u/Key_Bar_5196

Going to start this by saying I’m not an ex catholic at the moment, but I come in peace. I’ve recently been going through a really low period with terrible mental health and OCD and it’s led me to start questioning things for the first time in my life and through my process of questioning I’m discovering just how many saints that we put on a pedastool seem to have been struggling with severe mental health. Only discovered this because people around me kept trying to tell me my religion was perpetuating my mental health struggles and I’ve been so resistant to accept that but now I am seeing a pattern. Just a few examples:

St. Rose of Lima: was made to feel as if her beauty, which was out of her control by the way was causing people to sin, so she burned and mutilated her face to prevent people from being attracted to her. This sounds like mental illness to me and in any other context it also sounds awful. God made her beautiful just so she can prove her loyalty by burning her face off????

St. Catherine of Sienna: what do you mean she died of anorexia??? Of course I’ve never been taught this, but she claims to have visions of Jesus and then proceeds to starve herself to death because of it. Also don’t make sense to me because by today’s standards the Church would consider starving yourself to death a mortal sin, but I suppose you just have to do it for the right reason?? And of course hallucinations persisted when she didn’t nourish herself for 30 something years

St. Terese: this one hit really hard cause I’ve always loved St. Terese, but even she suffered from OCD. She admits to it but I read that near the end of her life she got the existential version of OCD where she started to even wonder if God was real and her suffering actually meant something. I relate heavily cause I’ve only gotten here because of existential OCD.

I’m sure there are others. Does anyone have any other absolutely confirmed problematic saint stories that I probably haven’t learned about?

I’m trying so hard to push through this, but it’s becoming quite unbearable 😭 I’m on day 12 and my anxiety has never been this bad in my life. I understand it can get worse before it gets better, but how much worse is normal?? I feel like I’m crawling out of my own skin, I constantly feel like I’m on the verge of throwing up and the worst part is I’m taking it for rumination OCD and my body feeling like this makes my brain want to think about what I don’t want to think about even harder. Not to mention the severe insomnia. I took an ambien last night, and it worked for about 5 hours but the second it was out of my system my body shot awake and went right back to being a ball of awful anxiety. My days have literally become nightmares of battling my anxiety and my mind until I get a few hours of sleep and then repeat. I can’t eat, I can’t watch TV, I can’t do simple tasks. Anyone else have this bad of an experience in the beginning? I really don’t want to have to switch medications and after making it this far I hope there’s some relief in sight. Really could use some support and advice.

I just can’t do it anymore, I understand erp when your intrusive thoughts aren’t constant, but genuinely how on earth am I meant to function when it’s the ONLY thing I think about. I feel like I can’t engage with a single one of my thoughts. Every second of every day I’m ruminating about the same thing, my only peace is when I sleep, but even then if I wake up to toss and turn my brain is still thinking about it. I try not to engage but my brain feels psychically incapable of thinking about anything else. I try watching TV, I try working, I try folding clothes, I try podcasts, nothing works. I feel trapped, it’s all my brain wants to think about. Has anyone else experienced this? Has anything helped? Does this get better?? I’m on day 7 of Prozac and I have slight hope that it’ll help eventually, but at this point I’m scared nothing will.

I know it can get worse before it gets better, but should I be feeling any benefits at this point? Right now I just feel anxious and nauseous 24/7, I’ve cried pretty much every day on it, my racing thoughts haven’t improved. Is it still way too early to tell if this is going to work for me and when can I expect any sort of relief?

This might sound so weird, but thought I’d ask. I’ve been in throes of an OCD spiral for a few weeks now, I’ve just been put on medication, but I literally can’t stop thinking about my theme to the point that I get severely depressed looking around at people or my house and miss feeling like I’m living in the moment? Instead I feel like I carry this burden and I’m constantly separated from the life I want. I look at people and think things like “I wish I could live like them” “I wish I could think like them” and I just analyze every person and I look at my pets and I’m like “I wish I could enjoy playing with you like I used to”. Is this absolutely whackadoodle or can anyone relate 😭

I am in a really dark place right now, I was going through an awful OCD and depressive episode and I was worried about other things, but my brain switched to being obsessed with past mistakes and the guilt feels so unbelievably overwhelming and I genuinely feel as if I don’t want to be here anymore and that I don’t deserve to get better. I’ve been on Prozac for a total of literally two days so I don’t think I can blame the medication, although the thoughts have felt super, super intense today. I hope that it’s not being caused by the medicine and that it will instead help these feelings go away but I don’t know. Is it possible it’s amplifying these thoughts that quickly? I’m scared of my own self right now

I’m in such a bad place mentally right now. To preface this I have OCD so I know I don’t always think clearly and so I’m reaching out for support. I just feel so much guilt for something I’ve done. I went to confession and I do believe I am saved from hell, but I struggle to believe I deserve anything good in this life. Does forgiving yourself require believing you’re allowed to have good things? I so badly want to get married and have kids some day, it’s a desire that has always been so strong in my heart but now I’m convinced I have to give it all up to pay for what I’ve done. I like to believe God would frown upon me throwing my desires away and to live my life in grief as a form of self punishment, but penance is also good. We are encouraged to practice self denial and I feel like the self denial doesn’t count if the outcome is something I want, or if part of me enjoys the thing. I know motherhood isn’t easy and I can offer the struggles as penance. I also want to go into a field where I help people struggling with mental health issues and addiction as a way to give back, and I want to offer the struggles of schooling as penance, but I’m scared it doesn’t count because I want it. Please tell me God doesn’t expect penance to be giving up everything good and forcing myself into a life of just sacrifice and pain

Was just talking about this in the replies, but wanted to make it its own post. I am so thrilled with what we’ve seen from the FO this season. They have finally stopped being passive. Struggling players have way shorter leashes and they’re making the hard decisions with DFA’s and sending guys down to Columbus. They’re being aggressive in calling up our producing prospects, and they actually made some impactful moves at the deadline. They’re done playing around and have given up on the “we gotta make do with what we have” mentality and are really trying hard to make us better. It might not turn this team around and make them 10 times better overnight, but if they keep up this approach and mindset it bodes well for the future. Now we just need them to be aggressive in making some changes in our hitting development. Think it’s past time to move on from Grant Fink.

I’m still riding high on all this. Not only did the FO improve our team, they showed them that they care. Our team has looked very much defeated as of late and this might be the boost they need to get their butts in gear. I think José is going to be really happy about this also, which makes me happy. Maybe he’ll feel less pressure now and can start working himself out of the funk he’s in. We have the easiest schedule to face the rest of this season, let’s go get this thing done 👏🏼