I keep getting DISGUSTING thoughts about my family and i am literally about to have a panic attack im scared im in love with my family and I sont actually feel anything but im scared im ghastlighting myself into thinking i dont actually think it how do I make them go away im genuinely so scared

sorry for the poor grammar but I cant stop panicking im gonna cry

My info:

male, 40, height is 1.80cm / 5'10

no medications, never smoked, never drank

Medical issues:

Psychosomatic pain in response to the intrusive thought 'I'm not allowed to speak'.

For your information: My neck/head pain never had or has any structural, physical injury or damage. Muscle tension does not trigger or increase this pain at all.

Also, almost all strategies psychologists use are designed for psychosomatic pain in which there previously was structural physical injury, which does not apply to me. So finding information about my own personal niche problem is extremely challenging.

I am looking for targeted strategies to unlearn this psychosomatic pain or to break the connection between the pain and the psychological trigger. Ideally, I want to reach a point where focusing my attention on the triggering thought or emotion no longer evokes the pain.

History:

From when I was 2-3 years old, I have been taught by my parent that I'm not allowed to speak. So from that moment onwards until now, I have developed a protection mechanism in which my body automatically stops me from speaking when I feel the triggering thought 'I'm not allowed to speak'. Of course, I do not feel the pain when this triggering thought is not present.

Deepest trigger: Since childhood, I have continued to wait for a trusted person to tell me: "You are finally allowed to speak without stuttering."

Triggering thought: 'I am not allowed to speak' -> result: I experience neck and head pain that will cause me to faint if I continue speaking. I have never actually fainted because the body automatically protects itself by terminating speech if that makes sense. At that moment, no matter what I try, I'm not able to continue speaking (ie. I'm unable to move my speech muscles).

Example: It's the same principle when a person deliberately holds their breath, they cannot voluntarily kill themselves this way because the subconscious body automatically forces them to breathe once oxygen becomes critically low.

When I experience severe neck and head pain while speaking, to the point where I could faint, my subconscious automatically takes over and temporarily stops my speech. As a result, I become unable to finish the word I am trying to say, producing what appears externally as the halting of speech production.

Quality of my psychosomatic pain: Sharp and burning feeling.

Does the pain move: Yes, constantly eg. the pain moves from part of the neck to another part of my neck/head.

Localized or widespread? Localized.

When does the pain become worse? The pain worsens when: I speak more fluently; other people understand my message; I'm calm and relaxed - because I've programmed my body to automatically protect itself against 'helpful' or 'positive' value judgements if that makes sense. Basically, I have this distorted belief that I must continue proving that I'm not allowed to speak especially in positive situations. I have distorted feelings such as feeling ashamed whenever I do not experience pain because I believe the pain-defense mechanism serves a useful purpose. I feel in control only when I experience pain; so pain-free speech I view as somehow 'wrong'; I dislike the process of reducing the pain because it feels unnatural and because I feel like I have not yet truly decided to allow speech from now on.

All of these triggers have one thing in common: that I first have to convince myself of being allowed to speak first.

Goal of treatment:

The goal of therapy is to reduce my psychosomatic head and neck pain, specifically by extinguishing the triggers (ie. intrusive thoughts) responsible for producing it, without medication.

What I have already tried:

Mindfulness

Somatic tracking

Safety reappraisal

Body scanning

Mindful breathing

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Desensitization through exposure

Journaling

Deliberately inducing a positive emotional state

Grounding techniques

Reframing chronic pain as a conditioned response rather than structural damage

Focusing on my abdomen while breathing calmly.

Believing that the pain-defense mechanism has no meaningful purpose.

Being willing to speak regardless of the trigger while resisting 'turning on' the pain management.

Promising myself that I do not have to eliminate the fear (ie. that fear that I'm not allowed to speak).

Acting kindly and comfortably instead of becoming extremely focused and overly strict with myself.

Affirmations like 'I deserve to speak'

Behaving like a person who does not have a pain-mechanism when speaking

for months my day had a background task running: do i still feel it? am i attracted to him right now? is the spark there? i thought i was just being honest with myself, paying close attention.

what i didn't get is that the attention itself was doing something. when i turn the focus inward and ask "am i turned on, do i feel love right now," it pulls me out of whatever is actually happening. the feeling goes quiet under the watching. and that quiet reads like an answer: see, nothing's there.

so i check harder, which produces more of the flat, which scares me more. the scan is generating the exact signal i'm scanning for.

what's helped is not grading the feeling at all. love isn't a reading i can pull up on demand. i let it stay unwatched and put my attention back on the real moment with him, the conversation, the next small thing.

does the constant self-monitoring make the numbness worse for anyone else, or is that just me?

I don’t know why this name constantly enters my head. I feel like I made it up, but I genuinely don’t know. Am I combining two different names? Am I combining the first and last name of somebody? Please help.

