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Have prayers ever led you to bad habits?


TheSpoonyOne

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I'll get straight to the point regarding this topic, and this is something of a request for advice on how to address it too. To summarise everything below: My prayers have led to developing bad habits day to day and I want to know if anyone else has experienced the same.

It is my belief that the existence and reality we're in is created by a Creator, whom I refer to as God, but I haven't been raised adhering to any religion. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years as an agnostic who never prayed and never thought about spirituality. In early adulthood I started to pray to God out of a fear of my family dying, asking him to prevent their deaths. This led to me praying for numerous other things, such as to prevent illnesses for people, to comfort those suffering in various ways, and an all manner of other prayers.

The problem is that I found myself becoming obsessed by these prayers, eventually feeling compelled to pray every time I heard the siren of an ambulance or police car (and in a city this can become something that you hear every ten minutes), or every time I ate a meal I would desperately pray for an hour or more to reiterate to God my request to see him stop death (such as of the animals and plants I was eating) and to give life back to the lives of the animals and plants I had taken in order to eat. I would wake up and say prayers for half an hour or more, which obviously made it hard to start the day properly. It got to the point where I felt compelled to say prayers regularly throughout the day, which I find extremely mentally stressful because I don't seem able to just speak to God simply and briefly, I almost always ended up feeling as if I had to torment myself by saying them as meaningfully as I can lest it sound as if I'm just going through the motions.

I have sorted out a lot of these negative effects over the last year, out of necessity because I was losing my mind, but some still remain. I find that those that remain do so because they can't justify not doing them. Namely:

- I still spend five minutes or so combing through the sink for lifeforms before I brush my teeth (brushing my teeth used to take around five minutes, now it's around a half an hour exercise)

- I still spend time, and often become stressed doing so, reiterating my prayers to God to restore the animals and plants I'm eating for dinner to life

- I still spend sometimes up to ten minutes or so combing the shower floor for life lest anything be washed away when I turn the water on, and over the past few days I am finding it very difficult to put items down on surfaces because I am paranoid at accidentally crushing something.

- I can't even sit down on my chair in the morning without spending five minutes brushing off all the white dust out of a fear that they, or something among them, might be a lifeform that I'll otherwise crush if I sit down straight away.

To top it all, just drinking water is becoming difficult because I have to crane my neck and get black bits out of my filter, which I use in the hope of preventing the deaths of organisms within the water, before I can have a glass to drink. Some of this is irrational, but I still feel compelled to do it. I have given up drinking hot drinks because I can't justify killing things like peppermint plants for peppermint tea, or not wanting to deprive a cacao tree of life just for a hot  chocolate, aside from the issue of the organisms inside the water to be boiled.

The idea of stopping seems selfish to me. It seems selfish to go back to how I previously lived, where I would just turn on the tap in the sink/shower without caring a whim about a small form of life that might be there or not, or to eat animals and plants without reminding God that I have taken their lives and would rather see them returned to them through God's will.

I know that I have a problem; I know that this isn't any way to live. I turned to reading about Stoicism to try to find advice on what to do, but that is based on accepting death and my prayers for the last three years have been based on informing God of my wish to prevent it. I know that the obvious answer is that I shouldn't be imposing stress and mental torment on myself just to do basic things, but at the same time I'm doing them in the hope that I am preventing the deaths of other living things, which is a hard thing to say "Well, whatever I'll just have to ignore them" towards.

I suppose what I'm wondering is if anyone else has had this experience in regard to prayer and spirituality? Have you ever found your prayers leading you to bad habits? How did you address it if they did? Has anyone struggled with the effects of prayer as I have?

Edited by TheSpoonyOne
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It sounds like you're describing textbook OCD.  JMO.  I think you'd find your obsessive attention to minutia would persist even if you stopped praying altogether.  To answer your question, no, I've never had prayer cause me problems.  For me, it is a way of focusing my hope and even of letting go and just knowing it is out of my hands.

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Just now, and then said:

For me, it is a way of focusing my hope and even of letting go and just knowing it is out of my hands.

It's a miracle. Something we can agree on.

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54 minutes ago, TheSpoonyOne said:

I still spend sometimes up to ten minutes or so combing the shower floor for life lest anything be washed away when I turn the water on, and over the past few days I am finding it very difficult to put items down on surfaces because I am paranoid at accidentally crushing something.

Certainly sounds like a case of OCD.

Quote

Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder in which a person feels the need to perform certain routines repeatedly (called "compulsions"), or has certain thoughts repeatedly (called "obsessions")

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive–compulsive_disorder

Your thoughts are based around your belief. It would be best to speak to your doctor as this needs addressing before it gets out of hand.

58 minutes ago, TheSpoonyOne said:

This led to me praying for numerous other things, such as to prevent illnesses for people,

No alleged god can prevent this, it has been happening in the world for centuries.

You would be far better off admiring the medical professionals who are the ones who do help people.

