Horrible pure ocd

Hello everyone. I was just wanting to post on here regarding a situation that I have been dealing with for a few months now. I have been taking my walk with Christ seriously for about a year now and ever since I started I’ve noticed a bunch of intrusive thoughts and it’s caused me much distress. It all started back in June of 2024. I missed a church service because my wife and I were taking care of our daughter and I went to a Best But store and upgraded my old Apple Watch to a new one. I felt like doing so I committed idolatry because I went and bought that instead of going to church. I felt immense guilt for doing so and the next day I cancelled my order. I thought that maybe I was over thinking the entire thing so I went ahead and placed a new order and got the watch. For two weeks after getting the watch, I ruminated about whether I should keep it or not. It didn’t feel right with me and was overwhelmed with guilt for having it and it was debilitated with anxiety and stress. Eventually I decided I would just give it back so I went to go return it on the last day I could do so only to find out I could not. I thought that was a sign from God that I could keep it. I felt the most relief after that that I had experienced in quite awhile but then the next day after I started have thoughts again thinking that I didn’t try hard enough to return it and that I’m some how putting it before God. Well eventually I came to terms that there was nothing I could do about it and I was able to stop worrying about it being an idol. Well my mind jumped from that to another thing in my life and this one has been harder to get over. I have been on hair loss medication for 7 years and I had a thought one day telling me that “if I’m a true follower of Christ, then I shouldn’t take the medicine because I’m placing too much importance on my looks” I again felt immense anxiety and dread and tried fighting these thoughts away but could not help but think” what if it is and this is conviction of the Holy spirit”? I would constantly look up online any answers I could find to help relieve my anxiety but I can’t. I pray to God all the time for his will to be done in this situation and sometimes I feel better but then it all comes back. It’s hard for me to read the Bible because there’s so much about idolatry I always feel like it’s God talking to me like it’s a sign or if I’m just taking it that way? I asked God to show give me an answer about this situation and a day later a YouTuber I follow posted a video about removing idols from our lives. I felt that was God speaking to me or wasn’t sure maybe it was a coincidence? I just feel so cornered and out under so much pressure on what to do. Of course I would like to keep taking my medicine because it has helped me but then I have thoughts that tell me it is an idol because I am not able to give it up. I cut back taking the medicine a lot more often over the last months but I don’t know if this is God telling me to do so or my own mind. Like if I want to keep my hair I believe God allows healing through medication and it’s a gift. But these thoughts are telling me that I rely on taking it and it’s an idol and that unless I give it up completely I’m not following God’s will and it’s an idol. It’s caused immense doubt because then I read Romans 14 and it says anything you do with doubt is sin because it’s not of faith. I feel like I’m being attacked and cornered because I’m forced to stop taking something that has helped me. Now I have thoughts telling me to stop wearing my retainers every night because I got Invisalign a few years back to fix my teeth and that unless I stop taking my medication and wearing my retainers I’m not authentically following God. I don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t want to go against God and I don’t want to commit idolatry. I know God is all loving so I doubt this is all coming from him. I have to take/wear these things daily for them to work and the ocd will twist that in saying they are idols because of that and I just feel so cornered and defeated. I try to find things constantly online to see if anyone else has similar issues but I can’t. I know this is a long post but just trying to get some clarity on the matter. What should I do to help my situation?

