OCD Discussions

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I get it. Taking trips is hard for me because i dont know what to expect in some respects and it is a change in routine, which is comforting but can become a crutch.
 
Another thing that calmed me is once again being with my dogs. I missed them so much while we were gone and they are a great comfort to me.
 
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For me it’s a mix. I feel happy to be home with my family, but at the same time it breaks my heart because my obsessions tend to go after them. I miss them terribly when I’m not with them, but I also feel anxiety and guilt when I’m around them. But at least when I’m home I don’t feel alone.
 
Jessica01 said:
For me it’s a mix. I feel happy to be home with my family, but at the same time it breaks my heart because my obsessions tend to go after them. I miss them terribly when I’m not with them, but I also feel anxiety and guilt when I’m around them. But at least when I’m home I don’t feel alone.
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I like the idea of getting away and the thought of taking a trip always gives me the idea that I’ll be able to take a break from my worries (I’ve always called my obsessions “worries”. The trouble is, where I go, my brain goes.
 
Meds only reduce the severity. And unfortunately, anti-depressants and other meds to treat anxiety have side effects.

What you are talking about is a type of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Resisting the urge to engage in compulsive behavior or thought when your obsessions/intrusive thought kicks in. It does work. Trying to argue with irrational obsessions and intrusive thoughts makes them more powerful, and creates a cycle—the compulsive behavior ends up reinforcing your obsessions.

Another, more intense treatment, is called ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention). It involves deliberately confronting your fears and not reacting. It is also used to treat phobias.
 
So for those with OCD /scrupulous how do you talk to a priest or find a priest that would understand you? Like say if you’re having doubts about you being a valid Catholic and stuff?

And if they give you an answer you know the OCD is going to return and cause you have doubts about what they said?
How do you guys find a priest that’s understanding to scrupulous?
 
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FYI,

OCD = Order of Discalced Carmelites
OCDS = Order of Discalced Carmelites, Secular.

I’m not sure how to distinguish the two from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD, but at a Catholic site like CAF, I think you’ll see many posts by people like myself who are Secular Order Discalced Carmelites, OCDS.

Jim
 
margaret42 said:
I took me a while to call it OCD. It made me feel guilty! Being aware of the" presence of the Holy Spirit" meant that medicine wasn’t needed, and prayer was the answer.
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Precisely.

The thing is, there is a very important religious aspect to OCD. (This also explains why the subject comes up so often on a Catholic forum, btw. It isn’t a coincidence that among Catholics and people interested in Catholicism, OCD appears to occur quite often.)

Unfortunately, many Catholics, including priests, do not understand this at all. So what is likely to happen when an OCD person talks to a priest or any Catholic, is that their OCD gets dismissed as “Oh that’s nothing to do with religion; for that you need to talk to a psychiatrist.” Or even if the priest takes the OCD into account during confession or even during a normal talk, they’re likely to take it into account as something that needs to be “filtered out” or “adjusted for”, i.e. the priest will deal with it, but still as something that’s not quite right: “Oh, I remember, this penitent has this ‘disease’ called OCD, so I better take that into account.” He’s acknowledging it, but only as an extraneous, interfering factor, not as something integral to the penitent’s religious behavior.

And when talking to a psych, the problem is more or less the same. Most psychiatrists are either not religious at all, or even if they are, they are usually not capable of consciously integrating psychiatry and religion in a meaningful way, or of understanding their relationship. So just like most priests, they cannot give the OCD person an understanding of their OCD in light of their religious nature.

The end result tends to be that the person with OCD finally buys into the dichotomy: “My OCD is some disease – oh and I happen to be religious too,” as if the two are unrelated. This view is a serious mistake that only confuses an OCD person further. The correct understanding is that one’s OCD is an expression of one’s religious impulse, no matter how practically inconvenient or weird it is. It may need practical adjustment if the behavior is severely debilitating, but still it should be understood in light of one’s religious impulse, not apart from it, and not in opposition to it.
 
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This is exactly what just happened to me. I just got done with therapy, and though I love my therapist because she is kind and tries her best to respect my faith, my main issue is that I have no idea how to truly deal with my OCD being this part of me that will always be part of my faith because it will always be in my brain. My OCD has been clinging to confession since it made its grand entrance into my life 12 years ago. I know now that trying to get rid off it is not going to work. I have to learn to see it as part of the way my brain deals with religion. The advice my therapist gives me of just brushing it off, honestly sounds great. I can see how if I just ignored everything I would find peace, the main issue is that I believe in sin, I believe in wrong. I guess I have Real Evet OCD because it feeds off the guilt I feel over my past actions. I have no idea how to go to confession without triggering a spike, since this is what triggers it to begin with. OCD is more common than Diabetes, I believe it should be more or less a requirement for therapists and clergy to learn about it.
 
