Last updated on November 17, 2022  by 
Jaimie Eckert

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“I’m not sure if I really have scrupulosity or if I’m just making excuses for not dealing with a deeper spiritual problem. Does my situation sound typical for religious OCD? I mean, could you please just define scrupulosity with some real-life examples?”

This is a question I get asked all the time. Because the nature of OCD is to doubt everything, most of us doubt our own diagnosis at some point. Unfortunately, doubting the diagnosis makes it harder to give ourselves permission to let go of our spiritual obsessions and compulsions.

Case Studies to Define Scrupulosity

Because scrupulosity can vary from one person to another, some people will get online in a support group or forum, hear what others are saying, and conclude, “that doesn’t sound exactly like me. I must not have OCD. This must be a spiritual problem.”

Then they fall on their knees again and try to cure their mental health condition through more prayer and more faith.

(And God does work through prayer; but He sometimes chooses to work through therapists. See this post for more on that.)

In my work as a scrupulosity coach, I have shared spiritual advice with almost 400 people with religious OCD. As I’ve worked with them, I’ve identified seven unique scrupulosity subtypes. These subtypes are based on symptom groupings, and they help me quickly get a handle on the issues that need to be dealt with in each unique case. You see, not everyone with scrupulosity experiences intrusive thoughts. Not everyone prays a lot. Some don’t ruminate at all but are caught up in fear-based compulsions.

I don’t have space in a single blog post to describe all seven scrupulosity subtypes. But I’d like to give a few case studies of people with very different symptom groupings who were all diagnosed with scrupulosity. Hopefully, this will help you define scrupulosity in a way that includes a broader range of symptoms, some of which you’ll have, some of which you won’t.

And here’s the pragmatic point I’m hoping to make: just because you don’t have every single symptom in the scrupulosity handbook doesn’t mean you should conclude that you’ve got a spiritual problem.

(And yes, I do have an upcoming resource that will talk more about each of the seven subtypes. Keep your eyes out for that.)

So let’s dive into a few case studies.

Case Study 1: Demons, Blasphemy, and Weird Sensations

Mark* was a truck driver from Arizona. He was a kind, handsome young man who had once been a guitarist and weekend weightlifter. But now he was a shell of his former self. He no longer played music or lifted; his muscles had atrophied and the hollows of his cheeks had sunken in. As terrifying thoughts and sensations closed in on him, he resigned from his job to try dealing with the fears.

Mark couldn’t understand what was happening. He had scary, unwanted thoughts urging him to blaspheme God’s name. He experienced word-order switch-ups, where his brain would replace God’s name with Satan’s name while praying or listening to worship music. He feared demonic oppression.

Demons, blasphemy, and weird sensations symptoms to define scrupulosity OCD

Increasingly, Mark started having unusual bodily sensations. A twitch in his abdomen, an ache in his head. Small things. Things that most people would simply ignore. But Mark fixated on these sensations. He began to interpret them through a hyper-spiritual filter.

“I think the demons have entered me,” he told me over and over again. “I didn’t have my guard up enough. I didn’t pray enough. I felt it when they entered me, and now I can’t get rid of them!”

The blasphemous thoughts that coursed through his mind seemed like proof that he had sold his soul to the devil, despite having absolutely no desire to do so. He battled against these thoughts with all his might, squeezing his eyes shut, shouting “no,” blowing air out of his mouth, stomping his feet, and punishing himself by not eating.

None of these compulsive methods worked.

Mark represents a unique grouping of scrupulosity symptoms. He didn’t really struggle with moral issues, compulsivity in his spiritual disciplines, or theological obsessions. His issue was almost purely related to bodily sensations, intrusive thoughts, and the unhealthy interpretations that he made about them.

However, if we define scrupulosity as a disorder that always involves intrusive thoughts, some of us might read Mark’s story and go away concluding that we don’t actually have OCD.

Case Study 2: Sin, Morality, and False Guilt

Faye* didn’t have a clue what intrusive thoughts were. When her therapist tried to define scrupulosity and asked if she ever had unwelcome thoughts, Faye was baffled to hear about blasphemous or harm-related thoughts. She’d never experienced anything like that!

Instead, Faye found herself caught in a loop of never-ending self-doubt. She worried constantly about her relationship with God, about whether she had committed a sin, and about the morality of the teensiest details of everyday life.

For example, Faye felt guilty about touching produce in the grocery store and worried that she might need to buy it just in case she had “damaged” it. She worried that disposing of cleaning chemicals incorrectly might cause harm to sanitation workers, and she spent hours calling the trash and recycling centers just to “make sure” nobody would be harmed by the items she had discarded. During the coronavirus pandemic, she even found herself (to her great embarrassment) sanitizing public spaces that she had used, like the common elevator in her building, out of fear that she might make someone else sick and thus be judged by God for her carelessness.

