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Can't get rid of these thoughts

Savedd

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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 ?
 
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Hi there I understand what you are going through. I find what helps me when a thought comes replace it with scripture. Praise helps too. I find to try not to give the thought attention and distract with something else. The more attention I find I give it or get upset yen worse it gets. A good website is Grantley Morris scrupulosity. Follow the links it's great has lots of testimony's is written by a christian psychologists. Praying for you PM me anytime. Remember God loves you the thoughts are not sin it's OCD and we don't have control over it.
 
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tyield1102

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I second what Gods Warrior 1 said I just started replacing a lot of my thoughts with scripture as well. By God's grace a lot of those thoughts that I was having have gone away. I will be praying for you. God loves you no matter what you think and know that the thoughts aren't yours anyway they are the product of a chemical imbalance in your head.
 
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tyield1102

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When you are scared of going to Hell read and memorize scripture having to do with your salvation and verses on grace. A good one I felt God gave to me one time was John 14:1-3 1"Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. 2"In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3"If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also." We have to remember we are in God's hands and nothing can snatch us out of His hand.
 
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Savedd

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Absolutely amazing your reply tyield, thanks a lot. I'm going to keep it my mind. God can't be other thing than infinite love for he created this whole universe and made all these things including earth and atmosphere etc so we can live in it. God never destines anyone to hell for He loves us so much that he want us with him and His Kingdom. I pray the lord Jesus who went on the cross and died for our sins to save me. I know he already said Yes.
 
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gracealone

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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 ?
 
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hutch1cor1013

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I pray God for help, as I realize I cannot do it in my own strength. In my prayer I admit that I am too weak to do it on my own, then I ask for the Holy Spirit to make it so that I can confront my fears, accept the fact that I am having these obsessions, postpone thinking about these fears and obsessions, believe in the truth that what I fear won't happen, and the truth that God will deliver me through the trial, and finally,surrender the situation and the outcome to God in faith.

If you try to force the obsessions out of your mind, they only become stronger. That is why you must tell yourself, it is okay that I am facing these fears, and that these thoughts are just "thoughts and part of my OCD illness. It is okay I am having these because they are just thoughts, and thoughts cannot harm me." Hope this all helps.
'
By the way, keep yourself in the Word daily. The more you are reading the Bible, the closer to God you are and the more you trust His provision to help you overcome the OCD obsessions.
 
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gracealone

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That's wonderful to hear. Please be patient with yourself and the process. It's usually a two steps forward one step back experience. Don't beat yourself up if you give in to ruminating just recognize it and take note of how it made you feel and then climb back up on that horse and keep at it. Praying for you, for patience, perseverance and courage. Hugs!! Mitzi

Thank you people. I started letting go of trying to get rid of them and actually it worked a little bit for the ideas keep running and I don't do anything I feel some feeling of relief now I know it's gonna take some time I need to be patient and keep letting go of any struggle
 
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gracealone

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Hi Stella, Can you private message me so I can respond to you personally. Or if you can't I'll PM you. I have a pretty full day today and actually need to get at it pretty soon, but I'll try to get in touch with you tomorrow afternoon. Meanwhile, go to: http:// OCDOnline.com and read Dr. Stephen Phillipson's articles on "Pure O" OCD. That will give you a head start on understanding ERP. Love and hugs right back at you sweetie! Mitzi

Dear gracealone,
Thank you for that reply.:thumbsup: I am 17 and have been and still am suffering from this problem. Especially at this stage of my life it gets really complicated. Can you please tell me about this ERP therapy so I can try it?
Loads of love :hug:
Stella
 
