Most Effective Therapy for Religious OCD: ERP
Treatment for OCD does not violate your religion.
We preserve your faith and turn down the volume on your OCD.
Religious OCD, also known as scrupulosity, is a unique subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder that involves intrusive thoughts, fears, and compulsions related to religious beliefs.
Understanding Religious OCD
Imagine having unwelcome thoughts and fears about your faith or religious practices constantly looping in your mind, despite your best efforts to get rid of them. This is the reality for yours struggling with religious OCD. These intrusive thoughts can center around concerns about morality, sin, blasphemy, or religious rituals, leading to significant distress and anxiety.
Seeking Effective Treatment
Breaking the cycle of religious OCD requires evidence-based treatment such as Exposure Response Prevention Therapy (ERP). ERP involves gradually confronting feared situations or thoughts while refraining from engaging in compulsive behaviors. By working with a qualified therapist who specializes in OCD, yours can learn coping mechanisms to manage your symptoms effectively.
Podcast – Bossing Up: Overcoming OCD
In the podcast series on Religious OCD, Erin H. Davis, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and OCD Specialist, shares insights and guidance on navigating religious OCD. As a Christian herself, Erin understands the delicate balance of integrating exposure and response prevention strategies with faith-based beliefs. She emphasizes the importance of seeking professional help and not attempting to tackle OCD on your own.
Overcoming Religious OCD
You can challenge your OCD thoughts without compromising your faith or values. Through tailored exposure exercises aligned with your beliefs, you can gradually confront your fears and reduce the grip of OCD on your lives. It's essential to involve loved ones in the therapy process to ensure they provide support without inadvertently reinforcing your OCD behaviors. Your family ultimately wants to help you
Embracing Compassion and Forgiveness
One crucial aspect of overcoming religious OCD is cultivating self-compassion and understanding that intrusive thoughts do not define your spirituality or relationship with a higher power. Recognizing the distinction between OCD-driven fears and genuine religious practices enables you to navigate your beliefs with a sense of clarity and peace.
Looking Ahead
As we continue our journey in understanding and addressing OCD, it's vital to destigmatize mental health challenges within religious communities. Seeking professional help, engaging in supportive communities, and practicing self-care are essential steps toward recovery and wellbeing.
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In conclusion, navigating religious OCD involves a delicate balance of faith, therapy, and self-compassion. By embracing effective treatment strategies, challenging intrusive thoughts, and fostering a supportive environment, you can move towards overcoming the challenges posed by religious OCD. Remember, you are not alone in your journey, and there is hope for healing and growth. Stay resilient, seek help when needed, and continue to boss up against OCD.
*This is an affiliate link. Make a qualifying purchase of at least $30 within 30 days and we both get $30!
Religious OCD Part 3
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We're partnering with NoCD to raise awareness about OCD. OCD is more than what you see on TV and in the movies. Imagine having unwanted thoughts about your relationship stuck in your head all day, no matter how hard you try to make them go away. That's Relationship OCD. It comes with unrelenting intrusive images, thoughts, and urges about your partner or loved one.
Breaking the OCD cycle takes effective treatment. Go to N O C D dot com to get evidence based treatment.
How to overcome religious OCD. Wow, like quite an interconnection between religion and obsessive compulsive disorder. Such a tricky balance in finding those exposures and response prevention strategies and activities that challenge the OCD. yet align with your faith. Now, we know with OCD that it attacks the things that you [00:01:00] cherish and value the most.
So it makes sense that religious OCD may be a theme for you or something that you've struggled with in the past.
Hi, I'm Erin, Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and OCD Specialist. I'm also a Christian, wife, mom to three, and small business owner, helping those who are overwhelmed by stress to climb out of that valley and enjoy the view. Reheat your coffee and pop in your AirPods to learn how to boss up to OCD.
And it feels like spring has sprung. It's mid March. We're about to have St. Patrick's Day. We're about to have Easter, all the things. Spring is one of my favorite times of the year because we've also got baseball season happening. It's right around the corner, not even around the corner, because we've got baseball and softball season happening.
So much fun.
And so you can find me on the baseball [00:02:00] field on the spring weekends, and there's no place I'd rather be. It's a lot of fun watching my boys play baseball. It's also a lot of fun watching my niece just kill the ball in softball.
