Finding Rest When You Struggle with Moral OCD or Religious Scrupulosity
Am I enough? Am I doing enough? These questions can haunt you in your relationships, at work, when you’re out and about, and in the quieter moments during the night. Such questions can hit even harder when they concern your faith. What ought to be a refuge starts to feel like another cage. That is the case when a person struggles with moral OCD or religious scrupulosity. Your faith is supposed to help you draw nearer to the Lord, and it ought not be a burden or something that makes you feel distant from Him. Even if you struggle with religious scrupulosity, you may not recognize it, which might only add to your distress. It can help to understand what religious scrupulosity is, how it affects you, and how to reconnect with the Lord through a deeper, authentic faith. Religious Scrupulosity and Moral OCD Religious scrupulosity may be a new term that you haven’t heard in everyday conversation. However, if you pause and break them down, the meaning starts to become clear. to God or faith. When we say a person is scrupulous, it typically means that they are quite careful and thorough, with an extreme concern to avoid doing something wrong. Religious scrupulosity, then, is when a person is thorough, careful, and deeply concerned with getting things right when it comes to being moral or fulfilling religious obligations. A person with religious scrupulosity obsesses about moral correctness. They will often experience deep fears and doubts that they are not faithful enough to the Lord, that they are sinning, or that they are failing to meet their religious obligations in some way. One of the challenges of religious scrupulosity is that the individual feels like a failure despite their best and sincere efforts at practicing their faith. This condition [...]
