Need help with Scrupulosity

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What you have discribed is a severe mental disorder, and there’s no “maybe” about it. It is a type of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The advice you recieved, although well intended, may not help. The best thing that you can do is to seek medical help, trying, if possible to find a doctor, phsyciatrist, or neurologist who is Christian, Jewish, or at least religion friendly. This doctor will probably prescribe medication, such as Risperdal or Buspirone. Stay away from the strong meds like Zoloft and Prosac, since they have bad side aftects (increased suicidal thoughts) and are not really the correct meds for this condition anyway. You may have to re-ajust the dosing on the medication several times before it works right. After you are on the meds, you will be able to figure out what you need to do for your spiritual life without being confused by these thoughts, and then all those prayers that were suggested may indeed be helpful.

The chances are you or relatives of yours have also had some of these problems:

-Repeated handwashing and/or obessive fear of contracting an illness

-Obsessive fear that you are sick.

-Fear that you hit someone in a car, offended someone, or hurt someone

-Sexual or violent images flashing through your head uncontrollably

-Saying of “prayers” to other gods in your head before you can stop yourself

-Repeated thoughts of jumping of bridges or high places

-Fear of numbers or color combinations that symbolize something you don’t like

-Swearing in your head, and before you can stop yourself, to do things that you don’t want to or aren’t called to do.

-Need to do things in a particular order.

-Cursing in your head before you can stop yourself.

-Fear that if you step on a crack, you will break your mother’s back, or worries allong those lines.

-Fear that you did something that will cause your house to burn down.

-Fear that you have not taken good enough care of your children or pets.

-Fear that you are not eating healthy enough.

-Images running through your mind of yourself doing something bad or inapropriate, i. e. killing someone, wearing a pagan emblem, doing the Nazi salute (this is one that bothers me), having sex with someone you shouldn’t.

Problems caused by illness, including mental illness, are not considered sins by the church. It is very important, therefore, that you take an apropriate medicin, so that you will be able tell which things are your fault and which aren’t. A very wise old priest told me that scrupulosity was a phsycological disorder and therefore something that the person could not be faulted for. Actually, it’s a phsyciatric or neurological (biologicaly based) disorder caused by a lack of seretonin in the brain, but the rest of what he said is still true. You can’t be blamed for something caused by obsessive-compulive thoughts.
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 I have suffered with this and other OCD based problems since I was little. My brother, my father, my mother, my aunt, my uncle, and two of my three first cousins all suffer from the same set of OCD based conditions, and my greatgrandfather did as well. The medications cleared up my brother's problem very quickly. (My brother was consumed by the fear that he had broken computer-licensing agreements and could think of nothing else all day for weeks untill we took him to the doctor.) One of them may have caused him to gain a little weight, but the other had absolutly no side aftects, so talk to your doctor about which of the two you should take.
Another word of advice. When you do go to confession, try to find either a priest who has had your problem or a really old priest who has heard a ton of confessions. Chaplins are also good, because they have to hear a lot of confessions. Basicly, you want to talk to a really expirienced confessor.

Finaly, keep going to church, no matter how painful, every sunday, and don’t let a mental illness persuade you to give up on your faith. God understands when you have trouble due to mental health, and he wants you to treat it, just as he would want you to treat pneumonia or cancer or any other medical problem. Also remember when talking to doctors, that your faith doesn’t cause this problem. If you weren’t a believer, you’d just be worrying constantly about something else.

Here are links to some sites about OCD.

nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/anxiety-disorders/obsessive-compulsive-disorder.shtml

mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=439&cn=6

webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/obsessive-compulsive-disorder

webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/obsessive-compulsive-disorder

ocfoundation.org/what-is-ocd.html

I will say a prayer for you tonight, and I hope that you will take my advice.

Annika

PS Prayer is always helpful, but in my case the answer to prayer was medical help.
 
Wonderful advice, I particularly applaud Fizendell’s and Annika’s. I just could not really add much to that. I have struggled with scruples for years, literally since childhood, even before I joined the Church. At times, it has been nightmarish. I am treated for bipolar disorder and my doctor told me it sounds like OCD, but I cannot take the anti-obsessive medications he recommended because of the symptoms of my bipolar disorder and I have had bad reactions to meds in that category in the past taken for depression.

However, I am learning to cope and live with it, with the awareness I may never be completely “cured.” Hopefully this is a situation that few people with scruples find themselves in. Some DO find that their illness is transient, more situational than biological such as is the case for many converts and move on after their consciences are better formed by the guidance and instruction of a good (but firm) confessor. This may be Fizendell’s experience? While others find that the scruples just don’t go away, get worse over time instead of better, more information/education just doesn’t help. In those cases, or if the scruples are interfering with your quality of life and ability to live your life and do the things you need to and the things you enjoy, then professional assistance is called for, as Annika suggests. In other words, though they may seem like two very different perspectives, I believe both of them are right and you will need both if your scruples are more than the temporary, growing-in-your-faith kind but the sign of a mental health issue.

