Religious OCD and Scrupulosity: When Faith Becomes Fear.
One of my favorite topics to help people with in counseling is religious anxiety, which is often known as scrupulosity. I get the opportunity not just to help somebody break a bad habit or begin to resolve a fear, but I get to be a part of a process where they discover joy in their faith. This joy comes without having to cut corners, leave the faith, or adopt a loose doctrine.
In my experience as a therapist, people struggling with religious scrupulosity are asking some variation of these three broad questions:
Am I going to hell because I didn’t get something right?
Have I messed up God’s will for my life through my sin, by not hearing His voice, picking the wrong career, or choosing the wrong partner?
If I don’t pray, confess, or attend services, does that mean something bad is going to happen?
Everyone struggling with some form of these questions has a story that makes one of them feel like a raw nerve whenever it gets triggered. These are not simply questions about a person's faith; they are symptoms of Religious OCD.
The Vicious Cycle of Religious OCD: Why You Can’t Dig Your Way Out
When someone comes to me struggling with these obsessions, I know that they are hoping I can do something that nobody can do. It's like they have been digging a hole, believing that if they just dig deep enough with their shovel, they will find the perfect theological answer or a specific verse that finally gives them peace.
They sit on my couch or talk with a pastor, hoping we will hand them the shovel that will defeat all shovels. They hope we will help them dig for the bit of information or reassurance they’ve been searching for all along. I anticipate this every time. Treatment that works for this kind of stuckness looks more like putting the shovel down rather than grabbing a bigger shovel that digs even better.
As you recover from Religious OCD, you learn to rest in the character and sufficiency of God rather than your own. You learn to accept some mystery about how God works without needing to resolve it. If all goes well, you learn how to enjoy God as a father and a friend rather than constantly fearing the consequences of getting something wrong.
Why Your Struggle is Not All Loss
Many mental health professionals who have read the writings of Martin Luther believe he likely struggled with religious scrupulosity, a subtype of OCD. It's fascinating to consider how his potential struggle with OCD was a big part of the Reformation. It is important that we see that our struggles are not all loss. They are often both our weakness and our greatest strength, and God has the power to redeem all of it.
The late Christian psychiatrist Gerald May demonstrates the potential power of a Christian’s struggle with anxiety:
“Many times I have seen people forced by anxiety to confront issues of meaning, consciousness, self, and God in ways that have led to deep spiritual openings, levels they would never have faced had they not been deeply distressed with their lives.”
- Care of Mind/Care of Spirit
OCD doesn’t respond well to logical arguments about the content of what you are struggling with. For that reason, I want you to consider a story from scripture rather than a theological argument.
“When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, ‘You will all become deserters because of me this night...’” — Matthew 26:30–35
Peter desperately wanted to get it right. Yet Jesus looks at him and the other disciples and says, you are going to mess up, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it. Try your best to not let your mind go down a rabbit hole of theological arguments about predestination or free will right now.
Faithfulness is the goal, but our perfect faithfulness is not totally up to us. And there is grace for that. The only way Peter and the disciples could have avoided the agony they felt after denying Jesus would be to never have known Him at all. They could have remained fishermen who never went on the great adventure of knowing God in the flesh. Those who struggle with religious anxiety often take this route out of pain by distancing themselves from God so they don’t have to feel the pain of messing up. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Finding Peace: A Prayer for Scrupulosity
I will leave you with this prayer from Eugene Peterson:
“I am grateful, God, that your plans do not depend upon my loyalty, that your salvation is not contingent on my steadfastness. Your resurrection takes place anyway. All praise to you, O God. Amen.”
If this is you, please know that you don’t have to stay stuck in misery. It’s hard work, but you can reach a place where your faith is more of a source of strength and joy than of fear and dread.
If you want to read more about how treatment for OCD works, please read my article about treatment: Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Therapy for OCD: A Simple Guide
About Tyler Slay
Tyler Slay, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor based in Madison, Mississippi. He specializes in treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anxiety disorders, and trauma. Tyler offers Christian counseling for clients who want therapy to align with their faith or who are seeking a faith-integrated approach to mental health.
He has completed advanced training through the International OCD Foundation and uses evidence-based treatments including Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Tyler provides therapy for children, teens, and adults across Mississippi, both in person and via telehealth. He also works with clients struggling with perfectionism, boundary-setting and assertiveness, family conflict, pornography, anger, failure to launch, relationships, depression, autism (Asperger’s), social skills, tics, PANS/PANDAS, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs), including skin picking & hair pulling disorders.
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