Urgent- please answer!!!

I cant afford a therapist, but thank you for the advice :)

Thank you so so much for your response!! I have genuinely never felt so heard before because most people with scruplosity have intrusive thoughts about things against their religion and a fear of going to hell. Part of me always thinks that because it's all rooted in actual religious teachings from Hinduism that material things (like sound taste touch) are distractions from God I can't give jn now that my brain has told me not to. I had lots and lots of rules too to the point where I didn't eat for a whole day because I promised not to! I keep thinking because in the Bhagavad Gita (a religious text in Hinduism) it talks about having self discipline, letting go of desires etc so I banned myself from so many things and became vegetarian. A few weeks ago I ended up really worrying some people around me as I would end up staying in one room doing nothing! I'm from the UK so I am hoping to get some help once I start University hopefully if I get the grades but I am so so grateful for your insight!!

Also everytime I do do a task involving ignorance like playing a song I have to think of what time it feels right to do it in my brain and it's always the minute AFTER. Like I'll think 4:18 is the right time and I'll check the time and it's 4:17 so then I think because the time doesn't feel right I just can't

@Anonymous Yes, the idea of “just right” OCD is a common theme. In this theme, we feel like things are bad if they are not “exactly right“. This is a very unhealthy form of perfectionism, and it will make you miserable. During ERP treatment, you will learn to do things “wrong” on purpose. You will practice playing a song on the “wrong “ minute until you get used to it. It’s scary, but get rewards are worth it!

@Anonymous Yes!!! I know exactly what you are talking about. I’ll write more below…

@Anonymous Below are two examples of how my misapplication of Scripture led to me getting stuck in OCD rules. The way to fix this is to apply a correct interpretation of Scripture. When I was a kid, I read an Old Testament passage from the Bible, that said, “Do not touch human discharge.“ This was a passage for ancient times regarding cleanliness.  However, I didn’t know how to interpret this. And so I took an interpretation that was extreme and false. I thought that every time I breathed on my hands or blew air on my hands that I was touching human discharge. I felt like the air was, in a way, “discharging” from my body. So every time I blew on my hands, I felt like I had to go and wash my hands. This was clearly not a correct interpretation of Scripture.  I also have struggled for years with the idea of the unforgivable sin of blasphemy. This is found in the Gospels. Because I have had a false interpretation of what blasphemy means, I have felt like I could commit blasphemy by little, every day things. I would feel like turning my wrist a certain way was blasphemy, or that saying words in the wrong tone was blasphemy, or that twitching my nose was blasphemy, or that just saying the wrong words blasphemy. In my head, there is some sort of logical connection to how this could be blasphemy. However, it is very extreme. Because of my fear of blasphemy, it was very hard to talk to people, because I was always worried about saying the wrong words. I was finding blasphemy everywhere because I had an improper interpretation of what blasphemy really means according to the Scriptures. What I have learned is that my INITIAL PREMISE is false. My understanding of blasphemy is wrong. The Scriptures actually don’t say that I should do all the things that I am doing. But my brain so deeply believes the wrong definition of blasphemy. Therefore, I am guarding and protecting myself all day from this fear.

@Tea and Honey In our hearts, I think we know what the Scripture is really saying. But we are just afraid to loosen up our interpretation. But we have to do that though. This OCD stuff will keep us in a cage. We have to operate under what the Scripture REALLY means, and not an OCD twisting of it:):) It’s very hard

@Tea and Honey Ultimately, you are going to have to break all your “rules”, even if they feel like they are coming from Scripture. Because the truth is that they are not really coming from Scripture. Otherwise, everyone in our religion would be acting the way we do. But people are not required to act that way. These rules are just coming from our brains. So we have to disobey all the false rules:):):)

@Tea and Honey What you're saying is so true!! The religious books don't even tell us to stop giving into 'materialistic' things they ask us to experience it but cultivate a sense of detachment and be balanced. I know this but still think I have to give everything up, even things which are morally good like studying to get the grades for medical school. I don't think I've ever resonated with someone this much, I feel like if I tell people even if a counceller they'll tell me it's isn't OCD. I think my brain latched onto this one aspect of my religion because it's something I can control by giving it up

How has your experience been? I'm so grateful for your replies :)

@Anonymous This is absolutely OCD. What you have is very classic for OCD. You would be surprised how many people have similar experiences. Yes, I have something similar to that. It feels like I can’t enjoy the good things in life unless they are associated with church. For example, I feel like I can’t enjoy a movie or joking around with friends if it’s not a Christian movie, etc. But this is false. We have to realize that the Scriptures are not taking away the basic things of life. Going to medical school is a gift you have. We need doctors. The OCD wants to keep you away from medical school and make you miserable. The Scriptures are definitely not saying you should stay out of medical school. The idea is that you will have to take a risk. Your brain wants you to be PERFECT. Your brain does not want you to take a risk that you might do something morally wrong. Don’t let OCD steal this great thing from you. It’s just a OCD trick to keep us miserable. I’ll give another example…

@Tea and Honey Even besides the medical school thing? I can kind of understand why I shouldn't sacrifice it according to scripture but the materialistic pleasure thing I just see no benefit-

@Anonymous In the book, “Waging War Against OCD,“ the author talks about a gift he had with sports photography. I think he was afraid that he would be too prideful if he exercised that gift (which he wouldn’t have been.) So he was afraid to keep taking pictures. He had taken some great photographs, even one of Michael Jordan. But his OCD told him that he should not participate in photography because it was somehow morally wrong for him. This was a big lie. In ERP therapy, we learn to TAKE THE RISK and do things that our brain says is morally wrong. We have to do the things of life—even if our brain says they are morally wrong. Are they morally wrong? You may never be sure. But in therapy, we learn to go forward EVEN WHEN YOU ARE UNCERTAIN. You can tell yourself, “Maybe, maybe not.” In other words, it might be wrong, but we are pretty sure it is not wrong. We don’t know for sure. But we have to go FORWARD anyway.

@Anonymous I didn’t see this comment last time. This is actually VERY common in the OCD realm. A lot of Christian people who have OCD want to enjoy certain things in life (like a movie or ice cream or a relationship) but they feel like God is always telling them no and that they can’t enjoy those things. This is a lie. It’s just an OCD trap to keep us miserable. OCD is a bully. It preys on what we value most. If we want to follow God, OCD will put twists and lies into our minds to make us follow rules that make us miserable, instead of allowing us to have the rewarding journey of faith that we should have. Take the RISK that the things you enjoy are not immoral. In your heart, you know that those things are not wrong. OCD just wants us to take an extreme and false point of view. Take a risk and do those things anyway. You might feel guilty, but it is a false guilt. Don’t let false guilt control you. Go forward anyway. The more you practice this, the easier it will get.

@Anonymous It will really help to label what is happening in your life. The thought that your mom might get cancer is an OCD thought. It can also be called an “obsession.” In therapy, we identify what the “obsessions” are, and we ignore them. So if your brain tells you, your mom is going to get cancer or your dad is going to get in a car accident or you were going to die if something doesn’t happen at the proper time, those are all OCD thoughts. They are all obsessions. And they all must be ignored. 

@Anonymous Once you ignore the obsession, you also have to ignore the compulsions that go with it. The “compulsions” are the safety behaviors that go along with the obsessions. In this case, the compulsion is having to eat by 9 o’clock. It is a “safety behavior” that goes along with the original obsessive thought about cancer. Your job is to resist all compulsions that come up. So you want to eat breakfast at exactly 9:01 on purpose. This will feel AWFUL. It causes great Anxiety to go against the OCD rules. But we have to practice breaking the rules over and over until we get used to it. It might feel like people are in danger, but in reality they are not.

@Tea and Honey It will be really helpful to start labeling the obsessions and compulsions so that you can start breaking them.

@Anonymous https://youtu.be/6SvKG-Gy-Dc?si=pcjv1HZUZ62nCs1E Here’s Nathan Peterson on scrupulousity on You Tube. I highly recommend him. This particular video might be helpful and it might not be for your specific case, but some of his videos will definitely apply and be helpful. He goes over a lot of foundational OCD stuff.

@Tea and Honey Talking though this (like with me!!!) is also very helpful as well !! When we talk or write about it with someone else, we can process it more.

@Anonymous My friend, you should go to medical school!!! The OCD is going to try to do everything in its power to get you not to go. But you should go and become a doctor and help lots of people !!:)

@Tea and Honey Life is good!! But OCD wants to keep us stuck and miserable:(

@Tea and Honey Thank you so much for your help I am really grateful!! Currently I am managing by thinking things like 'i promise not to give into compulsions until a certain time' so then I'm able to study but as this is a compulsion too it would be helpful to break 😂 also I am focused on studying now! It was just a momentarily crisis but I came to my senses pretty quickly :) but I'm afraid the materialistjc pleasure thing will always stick with me since it's not necessarily moral and religious teachings do tell us to let go. And you are super right, talking about this to you has helped me figure so many things out e.g I realised whilst typing I could have 'just right' OCD and you just confirmed it :)

@Tea and Honey I think it's crazy that this is happening to me- used to have such a good and healthy connection with God. Then one day in lockdown my brain became latched onto the idea that my whole family would get COVID and die so I started praying all day, giving up things, etc etc. what makes it complicated is that 'sacricing' things or fasting is actually really good jn my religion ad many people do it to ask God for things!

@Anonymous Yes!! I feel like I have heard of quite a few people who had good connections with God, and then OCD came out of nowhere and started to hijack the true meaning of faith. You are not alone in that!!! Big hugs!! You got this!!

@Tea and Honey Thank youu, I wish you all the best too!! I did promise to God today to not do compulsions until before I went to sleep (I always pray before) but I have in 6 times and now I feel like I have to go to bed 6 hours later to clear them so I am going to bed at 6am today 😭I'm sorry this sounds so crazy and also whilst praying I kind of realised that materialistic pleasures do bring suffering so I'm restricting myself on that too, which means I can't watch Netflix whilst waiting for 6am! (Sorry I know this sounds ridiculous)

@Anonymous Hello!!! This is going to make you miserable!! I can tell you are tough and willing to make sacrifices, but God does not want this from you. Please text me anytime you feel like you have to do these things, and I can try to help you process it. Let’s label everything: 1.). Feeling like you promised God something probably isn’t real. If it’s just OCD rattling around in your brain and you feel like you made promises, those promises are just OCD and not real. 2.) It’s a compulsion to follow the rules of a promise that is not real. As for the Netflix, go ahead and watch!! I’ll tell you the reasons why that is okay: 1.). The Scriptures about materialistic pleasures bringing suffering do not mean you should cut everything out of your life. We are meant to take Scriptures in a reasonable, balanced way—and not to extremes. Otherwise, everyone from your faith would stop watching Netflix! 2. Even if you don’t KNOW FOR SURE if it’s morally wrong to watch Netflix, it’s important to risk it. Take a step forward even if you are not sure. The OCD is creating a “new normal” for you where you feel like you can’t sleep or eat or watch things. This isn’t how life is meant to be lived, but OCD makes us think that this is how life is supposed to be for US (but not everyone else.) It’s scary to do things outside of what OCD tells us to do. We are familiar with following the rules. It feels safer to follow the rules. But the steps to freedom come by faith. We break the rules (even though it comes with great anxiety) and ride out the bad feelings that inevitable come. The horrible anxiety does come with breaking the rules. But anxiety subsides over time as we practice breaking the rules over and over. That way you don’t give OCD control of your life. You take control and life your life the way you want to live it. :):):)

@Anonymous Ask yourself this question: Would someone else from my faith live like this? Is life meant to be like this? If the answer is no, then you don’t have to live like that either. You can break the OCD rules and live like everyone else.

