#Homicidal Ideation

[autopsyfreak]

Homicidal Ideation

homicidal ideation is the term for having active thoughts about murdering others. these thoughts can be intrusive, however they can also often be voluntary.

misconceptions:

‘people who have these thoughts either have killed someone or will kill someone in the future’ - this is false. most people who have these thoughts usually have disordered behaviours (most commonly as a result of personality disorders) and struggle to find healthy ways to cope with their emotions, therefore provocation and stress can easily cause thoughts of inflicting harm onto others. this doesn’t inherently mean these people are dangerous, nor does it mean that they’re going to act upon these thoughts. most people who experience homicidal ideation never act on it and use it more as a way to process their distress/frustration internally.

‘having these thoughts about people in your life means you can’t possibly care for them’ - also false. caring for someone doesn’t make them an exception to mental illness and it doesn’t stop your mental illnesses from existing. to think that someone’s love for you is only valid as long as they’re not displaying traits of mental illness is unfair and is hugely misinformed. to love and be loved by someone who is mentally ill is to accept that they will display symptoms of their mental illness. you are not the exception and they do not love you any less by showing traits of being unwell.

‘so you endorse murder’ - no. that’s not at all what this means and if you seriously think this then your grasp of severe mental health issues is too limited to be commenting on such topics.

‘you’re evil’ - for being unwell? don’t be a cunt. if you seriously think that having a disordered manner of processing emotions internally makes someone ‘evil’ then that sounds more like an issue with you being too sensitive and having a lack of understanding, not an issue with the mentally ill person experiencing these thoughts. don’t make your inability to understand mental illness into someone else’s problem.

as someone who does experience homicidal ideation, it’s also important to not make the mistake of assuming everyone who is mentally ill experiences these thoughts either. i had an anonymous ask earlier today that directly associated the fact i’m mentally unwell with murder and homicidal thoughts, to immediately make this assumption just because someone is mentally ill is disgusting.

[whats-a-human]

Tips on coping with homicidal ideation, no empathy necessary!

Unrelated to this blog's theme, but this is a very important topic. Everyone is welcome to interact. I wanted to post this long ago; it's hard to but I gotta help others and break the stigma around this too. I hope my wording is good enough.

I have struggled with homicidal ideation years ago, which you might call a type of intrusive thought. I rarely have any homicidal intrusive thoughts anymore and I've dealt with the underlying issue that caused them, so I believe I have overcome that problem.

So, here's a post to anyone struggling with this. Having a licensed therapist is better but I know that just like me, many of you can't have one.

Preparing for an episode

First of all, be neutral about your ideation: you aren't a horrible person and you aren't going to actually murder someone just because of it. Now, and that's really important too: do not normalize those thoughts. You aren't evil for having an illness, but it's still an illness that hurts you above all else, and can hurt others too. I learned this from an acquaintance and that was really helpful.

Now, have a support network. Friends, mental health groups, anything. You should have a safe space to talk about your experiences but you don't need to be "out" to everyone! You can just tell a friend something like "hey, sometimes my mental illnesses act up and I have episodes, when that happens I'll give you a heads up and we could do X" (like talking about a comfort topic, having you/your friend talk about your/their day, etc.) Find a safe way to avoid isolation!

Think of your triggers, make a list so you can avoid them and prepare for when you get triggered. Also list things that soothe you and things that give you a sense of power and control but don't harm you/others. The options are endless, like painting your nails, giving your hair a trim, customizing your phone/blog/etc, cooking, going for a walk, hobbies etc.

2. During an episode

The goal here would be averting your attention to something else, but that can't be forced.

So, you can always talk facts with your brain. If you did act on your urges, you'd be arrested, period. Minor or not. And as a mentally ill person, your time there and after prison would be double hell... compared to just not acting on the thought. If you've been arrested before I doubt you'd want to years on end there (or years on end again). What I also told myself was, "going to prison because of such lowly people isn't worth it". I was right and extra based.

Also why waste your time with murder plans when you can be thinking about Pokemon. Or anything else that brings you joy. Yes, thinking of Pokemon instead of murder plans is part of recovery and based as hell. Like, even if you aren't a fan, some of those critters are cute, right? And just like that, you're slowly averting your attention and the urges are quieting down.

3. Other important things

The biggest victim of my intrusive thoughts was me. Those I wanted to kill were my abusers and I didn't want to have those thoughts, even during episodes I hated that a part of me was into it.

