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Things I wished I know in my twenties about OCD

Road Runner

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I am a 57 year old male who has suffered on and off from OCD since my early 20’s. I am a survivor. I have learned by God’s grace to manage it. I decide to start writing some truths I have learned in my over 30 years with this disease to encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Things I wished I know in my twenties.

1. OCD is an anxiety disease that effect both Christian and Non-Christian the same. Is not moral issue in the sense that if you experience it you direct disobedience to God.

2. The content of the thoughts are irrelevant because it is anxiety disease. The anxiety disease is the source of the thoughts. The content does not reflect your character or personhood.

3. Having random bad thoughts does not make one a bad person. The suffer obsessives that having these bad thoughts could eventually make you do something that is against his will. I cannot emphases more the word obsessives. For the suffer, the brain becomes lock in a loop of fear and anxiety in one’s mind. One of the most freeing thoughts for me as examine my life is I never acted out a bad random thought that I have obsessive about.

4. Do not internal analyze these bad thoughts. For the OCD suffer the bad thoughts our random and our result of the anxiety disease. Analyzing just makes them worse and gives them value.

5. God uses medicine to address mental disease the same way he does physical diseases. It is not a cop out to take medicine.

More to come.
 

Abide with me.

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I am a 57 year old male who has suffered on and off from OCD since my early 20’s. I am a survivor. I have learned by God’s grace to manage it. I decide to start writing some truths I have learned in my over 30 years with this disease to encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Things I wished I know in my twenties.

1. OCD is an anxiety disease that effect both Christian and Non-Christian the same. Is not moral issue in the sense that if you experience it you direct disobedience to God.

2. The content of the thoughts are irrelevant because it is anxiety disease. The anxiety disease is the source of the thoughts. The content does not reflect your character or personhood.

3. Having random bad thoughts does not make one a bad person. The suffer obsessives that having these bad thoughts could eventually make you do something that is against his will. I cannot emphases more the word obsessives. For the suffer, the brain becomes lock in a loop of fear and anxiety in one’s mind. One of the most freeing thoughts for me as examine my life is I never acted out a bad random thought that I have obsessive about.

4. Do not internal analyze these bad thoughts. For the OCD suffer the bad thoughts our random and our result of the anxiety disease. Analyzing just makes them worse and gives them value.

5. God uses medicine to address mental disease the same way he does physical diseases. It is not a cop out to take medicine.

More to come.
I'm not sure if I had medical OCD or not, but I have had catastrophic invasive thoughts all my life that go round and round like a loop, which would often result in me talking to myself repeating the same phrase over and over, for months or years on end, I started reading the Bible because I had heard about neuroplasticity, which means you can actually change the structure of your brain by re arranging and replacing your thoughts, with ocd it needed to be something challenging and long enough to hold my attention, and the Bible fitted the bill for this reason, but also because I wanted to read about something good.
I am now on month 3 and broke the catastrophic negative thinking after 20 days, my anxiety has vanished and I'm not a hostage to those thoughts any more, but....I am now totally engrossed in finding answers to the big questions the Bible poses, but I have a feeling intellectualising about it is a baby step to being one with God.
I'm very sorry to hear you have ocd road runner, if medication can get you out of this negative cycle then go for it, but I just thought I'd throw in my experience to illustrate what I was able to do with my condition, but we are all different and I can only speak for myself.
 
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Tolworth John

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Some free medical advice written by a psychiatrist to help his patients can be found on line by looking for,:-
25 tips to successfully by treat your ocd.

Re intrusive thoughts he says they are not real, don't talk, argue or ignore, them but just acknowledge them. A simple ok that's right and carry on paying that thought no attention.

If one has had this for a long time medication can help get this thoughts under control.

It is also worth saying that any promise, vow etc made because the odd makes one do it, is not a binding promise.
No promise that one is force to make is legally binding.
 
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Larniavc

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I am a 57 year old male who has suffered on and off from OCD since my early 20’s. I am a survivor. I have learned by God’s grace to manage it. I decide to start writing some truths I have learned in my over 30 years with this disease to encourage my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Things I wished I know in my twenties.

1. OCD is an anxiety disease that effect both Christian and Non-Christian the same. Is not moral issue in the sense that if you experience it you direct disobedience to God.

2. The content of the thoughts are irrelevant because it is anxiety disease. The anxiety disease is the source of the thoughts. The content does not reflect your character or personhood.

3. Having random bad thoughts does not make one a bad person. The suffer obsessives that having these bad thoughts could eventually make you do something that is against his will. I cannot emphases more the word obsessives. For the suffer, the brain becomes lock in a loop of fear and anxiety in one’s mind. One of the most freeing thoughts for me as examine my life is I never acted out a bad random thought that I have obsessive about.

4. Do not internal analyze these bad thoughts. For the OCD suffer the bad thoughts our random and our result of the anxiety disease. Analyzing just makes them worse and gives them value.

5. God uses medicine to address mental disease the same way he does physical diseases. It is not a cop out to take medicine.

More to come.
I’ve be a CBT therapist for 15 years and I agree with everything you say.

I would add that CBT is a very good evidence based intervention for OCD (and the other anxiety disorders).

Glad to hear you are managing it well.
 
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