Intrusive thoughts,

[Irishmadcatholic23]

Hello I have been striking when I pray thoughts keep comin in my head, when I say jesus christ the Holy son of God. I keep getting blasphemous thoughts in my head.

 

[Irishmadcatholic23]

Yes it is very worrying I have been to a priest, about it, he says that as long as I don’t give into em I’ll be alright. He says just bat it off and carry on, he said a lot of saints had it, including St therese of lisuex and alphonsus.

 

[Kei]

Intrusive thoughts happen to a lot of people. Thoughts they don’t mean to think about.
Just don’t give into bad thoughts. Pray about it if you’re concerned, maybe ask for help against them or to not worry about them.
When it happens while you pray, try to reorient your focus back to the prayer.

They really are intrusive thoughts. You don’t want them, and so it’s not like you are committing a wilful act.

 

[LikeaChild]

If these thoughts are causing significant disruption in your daily life, it might be worth consulting with a mental health professional. Such thoughts are common for individuals with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for example, and there is help available for this.

Most importantly, be gentle with yourself. As my grandma used to say, bad thoughts are like birds. They may land on your head, but you don’t have to let them make a nest there. Don’t give these thoughts more power than they deserve. They will pass. The Lord knows your heart and your good intentions.

 

[ForumPoster]

If these thoughts are causing significant disruption in your daily life, it might be worth consulting with a mental health professional. Such thoughts are common for individuals with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for example, and there is help available for this.

While this is true, sometimes the thoughts can have diabolical causes. I won’t get into detail, but someone close to me did some things they shouldn’t have, and it was revealed that such thoughts were caused by an external issue.

One of the enemy’s sneakiest tricks is to disguise his oppression and possession as mere mental illnesses. Many “psychological” issues (especially schizophrenia and bipolar) are in fact caused by demons (at least in many cases), and Fr. Ripperger himself talks about this. He explained how many of these so called “mental illnesses” that have placed people on medications for years were either gradually or instantly alleviated the moment the Exorcism process was completed. Unfortunately, society (many Catholics included) have lost sight of the spiritual reality of our daily lives, and have instead compartmentalized spiritual issues as “mental health” ones.

Again, I don’t want to say too much, since glorifying Jesus is far more important than musing over the diabolical, but it turns out that even before this person close to me opened the door, the demons that were after them were already beginning to work on them. Particularly, this individual used to be very sweet and loving, yet almost instantly began to “change” the moment they entered High School (right about the time when these things got to work). Everyone that knew this person thought that it was simply “adolescence”, “bipolar”, “autism”, etc. but the moment the problem got exposed and tackled years later, they very quickly reverted back to their old compassionate self.

I’m not saying that real mental health issues don’t exist; If not every physical illness is directly caused by demons, there are almost certainly mental ones that aren’t caused by them either, however as people, and especially as Christians, it is our responsibility to consider more than just the superficial angle. The secular world can deal with the mental health problems, we should be the ones that prioritize the spiritual side, because if we don’t, who will?