This month’s newsletter, September 2024, is the first of two parts. Next month’s newsletter,
October 2024, will continue the discussion.
Take a deep breath. Find a place where you can be calm and collected. This month’s reflection will challenge the root of your belief system about scrupulosity and OCD. Take your time and read each sentence, making sure you understand it before moving on. This reflection offers an essential insight into your struggle with scrupulosity. It may make you uncomfortable—that is OK. What is important is that you try to apply what you are reading here to your own experience and see if it holds true.
What I share with you in this reflection is intended solely for people who are struggling with scrupulosity and OCD. Most of it will not make sense to those who do not suffer from this disorder; it will seem contradictory to acceptable spiritual practices and disciplines. This reflection is not for them. It is for you—the person who struggles and desires to become freer and live life as it is intended, unburdened by constant fear and anxiety.
The content that is the subject of your OCD is not your real concern and should not be the object of your attention. Content is the trigger of your OCD. Content is not your solution. Let me repeat this important distinction: content is the trigger; it is not the solution. Reflect upon your experience of OCD and recognize the truth of this statement. As Scripture says, write it in your heart.
You could answer all the questions and doubts generated by the content you are obsessed with, and by the time you have it “figured out,” your OCD will have moved on to another question or concern. The only one loyal to the content is you, not your OCD. It could care less about the subject matter of the content; all your OCD cares about is that the content triggers your anxiety. It makes no difference if the content is an obsession with germs or with sin, real or imagined. For OCD, there is no fundamental difference.
Again, obsessive and compulsive behaviors are triggered by content. If you have scrupulosity, the content that triggers your OCD is religious in nature. For instance, you might believe your thoughts are about sin. You may engage in an action because you believe it is demanded by God or required for a good confession. You might be convinced it is necessary to worry about past sins, or you may repeatedly think about whether something is a mortal or venial sin. You may believe that you are wrestling with fear of the unknown or eternal damnation. Each of these assumptions, which appear real and convincing to you, are false.
To OCD, all these thoughts and concerns are simply content to foster your anxiety, nothing more. The content is the trigger for your pain, suffering, and struggles. Your OCD uses many familiar and scary words, but they have no meaning. Your OCD only cares that the words generate anxiety. Your content is not religious; it is not coming from God. It is not indicative of your spiritual self nor descriptive of your relationship with God. Your content is OCD, masquerading as something important.
When you try to answer the questions that the content poses, you engage in a waste of time and energy. All your effort, dedication, questioning, and attention to detail are not helpful. Rather, these things feed your OCD and provide it with fuel to make you feel ashamed, guilty, anxious, or depressed.
The only healthy and grace-filled response to managing your OCD is to deprive it of content—to abandon the pursuit of determining the definitive answers to the questions that flood your mind. In the process of starving your scrupulosity of content, you will effectively eliminate, or at least begin to manage, the triggers generated by the content.
What does this response mean practically? First, you must understand and remember that content triggers your OCD. This response therefore urges you to stop wasting energy with obsessive questions and doubts about the content. Any attention you pay to the content simply energizes and enables your OCD, allowing for continued suffering. It is profoundly difficult to accept that scrupulosity is not a spiritual issue—it is a mental disorder that uses spiritual content to generate anxiety, guilt, and shame.
The second step to depriving your OCD of content is the practiced choice of moving deliberately into the present moment, the only place where OCD does not thrive. OCD needs the past or the future to foster worry and anxiety. The present moment starves scrupulosity of oxygen; it struggles and loses power for the moment. From a spiritual perspective, the present moment is also the home of the Eternal Now. It is the place where God dwells. In divinity, there is no time—no past, no future. All things are simply what they are during this moment, in this place, and, most importantly, in the fullness of love.
How must you apply this remedy to your life? You must apply it consistently and with no exception. You must apply it with focus and commitment, providing no wiggle room. You must apply it—particularly when referring to religious scrupulosity—often in contrast to the normal, prevailing spiritual practices and disciplines. You must apply it with the conviction that it is the only correct and necessary application, even if it may be misunderstood by popular religious leaders or canonized saints.
NEXT MONTH: Practical rules to deprive your OCD of content.