Okay... Savedd, What I'm going to share with you about this problem will seem like the exact opposite of what you feel you should do in response to the thoughts. You will find me to be quite irritating from time to time... sorry bout that.. but trust me, my motivations are to try and help you manage OCD. This is an OCD forum and therefore my responses will always relate to what I've learned from living with OCD for most of my adult life. (I'm 57 BTW)
First off.. you need to let go of the goal of "getting rid" of the thoughts. Any attempt to get rid of the thoughts gives them credence. It's a bit like giving in to a bully. If you give him your lunch money, he's never going to let you be. If you ignore him or just stand there unflinching when he threatens you he backs down. OCD is a bully, treat it as such.
I am not a fan of "thought replacing" when it comes to treating OCD of any kind.. Religious or otherwise. Thought replacing can become part and parcel of the compulsive activity of the disorder. I am not saying that we shouldn't meditate on scripture in order to appropriate it into our soul and spirit and actions, but what I am saying is that we should not use scripture in response to an OCD thought as a counter measure or in a thought replacing manner. When we do that we are fighting the thoughts. When you fight an OCD thought you make it bigger and your brain will mark it as being the uppermost, most urgent thing in your life. Your brain will act like a broken fire alarm in response to it. It will rank at the top of the list because you are giving it so much attention. Scripture is good and true and good for us. But, so is washing our hands when they get dirty. But if we wash our hands in response to an OCD contamination obsession, washing our hands can turn into a continual compulsive activity which, the more we do it, the bigger our fear of contamination will become. This is because in the continual act of washing our hands to try and get rid of the feeling of contamination we validate the fear that our hands surely must be contaminated.
Do you see the point I am making? OCD is OCD and no matter what kind it is; whether it's the kind that sends us horrid blasphemous thoughts or doubts about our relationship to Christ, or whether it's the kind that sends us thoughts that our hands might be covered with dangerous germs, it must be managed in the same way to in order to make good progress.
The intrusive thoughts of Religious OCD must be ignored. We need to train ourselves to just let them be. Every single time we attend to them, we make them bigger. Attending, which is actually the compulsive side of this form of OCD can be many things; thought replacing, positive counterstatements, logical counterstatements, repetitive praying for forgiveness, asking other's for reassurance that the thoughts are meaningless and that we are still saved, constant rumination trying to solve or figure out why we are having such awful thoughts.. etc. I have done all of these things in response to my Religious OCD and all of these things only made the obsessions bigger and more scary. But the worst part is that it also got them more stuck in my brain. The goal of OCD treatment is to teach yourself to put on the brakes and learn to prevent these kinds of responses. ERP = Exposure and Response Prevention therapy. It takes practice, patience, grit and time to work on this. But I am living proof that ,when I've been willing to take this approach to all the differing forms of my OCD, I have been able to move past some very long held and excruciating OCD obsessions.
Trust me, I am in no way, suggesting that God's Word isn't our food and our way to navigate in this world. I am all for meditating on His life giving Word. What I am trying to say is that those of us with OCD need to be able to discern when we are approaching the Word of God with a legitimate desire to learn and grow and when we are using it to fight an OCD obsession. The latter of these two can become part and parcel of the painful OCD cycle if we don't figure that out. Besides all that... all those verses which I was aware of and found so reassuring before my OCD latched on to my faith, did not comfort me when used in the form of "thought replacing". Because my OCD was not a spiritual problem, it was a distressing and valid mental disorder. And now.. I am very thankful to report that after learning to do ERP those verses are just as meaningful and comforting to me as they always were. But now I don't use them to fight my OCD. Now I just revel in the fact that they were always true, during the dark seasons.. and during the seasons of comfort. My emotions are fickle indeed.. but God's Word is not.
I hope and pray that you trust my heart and motives in writing what I've written to you. Praying for you, Mitzi
Hi. Here's my problem : since quite a long time I can't get rif of some terrible thoughts that froce themselves into my mind and I can't seem to get rid of them. I am on a medication now and it's still erly to see the results. But I wonder if one of you has ever come to get rid of obsessive thoughts ? Is it just by leting go ? Would these thoughts hurt a little while then leave for if I do so ? Thanks ?