The thought made me feel depressed, scared, worried, isolated and terrified. I felt so hurt thinking that if it were true, then I would feel so horrible about myself. Not being able to rationalise my thoughts, the dreadful thoughts getting more profound and louder. I’m not able to tell which thought is real or not. I listened and believed my thoughts.

They led me to a lot of anxiety, which was very challenging and upsetting for me. I felt happy at first in my feelings, living in the present moment and having positive thoughts, which made me feel content and happy. The feeling of relaxed thoughts taught me and showed me what happiness was. But suddenly, when this scenario happened, I felt sick to the stomach. I felt depressed and isolated once again.

The whole thought came to my life when my little sister beeped the car and opposite was our neighbour, the little boy looking through the window. I had this thought that the boy fell over as he got scared of the noise and died. My head was now alive, feeding all the negative energy in how I was feeling. I was scared and overthinking. My head told me the boy died as he fell over and hurt himself because of us. The voices kept coming and coming until I had a panic attack. I felt worried, anxious and distressed. Then my little sister said as a joke, yeah, the boy died. I asked her for reassurance, then she said, of course, it’s not true as I was worried and thought it was real.

I wanted to go round there to check if the boy was alive. I kept looking outside my window to see if I could see the boy, but I didn’t for a while. I was anxious, at this point, my anxiety levels were very high, and I felt depressed. I stared outside my window for a long time and then I saw the car was not in the drive, so in my head the thoughts told me that they took the little boy to the hospital. My anxiety was worse than ever. The thoughts did not stop coming into my mind; I could not get them to stop.

It was a vicious cycle once again. It made me feel terrified, I felt like it was the end of the world, and I felt drained. I wanted to sleep it off. I decided to ask the people around me for reassurance as I was not in a good place. It made me not want to do anything until I knew the boy was okay. I was with my little sister and my mum and dad at the time.

We just came back from being out. It affected the people around me as they were drained and sad. I wasn’t able to rationalise my thoughts. My family feel guilty as my little sister made a light-hearted joke. However, it’s affected my OCD and anxiety. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, meaning I have compulsive negative thoughts that affect my physical, intellectual, social and emotional development. This has a significant impact on me. When I am less anxious, the people around me feel less anxious, but the more anxious I feel, the more intrusive thoughts come into my mind and the more drained they feel.

I spoke to my sister and explained to her that although it was a joke, this has affected me. I reacted badly as she triggered my negative thinking and made me feel anxious. This contributed to my overthinking. I felt anxious, distressed, destructive, feeling responsible and low in my confidence and lack of memory function. Not being able to see real memories and in my head plotting negative and false memories. It negatively affected me, and the comment made me think about all these evil thoughts. I did not take it as a joke as my anxiety levels were very high at that present moment.

You can’t joke with someone who had OCD as they will believe the thoughts and think differently, unable to rationalise and ignore the thoughts. When you feed the thoughts, it gets worse as your mind repeatedly goes over the same thing, and your mind will feel empowered as it thinks it has won.

Some of the ways I can stop this is by thinking positively and more maturely, thinking about what’s realistic and what’s not, making sure I write it down and do a timeline on what time I had the thought and how I reacted to it and how it made me feel. This will make me feel confident in my mind.

I am empowering myself to shift negative thoughts to positive thoughts. Speaking my thoughts aloud makes sure I say the same thing every time to make me feel less anxious and think my thoughts through. For example, rating the thought out of 10 and digging deep into my feelings and thinking, is this even possible? I can also stop it by ignoring them, thinking of a safe place in my mind that makes me feel happy and content.

My desire for the future is to be more channelled with my thoughts and feelings, not asking for reassurance, and being confident in my own ability to reason. Also, I want to focus on my breathing to not get to the point of feeling trapped and having a panic attack. Removing myself from the situation is also a good thing.

I have to try and believe my family when they say nothing happened, not thinking they are lying. I’m was tired of these thoughts. It was emotionally and physically draining. However, I feel a little better as I have been practising my breathing and channelling my thoughts to more positive thoughts.

As time has gone on, I feel much better about my thoughts, practising happier thoughts and rationalising things in my mind.

If you believe you’re struggling with any of the issues mentioned above, please don’t hesitate to contact us.