@Tea and Honey I understand what your saying! I just wonder because 6 hours 'feels' like I've erased sin and it feels like a clean slate if I wait that long. It is super difficult though as I can't study until 6 straight and I just wonder if I'm doing something wrong

@Tea and Honey Also the advice about whether someone else from my faith would do this seems really helpful and I'm considering following it now :) it's all about limiting it's control

@Anonymous Yes, the OCD wants to take control. But you don’t have to let it!!

@Anonymous Yes, six hours is way, way too long. This is just going to make you miserable. Even though you “feel” clean after that, that doesn’t mean you have to put in that much time. With OCD, our feelings are often wrong. Our feelings are still giving us rules. Can I ask what it seems like you need to do during the six hours?

@Tea and Honey It’s just way too long for anybody

@Tea and Honey Yhh I understand it's really long and extreme too. I was planning to study until 6 even though I was tired but I tried to ignore OCD and slept at 4 instead :) as soon as I woke up though I felt a heavy sense of guilt. It was there the second I opened my eyes and it took me a few seconds to process why and remember. I feel like I'm only going to feel right if I make it up by sleeping at 7 or something now 😭why do I even feel this much guilt

@Anonymous Don’t try to make it up by sleeping at 7! That is a compulsion! Remember, you can’t do anything to “make up” for the things you do. You can’t do anything to “fix” The obsessions. That is playing right into OCD’s game. Do NOTHING when you feel like you have broken OCD’s rules. Yes!! This will cause a lot of guilt!! The guilt is a tool that OCD uses to manipulate you. Think about OCD like a little person who is a bully. He is trying to keep you trapped and miserable and make up rules to keep you stuck. But you are going to defeat him. This is how you are going to defeat him. Every time he says you have to make something up or fix something, you don’t do it. He will pile on you tons of guilt and anxiety. Your own brain and body will pile on you tons of guilt and anxiety. But you have to go through it anyway. You ride it out. It’s like a wave of bad feelings. But eventually, the bad feelings will loosen up as you practice breaking the rules. But even if the bad feelings don’t go away, you go forward anyway

@Anonymous Going through ERP therapy will cause lots of guilt and anxiety and bad feelings to rise up. You can expect that. It’s part of the process. But the feelings don’t matter. Part of your training in recovery is to learn also to ignore the feelings. The bad feelings are going to be there. They get worse the more they go against the OCD. But it’s okay. It’s part of the process. I’ll give you some examples. Let’s say someone with OCD is afraid of bridges. They have an OCD rule about crossing a bridge. In ERP therapy, the therapist will help the person practice crossing the bridge. This is going to feel HORRIBLE for the person with OCD. It’s going to feel dangerous, and the person is going to feel really guilty. But this is part is the process. The hope that is over time, and with practice, the person will get desensitized to the guilt and the anxiety will go down.

@Anonymous I have episodes where I break OCD’s rules many times a week. I always have bad feelings and guilt that accompany this. I just have to ride it out until the feelings go away. There’s nothing I can do about the bad feelings coming. I just have to let them come. So yes!!!! You can expect to experience bad feelings and guilt. And they could get worse as you keep fighting against the OCD. Don’t worry about it. It’s going to happen. Just keep going forward with your ERP and breaking the rules. Let the guilt be there. Ride it out. Keep going.

@Tea and Honey Hi sorry for the late reply!! What you saying makes lots of sense, I think it's how I got rid of lots of my themes or OCD without realising it :) also I am a bit stressed right now because I have a massive fear of my mother getting cancer and when I was little I used to have dreams of like things multiplying out of control (super random I know) and when I was praying today I kept saying 'please let her not get cancer' even though I should trust Krishna and his plan. I kept doing the same ritual and then I had the urge to touch the picture of Krishna again to protect my mum but I thought 'dont do a compulsion, just trust Krishna' but I did it anyway and in that moment I felt like I had just given her cancer and the cells are multiplying out of control. I feel like it was my final straw and I've just given it to her bwfause immediately I felt the sensation on things multiplying out of nowhere and now I don't know how to reverse this, I should have trusted God and not done the compulsion

@Anonymous Sorry to get back to you so late. It’s okay. Everything is okay. Don’t be so hard on yourself!!! You are okay! It’s OKAY if you give into the compulsions every once in a while. In fact, it would actually be okay if you give into them ALL the time. It’s not going to hurt anything. It will just make you unhappy, lol. Giving into the compulsions doesn’t mean anything bad will happen. It really does not mean anything at all. So everything is okay!! So, let’s label things: The thought that your mom might get cancer (and that you are responsible whether that happens or not) is an OBSESSION. If it’s an obsession, let’s treat it like an obsession. We throw in in the OCD garbage bin🗑️ with all the other OCD things. You don’t have to listen to obsessions, and you don’t have to do the compulsions that go along with them. (But if you do the compulsions, that’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t matter too much.) Just imagine if all everyone in the world had to live their lives in such a way that every little thought or little action could result in someone else’s death! That is much too hard of a way to live a life. God does not expect that of us. We are free from that. But OCD wants to trap us and keep us in a cage. In ERP therapy, you are trained to do NOTHING with your obsessive thoughts. You might have thoughts that your mom will get cancer if you touch something, or you mom will get cancer if don’t pray, and so on. Let those thoughts come a million times into your head every day if they want to. Let them rattle around in your brain. But you don’t have to do anything with those that kind of thought. It’s just an Obsession. It’s just an OCD thought. It doesn’t mean anything. When the compulsions come up, you shouldn try to resist, but you won’t be perfect. We will never be perfect, and that’s okay. We are in a JOURNEY with our OCD, and we are learning as we go. There’s plenty of room for failure. PLEASE , please keep texting me or talking to people when the episodes come up. Overcoming your OCD will take lots of practice. Think of it like training on a sport’s team. You go out on the field every day and practice. You are learning and practicing. It helps a lot to process through these episodes with someone else.

@Anonymous Also, remember that FEELINGS don’t matter either. You are going to experience great feelings of guilt . You might feel like your whole day is ruined because you touched something or did something. Just ignore the feelings. They feelings don’t mean anything. I get bad feelings often. I have to just ride them out. They are going to be there whether I want them there or not. It’s okay. But your feelings are not a relevant measure of whether something is true or not. You are going to have to make DECISIONS on how you are going to handle your OCD. Then you implement those decisions no matter what your feelings are doing. You implement those decisions no matter what your mind/brain is telling you.

@Tea and Honey Hi, thank you!! I do really understand what you mean and I'm going to make active decisions to resist compulsions :) it's really helpful to get your view. One thing that scares me is that I didn't think 'if I touch this X will happen' I just had the urge to touch it and when I did I immediately felt a sensation of something bad now happening because I couldn't trust God. It was like an automatic response to me ntouching it-like the second I did I felt the world caving in. Usually I give in and don't feel this- it just felt like God had had enough 😭

@Anonymous Imagine a field with several pillars of TRUTH standing in the middle. These pillars are stuck deep in the ground and can never be moved. Now, imagine a thundering, black storm swirling around them. This is our feelings. This is the OCD thoughts and obsessions. We have to hold onto the TRUTH, regardless of what our obsessions and thoughts and feelings are telling us. This is why I am saying that we have to make DECISIONS and operate according to those decisions, whether or not our brains understand, and whether or not our feelings lineup. —————————————- So let’s make this practical. Here are your pillars of truth that cannot be moved or changed. 1.) The obsessions don’t mean anything. They are meaningless and should have no effect on our lives. 2.). The compulsions don’t mean anything. They are not necessary to keep us safe or other safe. So here’s are the DECISIONS you are going to make: 1:). When the obsessions come into your head, you can notice they are there, but let them float on by. You can let them go. Don’t do anything about the obsessions. Don’t try to fight them. But DON’T try to fix them. 2.). When the urge to do a compulsion comes up, try to resist it. (It’s okay if you fail.). But when you resist, you become stronger in your quest to overcome the OCD Then just Keep on practicing!!! Every day!!

@Anonymous No worries at all!!! Physical sensations are part of OCD. I can try to get some resources on physical sensations for you. The physical sensations are just as much of a lie as the feelings and thoughts. The physical sensations are just the SAME as the obsessions. Put them in the same category. God is not done with you. That is not how God works. You can hold onto the TRUTH instead of what the OCD is trying to tell you through obsessions, compulsions, and physical sensations. OCD is working really hard to keep you miserable and trapped. OCD is also working really hard to give you a skewed view of God. This is where it becomes an act of FAITH to believe the truth about God despite all the negative things that the OCD tries to tell you.

@Tea and Honey I’ll give some examples from my own life since I have religious OCD: My OCD is always telling me that if I do something wrong, then I am going to go to hell. If I say things in a wrong tone of voice or if I say the wrong words or if I mispronounce words, then it feels like “that’s it” for me. Hell. No second chance. Do you see the amount of stress and weight and perfectionism that this puts on a person? It’s horrible. God never intended us to have to live like this. I know God’s promise (God’s TRUTH) that I am not going to hell. I have to hold onto that promise no matter what the dark storm of OCD says in my thoughts or feelings. I have to hold onto that pillar of truth and act according to my DECISIONS, despite that fact that the OCD tells me that I am in danger if I don’t follow the rules.

@Anonymous Your OCD will tell you that you are obeying God when you follow the rules of the obsessions and compulsions—and that you are disobeying God when you don’t. This is what makes religious OCD tricky. But it will deepen your faith as you take steps to overcome the liar of OCD. This is where you have to EXERCISE FAITH by sticking with your PILLARS of truth no matter what the storm ☔️ of OCD thoughts, feelings (and even physical sensations) tells you. This is where you LIVE BY YOUR DECISIONS and do not live by the OCD thoughts and feelings. As you overcome the OCD, it may get worse and throw a fit and pitch even more negative thoughts and feelings your way. Expect this. It is a normal part of the battle. The OCD will also morph to other themes too. Once you conquer in one area, it will try to trick you in another area. This is all normal and part of the battle. Keep talking openly about your OCD struggles. This journey you are on will take a lot of time and practice. It has taken me years and years to get where I am. And I still struggle today. It takes time, so don’t be discouraged if your life doesn’t change right away. But you can be encouraged by this: OCD runs with the same basic playbook for everyone. It kinda tries the same tactics in the same way with everyone, even though the subjects (or themes) can switch around. And in this day and age, a good therapist will know the playbook!!!!! Now, it is true that some therapists do more harm than good. If someone is not helping, you can leave. But if you find the right therapist, they should understand your situation essentially completely. They should help you overcome it.

@Tea and Honey Thank you!! I'm sorry to hear that you're still struggling too and I appreciate your tips on how to get better, especially the physical sensation thing! :) I AM going to overcome this and stop doing compulsions, they are not a reflection of reality. What you said about your brain convincing you compulsions=obeying god is so true, and for me obeying god=something bad not happening, but this isn't true. OCD really does work in the same way each time and it makes me think I'm absolutely crazy because I would not ever usually think like this or act in this way. I remember I used to spend hours every day googling symptoms of diseases because I had severe health anxiety and I used to be so scared of not being straight (crazy I know) but talking to you and someone who understands RELIGIOUS ocd has honestly made me feel so much better because this theme has always been there :) i also am 17 so I can't get a therapist without telling my parents but it is on my agenda as soon as I turn 18! I also hope you can overcome OCD completely 💗

@Tea and Honey I feel like all my OCD is routed in real religious beliefs. Like not wearing a certain jumper to school so nothing bad happens isn't me being superstitious- it's me avoiding giving into materialistic pleasures and appearance which my religion tells us is what takes us away from god. So am I not just doing the right thing?

