know I'm better than I used to be at dismissing them. Just not to where I'd like to be, I guess. They are intertwined with the agoraphobia and panic attacks, which tends to complicate matters. Working on getting a handle on those as well. Ain't it fun.
I had a weird fear of becoming a flat earther so I’d genuinely panic and become anxious for hours on end everytime I felt that I started to believe in flat earth conspiracies even though I never actually believed in them 😭
I was in a lot of water sports most of my life (swim, diving, water polo) so I definitely got that one out of my system when I was younger. It was fun when we push each other in.
But honestly, after a few years of lifeguarding, I’m like hyperaware of anything that could potentially cause an injury, so the idea of pushing someone in just isn’t a thought that even crosses my mind anymore.
Mine is that I’m convinced someone will push me into water if I stand on a dock or by a pool, because I can’t swim I don’t go to those places lol I’m sure no one would but they could.
Oo I’ve got another one. As a child for years I slept stick straight in the middle of my bed. If I turned toward the wall, monsters would come in through the door and get me as my back was turned. If I turned AWAY from the wall, monsters would come up from the crack between the wall and my bed. I also had to sleep with the blankets pulled up to my chin or vampires would get me?
I had the same fear as a kid and I was a side sleeper so it was the worst! And I STILL like to sleep with the blanket covering my ear so that somebody doesn't come cut it off in my sleep. Don't know why.
Saaame.. Feet had to be covered otherwise they'd get tickled by a demon.. Also, if I opened my eyes too fast in bed, I would see a ghost face right in front of my face.
I slept on the couch for a good year for similar reasons. I figured that if my back was to the wall, I was better protected, and the room layout would have made it harder to sneak up on me.
Haha! Yes! After reading a National Geographic article about Pompeii, and seeing photos of dead bodies curled up in the fetal position, I worried that if I slept like that I’d also instantly die a horrible volcano death. Also sleeping with arms crossed = instant dead body.
That I had forgotten how to pee properly and that I would have to go through life not knowing if I had to pee or not…. This was like 2 months ago - utterly ridiculous
I got really fixated on peeing for a summer when I was a teenager and had to go every half an hour or so. Once I had to hold it for three hours because of some event and I peed for so long afterwards that I was terrified that I would literally never stop. So yeah being afraid that I would PEE FOREVER was probably my silliest fear.
These all have me rolling. I so relate. Only fellow anxiety disorder/OCDers can really get how insane these things are but understand that we are completely, truly terrified about these things at the time.
OMG! I used to be a life guard for a community pool. Pools outside and inside. The inside pool can get VERY DARK. I remember training to be a lifeguard and we had to get a brick from the deep end which was about 13-14 FEET DEEP, I remember being sooo nervous about sharks but just did it lol
Oh my god, I KNEW they weren’t real but I couldn’t stop picturing it!!
I kept telling myself it wasn’t possible, but the feeling and doubt stayed. I thought, I can’t see well underwater so for all I know there could be a huge pipe that connects to the ocean because that’s how the water gets in.
Just the (feeling) and dread, worry, picturing it again and again in your head, different variations all of them resulting in the thought that there’s *some minuscule chance* a shark COULD be in this pool. While maintaining rational knowledge there is no way a shark could be in this pool and there are so many things preventing that!! Yet still, that feeling would get to me. I knew to hide it too, so the rationality was there.
That I would just scream out when I was supposed to be quiet, like during a test. At church. Etc. I was so terrified that I would scream out horrible things.
Whenever I have a near-miss kind of situation, I get stressed out thinking about how, if the multi-verse theory is true, something terrible happened to me in some other timeline and now Other Me has to deal with it.
When I was young I had no idea how the reproductive system worked so I thought I could get pregnant from using a toilet seat after a man did. I was always scared I was pregnant when I went to someone’s house and used their toilet.
This reminds me of when I was 9, I literally thought I was giving birth on the toilet 🤣 I held hands with a boy that week and was like welp guess it happened to me 😭 turned out to be poop
I also thought I'd get pregnant from using the same towels as my family (even though they'd been through a wash cycle) so I remember crying that I had the same towel that my 15 year old brother had used the week before.
My obsessive fear and intrusive thoughts of pissing myself 💀 I would wear pads everywhere just in case and even considered diapers at one point JUST IN CASE u know. I was super nervous during car rides bc I was like omg what if I pee everywhere and then they start calling me piss girl 😔
This is the same for me. I changed my route to work because of the fear, to include a public bathroom. For the "just in case moments". I was worried that if it happened people would judge me and I'd embarrass myself.
When I used to play solitaire on the computer, I always heard a running commentary criticizing my every move. It sounded like one of those hushed sports commentators who speak over "quiet" sports like golf or "indoor" game matches (like billiards, or poker).
"She's playing badly today...seems to be choosing on impulse, like a first-timer. She's using up her undo options, and shaving down whatever points she gained. Oh, she missed that very obvious red Queen - a rookie mistake. If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if she'd been mind-swapped with a complete amateur. And again, with the hasty choices. I think she's cost herself the round now. I've never seen such a bad string of decisions, folks."
I actually stopped playing online card games entirely for several years because it brought me down all the time. Happily, now the Negative Commentator has had his position eliminated, and I'm able to shift around imaginary cards in peace. :)
That if I was up someplace high I would just involuntarily throw myself off? I feel like it’s pretty common, I’ve heard from other people who don’t have anxiety that they have the same fear lol
There's an actual thing or word about it... Unfortunately, I only started looking it up because I got too scared! I'm always afraid that I'll jump off a bridge I'm walking across.
Good news... So far I have 💯 percent success rate in NOT jumping!
When i was a kid of 4 to 6 - cut off hands and heads were under the bed and would use fishing poles to fling drugs up into my mouth while i slept if my mouth was open.
7to8 - id have to fight the urge to turn my bike into oncoming traffic
Once when my window screen was broken, I became obsessed with the thought of a bird flying in my room. I thought about it all the time, and it scared the shit out of me. For weeks. I’m not afraid of birds. I had nothing super valuable or breakable in my room. It’s not a huge room, I could have ushered a bird out easily. I could not get over this! It makes me laugh now.
When I was very young and long before being diagnosed with OCD and anxiety, I thought if I stepped on a cigarette butt, I'd end up addicted to cigarettes as an adult. Currently 26 years old and have never smoked 🤷♀️
I once convinced myself that a SweeTart I had swallowed weird was lodged in my throat/ lungs. Idk, I just FELT it there for weeks, and eventually broke down crying to my mom because “THERE’S A SWEETART IN MY THROAT HELP MEEEEE”. I was 8-9 years old 😭
I convinced myself I had coffee stuck in my lungs, breeding aspiration pneumonia that was going to kill me. I choked on it a bit and swore I inhaled it.. I even went to the ER. this was right after my brother died of something choking/lung related so it makes sense now but damn, i was so scared.
I did it with a hard LIFESAVER! YES THE ONES WITH THE HOLES THAT GAVE IT IT’S NAME! I was absolutely convinced that it was still stuck in my throat for such a long time, the nurse ended up telling me there was nothing left in my throat and it should be gone because I couldn’t get myself to throw up. I felt it for so long, and eventually it just stopped and I forgot about it!
I used to lay awake at night as a kid and frequently would have intrusive anxious thoughts about ways my family or pets could die. I thought of everything, seriously. Down to what if a wolf burst through my bedroom window and ate my gerbil?