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gracealone

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Hi Savedd, I can actually still get an intrusive unwanted thought on this theme from time to time. It can happen in church when my Pastor makes certain statements regarding things like: How does a real Christian act etc. The difference now is that I recognize the sudden stab of anxiety in response to stuff like that as being my OCD so I don't "chase that rabbit". I just let the thought lie there unattended and keep on listening. But, this happens rarely since I've been able to treat this obsessional theme with ERP.
So yes... do not fight the thoughts. Allow for the feelings of fear, doubt and anxiety because you don't have control over that or over the presence of the thoughts. Those are uncontrolled events. What you DO have control over is whether or not you will respond to the thoughts by attending to them as if they are valid or worthy of your time. This is very hard to resist because with OCD our emotions will definitely trump our logic.
As to "thought replacing" ie: quoting a scripture verse to try and undo an unwanted thought, although learning and quoting scripture should be part and parcel of our walk with Christ, in this scenario if we quote a verse to undo the thought, we are, in essence, treating the thought as valid and weighty and worthy of our attention. This only serves to cause our brain to focus even more intensely on the fact that we are having these thoughts and this in turn makes it generate them more frequently. Does that make sense? It's kind of like itching a mosquito bite... the more you scratch the more it itch's. If you choose to let it be even though you are SO aware of the discomfort it produces it will settle down and heal. So when the thoughts come tell yourself... "no scratching!!"
When I first went for help for my Religious OCD the therapist I had actually told me to do this kind of thing. I was to make two columns; in the first I was to write down the intrusive/ anxiety provoking thought, in the second I was to write a logical counter statement or reassuring verse or whatever was the exact opposite of what the thought was telling me. I wanted to get better so badly that I took up this task with diligence. The result??? Those thoughts became even more frequent and even more distressing than ever. This is because all that she was telling me to do was only cementing them in my brain as being worthy of my attention which made them grow more weighty and threatening with every passing day. This was my experience with this kind of OCD. It was only when I started learning about how to do Exposure and Response Prevention that I began to improve.. over time. This isn't an overnight cure. It's hard work and it's definitely a one step forward two steps backward process.
You do need to stay in God's Word.. but what you do not want to do is to be anxiously flipping through the Word searching for reassurance about thoughts which are generated by your OCD. When studying God's Word you will still come across things that will stab at you and make you feel fearful. This is common with this kind of OCD. When that happens just allow that feeling to flood over you without attending to the thought and keep on reading. We DO need to expose ourselves to the things that trigger because avoidance will also cause our brain to mark the thoughts as scary valid things we need to avoid. What I share is what helped me. Other's may have been helped differently and I do not with to invalidate their experiences. My only desire is to share mine with the hope that someone else may be comforted or even directed toward relief from this very painful and distressing disorder because I know full well how excruciating it can be. Prayerfully, Mitzi

Dear gracealone, it was a pleasure reading your message, actually this is how it works, I should try not to fight obsessive thought and not feel sorry if I give in. It's a little bit hard, but I'll keep it up. How long did it take to you before it's completely gone ?
 
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giveitachance

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Hello,

I completely understand. I have had them intensely, but the day I searched the net in desperation in 2007 was the day I found a quote that basically said, OCD is a disconnect with God. It could not have come at a better moment. To me that translated into one trying too hard to solve something that can't be solved on one's own, but through the power of the Holy Spirit. I felt a huge relief when I read those words and said right there, Lord, I hand you these problems to help me solve them. I felt like all of a sudden, I had nothing to worry about, even if these thoughts kept coming back. Now, I have someone to go through this ordeal with. Sounds a bit exaggerated, but it is absolutely true. If we rely on the Lord to help us in the most desperate situation, he will. The power of God and the Holy Spirit is much more powerful than we realize and up to that point, I had almost gone out of my mind trying to rid of the terrible thoughts I had, without truly relying on the one who can take them away. The hard part of OCD is not so much the thoughts that you have, but how the brain handles them. After the feeling of the Holy Spirit coming into me, not only was it a huge burden lifted off of me, but I now knew I could handle it when the thoughts came back. Don't get me wrong, it was years before I got to the point that the thoughts were not affecting me, but each and every time they came back, I handed the thoughts to God. He "handled" them for me and I was able to continue my day as normal, even though the thoughts kept trying to get into my mind. Please, allow God to help you when you have these thoughts again. You are stronger than you think with the Lord's help! God bless you!
 
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