@Anonymous Thank you so much!!!! Big hugs to you!! 💕💙💙

@Anonymous Yes, not wearing the jumper is not just doing the right thing. Here’s a test that you can apply: 1.). Are you thinking about the subject with a clear mind or an OCD mind? With a clear mind, you would say that wearing the jumper is fine. With an OCD mind, you would say that it is not. I think, deep down, we all know that what the OCD wants us to do is wrong, but we follow the OCD anyway. You should wear the jumper!! If you are confused whether or not something is morally correct, then talk to someone else from your faith who knows what they are talking about. This stinks, but when we have religious OCD, we have a really hard time making decisions about whether something is moral or not. The OCD clouds our judgement. If other people tell you that something you want to do is fine, then they are most likely right!!!!

@Tea and Honey Hi, i’ve been struggling with OCD horribly for the last year it was so bad to the point where i would have a panic attack every night cause i thought something bad would happen when i sleep. In january of this year i had a bad accident and i broke apart of my neck. After this i found God, i was so happy and felt more at peace and i felt loved i truly started to unknowingly give up anger, lust, sadness and it felt great. within these past few months i know following God comes with sacrifices so if my body wants a sweet treat i say no so i can deny my flesh. I’ve gone on reddit and quora multiple times to just try and seek answers. I can’t tell if i have my own convictions or i’m just feeding off of what i heard someone say on social media. God calls us to be disciplined, and says the path is narrow and if we’re suffering but it’s pleasing to God it’s okay. I just don’t want God to be angry at me , i cannot do whatever i want because our lives arent ours their Gods. and im afraid im committing idolatry all the time even know i genuinely feel like God is so mad at me?

@sarah045 Oh and taking the risk what if i take the risk to go against it and God gets actually mad at me?

@sarah045 These are great questions! I hear what you are saying. Here’s the thing. Jesus said he came so that we could have real life, and that we would have it to the full (John 10:10). Sometimes people don’t see this truth, but God actually wants us to enjoy our lives. His commands to abstain from certain things (drugs, sex, etc.) will actually make our lives better in the long-term. For example, staying faithful to your spouse brings social, emotional, and financial stability. It’s good for us to follow God’s ways! However, sometimes we put rules on ourselves that don’t bring us life. If you tell yourself that you can’t eat any cookies/treats, is that bringing life to you? Most likely not. The little rules we give ourselves are actually a form of legalism. And Jesus was against burdening people with legalism when they were meant to be free to enjoy their lives. Jesus was angry often at the Pharisees because they created all these little rules for the people (that weighed them down), but they weren’t actually biblical rules. The Bible says, “The letter [of the law] kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The Bible also says, “Where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is freedom.” So when you look at the “sacrifices” that you feel like you need to make, they are most likely laws that you put on yourself that God doesn’t need you to follow. We are actually stronger Christian witnesses when we live in freedom and joy then when we are stuck following little rules (because there is no life in following little rules all the time). I eat sugar all the time. I have honey 🍯 in my tea EVERY DAY. You can enjoy all these good things in life that God gives you. Now, about the subject of God getting mad at you, let’s talk about that… This is a subject that the OCD can manipulate to make you do what it wants. Think of OCD like a little bully sitting on your shoulder, and his only job is to make you miserable. He is going to try different tactics to get at you the best he can. (And if you start conquering some of his tricks, he’ll change his tactics slightly to come at you from a slightly different angle.) So the OCD can sit in your shoulder and use this idea that God is going to be mad at you. It can tell you that you need to make sacrifices. It can tell you that you are committing idolatry (and that you need to do certain things to fix that). But here’s where you can defeat the OCD with the truth. The TRUTH is that God does not get mad at you. His feelings toward us don’t change from one day to the next, even if we mess up. That’s the beauty of the cross. God sees us as righteous, even though we sin. The TRUTH is that we are all in process. We are in a journey. The OCD says we have to be perfect, or else God is mad at us. But actually, God understands that we are in a journey. If we are doing something wrong (like committing idolatry) he can teach us about that over time (without condemnation). But he is not going to make us panic and feel bad about ourselves, etc. The OCD can use the fear of idolatry to try to get you to follower burdensome rules, which you don’t need to follow. The true sacrifices for a Christian will be more clear and not tangled up with OCD. For example, if a child tells his parents the truth (that he lost the cash at the mall, for example), he may face consequences. The child makes a sacrifice of his own comfort (and he risks getting grounded, etc.) because he has a commitment to God’s way, which is telling the truth. This is noble, and it’s very different from the “sacrifices” and suffering OCD gives. My religious OCD gave me so many rules, I was drowning. I couldn’t eat eggs, couldn’t eat chocolate, couldn’t swallow in a certain time period, couldn’t go to the park on certain days. It felt like I was sacrificing my life to follow God, but I was really acting in an ungodly way and hurting everyone around me. I had to learn that God really desired my faith (not my ability to follow rules), and that my faith actually required me to break all the OCD rules that I felt were keeping me “safe.”

@sarah045 You are free to takes risks because God doesn’t get mad at us if we make mistakes. In fact, I think God is more pleased that we had the faith to step out and try something then if we never did anything because we were afraid of taking risks with God. Joyce Meyer has a really good book called “Love Outloud” That really helped me and had some pages about how God doesn’t get mad at us. She also has a lot of good articles about that very subject available online too. Mark DeJesus (YouTube) is another resource. I think when we have OCD, we are always worried about if God is upset with us for one reason or another. That’s just the nature of OCD. But if we can steep ourselves in the truth, we can have an easier time.

@sarah045 By the way, if you need to start a a new thread so we can talk more, i an HAPPY to do that. Let me know, and I’ll start one

@Tea and Honey Thank you so much for helping someone else who is also struggling with OCD and even just reading your replies helps me too! You are an amazing person ❤️ and your helping more than you know!!

@sarah045 I'm so sorry to hear your going through that :( it's really tough but eventually I think we have to take leaps of faith and just trust that God would not punish us for not making impossible sacrifices. I hope things get better for you

@Preena So good to hear from you, Preena!! 😀😀Thank you so much. And it’s always wonderful to talk with you! Anytime you need to talk, just send me a message 💙💙😀

@Tea and Honey yes that would be great !

@sarah045 You got it! I’ll title the thread “Let’s Talk More” and I’ll tag it for religion. Preena, love to see you there too!! This will make communicating much less confusing

@sarah045 Done. Let me know if you can’t find it

@Tea and Honey found it!

OCD is definitely all smoke and mirrors and it does not make sense at all :( Today I was about to study and then my brain was like 'sacrifice studying for half an hour' so I did but 1 minute before the half an hour my brain said 'open a book within 1 minute' so I did immediately and now I only managed to do 29 minutes instead of 30 idk how to fix this. I tried not to read any of the pages until the minute was up but I still felt awful after, idk how to get around this and I'm thinking of staying awake without studying until 1:05 to make up for it

@Anonymous Hello!! Good to hear from you!! Don’t make up for it!!! Don’t do anything to make up for it. Your brain will tell you that something bad will happen if you don’t make up for it. But “making up” Is doing a compulsion

@Tea and Honey Hi, thank you!! It is good to hear from you too :) my OCD is so crazy sometimes. I just really want certainty but hopefully I'll learn to trust

@Anonymous Yes, we can’t have certainty. We have to learn to go forward without certainty. This is a big part of OCD. We have to learn to tolerate uncertainty:):):)😀😀 When your brain gives you rules about doing things or not doing things in a certain time frame, remember those are called “Obsessions.” Your job is to not perform the compulsions by not following the rules. TRY TO BREAK ALL THE RULES if you can!!

@Anonymous I thing this video might help: https://youtu.be/z0n3MjHKmBc?si=3VW-BDPSm73Oceel

@Tea and Honey This video talks about learning new pathways. Our brains are so used to following the OCD pathway that we don’t know how to break out of it very easily. But when your brain tells you to do or not do something, take a deep breath. Then practice NOT doing what your brain says. It will FEEL awful. You will have a lot of false guilt. But you can expect that your feelings will be against you most of the time with OCD. Each time your brain tells you to do something, you have the opportunity to practice!! 😀🩵😀

I'm so happy to hear your doing better with your OCD too :) for me I used to wake up and have to pray IMMEDIATELY but now I can wake up and then pray after a little while. Once I do start though I have to keep going to a few different rooms and saying the prayer there too so it does take me a while 😂but it used to take around half an hour to even go downstairs. I also really struggle with not praying if I see a picture of god for example because walking away after I have the thought to pray seems like igorance

@Anonymous Yes, I hear everything you are saying. This video might help: https://youtu.be/zMR4mMuwZjs?si=PnF0KqKX70GccuzQ

@Anonymous I understand what you are saying. You are suffering a lot more than you realize. This bully of OCD is trying to tell you what to do all the time, and it’s keeping you in such a tiny box that you can’t live in freedom. Let’s get you free of the bully!! I think if you PRACTICE in just one place to start with, it will help you in all the other places. OCD takes PRACTICE. We don’t beat it all at one time. We practice beating it a little bit at a time each day. So maybe start practicing in the places where you can. You don’t have to do everything all at once. Let’s take this example. The OCD says buying presents for your friend will cause something bad to happen (unless it’s at 2:00). Okay, you realize the OCD is trying to tell you this. So you will PRACTICE not giving in the OCD. You will buy at present at 1:00, just to make the OCD “mad” at you, lol. Now you will experience false guilt and fear. You will fear that something bad is going to happen because you went against the OCD. But when you are doing ERP training, you can EXPECT to feel emotionally upset. It’s okay. It’s part of the process. Part of your training is to learn to ride out the false guilt and the fear. The tricky part with religious OCD is that the OCD is also telling you that God wants you to follow the compulsions (which is false). What’s important to remember is that OCD hijacks true faith. It twists the real concepts of religion into something else. Think of OCD like an evil little man. He is going to speak lies to you all day. He knows that you are sensitive to wanting to follow God. So he is going to exploit that and tell you that God wants all these things that God really does not want. God does not wants the “sacrifices” and compulsions. How could God be good if he required everyone to act like this? How could human life be any good? This is a torturous, chained way of life created by the OCD, not God. But OCD will lie and say this is really what God wants. So be on guard! When the OCD says, “You have to do a sacrifice to please God,” don’t listen. When the OCD makes you feel guilty because you did something in the “wrong” time period, that is a false guilt. When the OCD says something bad is going to happen because God is not pleased with you, that is all false. It will help to start discerning OCD’s voice, which is all false. The biggest help is to practice resisting the compulsions. The more you do this, the easier it’s gets in all areas. :):):)

@Tea and Honey I genuinely feel like by reading the messages your replying with and the videos your sending me I am getting better. Like I have become so much more rational and it's like so much easier to live!! The music thing though is scaring me, I could never purposefully play music now until tomorrow. I also have another compulsion of avoiding thinking about and engaging in materialstic pleasures because of going over that time and literally right now I was thinking of what jewellery to wear Tomorrow and I realised that was one of the materialistic things I was going to avoid but my brain is telling me to go and touch the door twice because that would feel so right and like I'm getting rid of all this materialisgic contamination. I'm trying to do ERP though and listen to your advice and trust God!! I am finding it so hard to withstand the idea that if something happened it would be all my fault for not fixing it right now but I think the video I just watched is really helping too. Thank you so much :)

@Tea and Honey Also is it a compulsion to think things like 'i promise to god I won't go and tap the door twice?' I feel like it's a compulsion too but sometimes the only way I can get by is saying things like this

@Anonymous Yes!!! Do the ERP and trust God!! Yes, when we have OCD, we want to take responsibility over our own and others well-being. We have a hyper-state of responsibility, and we feel like if we get little things wrong that others will suffer. But that’s not true. This is where learning to tolerate UNCERTAINTY is important. It’s a skill we really have to develop when we have OCD. Sometimes we don’t know exactly what is going to happen, but we practice ERP anyway because it’s the right thing to do. It really is trust in God to go forward when we are uncertain.

