Scrupulosity – Jimmy Akin

OCD, Therapy, and Promises

A reader writes:

Mr. Akin,

Thanks for the OCD articles you’ve posted. Your one on promises has been a site I’ve read and re-read many times as a comfort to know I’m not alone.

In your estimation, is it OK for one working through an exposure technique to purposely think, “No matter what I think, including ‘I promise,’ I’m going to ignore it and move on”?

In my case, when I thought “I promise”, I was thinking it as if directing it to God, as you would in prayer. I immediately regretted it . . . and in fact have replayed it in my head over and over to try to comfort myself, and worry I may have double-downed on my promise.

My worry being that it wasn’t a compulsion I could blame it on, but a conscious thought. I usually take a thought of “I promise” as meaning I need to give up things I enjoy for a day (coffee, etc.). And then the days compound.

Thanks for all the help; it really is comforting.

Thank you for writing. I believe I can be of help.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Its Treatment

For those who may not be aware, one of the most promising treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder involves cognitive behavior therapy and, specifically, exposure and response prevention therapy.

In this treatment, a person with OCD is exposed to situations that can trigger his obsessive thoughts and then refrain from engaging in the compulsive behavior ritual that he normally uses to relieve the stress they cause.

He thus learns by experience that he doesn’t need to perform the compulsive rituals in order to deal with the thoughts that flit across his mind, and the OCD condition lessens over time.

While this therapy involves some initial stress, it has proved effective for many patients and is considered one of the best therapies for this condition.

Promises to God

In this situation, the reader has OCD that is manifesting in thoughts about making promises to God and then being bound by them.

This is a common manifestation among religious OCD sufferers.

When this occurs, the person feels compelled to make promises to God that will inconvenience him to a greater or lesser degree, but which he feels obligated to keep.

The fact that these are inconvenient promises is the point: The OCD wants the person to be inconvenienced, since it is the inconvenience—and the fear of disobeying God—that is the cause of the anxiety that the condition wants.

But are such promises binding?

The Answer Is No

Such promises are not binding because they (1) are not rational, (2) are made under the duress of anxiety, (3) are not fully human acts, and (4) are the product of a disordered thought process and disease that needs to be fought.

For all these reasons, they do not bind.

However, OCD sufferers can have a fear that a particular promise might have been voluntary, and so it might bind. The same anxiety thus emerges in a new form: fear that a particular promise might bind, and the cycle starts again.

The solution is this: It doesn’t matter what degree of voluntariness a particular promise had. It’s still part of an overall disease process that needs to be thought. Ignore it anyway.

Promises to a Friend

To see why, suppose you live far away from any body of water and have no interest in boating.

Then, one day, a friend who you know has OCD comes to you and says, “Guess what! I’ve had an obsessive-compulsive impulse that I need to buy you a luxury yacht! I’m not sure how voluntary this thought was, so I’m afraid it might be binding. Therefore, I promise to sell my house, pull all the money out of my bank account, liquidate my retirement savings, and buy you a luxury yacht!”

What would your response be? Would you consider him bound to keep this possibly voluntary promise he has made to you?

Of course not! You would tell him, “Hey! Slow your roll! I have no need for a luxury yacht. I don’t care whether this thought was voluntary or not. You need to fight your OCD. I do not want you to hurt yourself by giving in to your OCD. Do not sell your house. Do not pull all the money out of your bank account. Do not liquidate your retirement savings. And do not consider yourself bound by this promise. In fact, do the opposite: Fight your OCD and ignore this promise for your own good. Don’t feed the OCD! The path to getting better involves ignoring promises like this!”

That’s what a good friend would say!

What a Friend We Have in Jesus

Well, Jesus is an even better friend than the human ones we have here on Earth, so he’s going to tell us exactly the same thing.

As Jesus himself said:

What man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matt. 7:9-11)

God is better than any earthly father, and so this principle applies here. As in the case of the friend, no earthly father, knowing that his son had OCD, would want his son to honor obsessive-compulsive promises he had made to do things for him, even if the son thought a particular thought might have been voluntary. He would want his son to ignore them and so get relief from his OCD.

For a promise to bind, it not only has to be made, it also has to be accepted. No friend would accept such promises as binding. No earthly father would. And neither does God.

Just because a person has compulsively tried to promise something to God doesn’t mean God considers that promise binding.

God has no needs, which means that he doesn’t need anything we might promise him. Further, he loves us, which means that he’s not going to hold us to promises made due to the effects of a disordered medical condition that needs to be resisted.

God knows that, if OCD suffers allow themselves to play the “Maybe that thought was voluntary”-game, it will only keep them trapped in their OCD.

The Great Physician wants us to be healed, including of OCD, and the path to healing is to ignore such obsessive-compulsive promises, even if we think one might have been partly voluntary.

