Struggling with OCD, Waswas, and Impurity Doubts During Salah
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,
I am 15 years old and I struggle with OCD. I am very tense and need your help. At first, I used to pray a lot of nawafil prayers because I thought Allah would be angry with me if I didn’t. Whenever I saw any ayah about punishment, I felt it meant Allah was angry with me. Later I gained some knowledge and reduced this, but now I am suffering with doubts about impurity.
I constantly fear that discharge or water will come out, and it is very tiresome for me. After doing istinja and wudu, when I pray, I often feel like some water comes out from the front passage. My family says it is just leftover istinja water, but it happens in every prayer.
Please guide me:
Is this water considered impure?
Do I need to repeat istinja, wudu, or salah every time?
Am I suffering from waswas (Shaytani doubts), and how should I deal with it?
JazakAllahu khayran.
Thank you for submitting your post to Stones to Bridges! We pray you will find the responses below beneficial. If you find these responses helpful, we’d love for you to share what you appreciated and how you feel it might help you moving forward in the comments section below!
Response from a “Fatima Counselor”:
Wa alaykum asalaam wa rahmatullahi wa baraktuhu,
I hear how deeply you care about pleasing Allah (swt). With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), intrusive thoughts invade our minds, and we can feel like our mind is out of control. We get stuck in a perpetual loop of doubt and uncertainty that creates a frenzied cycle of guilt, anxiety, and exhaustion. I can hear how these disturbing thoughts are causing you anguish and suffering.
The good news is that just as you found relief from thoughts of punishment by gaining knowledge, we can apply the same strategy by learning more about purification and the fiqh of female discharge, specifically from a trusted Islamic scholar from your community (A shaykh or shaykha.) I encourage you to pair Islamic guidance with counseling from a qualified mental health professional who has experience treating OCD. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) have been found to be the gold-standard of treatment for OCD. There are medication options for treatment as well. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are evidence-based medication for treating OCD. Everyone’s path to healing is different, and certain options or combinations of options may be more effective than others. I have some resources below that I pray will provide direction, insha’Allah.
Regarding your question about waswasa, watch this YouTube video by Najwa Awad, a Muslim therapist who specializes in treating OCD where she describes the source of intrusive thoughts in OCD, the Islamic rulings to help treat obsessions and compulsions, and how to do that: OCD Yaqeen Podcast
Those who suffer from intrusive thoughts become fused with their thoughts. In other words, they may think that they are one with their thoughts, and they are facts. The reality is that thoughts are just thoughts. They are not threats. They do not define us, and just because they are strong, does not mean that they are true. Instead of believing our intrusive thoughts, we can just notice them, let them pass, and not give them any importance.
Think of intrusive thoughts like walking past a pile of garbage. You see a rancid, heaping pile of garbage. You smell the putrid rot. You feel disgusted and get annoyed that it is in your way. But you keep walking, and as you keep moving forward, the garbage eventually is out of your sight and mind. You don’t stop, pick it up, or carry it with you. Intrusive thoughts work the same way. You notice them, but you don’t engage with them. You allow them to pass.
One way to defuse yourself from thoughts like, “I’m impure, I need to redo wudu” is to say instead, “These are OCD thoughts, not facts” or “My brain is producing the thought that I lost wudu. This doesn’t mean that I actually did.” You can shift from believing the intrusive thoughts to focusing on your values, which would sound like, “I trust that Allah will accept my sincere salah, and He does not expect perfection because only He is perfect.”
Remember to seek support from family and friends. OCD can feel very isolating, but you do not have to go through this alone. Reaching out to family, friends, and professionals can ease the burden. Shame makes OCD heavier, but connection and support bring relief, insha’Allah.
Resources
OCD Yaqeen Podcast
Article: Scrupulosity in Islam
Amanah Counseling
https://iocdf.org/faith-ocd/
With du’as and deep care,
Fatima “SA”
Response from an additional “Fatima Counselor”:
Assalaamu Alaikum Sister,
May Allah reward you for seeking knowledge for His sake and to better your worship. This is an important part of being Muslim: Doing our due diligence to make sure we can worship Allah in the best way possible and within our capacity. We are all created differently and we will never be judged in comparison to each other. We will only be judged based on our own capacity. It is important to understand that perfection of our worship is impossible because only Allah is perfect and we are created to be imperfect. That is why we say Asthaghfirullah as soon as we finish our salah. We will never truly be able to worship him in the manner that He deserves.
To determine if you are doing the best you can when it comes to prayer and purity, again your “best” will be determined by your unique circumstances. First, I would see a doctor to rule out any kind of urinary incontinence or other possible medical conditions. If you do not have a medical condition then purify yourself before salah the best you can and move forward with your prayer. Shatyaan does everything he can to derail and distract us from worship and creating self-doubt is one of his tactics. Ask Allah for refuge from him then continue your worship. If you can determine the type of discharge you are physically seeing that would be helpful in determining next steps. Women have multiple types of discharge and sometimes it can be hard to tell the origins. Color of the discharge can help determine the type. Normal vaginal discharge is considered pure. Discharge emitted as a response to sexual stimulation requires ghusl. If you do have some medical condition, purify yourself the best that you can before salah, ignore any discharges and don’t worry about cleaning yourself again until the next salah. Some scholars even mention the option to combine or delay prayer so that you can pray back to back with the next prayer and reduce the hardship of constant cleansing.
