Hello all. I'm new here. I've been having a horrendous time trying to beat repentance prayers. Please if you have advice I'm desperate. The things I'm fighting are: - "feelings" that I did something wrong - actually doing something wrong but not being able to pray quickly - rituals having to do with feet movements, hand movements, where I'm facing when I pray
Know that you are a child of God and the fact that you fear you've done something wrong is a good sign. Prayer is part of repentance but the main thing about repentance is changing your behavior that is real repentance so beat this ocd.
Thank you for your reply
I’ve had lots of prayer compulsions in the past. Exposures that can help you fight that ocd is stuff like messing with the little details—intentionally praying where you say something or do a movement a little different than what you feel like you’re “supposed to” to push back against the ocd anxiety. It’s a hard thing to deal with but you can beat this ocd with some time and effort in pushing back against whatever ocd makes you feel like you “need” to do in order for the prayer to be “right”
If you need to take a break from praying right now, God understands. Often with OCD, we need to entirely take away the things that make us ritualize and come back to them once we're in a better space. I knew a guy in residential who used to ritually read the Bible for at least an hour everyday, and he and his team decided to take away the Bible for a little bit. By the time he was ready to leave, he was reading the Bible again in a healthy way.
I’m sharing this bc I need advice or even support from anyone who can relate. If you can’t relate and don’t think you’ll say anything helpful or kind pls don’t comment anything… I’ve been struggling with somethings that’s making me question myself. There has been moments while self pleasuring when I get intrusive thoughts, in those moments it feels like I’m enjoying or even self pleasuring myself bc of the thought. Right after I immediately have an anxiety attack and my HEART drops bc it feels terrible I feel like a disgusting monster :( ppl have told me I haven’t done a bad bc of how intense my guilt and panic are but I keep thinking that MAYBE I made a horrible decision in the moment and the guilt is just realising that it’s just wrong this doesn’t make sense to me because I’ve always told myself that I would never act on this in 1 million years and I’ve been known that these things are wrong so I’m just like constantly questioning myself these feelings and exact same situation has happened two times already I even promised myself that I wouldn’t act on anything beforehand and yeah, I still felt like I did act on my thought during my alone time I’m genuinely convinced that I’m a horrible and it’s even got into the point where I don’t wanna be here anymore and I don’t even think this is my OCD :( tbh
I’m having a big OCD relapse and would like to hear anyone’s tips on how to be present and healthily deal with these intrusive thoughts and the “need” to preform compulsions. Thank you!!
TW religious ocd OCD is turning innapropriate desires into prayers. Essentially the best way I can describe it is everyone has innapropriate desires sometimes. One example is if I’m suicidal, I wouldn’t mind if a meteor hit while I was asleep. Obviously that affects other people too, but if it’s not my fault, selfishly I want it. Well, it essentially turns that “I want this” thought into me thinking towards god “this would be nice if it happens.” Especially if it wasn’t my fault at all, I wouldn’t mind. My brain can VERY easily turn that into a prayer. All I have to do is direct it for a second towards god, and boom, technically it’s a prayer. Has anyone else had this? It really seems like ocd, even if it is VERY technically a prayer. It doesn’t seem like a normal, thought out prayer
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