Anyone else struggle with prayer? I do it obsessively and I have to do it just right or I think something bad will happen to my loved ones. Ive struggled with it for about 25 yrs. It's makes it so hard for me to pray but if I don't then the fear something terrible is going to happen kicks in I just can't deal with this anymore...
I used to but not that much anymore. God knows you have ocd
Hi! Good Morning! Yes, I have struggled with it, but this is something that I do to help me with this battle: 1) the voice of God (if we believe in him) will never be the accuser, he will lift you up 2) the Devil will always try to tell you, you need to pray more, more, more and more but in reality these are just our compulsions to want to try to earn the grace of God. Some tips that I do is understanding when I am doing something “to feel right” vs if I am doing something “to be in the presence of God”. Furthermore, you mentioned that you have to do it right or something bad will happen. I myself struggled with this especially in legalistic churches that mention we must pray in ABCD way in order for God to hear our prayers. What I recommend is definitely talking with your therapist to see if there are some ways that you can better on those intrusive thoughts. Furthermore, you could go against what OCD tells you which is to pray. OCD is like a little enemy that tells you everything has to be right in order to experience peace, but God stated that “if you are broken, you can come to me”. Prayer also is not a form of confession or compulsion but should be used as a way to communicate with God, again try to understand when you feel these compulsions just right. I will be praying for you! ❤️
I struggle with this too. I’m lost at what to do anymore
So am I and ppl say pray about it but don't understand that prayer is my problem I struggle so hard with.
@Peaceandlove777 When speaking about this thoughts into churches, people will say “pray about it”, but unfortunately they do not understand that this phrase just will feed into the compulsion. People view prayer as a way to just talk with God but don’t understand or have knowledge of mental illnesses. Telling someone to pray when they have a problem is just to me kind of “pushing the problem away”. Again as Christians, we must understand that prayer is not a “must”. The Devil will always accuse us of not praying the perfect prayer and it reminds me a-lot of the pharisees. The Pharisees continually stated that we must do this and you can’t do this on the Sabbath but Jesus went against those ideologies. He healed people on the Sabbath when the religious leaders ruled against, which can be inferred that Jesus does NOT ask us to be perfect but no means. In fact that’s why he came on the cross was to die for our sins because we are imperfect. Whenever you feel these compulsions to pray just right, try not feeding into those compulsions by prayer but rather sitting with the uncomfortably of the thought. I hope this helps and will be praying for you! ❤️
@MattoAmericano Thank you very much❤️
@Peaceandlove777 You are welcome! ❤️
This is sort of a sub part of the religious OCD, but I have Meta OCD as well. My main fear is ocd driving me to do a horrible prayer. Unfortunately, one thing my mind does is prays for things I want constantly to prove that I can choose what I pray for. Some of these things include either my ocd to go away, people to be safe, or to die by being killed by a an animal or something when I’m running on the trial. The issue is with the being killed thing. I have prayed for all sorts of things I know are not going to happen. Unfortunately, one of them was almost world war 3. I’m not usually that kind of person. I read someone say they basically prayed for disaster every day on Reddit and people didn’t completely destroy them over it, so I thought “well I could pray for world war 3.” The issue is, if I were my normal calm self, I wouldn’t do that. All I would be thinking about is how I would die if it happened. I’m not sure if testing the prayers are somehow warping my actual values or if that’s an excuse I’m making for myself. When I’m running on the trail, I really wouldn’t want to be killed by an animal either, but I guess I mean it, cause I want to die. But I know it’s not going to happen. So I’m not sure if this is an ocd issue or not
This is really complicated but it isn’t just intrusive thoughts, however I didn’t directly do the prayer. I’ll do my best to explain. I’ve been having an obsession over prayers. There have been a few bad prayers I’ve almost done and meant that are not good. A week and a half ago, I was feeling desperate and I had the genuine urge to pray for my parents to die in a way which somehow wasn’t my fault (I couldn’t be morally responsible for the prayer was another condition too), because if I attempted suicide, it would devastate them. Thankfully, I stopped myself, but that mindset stuck. If I was worried about it, it could actually put me back in that mindset where I wanted to pray for it. I know this sounds crazy. So it followed me around sometimes. OCD has found loopholes to actually doing the prayer. I have prayed to pray for certain things, meaning I am indirectly praying for it. This was sort of like that, except my mind designated that blinking while thinking of it a certain way would be a prayer. To me, this actually meant it was a prayer because of magical thinking. I ended up blinking while thinking of this, and I did regret it right after, but in that moment, I meant it. I essentially blinked during that moment to magically agree with and do the prayer. And to me, it was doing the prayer. I meant it while doing this too, but didn’t care afterwards. To me, stepping back, it does feel different than directly doing the prayer. This probably doesn’t make much sense
I have an obsession with doing bad prayers and it’s worse cause of meta ocd. I feel like I can psyche myself out into doing prayers I wouldn’t normally actually do. It’s not all just intrusive prayers either, but that is part of what Meta ocd is targeting. One issue, is that because of it, I’ll start praying for every little thing, like there to be enough soap, etc. I wouldn’t normally pray for this, but thanks to meta OCD I am and I still want it. This creates a bigger issue when there are other desires I have that I want but wouldn’t normally pray for. I can psyche myself out into possibly praying for those and meaning it, however this would not normally happen. Basically there is the fear of doing the prayer I know I could do. Then the fear of the fear of the prayer. Then the fear of the fear of the fear of the prayer, and it causes a lot of anxiety, and can lead to me actually doing it. I’m sure there can be confusion as to how much I mean things, but ocd will also hand select things I can mean (not just intrusive thoughts, since meta ocd is targeting things that aren’t intrusive thoughts). One way this goes away is if I allow myself to pray for all the bad things, even if I mean it. Because everything will go away, including praying for enough soap or something. But then I’m stuck on the fact that I prayed for the specific things. If I don’t do it, I’m stuck worrying about how my mind is going to manipulate me into praying for something
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