"I always thought that OCD was what they show on movies or in the media, where it's, you know, somebody who's afraid of germs and washes their hands a million times a day. Or, you know, somebody who checks a lock on a door, even though they've checked it a million times. The way I experience OCD is nothing like that. When I started experiencing the symptoms, I was completely baffled by what was going on. I thought I was going crazy, to be completely honest with you."
What does Scrupulosity Mean?
It comes from the Latin word, 'scrupulum', which means a sharp stone. And this is like a, it feels like a pebble in your shoe, but in this case, [it] is a pebble that is within you and you cannot get rid of it. But overall, what that means, is that people have religious and moral anxiety. The clerics back in the day were the ones who discovered scrupulosity, which really, they discovered OCD. And this was hundreds of years ago when parishioners would go to the priest or rabbis saying, [or] they go repeatedly to confession, or [ask] 'Am I doing this right?' or pray incessantly. But there's this feeling of anxiety and these religious folk would say, 'Wait, something's wrong. This is not what God would intend for you to be feeling or thinking'. OCD and scrupulosity have nothing to do with devotion, right? It's not your religious beliefs and how religious you are because there are very religious people who don't have OCD. You have to put in the anxiety component. The anxiety component comes in when they have a belief that they're not doing it right. OCD targets their morals, their moral values. So, they may not be [religious], but they still feel very scrupulous about, 'Am I a good enough citizen? Am I a good enough neighbour? Am I a good enough parent, child, etc.
' I've thought a ton about how to try to explain what's going on to somebody who doesn't have OCD, so they could understand it. Without getting too graphic, or, you know, personal, because most of the thoughts are taboo subjects. You know, violent, sexual stuff that you don't bring up at a dinner party. You know what I mean? Let's just imagine that you hated the colour blue. And it was like the worst thing in the world for you was the colour blue. And one day, you pictured yourself wearing a blue suit. But you hate the colour blue! So why would you picture yourself wearing a blue suit? And what does that mean? Do you really like the colour blue? And then you get wrapped into that circle, and then all you can think about is the colour blue. And then you're thinking, 'Oh, good. I didn't think about it. Oh! I just thought about it again. Am I ever going to stop thinking about the colour blue? Is the colour blue going to control my life for the rest of my life? Is the only thing I'm going to be able to think about, is the colour blue? And I see other people, and all I can do is picture them wearing the colour blue. This is complete nonsense. Why am I so afraid of this?' But the OCD is so powerful that it can kind of overcome that, that reasonable, rational voice and say, 'No, this isn't nonsense'. There's a set group of people, a population, that really struggle with this. What they're trying to do is to really not make any mistakes at all in what they consider right and wrong. And when they do fall short, they experience an intense amount of anxiety, intense amount of self-doubt and guilt.
Someone, this is a Jewish individual, who puts on what's called phylacteries. It's sort of like a box that has some religious articles inside of it and they wrap it around the hand. There's a prescriptive way of doing it and he always doubts if he did it the correct way, and he'll put it on a few times a day to make sure that he did it correctly. Looking back, I had symptoms of OCD going back to childhood. When I was a kid, I thought it was normal to be that, that worried about something. When I say I wasn't diagnosed until [my] mid-30s, it doesn't mean I didn't have OCD. It just means that I didn't know what it was. The reason that I ended up being diagnosed is because I became a father in my in my mid-30s. I have two young children. I started having thoughts about bad things happening to them. And, you know, not to get too specific because it's very personal, but that was something I just couldn't tolerate, or I felt I couldn't tolerate. And so, I started having panic attacks. I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating. And I knew I needed help, but I didn't know, you know, what help looked like.
Getting better with any kind of OCD is accepting uncertainty. That's really what it's about. You have to say, 'I don't know' and carry on with your life. And that 'I don't know' creates a lot of disturbance because OCD demands that you know, and you can't know. You can never know. Instead of using your faith as a compulsion, Can you ask Heavenly Father or God, or whoever you believe in, to help you be strong? At the same time, let's use your values to help you. Then their values can be their guide, their overall arching path to wellness, versus being the enemy.
There are people out there ready to help you and you're not alone. You confront the fears, then you learn to just treat the fears as irrelevant. And it's scary and it's hard, and it's, you know, it's not an overnight type of cure, but it does help. OCD is also a very greedy disorder, it wants to be the only thing in your life. And the way to beat it is to realise that it's only a small part of your life, that there are many other things that make you you, and OCD does not define you.
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