Question about Confession.

[Gigglin4God]

I have a question about confession that I hope I will get alot of answers. I suffer from severe anxiety, depression, agoraphobia, ablutaphobia, & A Scrupulosity Addiction. Why is it when someone has mental illness that the first thing we/ I am told is that I need to go to Confession? How is someone that is ill, its supposed to be filled with sin from head to toe? What have I done so bad that everyone tells me that I need to go to Confession? Do they know something I have done that is wrong? Anyone? Please help? Its like it makes things worse to me and I feel that no matter what I do if I died, I’d still go to hell.

Can someone please help me out on this one?
God bless you & Mary Keep you.
Gigglin or Georgia.

 

[LilyM]

My dearest Georgia, first of all fervent prayers for you.

Secondly, while I have no specific recollection of your threads, I have seen lots of threads started by mentally ill and scrupulous people, and only a few recommendations that they go to confession.

Thirdly - mental illness and scrupulosity can sometimes exist side by side with one or more real mortal sins. Just as people who are always imagining themselves to be physically ill are not immune from having the occasional real cold or flu or other illness.

A good priest, like a good doctor, will help you discern what, if anything, that is going on with you is a real sin or physical ailment and what is not.

So it is not that everything you are imagining to be a sin or asking questions about really is so, simply that a priest in the confessional can better advise you than random people on the Internet.

God bless you.