Sorry, english is not my first language, but please help me if anyone knows what I suffer from. Its a bit long too, but bear with me.
When I was 12 years old I was in boating accident where almost me and my whole family drowned on a vacation-trip in Turkey. We all survived which was a miracle. In fact it was also a miracle that only 1 out of 40 people drowned in this accident. We were on a tourist-boat in the atlantic when a storm appeared and the motor broke down… the boat flipped, waves were extremely high, and we were almost trapped inside the boat. This will be a long story if i don´t cut it short, but my father saved my life and eventually got us to safety after probably hours in water. I have no idea for how long we were in the water etc, but it was absolutely nightmare. It was a traumatic event for everyone.
However, after that accident I had problems coping with this horrific incident mentally…The memory of it made me feel extremely sad and I suffered from severe anxiety… I tried to cope with it by trying to ignore the thoughts of it, and that the accident never happened. I never wanted to talk about it, and I certainly did not want to see a psychiatrist. Which of course didn´t really work, I should have gotten help, but I never did. I was already a really scared child and was scared of everything that happened to me, so this accident didn´t exactly help me…
I wasn´t able to let the ”bad thoughts” (memory of the accident) go. They stayed with me in my head all the time. Eventually (i can´t remember if 2 or 3 years passed), I stopped thinking about the accident, but I replaced them, un-intentionally, with new things to be extremely afraid of. It could be something I read or something I saw or heard etc… and the image of this would plant itself in my head and it stays there and I feel anxiety.
Its hard to explain, but I could become terrified of thoughts in my head and I was extremely scared that I was becoming crazy. Not that I would do anything bad... just by sheer fear of the thoughts. For example: In high-school I became extremely scared of a classmate that I thought was a bit weird and I couldn´t shake the image of his face in my mind. His face was glued to my mind and I couldn´t really get rid off him. His face was there from I woke up until I slept at night… Eventually I did get rid of him in my head, when he changed schools… but I replaced him with other stuff/people/ to be afraid of… and then it started/continued with things I read in the media of massmurderers or really bad, evil people. It developed from there...
Its really hard to explain, but I get so scared of something horrific, for example an image of something horrific, for example an evil face/letters of an evil man´s name… or sometimes that I see someone being murdered inside my head from something i´ve heard or read… I don´t want to have these thoughts, but I do… It´s like they eat me up in my head. I can’t control my own mind.
I have had periods of time in my adulthood when I´ve felt pretty good for weeks, sometimes months, but eventually the bad thoughts always comes back and haunts me. I have broken down in depressions many times and has had suicidal thoughts. I would probably have committed suicide if it wasn´t for my parents which I love immensely.
About 10 years ago… when i was 26 years old, I had the biggest depression of my life. I could not shake things I had read in the media of this specific massmurderer and I could not shake the image of his face. Often I could see the people he murdered in my mind and the horrific events being played in my mind like a movie… and I could not stop it.
I broke down completely and was on sick-leave for six months and moved home to my parents. I talked to a doctor but I didn´t tell her about the bad thoughts, but instead I just told here that I was extremely depressed and needed medication. She prescribed celexa (citalopram) and I refused to talk to any psychiatrist about it, because I thought that I will become completely crazy if I tap into this.
Anyways, the anxiety and images of this man was so intense… but eventually I did get better with the medication and support from my parents. At times, I could have less good days and such, but I was able to handle it... since then the last years it has been lots of ups-and-downs, but I never really get a break from it. I get depressed at times with these thoughts and think I am going crazy.
Now I am 36 years old, and it feels like it´s getting worse again. Now, these last weeks I can´t shake the massmurderers name… the letters of his name pop up all the time. I see the letters…. and I can´t shake them. It´s like I can´t control my own mind at all.
Can someone tell me what condition I suffer from? Is this some kind of OCD?