I have very violent thoughts at times. But they stay at the level of thoughts. Sometimes I feel really very %#@&#! mad and I have mental pictures of all kinds of stuff (though I won't go into the details).

There is a difference between thoughts and action urges.

I used to worry about this considerably... Worry about whether ruminating on those kinds of thoughts might make it more likely that I'd act on it (which I would be absolutely mortified about in hindsight).

Like when I was getting a hard time with some of the %#@&#! ups in community mental health I used to envisage getting a big %#@&#! knife and going to find p-doc... Or explosives or something... I'm not joking... Thinking about this stuff... Well... I don't know if it helped, but I used to think about it.

But I never went out and brought a knife. I never tried to obtain explosives. I really don't think I would ever act on such thoughts.

But I do think that it is fairly normal to have violent thoughts at time. Because we see so much of it in the movies and on the news etc... And what we experience... We tend to think about.

Are these the kinds of thoughts you mean?

Health professionals are typically fairly good at assessing risk. They are typically pretty good at knowing that there is a difference between ideation (thoughts) of suicide and / or harming others and urges where there is a risk that the person might act on their desires.

The biggest factor... Is likely to be history of harming others or oneself.

Are you talking about an anger management program or something like that?