Faye felt guilty about everything.

False Guilt and Morality Obsessions with OCD

She would try to pray for the sick and would feel guilty when they didn’t recover immediately. She would try to drive somewhere to take a vacation and she would feel guilty for not stopping to leave gospel tracts in every gas station she passed. And by the time she reached her vacation destination, she felt so guilty about enjoying herself that she barely did anything at all.

No matter what she did, and despite having a cognitive knowledge of God’s love and goodness, Faye felt a constant sense of spiritual doom hanging over her head. Her compulsive behaviors illustrate her severe difficulty in being able to overlook this feeling.

Faye is an example of someone with scrupulosity who struggles predominantly with false guilt and its related compulsions. But again, if we define scrupulosity only in these terms, we might be missing other patterns that often emerge.

Case Study 3: Pure O and Religious Themes

Ryan* was a college student in Nebraska who had taken a semester off to try dealing with his scrupulosity. Things were getting out of hand. It was easy for him to define scrupulosity as it applied in his life: it was a constant round of impossible-to-solve obsessions.

By the time I’d met Ryan, he had been analyzing his salvation from every possible angle for years. He was afraid of committing the unpardonable sin, of not having enough faith, of being prideful, of becoming a reprobate, of being insincere, of failing to confess his sins properly, and so much more.

Ryan felt extremely anxious while ruminating on these themes. His thoughts would completely derail him from life (hence, his need to take a semester off from university). He didn’t enjoy these thought loops, but they felt urgent and important, as if he could lose his salvation if he didn’t “figure out” his fears. Ryan told me that he used to ask his pastor hundreds of questions, but after time, he said he could see the pastor visibly sigh when he saw Ryan approaching him. Ryan was tired of his endless questions, and so was everybody else.

But he couldn’t stop.

Pure O and Religious OCD Themes

Ryan didn’t have many overt compulsions. He wasn’t the type to kneel down in random public places to pray compulsively. He wasn’t the type to wrestle and shout “no!” to his blasphemous thoughts. His issues were ruminative in nature, a constant urge to satisfy his brain’s unreasonable demands.

Ryan’s experience with scrupulosity was mentally taxing and emotionally draining. It represents a very common symptom grouping within the world of religious OCD. But if we define scrupulosity only by Ryan’s experience, we might miss the big picture. As we’ve seen, scrupulosity can manifest in multiple unique patterns.

A Reliable Way to Define Scrupulosity

As these case studies demonstrate, scrupulosity can look different from one person to another. That’s why I believe it’s important for us to look for patterns, not specific symptoms.

In my online master class, I talk about five main patterns that everyone with religious OCD experiences. These five patterns are:

  1. Chronic Doubt
  2. False Guilt
  3. Overactive Control Tendencies
  4. Emotional Reasoning
  5. Misunderstandings of God’s Character

If we compare symptoms with each other, we need to be careful not to put too much weight in the varied experiences we each have. OCD is a shapeshifter, and it doesn’t really matter how it’s manifesting. We are all dealing with the same underlying patterns of doubt, false guilt, emotion-based reasoning, and so on.

Nevertheless, comparing and grouping symptoms can be helpful for many people, because it helps us define scrupulosity as the issue rather than spirituality as the issue. It can be much easier to accept the diagnosis when we see others suffering in the same way as us.

Let’s just be careful not to put too much stock in comparisons. Check for thought and behavioral patterns rather than symptomology, and I think you’ll find the puzzle pieces begin falling into place much quicker.

I hope this has been a bit helpful in your search to define scrupulosity. Remember to keep looking up and trusting God to carry you through to the end.

Best wishes on the journey,

jaimie-eckert-signature

*I’ve changed the names and identifying details of the people in these case studies. In some, I’ve taken liberties to combine the struggles of two people into one to make the point clearer.


