Need advice bad. OCD is obsessing over my hair pretty bad. I'm terrified to cut my hair short again. My fears are pretty dumb For instance - "You miss adventure in life because your hair is short" This is a dumb one. "You're disrespecting your religion by having short hair." I'm not asking for reassurance but I am asking for enelightment.

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!!

My last and almost life long theme/sub-theme largely subsided recently and my ocd felt like it wasn’t even an issue. Then I went on winter break from uni and being alone made my mind come up with a whole new topic to obsess over. TLDR on my fears, my advisor wouldn’t email me back for a while about signing up for classes so my mind started to worry “what if he doesn’t in time and you can’t enroll this semester and you lose this whole life you just built and all these new friends” So when that issue was resolved my mind found other scarier ways I could be uprooted from my current life and friends that I’ve grown so attached to. Then my mind remembered back when I was struggling with false memories and scrupulosity and I essentially made a post on a forum 2 and a half years ago saying I did something or was convinced I did something that I never actually did. Now I’ve been spiraling about someone finding it reporting me and I either get seen as a horrible person or arrested or something over something I never actually did but “admitted” to out of fear of going to hell. My mind won’t let it go and keeps finding new reasons for it to be “valid” “logical” or even inevitable. I feel like it’s just hanging over my head and I can never rest easy. Especially when I try to focus on my daily tasks or plan for the future I get this horrible flair up of “why plan for the future when this could come back in that future and you get uprooted from all of it” my mind won’t rest without certainty being uprooted won’t happen but certainty doesn’t exist, at least not with ocd. This sucks and I miss being care free.

Hello everyone. I was just wanting to post on here regarding a situation that I have been dealing with for a few months now. I have been taking my walk with Christ seriously for about a year now and ever since I started I’ve noticed a bunch of intrusive thoughts and it’s caused me much distress. It all started back in June of 2024. I missed a church service because my wife and I were taking care of our daughter and I went to a Best But store and upgraded my old Apple Watch to a new one. I felt like doing so I committed idolatry because I went and bought that instead of going to church. I felt immense guilt for doing so and the next day I cancelled my order. I thought that maybe I was over thinking the entire thing so I went ahead and placed a new order and got the watch. For two weeks after getting the watch, I ruminated about whether I should keep it or not. It didn’t feel right with me and was overwhelmed with guilt for having it and it was debilitated with anxiety and stress. Eventually I decided I would just give it back so I went to go return it on the last day I could do so only to find out I could not. I thought that was a sign from God that I could keep it. I felt the most relief after that that I had experienced in quite awhile but then the next day after I started have thoughts again thinking that I didn’t try hard enough to return it and that I’m some how putting it before God. Well eventually I came to terms that there was nothing I could do about it and I was able to stop worrying about it being an idol. Well my mind jumped from that to another thing in my life and this one has been harder to get over. I have been on hair loss medication for 7 years and I had a thought one day telling me that “if I’m a true follower of Christ, then I shouldn’t take the medicine because I’m placing too much importance on my looks” I again felt immense anxiety and dread and tried fighting these thoughts away but could not help but think” what if it is and this is conviction of the Holy spirit”? I would constantly look up online any answers I could find to help relieve my anxiety but I can’t. I pray to God all the time for his will to be done in this situation and sometimes I feel better but then it all comes back. It’s hard for me to read the Bible because there’s so much about idolatry I always feel like it’s God talking to me like it’s a sign or if I’m just taking it that way? I asked God to show give me an answer about this situation and a day later a YouTuber I follow posted a video about removing idols from our lives. I felt that was God speaking to me or wasn’t sure maybe it was a coincidence? I just feel so cornered and out under so much pressure on what to do. Of course I would like to keep taking my medicine because it has helped me but then I have thoughts that tell me it is an idol because I am not able to give it up. I cut back taking the medicine a lot more often over the last months but I don’t know if this is God telling me to do so or my own mind. Like if I want to keep my hair I believe God allows healing through medication and it’s a gift. But these thoughts are telling me that I rely on taking it and it’s an idol and that unless I give it up completely I’m not following God’s will and it’s an idol. It’s caused immense doubt because then I read Romans 14 and it says anything you do with doubt is sin because it’s not of faith. I feel like I’m being attacked and cornered because I’m forced to stop taking something that has helped me. Now I have thoughts telling me to stop wearing my retainers every night because I got Invisalign a few years back to fix my teeth and that unless I stop taking my medication and wearing my retainers I’m not authentically following God. I don’t know what to do at this point. I don’t want to go against God and I don’t want to commit idolatry. I know God is all loving so I doubt this is all coming from him. I have to take/wear these things daily for them to work and the ocd will twist that in saying they are idols because of that and I just feel so cornered and defeated. I try to find things constantly online to see if anyone else has similar issues but I can’t. I know this is a long post but just trying to get some clarity on the matter. What should I do to help my situation?