I have really violent homicidal thoughts and I’m scared I’m going to hurt someone because I can’t hurt myself and I don’t really feel anything about it, I don’t feel anything at all, I’m just so numb, I saw something about homicide and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about killing dozens of people since then, I want to kill and then kill myself so everyone calls me pathetic and evil scum. Then people will call me what I really am. I don’t want to hurt anyone except myself, just want to feel
Hi lovely,
Thank you for reaching out to us here at MHA! I’m really sorry that you are experiencing this right now and it is causing you so much distress, it must be really hard to deal with. Asking us for advice was a great step to take though and is already a positive move forward. I hope I’ll be able to give you some advice and reassurance!
I do need to say that if you ever take any action to hurt yourself or someone else than please reach out to your local emergency services (e.g. 911) for immediate help. If you are reaching a point of crisis then try and get yourself to somewhere safe and contact someone who can help to keep you safe/take you to the hospital if necessary.
I realise it may be extremely difficult but I think the best idea for you right now is to speak to a professional about how you are feeling. A therapist or counsellor will be able to guide you into understanding your thoughts, why you having them, and how you can learn to manage them. If seeing a counsellor or therapist isn’t immediately an option for you, you could go to your GP who can then refer you onto a mental health professional. Your GP will be able to discuss treatments options for you, and will diagnose any underlying mental health condition. I’m linking our page about getting help here because I know how hard it can be to ask for help and to admit the issues you are facing out loud. You could call a helpline or use web counselling anonymously if seeing someone face-to-face is too difficult for you. I do really think seeking some support would be good for you, you don’t have to face these feelings alone! Professionals are trained in dealing with situations like this, and this will not be something shocking or necessarily bad to them, so I promise that they won’t judge you or treat you differently for going to them with these issues - you have nothing to be ashamed of, lovely!
Intrusive thoughts like these can be super hard to deal with, but there are some techniques that you could try and use to help you manage them. The most important thing with intrusive thoughts is to avoid giving them too much power - easier said than done - but if you don’t give the fire and fuel then the fire can’t burn, you know? So, if you try and avoid milling over the intrusive thought and attempting to analyse it you are giving it the attention and fuelling the thoughts further. This is not to say you should completely ignore the thoughts, but simply acknowledge the thought is present and then move on and try to distract yourself. Instead of repressing them, I think an important thing to do is challenge the thoughts - you can do this directly, or some people find it helpful to challenge them sarcastically, for example ‘‘Oh yeah, what a greeeeat idea that is!!’
To help with distracting yourself from the thoughts here is our page about distraction techniques. Grounding techniques might also be something you could try? Grounding techniques help to bring your focus away from any intrusive thought, bring it back to your consciousness and back to reality. We have a page of them here! I suggest to begin with you try something like saying the alphabet forwards and then backwards slowly, or running your hands under really cold water. One I find particularly useful is:
Describe 5 things you can see
Describe 4 things you can hear
Describe 3 things you can feel
Describe 2 things you can smell
Describe 1 thing you can taste
I am going to share a couple of resources with you which are helpful interactive guides to help you start dealing with the intrusive thoughts:
This four step programmeIntrusivethoughts.orgSuppressionMoodsmith
I really hope this has been of some help to you, please don’t hesitate to get back in touch with us if there is anything else we can do for you! Remember these thoughts do not make you a bad person and you can overcome this and come out the other side stronger. ‘’Fall down seven times, stand up eight’’.
Please take care,
Rhiann xo
