HI Caty,
What do you mean by "careless thoughts?" As if you could somehow unthink them or stop them from popping into your brain. OCD spikes are uncontrolled events. All human beings have thoughts that disturb, unsettle and disgust them pop into their heads. Even people without OCD. The difference is that people without OCD don't have a faulty alarm system that grabs onto the thoughts and turns them into a theme of constant torture.
Having OCD thoughts in our heads in no way means that we agree with them, want them there or desire to act upon them. If we did we couldn't possibly experience torture over their presence.
Everytime you give them attention by trying to solve them, get rid of them, search for something to reassure yourself that they aren't true or valid you are in essence taking a big yellow highlighter and marking them in your brain as something urgent and thereby you are feeding the cycle of OCD. Those are the things that you need to stop doing.
Let the accusations lay there, leave them alone, don't pick at them or they'll only bleed all the more. Then... get on with doing those things that you know to be right and true and good. "If you love me keep my commandments." Faith is about allegiance to God. It's about walking in a way that pleases and honors Him. It's not about comfortable feelings of ease. The greatest demonstration of faith is walking, even when we don't feel like walking. OCD can't stop you from doing these things. It can only blab a bunch of invalid nonsense in your head. When it does, you just have to do your level best to ignore it... even with the alarms blaring at full strength. It takes guts, grit and persistence to ignore the terror. To live with the presence of the thoughts for as long as it takes for your brain to get used to their presence.
I still haven't heard from you as to what practical steps you are taking to manage this disorder - as a disorder.
I guarantee you that if I hadn't done this myself, that I'd still be in the place where you are right now.
When has all this compulsive reassurance seeking, which is part and parcel of the cyclical symptomology of this disorder, helped you?
Isn't it time to try a different approach?
Actually, what you said about stopping worrying about it, is the nearest you've come to properly responding to the obsessions. This is because they aren't worthy of your attention. If you want to make them important by ruminating on them they will just get all the more stuck in your head.
I know that I probably seem mean, uncaring or insensitive. In reality, I hate that you are suffering and I want you to learn to manage this disorder instead of having it manage you.
The reason I don't offer you scriptural reassurance is because I'm well aware that you already know every thing that I could offer you. But my greatest reason for not doing so is that I don't want to cooperate with your OCD in any way. I don't want to keep the cycle going by helping you to check
just one more time to see if your faith is still locked. This would be akin to me checking the lock on the door for someone who obsesses about unlocked doors. If I go and check that lock for them I make their fear that it might still be unlocked more valid and real and in doing so I perpetuate their OCD cycle.
I know you feel c
ompelled to keep asking these questions, but don't you see that this is the nature of the disorder. That's how it got it's name - Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder.
Does any thing that I'm saying to you make sense? I'm praying that it does. I want very badly for you to feel better and I'll not stop asking the Lord to show you how to manage your OCD.
Love you!
Mitzi
thanks again Ann, I dont want you to think that I dont appreciate what you try to help me with on here because I do. But I can't change what thoughts i know Ive been careless with thinking and the ones that I have probably meant. I dont think there could possibly be any saving here, so Im gonna just try to stop worrying anymore.
Jesus restores our souls and leads us to still waters.
