CNN interview: OCD and religion

Nearly two weeks ago, Elizabeth Landau, a writer and producer for CNN's website, contacted me about an article she was writing about scrupulosity. She had found me via this blog.

She interviewed me by phone about my experiences with religious scrupulosity. I talked to her about the ways my fears of sin affected me, especially as a teenager and young adult.

Landau’s article was published today. You can read it HERE. It’s informative and paints a good picture about how this form of OCD can affect people of any religion or no religion. And it gives hope for those who suffer with this form of OCD, including a section on the use of exposure therapy.

If you do read the article, I ask that you share it on other social media such as Facebook or Twitter, or send links to friends who might benefit. Or you can share this blog post in the same way.

It is my hope that this article will help spread the word and help people feel less alone.

Some background

I went to an evangelical Christian school for high school, and the calls to be “saved” were traumatic for me because I could never be sure if I had said the prayer “right,” or if my heart was “right” with God.

I believed that I had to say all my prayers perfectly or harm would come to my family and it would be my fault. I prayed silently, incessantly, repeating myself over and over. If I made a mistake in my ritual, I had to start over.

I turned away from any hint of God or religion for years because of my experiences with scrupulosity.

I’m in a much better place now, living better with the uncertainty of faith, believing that there are many paths to God for people to choose from, or not.

You can read more about my religious OCD on this blog HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Good Friday thoughts

Tonight I attended the Good Friday service at my church. It was a quiet and meditative time, and I carried away some thoughts I’d like to share with you.

I respect people of all faiths and religions, as well as those who have no religion at all. I believe we are all connected by the same Power.

I can only speak from the belief system that I have chosen to follow, and then, even more specifically, from my understanding of that belief system.

My faith is far from perfect. Sometimes it’s feeble. My commitment to my belief system has been spotty and unreliable.

I have many issues with organized religion stemming from my religious scrupulosity, one of the manifestations of my obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I am a doubter, a wanderer. I sometimes look at others who seem to have an unwavering faith and wish I could be like them.

I am in no position to teach anyone else about how to live a good and faithful life.

I still come before the cross.

I come before the cross, sometimes in despair, sometimes with my unending desires to know how to live a good and meaningful life, and sometimes because there is nowhere else to go.

At tonight’s service, we had a time of meditation on the cross, and anyone who wished to do so could go and kneel before the cross to pray and meditate.

Before the cross tonight, I didn’t pray much. I just tried to absorb the moment and think about what the minister had said in prayer: that we learn from Jesus’ carrying the cross how to carry our crosses.

To each of you, wherever you are in life, God’s grace and peace and blessings.

Showing my scrupulosity

I’ve been reading a record of my scrupulosity OCD.

I recently dug out journals that I kept when I was in high school. One covers the period from June 28, 1978 to Dec. 31, 1979. I used the other one more for poetry and stories. That one runs from Dec. 22, 1978 to July 4, 1981.

I was hoping to find some insight into how I was coping with OCD at the time, and what my ideas about life were.

Do you know the writing advice, “show, don’t tell”? It means it’s better to paint a picture of something, or give an illustration of something, rather than telling it.

Well, I didn’t write directly about any of my obsessions or compulsions, but I sure showed them.

On his Psychology Blog, Dr. Steven J. Seay recently wrote about scrupulosity. One of the compulsions that people with this manifestation of OCD may display is “Compulsive writing (e.g., Jesus loves me).”

I exhibited that on many of the pages of my journals. For example, different versions of “I love God” and “Praise God” intersperse entries describing my activities, sometimes for no obvious reason.

But what was most telling was evidence of my cycle of doubt and reassurance.

Part of my scrupulosity when I was young involved the idea of being “saved” in the fundamentalist Christian way. Sometimes I felt saved; sometimes I felt I wasn’t.

And, yes, my doubt and reassurance were based on feelings. I prayed until I felt right. I prayed until I felt saved. I felt fear, sadness and doom when I didn’t feel saved.

