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 don’t know how to stop confessing. It’s driving me insane. I confess every little thing to my boyfriend. I confessed that I liked attention (this is so obviously human), that I liked it when people found me pretty (also very human??) I confessed about a million other things and I feel out of control. I felt so safe with him last night that it just started pouring out of me. I felt guilty and awful and I just needed release, I couldn’t breathe I felt like I was dying. I’m stuck in a confessing loop and I know I’m only making things worse. Has anyone experienced this and been able to overcome it? It feels absolutely horrible and impossible. I tried to ERP this and I genuinely feel like I am suffocating if I hold off. I feel so disappointed in myself, but I can’t seem to stop. I even had a dream where I confessed to him and woke up needed to confess that. I’m scared I’ll start sharing my worst intrusive thoughts I’ve had if I feel too safe around my bf. Help please :(
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!!
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