Convinced of the Wrong Thing: Religious OCD and Mental Rigidity 

Do your loved ones ever tell you you’re convinced of the wrong thing? That your convictions or fears are based on anxiety rather than biblical fact?

I recently had a young woman pose this question in our weekly Zoom support group. She said, “I’ve always heard of scrupulosity in terms of doubt and uncertainty. But I tend to feel absolutely sure that God is talking to me. Like a few years ago when I felt convinced that God wanted me to move to another state and live as a homeless person in order to show my devotion to Him. It wasn’t something I doubted or wavered about, I was so certain about it.” She went on to share how she continued to struggle with feeling absolutely sure that she was making up her OCD diagnosis as an excuse to sin, and absolutely sure that she needed to call off her wedding (for no clear reason except that “God told her”). 

It’s very true that religious OCD (and OCD of every type) is characterized by doubt and uncertainty. It has sometimes been called “The Doubting Disease” because the brain has a diminished capacity to feel certainty and closure to the same extent as the general population. This is why people with scrupulosity may spend excessive time ruminating about their beliefs over and over again, or obsessing about whether they are truly saved. They may develop a fixation with the unpardonable sin or think that Lesly about moral decisions. 

But here’s the glitch in the system: there are times when your brain can be very, very convinced…about the wrong thing. 

Why Do We Get Convinced About the Wrong Thing?

This anomaly can happen for several reasons. 

• Low or absent clinical insight
• Cognitive biases

Though OCD is often characterized by doubt and uncertainty, the brain’s cognitive processes can sometimes flip—producing false certainty about distorted or unbiblical thoughts. Here are some ways this can happen:

Possible Issue 1: Insight as a Sliding Scale

Clinical insight in OCD isn’t binary—it’s a continuum from clear recognition of one’s symptoms to poor or even absent insight. In DSM-5, this is specified by levels such as “with poor insight” or “with absent insight/delusional beliefs.”   

Research shows that poor insight correlates with greater severity, more treatment resistance, a longer duration of illness, and worse outcomes overall. This means a person may be absolutely certain that a compulsion or conviction is from God—because they can’t recognize or question it as part of OCD.

Low or absent insight can also manifest through what psychologists call ‘inferential confusion’—a reasoning style where the mind treats imagined scenarios as though they are factual. Instead of doubting the thought, the person becomes certain of the imagined possibility, treating it as a real risk. Such certainty overrides sensory evidence or logic and makes it harder to recognize the OCD distortion.

Now, bridging to the spiritual side of things (because as you know, I am not a therapist or mental health specialist)–I have tried to think of this in spiritual terms. How can it be that a person could have a terribly illogical and objectively untrue conviction about reality? Psychologists call this delusional or low/absent insight.

Perhaps Scripture would call this spiritual blindness.

Blindness to our own dire situation is what characterizes the beginning of every conversion story. At some point, God’s grace awakens us to see our own need. But there is not merely one awakening. There can be many awakenings throughout the lifetime as God breaks open new vistas before us. Sometimes these new vistas are full of hope and purpose that cause our hearts to soar. Sometimes they are ugly and broken pictures of ourselves that lead us to the foot of the cross.

What if you are spiritually blind to your current situation with OCD? Are you absolutely convinced that it’s God talking to you, when it really isn’t? Perhaps opening your mind to new and different explanations is the way forward. There is no shame in admitting you can’t see, because Jesus came to bring light to those who sit in darkness.

Possible Issue 2: Cognitive Biases

There are a number of faulty modes of thinking that can cause us to be convinced about the wrong thing. For example:

The Overconfidence Effect

You have probably heard that most people tend to feel overly confident about their abilities and opinions. Most people think they know more than they do and think they are right more often than they actually are. There is a strange plot twist to this when it comes to OCD, though–because you are probably thinking, “Hey, I don’t have that much confidence in myself. I’m always doubting myself. I can’t even remember the details of an event from yesterday! How could I possibly be guilty of the Overconfidence Effect?”

Interestingly, individuals with OCD can get tripped up because of an overconfidence in their threat evaluation skills.

For example: a blasphemous thought enters the mind. Average people think, eh, whatever. That was just a weird thought. And they let it go.

People with OCD get immediately triggered. They think, That was a terrible thought! It must mean something really awful about who I am as a Christian! They view that blasphemous thought as a bad and very dangerous thing, and become fixed in their estimation of the threat that thought represents. They don’t easily back down. They don’t easily let the thought go. Their minds are overconfident in the estimation of what they fear.

So they go to therapy and their therapist starts talking about things like, “It was just a thought. Sit with the ick and let the thoughts just pass by. Don’t argue with it.” They struggle to follow this advice because a stubborn little part of the mind says, “I know better. I know with absolute certainty how risky it is to ignore this thought.”

It’s the Overconfidence Effect, with a twist.

The Introspection Illusion

The introspection illusion is a bias where people believe they can understand their own internal states (motives, reasons, feelings) through introspection better than is actually possible. At the same time, they assume others can’t possibly know them as well as they know themselves.

OCD is, in general, a morbidly introspective disorder. We get stuck in our heads…a lot. But add to that the cognitive bias of thinking that you can actually understand yourself and your inner state when you get in there? That is a recipe for disaster.

Many people with scrupulosity analyze their internal states–things like apathy towards spiritual things, lack of confidence or anger towards God, or faulty motives–and they assume they are able to judge themselves properly. In reality, something like “spiritual apathy” could come from a variety of causes: burnout, spiritual backsliding, mental health crisis, or use of certain medications. The person who tries to understand the cause for their spiritual apathy through introspection is first of all missing the fact that some things cannot be ascertained through introspection (such as the actual biochemical effects of taking a certain medication). And secondly, they are missing the bias that is inherent in introspective self-judgment. Most people are either too lenient or too hard on themselves. It is for this reason that the Apostle Paul wrote,

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God.