@Anonymous I have known some people who have done that, and it worked for them to get them to stop the compulsions. I think this is okay as long as you understand that it is okay if you break the promises every once in a while (and give into the compulsion). This other person would break the promises every once in a while, and he realized that that was okay.

@Tea and Honey I mean that I have known someone who got out of compulsions but making promises to God

@Tea and Honey By making

@Anonymous Sounds like you are off to a great start with your ERP!!! You don’t have be perfect with it, so if there are some things that too hard right now, don’t worry about it:):)

@Tea and Honey Thank you, this is really good to know!! I DEFINITELY feel the hyper sense or responsibility thing. Right now i am going through a bit of a cricis lol because I allowed myself to listen to music today (I had refrained for 2 days) but I realised that I should only listen to 6 songs 😭 even though I needed more as music helps me study. Then I eventually was able to by thinking 'i promise to god on my rabbits life to listen for half an hour' but then I kept thinking of the right time being 4:56. When it was 4:56, guess which lyric plays? 'tgis is what I was doing when I lost it all.' i shut the song off immediately because I'm so scared and I feel like God wants me to not listen to music and sacrifice it

@Tea and Honey I think that method works for me too :) although what's really working is praying sincerely in the morning and then thinking 'i don't talk to ocd, I trust God has heard my initial prayer' I really hope this is ok

@Anonymous Hi! I am glad you are talking about all this!! These are great examples that we can work out. Please keep writing all these examples, and we can keep talking. It’s going to take lots and LOTS of practice!! Okay, let’s label: The idea that you should only listen to 6 songs comes straight from the OCD. It’s a compulsion. Try to listen to 7 songs on purpose, or 8 or 10 or however much you want. Go against the compulsion. Whenever you feel like you have to do things in a certain time or with s certain number—that is OCD and a compulsion. Practice building new pathways in your brain by refusing to listen to the compulsions. Yes!! I have had many times when I have flipped to a certain page in the Bible (when I am in my OCD mode) and I thought that maybe God would speak to me. Every time I have done that, I have always comes to verses that scared me, LOL! Every time. The point is that when you have OCD, and you are looking for a sign from God, usually the OCD will play tricks on you. You can expect this to happen a lot, lol 😂 I have had the same thing happen to me that happened to you. I would read something or hear a snippet of music right at the right time that I thought it might be a sign from God, and then I would be worried that I was going to hell. What I have learned is that the OCD knows that you have a sensitive heart and are looking for a sign from God. So the OCD will trick you by making you think that God is communicating with you when He is not. God does not communicate with us in a scary, confusing way that makes you feel condemned. God is gentle is kind with us. So don’t worry!! God is not upset with you at all! God wants you to be happy. The problem with religious OCD is that we think God WANTS us to do the obsessions and compulsions. But in reality, God doesn’t have anything to do with those things.

@Anonymous I really like the strategy of ONE prayer and saying you talk to God instead of you OCD. I think that is great!! Yes!!! Yes!!! Trust God heard you instead of thinking that you have to pray more. That is perfect!!

@Anonymous I think what really might help you is to DECIDE that you are going to do ERP even though it thoughts and feelings are telling you not to. Your thoughts and feelings are going to say all sorts of false things to you because they are so heavily influenced by OCD. You can’t really trust your thoughts and feelings very much. When we have OCD, we have a lot of trouble discerning what God wants. It can help to have someone else help you. God wants good for you, not for you to be tortured by OCD

@Tea and Honey Thank you so much for taking the time out to help me for my OCD :) I did end up listening to more than 6 songs! (But I had to say promise on my dad's life to listen to more than 6 today) but I still get scared like if my laptop playing music is resting on my dad's table I'll feel like I would give him an illness 😭 I am also making the conscious choice to do ERP. I do feel like when I trust God has heard my first prayer my OCD goes down a lot even it just feels so much less strong and like God has helped me :) I really just hope my family stays healthy

@Tea and Honey Also hearing your responses is so reassuring! I never thought I'd find someone who was exactly like me

@Tea and Honey I am so scared of developing other OCD themes in the future too like relationship ocd because I know that with physical compulsions I can control them (e.g my OCD has told me to do things like counting and checking before and i've been able to stop) but it's the mental ones which cause so much doubt

@Tea and Honey The thing is listening to 6 songs just felt so clean and right and the scripture said that life is ' a balance of pain and pleasure' and I felt like I hadn't earned more 'pleausre than 6 songs' so I'd get pain 😭😭

@Anonymous So awesome that you are making the conscious decision to do ERP!!! Yay 😀🤗 Don’t worry about your family!Their health is not on your control. You are not responsible for them in that way !!:):)

@Anonymous Yes!!! I am exactly like you!!! I so understand what you are going through! This is all classic OCD. But the good news is that you can defeat it!!

@Anonymous The six songs is an OCD rule. You have plenty of pain dealing with all the OCD tortures. When something is an OCD rule, your job is to fight it!!!

@Anonymous Don’t worry about developing other themes. Once you master one theme, you get better at defeating the others too. The treatment for every theme is pretty much the same anyway :):)

@Anonymous I am happy to spend time talking with you and processing. I was where you are once! Please message with any of your struggles. It might really help you to keep talking about this and processing though. OCD tastes TONS AND TONS of practice! :)

@Tea and Honey Thank you so so much! I think I am better at avoiding physical compulsions now. A few weeks ago I had to keep touching pictures of God and my parents kept wondering why I was moving around the house so much constantly going up and down and they got quite scared 😭😭but I couldn't tell them it was OCD. My mum especially was getting genuinely concerned but thankfully my OCD got better. I also find it most difficult when I'm trying to study though. My brain says 'go touch that picture of God' and if I continue its like I'm choosing study OVER god and as a result something bad will happen to my mum and I just spend so long arguing with the thoughts in my brain instead of studying

@Anonymous I totally understand what you are saying. In this case, it might be helpful to give certain “Responses” to the thoughts. Just remember, these “Responses” are not a rule that has to be followed. It’s okay if you don’t give any responses also. You can just use them if they work for you. There are 3 types of Responses: Uncertainty: “Maybe something bad will happen to my family, maybe not. But I am not doing my compulsion right now.” Acceptance: “Wow, something totally bad is going to happen to my mom. That’s too bad.” (You don’t have to really be rooting for this. You are just training your brain that you don’t care about the pressure that the OCD is putting on you.) Humor: “Sounds like my life is going to be over because of not touching pictures (hahaha).” The idea is that instead of arguing with your brain, you chose one of these Responses (or something like them). Just give the response to your brain when your brain puts pressure on you to do a compulsion. You don’t argue with the thoughts, and you don’t try to stop the thoughts. I’ll look for a visit for you. :):)

@Anonymous Here is a video about delaying compulsions that also talks a little bit about responding to the OCD at the end https://youtu.be/OxgIC08cpWY?si=WqZ_xw9Gb_yXdEoK

@Tea and Honey Just remember, DON’T turn your “Responses” into compulsions. Some people can get obsessed with whether they are responding to their OCD correctly. You don’t have to worry about that. Your “Responses” are just tools so that you don’t argue with your brain so much :)

@Anonymous Here’s some examples of how I would use the three types of “Responses” in my life: Let’s say my OCD tells me that if I twitch my nose, then my son will get a good hit in baseball, but I will be going to hell because of it. It’s tempting to argue back and forth with my OCD. I could tell my OCD, “No, I am not going to hell. It’s okay to twitch my nose!” And then my OCD would reply, “Are you sure you are not going to hell? Maybe you should stop yourself from twitching your nose just in case something bad does happen.” Instead of arguing, I can use one of the three responses to train my brain that I just don’t care how my brain is pressuring me to do compulsions. I can use a reimburse response to help me resist the compulsions. Here’s examples of how I could use the three “Responses”: 1.) Uncertainty: I could say, “Yeah, well, anything is possible. Maybe I am going to hell, maybe I am not. I don’t know for sure, but I refuse to do the compulsions (I refuse to avoid twitching my nose). —————————————- 2.). Acceptance: (Say these sarcastically) I could say, “Yeah, I am totally going to hell. Yep. That’s great.” Remember, I don’t actually believe these statements are true or right. It’s just a way to train my brain that I just don’t care about the OCD.) For example, if your little brother tells you that you are fat, you can shut him up by answering sarcastically, “Yep, you are right. I totally am fat. Yep, I’m nice and fat.” Suddenly the little brother doesn’t know what to say any more. You have just taken all his power away. —————————————- Humor: I could say, “Great! Who knew that twitching your nose was literally the end of the world? (Haha)” Humor shows us how ridiculous the OCD really is.

@Tea and Honey Using these responses can help me focus on moving forward instead of getting stuck arguing with my thoughts.

@Tea and Honey Thank you!! I really like this person's you tube channel as well thank you for introducing it to me :) I feel like for me because everything is routed in an ACTUAL religious teaching I find it hard to get away from it. I caught myself doing a really old compulsion that when I'm passing the picture of god putting my phone behind me whilst I'm walking to show god I wouldn't choose materialistuc things because I also read recently it's a sin to have anything materialistjc around Lord Krishna. Im so scared I don't have OCD sometimes

@Tea and Honey The analogy of the little brother is so true!! (I have a twin brother and so this makes complete sense :)) about 5 minutes ago I got the thought that I don't really care if something happened to my mum all these compulsions are too much (ofc I do care) and I had to quickly go down and touch the picture of God to show Lord Krishna that I do care. I just got that feeling again and I had to touch the wall around Krishna twice 😭I'm so scared letting go would be not good...

@Anonymous Also yesterday when I came back from school- as soon as I entered the house I had no memory of locking the door and felt the need to go back and check. I didn't do it but in a way it was so reassuring because it made me feel like I did have OCD since this was a common compulsion unlike mine which just sounds like I'm actually sinning all the time and I'm doing things I shouldn't do

@Anonymous Don’t worry. I can tell you that what you have really is OCD. It is classic OCD. Yes, you are right. Religious OCD is harder because the OCD makes you feel like you are following God by following the OCD rules. What I really needed to learn is that I was not following God by following the rules. I was actually going against what God wanted by following the OCD. Then it became an act of faith to obey God by BREAKING the rules. I will give you some examples. In the Bible, we are told how important it is to love one another. This first greatest commandment is to love God, and the second is to love one another. When I was trapped inside of OCD rules, I had about 125 rules a day. I was stuck with things like, “Don’t part your hair with a side part for a day. Don’t eat eggs for a day. Don’t eat chocolate for a day. Don’t go to the park for a day.” And so on… When I followed the rules, I felt like I was making scarifies to follow God. But I wasn’t! I was actually doing the opposite of what God wanted me to do because I was so caught up in myself and in my “rules,” that I couldn’t love anybody. I couldn’t follow God’s REAL commands. OCD distracts us from what God really wants by keeping us suffering and trapped and spinning around about tiny minutiae. However, the struggle with OCD can deepen your faith. It becomes an ACT OF FAITH to not perform the compulsions. Think about this: Every time you win 🥇 a battle against OCD by denying yourself the compulsion, you are doing what God actually wants. God did not design our lives to be so tangled and miserable and impossible like this. Just imagine what life would look like if God wanted all humans to live like we do with OCD!! OCD tells us that we have to follow special rules to follow God—but nobody else does. Lol! This can’t be true! Why do we have to follow special rules, but no one else does?! So, take a leap of faith. Deny yourself the compulsions. It will FEEL kinda awful because you will FEEL like you are disobeying God. But you have to ignore your feelings. The OCD uses feelings as a weapon against us. You have to disregard the feelings. Instead, you making a leap of SHEER FAITH, apart from feelings, that you can deny the compulsions. :):):):)

@Anonymous Once you practice denying the compulsions, they get easier and easier over time. After a time, you will get good at ignoring the OCD rules. :)

@Anonymous Okay, when it comes to putting your phone behind you, I think you know in your gut that Krishna is not really asking you to do that. It’s your OCD who is telling you to do that. So don’t listen to your OCD!! The OCD will not help you come closer to God. It keeps us farther and farther from God because the OCD makes God seem like someone who is extreme and who requires such extreme and silly things of us. But in reality, God does not do that. It wouldn’t be fair to us to make us live in that kind of misery.