Therefore, whether it’s part of exposure and response prevention therapy—or not—God wants OCD sufferers to ignore such promises.

So that’s what they should do.

Scrupulosity, OCD, and Life Goals

How is a person with scrupulosity or OCD supposed to manage going about life when their condition interferes with achieving key life goals–like getting an education, finding a spouse, or holding a job?

Recently I received the following email (per my usual policy, I’ve edited it to remove any personally identifying details):

Hi Mr. Akin, I am a practicing Catholic, but also very scrupulous. (I do have the mental disorder of OCD)

My question is in regards to near occasions of sin. I think many things are near occasions of sin, some being real and some being scrupulous.

I have decided to go to a Catholic college. The major I am going into has both a 100% on-campus option and a 100% online option. I really want to go onto campus but I feel it is a proximate occasion of sin because I have the opportunity to avoid it.

The reason I see this as a proximate occasion of sin is because I struggle with chastity; almost every time I see a beautiful girl I have impure thoughts.

I do not want to offend God because I know that we as Catholics are required to avoid proximate occasions of sin that can be avoided.

I would very much appreciate it if you could give me your educated input on if I have a moral responsibility to avoid being on campus. I have spoken to my spiritual director and he said I need to weigh the pros and the cons and which one outweighs the other.

Thank you for your time.

I responded:

Thank you very much for writing. Your situation is a difficult one, but not an uncommon one. We all have challenges and temptations that we face, and the latter can be especially strong at your time of life.

Unfortunately, I can’t give you a simple, single answer to what to do in your situation regarding attending college on campus or not. However, I can sketch the principles that need to go into that decision.

Forgive me if I repeat some things you already know, but I don’t want to accidentally leave out something important.

As you know, OCD is a common disorder that feeds scrupulosity. There may be treatment avenues for OCD that you haven’t yet pursued that could help. If you are not already in contact with a physician or psychologist about the condition, I strongly recommend consulting one to see what options may be available.

One of the most promising treatments for OCD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which–among other things–can involve exposure to the things that trigger a person’s OCD to help him become desensitized to them.

This tends to work because, the way OCD normally operates, there are certain triggers that produce distressing thoughts (the obsessions), and then to manage this anxiety, the person feels compelled to perform certain ritual behaviors (the compulsions).

A common strategy that OCD sufferers employ is to avoid the things that trigger their obsessions, and this is not always unreasonable. However, if it becomes the default strategy, it can cause the OCD to grow in strength, as more and more things become potential triggers. The very act of seeking to avoid the OCD triggers can actually reinforce the disorder and make it worse.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) seeks to break this cycle by helping the sufferer realize, on an emotional level, that he does not need to give the OCD triggers power over him.

It thus may involve a form of treatment where the person is gradually exposed to his triggers, and he learns to manage the anxiety, which gradually decreases.

To take a classic example (really, the classic example), suppose a person with OCD has a fear that his hands are constantly dirty and need to be washed. This is extremely common. As you may know, some OCD sufferers spend hours a day washing their hands, until they are raw.

One way CBT might help treat this would be to say, “Whenever you have the thought that you need to wash your hands, don’t give in immediately. Set yourself a goal–say, you won’t wash your hands for 5 minutes. Then, relax and think about something else. Distract yourself so that you’re not thinking about your hands.”

By the time the 5 minutes ends, you may have either forgotten about your hands or, if the thought comes back to you, you can say to yourself, “Hey! I didn’t wash my hands for 5 minutes, and the world didn’t end. I’m still okay.”

That reassurance that, despite the presence of the trigger (the thought you need to wash), things are still okay, though you didn’t immediately give in to it will–over time–give the person the confidence that he can relax and not be governed by his obsessive thoughts. This then can lead to a diminishing of how often the obsessive thoughts occur.

The bottom line suggested by CBT is: “Don’t simply run from your triggers. If you do that, they will get worse. Instead, do your best to relax and ignore your triggers. Focus on something else. That is what will weaken them.”

To apply this to your situation, it will not be possible for you to spend your life avoiding women for purposes of avoiding temptations to mental sin. Women are half of our race, and you can’t just run away from them.

Instead, you need to find a way to manage the situation: to encounter women, and relax and move beyond whatever distressing thoughts and temptations may occur. That’s the long term solution.

Temptations to sin are particularly strong at your time of life, and there is no magic cure. The problem will get better later on in life, but for now it is something that has to be dealt with.

The parts of the problem that can be dealt with, right now, are the scrupulosity and OCD–as well as the general management of temptation that every person must do.

Normal temptation management is something that there is a good bit of literature on (including temptations against chastity), and your spiritual director can no doubt be of help with figuring that out.

There also are literature and support groups for people suffering from scrupulosity.

A key part of this is recognizing that there is a major difference between temptation and sin; having a thought or feeling of being attracted to a woman and desiring her is only temptation; it doesn’t become sin until you foster this feeling by an act of the will; and it doesn’t become mortal sin unless there is full knowledge and deliberate consent.

