So a long time ago, I made a wish at 11:11 that unexpectedly came true. Since then I have been terrified of that time of day and it’s power to grant wishes. This morning and tonight I accidentally made a really bad wish. It’s not something I want to happen. The words just strang together cause I was freaking out. I don’t know what to do. I’ve had 11:11 wishes not come true in the past, but… I’m scared. Help?
OK, so let’s talk about what I think ERP therapy would look like for you. I could be missing some of your information, so you can correct me if you want. But I just want to take a moment and describe what I believe ERP would be for you. First, you need to identify that your “bad wishes“ are actually defined as “obsessions.” Obsessions just populate our brain without us wanting them there. I used to have obsessions that took the form of bad sentences toward God. Since I am a Christian, you can imagine what havoc and pain that caused me. But obsessions can also take the form of wishes or promises or “if…… Then… “ statements. For example, I have a friend who feels like she makes promises to God and then has to keep them. However, these are just obsessions and don’t have to be followed at all. In ERP therapy, we are trained to stop fighting the obsessions. Imagine OCD is like an annoying little brother. He wants to bother you. He wants to say all sorts of bad things to you. If you try to get him to stop, he just will say them louder and try harder to push your buttons . But if you ignore him, he sees that he can’t get a reaction out of you, and eventually he might stop trying. So when it comes to scary, intrusive thoughts like sentences, wishes, promises, etc., we have to learn to stop reacting to them (like ignoring a little brother). We just allow the thoughts to “do their thing.” We can let them pop into our heads, and repeat themselves, and rattle around all they want. We don’t try to stop them. The more we try to stop them (like yelling at our little brother to stop), the worse they get. The point is that these obsessions don’t actually mean anything. That is the biggest thing that people with OCD have to learn. We always believe that they mean some thing, and we will be tortured as long as we think that. It may take a long time, but we all have to come to point where we learn that THEY MEAN NOTHING. That is why we can let them rattle around in our brain and we can do nothing about it. The second part of ERP is to deny compulsions. For you, this means that you have to stop AVOIDING the number 11:11. You have to expose yourself to it ON PURPOSE so you can train your brain that it doesn’t mean anything. We can talk more if you want!!
This is just OCD. You have nothing to worry about. The bad wishes are actually just “obsessions”. They might seem real, but they are not. It doesn’t matter if some of these things actually come true. Some of them will always come true. But we have to learn to treat OCD with ERP no matter what—no matter if we think our fears are coming true or not. ERP therapy could be a big game changer for you. It can help you overcome all of these fears and obsessions and compulsions. Have you tried it? One option is NOCD . The people at NOCD will train you in ERP therapy and help you to overcome these things. There are other places you can use as well. The point is to get ERP training somewhere. What you are experiencing is CLASSIC for OCD. It feels like a trap. It feels like there is no answer. It just feels like FEAR all the way around. I know this. I understand completely. But there’s answers!!! There’s a way to beat this!!! You have got to apply ERP therapy to this situation. I’ll give an overview.
I keep on getting restive thoughts based on curses and stuff. I keep on closing my eyes and get this one feeling that if I open I get bad luck or smth and I must pray to get it away. It feels so close idk how to explain. I’ve used holy water and it feels better but isk
This wasn’t an ocd intrusive thought necessarily. It wasn’t really a well thought out prayer either. I was in the middle of a prayer obsession. I was thinking of things I could pray for. I wanted to die, so without really thinking it out too much I thought “please let world war 3 happen, amen,” and then didn’t really care and regretted it afterward. It feels insignificant to me, but it’s bad to most people. This is a common thing with a lot of prayers and I’m not sure why. I’m not normally a malicious person. I don’t know if the difference is people think I care a ton when I do them, sit down and have a connection with god, and say them. I’m not very religious and know nothing is going to happen. This has happened for other prayers too. I don’t have a desire to keep praying for stuff like that to happen, but I did, and I did stuff like that for a lot of other things too. And I meant it in the moment, but couldn’t have care less 2 seconds afterward.
About 2 months ago, I started to worry about making bad prayers. I have meta ocd so it was very complicated. My brain would essentially stimulate me to make certain prayers by praying for every possible thing, showing how easy it was to do. It was so bad I initially tried sleeping, and anything to avoid bad prayers, but that wasn’t enough. I kept imagining people yelling at me to not make prayers. Eventually, I was fed up with it, and felt like I got washed up with a wave of anger towards those people in my head (I imagined them being real people), and ended up praying “if someone says something online that’s going to lead to me being triggered and killing myself, kill them first please,” with at least a feeling of anger towards people. Then immediately after I didn’t care and thought “woah woah woah.” I don’t know why this happened. Maybe it’s a part of it. But it felt targeted and malicious.
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