I sleep with the lights on, and I fear that if I sleep I will wake up burning in hell.

Since last year, I’ve been going through many life challenges. I then made a decision to make myself closer to God. I ended up choosing to pray most of the time and I started to read the word of God. While I was reading the Bible, problems began.

As I was reading some of the verses from the Bible, I had so much fear to disrespect the word of God. I remember one of the verses that gave me a problem was when Jesus said: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

I became so worried that I was going to blaspheme the Holy Spirit with my mind. I thought I was going to forget about it, but it kept on bothering me. The worries became even stronger, and I couldn’t think of anything but: “what if I blaspheme the Holy Spirit with my mind – does this mean that I will have an eternal sin?”

So I ended up saying: “this is it – maybe I should just blaspheme the Holy Spirit with my mind; I would probably be relieved.” After I did it, my OCD became so bad, and I felt like God would never forgive. My mind continuously had more and more blasphemous thoughts against God, and I couldn’t control it any more. I couldn’t enjoy anything in life.

I kept on hoping that if I slept, maybe I would forget about these blasphemous thoughts, but they became more. Up till now I still find it difficult to control my mind. I live in extreme anxiety because I get thoughts like “God will punish me” or “I worship the devil”. I sleep with the lights on, and I fear that if I sleep I will wake up burning in hell. I don’t feel comfortable with doing anything. These thoughts leave me helpless and hopeless. I struggle to do the simplest things in life. I have low self-esteem. I usually refer to myself as ‘useless’.

This is not just it. This is what I go through every day and night, in summary:

• I have difficulty concentrating.
• I have difficulty in falling asleep or staying asleep as long as I desire.
• My lips are always dry and I bite my nails quite often.
• I have upsetting thoughts against my will that I can’t control.
• I experience depression and anxiety daily.
• I experience recurring dreams every time I sleep.
• I have difficulty listening.
• I would say I’m anxious most of the time.
• I experience a headache almost daily.
• I see nude images in my mind when I close my eyes or during a prayer.
• The list is quite endless…

This is more than just OCD. I still pray a lot just to feel better, and my God provides me with everything I need, even though I’m battling with my OCD. I normally whisper “devil is a liar” to myself to ease my pain.

The messages of other OCD sufferers have made a difference in my life. I feared to live, but they made me realise about this disease I wasn’t aware of which has affected me all these years. I feel so much better because I’ve learnt that I am not alone in this situation. Even though I feel hopeless, I’m now trying by all means to just live with my OCD and beat it.