Losing it

[Skitsskat]

Ever since I got more involved in Christianity my mental health began to plummet, now all my life I can remember even when I was little making obsessive vows and now they're all coming back and I feel like they're coming back because of a situation where I yelled at God and now I'm being punished for it, everywhere I turn there's a memory of a vow and it's killing me. And I'm just losing it I feel like my sanity is dropping every day I can't handle it.

I believe in hell and I think that's the thing that's keeping me from just giving up on being a Christian because I'm afraid of going to hell, but I just can't handle this and I feel like I just want to give up. The OCD is getting worse and I find myself sitting around doing nothing because I've vowed everything in some obsessive memory.

I don't know what to do anymore, I'm always afraid that if I drop a vow that God's going to kill someone I love, I'm sure I have scrupulosity and those thoughts are just caused by it but it still kills me.

I just really need some words to calm me down, I'm just about ready to give up, I don't feel like God loves me at all, I feel like he only wants me to suffer.

I don't know what to do anymore.

 

[kaykay9.0]

A lot has been said on here about vows lately. I felt the following post by gracealone on another thread was excellent and I am posting it again here for you. I really think you need to recognize that this vow thing is part of the OCD disorder for you and treat them according. Hang in there. If you are not getting some professional help via meds, counseling or both, I strongly recommend that you do! Praying for you~

"For starters, you aren't at the end of your sanity because your post is obviously still lucid. It sounds as if your OCD has gotten pretty debilitating at this point. Not your fault anymore than how any other illness can interfere with our functioning abilities. So even though people make it seem like it's your fault, I promise you that it's not. I'm sorry you are encountering that. I think people would rather make our mental illness our fault because that's more comforting to them. Thinking that way makes them think that they have control over their own brain and that therefore they can avoid a mental illness. It's fear that really motivates that kind of thinking so try very hard to forgive them. God understands your pain and that's what matters.
Now on to Vows and OCD. Since you are obviously aware of what the scripture says concerning Vows you understand that to make a vow to God is a serious thing to be taken seriously and not to be made lightly. So you have that knowledge but you also have OCD. OCD will come at us in any area of our life that is precious or most important to us. So you are a Christian which means that your relationship with Christ is the most precious and important. So the OCD finds ways to threaten that. OCD is a fear based disorder. There is an overabundance of fear emotions in your brain and body, therefore the mind searches for something to be afraid of. Now since you know about the Vow stuff in scripture you realise that it's not a good to make Vows to God. So you think, I don't want to do that. Then the OCD using that knowledge, begins to make you think that you want to make a vow, but it goes even farther than that by causing you to actually think of Vow like statements in regard to all sorts of things.(If you had Tourettes this would also come out of your mouth.) OCD is like having "tics" of the mind. The more you resist those Vow statements the more you think of them because resisting them is the very thing that makes them become more frequent and more intrusive. So then you feel that you've done something to irrevocably harm your relationship with Christ. So then comes the compulsion. "I need to fix or take back or undo this Vow or I will need to be sure that I carry through on the Vow no matter whether I really meant it or not." The root fear of your OCD really has nothing to do with the idea of Vows but rather that you might lose your eternal standing with Christ because you made vows you can't keep. The Vow obsessions are just a way to keep you in a state of continual doubt which in turn keeps you compulsing. These vow like statements are really no different than an unwanted blasphemous thought, or a thought that says something like.."I want to be an athiest!"
I can see your pattern is to have an unwanted Vow pop into your mind which makes you feel trapped, then you try to undo or cancel it by saying something to the effect of "well I won't be a Christian then" which ends up being yet another unwanted/intrusive thought you felt you had to make to cancel the previous one. Then of course that won't do so you have to ask for forgiveness again... but then wham! another Vow crops up and...here we go again. Exhausting and draining work!!
So last night when you were actually meaning to perform the first undoing/canceling statement which you see as a statement of choice, you got mixed up and made a vow statement instead. Now since you did this at the "wrong moment" so to speak you are seeing it as a statement of choice. So now you feel that unless you give up on all your plans and head out for the mission field your pretty much doomed since you see it as a vow of "choice". Funny how just a moment or so earlier you viewed it as an unwanted/instrusive statement but just doing it at the wrong time made it seem like you really wanted to say it.
Here's how I see it; your unwanted/instrusive vows and the compulsions that follow them are firing off so quickly that you got mixed up in your usual cycle. This is common. Sometimes the obsessions and compulsions run together in such a way that it all seems like just one big tangled up mess where you can't sort out one thought from another.
Now... what you really need to do is to completely stop trying to undo or take back or fix the Vows that pop into your head. Let them ring out in your brain and no matter what they say or how they make you feel or if you think you meant them or not you have to refuse to attend to them in any way shape or form. Do not ask someone else if they think you need to keep them. Do not ask God to forgive you for having them. Do not try and cancel them with undoing statements. Don't try to analyze why you thought them. Don't do anything about them at all. You must begin to do this no matter how scary it feels. Think of them as if they were a real annoying itch that wants to be scratched so badly, but if you scratch it, it will spread and get worse until you itch all over. If, however you let that itch be and refuse to keep on scratching it, it will over time heal and stop bothering you.
Try to learn to categorize your OCD episodes so you can recognize which part is the obsession and which part is the compulsion. Then stop the compulsion and let the obsession lie there unattended. This is key; the compulsion will always be the thing you do to try and reassure yourself or make your self feel better about the obsession."

 

[Skitsskat]

Thank you. :> I will save this and read it whenever I feel upset about them.

 

[kaykay9.0]

Thank you. :> I will save this and read it whenever I feel upset about them.

Good. I really feel like what Gracealone wrote above is "textbook excellent."