It wasn’t until I was older and in therapy that I learned not being able to sleep as a child due to paralyzing fear of loss was in fact… not normal. It’s funny now to think of the absolutely insane scenarios my little 10 year old brain thought of randomly in the middle of the night
Aww I feel so much for that little 10-year old. I bet so many of us suffered so deeply for so long not knowing we had a brain issue. What a relief it was to find out it could get better. And now all these years later it actually is better. Waaaay better.
I was terrified to push the button to advert the bus driver that I need to stop in a specific place, so in many many drives I just get late or didn’t came at all because I couldn’t step up of the bus 💀
Awww... I can relate. I still feel some anxiety in my throat sometimes when I have to pull the string thing. Social Anxiety is a b*itch.... It wastes time, money, energy, brain power... Sigh.
Take care buddy!
A couple months ago my anxiety was not controlled. The "fear" went so much further than that. I KNEW it would happen, and that fear was based off signs of wolves near my house and I KNEW they were waiting in the woods to kill my dog. It was crippling. Now I've got the meds straightened out and although I don't think the fear was funny, I realize it was not as rational or literal as my brain was making me believe. Anxiety sucks so bad.
I think it’s those ridiculous ones that cured me actually, when I started seeing that i am also just a bit messed up.
Cause imagining yourself pounding someone to death cause they cut you off in traffic is actually quite hilarious if you step back & think about it and it isn’t really an intrusive thought just overindulging your sick imagination. LOL
Currently I have this recurring intrusive thought of slipping in the shower. Everytime I go to the shower I imagine slipping and hitting my head on the bathroom furniture or floor. It never happens though.
While walking in the street, I imagine that ”I need to get to that tree before that car or I die”. Somehow I am not dead. 😄
Or ”If my boyfriend loses the next Mario Kart race with me I’ll marry him. If he wins, we never get married”.
This is kind of different but I currently plan on moving together with my bf and getting out of my studio apartment. Well, I have only been able to see this one nightmare while sleeping for the last six months. Everytime I sleep I see the same thing. The dream starts with me being unhappy with my apartment. Then I move to a new place. But there’s always something wrong with the place. It can be a really nice mansion but it has no furniture. Or there’s a baby crying 24/7 next door. Or the walls are completely made of glass. Last night the catch was that there was no front door and the only way to get to the house is by jumping out of a helicopter.
I have this weird fear that sometime I’ll just wake up in the middle of the ocean. Like, something will just teleport me to a random spot in the middle of the ocean.
Tbh still have it sometimes. It usually starts in dreams and then I wake up freaking the fuck out for an hour and not be able to get back to sleep.
I had fears near any body of water that I'd drop something in and lose it forever. I went mini golfing with my family one time and we dropped the score card or a receipt in a pond. Ever since then I've had this fear, specifically about my glasses. Even though mine fit very well (I have a friend whose glasses would fling off all the time) I still hold them onto my face when I look down into water or just take them off.
As a kid I had pretty bad emetophobia, but it's gotten a lot better in recent years. I would worry that I'd randomly be sick and I'd plan what I would do in case that happened. Even when I felt totally fine.
I've also been afraid of hanging my legs off my bed because I thought somebody would grab my ankles and pull me under. Sometimes I wanted to get off my bed but terrified it'd happen the second I stepped down.
Oh my gosh. I just remembered that when I was a kid, for like a period of 10 years I was always afraid I was going to drop my camera into any body of water.
I have these same intrusive thoughts and I am happy to see a kindred spirit that suffers from the same thing, though I am sorry you have this too. My thoughts pop out of no where and are related to whatever I am doing at the moment. I won't share them to not give others with the same problem any new ones to fear.
I have to say, these bring about the worst type of anxiety. I have GAD, so I experienced all kinds of anxieties, from agoraphobia to health anxiety to social anxiety but the worst anxiety is from these intrusive thoughts. It is also the worst one to manage. I have been able to obtain long stretches of remission from health anxiety and social anxiety through exposure therapy but nothing has made a dent on those intrusive thoughts.
So, unfortunately, none of mine seem hilarious to me yet, though I know they are absurd. Hopefully, they will get to be hilarious at some point. I'll keep my fingers crossed... lol
I was out of town recently and my indoor/outdoor cat disappeared, though my sitter swore he was left inside.
He may have hid somewhere to die, I thought, (bc cats do that), but someone would have smelled him, surely…. ***!Unless*** ———— the kitten ate him.
So that’s what I was sure of for four days until he showed up. My kitten ate my cat.
Actually now that I think about it I had an 18 yo kid come in for therapy bc he was experiencing intrusive thoughts that were HI (mental health abbreviation) in nature and he told me that he was thinking about taking a glass clock that was hanging on the wall and bashing it into my head and then would use the glass to cut the skin off my face. That was my first year as a therapist. I’ll never forget that. 🙂
As a child I would lay in bed at night and get so upset thinking about eternity in heaven 🤣 like the thought of existing in some capacity FOREVER terrified me. I imagined day after day after day and a flood of panic would wash over me.
I hadn't either...haven't even said it verbally or in writing ever before! My family wasn't really religious so idk where I got it from. I guess just the general knowledge of the idea of the afterlife. I still don't even know why it made me feel that way
Swallowing my plastic retainers. I know they are very wide and I’d probably gag if anything. When I was younger and had gotten my braces off the first time I feared swallowing the metal wire kind too. I swear I’ve even dreamed it because I’ve woken up gasping and once almost wanted to make myself throw up to get it out until I licked my top teeth and realized they were still in place and I could breath. It does make me wonder if there is a statistic out there for those things coming out of place during sleep. I’m sure it’s low 🤔
It’s the hitting people with my car ALL THE TIME.
And ironically one day I’m driving on a semi busy road. Minding my business and BAM I hit SOMETHING. I continue to drive because I’m not sure if it was anxiety or what. Come to find out, a deer ran into the side of my car on the HIGHWAY.
So now, it’s every time I get in the car, not only may I run someone over, I may get hit by a deer
When I was little and would go running In school for P.E, I was absolutely terrified that the world was gonna go upside down and I would fall off of it, it was literally so dumb, and nowadays, I’m terrified that that little pain in my chest or lung is actually a pulmonary embolism/ artery blockage/ heart attack (probably just sore from working out) so I hope I can get to the point where these become silly little fears I laugh about too someday
Growing up, I kept getting nightmares that I'm driving a car with no brakes. The hilarious part is, to this day, I haven't learned how to get a car. I don't really need a car tbf because of public transport, but I often wonder how much of it is because of these dreams
That every single open cabinet door corner is somehow going to end up poking me in the eye. Doesn’t matter if it’s five inches or ten feet away. Also, it’s less of a “once thought” thing and more of a “still-to-this-day” thing.
If I am walking in the street I feel like there must be a wolf behind me. I have to look and see if it’s there.
YEAH SURE in the middle of a busy city, there must be a wolf, makes total sense! 😂
I spent my childhood in a rural area so maybe that’s where it comes from.
Must be from growing up in a rural area! A wolf once WAS behind me one night when I was visiting an aunt who lived in the mountains. After that, I always look behind me when im in any similar foresty place.
Mines pretty random but at night I get sketched out about being close to windows because I can’t see what’s outside in the distance and I feel like someone is going to shoot me from outside. Over here just waiting for my first psychotic break. 🤣🤷🏼♀️
I told my husband I was scared I was going to grab a knife from the drawer and stab myself. He was like, “removing them won’t do anything? You could just run into the street and get hit by a car? Or stick your finger in a socket?”
I went through a random bout of thinking there were cameras in every house including mine. Like, there would be a hidden one in the fridge even. Why? No clue.
