There's an old saying that “an idle mind is the Devil's Playground,” now I will add to that that "an overactive imagination is the devil's workshop." The imagination can be a powerful tool for understanding abstract ideas and creating all kinds of new and useful things for mankind to use, but when the imagination is taken over by the dark-side and causes you to have irrational fears, worries and preoccupations with things that actually don't matter so much.... that the imagination begins to run your life to the point where you are serving it like a slave, you are in deep trouble.

Doctors often label and name this OCD (obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The spiral begins in childhood when the early development of the mind is not shielded from irrational thoughts, superstitions and strange beliefs. Parents and adults and even children do not realize that playing with dark imaginings such as Ouija boards, Dungeons and Dragons and violent video games can have an effect of opening up the young mind to the very forces that are at work in the minds of those adults who believe such bizarre things.

Children should be shielded as much as possible from ideas that they cannot comprehend or understand at an early age because of the danger of contamination by the source of those strange and bizarre ideas that take on a life of their own. Unfortunately, many people have been infected with the dark spirits associated with strange and horrible thoughts that are produced by a component of the imagination that is not subject to the conscience or consciousness but dwells below the surface in the subconscious mind.

The Id learns how to mimic your identity and your thought patterns to confuse you and seduce you into following it down the dark path into a black hole a fear worry and confusion. To become aware of these strange thoughts produced by the imagination you simply have to stand back and objectively see that what is tempting you to believe in all kinds of weird and most often useless thoughts is an "impostor of alternative identity" that has existed ever since the beginning of humankind. It understands how to appeal to our ego. 

To be clear, the ego is the part of us that wants to play God and is a remnant of the fallen Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God's command. It was not knowledge itself that was deadly but the knowledge of good and evil that caused them unimaginable suffering and separation from their creator. Today we all have the same problem and the ego steps up to serve our need to know.

Look at the definition of the word ‘know’ from the Latin: it means “to be intimate with.” Now imagine that you are becoming intimate with a dark source that is dedicated to misleading you and taking you down into the pit where there is no truth or light and there is only regret and suffering for a wasted life. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has its roots in such an ego, a fear-based immature self that was damaged and broken in childhood that struggles to protect itself from what it does not understand.

Of course, mood controlling drugs can help to stabilize such a person who suffers from OCD but it does not cure or alleviate the actual problem down below in the subconscious. Drugs only make us less aware which is counter-intuitive to the actual remedy for believing our imagination to the point where we have become diseased and compulsive about serving it. Simply by turning toward the now moment through mindfulness meditation anyone can detach from the impulse to believe in an errant or false belief and as long as you can remain in a place of observing the impulse and the thoughts long enough, those thoughts will eventually pass (and much more quickly than you would ever realize).

Belief in God is extremely critical to recovery and cannot be discounted in the sense that if you believe that you can be saved from the things that you fear by the higher power then that can become the source of your comfort and your refuge from the horror.

Acts 4:12 - “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” ... Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Acts 16:31 - So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Romans 10:8-10 …8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: 9 that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved.…