For the past few years ive been struggling immensely with extremely invasive and intrusive thoughts. These mostly are feelings of panic that originate from my supposed irrecuperability in social skills which causes me to be more childlike than adult like. I can't relate to other 21 year olds. I feel insecure about being unemployed. I keep getting invasive thoughts about potential scenarios where someone asks me to help them pay for something and I reply "I don't have money" and they passively aggressively laugh and mock me, etc. But none of these can compare to the thoughts I have of my ex. Specifically her being with someone else. Her smiling and loving and f*cking someone else. These images, especially the ones about her having s*x just flash through my mind and when they do it's like someone stabbed me in my heart. I feel an intense eruption of panic, anxiety, anger, all mixed into one horrible emotion. It's the main trigger for my self harm strategies in dermatophagia and light head bashing.

But for some reason, I kind of....want these thoughts???

I have this fear that if these thoughts stop, I would be in a comfort zone and wouldn't have the motivation to fix my issues.I don't want to fall into a comfort zone where I am satisfied with my current state of life. I would like motivation. And these intrusive thoughts HEAVILY motivate me out of social anxiety and laziness. E.g. last week, there was this pretty moroccan girl sitting in front of me in the library and I was afraid of approaching her due to my balding and my appearance and my lack of experience with NT women. However, the thought of my ex having s*x with someone else flashed through my mind at that moment and it made me feel rage so intensely that I just went up and started full on flirting and dirty talking with her, not just the "hey your cute can I have your number". I said all these things that I never would be able to do normally and I could tell I swept her off her feet. I was like accusing her of being Italian coz she got them pretty dark features and jet black hair and that id love to cook her some pasta some time and that she would look great in a wedding gown, etc. It made her laugh. Yeh I was so embarrassed afterwards about what I said lol. But she was kinda getting into it. She gave me her number. We talked a bit but then she blocked me.

Examples like this you know. These thoughts give me the correct amount of motivation I require to fight my issues. But they also fuel my self harm. Im scared that if I stop having these thoughts I won't have another potent medium to be able to motivate myself enough to fight my issues.

What should I do?