I kind of doubt this is intrusive thoughts. I hope it is, but I somewhat doubt it. I have a prayer obsession that has been driving me CRAZY. I have spent like 10+ hours a day thinking about this, and there seems like no end in sight. I believe I’ve prayed for some bad things and meant it, partly as a result of this, so I’m stuck in this cycle and can’t accept uncertainty with it. When I was incredibly desperate during one of my classes and suicidal, the one thing stopping me from doing it, was that my parents would be devastated. I almost, I believe had the genuine urge to pray that they would die in a way that wasn’t my fault. I’m not even talking about intrusive thoughts. Unfortunately, the ocd did play one factor. It somewhat neutralized it, to say that in the conditions of the prayer, I could not be morally responsible at all for praying for it or the outcome. So this was something at that moment I somewhat wanted. I resisted, but came very close, which is disturbing. At the moment it happened and had that urge, I was so bad off that I felt like there was no hope (I wanted to do it when I got back from class, although I didn’t cause it’s scary), and I needed an escape. Unfortunately, this was the escape my mind presented. It also presented another escape that I believe has actually become something that I now view as an escape. I was worried about making a racist prayer in the beginning of the prayer obsession. My mind presented to me the scenario: “if all people of color suddenly died, you would feel so guilty, you would attempt suicide.” My mind also neutralized it to say if it happened, it could happen in a way that I wouldn’t be morally responsible at all for, including the prayer (which makes no sense). I believe I have thought of this so much, that not only has it become something I’ve started to see as an escape, but the worry about praying for it has actually made that particular situation something that stands out as an escape. The more I worry about it, the more guilty I’d feel if something like that happened (which obviously never will), so when thinking of escapes, that and the thing about my parents are in the forefront of my mind. I believe possibly my mind has driven me crazy to the point where I am actually capable of praying for these things. I have also had the urge to pray for things like world war 3 as an escape. I know it wouldn’t normally happen beyond ocd driving me crazy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t mean it.

TW Religious ocd This is very confusing. I have severe religious meta OCD, and it’s making my mind go to bad places. With meta ocd there are multiple layers to it and it becomes complicated. Prayer can be basically both used to express desire and as a test, and it is REALLY confusing. This is probably triple or quadruple meta ocd pr even more but I’ll do my best to explain. During the prayer obsession I’ve had, I convinced myself I prayed for bad things (it was probably more ocd than I realized). One thing ocd would do is present scenarios of things I wanted that I wouldn’t normally pray for to basically create a lot of ambiguity. It also found loopholes such as praying to pray for things. One of the things I would do while praying for things I’d want is praying to die. This is I guess already a gray area, cause I’m sure god wouldn’t be happy, but at the same time, it’s something I established I wanted and prayed for. It could be like I was running on the trail and I’d see a fox and pray it attacked me and mean it. The issue is, in reality, I wouldn’t really want a fox to attack me that much. I wrote about that as an example and there was a therapist who was probably right who said the prayer could be both a testing ground and to express desire. OCD realized that if it could get a bad prayer in that, it could be bad, since they said “and express desire.” Another issue with this is a fox attack isn’t the most desirable thing. So then today, my brain thought of something else: what about a bee attack. Same thing. I prayed and meant that, and then it instantly jumped to something that could affect not just me but other people: world war 3. The ocd is so complex that I have that the way out is likely just allowing myself to pray for whatever I want regardless of how bad it is and letting god ignore it. So I did the same thing with world war 3, and some other bad things my brain hand picked, meant it in that moment, felt bad, and then that whole thing was gone. I also prayed to pray for it. Essentially, I prayed through magical thinking (I know it makes no sense. Praying through magical thinking makes it easier to do and that’s why my brain came up with that). After it was done, I had no desire for any of those prayers. I’m confused because there are so many layers, and I technically prayed for something bad. Unfortunately, if I don’t pray for that thing, I’ve prayed for so many things like that, and it could cause issues. I could wonder why I prayed for stuff like that in the past. So I can’t walk away easily. I might just have to let myself do bad prayers, get it out, hopefully it fixes my brain, and move on with my life. What I hate too is for the prayer to die, my brain selects whatever way I could die that would either hurt the most people or be relate to whatever I was afraid of it relating to. If I don’t do it, I start to ruminate about why I did it in the past. But essentially, with this specific part, it’ll almost bait me by starting off with a prayer for a fox to attack or something, move to something else somewhat less desirable, and then whatever thing it hand picked that could hurt others. And it all feels similar.