I realize this thread is about a month old, but I felt compelled to share.

About three years ago, when my anxiety was reaching its apex and I didn't know what was going on (no diagnoses yet), I started having obsessions of hurting my dog. Not anything detailed, but terrified I was going to hurt her--that I would lose it and kill her. Sometimes I would look at a knife on the table and literally have to turn my head away, because I was afraid the compulsion to use it to hurt her would overwhelm me. I didn't tell anyone this for a long time, for fear I was going legitimately mad. Finally told my mom, who assured me I wouldn't hurt anyone, even though I had urges to hurt her as she sat next to me. The first psych I went to said it was "just anxiety." But my anxiety was spiraling out of control and I lived alone, and the terror of hurting my dog was growing. Finally I was diagnosed with OCD.

I continue to have thoughts of hurting my animals (most are caged). And I too adore my animals. I've also had compulsions to swerve my car into cars in traffic/hit or hurt family members.....my psych said all of that is my brain wanting to alleviate the anxiety. Which made perfect sense once he explained it.

I'm now on a med for the OCD, and usually it keeps things in check. But I know when the thoughts pop up things are off kilter in my life/brain. I'm better able now to simply allow the thoughts to come into my head, or instead of letting them in enough to frighten me, to literally shake my head to shake them off, and that works a lot.

I do still, to this day, have a back-of-my-mind fear that one day I will become so incensed with rage/anxiety/hypomania that I'll lose it on one of my animals---because when I get like that it's almost like morals/humane-ness goes out the window. But that's mostly been kept under wraps as well.

I just had to share, because it is something that almost no one I know deals with....as with all mental illness, one simply cannot relate unless they've been in that place themselves.