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  1. I guess I know my fear. It’s pride/insecurity. I am terrified/ embarrassed to go in front of people.
    My first experience was going forward when I was 16. They asked me questions. I was horrified when I didn’t know the right answer. I was so scared, I couldn’t even hear hardly..but I thought going up basically had saved me..
    The next time a few years later, I was terrified when the preacher said ,are you sure you asked Jesus. I went home and found a tract and tried to pray the sinners prayer over and over. The following Wednesday night, still in a state of panic, I was sitting in church and I just said, I’m a sinner, I accept You. Please forgive me and save me. Something happened, although not physical and I thought He saved me. I remember thinking, all I had to do was ask.! But then. That thought came, if you don’t confess me before men, I won’t confess you. There was no invitation that night, and I walked out thinking all was lost. I actually had such fear that the memory was blocked out for months. I ended up in a stress center.
    During this time, I tried to do it the “right way”. I tried to go up in a state of panic and pray a sinners prayer but it was a mess. I didn’t really mean any of it. I ended up getting baptized again.
    After memory returned, I was in my computer room one night and I told God I was tired of worrying, told Him I believed He died for me etc,and that I accepted Him as Lord and Savior and asked Him to please forgive me and save me. Immediately the thought came that I must tell someone.. I just remember saying I’m not going to worry about that right now, I told my pastor that I had asked Jesus to save me and he said that I was already saved.
    A few years later, my husband was close,to the Lord and I wanted that! I was on my way to work and I cried out to Jesus that Imwamted Him as my Lord!! And immediately the thought came, but you didn’t ask Him to be your savior. Imrember crying out ‘And my Savior”. I had peace for weeks. I didn’t really feel I had to do anything more.
    I found your website and I can definitely see I have OCD.and sure can relate. I can’t believe how well you describe me. I have been in a state of panic for a few months though. While reading your assurance blog, I was laying in bed and told Jesus I trust what He did for me instead of what I could do for Him. Well, I meant about not asking the right way. I resisted all what ifs or rumination. But now my thoughts are, I must tell the church and be baptized again because I am prideful and God hates pride. Or I have to go forward and accept Him in front of the church. I don’t know if I am in another loop. I just want to move forward. The only thing that helps me let go is to go confess to my pastor. But chances are I will doubt again and go through the process again. Ugh
    Sharon

  2. I have gone to many therapist. I'm now 65 years old. I have prayed to God for healing, I have wondered if this was my thorn and if God doesn't heal me then He wants me to trust in Him and carry my cross. I am tired of counseling and now very expensive. I don't like to drive. How do you feel in me getting your email instead. Prayer and your emails have helped me more than counseling.

    1. Hi Debbie,
      Everyone is in very different circumstances from each other, so it’s hard for me to make one “silver bullet” suggestion that I think will work for everyone. Some people are very much helped just by reading books and blogs that speak into their experience. Others have a hard time improving without outside support and help. It really depends a lot on the severity of the OCD, the extent to which one is a self-directed learner, and the home support environment that exists. In any case, I believe that we can make progress with OCD no matter where we are and what resources we have access to. Do the best you can with what you have at hand, and God will bless!
      Jaimie

  3. Jamie, most of the stories I read about religious ocd seem to speak of situtions where someone only thinks they have seriously sinned. But what about folks who have gone through a period of having fallen into sin perhaps years? Sin does do damage to our minds and hearts. Do you have any stories where the person is dealing with real guilt but still has ocd/

    1. Oh goodness! Yes! In today’s scrupulosity Zoom group, our topic was “Haunted by Past Mistakes (And How the New Covenant Helps Us Move on).” We definitely deal with both. There is real sin that haunts us, and there are fake, fabricated scruples that also haunt us.
      Thanks for bringing this up! Very good point!
      Jaimie

      1. Here’s an image that has helped me with ruminating on past sins as well as worrying about situations where I can’t be absolutely sure (it comes from a book called theGuilt Book written by an Episcopalian reverend and a psychologist: a person sits in a prison cell in despair. Everything they ever did wrong is written on the walls in big, ugly letters that accuse them every where they look. The cell door is open, they want so much to go free, but they can’t move. Someone comes into the cell, He places His hands over the words and they disappear,He leaves traces of blood on the walls where the words have been. He turns to the person and holds out His hand. ‘Come with me, I’ve set you free’, He says.

  4. Jamie, thanks so much for this article. It's helpful knowing people have similar symptoms as mine but for a different reason. It kinda helps me not to feel so bad about the thing I find myself obsessing over. I think I've had scrupulosity for years. I thought over analyzing my spiritual walk was normal. Now that I'm older I can clearly see it wasn't.
    Do you have any testimonials of people who overcame scrupulosity/OCD or at least learned to manage it well?

    1. Yes! We are constantly cycling through new/old members in our online group coaching sessions. The outgoing members often give a few “graduation” remarks during their last session and talk about how they’ve learned to manage and move forward. I also have a few blog posts from readers who wanted to share their progress. I really should get more of those, though!

  5. Well Faye sounds just like me lol. I really struggled at the beginning of COVID…I had to confess my anxious thoughts to my office manager and family to help steady me through it…yikes! I would have the same thoughts about getting people sick and them possibly dying. It was TERRIBLE. I think false guilt is a BIG ONE for me. Then of course the evangelism and praying for the sick. Faye is my girl haha.

    1. I related a lot with Faye, too. I have actually been very discouraged lately because I don't hear/see anyone talking about having an evangelism compulsion, which reinforced my thought that it is a spiritual problem.
      I'm so thankful to know that someone else also had trouble with guilt regarding tracts and gas stations!!!!!

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