Intrusive thoughts

[coreys86]

Hi guys I want to share my story. I was relaxing one night thought everything was good had a crazy anxiety attack (which i didnt know what it was) and had scary thoughts of loosing my mind and hurting my child. Also i was taking testostorone booster because i was doing alot of working out which causes anxiety so im told.(i was scared i was going to end up like chris benoit and hurt my family) ever since then i have been scared to be alone with my child its the stupiest thing in the world because i love my child more then anything and he means the world to me. Im scared to get into a fight with my baby mom and loose control or something its rediculous and i hate the thought of it. I am 200 x better then i was when this started 5 weeks ago. But i just wanna be back to normal. This is the worst thing anyone can go through but i would hurt myself before i ever touched my beautiful son. Anyways I went and talked to a psychiatrist who told me this is normal and me being scared of the thought shows i would never hurt him (which i know i never could ever) but its annoying and is destroying me. Anyone have any success with getting through this. Also i have been with my son alone and we have a blast. Just when im not with him i think what if what if, its retarded and i hate it!!!!

[nodifferent]

Coreys86,

I'm sorry that you've been having these feelings, but I'm glad to hear that they're 200x better than when they started.  I'm not sure if I'm the right person to be giving advice, since I'm knee deep in this myself.  I can't say that I've had the thought of hurting my son, but when I thought I couldn't handle it anymore, I've had visions of walking away.  I think these are just our personal fears, and whatever fear affects us is the one that comes to us.  However, that's what it is - a fear.  So, I would believe your psychiatrist telling you that this is normal.  Being a dad can be scary, and so you can get a fright every now and then.  However, it certainly sounds like you love your son tremendously, so the next time you start to get those feelings, focus on your love and what great times you have with him.  Hopefully, that will help you cut off the bad feelings before you start dwelling on them.  That being said, I should probably follow my own advice.   There have been many times where I yell at myself to stop worrying and just enjoy the experience of having my first son.  It's slowly starting to work.  I hope it can for you too.

[rssooner]

coreys86,

try not to be too hard on yourself.  i think some of us think of extreme situations that could happen or that we could do, meanwhile knowing that we would never even consider actually doing them.  i have thought of extreme things like you have and i wonder how i would cope with the loss of my family and it puts a chill down my back.  to have thoughts like this doesn't make you a bad person.  whats amazing to me is that before my son, i could watch a tv show like dateline or 20/20 etc and watch about children being victimized, hurt, murdered etc and it didn't really phase me but when i watch them i almost always break down some because of the pain and sadness that some parents feel b/c of what happened to their own child and the loss they feel.

you love your son with all your heart and you know you would never harm him in any way.  also, it was great that you sought some professional help.  that tells me you are willing to do anything to be a great father.

i hope this helps.

rssooner

[jytreberg]

I'm right there with you rssooner.  My wife and I have a hard time watching any show on TV that deals with sick children etc.  Have a child of your own certainly changes things.

[AzDad2011]

Hello Dads out there, new poster here.

It's been pretty quiet on the forum so I hope some of you still check in here.

Anyways, I have struggled with these thoughts just like the original poster.

A little background, Im 36 and my wife and I just had our first child 5 months ago, a beautiful healthy baby boy I think the first time I had a "scary thought" came from a book I was reading about 3 days before he was born, there was a scene in it that really disturbed me (I wont share it as to not add any triggers for anyone else) so much that it gave me tons of anxiety for a few days. It disturbed me so much I started wondering "Is there somethiing wrong with me?" I started thinking things like "geez, since it bothered me so much could I be capable of doing something like that?" Well eventually it went away and I was fine for a while....

Then every couple of weeks it seemed the heavy anxiety came on again, and things that were scary or dangerous would make me think of awful things regarding my baby, sometimes unintentional harm and sometimes intentional.... I would even question "Could I actually do that? Am I going crazy?" Honestly I hated myself over the thoughts, I thought I was either going crazy or an evil person.

I kept it to myself for the first few months because I was terrified what my wife or anyone else might think. It went on long enough I started looking up things on the internet and thats when I found out that scary thoughts regarding your baby are apparently normal and common in both fathers and mothers. I wonder if it would have affected me less if I would have known that from the start. I love my kid so much and the thought of doing something to hurt him is about the worst thing I can imagine, and I think that might be what heightens the anxiety.

I found a book called "Dropping the baby and other scary thougths" by Karen Kleiman. It's directed at mothers suffering from these thougths, but amazingly almost all of my feelings where right in the book. The only issue I wondered about was that its directed at Mom's and did all the info apply to a Father as well. That's when If found this forum.

Anway, is the original poster still around? If so, how are you doing now? I hope you have been doing well because I can understand how terrible this can be.

One of the most important things I took from the book is "Its not the content of the thought but how much it disturbs you thats important. Basically that scary thoughts are just that "thoughts" and they arent you and if you are disturbed by them then its quite normal.

I still occasionally get anxiety on and off and now its mostly worry like "Is there really something wrong with me because I dont want to have these thoughts anymore". Im doing much better but its still a bit of a struggle. It's the whole "Dont think about that thought" so you know what happens thats what you think about!!!!

Completely agree with you all regarding the news stories and stuff, I mostly avoid the news now because stories about bad things happening to children disturbs me too much.

Anyways, sorry for the long post its not easy to sum it up quickly and not easy to open up about this stuff. Hopefully some other guys that have had similar thoughts will see this and get some reassurance and maybe post their experiences here.

[Stymie]

Hi all, a bit of a late reply to this but yes I also had intrusive, macabre thoughts, ones I really hated having.  They faded away eventually, along with the anxiety and depression.  Your shrink is right, you'll never hurt your kid.  If its still a problem for you I would recommend using the CBT methods, I believe rsooner listed these once, that allow you to address the thoughts as they arise and conclude they are BS simply fabricated by anxiety and a mind thinking too much and not calmed.  The mind can be calmed by a lot of ways, but point is even if you have these thoughts is normal and will be OK.

Cheers

[Ed]

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to share that I went through the exact same thing.  At the time, I thought it would never end but I'm happy to report that it has.  I had constant intrusive thoughts.  CBT helped me immensely.  It helped me realize what I had forgotten - that these thoughts were just dumb thoughts brought on by anxiety.  Two tips helped me every time I had an intrusive thought.  The first was to run with the intrusive thought.  It sounds scary at first, but it really takes the sting out of your thought and you realize its just your mind racing.  So, everytime I had an intrusive thought, in my head, I would elaborate it.  I would twist and turn it.  The trick is to twist and turn it into something completely ridiculous that you snap out of your racing mind and realize it was just a stupid thought.  If I had an intrusive thought of going crazy and harming my family, I would somehow inject something stupid into the thought...like Mickey Mouse.  Nowadays, when the thought comes in, I don't even think about it.  The other tip was to monitor my body.  I found that when the anxiety and the intrusive thoughts came, I was tense.  I was especially tense in my abdomen and my breath would be shallow.  Once I relaxed my stomach and took a few deep breaths, you realize you were just in your head.  Hope this helps.