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Originally Posted by nikon
i can relate - i have very violent fantasies when i feel angry. i seem to go through periods when i am intensely angry and have these fantasies, and then periods when i rarely get angry, and don't have them. so i think it might help to check how angry you are feeling generally, or if you have old anger about anything in your past, and maybe see how that might be coming out in violent thoughts towards people now.
i also have not told my therapist or dr the extent of my thoughts, for the same reason. one time when i was in an inpatient setting, but not a psych ward, i told someone about a fantasy i had in more detail, and was immediately made to leave because of being a danger to the other patients. so - although the sensible advice is always to talk about these things to someone you trust, the mental health field does not provide a healthy atmosphere or space in which to do this when it comes to thoughts like these.
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So, I did tell my therapist that I had violent fantasies about harming this person. And he asked me if I would act on them. I said no, because I recognized the consequences of those actions. And he deemed that because I could discern that there would be consequences, like going to prison, he deemed it was just a healthy outlet for the stress I felt.
But hospitals need to get better questions about whether or not you're a harm to others. Because I had an intake question about whether or not I had thought about harming someone else. And yes, I had. But that's not enough to determine if someone is a danger to the community. They also have to be willing to act on those impulses and not care about the consequences. Yes, I wanted to harm my boss because of what he did, but I also knew it was wrong. Knew I would go to jail, and knew it would harm is family, and knew it was just plain wrong. So no, I wasn't a danger. But their intake questions don't ask that and don't discern that.
We all have desires to harm other people. Someone cuts you off in traffic and you just want to ram their fender...if only for a second. Someone spews hate speech and you would like to see them punched...the real question is how likely is the person to act on it.
It seems to me we get policed lately just for our thoughts...and if Tom Cruise has taught us anything, that is wrong. (See Minority Report.)