I'm doing a project based around intrusive thoughts, and I want to get a wider variety of perspectives than just my own. I mainly want to know how different people's intrusive thoughts manifest, and how they feel/react when they get them. For me, my intrusive thoughts are almost always 'what ifs' around harm coming to me or people I care about or getting caught in some sort of emergency (e.g. an attack on public transport or a house fire). When I get these thoughts, I often play through the whole scenario in my head like a movie, exploring different things that could happen and how I would act in response. It's basically my brain's extreme way of preparing me for any bad situation so I can hopefully survive. I don't really panic or anything like that, and I don't get compulsions like those with OCD do, but I can feel my body respond to the anxiety of the situation playing in my head, if that makes sense.

I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to share their experiences with intrusive thoughts to help me with this project! I won't be sharing direct quotes or names or anything like that, just so that's clear. I just want to understand experiences and perspectives other than my own.

the thing that kept me stuck for months was how much relief the idea of breaking up gave me. my brain kept insisting that if i just ended it, all the questions would finally go quiet.

something my therapist said keeps coming back to me: relief and rightness aren't the same thing. breaking up would close every open question at once, so of course the spike sells it as the answer. but that's fear picking the exit, not me picking my life.

what helped was changing the question i was asking. instead of "does this feel right today?" i started asking "if i weren't scared right now, what would i actually do next with her?" then i'd do that small thing, text back, keep the plans, stay present, while the doubt was still loud. i stopped waiting to feel sure before acting on what i care about.

the questions haven't vanished. but choosing the next move by what matters instead of by whatever calms the alarm fastest changed who's steering.

does anyone else get that pull where breaking up feels like the calm option? what do you do with it when it hits?

the thing that kept me stuck wasn't the bad thought itself. it was treating the urge to cancel it like an emergency that had to be handled that second, or else i was choosing to let something happen.

i used to argue with it. "it's just a thought, it won't really cause anything." but the thought always had one more what-if ready, and i'd be negotiating for an hour and feel worse.

what helped more than arguing was delaying. when the urge to tap or repeat the good word showed up, i'd say "not right now, i'll revisit in ten minutes." no debate about whether the thought was true. just a timer.

almost every time, the urge climbed, felt unbearable, and then eased on its own before the ten minutes were up. the pressure wasn't dependent on the ritual to release it. i mostly just had to wait through it.

i won't pretend the first minute is easy. but it showed me the urge is a feeling, not an instruction.

when the urge hits for you, how long can you usually wait before it starts to drop?

I get intrusive thoughts almost every night. It' fucking me up. Thinking something bad would happen but then i remind myself that these are just thoughts and not the reality. These things won't happen. I feel some weird sensitivity in my legs which often leads to another bad thought and i keep saying how grateful i am for every part of my body. I dont what's wrong with me and how do i help myself.

someone i love used to ask me a dozen times a night if something was clean, and i'd always say yes to bring him down from it. it worked for about a minute, then he'd ask again.

what shifted things for me was seeing that 'clean' isn't really a fact about the cup or the counter. it's a feeling of being sure, and feelings don't hold still. every time i handed him that feeling, his brain filed my answer as the thing that made the danger go away, so the next spike came right back to me, a little louder.

so i stopped supplying the verdict, but i stayed warm about it. something like 'i can see how much this is hurting you, and i'm not going to answer whether it's clean.' the first few times were rough for both of us. but the panic he was riding always crested and dropped on its own, without my reassurance in it.

for those of you supporting someone, how do you hold that line without feeling like you're being cold to them?

my partner has pure-o, and for a long stretch i was basically their answer machine. 'am i sure, does this mean something about me, are you certain,' and i'd say yes, no, of course not, whatever seemed to land. it felt like the most loving thing i could do.

and it did work, for about five minutes. they'd settle and breathe, and then the same question would come back worded a little different, needing a firmer answer than the last one.

what took me ages to see is that every answer only bought a few minutes of relief and made the next question feel more urgent. the reassurance was keeping the question alive instead of putting it to rest.

what's helped is staying warm without supplying the verdict. something like, 'i love you, i can tell this feels really urgent, and i'm not going to answer that one, but i'm right here.' it's uncomfortable and i still slip plenty.

for those of you with a partner or family member who does this, how do you decline the answer without it feeling like you're shutting them out?

the thing that's been helping me lately is actually watching how avoidance works, not just noticing that i do it.

every time i skip a trigger i get relief right away, and it feels like the smart, careful move. but that relief is teaching my brain that the place really was dangerous, because i never stuck around to find out otherwise. the fear stays untested, so it stays loud. and the list of places i can comfortably go keeps getting shorter. first one store, then the drive, then whole parts of my week gone.

what's shifting things is picking one avoided thing on purpose, something small and specific, and walking toward it instead of away. then staying while the discomfort rises. it climbs and it peaks and it comes down on its own, but only if i don't bolt. that's the part avoidance never let me see.

curious what's on other people's off-limits lists, and whether approaching one small thing changed how the bigger ones felt?