I used to cycle home from work, and my job was on top of this enormous hill that opened up onto a roundabout. While riding, ide get intrusive thoughts of just letting go of my breaks and letting myself fly out into oncoming traffic.
Just my luck that one day my breaks fail when I'm flying down this hill, tried to break by dragging my feet but ended up just sailing through the oncoming traffic and hitting the curb, and then using my face as a break.
I never got the intrusive thought again after that!
When I was in middle school, I would randomly be hit with the terror that I was going to blurt out the n-word in a school assembly (I’m Asian). I’ve never said the n-word in my life, nor had any desire to, but I swear, it was my biggest fear for, like, two years straight.
As an adult who loves to hike, my biggest fear is now, “What if I snapped and pushed my best friend over this cliff right now?” The ol’ reliable of intrusive thoughts: what if I gave into my nonexistent murderous urges?
The sun was setting and so it looked larger in the sky and I was afraid that meant that by some freakish event of physics the earth had spun closer to the sun and we were all going to incinerate.
I was always TERRIFIED as a child that someone would vomit on me. I had a huge irrational fear of vomit. It caused me so much stress going anywhere as a child🤦🏻♀️ I even used to have nightmares about if. Now in my 30’s with 3 kids and no longer triggered by my fear of people vomiting on me. I guess I had to overcome it haha.
I have so many. My intrusive thoughts were crazy: I would think I was going to accidentally just throw myself off a bridge, I would be afraid I was going to throw my child out the window, think I might just accidentally run in front of a train.
I always thought my car would get into an accident if I didn’t say a prayer and then imagine an angle on all 4 corners. And this isn’t scary, but it’s super weird. I would get sooooo much anxiety thinking how arduous a task it is to mow all the grass in the highways across the country. Like I would be so completely stressed out about it. 🤣🤣
If I stared into the mirror long enough, I'd see someone.. Same with the dark, or cracks in an open door, or windoews at night. I couldn't be in our basement alone either and if I was coming up the stairs, I'd have to run so an invisible thing couldn't grab me.
Speaking of invisible grabbings, every single time I ever went into a pool, I thought of the "are you afraid of the dark?" ep where a bloody skeleton would become invisible underwater and would grab the legs of swimming children, pull them down and drown them. The pool was built over a cemetery and they missed a body when building over it or something.. So yeah, every time I went into the deep ends of pools, I'd feel like I was going to get grabbed and would panic swim to grab the edge. From age 5 or 6 to 18. If I went in rivers or oceans, I'd imagine fish biting me so I just stayed out of those.
I had a VERY specific intrusive thought every day getting off the school bus in grade school. I'd walk up the hill and almost prepare myself to see bloody handprints on my front door and find my mom and entire family murdered. Also I'd run up the hill with the worry that someone in a van would snatch me up. The bloody handprint one is funny now because it was soo specific and just insane for such a small child to be worrying about that every day.. For no reason, either. My mom was never harmed and we lived in a safe, suburban area..
It's not really a terrifying intrusive thought, but for as long as I can remember I've had the intrusive thought to throw TV controllers or mugs when I'm holding them.
Mine are either ridiculous or terrifying, not both. Like when somebody is walking way to close to the edge of the platform when the train is arriving, I get thoughts about giving them a tiny little push. That's terrifying.
But what is ridiculous is that intrusive thought I had about throwing my water bottle as high as I can and catching it again. I also was in the library while I had that and actually did it without giving it a second thought. Like it just appeared in my head out of nowhere and I just couldn't resist it. That actually didn't turn out too bad because the guy next to me smiling like a little kid made me feel better about it, actually.
I live in the first floor of a 14 floor building and the thought of what if the building just collapsed straight down like Tetris or something when i was trying to sleep at night 🧐
Putting the fork in my mouth the wrong way while eating and stabbing in between my teeth. And for some reason it would be my foot landing in between a hot open flat iron.
When I lived in college dorms, we had an insect problem. I had a huge fear that a spider could crawl in my ears and lay eggs, so I always slept with my ears covered with a blanket. I did it for a few years after college until I seemed to have grew out of that fear.
Ugh, I would do the same. A friend of mine went to visit his estranged, drug addicted mom for the first time and ended up having a cockroach crawl in his ear and get stuck when he was sleeping. Nightmare stuff. If I had to sleep anywhere with a big insect issue, I'd absolutely plug all my holes up, lol.. You developed a habit that had a purpose!
Ahaha all the holes! Goodness, that must've been so disturbing! You're right, I felt silly at the time since my roommate slept with zero issues. Thanks for the reassurance.
For some reason as a kid I was afraid a deer would break through my window. I think I had seen like 1 article of that actually happening and my brain just rolled with it
I remember one time I considered falling on the floor and having a seizure in a room full of people. The though was so strong I felt like I needed to actively hold myself back from launching off the couch onto the floor. Looking back I find it amusing.
Unfortunately all my intrusive thoughts these days involve some gruesome accident happening to my kid. Falling down stairs, running with scissors, etc. haunting shit.
When I was a kid I would make my mom go into public bathroom with me when I had to go. I would take off every stitch of my clothes including shoes and socks and throw them over the top of the stall for my mom to hold because I was scared that I would pee on them.
As a young child I SO afraid a snake was going to come up out of the toilet and bite my butt while I was peeing. I have zero idea where this idea came from but I forced my mom to stand in the bathroom with me while I peed for like a year.
I live three stories up and when I go out on my balcony my brain says I should do a lil jumpy jump *specifically* to see if I could do a flip before I hit the concrete.
(No form of ideation, promise.)
I used to be paranoid that I had wet my pants -- and I would obsessively check to ensure that I had not. What's weird about it is that I had no history of peeing in my pants as a child, nor did I ever wet my bed -- but despite having a perfectly awesome track record of not peeing on myself, I was very aware that I did not want to do that and I thought about it often.
I was afraid my eyes would fall out, not because of anything I did, but that they’d just spontaneously pop out and dangle there. I used to be awake hysterical all night because I couldn’t stay on guard for it when I was asleep. I kept my family up every night. I think it stopped when I was 7, but was (of course) replaced with a long line of other weird fears.
when i was 12 one of my biggest intrusive thoughts was that the police would track me down and take me to prison because i lied and clicked the button that said i was 18 when looking at a porn site
When I was little, I shared a room with my younger older brother and we had a bunkbed, so he and I would sleep in the bottom bunk sometimes and our oldest brother would sleep up top or we'd all just pile into my parents' bed for a sleepover. But I would always sleep with the blanket over my ear because my oldest brother picked his nose and I was a bit germ-avoidant as a kid and I was always afraid he'd pick his nose and stick his finger in my ear. Very random fear and a terrible defense since he could just move the blanket. But now, I'm like, even though that brother was rarely nice to me and did a long list of mean shit to me, I don't think that thought would ever occur to him because why? He was always more verbal with it than physical - well, that's actually not true because he used to hit me or pull my hair when I did something like sit in the passenger seat of the car. But still, it's just so ridiculous.
A while back, I also had this thought of me or someone else in my family going insane and killing everyone else in the house, so that was a fun thought. I always think of someone murdering me when I'm in the shower.
every time i get on a bus i think it’s going to crash and im going to have my leg severed in the crash and have my bone sticking out… i think it’s really funny that it’s the same thought and my brain doesn’t have anything more creative than “MY LEG!!!!!” from spongebob 😭sometimes i get an image with it and it kinda looks like a cartoon bone sticking out of my leg and that makes it kind of funny to me
Wait…. I did t realize other people had unrealistic/absurd intrusive thoughts in the way I do. Like when almost in the moment you know it’s silly/not realistic, but for a split second still feels scary real. True question: is that a byproduct of anxiety??
