- Jasmine West, 25, from Michigan, said she would spend hours praying when she was a teenager.
- At age 14, she became “obsessed” with whether or not she would go to heaven.
- Jasmine candidly admitted that it got so intense that she even considered suicide.
A woman who suffered from “religious obsessive-compulsive disorder” has revealed that her intense fear of sinning caused her to pray before taking a bite of food, was unable to see the color red or the number six, and nearly committed suicide.
While most teenagers worry about grades, parties and first love, Jasmine West, 25, of Ferndale, MichiganWhen she was in high school, there was only one thing on her mind: going to heaven.
Although religion wasn’t a big part of Jasmine’s childhood, after she started watching Christian videos online at the age of 14, she became “obsessed” with doing whatever she could to achieve an eternal afterlife.
It started small: she said prayers before meals and before bed, she avoided curses, drugs, and alcohol.
But Jasmine’s obsession began to grow quickly, and she soon found herself repeating the prayer over and over, feeling like it was “not enough.”
She would not eat or sleep until it felt right in her mind, which would sometimes delay her activities for hours.
The obsession became so strong that she began praying after every bite of food.
That’s not all: Jasmine not only avoids saying foul language, but also feels unable to hear it, so she chooses to isolate herself from her peers.
She could not bear to see the color red or the number six because they were associated with the devil.
Similarly, if she has to write the letter “T” during her schoolwork, she feels that it looks like a cross and has to be written perfectly, which causes her severe anxiety.
Eventually, Jasmine stopped doing her homework and began failing several classes. Instead, she spent hours a day praying, and eventually she considered suicide.
During a recent appearance on the show, Jasmine spoke about her “religious obsessive-compulsive disorder” and how she eventually overcame it. Deborah Roloff’s “We’re All Insane” Podcast.
The Michigan native, who now works in marketing, explained that she showed signs of OCD long before she developed an “obsession” with going to heaven.
Jasmine says she developed an irrational fear of getting sick at the age of eight, which led to an obsession with cleanliness.
“Kids don’t think about that. They go play and don’t care,” she said. “Their hands are always sticky, but I always tried to stay clean.”
“It started to get really bad. I was just washing my hands. I didn’t want to touch anything.”
“I wanted to wear protective gear at all times because I was scared of getting sick.”
“And then my hands started to get rough, cracked and bleeding from washing them so much.”
Jasmine explained that her parents divorced when she was graduating from middle school and that she left the area with her mother, although her father and younger brother stayed in the area.
And moving to a new place and being separated from some of her friends and family only intensified her “obsessive” thoughts.
She said she had become extremely “lonely” after moving, and that’s when she “started watching videos” online and somehow “became exposed to religious content.”
Jasmine said she attended church as a child but wasn’t particularly passionate about it, but as she came across videos about Christianity, she said a new passion began.
“It was an overwhelming fear that I would sin and not be able to get to this higher place,” she explained.
“OCD is tied to fear. I started thinking, ‘Oh, dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. The worst thing that can happen to you is not going to heaven.'”
“That was my belief that to get to heaven you had to be a certain way. And my OCD developed along with that. I started to become obsessed.”
It started with praying before meals and before bed, which wasn’t easy because her OCD made her believe she had to pray over and over again until she got it “right.”
“Something was telling me, ‘No, that prayer wasn’t enough. If I don’t do it again, I’m going to die in my sleep,'” she recalled.
“So I started praying again. I prayed and prayed and prayed. Not a different prayer every time, but the same prayer every time. I couldn’t eat. [or sleep] Until the prayer feels right.
“It got to the point where praying before meals was no longer enough. Now I have to pray after every bite.”
“If I had a bowl of potato chips, I had to pray before I put the chips in my mouth. If I had a piece of gum, I had to pray before I ate the gum.”
Soon, this expanded beyond simply praying before food to also including “praying for forgiveness” if one heard a curse.
“I started avoiding music with swearing in it. I started avoiding TV shows and movies with swearing in them,” she continued.
“I started distancing myself from high school students because they were always swearing.”
