Deleted post.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

I hear what you were saying, and I understand the struggle. I understand the urges and the desperation of the moment where you fear you’ll do some thing that will cause really bad consequences. And I understand the idea of thinking that you need escape. I’m going to tell you the way out of this. It requires a new way of thinking. We have to back waaaaaay up and look at the big picture. The problems you are experiencing come as a result of a core belief that your thoughts themselves have any meaning or power. It sounds like maybe you differentiate between an OCD thought and your “own” thoughts. Perhaps you think OCD thoughts are meaningless, but that your “own” thoughts have meaning and power. I need you to embrace something new: ALL YOUR THOUGHTS ARE MEANINGLESS. A thought is a thought. It doesn’t matter if it’s an OCD thought or your own thoughts. It doesn’t matter if you thought the thought on purpose. It doesn’t matter if you prayed the prayer on purpose. You need to take an attitude that ALL your thoughts are meaningless. Then you can practice letting the thoughts flow freely through your mind. You need to stop differentiating whether or not they originate from your OCD or not. My therapist described it like this. Imagine a tree planted by river. Leaves fall off from the tree and float down the river all the time. You can notice the leaves, but you don’t try to prevent them. Our thoughts are like leaves. We don’t try to fight them off. We just watch them float down the river. When I read what you were saying, it seems clear that you feel like you have to resist the urge to think of certain thoughts. And then your brain makes escapes for you, because you are so afraid that if you thought those thoughts, something really bad would happen. But you need to get out of that trap. The only way to do that is to realize that it doesn’t matter if you think those scary thoughts or not. You have to practice allowing yourself to think all the thoughts, whether you think they are intrusive or your own. And don’t try to stop them, and don’t try to fix them. You will experience great anxiety when you start letting the thoughts flow for the first time. You’ll be afraid that people will die as a result. But, as time goes on, and you continue to practice letting the thoughts flow, you will see that people don’t actually die. You have to allow yourself to “ride out” the anxiety that occurs when you stop fighting thoughts. But this is your ticket 🎫 out of OCD suffering. We can talk more about this if you want, and a good therapist can help you with us too. You’re suffering so greatly, it’s time to get these things fixed for you, so you can start enjoying your life!!! And remember, don’t let your OCD fool you because it will tell you that prayers are somehow different than thoughts. There is no difference! I am a Christian, very religious, and have religious OCD. But these prayers in our heads are still thoughts. You treat them all the same. Don’t let OCD tell you otherwise.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Tea and Honey Write back if you want to talk more

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 It will really help to pull back and look at the big picture. You will have to start looking at things in new ways. When you sit in shame, that is actually a compulsion. You will need to start practicing not allowing yourself to sit in shame anymore. It will feel awkward because your OCD will tell you that you have to sit in shame. But you need to keep in mind that it’s a compulsion that has to be broken. The escapes that your OCD pre-selects are actually also compulsions. You need to practice not taking escapes. This is going to sound scary, but you need to actually allow yourself to think the thoughts that you are so desperately trying to resist. I can tell that you are really trying to resist the scariest thoughts or prayers. But you can’t do that. You have to actually ALLOW yourself to think of these things. It is okay to do this because all the thoughts are actually meaningless.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 I hear you. But this is just playing the OCD game. We have to zoom out, and look at the OCD from above, seeing where whole picture. New Definition: The “escapes” are actually COMPULSIONS. When you have OCD, you have to practice denying the compulsions. Don’t allow yourself to take the escapes. Instead, you need to ALLOW yourself to think the scary thoughts on purpose, or prayer the bad prayers in purpose. This is very difficult to do, but you need to trust me. This is your pathway OUT of the OCD.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 Have you heard of ERP therapy? It could possibly rescue you from all of this.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Annoying_OCD Sure:):)

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Annoying_OCD I am aware of it :):)

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Annoying_OCD I’ll go try and find it

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Annoying_OCD Okay, you need to change your relationship with 1.) how you view false arousal 2.) how you view physical symptoms that come with OCD, and 3) how you handle compulsions. Let’s go through those in order. 1. How to view false arousal False arousal is meaningless. It’s just like an intrusive thought. What do you do about it? The answer is nothing. You do nothing. You don’t try to fight it off (just like intrusive thoughts). To have to come to the point where you don’t care if it’s there or not. It’s just part of OCD. The fact that your brain is trying to tell you that you “enjoy the arousal” is just a product of thought-burnout. You have spent so much time trying to fight this off and being afraid of it that your brain just goes numb and into confusion and burnout and eventually says stuff like you actually “wanted” the false arousal. Don’t worry about it. It’s just OCD. You have to get to the place where you just IGNORE the fact the OCD says you liked it, and treat it all like intrusive thoughts (which means you just let it pass by you while you go about your life). ————————————————- 2.) How to view physical symptoms All physical symptoms are like “intrusive thoughts”. This means that they have absolutely no meaning at all. Groinals, panic attacks, false arousal, feeling separated from one’s body—no matter what, they are all meaningless. So when a physical symptom comes up, treat it like an intrusive thought. This means that you don’t care whether it’s there or not, and you just let it pass by. The big point is this: You have to train yourself to not care whether the physical symptoms are there or not. ————————————————- 3.) How to handle compulsions You have to deny yourself from doing compulsions. When you have a false arousal, and the OCD tells that you have to shower or change your bedding, DO NOT do it. The showering and changing bedding are compulsions. They are “safety behaviors” that your brain wants to use to mitigate the fear from the OCD. You have to deny yourself doing the compulsions. It might feel scary to deny them, but you must practice that. :):):):):)