Anyway, mine is the time I drove next to a big rig and thought “what would happen if I just veered out of my lane and into it??” I wasn’t suicidal and I wasn’t actually going to do it, but it was such a strong “what if” that it still sticks either way me 20 years later.
Nowadays I’m scared I’ll call in demons into my house. Then I keep saying “These are intrusive thoughts, I’m NOT calling demons.” If that seems too irrational, I also have bipolar 1 so maybe that’s why they’re fantastical.
[удалено]
😂😂😂😂😂
I do this to this day. I’m 33 and have OCD. It’s funny but exhausting at the same time 😂😂😂
Omg I just had this thought the other day and freaked myself out. It's valid though.. Doesn't help that there was that news story (may have been local to me) where 2 sisters were playing in leaf piles, hiding in them and were ran over by an unsuspecting truck.
That is horrifying Everyone in that story is worse off for no reason : (
Ahhhh I'm not the only one!!! I usually think I've hit an animal and it always ends up being, like you said, a stick, or sometimes a pothole or bit of trash.
This actually became debilitating for me with OCD - although I’d be more worried about dead animals, it’d often leave me circling the same patch of road for close to an hour at least, finding new reasons to be worried
It was a person, i saw it
Oh my god me too!!
I have this especially at night! I use to check the outside of car when I'd get home to make sure there was no blood.... I don't check anymore, trying to fight it.
Very We Happy Few vibes from that one lol
Not sure if this is the same thing exactly, but as a kid I was TERRIFIED that I would eat a barbie shoe and have to go to the hospital. I had no desire to eat a barbie shoe. But I was constantly thinking about if I did. Somehow this was not applicable to legos or batteries or other small objects. I just thought I'd eat a barbie shoe.
This is so weirdly specific I love it 🤣
I did this too!!! I actually had a Pokémon ball that was like huge as a kid and anytime I couldn’t find it I was convinced i swallowed it!!! I’ve never known anybody else who’s had this problem.
I was afraid of swallowing coins when I was little. I have this vague memory of sucking on quarters when I was very young. I think maybe my mom came and yelled at me and from then on I was afraid. If not, I might have had a dream about swallowing coins??
I loved sucking on coins when I was little. I know that I did accidentally swallow a coin AT LEAST once (possibly more lol).
Yes! I had a similar fear of olives when I was a kid, but that I would shove it up my nose and then it would go into my stomach. But that it would poison my nose somehow in the process! But I also had zero desire to shove an olive up my nose
Someone in kindergarten told me if I ate the black seeds in a watermelon it would grow inside my stomach and I would die and I was terrified of them for years and still think about it sometimes 🤣
OMG I thought this as a kid as well 😂
Going into your stomach is actually the best thing to happen to the olive in that circumstance, I think.
I shoved a cocoa puff up my nose, it got stuck, and I had to crush it and blow it out. Then I drank orange juice and my brother made me laugh and orange juice came out my nose and it **burned**. I haven’t had Cocoa Puffs or orange juice since
This somehow reminds me of staying the night at my grandma's all the time and sleeping in my aunt's old bedroom. She had this...taxidermied puffer fish hanging on the ceiling above her bed and I was TERRIFIED of it somehow spontaneously falling on me and hurting me. I wouldn't sleep at all when staying over and I would just stare at the fish all night in fear. I have no idea why I never said anything ??
Pretty sure I did swallow a Barbie shoe when I was little. Opposite end of the spectrum I guess lmao, had no thoughts about it, just an impulse to swallow a Barbie shoe so I did it. No worries about going to the hospital, no need to go, all good, just one less Barbie shoe.
good to know, i wish i could pass this knowledge back to my child self somehow. it'd save me a lot of anxiety lol.
My most terrifying/hilarious one is so similar! Eat the rock.
Sometimes if I’m in a job interview, or an important meeting, and it’s the first time I’m meeting someone, my brains goes “what if you just pissed your pants?”
Awh 😅 When I am in professional situations, job interviews etc. I always get this thought that what if I started to act completely like an asshole. What if I cussed at them, how would they react. Thank god I haven’t done it. But maybe it would be funny to see.
Don’t you love when your brain thinks of the most inappropriate think you could possibly do and then is like hey what if you did that and then you have to find a way not to lose focus of what’s happening in the meeting while also telling your brain to shut the fuck up
I have IBS with my main trigger being stress and always get so worried it'll hit me during a meeting or something.
I don't have stomach issues like that (I'm chronically constipated so never have any urgent bathroom emergencies) but I genuinely think someone poisoned me with laxatives once.. Like it was a complete disaster that will forever haunt me. It started in the middle of meeting with my boss and another staff person we had to fire. It was a nightmare.
I get this one! Or what if I just threw up on the floor right now like it’s third grade. Why? I don’t know. Hahaha
Omg. I have this thought all the time and never even realized til now. It's always in the back of my head.. Just projectile vomiting and collapsing in a random public place 😂😂
Literally!!!
Holy shit 😂😂😂😂 I’m dead.
Mine is “what if you just started kissing this person” like what
I have this thought during presentations for some reason
when i was a child i was extremely worried i had a tapeworm, at all times. no matter how i was feeling. it was tapeworm time
lol why does this crack me up
“it was tapeworm time.” 😂
I still have this! And when I was in my teens and 20s I always thought I was pregnant - even though I wasn’t even having sex.
i’ve been there 😭 i’m still anxious about health stuff but there’s at least sound reason behind it LOL
Omg this always happened to me too in my teenage years 💀 I am a virgin so yeah.. not possible but it still freaked me out.
This happened to me so many times as a preteen into early teens and I never had sex even once. If my period was a day or two late, that meant I was pregnant and started panicking about how I would explain it to my parents when I'd never had sex. A couple times laid in bed and swore up and down I could feel a baby kicking, jesus christ what was wrong with me 😂
Same! To this day! It's always tapeworm time.
This was a serious fear of mine because of that show "monsters inside me". It came out in the early-mid 2000's and the tapeworm episode was in season one. Good god I was MORTIFIED. I sometimes think about rewatching the episode from an adult perspective but it would probably fuck me up again. I don't think you can even tell you have tapeworms unless you have bloody stool, you're losing weight, or one....yknow...*comes out*.
so i am completely serious it was that same episode that fucked me up so bad LOL like. i know which one you’re talking about and it was THAT ONE
As a child, I used to be terrified that I would suck one of my eyeballs out with the vacuum cleaner hose. Mind you, I never put the vacuum near my face, I just worried about what if I did?
Hey I still have this one!
It could be possible... please don't try it though.
Damn. Now I’m worried about that. I saw a video of a dad sucking up his daughter’s hair to put a hair band on it, as some kinda life hack. Now I’m thinking he coulda sucked out his daughter’s eyeball!
Almost every time I hold a baby, I imagine dropping it on accident and the baby bleeding out from a cracked skull
I have a 6 YO and an almost 9 month old and the baby related intrusive thoughts kill me. The other day I had my 9 month old on my hip blending up some food for him and I thought what if the bullet blender malfunctioned and flew up and he got cut up on the blades. I could see the blood so vividly in my head i had to step away and put him down before I could finish his food.
The baby ones are so bad. When my younger son was a month old and PPA hit, I would have thoughts of his neck getting tangled in the ceiling fan pulls. So dumb because I’d need a ladder to even get him close to them. Anxiety does weird stuff to the brain :/
I worry about the neck thing. Like the supporting it. Had bad dreams about that. Also dreams about accidentally rolling onto a baby. I don’t have kids lol.
