- Date posted
- 1y ago
Reworking religion
Because of years of scrupulous OCD the very idea of religious services and activities brings up apprehension and stress. How can I rewire my brain to learn to enjoy these things?
Because of years of scrupulous OCD the very idea of religious services and activities brings up apprehension and stress. How can I rewire my brain to learn to enjoy these things?
Medication, Therapy, and praying with real intent that God will help you to get back to him in a way that you can understand that its him. It's hard but worth it. Remember God is love and he always will be.
Give yourself time. Attending services caused a lot of anxiety. Still does to a degree. But I go anyway. I do my ERP at church at times. I sometimes sit in a room where I can't be seen but I can hear. But it doesn't happen overnight. And you can't go by your feelings a lot of times because OCD will lie.
I've gotten diagnosed with OCD and I'm in therapy. But I'm worried that I don't have OCD/that I got misdiagnosed. And recently I'm worried that I've just gotten myself into a habit of thinking of dirty minded or just plain old terrible things after I see/hear certain things because I feel like I need to prove I have OCD or else I'm faking(sometimes this goes away). Or that I'm just mimicking symptoms of ocd to cope with real problems I may have and that im just really deep into denial. I don't know...I'm just so tired. I mean, what if I really am what I think I am and this is my brains only way of coping? I don't even really feel anything towards most of the thoughts anymore either I just know they go against my values and I don't want them. I don't know if that's because I'm so mentally exhausted, I just don't care, or that the thoughts are true and I'm comfortable with them.
I have contamination OCD that causes me to excessively wash my hands/clean items with disinfectant wipes. I know I just need to start with small exposures but how do I do that without spiraling? I tried a while back by just touching the outside of my dishwasher and not washing my hands after and it led to me being unable to even exist in my house. I basically lived on my couch for three weeks as it was the only 'safe' space that I had not touched with my dirty hands. I had to take a week off work to clean my house to make it somewhat liveable. I still haven't got round to cleaning everything though so things like my kitchen are still no-go zones that I don't enter. I just don't know how to start ERP without it making everything worse. Any advice would be appreciated. I am not seeing a therapist at the moment due to financial constraints.
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
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