But I would never accept a murderer as a part of myself. I refused to ever accept such path as a valid future for me. Those thoughts were a part of me, but they didn't need to be part of me FOREVER. And I proved myself right. I focused my strength and intelligence on RECOVERING and it was the right choice.

You may feel powerless just like I was. Then, give yourself a haircut, cook something, make art, customize your phone, watch a movie, go do anything that reassures you that YOU are in control of your life, not your abusers. Some things may not appear productive but they are nonetheless carving the way to a beautiful and FREE life. Your episodes will slowly become less and less frequent, and less intense.

Of course recovery isn't linear, it's not always pleasant or easy and you'll still have really bad times, but deciding to thread the path of recovery is a huge step of power in itself. Stay determined.

I still live with my abusers but I have worked so much with myself and whatever I could do within my reach, that the power I consider them to have over me is much, much smaller and that did wonders to me.

An extra reminder: some triggering things may feel kinda good or addictive, like doomscrolling or something that personally entertains your homicidal ideation instead of directing you away from it. For example, directing your violence towards fiction can be helpful but if engaging with/producing violent media entertains these thoughts about real life actions instead of being cathartic, that's a form of self-harm. I know it's addictive but try to look for alternatives! You can do it 💪

Once again, huge virtual hug for everyone 🫂 stay safe!

[love-me-love-my-weirdness]

Anyone who talks about how “edgy” they are needs to go take a bath in acid.

It makes it so hard for people to talk about their actual homicidal ideation or low empathy or low guilt or delusions or other stigmatised symptoms of mental illness.

I shouldn't have to clarify that my delusions are actual harmful, prolonged periods of distorted reality or that when I say I want to kill someone I mean that I have dark fantasies where I kill them in graphic detail.

I don't feel empathy. I don't feel guilt. Most of the time, I don't feel anything for other people. It's not quirky. It's not a joke. It's not something you can say you experience only to turn around and criticise the moment I go more in depth.

Stop trying to be cool by imitating mental illnesses. It's pathetic.

[saul-goodboy]

hi this is your reminder that having homicidal thoughts does not make you an inherently bad or broken person. your intrusive thoughts don’t define you as a person. and anyone who says otherwise can go vomit blood and die :3c

[thehomicidalbaby]

“Everyone wants a yandere partner until”

Until what? They have a mental/psychotic breakdown? They panic when I don’t answer in time? They threaten the lives of myself & everyone I know? They suspect I don’t love them or that I’m interested in someone else? They need my constant attention/affection or they feel like they’re going insane? It hurts them to be away from me? They lash out & harm me? They have uncontrollable thought/urges, mental illnesses & trauma that make them feel unloveable?

Sweetheart, there is no “until”. I love you. No matter what illness you have. No matter if you hurt me. No matter if you hurt yourself. No matter how many times I need to reassure you. No matter the severity of your episodes. You think I care if you’re insane? That is precisely why I chose you, the reason that I want you. You can’t scare me away. I’m here, darling. I’m not going anywhere & neither the fuck are you.

[sillynarcissist]

I cannot relate to "violent intrusive thoughts" all my violent and homicidal thoughts are welcome. I WISH I could fucking indulge in them, but I have some self control.

I will sit and kick my feet and daydream endlessly about brutalizing people because it makes me feel better. I will never do anything I fantasize about, buy I do get stuck on those fantasies, and I've decided to be proud of them !!

[narcfyodor]

Aspd traits/homicidal ideation are SO FUCKING annoying.

Tw for homicidal thoughts/urges

People who demonize people with homicidal ideation DNI. I don't support my homicidal ideation. This is a rant.

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A minor inconvenience happened and now I just have the intense urge to kill someone or at least beat someone up. Not even any person specific just a person. And this happens EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. multiple times 😭😭😭

[tiredtourettic]

homicidal ideation going crazy like STOP FUCKING LAUGHING OR I'M ACTUALLY GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU YOU'RE SO FUCKING ANNOYING

[daintydolldiary]

You ever fantasize about killing someone? Yeah. Me too!

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

NPD + Homicidal Ideation culture is feeling like you’re pushing the NPD stigma more because you actually do want to hurt people

.

[antisocialsharky]

Hi! I've not been diagnosed with ASPD (though I suspect I have it), but I do experience some pretty bad homicidal ideation. I know you've talked about that before on your Insta.