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She said she would pray even if she saw the color red or the number six.
“When I think of hell and the devil, [you think of] “Red. I associate it with evil,” she said.
‘If I [was at a store and my total] I had the number 6 so I had to buy something else. [total] It does not include the number 6.
“I was deathly scared of that number. I was losing my mind. I was praying in my head all the time.”
‘[Someone would be] Even though God was speaking to me, I wasn’t listening because I was praying over and over in my head.”
She also said she felt “anxious” when writing the letter T because “it looks like a cross” and she felt that if she wasn’t “perfect,” God would think “I’m against her.”
The stress of having to write the letter T and the fear of seeing the number six quickly led her to skip assignments and end up failing two classes.
“I was such an empty shell of a person. I lived only in my own head. I felt very suffocated,” she added.
“These thoughts were driving me crazy. They were taking over everything. I was so tired and emotionally drained.”
“I knew what was coming and I didn’t want to eat anymore. I was so tired. I restricted how much I ate, but that just led to some really bad eating habits.”
“I started hiding in my room and became very withdrawn. I was trying to avoid everything.”
Eventually, Jasmine began to have suicidal thoughts. She said, “I was overwhelmed with these thoughts, the noise was so loud. I started thinking, ‘How do I stop this? Can I stop this? Can I recover from this? Will this ever be something I don’t have to deal with?'”
“Then I thought, ‘Dying isn’t such a bad thing. Dying seems so peaceful.'”
However, because suicide is considered a “sin” in Christianity, she also felt an “overwhelming sense of guilt.”
“Eventually my OCD took over and I was like, ‘No, you can’t do that because if you do that you won’t get into heaven, which is your ultimate goal,'” she explained.
Jasmine kept much of what she was going through secret from her family until one morning, when her mother found her praying before breakfast and forced her into therapy – and she says that changed everything.
During her first session, the therapist diagnosed Jasmine with OCD, a term she had never heard of before.
‘[Before that] “I just thought I was crazy. I never thought there was a definition for what I was going through,” she said.
“She was the first person to basically tell me, ‘You’re not alone. There are other people out there with the same problem and there are solutions. There is light at the end of the tunnel.'”
She then began taking anti-anxiety medication, which also helped to calm her “intrusive thoughts” and make them “manageable.”
But most importantly, she has done “a ton of personal mental work” and learned to be “a lot more patient with myself.”
“That’s not how I was before. I was very hard on myself. [before],’ she added.
“I finally got to the point where I was like, ‘You’re not crazy. You’re going to be OK. You’re going to be OK.'”
“I started feeling a lot of pity for myself and saying, ‘You’ve been at this for a long time, you should be proud of how far you’ve come.’
Jasmine graduated from high school with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in criminal justice.
She is currently a Marketing Specialist at Redefined Growth Marketing and is happily married.
She took medication for eight years but no longer needs it, and although her OCD has improved, she knows she will never be cured.
“I still have OCD. It’s something I’ll carry with me. [forever]she said.
‘[My OCD] It will always be there, but it is manageable and I’m not struggling with it right now.
“I’ve noticed there are a few things that trigger my symptoms so I try to avoid those, but it’s not a big deal.
“For example, certain TV shows I can’t watch, like creepy stuff or horror stuff, like people being possessed.”
As for religion, she “moved away” from Christianity for a while, but eventually “found her way back to Christianity.”
“My relationship with religion has changed a lot now. I am very careful with myself so that I don’t fall back into obsession or attachment,” she explained.
Finally, she said she was “grateful” for her experiences, saying they helped her become who she is today.
“I try to emphasize to anyone who suffers from OCD that you are not a mental illness, you are not the intrusive thoughts,” she concludes.
“I want people to know they’re not alone. I want them to understand that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Don’t give up, it will get better. I know everyone says that, but it really will get better, I promise.”
“I was in a cage, I felt trapped, I felt chained. I wasn’t free, but now I feel free. I can swear if I want, I can listen to any music I want, I can wear any color of clothing.”
