Religious fears?: I'm not very religious, more... - OCD Support

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Religious fears?

Lindsey14 profile image
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I'm not very religious, more of a universe person, but my latest obsessive intrusive thoughts have been religious. Two different things. 1. Is bad stuff is out here and im not safe. 2. Every time I try to reverse a negative thought to a positive, a voice/thought tells me negative.

Is this OCD?

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Lindsey14
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Sallyskins profile image
Sallyskins

I'm not religious myself, so I'm not really equipped to commentate on theology! But it is very much a characteristic of OCD that we try to neutralize negative thoughts with positive ones. Then the negative one comes back and we try to neutralize that again with positive thoughts. It's like a sort of mental ping-pong.

The trick is to learn to tolerate the negative thoughts, at least for a little while. They like attention, and you are giving them attention by trying to negate them with positive thoughts. They're like an attention-demanding toddler. The more you try to quiet them the more noise they make. Acknowledging them, then ignoring them may make them shout all the louder, but they get fed up and shut up.

It's something that is taught in CBT, and it isn't easy do, but it does work.

ruefreedom profile image
ruefreedom

Yes it may well be those negative thoughts are OCD, I don't know. If you feel those negative thoughts have control over you, it creates hyper awareness to those thoughts entering your mind. I used to get a lot of those kind of not blasphemy but criticisms of God or some aspect of religion. I would have to go back over and rethink to quell the anxiety., to make it a "correct" thought. I gradually realized this didn't make sense. Thoughts come into our heads unbiden, we have no control over that and it doesn't mean we actually believe the thought we're having is true. I think the only way is to dissociate yourself from it with something like "ok I'm having this thought but it isn't what I believe and I don't need to replace it with a positive thought." A thought is just a thought until you give it a meaning.

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