Avoiding Fear-Based Obedience in Scrupulosity OCD

One of the main components of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is fear. Whether it’s the fear of getting others sick, not being in the right relationship or harming others, without fear, OCD wouldn’t exist. 

For Scrupulosity OCD, this means that individuals with this disorder may participate in different religious behaviors, such as praying, repenting or attending church, in a way that is compulsory rather than faith based. For this reason, it may be difficult to discern whether or not you are participating in certain aspects of religion because of your OCD or because of your faith.

In this blog post, we discuss how you can ensure you’re living in a way that is conducive to OCD recovery if you don’t want to give up on religious behavior altogether.

Scrupulosity and fear-based obedience

Before we jump into how to decipher religious compulsions and avoid them, let’s explore some more details about what the fear that drives Scrupulosity OCD looks like. 

This fear is often centered around the fear of doing something wrong, offending God or preventing bad things from happening through certain behaviors. For example, a Scrupulosity OCD sufferer may:

• Repent for the same sin multiple times because they are afraid they did so incorrectly, therefore forfeiting God’s forgiveness.

• Follow a particular prayer ritual because they are afraid something bad will happen to the family members they forget to pray for.

• Complete a certain behavior to cancel out or fix a thought they had that they fear might be blasphemous or offensive to God.

Sometimes, this fear is disguised in such a way that it may not appear to deal specifically with Scrupulosity. For instance, in my own life, I used to keep a detailed record of how I spent all of my time, including what I was wearing and what I ate, to keep myself from sinning by wasting time.

Bottom line, if you are doing something because you are scared and/or trying to prevent a negative consequence from happening and you have OCD, there’s a good chance that it is a compulsion.

A healthy relationship with religion doesn’t involve fear

If you are a person with Scrupulosity OCD who wishes to remain religious, there must be a huge shift from completing behaviors out of fear to completely abandoning fear-based obedience. 

Because here’s the truth: healthy religion isn’t fear. Doing things because you’re scared isn’t faith. And if you continue to do so, you won’t be able to recover from OCD.

It can be difficult – even a lifelong effort – to make this change, especially when you may hear things said at church or read things in scriptures that suggest otherwise, like how you have to fear God or repent every single day.

One of my favorite ways to combat this is to tell myself, “That’s a good idea for other people.” To heal, you have to make adjustments! And they are terrifying, but absolutely necessary.

It takes bravery to recover from Scrupulosity OCD. It takes courage. It takes faith – not fear. For more information on Religious OCD, check out this resource.