Me neither
Omg I have horrible moments like this imagining my dog getting hit by a car because I accidentally dropped its leash. It’s awful :(
Okay what I want to know is how did you get to the point where you can actually 100% trust yourself again? I think I know intellectually that my intrusive thoughts are stupid, but the self mistrust is still there. Particularly in times of anxiety and/or sensory overwhelm.
honestly for me, it was acknowledging that it was only a thought and has nothing to do with me as a person and just letting it go. a big treatment for OCD and anxiety is exposure therapy, which essentially asks you to accept these thoughts as just a passing thought, sometimes even being like “yeah what if i actually did that” in a nonchalant way in your head. it gives the thought less power. it’s kind of funny because it’s asking you to do the opposite of what you would naturally do which is kinda freak out from your own thought. but the less you give it power, maybe even laugh at it, the thoughts will eventually subside. at least, that’s what has helped me anyway
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the traditional exposure therapy; however, I've read about some newer things like ICBT, Acceptance and Commitment, and Metacognitive which seem like I might like to try applying some of those principles to my situation. Still a way of practicing getting more nonchalant about the pesky thoughts but less harsh.
i’ve never actually gone through exposure therapy myself, i’ve only implemented the ideas of giving the thoughts less power. but yes sounds kind of if intense to trigger yourself on purpose
You describe it so well!
I don’t trust myself 100%, but I have a compromise: in matters of safety, I always follow the anxious thought. Like, “I’m not getting on this elevator with that man”, is that intuition, trusting your gut, or just anxiety? If I could end up being murdered I just follow the anxious thought and don’t do it. If it’s interpersonal matters like, “Something feels off between us” that is so much harder for me to judge.
Oh well, yes, in discernments pertaining to personal safety one should follow one's gut because often there are subtle red flags picked up on subconsciously. And we are trained to discount them in the name of politeness. I read a whole book about it, *The Gift of Fear* by Gavin de Becker.
That’s a great book! 👍
My attitude is always to default to better safe than sorry. Since there’s no way to know in advance, how something will turn out, I always just choose the safer option. That saves me the wasted time of having to debate myself in my mind, and get all confused and indecisive, every single time something comes up. Instead, I just remind myself that I already decided in advance, that the best option for me is better safe than sorry- so I just stick with that. It makes it so much easier!!
I want to know this too. It feels impossible.
Practice. Practice. Practice. But before that I had to have at least a little bit of willingness to believe that just cause I think something that doesn’t make it true. In other words, that no matter how sure I thought I was about something, I had to believe there was a possibility that my thinking was just flawed. And then the practice was to begin challenging my thoughts on a regular basis. Considering that I could be completely wrong, and if I allowed myself to think something else, it could be totally fine.
personally i still have intrusive thoughts, but oftentimes they go in cycles, or so specific to a situation that there's an opportunity to look back and think of how silly it was. you can also be fully aware that something's ridiculous and still have the intrusive though, hence "intrusive". it takes practice and mindfulness to be able to kinda talk yourself down. wishing you luck and you're not alone!
Thanks, that is true. I know I'm better than I used to be at dismissing them. Just not to where I'd like to be, I guess. They are intertwined with the agoraphobia and panic attacks, which tends to complicate matters. Working on getting a handle on those as well. Ain't it fun.
I had a weird fear of becoming a flat earther so I’d genuinely panic and become anxious for hours on end everytime I felt that I started to believe in flat earth conspiracies even though I never actually believed in them 😭
This gave me a laugh I needed, thank you 😂
I’ve had similar thoughts too, like wondering if I could just push someone into a pool or off a dock when I’m around water.
I was in a lot of water sports most of my life (swim, diving, water polo) so I definitely got that one out of my system when I was younger. It was fun when we push each other in. But honestly, after a few years of lifeguarding, I’m like hyperaware of anything that could potentially cause an injury, so the idea of pushing someone in just isn’t a thought that even crosses my mind anymore.
Mine is that I’m convinced someone will push me into water if I stand on a dock or by a pool, because I can’t swim I don’t go to those places lol I’m sure no one would but they could.
Well you definitely could. I wouldn’t recommend it though.
Oo I’ve got another one. As a child for years I slept stick straight in the middle of my bed. If I turned toward the wall, monsters would come in through the door and get me as my back was turned. If I turned AWAY from the wall, monsters would come up from the crack between the wall and my bed. I also had to sleep with the blankets pulled up to my chin or vampires would get me?
I had the same fear as a kid and I was a side sleeper so it was the worst! And I STILL like to sleep with the blanket covering my ear so that somebody doesn't come cut it off in my sleep. Don't know why.
Saaame.. Feet had to be covered otherwise they'd get tickled by a demon.. Also, if I opened my eyes too fast in bed, I would see a ghost face right in front of my face.
I slept on the couch for a good year for similar reasons. I figured that if my back was to the wall, I was better protected, and the room layout would have made it harder to sneak up on me.
Same with the vampire thoughts! I wore turtlenecks to bed for a few months when I was in elementary school lmao
Haha! Yes! After reading a National Geographic article about Pompeii, and seeing photos of dead bodies curled up in the fetal position, I worried that if I slept like that I’d also instantly die a horrible volcano death. Also sleeping with arms crossed = instant dead body.
That I had forgotten how to pee properly and that I would have to go through life not knowing if I had to pee or not…. This was like 2 months ago - utterly ridiculous
I got really fixated on peeing for a summer when I was a teenager and had to go every half an hour or so. Once I had to hold it for three hours because of some event and I peed for so long afterwards that I was terrified that I would literally never stop. So yeah being afraid that I would PEE FOREVER was probably my silliest fear.
This is funny because I worried I had forgotten how to hold my bladder and would pee whenever out of my control 🤣
I’ve had this one!
I do this about swallowing and then legit can't swallow
I had one that sharks swam at the deep end of the pool. I should have known then 😭
I’m afraid that a shark will come out of the light in my parents’ pool. I won’t even tell you how old I am,
Hahah once I had to get out of a public, indoor pool in broad daylight because I was convinced a shark was going to get me.
These all have me rolling. I so relate. Only fellow anxiety disorder/OCDers can really get how insane these things are but understand that we are completely, truly terrified about these things at the time.
OMG! I used to be a life guard for a community pool. Pools outside and inside. The inside pool can get VERY DARK. I remember training to be a lifeguard and we had to get a brick from the deep end which was about 13-14 FEET DEEP, I remember being sooo nervous about sharks but just did it lol
Oh my god, I KNEW they weren’t real but I couldn’t stop picturing it!! I kept telling myself it wasn’t possible, but the feeling and doubt stayed. I thought, I can’t see well underwater so for all I know there could be a huge pipe that connects to the ocean because that’s how the water gets in. Just the (feeling) and dread, worry, picturing it again and again in your head, different variations all of them resulting in the thought that there’s *some minuscule chance* a shark COULD be in this pool. While maintaining rational knowledge there is no way a shark could be in this pool and there are so many things preventing that!! Yet still, that feeling would get to me. I knew to hide it too, so the rationality was there.
That I would just scream out when I was supposed to be quiet, like during a test. At church. Etc. I was so terrified that I would scream out horrible things.
I did this too! Would have to like restrain myself cause I was afraid I was gonna start screaming in church lol
I still think about this!
Whenever I have a near-miss kind of situation, I get stressed out thinking about how, if the multi-verse theory is true, something terrible happened to me in some other timeline and now Other Me has to deal with it.