If you are dependent on your parents, you need to talk to them. (Forgive me because I know I am making an assumption here, but it is just the impression from your post, please feel free to set me straight). Print out some information about what scrupulosity is, maybe a couple of these posts or something off the Liguori website. It is HARD admitting you need help about something so personal and private as your own thoughts, but you need to if you can’t get help on your own. You don’t have to tell them the gory details of your specific obsessions, just that you think you have it, how it affects your life, what you don’t do because of it, maybe come up with a couple of examples that are not too intimate or embarrassing so they know what you are talking about (and so they don’t push too hard to hear more than you want to tell them! It is normal for parents to be concerned and want to make sure you’re not thinking of hurting yourself or some such thing.) Ask them to take you to a doctor to talk about it, make an appointment to see a priest outside of confession hours. Heck, print out your own post and let them read it if you can’t think of anything else!

It may not be pride at the root of scrupulosity itself, but it IS pride that keeps people from seeking help when they know they have a problem. Think of all the humiliations Christ suffered during His passion and unite your own to His as you walk this road. Don’t live your life caged in fear, waiting for “someday” when you are independent because trust me, it won’t be any easier then, either. The obstacles may be different but they are always there. At least right now, you will have your parents’ support, and if you’re very blessed, their insurance. 😛

Trust yourself to God’s love and mercy. St. Joan of Arc famously said words to these effect, “If I am not (in the state of grace), may God put me there, and if I am, may God keep me there.” Perfect words when uncertainty is our state of being. Even if you cannot bring yourself to believe you have not committed some terrible sin, never stop praying. Don’t think of your sins, real or imaginary, at all, if you can: cast your eyes on God instead. Think of Him. Think of Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, sharp constant pricking and gouging like the doubtful thoughts that gnaw at you. Offer your “prickings” to Him. Carry your pain in unity with Him. I will pray for you.
 
This is a obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a mental disease

I suffer from it too, in the worst and painful variant : scrupulosity, blasphemies, the unforgivable sins

For an Atheist saying blasphemies or offending God is not very harmful for him, he just doesn’t care because he doesn’t believe in God

But for a Religious man it can be a mental torture, like living in a hell, like if he wasn’t able to do a single act of love, to feel like a monster, the worst human being on earth since the creation

I even had psychotic delusions thinking that I was the Anti-Christ, someone born to destroy everything that is from God

Scrupulosity is a terrible cross to bear. We can listen the devil and his dark angels talking directly to our ears, do you believe in Satan ? he exists, he is a snake that takes any advantage of any human weakness or disease in order to cause in them despair and going to lead them astray

People that have this mental disorder is because they have a full respect of God but also they are very, very, and I mean very afraid of Him

And because they have a genetic biological predisposition for OCD, that can be triggered at some point in life by an event, experience or environmental stressor and develop full-blown OCD.

In my case I think it was in my childhood, my father didn’t loved me, in fact he hated me. I was very afraid of him, I was spanked, and so on…that’s because he thought that I wasn’t his child, was a jealous hate thru my mother, he thought my mother had cheated him

he changed a lot, and I have forgived Him in full heart, God knows, but the trauma is still here inside me and I can’t get rid of it

Jesus talked a lot of the Father, …the Father’s pray…didn’t He ?

I think that that childhood trauma of mine triggered my OCD thru God - Father

I don’t take any medicine, what I do in order to get some relief is to offer all my pain to the souls in order to release them from purgatory and so on…I offer my torture, my cross to them

this is my story
 
To add some more info about my self experience on this

People with OCD :
  1. that thinks for example that they will harm the beloved ones, what do they do ? they avoid knifes and all that stuff
  2. that thinks for example that can be contaminated with germs they avoid all that situations
They avoid all situations that triggers their anxiety

But religious people with OCD thru God - With Scrupulosity

What can they do ? avoid the church ? God ? everything that remembers him God in order to avoid anxiety ?

Yes, that is what Satan wants and that’s why he takes a lot of efforts to talk into our hears until we’re mentally exhausted

Many times I have thought that the best for me was avoiding the church, God, everything that caused me terrible pain

now, I’m not cured, and I don’t take any medicine, but I accepted my pane and torture and in the Blessed Sacrament I offer that sacrifice to the souls. To others who may need, my pane in turn of their relief

it is a day by day struggle, didn’t the little childs at Fatima offer their pains to the souls ? What said Mary ? that a lot of souls was going to hell because nobody was offering anything for them ?
 
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