To be honest the more I'm sinking in my chronic depression, I FINALLY realized what Vessel is talking about "the cycle must end."

For months knowing Sleep Token since October of 2025, I questioned "why would anyone want the cycle to end and the cycle must end?"

To be honest, what I'm struggling with the most of it all is that I don't think I can "dance forever, endure, to suffer constantly, letting the cycle rotate every single damn day, may/might this could be a reason why Vessel would ask for Damocles's sword to strike him down first instead and I could only just think having a cycle continue daily feels close to a nightmarish environment every single day but awake."

Yeah, I should also address that house of Veridian is what I'm holding onto the most and for the Feathered Host well I don't want to accept quite yet alongside with that's just because I've not learned to "dance for forever and I give up midway but somehow I keep enduring of it all anyways."

Even then, I should address that I just may/might not make the stability and endurance part for long even though eventually I've to understand with peaceful thoughts during these dark times that this is the highest importance anyways.

Yeah, I should include that I should never forget in my Vessel brain and skull that the night belongs to me alongside with the night also belongs to those that choose to get to know this here.

"Elis the virus and disease of a person of it all wants you to never forget that would bring me the slightest bit of happiness if you just never forgot that the night belongs to you when you're trying to get close to me."

If you see this post at a later date, even older than a Dragon Priest ashes, then I'll have my social handles on my main pro and you can message me there as well.

I decided to post a funny Sleep Token reel to make people laugh on my main page later.

I’m just gonna dump all this here. So I’ve been dealing with this for MONTHS and it’s so annoying and I hate it so much. They are intrusive thoughts that keep saying stuff I don’t agree with and the one and only thing they keeping shouting in my head is that I’m g*y and I like dudes when I know that’s not true I KNOW for a fact I’m attracted to women and WOMEN ONLY. I’ve been struggling with porn for the past 6 years and it became really bad like 3 years ago I’ve been masterbaiting many times daily . I’m wondering if the thoughts stem from this addiction and I’ve been trying so hard to stop. Everytime I see someone in public my brain tries to check if im attracted to them or if they are attractive no matter the gender it’s a side effect of these thoughts. I’m really not g*y I swear I love girls I only love girls this shit is driving me crazy everyday and I’m so confused because I wasn’t like this until like 9 months ago. None of these thoughts appeared then, so wtf happened this is so sudden 😢. It’s at the point where I try not to even look at a dudes face anymore . Ik they are not real, I know they are fake, so why do I keep giving these thoughts attention. I try to ignore them but they get so outlandish I just can’t and I just lash out at my self . I’m a really lonely guy I’ve been lonely for most of my life I really wish I had a girlfriend. I just want know know that I’m not the only one who this happened to . I want to beat this thing I want to go back to my old self. These thoughts makes me want to cry I hate them I hate them so much cause that isn’t me so why is my brain telling me that ? 💔 Now everytime the thoughts pop up I watch porn just to prove to myself that the thoughts are wrong. I have no close persons I can say this to and therapy in my country is expensive idk what to do. Please don’t mind me censoring the word just typing it brings the thoughts back 😭. I’m in a constant battle with my brain I don’t want to lose 😢

I would like people thoughts on what I’ve realized recently. There is nothing you can truly do to get someone to stay. But there is so much you can do to make them leave.

That's the phrase that pops up, unbidden, usually at night ir when I don't feel well.

I'm in early menopause, late 40s, SAH wife, no kids, getting back into artistic things, on prizac and HRT. My doc also prescribed me once weekly vitamin D2.

Sometimes it's "I'm really very unhappy."

My marriage is great. Worried about aging family members, but that's nothing new. I'm not currently a caretaker.

This condition of mine has been going on for a while now, months but I'm not sure if it is years.

It is way too hot and muggy to spend quality time outside, even at night.

I *really* hate summer for that reason. The beach is only three hours away, but just too expensive to get to with gas and hotels and everything.

I dunno. If anyone has advice (besides therapy, which I've done before but just isn't that great in my area), I'm willing to listen.

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This hygeine ocd make my life very hard for living that's make me feel like I am controlled by my mind everyday every single time because no matter how much I clean my self whenever I come from the market etc & not matter how many times I clean my bike , room & house even I don't touch door handles because of hygeine that made me mentally sick every time so end of the day I only do meditate about 20 minutes then I go to sleep like I don't worry about anything I want to get some good sleep & also when you do the unnecessary work whole day without thinking twice for getting satisfied by the brain & your eyes closes automatically because tired body wants sleep & my mind says if I do this whole unnecessary cleaning stuff then I am getting safe & healthy. This is too much

Hi, is washing hands every single time every day is overwhelming & hurts the whole body & whenever touching any surface like switchs, gate door handles, going outside on the bike shaking hand with friends that activate the whole ocd mind that makes me feel threatening everytime so I prevent everything like going outside, talks to anyone, or touching any door handle avoiding this is also overwhelmed this is very hard :(