@Tea and Honey Same, this is so me!! I was making so many rules like stay in 1 room for an hour and doing touch anything or talk to anyone, don't eat chocolate, don't listen to music, don't have sweets, don't wear nice clothes- basically anything material I would have to ban or else the thing I fear most at the time would happen. I felt like I had to sacrifice things to god or else I'm choosing materialstic pleasures 'over God.' even now I just keep arguing with my thoughts. I was revising in my parents room and I was thinking of playing music quietly to help but then I had a quick thought 'Promise on your Dad's life to not inhibit music' so that let me play it but I felt AWFUL like I was causing something terrible to happen playing music out loud in his room, I kept arguing with my thoughts thinking what would be breaking a promise and what would not be.' I can't choose music over my dads life so I might as well not play music at all ' is my line of thinking all the time unless I make a promise to do it :(

@Tea and Honey But whilst I walk past a picture of God I'm almost always silently praying and it's an offence to hold something materialistic whilst praying to Krishna, so I have to hold it behind me or put it down. I do understand what uir saying though!, I cant believe OCD plays this many tricks on us

Im so scared because I want to stop looking at clothes or anything materialistic after taking longer than 3 but my mum is showing me a bunch of clothes she bought and I feel like I'm just on the brink of causing something bad to happen because of ignorance and it actually will if I keep looking at them or even thinking of what outift to wear 😭😭

@Anonymous The OCD is lying to you. It’s telling you that you have only 3 minutes to look at clothes. This is not true! The OCD is taking the true meaning of the scriptures and twisting them. The thought that you have only 3 minutes is an OCD “obsession.” It might make you nervous, but you should allow yourself to break this rule. (And also break the other rule by thinking about clothing also.) The OCD says something bad is going to happen if you don’t follow the rules. That’s how OCD manipulates you. That’s how OCD works for all people. It tells them that their worst fear will come true. For me, the OCD says I will go to hell (or someone I love ). For another man, he was afraid all the women in Asia were going to chase him with a knife if he broke his OCD rules. (This sounds funny, but it’s true.) For another woman I know, she was afraid her dog would die if she broke the rules. The OCD uses everyone’s worst fear to get us to comply. It’s an evil bully. For people with religious OCD, the OCD will twist up the real meaning of Scripture in bizarre ways. But it’s the OCD talking, not God talking. The OCD wants you to do what it wants you to do. But this is not what God wants. Here’s where the leap of trust comes in. You might not be 100 percent SURE that something bad will not happen. That’s okay. Take the risk and deny the compulsion anyway. So in this case, let yourself look at the clothes for longer than 3 minutes. If you feel like you have to promise something in order to stop yourself from doing the compulsion, just make sure that act doesn’t become a compulsion on its own. It can easily be a compulsion. Remember, IT’S OKAY IF YOU BREAK THOSE PROMISES. Ultimately, all those promises are just part the the whirring around within an OCD mind, just part of the OCD as well. You can do this!!!

@Tea and Honey Thank you!!! It wasn't actually a 3 minute thing it was because a few days ago I was trying to order presents for my friend and I felt bad for looking at materialistic things but then I realised if I just did it from 2-3 O clock this would feel right- however I ended up going over time and stopping at like 3:15, and the only way I could deal with thos was by limiting looking at and thinking about clothes for the next few days. I felt like something bad would happen for the ignorance and I needed not too. I think your right about the promises being a compulsion too!! Today I deciddd to pray when I woke up that I wouldn't have the thing I'm obsessing about done true and also that my promises wouldn't mean anything if they're broken- this really helps because all day I can then just think 'i trust that prayer'instead of doing compulsions. I think I am going to do ERP right now and look at clothes because I need to accept uncertainty!! Thank you for helping me :)

@Anonymous You got this! You are doing great!!

@Tea and Honey Thank youu!! I hope you are doing well with your OCD too :)

@Anonymous Thank you!!!! Doing okay!!

@Anonymous Hello!! Going to be off-line from the app for a while. Will be praying for you! If you have rough patches, I want to encourage you to keep watching the videos:):) And parents are awesome resources too!! Because they love you so much they always want what is best for you, and they will help you!!!!

@Tea and Honey Okay, thank you so much for all your help!! I really appreciate it :)

@Anonymous You are so welcome 😀😀💙

@Tea and Honey Hi I'm not sure if your still here but I'm really really struggling right now

@Anonymous What’s going on?

@Tea and Honey I'm so sorry, because you said you wouldn't be using the app anymore!! I was just kind of going through a crisis before because of how I can't only do things like listening to music and watching TV if I promise to god on my mum's life to do it, but I always end up breaking it!! And I'm so scared because it feels like I'm causing something bad to happen to her. My brain keeps generating promises which are never easy like 'promise to listen to every word in this song' if I want to listen to music and then ofc Ill miss a word! And idk what to do. I keep generating promises without meaning too like I promise to not go downstairs for an hour for example and it just always happens and I am so scared that I am interfering with my mum's life

This is exactly something I would do! I'm pretty sure I've even done it before. Thank you so much for replying :) I think the only problem is that when I did things like this before e.g 'stand still in 1 room for half an hour' (which sounds crazy I know) I was able to break it and only feel the guilt from jot doing a compulsion, nothing more. Now if my brain promises something on my mum's life to god I don't even feel guilt I just feel like sin and disappointment from god when breaking it and I feel like it's actually making a difference to my mum's life because I shouldn't be breaking promises to God. I just feel a sense of like jm sinning wash over me e.g if I want to listen to a song and my brain says listen within ge next 5 minutes, but then something happens and it won't play I'll just feel a wash of like disappointment and like I've just sinned after 5 minutes even if I'm not looking at the time I know when the 5 minutes is up because of it

I feel like this is a good idea ! I may write down all my rules too :) also I'm sorry for messaging you again, this is the last time!

@Anonymous No worries!!!! I am so so sorry you are going through all this

Hi, I am doing much better, that's so kind of you to have thought about me!! My symptoms have gone down lots even though j don't think they will ever go away completely, but I come back to these old comments when I'm struggling because they really help me focus rationally!! I can function much much better (super necessary as I need to study for exams which determine if I'm getting into medical school) but your comments have honestly helped me so so much :) I hope you are doing well too!

@Preena So good to hear!!! I am thinking of you and praying for you. I am a mom of kids about your age. It’s so tough to be a kid and have struggles like this. Wishing the best for you always:):)

@Tea and Honey Thank you!! :)

@Tea and Honey Hi!! I hope you are well. I’m really sorry to message you again, but I was just hoping for some advice. I used to pray that my mum will never develop cancer 60 times and that used to feel right but now if I think if I am just satisfying my OCD or if I am actually praying she never gets cancer- in which case I am praying that she never gets it. but now I think like that it feels right to pray again 120 times to ‘undo’ the 60 prayers that she won’t get cancer which are from OCD and replace it with 60 meaningful prayers that she will never get cancer (not OCD ones.) Now I just don’t know what to do I don’t want to cause anything bad to happen by undoing the prayers or by not doing them and my mum has a scan tomorrow for whether she has it or not and I have until then to do the right thing. thank you for reading all of that!!!!

@Preena Hello!!!! I am so glad you wrote!! I am always happy to hear from you!!!!😀😀😀😃 Okay, let’s break this down. This is where you get to take a step a FAITH. It’s going to feel “safer” if you make sure you do the payers “correctly.” This is because you feel RESPONSIBLE for whether or not your mom gets cancer. But this is all wrong. It’s not safer. And you are not responsible. We are going to have to break the OCD cycle. We have to look at the BIGGER PICTURE. We have to look outside of the OCD loops/rules. Here’s the facts: All the rules of getting the prayers “just right” is 100 percent OCD. When you feel like you have to pray 60 times, that’s OCD talking. When you feel like you have to pray 120 times (and undo 60), that is OCD talking. It’s all OCD. So here’s the right thing to do. You have to break the OCD. It’s going to be really hard. But it takes an act of FAITH to do this. You need to refuse to pray 60 times. You need to refuse to pray 120 times. Don’t follow ANY of the OCD rules. You can pray once if you want. But you need to trust that God doesn’t need a certain number of prayers. He is not requiring that. You can trust that EVEN IF you don’t follow the OCD rules, that God is in control and everything will be okay. I know what you are going through. It always feels like my OCD “rules” can control whether or not my son has a good track race or not. I feel like if I mess up, it will effect his sports . But in reality, my OCD has nothing to do with his performance in sports. It’s just hard because the feelings are sticky. OCD makes us really FEEL that certain things are connected when they are not connected. We really feel that things need to be “just right” in order for us to get the outcomes we want. But it’s all not true. Because feelings are sticky, it’s hard to break the OCD rules. But it’s good for you to try your best to break them!! Here’s what I think you should do for this situation: Pray once for your mom. (If you can’t handle that, then just pray a little bit.) Don’t pray up to 60 (or 120 times). In fact, you don’t need to count your prayers at all. Trust that God hears your prayers without having to hear them multiple times. Then let it go and go do other things in life. When your brain tells you that you have to pray more, or your mum will die, then try to resist the pull to pray. Just go do other things. It will FEEL very uncomfortable and scary, because you will feel responsible for your mum’s outcome, but you have to practice this!!! Try not to do anything. Just sit with the uncertainty and the uncomfortable feelings. Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable without doing anything. In the end, whether your mum gets cancer or not, YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL!! She probably won’t get it, but if she does then you guys will deal with it then. In the meantime, you need to break the OCD cycle so that you can get out of all the tormenting OCD rules. It’s hard, but it will help you a lot!!!! You can do it!!!! 💙💙💙👍👍👍👍 Keep writing, and we can talk through it if you want

@Tea and Honey Thank you soo much!!! This was super helpful and I really appreciate you taking out the time to help me :) I think it flares up lots the day before my mum has a scan or something, because then I’ll always remember how I could have just prayed more times and then I will feel responsible and it will reinforce my OCD and make me do lots of more compulsions :(Also lately it has been coming in my sleep! Like I’ll dream about something happening and then me praying to prevent it. But what you said makes so much sense, I will try taking your advice❤️

@Preena Yes!!! Flare ups always happen during times of stress. You can expect that to happen. It’s normal, so don’t worry!!! 😀😃😃 Let me know how things go :):)

@Tea and Honey Thank you!! I think things are getting slightly better- it's mostly when I wake up and I have to pray that my parents never get cancer I find myself needing to do it 10 more times, then 10 more times downstairs, and then I'm going back up and down the stairs until it feels right 😭😭and then finally I quickly think something like 'only 2 more times unless your mum will develop cancer' but then i come back with it feeling unfinished and I'm going again and again. Then I'm scared because of the promise I made 😭 😭

@Preena Don’t worry!!! And big hugs!!! 💙💙 It’s just your OCD playing it’s games. It’s okay. You will work through it. Every time you work through the obstacles, you will gain more and more freedom. And you will practice (exercise) your faith. Your “faith muscles” will get stronger and stronger. And it’s good for you to keep talking about what is making you struggle. This group is here for you!! Then you can apply your tools that you learn in your OCD-fighting tool-kit. The more you practice using these tools, the more you will defeat the OCD. But it takes time and practice. So don’t worry!!! You are on the right track!!! You are getting there. OCD will continually throw up more tentacles at you (like at octopus) to try to trap you in “different “ ways. That’s what OCD does. It’s job is to try to make you miserable. But the roots of OCD are always the same, even if it throws different tentacles 🦑 at you. This means you can apply your same tools to lots of “different” OCD scenarios and still get a positive outcome. The praying 10 times upstairs and downstairs (and the promises) are just the same thing as the 60 times or 120 times and the “promises” from before. You can apply your same tools here also. But it takes time and practice. So don’t be discouraged if the road seems slow!!!! In fact, having a slow road is really what it takes to build character and faith in us!! The building of virtue takes a long time, but that is what happens when we take this challenging path of OCD recovery.

