I’m sure I’m not the only one

Hopefully this helps somewhat. When my intrusive images come to mind, sometimes they’re repetitive and I’ll try and replace them with a more positive image. Sometimes that doesn’t help though, I’ll just sit and look at the image, feel that horrible feeling, accept that it’s upsetting and triggering, and then try and replace it with a positive image or healthy distraction.

I used to have blasphemous words and sentences repeating themselves over and over and over and over in mind from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. These sentences were always against God. Words just repeated in my head all day. I am a Christian, and my faith is the most important thing to me. OCD always attacks what we value the most; so in my case, it went after my faith. The worst thing you can do with repetitive thoughts is to try to fix them. The best solution is to just let them run around in your head and do whatever they want to do. My repetitive words/sentences didn’t go away until I let them run their course WITHOUT TRYING TO FIX THEM. You see, I used to try to put a “not” in my head against every evil sentence that kept repeating. I felt like this was somehow negating the bad thought. But it turned out that I was adding “not” fifty times a minute, a hundred times an hour—all day every day. I was so focused on adding “not”s to all repetitive words and sentences, that I was drowning inside my head. Repetitive words are just intrusive thoughts. And the solution to intrusive thoughts is to JUST LET THEM BE THERE. Don’t try to fight them or fix them. The more you fight or fuss or fix, the worse the repetitive thoughts get. Your job is let your thoughts do whatever they want, but then you have to deny yourself from performing any compulsions. (The compulsions are what we try to do to fix or mitigate the thoughts. This was me trying to add a “not” to every repetitive sentence.) You can torture yourself to death trying do fix repetitive thoughts. The answer is to just ignore them and live your life like you normally would. We can talk more if you want:):):) You’ve got this!

Repetitive thoughts were my bane for many years. So torturous. But they don’t have the power to hurt you. THEY REALLY DON’T MEAN ANYTHING!! They are meaningless and harmless. And you take away the power they think they have when you ignore them and don’t try to fix them or engage with them. The key to OCD treatment is this truth: You have to let the intrusive thoughts just run totally wild in your mind—without trying to fight turn or fix them. Anything we do to fix them is a compulsion.

I’ve been trying to look for a Christian with ocd type of group but the ones I do find haven’t been any good. If you know of any let me know! I feel I may have to be starting my own soon.