My story doesn't really compare to the horror of a lot of the stories on here, but I think that telling it here has some value. Anyway, I have had harm-OCD ever since I can remember. From the OCD Center of Los Angeles's Website, harm-OCD is when "an individual experiences intrusive, unwanted, distressing thoughts of causing harm. These harming thoughts are perceived as being ego-dystonic, which simply means that the thoughts are inconsistent with the individual’s values, beliefs and sense of self." Basically, all my life I have had horrific, unwanted violent images and thoughts play out in my head; my reaction to these was always one of repulsion and terror (which is basically how you know it's OCD and not, like, antisocial personality disorder or something). But when I was a kid, I didn't know what OCD was. My thoughts made me terrified that I was a psychopath and would one day snap and kill someone. What made it worse is that I would have panic attacks, where the thoughts would build up and up and up inside me until I was certain I was going to act on them (I obviously never did). But imagine being five years old and having images of your family member crucified or their head being served on the dinner table. I'm at work writing this, and I'm about to fucking cry. Anyway, I battled this crippling terror called OCD my whole life. Its intensity ebbed and flowed; it calmed down in some periods of my life, and flared up in others. However, when I went on birth control for my acne at age 17, shit hit the fan BIG TIME. Not only was I crying all the time and reacting emotionally to everything, my OCD decided to emerge again, kicking its heels high and ready to dance. A few months after I started taking the birth control, I was on vacation with my mom and grandma. Our rented condo had a little kitchenette, and naturally, the kitchenette contained a set of knives. One night, while I was trying to fall asleep, an OCD thought swam lazily to me out of the pitch black abyss of the room. An image of me stabbing my mother with a knife. I had learned to "deal" with these thoughts; if I was able to ignore them, they would eventually go away. However, for some reason (read: my fucked up hormones on the birth control, which I would later find out SEVERELY worsened my OCD), the thought stuck. Just like when I was little, the image bubbled over my brain like boiling water. My spine was tingling, my body was shaking, my heart was hammering. My body felt very, very light. Thoughts kept flooding my head: "Your love of your family doesn't matter; the laws don't matter; do it, do it, do it, do it, do it." Utterly terrified, I tore from my bed and locked myself into the hotel bathroom, where I read random pages from the only book in there (House of Leaves) and prayed and prayed and prayed until I felt safe enough to leave the bathroom. After that incident, my OCD affected my life to the core. After each panic attack (which is what the vacation incident was), I would spend weeks in a petrified fog, my brain reeling with harm-OCD thoughts, questioning reality (although deep down I knew what was real), existentialism, solipsism, extreme loneliness, and fear. More than anything else, fear. To the bone. To not be able to be certain of ANYTHING (OCD, of course, is known as the "doubting disease"), even my own actions and thoughts, would keep me floating in a cloud of horrified derealization and trauma for weeks. I did extensive research on what I was going through, and thanks to the extensive online OCD community, I realized that all my life, I had had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. I convinced my family to let me go to a psychologist (this was my senior year of high school). The psychologist, of course, diagnosed me with OCD. I didn't like her personality or therapy style, so I didn't go back. At the time, I just wanted confirmation to both myself and my family that I had an anxiety disorder, that I wasn't "crazy." Anyway, I was on track to go to college that August, and miraculously, I felt well enough to go. My OCD was pretty much completely fine for the duration of my freshman and sophomore years. Then, the summer after my sophomore year came. My family was watching the movie Shutter Island one night. Something about the elements in the film--questioning one's reality, murder, insanity--threw me into another fit, just like the one that really started all this shit when I was 17. After we finished the movie, everyone in my house went to bed. I remember running upstairs to my room quickly, shutting the door, and feeling my heart race so fast, I thought it was going to stop. I was convinced that at any moment, I was going to run downstairs, grab a knife, and kill my mom and grandma. My spine tingled and my body felt so light; although I was staying still, it felt as though it was in a forward motion, moving toward the knives in the kitchen. (The images in my mind and my extreme adrenaline caused me to feel this way.) After that night, I got very, very sick. I had no appetite. I wasn't able to eat. Anything I did manage to choke down made its way through my stomach and into the toilet in about ten minutes. I'm 5'6, and I went from 135 pounds to 115 pounds in the span of two weeks. I had to quit my summer job, and all I wanted to do was sleep. At least sleep gave me some respite from the horror. I was unsure of reality, of my own thoughts, of whether I would harm someone. I was experiencing derealization for most of each day. To make matters even worse, the guy I was dating was an emotionally abusive, cruel person who just exacerbated it. My mom and grandma understood and were there for me, but they were getting more scared for my health by the day. My physical and mental states were worsening every day. Finally, I was able to see a psychologist and psychiatrist. The psychologist taught me about mindfulness and being aware of the present moment. The psychiatrist prescribed me Fluvoxamine. With this combination of treatment, I started getting better. I entered my junior year in a period of grateful recovery. I found the courage to break up with my boyfriend. Eventually, I started dating another guy, an infinitely better person than my last boyfriend, and we are getting married in a few months. My OCD still gets horrible, especially in times of high stress, but it no longer ruins my life. I strongly believe that medication and therapy can restore a person's life in a profound way. If you are struggling, or facing something you don't understand, please get help. You will find it.