@Preena I am here if you need to write more!!!

@Tea and Honey Thank you!! This is a really amazing way at looking at it and it has really helped me so much. Also if it weren’t for you my OCD wouldn’t have calmed down enough to let me revise for my exams at school and I never would been accepted into medical school yesterday, I appreciate it so much :)

@Tea and Honey I keep having these issues intense feelings to pray that my mum will never get cancer but it feels different this time, like usually I can manage them but now it’s like I have to do it straight away without wasting a second because if I wait for the anxiety to subside/ do the ERP I will have ‘missed the prayer’ and it will all be my fault if she gets cancer. If the prayer is facing the right I will get like an itchy tingly feeling in the right side of the body which will only go away if I pray enough/ correctly.Right now I am feeling really sad because it’s getting more noticeable, like my dad heard me going up and down the stairs at like 5am the other day and Just now my dad got annoyed at me for opening and closing his door when they were trying to sleep but I was just trying to pray that he never gets cancer and it wouldn’t feel right unless I did it in that exact location in the exact manner which I needed to open the door for 😭😭. I am so sorry if this all sound so crazy

@Preena 🥳 congrats!!! Yay!!!!! So excited you got accepted into medical school!!!! Congratulations 🎈🎊🎉!!!!!!!!!

@Preena It doesn’t sound crazy at all. This is just OCD. This is how OCD works. Let’s start with the idea that it “feels different” this time (and you feel like you have to pray right away or you will miss the window). OCD is like an octopus 🐙. If you cut off one arm, it will throw another arm at you. The new arm will seem slightly different, but it always comes from the same place—the octopus of OCD. The same is true whenever you encounter these things that feel slightly “different.” It’s just another arm of OCD. The root is always the same. It all comes from OCD. And when you are dealing with OCD, your answer to it is always the same as well: You treat it with ERP. So let’s apply ERP to your “new” situation (which is not new but is another arm of the same thing): First, we identify things and label 🏷️ them: 1.). The idea that you need to pray to keep your family safe is an obsession. Don’t worry if you feel tingly or itchy or anything like that. Bodily sensations are yet another arm (tentacle) of OCD. They are just like intrusive thoughts. THEY DON’T MEAN ANYTHING!!! So you can ignore the bodily sensations, and you don’t have to follow any RULES regarding them. The bodily sensations are just another one of OCD’s tricks. 2. When you pray in a “just right” way or do things in a “just right” way (like going up and down the stairs), you are following COMPULSIONS. ————————————————- Okay, now we have labeled things. Now you have work to do. You have to practice denying your compulsions. This will be hard, because your anxiety will rise. It will FEEL like you are giving your parents cancer. It will FEEL like you are responsible. But I want you to take that “RISK.” Conquering OCD is all about learning to have the courage to take risks in the face of uncertainty. It will feel like you are taking a HUGE “RISK” when you deny your compulsions and don’t pray in a “just right” way for your parents. You might get plunged into a pit of negative feelings, like fear and guilt. But you must be brave here. You have to tolerate going through all those negative and scary feelings when you deny your compulsions. This is the way you defeat OCD. And it will get easier and easier!!! —————————————————— It’s time for a perspective change. God is not asking you to pray in a “just right” way. If he was, imagine what it would be like if everyone in the world had to go through what you go through to keep their parents safe. Everyone would be stuck in their homes going around in circles instead of going to work and living life. It wouldn’t make sense, and we know that God is not asking people to do that. So all of these DEMANDS on your life are not coming from GOD. Keep that in mind. Here’s the perspective change you need: Imagine the OCD like an evil, little gremlin 👿 who is always telling you what to do. He is always giving you RULES. He is always telling you that if things aren’t “just right,” then you are responsible for people getting hurt. Can you imagine how awful it would be to treat someone like this? It is a cruel thing to give someone impossible rules to follow and then give them the fear of ultimate responsibility if they make the smallest mistake. It’s definitely a mean way to treat someone. And yet, when we have OCD, we usually think these rules come from God!! But they don’t!! This is an important paradigm shift for you. You need to realize that the OCD comes from the gremlin 👿 and not from God. God wants to empower us to live a full life. The OCD’s only job is to keep us tired, stuck, miserable, and going in circles all day. That’s why we have to learn to stop playing the gremlin’s games. The gremlin is trying to get you to pray in “just right” way. (God If not asking you to do that.) You have to stop playing the games by refusing to do what the OCD wants. It will FEEL very scary to go against what the OCD wants, but the more you practice, the easier it gets. It will get easier and easier until you start living the LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE. This is the life where you have the freedom to study and rest and eat and sleep and go to work and not have to follow the “just right” rules. But it will take work and time to get there. The first thing to do is to practice denying the “just right” compulsions. If your OCD says you have to pray 10 times, then pray 2 times, just to mess it up on purpose. You are going to laugh in OCD’s face when you do it wrong. If the OCD says it has to be “just right,” then you do it wrong anyway and say, “You aren’t getting me today, OCD!!” It’s funny. Sometimes I watch videos with Nathan Peterson, and he gives funny examples. He talks about someone having an OCD rule about touching a pole in a subway. (In other words, the OCD told the person that if he touched that pole, a family member would die.) Nathan Peterson said that the person should not just touch the pole—but he should hug the pole and put hands on lots of different spots on the pole and just make a show of touching the pole everywhere. This is a way of laughing in OCD’s face and saying, “Haha, take that!” ——————————- I’ll try to find another “just right” video from Nathan Peterson and put it below :):):)

@Tea and Honey Let me know what “risks” you take today!!!!😃😃😃😃

@Preena This video might be helpful also https://youtu.be/zMR4mMuwZjs?si=tToxz95jHqjdvFDc

@Tea and Honey Hi! I’m so sorry for my late reply- my brain kind of convinced me something bad would happen if I chose myself/getting better over the compulsions that my mum never gets cancer. I can reply today because she had a checkup and they told her the lump was just a hernia and I feel so relieved- I was doing compulsions and praying all day and my elbows are even super sore from putting them on the ground 😭 even the night before it took me like 2 hours to finish the prayer that she never gets cancer. I am so relieved now though! Somehow my OCD still managed to make me pray again and again that she never gets cancer because my brain is convincing me that I got too comfortable with the idea that she wont. I think things will be a lot easier (hopefully) now though! And I really appreciate your advice, it calmed me down a lot. I feel like even though it doesn’t make sense for God to demand things it also feels like if I ignore the urge to do the compulsion I’m sending God a signal that my mum being sick is okay and it feels like I’d be choosing myself over her. Even though logically I know that doesn’t make sense :( also the YouTube video was super helpful!

@Preena No worries! You can reply whenever it’s convenient for you 😃😃I don’t mind at all!! I just had a fairly big OCD episode, and one thing that I am learning is that sometimes we have to CHOOSE SUFFERING. In order to conquer OCD, we have to go through fear and uncertainty. And we have to PUT OURSELVES IN A POSITION where we experience these things. I know that none of us want to do that. We would rather go through life without feeling uncomfortable. However, it’s the only way to beat OCD. I can tell you this from experience. Again, I am saying that in order to conquer the OCD, you will need to put yourself in a position where you feel uncomfortable and afraid. This means that you have to refuse to pray for your mom, even though you will feel great worry, anxiety, and fear. You are going to choose to suffer. It would be easier not to suffer. It is easier to pray just like the OCD wants you to. But in order to conquer OCD, you have to go THROUGH fear. It’s only on the other side of fear that OCD begins to let go of its grip on you. My advice to you is this: When the OCD tells you that have to pray more that your mum will never get cancer, don’t pray. This will cause you FEAR. But you will have to choose the suffering of fear in order to do the right thing. Choose to allow yourself to feel afraid and anxious. This is actually great faith. This is actually very brave. Because in the end, what is the reward if you choose the suffering of fear? You have a chance to live a life without compulsions!!!! Imagine living free of the compulsions!! How wonderful that will be!! And you can get there. But for now you have to put in the hard work. And what is that hard work? It means you practice letting yourself experience fear. It is on the other side of fear that you experience success.

@Preena When we have OCD, we are very good at following rules. So I am asking you to follow the “rules“ that I am giving you. It will be “scary“ and anxiety-provoking to take this path. However, when we do the things that the therapists tell us to do, we will experience success. Your brain will think of 100 reasons why you shouldn’t do the things that therapist tell us to do. It seems too scary. But if you do those things, over time you will experience success.

@Tea and Honey Thank you! And I’m sorry to hear that you went through an OCD episode :(( it really is the worst. I think your right, and that we do have to choose fear! It’s hard but it’s definitely possible and it gets way easier than when we do it the first time. Today has been really good! I’m not sure if this is weird, but it flares up way more when I am alone than around people. I’m not even diagnosed with OCD so that makes me doubt it too 😭 but reading all of this really helps me come out of an episode, thank you!!

@Preena Yes!! I so understand. My OCD is much, much easier when I am around other people. When I am alone, I give it a lot more of my time and attention, and I ruminate over things more. Glad you are feeling better !! :)

@Tea and Honey Thank you :)

@kirti sharma Hi, I am doing much better thank you! I just moved into college/uni and I think that helped reduce my OCD. How are you?

@kirti sharma This is random and not OCD related so it’s perfectly understandable if you don’t read this but I’m struggling so bad right now :( I started secondary/ high school and my cousin was going to the same one but we never really connected and I have always felt uncomfortable around her. She’d always show off that she had so many friends and make me feel bad whereas I was always quiet and I began to kind of resent her because she always just acted so much better than me for being loud. 3 years later she joined my friend group with another girl and just like that they both became closer to all my friends in a couple of months than I had in years. I was unhappy because my friends started to actively look past me and not care that I was there. I was so so sad and cried like every night for the next 2 years, because I didn’t understand why they couldn’t just be friends with BOTH of us. Why did being friends with my cousin make them not care about me? My cousins friend had made someone else in my group feel really replaced too. All my confidence went and I got so awkward and sad around everyone except my parents and brother. I can’t even hold a conversation. A few years later they both got kicked out of the group because they had done some bad things and just like that my friends starting liking me again. After 4 years I finally felt happy in that group. But now we are going to the same university/college. I started earlier and I have had the best 4 days of my LIFE. All of a sudden I’m confident, not awkward, made more friends than I have in a lifetime. My cousin however moved in today and I already feel that all of it’s gone. I just spoke to my flatmate and I became my old self, all awkward and not able to make friends at all. Why is this happenign to me. Why did I only get the college experience for 4 days before she came. I know it makes no sense but knowing that she’s here has made me the person i was before and I can’t stop crying because I would have had such a good life. I lost a lot of friends today because I had become my old self and they didn’t want to be around me anymore. It’s not ocd related so you don’t even have to read/reply to this, but I would just appreciate it so much!!

@kirti sharma Thank youuu, I really appreciate this!! It helped a lot

@kirti sharma Your English is really good!!

@Tea and Honey How is everything going lately?

