Mum shares disturbing thought that made her think she was paedophile
Warning: This article contains discussion of suicide which some readers may find distressing.
A mum was diagnosed with OCD after fearing she was a paedophile with her hardly leaving the house and considering calling the police on herself, even though she hadn't done anything.
In January 2024 a few weeks after the birth of her daughter, Lauren Carrigher woke up with chest pains and intrusive thoughts that her TV was going to explode, with the 35-year-old rushed to hospital fearing she was having a heart attack.
Diagnosed with postnatal depression and prescribed anti-depressants, the mum-of-three started having more intrusive thoughts which made her panicked and anxious to the point she was in a 'living hell'.
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"I’d have thoughts about what if I inappropriately touched my baby while changing nappies," Lauren told The Sun
"It was so debilitating. I thought, ‘Why am I thinking this? Only paedophiles think this’.”
Her intrusive thoughts reached a 'peak' in August of that year when she thought about murdering a family member and said she felt 'horrendous' about it.
The mum spent three months in a mental health unit and was diagnosed with post-natal obsessive compulsive disorder, leaving her 'over the moon' to finally learn the reason behind her thoughts and start treatment.
Since being prescribed anti-psychotic medication and starting therapy she feels she's been able to 'get her life back', and now Lauren is speaking about it so anyone else going through what she experienced can better understand what's happening.
The Essex woman said: "It is so intense and so awful, you don't know what to believe. Your brain is telling you you're this vile, nasty person, it's so debilitating.
"I honestly believed for about six months that I was a paedophile and that I needed to go to jail. I felt like I needed to call the police on myself.
"I had to try and act normal around them and ignore what was in my head but it was so hard. Doing the school run was extremely hard. There was one time I thought 'no, I know I'm not a paedophile, I'm going to do the school run'."
She described having a 'massive panic and anxiety attack' when the school doors opened, leaving her 'a heap on the floor crying my eyes out'.
When her mum had to move in because she was afraid she'd act on one of her thoughts Lauren was at a point where she was hiding the knives in her house as she was afraid she'd stab someone, and feared getting out of bed as she thought the floor might collapse if she touched it.
"I had to lock all the windows upstairs because I thought I was going to jump out the windows," she recounted.
"I didn't want to commit suicide but my brain said 'what if you jumped out of the window?'. There was no point in any of my journey where I got pleasure out of it or wanted to do anything."
The anxiety she went through meant in a few months she lost 5st 7lbs, and she went to hospital after having intrusive thoughts about planning to kill a family member.
She said: "All night I sat up, that was the peak for me, and my brain was planning a murder. It was saying 'there's knives in the drawer, they're vulnerable, what if I strangled them or stabbed them?'."
She warned that 'it was literally like a switch went in my head while I was asleep', but due to her therapy Lauren says she rarely gets intrusive thoughts now.
"It's the most horrendous living hell for so long but now I've got my life back and you can recover," she said.
"I couldn't tell you the last time I had an anxiety or panic attack, they've completely stopped. I have the odd thought but nowhere near as intrusive as what it was."
While she says she's received 'so much hate', she's talking about it in the hopes she can 'spread awareness that you're not some horrible, vile person and it doesn't define you as a person, it's a mental health disorder'.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, please don’t suffer alone. Call Samaritans for free on their anonymous 24-hour phone line on 116 123 or contact Harmless by visiting their website https://harmless.org.uk.
Topics: Parenting, Mental Health, Health
Joe Harker