1 Corinthians 4:3-5

Emotional Reasoning

This bias assumes that feelings are facts: “If I feel guilty, then I must have sinned,” or “If I feel afraid, God must be warning me.” In scrupulosity, emotions often run hot, and the brain mistakenly treats them as reliable evidence. Yet research shows that emotional reasoning can distort perception, leading to certainty about things that aren’t objectively true.

Emotional reasoning is a somewhat different issue than the introspection illusion. With the introspection illusion, one is trusting themselves to make the correct judgment call. With emotional reasoning, one is trusting the emotions with unquestioning faith in their ability to provide true indications of reality.

I was personally caught many times in the riptide of bad emotions. If I felt inexplicably sad, I would assume God was disappointed with me and was withdrawing His presence. This would lead to frantic episodes of self-introspection as I would try to figure out what I had done wrong. Sometimes, finding nothing of substance, I would fabricate imaginary sins so that I would have something to confess. But of course, I didn’t see myself as fabricating sins. I was convinced my imbalanced perspectives were correct. In other words, I was convinced of the wrong thing.

And such faulty convictions began with the false bias that my emotions could be trusted. But as we well know,

The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?

Jeremiah 17:9

What Can We Do About False Certainty?

Recognizing that we can be “absolutely sure” of the wrong thing is humbling, but it can also be freeing. Here are a few guiding principles to help us heal:

• Practice intellectual humility. The Bible reminds us that “we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Our human perception—whether shaped by anxiety or not—is limited. Scripture urges us to stay teachable: “Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil” (Proverbs 3:7). A willingness to admit, “I might be wrong,” is a safeguard against taking intrusive convictions too seriously.

• Test impressions by Scripture and counsel. Even strong inner impressions need external checks. Paul commended the Bereans because “they searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). In the same spirit, we can pause before acting on a conviction and weigh it against God’s Word and the wisdom of mature believers.

• Seek therapy with an open mind. OCD distorts reasoning patterns in ways that often feel spiritually compelling. Working with a trained therapist, especially one familiar with OCD, can provide practical tools (like ERP or inference-based methods) that help separate anxious conviction from genuine faith. The key is going in with a willingness to be challenged—real healing often begins when we’re willing to consider that our feelings may not reflect reality.

• Pray for discernment and patience. James 1:5 promises wisdom to those who ask, but wisdom is often delivered over time and through community. Learning to wait instead of acting on urgency can itself be an act of faith.

• Accept uncertainty as part of trust. False certainty tempts us to cling tightly to anxious conclusions. Instead, Scripture calls us to rest in God’s character even when the details feel unclear: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).

Conclusion

Let me tell you Bailey’s* story. Bailey came to me several years ago for private coaching and also joined our support group on Zoom. She was in a major life crisis that she described as a “very dark time.” Her boyfriend had broken up with her and she’d gotten into a car accident in the same weekend, and suddenly she had the emergence of religious OCD. 

Bailey became morbidly obsessed with the idea that God wanted her to move to another state and marry a guy she had absolutely no attraction to. It became a “test of faith” that would prove or disprove her authenticity as a believer. 

Bailey did not want to make the move, and when she reached out to the guy to awkwardly propose that she felt God might have plans for them, he was flattered but not interested. Nevertheless, the “conviction” dogged her. She heard the young man’s name in random conversations. She saw the state name on license plates and advertisements. Every time, it felt like “signs” confirming God’s will: move to that state and marry that guy. 

Bailey’s family told her this idea was not from God, and she trusted their judgment during a season that felt dark a delusional. She knew she couldn’t trust herself. She began having very strange intrusive thoughts about God. In her mind’s eye, she saw vivid imagery of God doing violent things to her, and it felt scary. When she couldn’t trust her own mind, she chose to lean on the sound-minded people in her life who were trying to guide her back to a place of mental and spiritual health. 

Bailey worked really hard in recovery. She saw a therapist and she worked with our scrupulosity support group. She came with a willingness to question her own convictions, and she saw—bit by bit—how she had been living under the influence of OCD. The obsession to move and marry wasn’t one that we argued away—because OCD cannot be beaten by arguments—but we learned to “test the spirits,” identify it as OCD, and ignore it. 

Bailey started to feel healthy again. She began to dip slowly into the world of dating. The obsession was still there, making her feel guilty and uncertain, but she pressed forward. The obsession became quieter and quieter. Her relationship with God began to spring back as she continued to read Scripture and pray, seeking His will from a place of groundedness rather than anxiety. 

And one day she went on her first date with the man who would become her husband. So many sound, solid things confirmed that this was the man God had for her. When I saw her engagement and wedding photos, I was so thrilled. I saw a beautiful young woman who was truly beaming with happiness–a real soul-deep joy and peace in the presence of someone she really loved. No longer the cringing, fearful young woman who had proposed to a guy she loathed to imagine dating, no longer the young woman plagued by fearful, abusive thoughts about God, no longer convinced of the wrong things.

Now she was living in the joyful freedom of clear thinking.

Which is not to say that she has never had any OCD flare-ups since then. But she is doing well. And it’s been a joy for me to watch her story unfold.

My friend, you can have a story like Bailey’s. You might be convinced of something really bizarre and unusual. You might be adamantly sure of utter falsehoods. And it’s making you sick to your stomach.

Why not bring these assumptions to God and ask Him to give you spiritual eyesight? Why not come humbly to your own self-evaluation, leaving generous room for the idea that your ideas could be wrong?

The same loving Savior who opened the eyes of the blind when He walked among men will do the same for you today. He will touch your eyes and give you sight, so that you can say,

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:6

Best wishes on the journey,

*Not her real name