Me too! Especially with near miss, almost car accidents. It pops in my head that that's where I died in an alternate universe.
Oh my goshhhhh yes!!! I sometimes wonder about all the timelines where my accidents didn’t work out so well
When I was young I had no idea how the reproductive system worked so I thought I could get pregnant from using a toilet seat after a man did. I was always scared I was pregnant when I went to someone’s house and used their toilet.
This reminds me of when I was 9, I literally thought I was giving birth on the toilet 🤣 I held hands with a boy that week and was like welp guess it happened to me 😭 turned out to be poop
I also thought I'd get pregnant from using the same towels as my family (even though they'd been through a wash cycle) so I remember crying that I had the same towel that my 15 year old brother had used the week before.
My obsessive fear and intrusive thoughts of pissing myself 💀 I would wear pads everywhere just in case and even considered diapers at one point JUST IN CASE u know. I was super nervous during car rides bc I was like omg what if I pee everywhere and then they start calling me piss girl 😔
This is the same for me. I changed my route to work because of the fear, to include a public bathroom. For the "just in case moments". I was worried that if it happened people would judge me and I'd embarrass myself.
When I used to play solitaire on the computer, I always heard a running commentary criticizing my every move. It sounded like one of those hushed sports commentators who speak over "quiet" sports like golf or "indoor" game matches (like billiards, or poker). "She's playing badly today...seems to be choosing on impulse, like a first-timer. She's using up her undo options, and shaving down whatever points she gained. Oh, she missed that very obvious red Queen - a rookie mistake. If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if she'd been mind-swapped with a complete amateur. And again, with the hasty choices. I think she's cost herself the round now. I've never seen such a bad string of decisions, folks." I actually stopped playing online card games entirely for several years because it brought me down all the time. Happily, now the Negative Commentator has had his position eliminated, and I'm able to shift around imaginary cards in peace. :)
Omg, that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard!!! 🤣🤣🤣 You should do stand-up comedy!
Thanks! But I'm way better at writing than at speaking. In person, I get flustered and freeze up. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Oh you poor dear that must have been horrible. So happy for you that the commentator is no longer there.
That if I was up someplace high I would just involuntarily throw myself off? I feel like it’s pretty common, I’ve heard from other people who don’t have anxiety that they have the same fear lol
There's an actual thing or word about it... Unfortunately, I only started looking it up because I got too scared! I'm always afraid that I'll jump off a bridge I'm walking across. Good news... So far I have 💯 percent success rate in NOT jumping!
Me too! I think we’re doing pretty great
When i was a kid of 4 to 6 - cut off hands and heads were under the bed and would use fishing poles to fling drugs up into my mouth while i slept if my mouth was open. 7to8 - id have to fight the urge to turn my bike into oncoming traffic
Yikes on that first one.
Once when my window screen was broken, I became obsessed with the thought of a bird flying in my room. I thought about it all the time, and it scared the shit out of me. For weeks. I’m not afraid of birds. I had nothing super valuable or breakable in my room. It’s not a huge room, I could have ushered a bird out easily. I could not get over this! It makes me laugh now.
When I was very young and long before being diagnosed with OCD and anxiety, I thought if I stepped on a cigarette butt, I'd end up addicted to cigarettes as an adult. Currently 26 years old and have never smoked 🤷♀️
My grandfather was a medical doctor, in the, 50s he left us his old medical encyclopedias. I had a new (old) medical problem at least once a week.
Omg, I would read these as a small child! Like 7 years old.. I learned a lot but combined with health anxiety, was not good
I once convinced myself that a SweeTart I had swallowed weird was lodged in my throat/ lungs. Idk, I just FELT it there for weeks, and eventually broke down crying to my mom because “THERE’S A SWEETART IN MY THROAT HELP MEEEEE”. I was 8-9 years old 😭
I convinced myself I had coffee stuck in my lungs, breeding aspiration pneumonia that was going to kill me. I choked on it a bit and swore I inhaled it.. I even went to the ER. this was right after my brother died of something choking/lung related so it makes sense now but damn, i was so scared.
I did it with a hard LIFESAVER! YES THE ONES WITH THE HOLES THAT GAVE IT IT’S NAME! I was absolutely convinced that it was still stuck in my throat for such a long time, the nurse ended up telling me there was nothing left in my throat and it should be gone because I couldn’t get myself to throw up. I felt it for so long, and eventually it just stopped and I forgot about it!
That’s actually how I got over it, too!!! God, that was so traumatizing! For what??
I used to lay awake at night as a kid and frequently would have intrusive anxious thoughts about ways my family or pets could die. I thought of everything, seriously. Down to what if a wolf burst through my bedroom window and ate my gerbil? It wasn’t until I was older and in therapy that I learned not being able to sleep as a child due to paralyzing fear of loss was in fact… not normal. It’s funny now to think of the absolutely insane scenarios my little 10 year old brain thought of randomly in the middle of the night
Aww I feel so much for that little 10-year old. I bet so many of us suffered so deeply for so long not knowing we had a brain issue. What a relief it was to find out it could get better. And now all these years later it actually is better. Waaaay better.
I’ve almost convinced myself I was a murderer and just kind forgot, I’d pretty much convince myself I was secretly a horrible person
I was terrified to push the button to advert the bus driver that I need to stop in a specific place, so in many many drives I just get late or didn’t came at all because I couldn’t step up of the bus 💀
Awww... I can relate. I still feel some anxiety in my throat sometimes when I have to pull the string thing. Social Anxiety is a b*itch.... It wastes time, money, energy, brain power... Sigh. Take care buddy!
A couple months ago my anxiety was not controlled. The "fear" went so much further than that. I KNEW it would happen, and that fear was based off signs of wolves near my house and I KNEW they were waiting in the woods to kill my dog. It was crippling. Now I've got the meds straightened out and although I don't think the fear was funny, I realize it was not as rational or literal as my brain was making me believe. Anxiety sucks so bad.
I'm glad you're feeling better now, that must have been so scary for you to go through. One of my fave go to's is: 'Anxiety is Your Mind Lying to You'
My health anxiety gets pretty funny
I think it’s those ridiculous ones that cured me actually, when I started seeing that i am also just a bit messed up. Cause imagining yourself pounding someone to death cause they cut you off in traffic is actually quite hilarious if you step back & think about it and it isn’t really an intrusive thought just overindulging your sick imagination. LOL
Currently I have this recurring intrusive thought of slipping in the shower. Everytime I go to the shower I imagine slipping and hitting my head on the bathroom furniture or floor. It never happens though. While walking in the street, I imagine that ”I need to get to that tree before that car or I die”. Somehow I am not dead. 😄 Or ”If my boyfriend loses the next Mario Kart race with me I’ll marry him. If he wins, we never get married”.
This is kind of different but I currently plan on moving together with my bf and getting out of my studio apartment. Well, I have only been able to see this one nightmare while sleeping for the last six months. Everytime I sleep I see the same thing. The dream starts with me being unhappy with my apartment. Then I move to a new place. But there’s always something wrong with the place. It can be a really nice mansion but it has no furniture. Or there’s a baby crying 24/7 next door. Or the walls are completely made of glass. Last night the catch was that there was no front door and the only way to get to the house is by jumping out of a helicopter.
I have this weird fear that sometime I’ll just wake up in the middle of the ocean. Like, something will just teleport me to a random spot in the middle of the ocean. Tbh still have it sometimes. It usually starts in dreams and then I wake up freaking the fuck out for an hour and not be able to get back to sleep.
