Writing intrusive thoughts down

[Scorpio]

Hi all, I've been on sertraline for five weeks now and feel in a slightly calmer place, am having more fun with my daughter and although having intrusive thoughts I am more able to dismiss them. I've decided that I feel the only thing i would get from CBT is a 'confession' urge thing although am still going but i think i just feel i need to release the worst of thoughts for some sort of reassurance.

I am that much calmer i feel like i am ready to write them down in black and white, harm and sexual being my worst along with some bizzare random thoughts. I don't want to be doing the wrong type of 'd.i.Y' exposure and potentially make myself worse, so am looking for advice that this may be of some help? My new partner wants a baby with me and I'd be terrified he found out the worst of my thoughts and change his mind and this is feeding my ocd. 

It's like what if he found the paper blah blah, what if someone else did? What would they think etc? Am on a long waiting list for cbt and want to get started on making myself better finally as have been suffering for fifteen years and meds are the only thing that have made me feel extreme courage in all this.

 

[taurean]

I don't think it's generally accepted to be a good idea to write intrusions down, build up a log of them, other than for the purpose of therapy - a therapist will often ask the patient to keep a log for a while so that he or she can identify their type of disorder. 

When I was really struggling, my therapist suggested I wrote down the thoughts as a kind of release mechanism and also exposure mechanism. I found this helpful and then quickly shredded the log afterwards - shredding it was a good feeling anyway. But as you say there are risks that others may find the record.

You could do this exercise in a password protected document in your computer or mobile, if you genuinely feel - as I did - that it will help. 

But as I said, in general it is deemed best not to do this, but to use an approach of noting the intrusion, seeing it for OCD, then - other than during a specific exposure and response prevention exercise - gently but wilfully refocusing away. 

[Scorpio]

Ok i haven't done it yet as don't want to make myself worse, I'm having a bad day, really low, and loads of groinal stuff going on but have realised that isn't relative to any thought it more just an arousal anxiety symptom, i feel like i need to increase sertraline and am going to call the doctor, have been on 50mg for almost six weeks, good days and bad days still bit less bad days!