The Constant Questioning: Did I Do Something Bad? Did I Do Something Wrong?
Dear Nicholas, I just ran across an article that describes so well the weird kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder that has troubled me since age five: moral OCD, also known as scrupulosity. It’s the daily question: did I do something wrong? Identifying it as abnormal can be an enormous relief. I think a lot of people could be helped by knowing this.
Bonkers!
I wish I had known as a child that it was wacky. I didn’t realize that until I was fifty and got medication. Before that, I thought everybody had daily damaging guilt-ridden questions but others just managed them better than I did.
Here’s the link. The article really makes clear the difference between this ailment and normal moments of self-recrimination.
“Moral OCD disrupts someone’s life and takes up a lot of time. Someone with moral OCD may go to the grocery store, leave and worry they accidentally didn’t pay for something in their cart, which would make them “bad” and a thief. This could lead them to check the receipt again and again and even go back inside and insist on paying for the item again….” This is not an extreme example.
I remember as a kid playing Monopoly and having to count over and over the number of squares I was supposed to move. I feared getting it wrong, which would mean I was cheating.
Cheater?
As an adult, I remember thinking I might have done something wrong on my county taxes and thinking this would bring permanent shame on my whole family. I remember inexplicable severe upset over why I wasn’t doing more to stop war in Bosnia.
The hardest part for me has been thinking–over and over and over– that I might have damaged someone or hurt their feelings decades ago. That can be really hard to shake. And someone trying to assure me that I’m a good person doesn’t work.
Relief!
But I have had good meds for the last twenty-seven years and they are about 90% effective. I am so grateful for this. The problem is now at worst a little jab or background simmer of feeling that at some time in my life I have let this or that person down or hurt their feelings.
But scrupulosity is little-known and can even be seen as a viritue. My first-grade teacher told my mother she had never seen a child with such a highly-developed sense of right and wrong. It isn’t a virtue; it’s a disability.
The Catholic Church has long recognized extreme fear of sinning as illness. See “The Struggle With Scrupulosity.”
The International OCD Foundation has a nice succinct description. And psychologist Reid Wilson offers in his books some innovative paradoxical ways of relieving OCD.
But mainly OCD is seen only as extreme feelings about order and neatness. A popular awareness of the extreme fear of doing wrong could help a lot of people.
Peggy
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: do something bad, do something wrong, extreme fear of doing wrong, extreme fear of sinning, extreme feelings, guilt-ridden, hurt their feelings, kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, moral OCD, order and neatness, Reid Wilson, relieving OCD, scrupulosity
Comments
Oh how glad I am that I don’t suffer that… but I’m sorry that you do, Peggy. We don’t know each other well, but I doubt you would ever do or say anything to offend me.
Well, I sure don’t want to, Judy! And I’m pretty much okay these days (except the stress of caregiving brings it back a bit.)
Dear Peggy, more than any other of your recent posts, this one demonstrates the wisdom of your writing them as letters to your therapist! (It also demonstrates your skill as a self-therapist.)
Your reference to the Catholic Church reminds me of David Lodge’s novel “How Far Can You Go” (retitled “Souls and Bodies” by an American publisher), which my wife and I are almost finished reading together (by listening to the audiobook downloaded from the National Library Service’s BARD) and laughing ourselves to sleep over each night.
The Lodge novel is about this scrupulosity stuff, Moristotle?
Peggy, the novel does depict some young English Catholics in the 1950s and 1960s as SCRUPULOUSLY trying to follow the Church’s rigid rules about the avoidance of pleasures (so as to avoid going to hell). But others lose their Catholic faith as they strive to juggle the disorientating pressures of sexual desire. I admit I’m not making a strong case for having mentioned David Lodge in my earlier comment. But the novel does deal with issues that you yourself have dealt with in your own novels.
Thanks. Sounds like I might be pretty interested.
So good that you explained the difference between this OCD variety and the sense of right and wrong. I think many of us struggle with the blurry lines between various normal everybody-has-these-kinds of feelings and when they become harmful to us. Sadness is one that I was thinking about yesterday- it’s such a recurring theme in our family because Sad Things Did Happen…. but some of us appear to have a harder time letting go of them, and some of us seem to make the sadness a part of our up-front selves. Not because we want to, but because it seems like a form of penance for the event that was sad, which in some (usually wrong) way we feel responsible for.
Sorry about the sadness. You seem to handle it well. Interesting point about the blurry line applying to other areas of emotional life. Hadn’t thought about that.
Hi Peggy,
Care Giving is definitely hard – am I doing it right? am I bad because sometimes I feel angry? i’m not taking care of myself and that makes me sad, So many things happen to us that we feel we can’t control. But you have such a great sense of who you are and you have a loving relationship with Dr D. Be kind to yourself. You really are enough.
I love that you openly share what you’re feeling because many of have these feelings but cannot save them. Thank you
Thank you, Marie. This stuff has come a little more to the forefront lately with the stresses of caregiving. At least I’ve stopped fearing drug mistakes. I know I’m doing the best I can. (Though my best has gotten a little less good lately.) You’re saying that you’re not taking care of yourself?
Thanks for sharing this Peggy. It’s a huge burden for a lot of people I love. Glad you also mentioned how OCD has become shorthand for keeping things clean and organized — but it is soooo much more. Insidious and intrusive thoughts. Painful rewinding of memories. All of us have moments with it, I think. But for many it is a true torment.
Thanks, Ruth! Some people do have neatness problems to a pathological degree, but that’s the only kind of OCD that most people know about. There is also this other expression of it. One good thing about it (sort of): I have almost no normal worry. It all gets funneled into this kind of unnecessary guilt.
Thanks, Peggy. I know you are aware of all the caregiving I’ve had to do. Marie had it right, especially the occasional anger… and then guilt. We know you are doing your best, and I’m sure Bob knows it – and is very appreciative!
You did an enormous amount of caregiving, Judy, and of hospital room time. And I’ll bet your efforts were much appreciated. Bob has been so wonderful through all this.