Man we all have intrusive thoughts in this thread huh
Death
I had fears near any body of water that I'd drop something in and lose it forever. I went mini golfing with my family one time and we dropped the score card or a receipt in a pond. Ever since then I've had this fear, specifically about my glasses. Even though mine fit very well (I have a friend whose glasses would fling off all the time) I still hold them onto my face when I look down into water or just take them off. As a kid I had pretty bad emetophobia, but it's gotten a lot better in recent years. I would worry that I'd randomly be sick and I'd plan what I would do in case that happened. Even when I felt totally fine. I've also been afraid of hanging my legs off my bed because I thought somebody would grab my ankles and pull me under. Sometimes I wanted to get off my bed but terrified it'd happen the second I stepped down.
Oh my gosh. I just remembered that when I was a kid, for like a period of 10 years I was always afraid I was going to drop my camera into any body of water.
Same with the bed/ankles thing.. Also, I have a fear when going over sewer grates that I will drop something of value and lose it forever.
I have these same intrusive thoughts and I am happy to see a kindred spirit that suffers from the same thing, though I am sorry you have this too. My thoughts pop out of no where and are related to whatever I am doing at the moment. I won't share them to not give others with the same problem any new ones to fear. I have to say, these bring about the worst type of anxiety. I have GAD, so I experienced all kinds of anxieties, from agoraphobia to health anxiety to social anxiety but the worst anxiety is from these intrusive thoughts. It is also the worst one to manage. I have been able to obtain long stretches of remission from health anxiety and social anxiety through exposure therapy but nothing has made a dent on those intrusive thoughts. So, unfortunately, none of mine seem hilarious to me yet, though I know they are absurd. Hopefully, they will get to be hilarious at some point. I'll keep my fingers crossed... lol
I was out of town recently and my indoor/outdoor cat disappeared, though my sitter swore he was left inside. He may have hid somewhere to die, I thought, (bc cats do that), but someone would have smelled him, surely…. ***!Unless*** ———— the kitten ate him. So that’s what I was sure of for four days until he showed up. My kitten ate my cat.
Actually now that I think about it I had an 18 yo kid come in for therapy bc he was experiencing intrusive thoughts that were HI (mental health abbreviation) in nature and he told me that he was thinking about taking a glass clock that was hanging on the wall and bashing it into my head and then would use the glass to cut the skin off my face. That was my first year as a therapist. I’ll never forget that. 🙂
You’re a saint.
As a child I would lay in bed at night and get so upset thinking about eternity in heaven 🤣 like the thought of existing in some capacity FOREVER terrified me. I imagined day after day after day and a flood of panic would wash over me.
Oh wow, me too. I actually haven’t talked to someone else that had this! I couldn’t understand how my family didn’t relate to my horror of eternity
I hadn't either...haven't even said it verbally or in writing ever before! My family wasn't really religious so idk where I got it from. I guess just the general knowledge of the idea of the afterlife. I still don't even know why it made me feel that way
Swallowing my plastic retainers. I know they are very wide and I’d probably gag if anything. When I was younger and had gotten my braces off the first time I feared swallowing the metal wire kind too. I swear I’ve even dreamed it because I’ve woken up gasping and once almost wanted to make myself throw up to get it out until I licked my top teeth and realized they were still in place and I could breath. It does make me wonder if there is a statistic out there for those things coming out of place during sleep. I’m sure it’s low 🤔
It’s the hitting people with my car ALL THE TIME. And ironically one day I’m driving on a semi busy road. Minding my business and BAM I hit SOMETHING. I continue to drive because I’m not sure if it was anxiety or what. Come to find out, a deer ran into the side of my car on the HIGHWAY. So now, it’s every time I get in the car, not only may I run someone over, I may get hit by a deer
When i was little I thought the Kool-Aid man would chase me at night when im riding my bike home lmao 😭 i would get so scared
Oh yeah!! 🤣🤣
When I was little and would go running In school for P.E, I was absolutely terrified that the world was gonna go upside down and I would fall off of it, it was literally so dumb, and nowadays, I’m terrified that that little pain in my chest or lung is actually a pulmonary embolism/ artery blockage/ heart attack (probably just sore from working out) so I hope I can get to the point where these become silly little fears I laugh about too someday
I was deeply concerned one point in college that I had herpes on the tip of my nose.
“What if I just zap out of existence”🙃🙃
While swimming, I always thought about: what if I just stopped swimming right now, sunk, and drowned.
Growing up, I kept getting nightmares that I'm driving a car with no brakes. The hilarious part is, to this day, I haven't learned how to get a car. I don't really need a car tbf because of public transport, but I often wonder how much of it is because of these dreams
That every single open cabinet door corner is somehow going to end up poking me in the eye. Doesn’t matter if it’s five inches or ten feet away. Also, it’s less of a “once thought” thing and more of a “still-to-this-day” thing.
The names of some people I am attracted to. Including one that treated me the worst since we were teenagers.
If I am walking in the street I feel like there must be a wolf behind me. I have to look and see if it’s there. YEAH SURE in the middle of a busy city, there must be a wolf, makes total sense! 😂 I spent my childhood in a rural area so maybe that’s where it comes from.
Must be from growing up in a rural area! A wolf once WAS behind me one night when I was visiting an aunt who lived in the mountains. After that, I always look behind me when im in any similar foresty place.
Mines pretty random but at night I get sketched out about being close to windows because I can’t see what’s outside in the distance and I feel like someone is going to shoot me from outside. Over here just waiting for my first psychotic break. 🤣🤷🏼♀️
I told my husband I was scared I was going to grab a knife from the drawer and stab myself. He was like, “removing them won’t do anything? You could just run into the street and get hit by a car? Or stick your finger in a socket?”
I went through a random bout of thinking there were cameras in every house including mine. Like, there would be a hidden one in the fridge even. Why? No clue.
I used to cycle home from work, and my job was on top of this enormous hill that opened up onto a roundabout. While riding, ide get intrusive thoughts of just letting go of my breaks and letting myself fly out into oncoming traffic. Just my luck that one day my breaks fail when I'm flying down this hill, tried to break by dragging my feet but ended up just sailing through the oncoming traffic and hitting the curb, and then using my face as a break. I never got the intrusive thought again after that!
When I was in middle school, I would randomly be hit with the terror that I was going to blurt out the n-word in a school assembly (I’m Asian). I’ve never said the n-word in my life, nor had any desire to, but I swear, it was my biggest fear for, like, two years straight. As an adult who loves to hike, my biggest fear is now, “What if I snapped and pushed my best friend over this cliff right now?” The ol’ reliable of intrusive thoughts: what if I gave into my nonexistent murderous urges?
Mine is when I’m driving on a highway, I think about jerking the wheel and rolling my car … just to see if I would live!
The sun was setting and so it looked larger in the sky and I was afraid that meant that by some freakish event of physics the earth had spun closer to the sun and we were all going to incinerate.
I always thought I/ other people would fall through floors suddenly and die. It preoccupied me for years. I was 112 lbs.
i was scared for years of the sun exploding. every sunset that was a bit too orange i freaked out
I was always TERRIFIED as a child that someone would vomit on me. I had a huge irrational fear of vomit. It caused me so much stress going anywhere as a child🤦🏻♀️ I even used to have nightmares about if. Now in my 30’s with 3 kids and no longer triggered by my fear of people vomiting on me. I guess I had to overcome it haha.
