OCD questions

This is extremely COMMON for religious OCD. I used to think I was the only one in the world who had swearwords or blasphemous thoughts in my head toward God, especially when I got angry or emotional . And then I read a book called "Can Christianity cure OCD?" by Dr. Ian Osborne. And he said that a high percentage of people with OCD experience exactly the same struggle with disrespectful thoughts toward God. Osborne also pointed out multiple well-known figures in history who had the same type of problems with OCD, including John Bunyan, who wrote "Pilgrims Progress". Also, many historians think Martin Luther had OCD as well. I read John Bunyan's autobiography (it's from the 1500s?), and it shows that Bunyan experienced the same sorts of disrespectful blasphemous thoughts that I had. (In fact, he even referenced that in "pilgrims progress" itself.) So you are completely not alone!! People with religious OCD might see an image of Mary and add a sexual element to it or something disrespectful, or they might think of disrespectful images of God, or they might have swearwords in their head toward God, or any number of things like that. That is just normal for OCD. I wish I would've known back when I was younger what I know now. But I am happy to talk to you and help you if I can! I have learned that God doesn't care about the thoughts in your head like this. You don't need to spend time trying to figure out whether or not these thoughts are OCD, or if the thoughts are coming from you, because it actually doesn't matter. In fact, it just doesn't matter if these thoughts are in your head or not. This might sound really scary to you, but one of the biggest steps that I ever took was to allow my intrusive thoughts to run freely through my head, without trying to stop them. I was really scared to do that because I felt like maybe I would go to hell if I didn't try to mitigate these intrusive thoughts. But I have learned that it doesn't matter if those thoughts are in our head or not. And if we spend all of our time fighting them, they are just going to get worse. The more we try to stop them, the worse they get. Today, I enjoy a good relationship with God. He has brought me a long way. Over time, I've gotten better and better from this OCD. And I'm not where I was 17 years ago when I felt like every blasphemous thought in my head was potentially going to send me to hell. There is so much hope for you !!!!!! I am sure you have a lot of questions. I'm here to talk if you want to. I also think ERP therapy is extremely useful. ERP therapy comes into line with everything that I have learned about getting better from OCD. I have resources for you to help you get ERP therapy if you are interested. I understand that you're in a lot of pain right now. I know it feels like no one else has thoughts like you do, and you don't understand why those thoughts keep coming. But what you need to know is that those disrespectful thoughts meaningless. And you need to know that it's not your fault that you have this mental illness. And there are a lot of people struggling with exactly the same symptoms that you are. I'm sending you a big hug. One of the main points of Dr. Ian Osborne's book is that some of God's most favored and special Christians have suffered with this disorder I think sometimes people who suffer with this are not suffering because they did something wrong, but because God wants to use them in a big way .