I'm a sadistic young adult (~20). Please help!

As the title says, I did it in august and have been feeling terribly unwell since then. It all started when my parent bought 2 pets, one of the pets was getting increasingly aggressive towards the other so I tried to stop it. It didn't work so I had to use a more physical approach and to my surprise I found out I enjoyed bothering my pet for some reason.

(The pets were not dogs, cats, bunnies or any mammalians. They were smaller animals.)

As time went on I realised I kept on getting sexually aroused whenever I hurt my pet, eventually getting to the point where I killed my pet by "accident". I did not intend to kill my pet but my sadistic tendencies caused me to use something that ended up killing it. I was completely devastated after what I did. I literally ran back and forth from the burial place 3 times in hopes of seeing my pet alive again. It yielded no results, obviously.

All that happened 1 year ago. I feel completely devastated for my pet. I have suicidal thoughts every day, I can't concentrate or do anything since then. I'm dead inside.

My childhood was riddled with abuse. Both from school by my class mates and at home by my parents and siblings. I have never been happy in my life, quite literally never been happy, only afraid, stressed and powerless.
I don't like to use my childhood as a justification for my actions, but it is arguably childhood that shapes ones brain and makes darkness potentially grow.

I bought a new pet a while ago and the couple have made 3 younglings. I'm still having sadistic feelings but it is greatily diminished since what I did. One of the younglings fled because seagulls scared it away and I have been feeling even worse since then. I don't know what to do. Thanks to my mental illness I dropped out of university and feel like I'm gonna get a heart attack or something. I hate myself for what I did to my pet. My sadistic feels still won't go away, but they are weaker. Still worrying considering it might come back stronger.

What do I do? My country won't help me, I have been trying to get help for over a year but haven't gotten anything. I literally don't know what to do, I fear I may drop out of university again or start hurting others. I have mild social phobia, autism and PTSD.

Hi fernan,

Welcome to PsychCentral.

I noticed that you posted a similar message in the Autism and Asperger's Syndrome forum.

I understand that your feelings and actions are your own, but from what I have read and somewhat from personal experience, those actions and feelings come about often because of unprocessed trauma. It's very unfortunate that no psychiatrist or anybody else that you've asked for help has done anything.

I'd like to tell you a little about myself so that you might understand that I think I understand where you are coming from, too. I did have sadistic type feelings but I mostly acted them out, so to speak, against myself, beating myself up emotionally and getting a sadistic thrill from that, of which I was barely aware. But as I tried to understand my penchant for emotional self-abuse better, it became more clear to me that the sadistic "enjoyment" kept the whole cycle going despite the pain.

After many long years of therapy for trauma, I finally became aware of some pain from emotional hurts in my childhood that I had made unconscious because they were just too painful. It was extremely painful going through some of that therapy but it has relieved my tendency to beat myself up a lot. And I rarely have a sadistic feeling about it even when I do.

This, I think, supports your idea that the desire to hurt the smaller animals is related to the abuse you experienced in your childhood. But, of course, that doesn't make it go away, either. It's great that you've gained some control over your actions and the feelings are much less, and since the animals weren't mammals, I guess the mental health people you have seen don't see your tendencies as much of a threat.

But it sounds as if those tendencies are having an enormous detrimental effect on YOUR mental health, and if there was abuse in your background you definitely need to get treated for that. In that light, your tendencies are just a symptom of the PTSD or something similar, and the underlying trauma needs to be treated and resolved.

Perhaps my experience and support might help you to contact a mental health professional and make a stronger demand for treatment for the underlying trauma? I hope so. Write back any time. Good luck!

Hi, I would just like to say that you are not alone. I also suffer from sexually sadistic thoughts except that I only feel pleasure when a person I find attractive feels pain.

However, I have not heard of being sexually sadistic towards animals. But then again, I haven't really heard much about Sexual Sadism.