In my journals, on Jan. 4, 1979, I wrote, “From this day forth, my life belongs to God. Thanks, Lord!”

On March 4, 1979: “I just surrendered my life to God. Praise the Lord!”

On April 24, 1980: “Tonight God told me that I am saved, was saved May 2, 1975. No more doubts.”

Ah, but on April 27, 1980: “I committed myself to Christ tonight, and I KNOW I’m saved.”

I didn’t ever name my doubt in writing. I suspect it was because I thought I was the problem. I was a sinful person who just couldn’t give myself over to Jesus like I was supposed to. I had no knowledge or understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I no longer have that kind of scrupulosity. I’ll write more about that part of my journey in future posts.

I learned about myself by reading my journals. It just wasn’t what I expected to learn.

Have you experienced this manifestation of OCD? Do you have old journals that offer a look at your past self?

Waiting

When I was a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time waiting.

Some of this waiting happened in actual waiting rooms, places of concentrated calm in the midst of the sadness and fear of hospitals.

I was surrounded by sickness growing up. I’m the youngest of three, with two older brothers. My oldest is 11 years older than me. My next oldest is two years older.

My next oldest brother was born with spina bifada and clubfeet. As a result, he had to have multiple surgeries as a child and spent a lot of time in the hospital.

My father had a major stroke when he was 54. I was 12 at the time. His speech and movement were badly affected, and he had to retire from his job as a rural letter carrier for the post office. Later that same year, he suffered a blood clot in one of his kidneys and almost died before the kidney was removed.

My mother also had her share of illnesses and hospital visits.

So the waiting rooms in the hospitals in the nearby city were very familiar to me.

The nicest one was at the then-private, church-supported hospital. The large main waiting room had real furniture, like you’d find in a private home. Chair railings ran along the wall. Paintings covered the walls.

There were volunteers stationed at a counter who watched over things. They were usually older women who wore the pink-jacket “uniforms” of hospital volunteers. They were called “Pink Ladies.”

Though people came and went, there was a hush over the room. No one spoke loudly or laughed or cried where you could hear. It was like a church.

At that time and in that place, my parents felt safe leaving me alone in the waiting room while they went up to be with my brother.

I always had a book with me, and I would sit and read in one of the nice green armchairs, my always-present purse tucked up against me. Sometimes, I would look up and stare at the paintings or the signs on the wall and on the swinging doors that went back into the main part of the hospital.

I started reading signs and dividing the letters into threes—my counting ritual—in that room.

If I wasn’t in a waiting room, I was usually with a relative. I grew up in the same community with many of my relatives. I stayed a lot with my father’s great-aunt or his cousin, who had two daughters near my age, or my mother’s sister.

My great-aunt made over me, and I felt safe with her. If I stayed overnight, she would sleep in the same bed with me.

I remember waking up in the early mornings. I could look out of the top of a nearby window while I was still lying down, and I’d watch the sky get lighter until my aunt woke up and then got me up.

I brushed my teeth in her bathroom and ate breakfast on her dishes and got on the school bus at the end of her driveway, feeling comfortable and homesick at the same time.

I never knew when a medical emergency would occur and somebody would have to go to the hospital. I got used to waiting somewhere.

My mother told me years ago that one morning when I was a child, I asked her, “Who’s going to keep me today?”

She said it made her feel really bad.

But it couldn’t be helped. The sick person needed her, and she couldn’t be everywhere at once.

I felt guilty sometimes because I didn’t have lots of illnesses. I thought that since I didn’t suffer as a child, God would have me be sick as an adult.

What was ironic was that even though I wasn’t physically sick where anyone would notice, I was beginning to suffer from OCD and depression.

My therapist told me that the content of OCD symptoms can be influenced by different things. I think my scrupulosity was probably affected by my life experiences. My prayers were meant to protect my family from harm and illness. They had to be said a certain way, and I had to be free from sin, or my family would not be under protection.

In a real way, though, I was praying for myself too. Because when my family got sick, I was back to waiting for someone to get well or die, for everything to be back to normal.