Hello, it's me again. I'm afraid I'm becoming a regular poster of problems on here, which I'm not exactly proud of.
I'm afraid of the pentagram, plain and simple. And I'm afraid of drawing it. And I obsess over whether or not, when my fingertips happen to scratch against a surface, whether or not I drew one. So I'll do this "cleaning" thing, where I'll just "scribble out" any kind of symbol I may have drawn. I do this mainly with the keys of my keyboard, and with my over-ear headphones, scratching my fingernails over the surface to cancel out any bad symbols I may have drawn--because sometimes it feels very real, that I've drawn something bad.
Now, I realize this is obsessive behavior. It's been going on since November. But I don't know how to stop it. And, to make matters worse, this evening while I was doing my little "cancelling out" ritual with my headphones, I started thinking about something else, and semi-consiously, semi-unconsiously drew a pentagram on the headphones with my fingernails, instead of my usual scratching-out thing.
And now my brain isn't accepting the "cancelling out" ritual anymore for the headphones. Maybe because it knew that before, the ritual didn't even matter, because nothing bad was happening in the first place. But now something bad did happen, and it's telling me to throw away the headphones. (Except I really don't WANT to throw them away, because they're nice headphones and the only pair I have.)
So, essentially, I did my little "scribble out the bad symbol" thing, because before this event, my logic was that it would make any "badness" "go away." But now, I'm having a really hard time getting past this. Logic (like, not obsessive logic, but actual common sense) tells me not to worry about it, that my rituals aren't what kept me safe in the first place, but it's God.(And, by the way, you wouldn't be able to tell that there was anything wrong with the headphones unless you shone a light directly on them and were actually looking for something, and then you'd see the light scratches.)
Long story short, I did something bad, I feel sick to my stomach, my ritual stopped working, and I'm trying to trust God and not throw away the headphones... but I'm hanging on by a thread.
I'm afraid of the pentagram, plain and simple. And I'm afraid of drawing it. And I obsess over whether or not, when my fingertips happen to scratch against a surface, whether or not I drew one. So I'll do this "cleaning" thing, where I'll just "scribble out" any kind of symbol I may have drawn. I do this mainly with the keys of my keyboard, and with my over-ear headphones, scratching my fingernails over the surface to cancel out any bad symbols I may have drawn--because sometimes it feels very real, that I've drawn something bad.
Now, I realize this is obsessive behavior. It's been going on since November. But I don't know how to stop it. And, to make matters worse, this evening while I was doing my little "cancelling out" ritual with my headphones, I started thinking about something else, and semi-consiously, semi-unconsiously drew a pentagram on the headphones with my fingernails, instead of my usual scratching-out thing.
And now my brain isn't accepting the "cancelling out" ritual anymore for the headphones. Maybe because it knew that before, the ritual didn't even matter, because nothing bad was happening in the first place. But now something bad did happen, and it's telling me to throw away the headphones. (Except I really don't WANT to throw them away, because they're nice headphones and the only pair I have.)
So, essentially, I did my little "scribble out the bad symbol" thing, because before this event, my logic was that it would make any "badness" "go away." But now, I'm having a really hard time getting past this. Logic (like, not obsessive logic, but actual common sense) tells me not to worry about it, that my rituals aren't what kept me safe in the first place, but it's God.(And, by the way, you wouldn't be able to tell that there was anything wrong with the headphones unless you shone a light directly on them and were actually looking for something, and then you'd see the light scratches.)
Long story short, I did something bad, I feel sick to my stomach, my ritual stopped working, and I'm trying to trust God and not throw away the headphones... but I'm hanging on by a thread.
