How can I manage religious doubt and anxiety without exacerbating it?

Check out Mark DeJesus on YouTube as well

Check out Jaimie Eckert. Her program has helped me so much restore a healthy relationship and view of God

I feel the same way

I also have OCD Religious. It’s not easy, but believe me. God is love and our thoughts about bad thinkings caused by OCD won’t be judge.

I am sorry that you are having a difficult time. Ocd attacks what is important to us and your faith community must be important so that ocd goes after it. Ocd makes us search for certainty - and it does not exist. Here is something that a spiritual person once told me - faith is belief without certainty. In other words we believe in the divine and our faith but we can’t know for sure what we believe is actually 100% correct. With ocd it is difficult to sit with this fact.

I also struggle with religious OCD. For the past 25 years! For me a big thing is doctrinal differences. I've been Lutheran my entire life, but question if I'm in the "right" church, etc.

Hi, I think everyone that is religious struggles with this at some point, I have and am rn. Remember God understands your OCD better than you do. It’s okay to question things about your religion and do research and pray. God wants you to learn about him. We can’t be 100% certain about anything. I believe this is where Faith comes into play. “Believe and trust in me, for your faith will give you strength”.

God made you! He understands more than anyone what you’re going through and will love you regardless.

As Jeffrey and Greg have said already, the only way to address the doubts and uncertainty is to accept them! There are a few ways to do this which we learn in ERP treatment. One is to use “non-engagement responses” when these fears and thoughts pop up. For example, “maybe this is just human invention, maybe not, but I’m going to choose to do x (like participate in services) anyway.” The problem isn’t the presence of the doubts, instead it’s how we respond to them. If we fight them in search of certainty, they will persist; on the other hand, if we can accept that they may exist and we don’t have to change that, we can show our brain over time that there’s nothing to fear. Sending you care!

Thank you all