What They Don’t Tell You About Religion and OCD

It was midnight, and I was standing by the foot of my parents’ bed. I walked over to where my mom slept and nudged her a little.

“Mom,” I whispered, as I tried to wake her up.

She grunted, waking up slowly and reluctantly.

“Mom,” I continued, “I explained to my stuffed animals how babies are made. I’m sorry.”

She sighed, “It’s fine.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“You can’t keep waking me up like this.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

The International OCD Foundation defines Scrupulosity as “a subtype of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) involving religious or moral obsessions.” It describes Scrupulous people as “overly concerned that something they thought or did might be a sin or other violation of religious or moral doctrine.” Said people might also “worry about what their thoughts or behavior mean about who they are as a person”.

This information is all correct, and the article has lots of other helpful information such as symptoms, mental compulsions, and statistics, among other things. My only real complaint was the statistics listed. While I do find it interesting that apparently up to a third of OCD havers (who, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, make up 1.2% of the population) experience Scrupulosity, I wanted to know more. Specifically, I wanted to know what percent of this third were under 13.

I wanted to know how many of this third were like me.

A common thing to hear when growing up in The Church is that the nagging little voice in your head telling you that something you did was wrong is the voice of God. I do not fault The Church for spreading this idea. I still consider myself a spiritual person and so to a degree I would go so far as to say that I believe it. Truth be told, I highly doubt that people spreading this information knew what an intrusive thought was or even considered that a young child may internalize this information and spend the next several years of their life submerged in guilt.

I was 9 when the guilt took root in my life. I can’t quite remember what started it, but once it was there, it made itself abundantly apparent whenever I did something that could possibly be sinful. Obviously, this feeling came out when I committed an obvious sin such as making a dirty joke or telling a lie. However, I also felt condemnation for things I didn’t do, such as thinking something bad, overhearing something bad, or seeing something bad, even on accident. This could also include my intrusive thoughts, which were more often then not related to sexual matters. It was like OCD-seption; I would have intrusive thoughts about the fact that I had intrusive thoughts.

I would then have to confess to God, my mom, and any other person involved in whatever was bothering me. If the internal voice did not like I was absolved, I would keep praying and apologizing, and maybe try to do good things to absolve myself. I would repeat this last step until the guilt subsided.

In the time it took for the feeling to leave, I would become distressed to an extreme degree, no matter the size of the original grievance. I would become convinced that I was letting down God, my family (immediate and extended), my church and school. I would imagine being cast out and reviled by everyone I held dear.

I remember once, at the age of 12, I decided to carve my name on the built-in desk that was in my bedroom. I had a friend over, and she watched indifferently. When I was done, I suddenly felt overcome with guilt and asked my friend if I should tell my mom.

“Probably not,” she had said, passively.

“No,” I had said, already plagued with the mental image of the deep disappointment of not only my loved ones, but Jesus Christ himself, “I’m going to tell her.”

She was baffled by my sudden change in attitude and my lack of self preservation, and brought up the incident years later, at my 15th birthday party. My other guest laughed at the story, and began to share their own experiences with my bizarre, childish shame. I remember feeling embarrassed and slightly indignant. They didn’t know how bad I would feel if I didn’t have atonement.

While the desk incident was, admittedly, a bit funny, if I hadn’t apologized, I would have become depressed, anxious, and/or physically ill, the feeling not subsiding until I tried to make things right with God.

As I grew older, it became easier to recognize that my so-called “conscience” had been skewed and my guilt was causing me enormous pain. My Scrupulosity quelled around the time I was 15. I had endured about 6 years of feeling so secretly dirty, so impure, and I had no idea how to justify those years. Rather than recognizing that the shame came from within, I blamed it entirely on my church, Christian school, and parents. I was not totally off in this regard. The conservative theology around me had stroked the flames of my intrusive thoughts, raising the stakes and heightening my fears.

I did not get diagnosed with OCD until I was 20, and the time between my diagnosis and discovering I displayed symptoms of OCD was at most a month and a half. I remember very specifically the slow creeping pain of realizing my daily catastrophizing, rituals and obsessive thought patterns were not, in fact, saving me. It took a while for me to think back and connect OCD to my childhood fears.

I began to realize that while Evangelical Christianity had certainly negatively affected me, my mind would have found a way to leverage any religion or culture I belonged to against me. In fact, being born into a non religious family could have been equally traumatizing. My mind may have latched onto something like having good grades, which could have, seeing as school wasn’t my strongest suit, drove me to drastic means.

I had already begun the process of deconstructing, but this complicated my healing process. I felt distrustful of my spiritual journey up to that point. After all, if my head had replicated the voice of God so convincingly, it could certainly do so again. I allowed myself to temporary abandon my faith, deciding the vulnerability of belief was something I didn't have the capacity for, at least for a bit.

Around a month into my distrust of my spiritual instincts, I was sitting on my then boyfriend's couch doing nothing, as he dug through his fridge to look for something to eat. Eventually, he pulled out the tiny cake my roommate had made us for Valentine’s day, forgotten since the day it was gifted to us, now covered in mold.

He dumped it into the trash and as I watched, I asked him, “Is this an omen?”

“No,” he said, totally without hesitation.

The next day we broke up.

I was caught off guard by this incident. It was, to me, an obvious omen and forced me to think about what I had been avoiding. I realized that I wanted to live in a world where there’s room for a moldy cake to mean something. I had honestly missed God and I wanted her back in my life.

I wouldn’t say that my spirituality has been completely smooth sailing, but at the very least I am willing to try. I interrogate intrusive thoughts, the ones that feel malicious and self deprecating. I look for omens, because I find it easier to get answers from outside my head. I got into oracle card reading, because it’s easy to find solace in interpreting the tiny pictures.

I’m building my faith back, slowly but surely. I don’t know if I’d even call myself a Christian anymore, but whatever I practice gives me a strong sense of peace, and really that’s what matters.

Written by Susan Moore

Writer

Hi, I’m Susan. You may have seen my work before in Darling Magazine’s fashion section and Tonitruale’s music column.

When I’m not writing, I can be found watching documentaries with my roommates, listening to audiobooks and drinking drinks that turn my mouth blue.

Photo credit: @bluerosetori