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Since I’ve been made more aware of the religious manifestations of OCD, I’ve come across several people who displays signs of it. On one hand I’m glad I can recognize it but on the other, their behavior drives me completely bonkers b/c I want to help them realize what they are doing but it’s to no avail… They don’t think they have anything wrong and most of them LOVE being so “devoted” to the faith (and I’m sure they do love God but I think the obsession with following the letter of the law gets out of control)…it just makes me wonder, how many of the saints really had some OCD as well?
 
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I am almost completely certain that St. Catherine of Siena had it. The stories of how she battled unwanted, horrific thoughts that she tried to neutralize by making the sign of the cross up to 200 times a day, sounds a lot like OCD to me. Also, St. Teresa of Avila used to go to confession daily, which may or may not have been a sign of scruples. I’m sure a lot of the saints had something. God uses suffering to sanctify us, and let me tell you, I’ve been physically sick in the past, but I would much rather take on the worst physical illness in exchange of the mental agony the OCD has put me through. I only wish I could know if my confessions have been good ( this is where I am right now). If only I knew my soul was good, I’d carry this thing with all the joy possible.
 
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Jessica01 said:
I am almost completely certain that St. Catherine of Siena had it. The stories of how she battled unwanted, horrific thoughts that she tried to neutralize by making the sign of the cross up to 200 times a day, sounds a lot like OCD to me. Also, St. Teresa of Avila used to go to confession daily, which may or may not have been a sign of scruples. I’m sure a lot of the saints had something.
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Good examples! I often wonder why do we think that this behavior is an example of a “good” person. Not saying these saints were not good, but a lot of their behavior that is so obviously OCD gets put on a pedestal as an example of someone who is truly devout. 🤷‍♀️
 
Angel_Gabriel said:
Good examples! I often wonder why do we think that this behavior is an example of a “good” person. Not saying these saints were not good, but a lot of their behavior that is so obviously OCD gets put on a pedestal as an example of someone who is truly devout. 🤷‍♀️
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I totally agree with you.
 
I think a lot of it is that people are afraid to offend the saint somehow, but their mental illness was something that helped them ( ironically) to become saints. I remember when I was younger I used to watch a show on EWTN called “Super Saints” and they were praising St. Teresa for going daily. Don’t get me wrong, the show is great and St. Teresa was a amazing, but it’s not wise, like you say, to promote these things as a form of ideal devotion. I didn’t know I had OCD then, but it basically validated my idea that I had to try and do the same. Same with St. Gemma Galgani, she’s amazing as well, but reading her autobiography is not the best thing for a person with scruples. I understand that God wanted an extreme level of purity from her, but most of us would probably spike like mad if we tried to do things like she did. There is an instance in her book where she looks up at mass to see the outfit a little girl had on for a second, and her Guardian Angel gets extremely upset at her for it. And there was a time when she went to confession ( St. Gemma is one of those amazing saints who never committed a mortal sin) and confessed a venial sin. Her Guardian Angel spent the rest of the day upset with her until she went again because she had not confessed it correctly. These saints are heroic souls, their situations, their calling was different, and I do believe we have to be careful what we promote because, for the vast majority of us who cannot see our guardian angel to tell us that our confessions are now correct, this can lead us into a horrible cycle of bad. And this is in no way God’s fault, or St. Gemma’s fault, or St. Teresa’s fault, it’s the OCD feeding off of things that could otherwise be edifying.
 
Yes Margaret! I was horrible with the weight. I would Weigh myself every day and sometimes throughout the day. I had to weigh a certain number otherwise I would consider it failing, or not being small enough. I used to run 5 miles daily, (especially if I had gained a pound)which is fine if you enjoy it, but I didn’t enjoy doing it. I would skip meals, I would walk around in circles in my living room to get more steps in. I would do all this to stay at that specific weight. My sister has the same thing. Mine just shifted back to religion and she tends to shift between that and contamination.
 
If you do it to relieve anxiety, doubt or to neutralize intrusive thoughts, very possibly. My whispering was me saying my neutralizing thoughts very quietly to get them right. Sometimes, though, i would have had whole lists with specifics i had to go through. I often kept lists with me and would excuse myself to recite neutralizing formulas.
 
I happen to attend at a Redemptorist Parish, and they are the order that seems to focus on Scrupulosity. Scrupulous Anonymous is run by Redemptorists. Their founder, Saint Alphonsus was tortured by scrupulosity. Indeed, his writings are a very important tool for combating scrupulosity.
 
I can think of two Saints right away, both founders of Religious Orders – St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Alphonsus Ligouri. I can also say Martin Luther likely had it very bad. In him, it drove him to despair and to ultimately leave the Church.
 
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