Dear Samrat manda:

I had OCD since the age of five or six. This is my reply to your post: you are not committing any kind of sin thinking anything at all that you are thinking. Not only you as an OCD sufferer, but nobody is committing sin by thinking any kind of thought. Unfortunately at least one religion I know teaches that a thought can be a sin. But I strongly disagree. It is only our behavior, or the ACTING on a thought that can help or hurt another. So the thinking itself is a mental activity, invisible, only you know about it. What you think does not make you a good or bad person.

Your thoughts have no power unless you act on them. In the real world, your thoughts have no power unless you act on them. Your thoughts cause you a lot of distress and by so they have power over you now. But no power over other people, therefore, they cannot be sinful by themselves.

OCD is fueled by FEAR that originated in your childhood. You were very afraid and alone then. That fear keeps circulating in your brain, attaching itself to this or that thought in effort to resolve itself. It is possible, through good psychotherapy, to get insight into the origin of the fear, learn skills how to calm yourself, to endure strong emotions… and over time, the fear will diminish, as you place the fear in the past, understand what was then dangerous, or perceived as dangerous, is no longer a danger to you. When you understand the danger is not present, when you fully understand it, then the fuel for the OCD will run out…

anita