Ramadan

Hi everyone, I’m reaching out for support. Right now I feel like OCD is “winning” in my life and I feel suffocated and alone. This is my story and I would love any support, guidance, or advice. Long post, but I appreciate anyone that reads it. I’m a 28 year old Muslim middle eastern woman. My family immigrated to Canada when I was a kid. I’ve never been very religious but I consider myself a believer. I also believe that religion is extremely personal and that my relationship with God is mine only. My faith hasn’t always been strong, it goes up and down. My family, although not super religious, has always valued tradition and my parents have always wanted me to marry someone Muslim and Arab. They are very adamant about that and very against mixing with other cultures and faiths. My father passed sway in my early twenties, and I’ve always struggled with doing things that he wouldn’t approve of and having him be disappointed or ashamed of me. I was very close to my dad - his death was really traumatic and I miss him everyday. I am in a relationship with a kind, caring man who loves me and takes care of me. We were friends first and I tried to not let things progress past friendship because I knew my family would never approve. But eventually we both confessed feelings and that led us to a relationship. He makes me happy and has healed many things in me that were wounded from past relationships. He’s Punjabi Sikh, so our cultures and faiths are different. He is not religious at all. When we first started talking about dating, he said to me that if he had to do an Islamic marriage to be with me that he would do it. If that’s what it took to be with me, he’d do it. That for me was the push I needed to go for it, and let myself get into a relationship with my friend and now lover. He even says that he’s open to our kids learning Islam. He just wants our kids to also learn about where he comes from, of course. I knew that my family wouldn’t approve, but having the Islamic marriage would be extremely important to maybe eventually have them accept my decision. My boyfriend has always been aware of my OCD and is always willing to do whatever it takes to support me. As we’ve navigated dating and being in a relationship we’ve had some challenges with my ROCD, and we’re actively working on it with exposure therapy. We’ve also had general relationship obstacles that we’re learning to work through, like communication and having different love languages. I tend to be anxiously attached and I get panic attacks when I think I’m losing people close to me. So even just the idea of a break up makes me feel sick. In all honesty, being in a relationship has been really hard on my mental health. My therapist says it’s like being in constant exposure- which can be exhausting (I always have the thought “being single is so much easier because there’s way less triggers” but I don’t want to believe that or let it dictate my life). My big struggles right now are guilt from hiding my relationship from my family, and dealing with constant ROCD intrusive thoughts like: “is he the one? You want someone from your own culture, your mom is right, this is never going to work and you’re going to be unhappy and divorced. You don’t want to mix cultures, you’re going to hate it, stop pretending to be open to it… your aunts and uncles are going to disapprove and cut you off, you’re going to be judged by everyone, your kids are going to be so confused about their identity, travelling back home is going to be so weird and not the same, so you should break up with him”. Often, this causes me to “test” the relationship or look for problems and create arguments. It’s a toxic cycle, and I’m so ashamed of it. I also often struggle with thoughts like “you’re lying to yourself, you want someone from your culture, you’re a bad person for leading him on, you’re a liar”…. “You did this to yourself by dating outside your culture”. Ultimately, I feel torn. How am I meant to know if I actually want to be in this relationship or if I want to do what my family approves of (and what would be easier)? How do I manage the thoughts that tell me opposing things? I have frequent panic attacks and when things are bad, they happen daily and are very debilitating. This is where I’m at right now, and this is the part that terrifies me. I don’t want to be stuck like this. I don’t want to lose my boyfriend. That thought terrifies me and I don’t think I can handle that. He means so much to me. I also don’t want to be suffocated by thoughts - if I have them every day first thing in the morning, does that mean I need to listen to them? I’m struggling so much and I feel so hopeless. I wouldn’t wish these feelings on anybody, ever. I want to feel at ease, more than anything.

i keep having such intrusive religious ocd thoughts, i feel like i’m sinning and i don’t want to leave my religion p.s i’m a muslim

Backstory: I was raised heavily Christian on my dad's side up until about middle school but then was sort of transitioned away from it and was atheist/didn't think about it. Then towards the end of middle school and through high school I was pushed heavily by my mother's side (and by the internet) into more spiritual practices. Both of which triggered my OCD a lot. After realizing how much they affected my mental health I tried to get as far away from both as possible for a while. But now I'm receiving a LOT of signs to turn back to religion but this time Islam???? I don't know it's hard to describe but I feel very conflicted. There's a lot I don't agree with in the religion. It has a lot of the same contradictions and stuff that Christianity had that I can't get behind but also like... What if I'm wrong. I also keep doing these mental gymnastics to try and make everything I disagree with make sense and look at things in different perspectives than other people. There's a lot about the religion that compels me too, much more than Christianity. But now I'm scared to do anything sinful, even things that I used to feel no guilt for. The guilt is the WORST. I feel bad for things I shouldn't feel bad for. The other thing is I'm very queer, and trans masculine. I know that makes me sound crazy. That part of me is screaming not to do this. But the part of me that's compelling me back to religion is telling me that I would actually feel okay being straight and a woman if I accepted Islam. It's the ONLY thing that's made me feel like that would be comfortable and okay for myself. Maybe that in of itself is a sign that it's the truth. It's insane that I would actually feel that way. I would even be okay wearing hijab and everything, dressing modest and feminine. But on the other hand I will ALWAYS be a science first person. That directly contradicts one of the key ideas of Islam, that the Quran is the exact word of God and that it is unchanged. My particular issue being that I will never believe in creationism. At the same time I know that my dad would have been extremely proud of me for finding God. While he did renounce organized religion towards the end of his life (he was also very sick and on a lot of medication) he still very much believed in God and wished that for his children. Part of me feels that even though I cannot find God in Christianity he would still be proud of me for finding God in Islam. But I also feel a lot of my identity has been formed around the spiritual practices of my mom's side of the family. That is also what I'm constantly surrounded by and what is largely expected of my. I do fear falling too deep into those beliefs was the worst for my OCD though. I was constantly worried about all the things I "needed" to do or else I would have bad consequences. I even believed I was the reason of my father's death at some point. I might still believe that to a degree. I'm afraid I can't really talk about this with anyone because Im afraid I would come off as someone who just wants to parade around Islamic culture while cherry picking what I want from it. That might even be the case idk. I could just be randomly finding something to build an identity around because of some narcissistic need for attention. Idk someone tell me what I should do.