I've been doing a lot of research into HI to try to better understand myself, learn coping mechanisms, learn how to address it, etc, and I've been shocked by just how little there is. Truly, there's nothing. The best information I've found has come from criminal psychology, and that, one, is working from the perspective of serial killers, and two, never outlines coping mechanisms and treatment methods and such (which has made me realize the entire field of criminal psychology is abelist, in that it cares more about satisfying curiosity on what makes monsters instead of learning how to help people, but that's neither here nor there).

I guess I'd like to ask if you've ever seen decent information about HI before? How have your therapists treated it? I find I'm usually the one teaching my therapists all about what HI is and what it feels like and everything. I've never found anyone who could teach me anything I didn't already know from my own trial and error. Have you had the same experience?

It's getting to the point where I'm just making my own awareness blog to discuss what HI's really about, share information and coping mechanisms, share how I've managed mine, etc. I think most people with HI have gone through the struggle of feeling alienated by it, then feeling monstrous because the best representations of ourselves that we can find are in serial killers (real or fictional), and then having to learn by ourselves how to deal with it (or never learning and floundering without support and ultimately harming people). I went through it, and I don't want other folks to go through that shit too.

I know ASPD (and other cluster Bs) are also frequently misunderstood and under-researched, and I suspect that's been a big motivator for you making your awareness accounts. How has that process gone? And do you have tips for managing these types of accounts?

Bit of a longer post than I intended, apologies. I hope you're doing well. I really appreciate your posts ^^

Hello there ^^

The lack of information about HI really is a problem and I think you're probably right if you say, that they just wanna satisfy their curiosity! Additionally I think they just also don't feel the need to come up with help & coping strategy stuff, because in their minds anyone who experiences HI is, as you said, a "monster" and thus beyond help anyway. They do not perceive HI as something that regular people struggle with, or would like to work on, cus if they'd acknowledge that, they'd have to acknowledge that they themselves and their friends/family/etc. are technically capable of it too. If you know anything about humans, you'll know, that they are terrified of being someone who could hurt others/make mistakes/do something amoral, so they create a category of people who are far removed from them and who are now the only ones capable of committing such acts (and are usually not even seen as human anymore, cus that makes it essier to argument that you don't need to help these ppl, etc....yk rly just the strategy thats behind a lot of bigotry 🤷🏻‍♂️ dehumanizing others so you dont feel guilty for demonizing them, works wonders). That much for that!

In terms of the questions, I gotta say, I have not really seen much decent info about HI no! As you said, theres some in criminal psychology and some personality disorder related articles lightly touch on the topic, but never beyond basic info.

My past psychs have all treated it a bit differently

• Psych 1 at age 15 listened without judgement and recognized me with conduct disorder with later ASPD probability (cus I already met all of the ASPD symptoms) and insisted, that due to my explicit plans, I should go inpatient for a bit (went voluntarily, left after a week, had I not wanted to go at all, they probably would have sectioned me involuntarily).

• Psych 2 at age 16/17 just ignored it completely tbh! I told her and she was like "yeah I dont see that, that seems a bit extreme for your age" and we never talked about it again, so safe to say she knew jackshit and I didnt like her, so I didnt bother explaining.

• Psych 3 at age 19/20, who I only saw shortly, also listened without judgement and said that my HI in connection to my other symptoms definitely sounds like ASPD and recommended to get an updated assessment. He unfortunately said he wouldnt be able to treat me tho (idk what motivation that statement had).

• Psych 4 at age 22ish till now, absolutely blamed it all on puberty and told me it was very normal that I was so angry and wanted revenge at age 15 and that my HI now, is just still some anger simmering away or whatever. But shes a shit psych overall, who doesnt seem to be able to grasp that not everyone thinks prosocially, so I genuinely didnt bother explaining anything.

So overall I think with exception for psych 1, none of them knew shit about HI or weren't ready to treat it/acknowledge it. Which, as far as I've heard, is a very common experience for ASPDers (and also other ppl who experiences HI).

Making your own account about it sounds like an amazing plan! Theres definitely not enough out there who focus on the topic ^^

As for the process of my own account, that one was partially indeed motivated by wanting to create a space for ppl with that diagnosis (cus back then there were only 1 or 2 cluster B accounts on insta that mentioned ASPD at all!) and possibly helping others feel less alone & less monstrous, cus feeling like that has definitely driven me into bad communities and situations before. Partially, it was also motivated by the fact, that online attention, is a relatively easy way for me to fuel my need for certain stuff and I knew I'd step on a lot of ppls toes with my posts and be confronted with ableists and would get to discuss with them and theres just a certain thrill about putting your thoughts out there and not knowing whether people will like it or not. The online world serves as a big coping mechanism for me, as well as a source of community!

