When going down hill on the road bike I wonder what would it be like if the forks snapped

Last summer, after a long road ride to the north of Harrogate and down a few steep descents I gave my bike the once over and spotted this…

I can’t imagine what might have happened had it gone whilst doing 45mph+ going down Greenhow Hill 😯

I think there are probably categories of these sorts of thoughts, ranging from stuff that would be shocking, impulsive and which seems to come from a genuine curiosity around what it would be like. We’d never do it, of course, because that crosses the line from thinking to acting which I think probably ticks a box or two on the psychopath checklist.

I can be sitting in a really nice restaurant, for example, and be speculating about the reaction if I were to just pick up a chair and hurl it through the sheet glass window. What would the nice couple next to us say? How long could I resist being wrestled to the floor?

Then there’s the slightly darker stuff, like the scary or more negative thoughts that can appear when your train is approaching or when you’re near a sharp drop etc. Could be something less sudden than this: I sometimes find myself thinking on (for example) a random Tuesday morning: “What if – rather than turning up at work as usual – I just bought a last-minute flight somewhere? How would that conversation go if I rang my wife and said I was calling from Japan and did she want anything whilst I’m there?”

I definitely suffer from the ‘imp of perversion’..
Be it pushing people in front of cars, or (the worst one) when I’m on a bridge/cliff top, I feel a ‘draw’ pulling me to teh edge, and beckoning me to just topple off the side….

Weird isn’t it!

DrP

im hugely relieved by this thread. so thanks to the OP. I’ve already mentioned one of mine above, but another prominent one is pouring boiling liquid on myself/others.

cant explain that urge.

When I was younger I did actually act out one of these random thoughts. I got it into my head and planned it carefully that I was going to do it after school and I did.
I just wanted to kick in a window in the local catholic church.
Why I wanted to and why I did it I have no idea. Im not catholic, I’d never been there. Just wanted to do it. I was probably about 8 or 9 at the time.

I occasionally have the through of wanting to absolutely batter my OH in the face whilst sat next to her sometimes. Not when Im angry or cross, just want to smash her face in for the sake of it.
Im clearly **** up.

When I was younger I did actually act out one of these random thoughts

One wonders of this is the case for lots of americas mass shootings.

Starts as a random thought (what would happen if etc) then it becomes more and more pressing.

When I was younger I did actually act out one of these random thoughts

Oh shit, you’ve reminded me of the one time I did too. Bloody moronic, surprised my mates didn’t disown me from then on!
Didn’t hurt anyone, but could’ve given an old dear or 2 a heart attack. 🙁

One wonders of this is the case for lots of americas mass shootings.

Starts as a random thought (what would happen if etc) then it becomes more and more pressing.
And the worry is, with each such event happening, it is getting more and more normalised so the next time someone has an urge they may believe it acceptable to act on it.

I used to jump out of perfectly good aeroplanes for a living and have thought about doing it without the parachute, high as possible, strangely feel very serene and thinking i’d enjoy it knowing fate was inevitable!

As it is a common thing, i wonder if it is something to do with how we are wired, a bit like “flight or fight” mechanism, are we constantly looking for the worse in a situation so we can react if it did happen subconsciously?

i’d enjoy it knowing fate was inevitable!

I do wonder what would happen to your brain during those minutes – would your life flash before you as it tries to unscramble everything?

I get the punching somebody one but instead of just thinking of punching them I play out the whole scenario in my head from what happens leading upto it, where I hit them, what happens afterwards, being restrained by co-workers etc

I just put it down to working with a lot of people who annoy me 😆

The other one is thinking about my funeral, again I’ll go into it in great detail picturing what happens, who’s there, music playing etc. And I did once think whilst stood on deck at the back of a ferry to France what would happen if I just jumped off? How long would it take for anyone to notice I’d gone or find me in the middle of the sea.

Would never do any of it but looking at other peoples replies it’s good to know I’m not alone thinking some pretty bad things 😆

Not going to post all of mine but they’ve been the bane of my life for as long as I can remember and are linked to pretty bad OCD (lots of redoing things to stop me believing that the thoughts specifically about harm coming to loved ones will come true).

I guess that we’re all probably on a continuum (and I think that to some degree they’re pretty common) but if they really get too much there are medications and therapies that can help.

Cycling’s a great help too (although fettling can be a nightmare!)

another prominent one is pouring boiling liquid on myself/others.
cant explain that urge.

Thoughts of harming others (in all manner of ways) are surprisingly common. Quite often the distress they cause if fear that me might actually carry them out but in my experience this rarely happens; I don’t think that they’re an urge, we just worry that they might be (the fear and disgust we often feel for thinking them is a pretty healthy, if exaggerated, response to such thoughts). I’m 50 next month and have lived with intrusive thoughts on a daily basis for as long as I can remember but have never harmed a single person as a result.

Anyone that does genuinely feel compelled to act out harmful though probably ought to talk things through with someone.

I recognise too many of these for comfort

Same here, and now having been reminded of some that I’d successfully managed to put in the box in the corner of my brain marked ‘do not open’ it appears the lid has blown off and they’ve all escaped like some kind of Indiana Jones style Ark opening inside my head…

Thanks Internet, you suck 🙁

I’ve got dozens if not hundreds. Typically I get a flash-back of something I did that was embarrassing and caused me anxiety at the time. It could be 5 years ago or 30, they come out of nowhere and cause me to shudder and sometimes say odd words. It’s weird.

Yes, this ^ – I was told it was OCD for me, between the above and not being able to make a decision and sticking to it my mind goes at 100 miles an hour some days

Pjay… Yeah the bike fettling rings true. Often play over and over in my head the best way to do things and have to psyche myself up to get the tools out…often replaying scenarios in my head like what to do if this or that doesn’t work. OCD can manifest itself in weird ways… Not just what you see on these clean freak programs on tv (not that I watch them!) ahem.

The other one is so bad I can barely even type it but, trypophobia.

Really wish I hadn’t googled that.

When I was a squaddie I had to remove the bodies from a people carrier that had been burned out, two adults and a number of children up to about the age of ten. It was an awful thing to do but oddly I didn’t consider it the worst thing I’d done or would do at the time.

Years later when I had my own kids whenever I was driving and would see them in the rear view mirror that scene would vividly play out in my head, only with it being my girls bodies. It fell away when they both got into their teens but we then had another girl who’s now 7 and I still find myself driving and having to hide or fake sneezing to explain the tears. They do tell me I’m weird and my eldest is always quick to tell me that she now drives without the need to cry! 🙂