Because OCD wants to cause you anxiety, the thoughts it generates are “ego-dystonic”–contrary to your moral values, which is why they cause distress and why the OCD generates them, to make you anxious.

The fact that you are operating with a problem like OCD means that the thoughts are not fully voluntary, and so even when there is some apparent motion of the will, it isn’t sufficient to be mortal sin.

The standard counsel for scrupulous people is thus to assume that a sin was not mortal unless the opposite is manifestly evident.

Today, there are new methods of dealing with OCD, of which Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the most promising.

I also can say that the long-term solution is not to simply flee women. In fact, doing that would not only increase your OCD, it would also harm your ability to achieve important life goals, like getting an education, holding a job, and finding a wife.

At some point, you must decide that you will regularly encounter women and just manage the temptations and OCD/scrupulosity that this will involve, knowing that it will get better over time.

This decision cannot be delayed indefinitely, because even if you didn’t attend college on campus, you will be encountering women in the workforce–not to mention needing to date and find a wife, for which college is an excellent opportunity.

I can’t tell you whether attending college on campus or online is the better choice at the moment, but I can tell you that the less you feed your OCD now, the fewer habit patterns you’ll need to unlearn later.

Whatever you decide, do not scruple about it, but trust that God will guide you through the situation and bring about your good and his greater glory.

I hope that this is helpful for you, and I encourage you to share it with your spiritual director and get his further thoughts.

God bless you!

Possibly Lying in Confession? Help for the Scrupulous

A reader (who will remain anonymous per my usual policy) writes:

The other day I went to confession and confessed my sins some of which were of a sexual nature. I honestly confessed these sins. However, after my confession Father began to give me advice on overcoming these sins. One thing he said was that I should get a porn blocker for my laptop. I said to him “Okay, Father.”

In reality, I had no plans of putting a blocker on my laptop. I seldom if ever use my laptop anymore. Also, I’ve tried blockers before and end up finding away around them. I didn’t want to go into a whole rebuttal with him, so I just said “Okay, Father.”

As I left the confessional, I started to worry. Had I committed the sin of lying? What if I just invalidated my whole confession by possibly giving him the impression I would put a blocker on a laptop when I was not going to? Can you help me, Jimmy?

Please set your mind at rest.

In the first place, saying, “Okay, Father” is ambiguous in meaning. It can mean, “Yes, I will do that,” or it can mean, “I acknowledge your recommendation.”

“Okay” is an ambiguous word that we use in English as a way of helping conversations and social interactions along. It can even mean, “Please stop talking now” or “Let’s move to the next subject.”

Therefore, by saying this phrase, you may not have been lying. Whether you were will depend on your intention.

If you deliberately intended to cause the priest to falsely believe that you would get a blocker for your laptop then it would be a lie, otherwise not.

If it was a lie, we then proceed to the next question, which is whether this lie would have invalidated the confession.

There are two types of things the penitent says in confession–things that are integral to the sacrament itself (e.g., saying what your sins are)–and things that are incidental to the sacrament (e.g., greeting the priest, asking for advice, acknowledging advice, etc.).

If you did lie, the lie concerned an incidental matter (advice) rather than something that was integral to the sacrament.

We then progress to the next question, which is whether the lie would have been mortal or venial.

Several factors indicate that the lie would be venial:

It doesn’t appear that we have grave matter (i.e., the priest doesn’t have a grave need to know whether you will or will not get a blocker for your laptop)
You did not know for certain at the moment of telling the lie that it would be mortal, meaning you lacked the kind of knowledge needed for a mortal sin.
You did not deliberately tell it anyway despite knowing that it would be mortal, meaning you lacked the deliberation needed for a mortal sin.

We thus lack the needed grave matter, full knowledge, and deliberate consent needed for a mortal sin.

Instead, it looks like–at most–you may have uttered a minor falsehood on the spur of the moment to move a conversation along, not intending to commit an act of grave harm.

This indicates a lack of deliberation about the act, as indicated by the fact you only started worrying about it after confession was over.

Therefore, at most you committed a venial sin on the spur of the moment and on a matter incidental to the sacrament.

Venial sins don’t need to be confessed, and therefore venial sins don’t invalidate confession. This is all the more true when they pertain to an incidental rather than an integral matter.

Therefore, put your heart at rest and be at peace!

Also, consider this an opportunity to figure out something to say the next time you’re given advice you think impractical in confession. “Okay, Father” is possible, but “Thank you, Father,” “Thank you, I’ll think about it,” or “Thank you, I’ll pray about that” might be better (assuming you do intend to do at least a little thinking or praying about it afterward to see if the advice might be practical after all).

Having a response thought out ahead of time will help avoid scrupling in future situations.

I hope this helps, and God bless you!