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Annoying_OCD It’s just OCD. I had this thing about being afraid of lifting my middle finger because I was afraid of flipping off God. And I tried to fight it, but then in the confusion and the desperation of the moment, it’s also like you want to lift your finger. And then I did, and I felt so guilty. But it was all nonsense. It was all OCD. Just think like this: If something is OCD, then you can just throw it in the garbage. It doesn’t mean anything.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 The way out is to treat all the thoughts the same. A thought is just a THOUGHT 💭, whether you mean it or not. You have to not care if you prayer bad prayers or not, whether you mean them or not. In fact, you should should simply allow yourself to pray the bad prayers any time your brain wants to pray them. This will feel scary. But think about this. God does not care if you pray a bad prayer or not. Here’s the other thing. You feel like if you prayer a bad prayer, it will come true! THIS IS A FALSE PREMISE. You feel like if you pray a bad prayer, sleeping bad will happen. THIS IS NOT TRUE!! You have to start challenging those assumptions. Tell yourself it doesn’t matter if you pray a bad prayer or not

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Tea and Honey I meant to say something bad, not sleeping bad

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 Them let’s break out of that pathway!!!!!! Who cares what people think? It doesn’t matter. So go ahead and practice praying the bad prayers. Don’t let the OCD keep you trapped by the concept “what would people think?” Break free from that concept!!!!!

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Tea and Honey It is not true!!! You can break free from this trap

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

We are going Zoom out like Google maps. Think of OCD like a little gremlin who has strategies to keep you in a twisted up maze. Right now you are following all the pathways INSIDE the maze. But they are impossible to follow correctly all the time, and they just lead to confusion and despair. But all you need to do is step OUTSIDE of the hedges of the maze, and you are free. So let’s stop playing the OCD’S game. Let’s stop trying to follow its pathways. We can only do that by zooming out and looking at the big picture. 1. Stop 🛑 thinking about what you read on NOCD where some thoughts have meaning and others don’t. This actually does not apply to you. You need to decide right now that you don’t care what thoughts or prayers are in your head. You don’t care whether you mean them or not. And you don’t care what people think. This is actually how ERP works. I know it can be confusing when you read other people’s comments, but the truth is that we often take in people’s comments when they don’t actually apply to our situation. All of those very same people you read about would agree with the advice I am giving you now about how to apply ERP to your situation. 2. Stop caring what other people think. This is a trap that little Gremlin has given you. And we are going to get you out of it. You can use the classic OCD response if it helps you: You can tell yourself, “Maybe people hate me, and maybe they don’t. I don’t care.” 3. Recognize the maze—then reject it Do you see how the gremlin of OCD is giving you pathways along a maze? They are all false. Let’s take the “racist” prayer. The first thing the Gremlin says is that the prayer means something. Full stop . This is not true!!!!! You have to stop believing that the prayers have any meaning. Remember, they are just worthless thoughts like any other thoughts💭 . The second thing the Gremlin does is give ideas that follow the pattern of “If….then…”. In your case, it said, “If ____(you are not morally responsible___, then ____(a conclusion about suicide).” Do you see that this is false? The OCD gave you a false “If…then…” statement. That is what OCD does. It makes strange connections based on “If…. Then…” ideas. The solution to that is to step OUTSIDE of the maze. From now on, you do not care about “if…then…” ideas. You are going to ALLOW yourself to pray the SCARY prayers (because they don’t mean anything). By the way, don’t try to figure out WHY this is okay to do. (That never works.). You need to just do it without trying to figure everything out. 3. Remember, ESCAPES are just compulsions. The escapes that your brain offers are actually “compulsions.” The escapes are trying to give you a way out of praying the prayers that seem scary 😱 . But you need to learn to PRAY THOSE PRAYERS ANYWAY, without taking the escapes. ——————————— CONCLUSION Don’t try to figure this all out. Just DO what I am telling you to do. We can never solve or figure out the maze of OCD when we are inside the maze. The only thing we can do is ZOOM OUT and step out of the game. We stop following the maze pathways. You have to practice doing these things that I am saying, even when you are scared, and even when you don’t understand. That’s the only way to beat OCD.

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 The OCD gets us into magical thinking. It gets us into making connections that are wrong and don’t many any sense. So what’s the solution? Just do the things I told you to do. Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t put yourself on the level of the maze and try to reason within the twisted pathways and connections. Just step OUTSIDE of the maze and DO the treatment. Don’t try to reason with OCD. Don’t try to figure it out. Don’t try to decide if it’s “safe”. Just do the treatment!!! (Do the things I said to do.:) You can do it!!

Tea and Honey

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymoususer26251 I hear you. It’s just like it is for me. I am deeply worried about losing my salvation. It’s not actually real. It’s not actually possible that I can lose salvation. But it’s so deeply ingrained in me, that the fear colors every moment of my day and everything that I do. I think the best thing to do is just practice doing what you are supposed to be doing despite the fact that you feel fear. Keep practicing acting the way you are supposed act (with the ERP). Keep doing it, even though you feel afraid of what people think. The more you practice this, the easier it gets. It takes time for these deeply rooted fears to change. And that’s OK. Don’t ask them to change right now. Just keep practicing doing what you are supposed to do, even though your brain and body do not understand. Just don’t try to figure it out, and keep doing what you need to do. :):):) You can do it!!! It just takes practice, even though you still feel the fear. :):)

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