The Law of attraction is a spiritual concept that 'what you think, you create', 'you attract what you fear', 'thought creates reality' and 'what you focus on, energy flows towards'. This concept can be terrifying for someone with OCD. Hearing these things can be terrifying for someone with OCD as we already fear that our intrusive thoughts may manifest, and hearing this makes us fear it more and makes us feel like the compulsions are necessary as it makes us think that something really would happen if we didn't do the compulsions. People then live in a constant state of anxiety, watching their thoughts.
This is ridiculous. The law of attraction means that we live in a subjective reality where your conscious and unconscious beliefs can energetically shape your reality that reflects what is within you, but just by thinking something is not going to make anything happen. Thoughts are just thoughts, and intrusive thoughts are just misfired signals that don't really mean anything. We cannot always control our thoughts, and trying to can make it worse. Knowing about the Law of attraction could exacerbate 'magical thinking', which is a symptom of OCD and psychotic disorders where people feel as if their thoughts could change things and shape reality, therefore knowing about the Law of Attraction could encourage irrational thinking patterns.
Another aspect of the way knowing about the LOA and spiritual concepts could influence OCD is the fact that everything is energy, it is, but someone with OCD may overthink this and begin to analyse every thought, fearing that the energy of the thought could be putting 'bad energy' into the world and causing bad things to happen. This does not happen, we are not here to be perfect, and no one has 'good thoughts' all the time. We are not our thoughts , but there's no shame in feeling like you are. One of the things that has been said about the law of attraction is 'worrying creates things you don't want', but a person with an anxiety disorder such as OCD cannot control their worry all the time. Most of the things you worry about never happen, worrying does not make any difference to the things that happen in your life. People do not choose to worry and things don't happen just because you think about it or fear it.
As well as this, it is possible that someone could blame themselves for an event that happens, they may fear that their thoughts or energy could have made them responsible for these things that just happen. This leads to a lot of uncertainty. The events in our lives are there to help us grow, maybe you chose this event before you incarnated into this realm or your higher self put it in your timeline to help with your evolution, or maybe things just happen? But your thoughts did not cause things to happen.
If you have OCD I recommend not looking into the Law of Attraction, it can do a lot more harm than good for some people. For some people it can be empowering to have power over their reality, have a sense of control and have something that helps them think positively, for others it can be dangerous, disempowering and utterly terrifying.
You will never be 'less spiritual' if your OCD picks up on the Law of Attraction or any other concept. It's okay, you do not need to feel ashamed for it. You are loved as you are, with your intrusive thoughts, fears, uncertainty and struggles. You are not alone. If you are reading this and experience OCD related to spiritual concepts - I love you.
I write this post because I remember reading about the law of attraction and hearing about it right before I developed OCD caused by PANDAS. It exacerbated the OCD as I never felt safe as I couldn't escape from my thoughts, and my OCD was telling me that by thinking these things, terrible things would manifest and I would be responsible. This made me unable to stop doing the compulsions, as every time I heard about the LOA it fuelled the OCD and left me in a lot of fear.
Some of this may be due to my Autism causing me to take things very literally, but I always felt as if their was some sort of evil entity threatening me that if I thought a 'bad thought', I could be responsible for very bad things happening. It made me believe that my thoughts had power, which meant that I didn't. It made my magical thinking so much worse as the possibility of my thoughts manifesting seemed true, even though it really wasn't. By saying that you attract what you fear, I became even more petrified, as a person with OCD cannot control how afraid they feel, and sometimes if you avoid the fear things can get worse.
This is not intended to bad mouth a universal law or belief at all, this is to show that for someone with OCD, our minds can grasp onto something like this and distort it.
When I experienced this, I felt incredibly shameful, like it somehow made me 'less spiritual' because it was feeding my OCD and validating what the OCD wanted me to believe.
When I found others talking about how their OCD was influenced by spiritual concepts, I cried a lot as I could finally let go of the shame and also see that this really is nothing to worry about, it helped immensely to see others who had been through the same thing - it wasn't just me.
Letting go of the Law of Attraction and not reading about it helped me a lot. I now feel free and no longer feel the need to control my thoughts. I let them happen and now have the attitude that they are meaningless. Thoughts are just thoughts. Of course, antibiotics and SSRI medication helped a lot, but from a psychological standpoint, this was the most important thing for me to address.
I hope that if if anyone is reading this and has experienced a similar thing, please know that you are not alone. You aren't doing anything wrong and you are not 'less spiritual' because of it. I do believe it that the law of attraction exists in the sense of our perspective, beliefs and viewpoints shaping our reality, but I now no longer see individual thoughts as having a contribution. This is the change of perspective and thinking pattern I have had to use to be free and mentally healthy.