@Tea and Honey Hi! I am sorry for the late response, and thank you for checking up on me!! I really appreciate it. you don’t have to read this but before I started medical school 2 months ago I was waiting for my results (to see if i had gotten in or not) I promised to God to fast for 3 days by not eating after 7pm for me to get in. I definitely did it because I have OCD but also in Hinduism it’s pretty common. After I got in, and I made another promise to god to fast for another 3 days for it to go well and be happy there, etc but I broke it on the second day. And I had such a bad feeling before breaking it like I really shouldn’t do this and after I did I felt sick, which doesn’t usually happen to me after breaking promises. My first day of medical School was amazing and I had no social anxiety (something I previously struggled with) but on the second day at 10pm (the same time I had broken the promise!) my social anxiety started glaring up and I haven’t been able to get out of it since. I’m now really quiet and shy here and I’ve pretty much lost all the friends I’ve made at the start and I can’t help but feel like it’s because I broke that promise and my OCD keeps telling me to pray for forgiveness over and over again.I didn’t even remember breaking the promise until after it but it all fits so well. I’m so sorry because this all sounds so crazy and I’m sorry that you had to read all of that. I hope things are going well for you

@Preena Hello, don’t worry if you have to send a long message!!! I love to read them!! I am so happy to read these long messages because they can be very useful for understanding what is going on. So please keep sending long messages any time, so that we can discuss anything that’s bothering you! I totally understand what you were saying. This is a classic attack of OCD. I’ve had similar things happen to me, and I’ve learned from it. The thing to remember is this: Even if the thing you fear does happen, that doesn’t mean the OCD is true. You have to remember that the OCD is wrong and false 100% of the time. It doesn’t matter if the outcome turns out the way you expect or not. It doesn’t matter if circumstances make the OCD look true. Just remember, the OCD is NEVER true. I’ll give you some examples. Sometimes I think if I break my OCD rules (which would be the equivalent of you breaking your “promises“), that something bad will happen. I feel like if I wasn’t supposed to read or do something or say something (but I do anyway), I feel like I am going to lose my eternal salvation with God and go to hell. So when I “break the rules“ and do those things, sometimes I look for evidence that I have lost my salvation, and sometimes that evidence just pops up. I will say something I feel like I wasn’t supposed to say, and then the next time I look in my Bible, I’ll automatically see verses that sound like God could be condemning me. I used to think that maybe God was communicating with me through this. But he wasn’t. It actually doesn’t mean anything at all that I saw those verses. I have learned that when this sort of “coincidence” happens, that doesn’t matter. In fact, this has happened to me so often, that I have learned to just ignore it when it happens. Here’s another example. The other day I felt like I might go to Hell if I bought stew meat. But I bought the stew meat anyway, and I was a little worried about my salvation. When the person was ringing up the other meat that I bought , one of the prices was $6.66. In the Bible, this is known as the devil’s number. In my younger years dealing with OCD, I might have worried that this was a sign that I really was going to hell, but I know better now. These sorts of things pop up often after I break OCD “rules”, and I’ve learned to ignore them. The truth is it doesn’t matter if these things happen or not. So let’s apply this to your situation. You broke an OCD “rule” by breaking your fast early. Don’t worry if you experienced bodily physical sensations by feeling sick after that. I’ve also learned that the physical sensations are also just another part of OCD. They don’t mean anything, so don’t take any stock in a physical sensation that doesn’t mean anything. Then, when medical school started not going the way that you wanted it to go, the OCD wants to go back and blame you for breaking your fast (which was actually just breaking an OCD rule). Let OCD bully you like this!! You do not need to feel guilty. OCD is completely false from top to bottom. It doesn’t matter if you broke the OCD rule. It has no effect on the future. What really helps me is to have a mindset that says whether or not the thing I fear does come true after I break a rule, I am not going to care about it. In other words whether or not medical school goes well or badly after you broke an OCD rule, you need to hold onto the TRUTH that OCD rules are false and don’t mean anything anyway. I don’t know if I am making sense. But the bottom line is that you can train yourself not to care if “coincidences“ show up or other “evidence” shows up that tries to say that your OCD is true. Hold Onto the truth that your OCD is not true. And keep going forward with medical school. The bigger picture here is that the OCD is distracting you and keeping you from enjoying your life in medical school. The OCD is preventing you from the freedom that you need to enjoy life. That is the real tragedy here. The real tragedy is not that you broke an OCD “rule.” I break OCD rules all the time . I break them every day. Sometimes it bothers me to break them, and I get worried. But I’m working through this every day to break more and more. The more you can practice breaking your OCD rules on purpose, the easier you will get free from OCD. God does not want or expect you to keep these rules. In fact, it is impossible as a human being to keep them. I have so many rules. I can’t even count them and they all tell me I’m going to go to hell if I break them. What a horrible way to live life! I have to slowly practice breaking them and trusting that everything is OK. I have to do this despite of what happens in my circumstances, and whether or not things turn out the way I think or not. You can do this!!!! Big hugs!:):)

@Tea and Honey It can be hard for us when we have religious OCD, because we think that by following the rules that we are following God. But actually the opposite is true. God wants us to break the rules and to live the life that we were meant to live. Can you imagine telling your friends that they are supposed to live according to all the rules that come into our heads? That would not be a reasonable way to live. We are not meant to live this way. But we can defeat OCD by breaking the rules. Remember that God does not want or expect us to follow these rules.

@Tea and Honey Thank youu, I really appreciate your reply- it is so helpful to tell someone who has had OCD and understands. I feel like I should never have made any promises at all 😭 because I really think I’ve ruined everything. I genuinely don’t think that God realised that I made the promise out of OCD because fasting for something to go good is common in Hinduism and I really think that this was taken seriously. I really really think that It isn’t OCD this time it feels so different to that and I just want God to forgive me so I can go back to how It was meant to be :( the idea of telling my friends to live according to the rules in my head is such a good way of looking at it though, and thank you again for helping me!

@Preena I think it will be a big step for you to accept that this mindset is all OCD. If you think that you can wreck your whole future based on one tiny decision (like eating food), that’s an OCD mindset. I know because I have lived this so many times. I always feel like like my little mistakes or failures are going to ruin my whole future. I feel totally devastated if I feel like I got my life off track of where it was supposed to be. But I am learning (slowly) not to feel that way. When we have OCD, we have this crippling, devastating fear and guilt that we have done some small mistake and then we have ruined the rest of our lives. It happens all the time. (It is interesting to see how “normal” people don’t ruminate or worry about things like this. It seems like mostly OCD people feel this way.) This same thing happened to me recently. I felt like maybe I accidentally said something which would make me sell my soul in order for my son to do well in a race. When he placed in the top group, I couldn’t enjoy it. I was worried that maybe I had CAUSED his success in order to lose my soul. But all of this was 100 percent false. In reality, I hadn’t affected my son’s race at all. The OCD was really just lying to me. Do you see how sneaky OCD is??? It is always telling us that if we don’t act PERFECTLY, that there will be devastating consequences (like me losing my soul, or you having a bad year in medical school). OCD is manipulating religious themes in order to confuse us. But in the end, it’s just OCD. God Is outside of all this. Our OCD does not affect our relationship with him at all. This OCD guilt will keep you from enjoying medical school. I’ll be praying that you can overcome this. The feeling that I have just ruined the rest of my life has happened hundreds or thousands of times to me. Here’s another example. One time I moved my finger when I felt like I shouldn’t have (I did it in a moment of stress when the stress felt overwhelming). I thought my life was over. I thought I was going to hell maybe. I couldn’t enjoy anything in life at all. But I am learning that that was all OCD and false. I don’t have to worry about it at all. People were not meant to be this tied up this way and enslaved to perfection. People were not meant to live like this. Quick question: Now that you are in medical school, could you do therapy with NOCD?

@Tea and Honey Thank you! It is honestly a really helpful reminder and I appreciate a lot, especially coming from someone who has struggled with the same thing. I can’t get therapy with OCD unfortunately because I’m in the UK, but I could get it from the NHS if I spoke to a GP, if I got a diagnosis. It does make sense that God would allow us room for our mistakes :)

@Preena Just remember that the therapist you get needs to be trained in ERP therapy :):):) 😀😀💙 Otherwise, the therapist might not be very helpful for you

@Tea and Honey That’s true!! In the Uk the waiting list is also really long though (like over a year) and I don’t know if I would have time to see a therapist because uni is really busy :( I still think that my social anxiety came back because I broke a promise to God and I’m just getting my punishment for it, but I know that my OCD is interfering now because of that. I’m kind of scared because I’ve fallen into the same old compulsions of accidentally promising to do things like give up chocolate, butter for 2 days, cheese (sounds crazy I know) but I promised them on accident to show God that I am willing to fast, and my OCD says that by breaking it I’m giving up any chance of redemption. It’s also giving me compulsions like not eating from a certain time to another so I keep skipping breakfast or eating lunch really late and I know that’s quite bad- but I’m trying to fix it the same way I did before by thinking things like ‘I promise on the possibility of forgiveness to not skip this meal’

@Preena It sounds really crazy I know I’m so sorry 😭😭

@Preena It’s not crazy. This is how OCD works!! This is very typical for OCD symptoms. Very typical

@Preena We have got to get you free from this OCD. It’s making you miserable and keeping you from enjoying school. ERP therapy is one of the best ways to treat this. You can conquer this and start living life the way you want to. I am trying to think how to get you into therapy. So is NOCD the one with the waitlist for the UK? NOCD is very easy to get into here in the US. They would be an excellent option if you could get in

@Tea and Honey NOCD doesn’t offer therapy in the UK, but we can get therapy for free of the NHS but the waiting list is at least a year :(

@Preena Oh boy. This is a problem. How frustrating!!

@Preena I can try to help you with ERP too. I think the more you can learn how to do ERP, the better.

@Preena Nathan Peterson also has really good lessons about ERP on YouTube. And he has an online course. https://www.ocd-anxiety.com/master-your-ocd

@Preena Preena!!!! I just texted NOCD. They said that they are available in the UK!!! Yay!!!! I have a link so that you could schedule a free phone call to chat with them. https://home.treatmyocd.com/calendar NOCD is awesome!! I think they could really, really help you. You can conquer with ERP therapy. And NOCD can train you how to do it. Even if you just work with them for 6-8 weeks, that is enough to make huge progress in your ERP. I only needed 8 or 10 weeks to learn most all that I needed to know.

@Tea and Honey Thank you so much for trying to help me!! I still can’t do NOCD because i also don’t have money and don’t want to tell my parents but I’ve been thinking about the things you’ve said and realised that although breaking the promise was bad OCD exaggerated it a lot and all my strict compulsions of not eating and standing in one place just distance me from God more and make it worse. I think things are getting better now :)

@Preena Yes, all these things just distance us from God because God wants to love us. He doesn’t want us stuck in OCD rules. I am here for you anytime !! :):)😀😀

@Tea and Honey @Tea and Honey I made a promise to God to not eat after dinner for the next few months so that I could go back to the way I was when I first started university. But then it all happened again :(( I had a feeling that even though I had lost my confident happy self with my friends it might still be there with my cousins and today we went out together, and after a few minutes I started going back to my confident self!! I was so happy because I forgot how good it felt. But then I broke the promise I had made to not eat after 7pm because I thought it was fine, but a few moments later I felt really empty and sad. It felt like all my confidence had gone and I was back to my old anxious self. I felt so annoyed at myself for eating because I could have had so much fun being the confident person that I’m meant to be, and for the rest of the night I became really anxious and people started even asking me if I’m okay. I can’t believe I did it again and broke the promise again, and it’s just too much of a coincidence because I didn’t even remember breaking the promise when I started to feel down, I just realised after what had triggered it.