History has shown and is proof there is no god and certainly not one which gives a damn about human suffering. 

Natural disasters are something humans have and will always have to deal with, no amount of praying is going to prevent it from happening and it is extremely naive  today to expect a man made entity will prevent it.

As for mans violence against his fellow man, you only need to read the history books and see what is going on in certain parts of the world to see that religion has played a big part in that because of the divides, even more proof there is no god, only mans greed, selfishness and want of power.

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1 hour ago, TheSpoonyOne said:

This led to me praying for numerous other things, such as to prevent illnesses for people,

I'm not trying to be cruel, but how is that working out? People die from illnesses every day.

 

As to your behavior, I agree with the other posters: you have issues that would be better helped by a professional therapist of some kind.

Good luck to you, and I hope that you find a workable solution.

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Thank you to everyone who has replied to me. I realise that it's OCD and I have already taken steps to help myself. Today was a much, much better day than I've had in a long time thanks to you all. I'm going to strive every day to keep getting better and make sure I don't relapse into bad habits. Particularly, your advice about asking for guidance, XenoFish, and you telling me about how you treat prayer, And Then, really helped me. Thanks so much.

Edited by TheSpoonyOne
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2 minutes ago, TheSpoonyOne said:

Thank you to everyone who has replied to me. I realise that it's OCD and I have already taken steps to help myself. Today was a much, much better day than I've had in a long time thanks to you all. I'm going to strive every day to keep getting better and make sure I don't relapse into bad habits. Particularly, your advice about asking for guidance, XenoFish, and you telling me about how you treat prayer, And Then, really helped me. Thanks so much.

I wish you the best of luck.

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5 hours ago, TheSpoonyOne said:

Thank you to everyone who has replied to me. I realise that it's OCD and I have already taken steps to help myself. Today was a much, much better day than I've had in a long time thanks to you all. I'm going to strive every day to keep getting better and make sure I don't relapse into bad habits. Particularly, your advice about asking for guidance, XenoFish, and you telling me about how you treat prayer, And Then, really helped me. Thanks so much.

Please stay as a member, and keep us apprised of your progress!

As with anything, realizing you have a problem is the first step.

And although some of us may seem cantankerous, we are really a nice bunch of people. :)

>>HUGS<

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8 hours ago, Jodie.Lynne said:

And although some of us may seem cantankerous, we are really a nice bunch of people. :)

If thespoonyone believes that, he/she hasn't a prayer in the world. Which would then solve the perceived problem.

I'm praying always for the best to happen to the general animal and plant population at large, and leave out the personal requests and details. God only knows what is best for all living matter.

Beside being nice, some of the bunch here are also funny. Let us pray for laughter, which is an inexpensive elixir, and a cure-all remedy.for the soul.

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I would suggest that praying is a bad habit for religious people.

Think about it philosophically for a moment.  You believe in an all-knowing God.  So why do you need to pray if that God clearly already knows what you want?

Either what you want is part of God's perfect plan and is going to happen, or it is against God's will and won't happen.   So why pray at all?

When you look at it clearly, with an analytical perspective, prayer represents a lack of faith that God is looking out for you, and that is something only Satan would reward.

So aren't you glad your prayers don't work now?

Edited by Alchopwn
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12 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

I would suggest that praying is a bad habit for religious people.

Think about it philosophically for a moment.  You believe in an all-knowing God.  So why do you need to pray if that God clearly already knows what you want?

Either what you want is part of God's perfect plan and is going to happen, or it is against God's will and won't happen.   So why pray at all?

When you look at it clearly, with an analytical perspective, prayer represents a lack of faith that God is looking out for you, and that is something only Satan would reward.

So aren't you glad your prayers don't work now?

I actually made the same/similar argument in another thread.:lol:

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On 5/27/2019 at 8:38 AM, TheSpoonyOne said:

every time I ate a meal I would desperately pray for an hour or more to reiterate to God my request to see him stop death (such as of the animals and plants I was eating) and to give life back to the lives of the animals and plants I had taken in order to eat. I would wake up and say prayers for half an hour or more

Life eats life.  Without death there is no life.  It's all that life is.   The twofold purpose of life:  To eat other lifeforms.  To keep from being eaten by other lifeforms.

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I've not had any issues due to praying too much. I tend to believe that though God can hear my prayers, what I believe I want to have happen might not be part of God's overall plan. Sometimes people die for a reason and sometimes they die at random. 

I don't believe I've ever prayed for the lives of the food I eat, or the tiny creatures I probably routinely kill. Though preserving all life is admirable in my opinion. I do thank God for my food though. Just as I thank Him for my job, and my very existence.

What a Christian might call what is happening is a "Stronghold". Specifically a stronghold of fear. Fear you are killing anything. To break a stronghold often is extremely hard. Counseling can be a big part of that. As well as medication if a doctor suggests. Usually a stronghold is based on some past event. If you can figure out that event and deal with it, you'll be a long way toward getting better.

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