Allah states that He has not made this religion difficult for us, if you find that you are purifying yourself to the point of exhaustion that may be an indicator that you should reassess your purifying process and focus on the actual worship itself. If you have not seen a psychiatrist already, then I would also highly recommend seeing a psychiatrist and a therapist to help manage your OCD symptoms inshaAllah.
Your Sister in Islam,
Afshana Haque, PhD, LMFT-S (Fatima V)
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy- Supervisor
Response from your friend at Stones to Bridges:
Walaykum assalam warahmatullahi wabaraqatu sister,
I want to acknowledge how it is very admirable that you wish to get closer to Allah. Your heart is in the right place, mashaAllah, but it’s important to note that stressing over every detail in prayer/purity may result in this desire being diminished and eventually abandoning the idea altogether. May Allah protect you and keep you on His path, ameen. I like how you noted that once you gained some knowledge, your fears around punishment were reduced and therein lies a key. Knowledge is a blessing and being able to learn about Islamic rulings and perspectives (to the best of one’s ability) will help in diminishing anxieties and worries. Often when we don’t fully understand or know a ruling that contributes to the fear, and so educating and informing ourselves will help to ease any tension or worry, insha’Allah. Allah sees your struggle and your desire to become closer to him. Don’t give up or lose hope. If you can find a trusted scholar or imam in your area (masjid) to help you with your questions that would be ideal but there are also many reputable Islamic organizations, institutes and scholars online who may help you in your questions. If you find a course that can address women’s fiqh that would be great as it would give you the tools to further address any potential future concerns. The institute, Al Maghrib offers a complete course on women’s fiqh: https://www.almaghrib.online/tz/
May Allah aid you in your struggles and strengthen you with knowledge of His deen.
All the Best,
Your Sister in Faith,
Peer Support Volunteer, NL
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Humara
Thank you so much for your kind responses It ferl good talking with you
Anonymous
Assalamu alaikum, sister. I hope my response can be of some comfort to you because I can speak from the point of view of someone who has experienced and is still experiencing the same sorts of things you are going through.
I know this is not easy, and I know how the usual advice for OCD to ‘just ignore it’ doesn’t always work as well with these religious things because we are afraid in this case that if we get something wrong we might actually face divine punishment in the next life. But a while back, I saw a lecture by Ali Hammuda (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNgemc5OSbk) that was really beautifully done and really made me feel better. In it, he advises that one way to help with OCD is to shift the anxiety from the ‘perfection’ to not repeating things because the whispers come from the Shaitan, so, the first time we do the act of worship, we are doing it for Allah, but the next time, it is a result of the Shaitan’s whispering, so then… who is it for? (Having mentioned the Shaitan’s whispers, I want to say that the reason why seeking refuge in Allah from Shaitan when the thoughts come doesn’t always work is because the whispers have sort of been absorbed by our minds already and are there even if the Shaitan is sent away by the prayer, and this is an illness that needs to be cured.)
Another thing to remember is that there is a principle in Islam about how ‘certainty is not overcome by doubt’. So: You are certain that you did your wudhu. Then, you experience some discomfort, but you are not SURE if anything to actually break your wudhu occurred. This means that you take your wudhu as still being valid. You only consider it to have been broken if you are 100% sure (to the point that you can swear to it, either because the feeling was totally clear, or because there was the sound or smell of wudhu being broken: https://islamqa.info/en/answers/148426/doubts-about-wudu) that something actually happened to break your wudhu. This might not be easy, since you’ll be confused about certain physical sensations sometimes, but one way to do it as a starting point is to go by the certainty rule for each prayer. For example, you do wudhu for Dhuhr and if you do not 100% break your wudhu, you pray your full Dhuhr prayer and ignore any doubts. If the doubts continue beyond your Dhuhr prayer, then you do another wudhu for ‘Asr, even if you aren’t sure that your wudhu was broken. I’m not saying this is the point to aim for as your final point, but if you struggle to do the certainty thing due to the doubts, then you can start with this and then build up from there.
Of course, the best solution is to make frequent du’a to Allah to help you with your situation, and to perform ruqyah on yourself.
I also advise you to read this: https://islamqa.info/en/answers/295203/the-one-who-is-overwhelmed-by-uncertainty-should-not-pay-any-attention-to-his-uncertainty
It’s important to remember, sister, that the Shaitan wants to target the Muslims to make worship as difficult as possible for them in order to make them give up on it. The best response, then, is to ignore the Shaitan’s efforts and continue your worship with happiness.
And Allah knows best.