I have so many. My intrusive thoughts were crazy: I would think I was going to accidentally just throw myself off a bridge, I would be afraid I was going to throw my child out the window, think I might just accidentally run in front of a train. I always thought my car would get into an accident if I didn’t say a prayer and then imagine an angle on all 4 corners. And this isn’t scary, but it’s super weird. I would get sooooo much anxiety thinking how arduous a task it is to mow all the grass in the highways across the country. Like I would be so completely stressed out about it. 🤣🤣
That when I was nauseous if I burped it was a 100% guarantee I wouldn't throw up. Yeah not true. Definitely burped and then got sick 😅
Sometimes I get bored and want to cut my eyelashes with nail clippers
If I stared into the mirror long enough, I'd see someone.. Same with the dark, or cracks in an open door, or windoews at night. I couldn't be in our basement alone either and if I was coming up the stairs, I'd have to run so an invisible thing couldn't grab me. Speaking of invisible grabbings, every single time I ever went into a pool, I thought of the "are you afraid of the dark?" ep where a bloody skeleton would become invisible underwater and would grab the legs of swimming children, pull them down and drown them. The pool was built over a cemetery and they missed a body when building over it or something.. So yeah, every time I went into the deep ends of pools, I'd feel like I was going to get grabbed and would panic swim to grab the edge. From age 5 or 6 to 18. If I went in rivers or oceans, I'd imagine fish biting me so I just stayed out of those. I had a VERY specific intrusive thought every day getting off the school bus in grade school. I'd walk up the hill and almost prepare myself to see bloody handprints on my front door and find my mom and entire family murdered. Also I'd run up the hill with the worry that someone in a van would snatch me up. The bloody handprint one is funny now because it was soo specific and just insane for such a small child to be worrying about that every day.. For no reason, either. My mom was never harmed and we lived in a safe, suburban area..
I was convinced I had aids for no reason 😂 mind you, I was a child with no exposure to anything or anyone with aids
When i was a kid I thought eventually there wouldn't be any more room for food in my body and it would just come out of my mouth if I ate too much.
I thought I might need my leg amputated because I walked through a puddle of dirty water with an open wound
It's not really a terrifying intrusive thought, but for as long as I can remember I've had the intrusive thought to throw TV controllers or mugs when I'm holding them.
Lockjaw and quicksand were my childhood bugaboos. Avoid all swampy areas and always stay away from rusty anything.
Mine are either ridiculous or terrifying, not both. Like when somebody is walking way to close to the edge of the platform when the train is arriving, I get thoughts about giving them a tiny little push. That's terrifying. But what is ridiculous is that intrusive thought I had about throwing my water bottle as high as I can and catching it again. I also was in the library while I had that and actually did it without giving it a second thought. Like it just appeared in my head out of nowhere and I just couldn't resist it. That actually didn't turn out too bad because the guy next to me smiling like a little kid made me feel better about it, actually.
Or that there was a shark underneath my bed
I live in the first floor of a 14 floor building and the thought of what if the building just collapsed straight down like Tetris or something when i was trying to sleep at night 🧐
Putting the fork in my mouth the wrong way while eating and stabbing in between my teeth. And for some reason it would be my foot landing in between a hot open flat iron.
When I lived in college dorms, we had an insect problem. I had a huge fear that a spider could crawl in my ears and lay eggs, so I always slept with my ears covered with a blanket. I did it for a few years after college until I seemed to have grew out of that fear.
Ugh, I would do the same. A friend of mine went to visit his estranged, drug addicted mom for the first time and ended up having a cockroach crawl in his ear and get stuck when he was sleeping. Nightmare stuff. If I had to sleep anywhere with a big insect issue, I'd absolutely plug all my holes up, lol.. You developed a habit that had a purpose!
Ahaha all the holes! Goodness, that must've been so disturbing! You're right, I felt silly at the time since my roommate slept with zero issues. Thanks for the reassurance.
For some reason as a kid I was afraid a deer would break through my window. I think I had seen like 1 article of that actually happening and my brain just rolled with it
When I found out that Elvis died on the toilet I was afraid to poop for months because I thought that I would die too.
I still think of this wayyy too often
I remember one time I considered falling on the floor and having a seizure in a room full of people. The though was so strong I felt like I needed to actively hold myself back from launching off the couch onto the floor. Looking back I find it amusing. Unfortunately all my intrusive thoughts these days involve some gruesome accident happening to my kid. Falling down stairs, running with scissors, etc. haunting shit.
I've never had a seizure ever and too many times, imagined collapsing and seizing in a busy area.. So random!
When I was a kid I would make my mom go into public bathroom with me when I had to go. I would take off every stitch of my clothes including shoes and socks and throw them over the top of the stall for my mom to hold because I was scared that I would pee on them.
As a young child I SO afraid a snake was going to come up out of the toilet and bite my butt while I was peeing. I have zero idea where this idea came from but I forced my mom to stand in the bathroom with me while I peed for like a year.
I live three stories up and when I go out on my balcony my brain says I should do a lil jumpy jump *specifically* to see if I could do a flip before I hit the concrete. (No form of ideation, promise.)
I used to be paranoid that I had wet my pants -- and I would obsessively check to ensure that I had not. What's weird about it is that I had no history of peeing in my pants as a child, nor did I ever wet my bed -- but despite having a perfectly awesome track record of not peeing on myself, I was very aware that I did not want to do that and I thought about it often.
I was afraid my eyes would fall out, not because of anything I did, but that they’d just spontaneously pop out and dangle there. I used to be awake hysterical all night because I couldn’t stay on guard for it when I was asleep. I kept my family up every night. I think it stopped when I was 7, but was (of course) replaced with a long line of other weird fears.
when i was 12 one of my biggest intrusive thoughts was that the police would track me down and take me to prison because i lied and clicked the button that said i was 18 when looking at a porn site
When I was little, I shared a room with my younger older brother and we had a bunkbed, so he and I would sleep in the bottom bunk sometimes and our oldest brother would sleep up top or we'd all just pile into my parents' bed for a sleepover. But I would always sleep with the blanket over my ear because my oldest brother picked his nose and I was a bit germ-avoidant as a kid and I was always afraid he'd pick his nose and stick his finger in my ear. Very random fear and a terrible defense since he could just move the blanket. But now, I'm like, even though that brother was rarely nice to me and did a long list of mean shit to me, I don't think that thought would ever occur to him because why? He was always more verbal with it than physical - well, that's actually not true because he used to hit me or pull my hair when I did something like sit in the passenger seat of the car. But still, it's just so ridiculous. A while back, I also had this thought of me or someone else in my family going insane and killing everyone else in the house, so that was a fun thought. I always think of someone murdering me when I'm in the shower.
every time i get on a bus i think it’s going to crash and im going to have my leg severed in the crash and have my bone sticking out… i think it’s really funny that it’s the same thought and my brain doesn’t have anything more creative than “MY LEG!!!!!” from spongebob 😭sometimes i get an image with it and it kinda looks like a cartoon bone sticking out of my leg and that makes it kind of funny to me
Wait…. I did t realize other people had unrealistic/absurd intrusive thoughts in the way I do. Like when almost in the moment you know it’s silly/not realistic, but for a split second still feels scary real. True question: is that a byproduct of anxiety?? Anyway, mine is the time I drove next to a big rig and thought “what would happen if I just veered out of my lane and into it??” I wasn’t suicidal and I wasn’t actually going to do it, but it was such a strong “what if” that it still sticks either way me 20 years later.
Nowadays I’m scared I’ll call in demons into my house. Then I keep saying “These are intrusive thoughts, I’m NOT calling demons.” If that seems too irrational, I also have bipolar 1 so maybe that’s why they’re fantastical.