@Preena The OCD has got you thinking that eating is actually related to what will happen in life. But the truth is that what you eat (and when you eat), have nothing to do with your life circumstances. The OCD just wants you to think that it does. Is tricky for us when we have religious OCD, because we think God might make things one way or another based on our actions. But the truth is that God isn’t doing that at all. The OCD is just messing with our head to make us believe that certain things are related to each other when they’re not. Eating food is actually not related to your life circumstances. Don’t worry that a “coincidence “happened. This same sort of thing has happened to me so many times. I have learned that it doesn’t mean anything. You have to hold onto the truth about OCD and practice that truth, whether or not there are “coincidences,” whether or not things go well, whether or not things go badly, whether or not the thing you fear happens. You have to just keep practicing ERP over and over. Big hugs. I’ll write more soon :) I am off to the store

@Preena We have got to break you out of the cycle. It’s not fair to you to feel like you have to live this way—where you feel like little tiny decisions, like whether or not you eat something, are going to affect your future in a catastrophic way. This is just not true. I will tell you how to defeat this. And remember, you can defeat this!!! If you put the principles into practice that I am telling you (even though it will be hard and scary), you WILL be able to overcome OCD traps. My mother-in-law put it this way for me: If anything is OCD, then it just goes in the garbage bin 🗑️. I don’t have to figure it out or ruminate over it. I can just drop it and move on. In your case, you need to realize that all these promises are just OCD. They don’t mean anything. They all belong in the garbage bin. 🗑️ Now you might be worried that because they feel like promises to God that they are real. But they are not. They are just OCD. They belong in the garbage bin. You may always have doubts about this. But you need to accept this truth and move forward (even if you have doubts). Remember, don’t question whether or not this stuff is real or if it is OCD. None of it is real. It’s all OCD. Let’s say you promise that you can’t eat after 7 o’clock for three days. In this case, you need to deliberately eat on purpose after 7 o’clock. This is an act of faith, actually. This means you’re not playing the OCD games. Now, when you break the promise, you will probably be flooded with negative feelings. You will probably feel like you won’t interact with your friends very well. You probably feel like your whole future is now affected in a negative way. You have to learn to not ascribe any meaning to the feelings. In other words, the feelings are going to be there, but they don’t have any meaning. Let me say it another way: It’s OK if you have strong and terrible feelings that flood your body. But you have to practice going on through life anyway. The feelings will subside over time. I’ll give you an example from my own life. 15 years ago, I kept giving myself rules that looked much like your rules. I felt like I had made “agreements” not to eat chocolate for a day, or not eat popcorn for a day, or not to go to the park for a day. These rules would change to different things and foods, etc. Every day I felt like there were certain things that I could not eat or do— or I would go to hell. If I had been therapy at the time, I would have learned to eat chocolate on the days that I was afraid to eat chocolate. And to eat popcorn on the days that I was afraid to eat popcorn. Of course, I would have experienced terrible feelings that catastrophic bad things were going to happen to me (like hell), but I needed to eat the food anyway. In fact every time I would eat it, I was actually practicing living as though the OCD doesn’t matter (which it doesn’t). Every time you eat after 7 o’clock when your OCD tells you not to, you are actually practicing living your life as if the OCD doesn’t matter. And this is truth. The OCD doesn’t matter. You don’t have to follow promises. I know that my brain will never quite understand the principles . But I have learned to go forward even when I have doubts. I’m sure it will be the same for you. Your brain might never be able to fully understand that it is safe to break the promises. And that’s OK. You don’t have to understand everything. You just need to keep breaking the promises and going forward. We have to take power away from the OCD. Right now the OCD has all the power. But if you practice what I am telling you (which is ERP therapy), then you defeat the OCD’S tricks. Now let’s talk about specifics. Let’s talk about what ERP therapy looks like for you. I am going to call this “Preena’s ERP Battle Plan to Defeat OCD.” ———————————————— Preena’s ERP Battle Plan 1.) Identify the obsession: The next time your brain makes a promise, maybe you can write it down. Or you can write to me and tell me what it is. The point is that I want you IDENTIFY it. Maybe your brain will be saying you have to study until 11 o’clock, or you can’t eat any food until breakfast, or whatever it is. When your brain tells you that you made a “promise,” write to me and tell me what it is. 2.). Practice denying the compulsions: When you follow the OCD rules/promises, that is actually a COMPULSION. It is a “safety behavior” to try to mitigate the anxiety caused by the obsession (above). You have to deny the compulsion by breaking the OCD on purpose. ——————————————————— One step at a time. Let’s just try to do this battle plan JUST ONCE to start with. And,then let’s celebrate your victory when you do it!! Maybe you can write to me when you get your next obsession. Then maybe we can break it together!! This is the road to freedom. I won’t lie to you, it will probably feel awful and scary sometimes. But when you have OCD, you have to learn how to do things anyway even if your brain tells you that you should be scared. Right now, the OCD has you trapped. It is making you miserable. The pathway out is to keep doing exactly the opposite of what the OCD tells you to do, despite the fact that you will have many strong, negative FEELINGS that something bad of going to happen. But if you keep doing this, the OCD will lose power over you. Let’s do this together!!

@Tea and Honey Thank you, so so much!! I really appreciate this and I think this has really helped. I have barely done any compulsions today and I keep coming back to read what you have written. I think I might also try to get an OCD diagnosis even if takes a long time on the NHS :) also I’m sorry for replying so late!

@Preena No worries!!!! Yay!!!! I am so happy to hear this!!!! You are doing a great job!! Keep going forward!! Progress is made usually slowly, little by little. But if you keep yourself going in the right direction you will be in the journey to healing. I am here for you anytime. Write to me whenever you are struggling!

@Tea and Honey Thank you!!

@Tea and Honey Remember, you can’t avoid the things that trigger you to make promises to God. For example, if certain stressful situations trigger you to make a promise, you need to go through those stressful situations anyway. If you start avoiding triggers, the OCD will get bigger and bigger. So you need to make sure to keep doing the things that trigger the premises. Then, you allow the promise to happen your brain. (Don’t try to fight it off. The more you try to fight the promise, the more the thoughts will come to your brain about it.) After you make the promise in your brain (which is the obsession), then you need to practice denying the compulsion (by refusing to obey the promise.) Maybe this video would be helpful: https://youtu.be/FgCDwt6BILQ?si=VQ22_E0BwMw_POkz

Hi, sorry I was about to reply to your comments and I forgot after watching the video!! Which was SUPER helpful. I'm doing a lot better with my OCD now thank you!! I did just have a little flare up though where I thought that because I'd relaxed something bad was going to happen and it would be my fault so I had to touch the picture of God in 3 different rooms immediately 😭but besides from that it's good!! I really appreciate the advice you gave me I think it really helped reduce my symptoms :) I'm trying to pray once in the morning, for my obsessions to not come true and then instead of doing lots of compulsive prayers and sacrifices throughout the day trust God has heard my initial prayer :)

@Anonymous That’s great!!!! So so happy to hear. Nathan Peterson has a lot of videos that might be good. Love that you are just doing one prayer :):) Please write any time if you want to process through things. It can help to talk!!! 😃😃

@Tea and Honey Thank you so much!! I really appreciate this :) I do think it's really wrong to restrict prayer at the same time. Also normally it doesn't come up at school but when it does it's so scary when I think things like I accidentally promise to god to not revise a certain topic and then I can't do it for a day 😭 also how are you??

@Tea and Honey Hi! I made a promise to god to limit music for 2 days but I have a song stuck in my head and now I keep neutralising it by thinking 'your meant to be with Krishna' (a Hindu God) do you have any thoughts? :)

@Anonymous Hello! Sorry, I didn’t see your last post until now :):) I am so glad you wrote!! Let’s talk about all this:):):) I used to go through something very similar. It was also scary for me because I didn’t know when these things would pop up. I felt like if I had a bad thought about God at the same time that I had a thought about doing something (like going to the park or eating eggs or eating popcorn), then I couldn’t do that thing for the day. Since I had bad thoughts in my head all the time, I was constantly restricting myself from eating certain foods for a day or going places for a certain period of time. It felt like I was making sacrifices to God on one level, though I knew it didn’t seem right. (I had to learn that God does that require this kind of“sacrifices” at all. In fact, these rules were actually severely hurting my walk with God, and also making me less of a good Christian.) It was scary because I would tell my kids that I would take them to the park or I would have a kids’ doctor appointment, and as the time got close to leaving, I would get really nervous that suddenly I wouldn’t be allowed to go any more. I totally understand what you are going through! In general, I want to say that religion is not meant to torture us like this. It’s not meant to give us tiny little rules and time restrictions and legalism and keep us trapped in a cage all the time. People with OCD are generally very noble-minded and very tough. But that can work against us a little bit. Because sometimes the answer is to give up and let go. Okay, let’s talk more about specifics. It can be really good to LABEL what is happening. The thoughts that you made a promise to God are obsessions. They are just OCD thoughts. Therefore, like everything else with OCD, you can throw these thoughts in the OCD garbage 🗑️ bin. You dont actually want to make these promises. They are just a part of the OCD brain swirling around. These “promises” are just an OCD trick to try to get you stuck and miserable. Think of OCD like a little man who is always trying to bully you. He will try lots of different approaches until he finds the approach that really bothers YOU. He knows that the idea of promising to God will get YOU to do whatever he wants. In my case, he knew the idea of a bad thought in my head would get ME to do whatever he wanted. And he always wants us to be miserable, confused, and suffering. These “promises” are just an OCD trick. They are meant to manipulate you into being miserable. Don’t listen to them!! So, we are going to label these promises, and we are also going to label what you try to do to fix them. One second…

@Anonymous LABELING: 1.) OCD thoughts about making promises are “OBSESSIONS” 2.) Doing what the promises say, avoiding what is against the promises, and trying to neutralize things are all “COMPULSIONS.” Compulsions are the things you do to try to feel safe after you have an obsessive thought. ——————————————— In ERP training, you are going to practice not doing the compulsions. This means you break the rules that the OCD gives you. This can feel really scary. It feels very unsafe to not follow through with the compulsions. But in ERP, you will learn to push through the scary or uncomfortable emotions. The emotions don’t matter. And the more you practice, the easier it gets. It can be helpful to do this with a therapist who is trained in ERP. (Some therapists can make things worse if they don’t understand ERP very well.)

@Anonymous In summary, every OCD comes up, you do two things: 1.) You label what is happening. You identify the “obsessions” and you identify the “compulsions.” 2.) You resist doing the compulsions. That is your number one responsibility. This is really hard and scary. It usually takes a lot of talking and processing. It is not easy to do. We can talk through this however much you need. I find that I go in circles a lot. It’s always harder to resist the compulsions then people expect. That’s because there are a lot of thoughts and emotions wrapped up in there. It might help to really talk about how you are feeling and what you are thinking during each step of the process.

@Anonymous Let’s go through this example on a practical level. You have a thought that you promised to God to limit music for 2 days. (This is just an obsessive, OCD thought. If it’s an OCD thought, then it goes in the OCD garbage 🗑️ bin.) Now, you are going to resist the compulsion of staying away from music for twos days. And you definitely are not going to neutralize anything with other thoughts. This means that you are NOT going to limit music for 2 days. You are going to think of music anyway. This can be really scary because OCD screams at you that you are breaking a promise to God and something really bad is going to happen if you don’t follow the compulsions. You are going to feel awful. That’s just how it goes. If you give in the compulsion, you will feel better in the short term. But giving into the compulsion only feeds the cycle and makes the cycle stronger the long term. If you refuse to give into the compulsion, your emotions will feel awful. But over time, it will get easier. In the long term, you will get better and better because you are breaking the cycle of obsessions and compulsions.