The process of making the account and running it successfully is indivdiual, but I do have some tips:

• you may wanna make sure that any info you state as a sort of "fact" can be "proven" by science (tho science is ofc never 100% fact but yk what I mean), cus otherwise ppl who may ask for proof or may look things up, will not take your account seriously and may class you as spreading misinfo and thats a hard label to lose again

• if you insert personal experience, you may benefit from being very explicit about the fact, that its just YOUR experience and that you're not trying to dictate how everyone with HI/a certain condition feels. ppl online very often lack that particular skill of reading comprehension & criticial thinking, where they can look at a post about something that they have and realize that this post is maybe just simply not about them/their symptoms. you'll need a lot of patience for the "okay but not everyone...", "but what about...", "okay but I am different because...." comments. like a LOT of patience xD

• with HI especially, you will run into a lot of ableism, but also just a lot of the whole "having a symptom is not an excuse to commit harm" crowd or "the symptom as an explanation doesnt mean you get to not work on that symptom" typa people or yk any variation rly. so before you grow as an account, its benefitial to think about where you personally would draw the boundaries as to which symptoms need to be worked on, what harm is "okay" without an apology, what harm is "not okay" without an apology, whether you wanna work on it from a harm reduction perspective or reframing which aspects of HI are seen as harmful in the first place or....the list goes on. if you have an inconsistent framework that could harm the potential of your account, maybe! (some ppl drive very well on the road of contradicting themselves, so its ofc up to u, but this is something I've learned over the years)

• if people who DM you/comment/etc. are not willing to listen to you, or are not open to considering your perspective, there is no shame in using the block button! you cannot have a productive conversation with someone who is already convinced they're right and is unwilling to learn! save your energy for those who do wanna learn!

• people usually love accounts that have a personality! mine was a lot more successfull when I put cute animal stickers on everything and leaned on the soft boy with bad guy disorder contradiction a lot (which to be fair wasn't a lie, I rly liked the aesthetic), or when I talked a lot about my personal life and stuff! even today ppl associate me with being the shark guy who just also happens to have this disorder! so giving ppl something to be interested in beyond your content topic, is a cool way to have them relate/like you & your account more!

• another personal trick of mine on insta were story games, but userboxes work just as well! ppl love interactive content! they love posting those silly things to their stories and making highlights to describe themselves with that stuff and thats a rly easy way to broaden exposure and have people follow you for that and then handily reaching them with your educational content too!

Thats all I can think of right now really! ^^

[love-me-love-my-weirdness]

Y’all be grateful for consequences because if there were no consequences I would just do whatever the hell I wanted with no moral compass whatsoever

[multiplesillylittleguys]

My god complex makes life so much easier for me

It also makes me want to violently murder anyone who acts like they're better than me in any way.

-Maia

[thehomicidalbaby]

Okay stalker boyfriend, ready when you are.

[homicidal-awareness]

I'm unsure if you've answered this question before, or if you even have experience with this type of thing, but do you know how to talk openly about HI in therapy/professional mental health spaces?

I've attempted several times before and simply speaking about my experiences with having intrusive or other thoughts about homicide has resulted in the threat of police being called and having me being sent to the psych ward.

After that time, I'm wondering if there's a specific way to avoid that or if it's just a gamble. I want to talk about my problems to seek help, but the help seems more keen to lock me up than to deal with it.

Ahh, yeah that's a tricky one.

Most mental health professionals are not trained to properly deal with HI, and are only told that homicidal thoughts constitute a crisis. If you're lucky, you'll get someone who understands it's not usually a crisis, but yeah it unfortunately kinda is a gamble, and you will always still have to explain the nature of your homicidal thoughts.

You can try to explain that your thoughts don't mean you're in a crisis and such. In my experience with explaining it, I usually put a lot of emphasis on the fact that I am not at risk of actually harming people most of the time, and the few times I am, I have a plan for it, and know to isolate myself and practice effective coping mechanisms.

Sometimes I compare it to suicidal ideation, in the sense that someone who experiences SI is not always at a risk of committing suicide. There may be moments it spikes, but that is its own circumstance. And homicidal ideation by extension functions similarly. Therapists tend to understand the nature of suicidal ideation better, so sometimes that comparison can work pretty well at talking down a reactionary or uneducated therapist.

I'm sorry you're dealing with that shit from mental health professionals though. Sending you care, and wishing you luck with finding someone who listens to you and understands better.

[thispeachisweird]