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Scrupulosity
Scrupulosity is obsessive compulsive disorder with religious thoughts. This means hitting the repeat button in the brain over and over. Many have stubborn sins which we confess over and over. Our whole body may be clean in Jesus’ blood, but we wash our feet again and again.
My therapist is also a nun. She told me priests have complained of some members confessing certain sins repeatedly. In some people therapy and medication are needed to retrain the thought pattern.
I think we all have a bit of OCD. I can’t take a call at work, at my desk without my feet flat on the floor, sitting up straight, or I am not prepared. Who knows what might happen if I don’t do these rituals? OCD victims suffer from unrealistic fears due to unwanted thoughts. To control these thoughts they use rituals or compulsive actions. First comes the fear, then comes the response to alleviate the fear.
For treatment the patient is to know this ailment is only a short-circuit in the brain’s chemistry to make strange thoughts come up. So the cure is to accept the thought and that which starts the thought pattern. Repeating the terrifying thoughts makes them less scary. It reminds me of when you repeat a word over and over it sounds weird and not like what it means. Let the thought become so common it loses its power to torment. Likewise Tolstoy had a club where the entrance requirement was to stand in the corner and not think of a white bear. Naturally we can’t stop thinking of what we are told not to. Alternately, if you focus on something your mind will stray from the topic. This is just the way the brain works.
For those who love God this ailment can be agonizing and diabolical, for where can you go to escape your own brain?
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