But in getting prepared for the weekends, if you have followed my show all this time, you know that I appreciate healthy eating. And so I do the same for my family and the way I go about preparing that, I pretty much have my go to snacks. Like we've got fruits, we've got gluten free pretzels, we've got.
Go gurts, all sorts of, healthy, protein based snacks. And what I do, which is a little trick I've learned, and it's so gratifying to get a discount or a kickback I know all the baseball. Moms out there, we like to have a good deal. And so some of the great deals I've found is I'm using this app called Rakuten.
And with Rakuten, I [00:03:00] go onto the app and I shop on Walmart. I do my Walmart pickup order because it's so much more convenient to shop online and do a pickup from the parking lot. And I love how our Walmart is very quick with getting my order out to me. And makes it super easy to just add all my fruits and oh and then protein bars.
I add that on there to my grocery list. Do the checkout through the Rakuten app and by doing that I get cash back. And since we're just getting started into another baseball season I had to order my kids some new baseball cleats because you know how it goes. It's like they are growing way too fast. And so again, I go back to Rakuten and I'm on the Under Armour site through the Rakuten app and I buy my kids cleats and turf shoes both pairs for each kid.
And I do the checkout that way. And just by [00:04:00] shopping with the Rakuten app between my Walmart order and my Under Armour order, I got about 30 cash back. back. It was fabulous. So I feel game time ready and excited about these deals. And if you use my Rakuten affiliate link in the show notes, you can do the same.
And in fact, you can use that link and automatically get 30 off once you purchase so much dollar amount. I think it's like you have to spend 30 in order to get 30 that first time around, but they send you a check in the mail. And it is legitimate. I've used it for quite a while. And I first got started with Rakuten from another baseball mom.
And I am so grateful for that deal and knowing about Rakuten. . It's nice to find out about deals and getting cash back. And so that has been a great way to get cash back, [00:05:00] especially on the things that you're going to shop for and need anyway. Oh, and then even for my dog, Rosie, I get her dog food from Tractor Supply.
So I'll go to Rakuten, shop Tractor Supply and do a dog food pickup order. And there we go. More cash back. So it all adds up. And, It's nice to get a few bonus bucks. It's nice to get a few bonus bucks. Alright.
With today's episode, I'm going to be wrapping up the series about the Religious OCD or AKA Scrupulosity. And if you have triggers or if you're very sensitive to the Religious OCD topic, I just want to go ahead and put out that trigger warning. to you because I'm going to be talking about some specific examples of how we may treat or how we may talk about that hierarchy for your exposure and response prevention plan.
And all in all, today's episode is giving you an overview of what [00:06:00] an ERP hierarchy may look like or what those exercises may be. That way, because ultimately, My hope is that you can get into counseling and get the help that you need the goal of these episodes is to help give you the comfort and the confidence that you can move forward in getting the treatment that you need. I don't recommend doing ERP on your own. These are again just examples. It's not a substitute for professional counseling or medical advice.
The examples I'll be giving today are referencing more of the Christian belief, but again, I will work with you or your OCD specialist will work with you. If you are of a different belief system, because it's not on the therapist agenda to convert you to a different belief. And that's one thing. that OCD may try to lead you to believe.
Your OCD may say, Oh, if you see like an atheist counselor, they may lead you in the wrong direction. Or if you see someone who doesn't [00:07:00] have your beliefs, then they may steer you wrong. And then you're going to be condemned and you're going to be sinning. And it's like on and on your OCD will go.
You know that you can't give your OCD enough reassurance. And so you will be learning how to tolerate that uncertainty. OCD is ego dystonic, which means it goes against your values. And so it's very natural and normal and understandable for OCD to latch onto your religious and moral beliefs, because those are the things you value and that's what shapes you as a person.
Of course, OCD is going to attack this area of your life and OCD doesn't discriminate. It doesn't discriminate on your race, your ethnicity, your religious beliefs. It doesn't care.
And I want you to remember that just because you have OCD or if you have religious OCD or any other subtype, that doesn't mean you have a faith problem. Okay. You do not have a faith problem. [00:08:00] This is a mental health condition, and we know that it's one of the most misunderstood mental health conditions out there.
And that's the purpose again of this podcast to help bring awareness and on top of that, not only are we bringing awareness about OCD, but bringing to light that you need to get the right kind of treatment for OCD.
Now, it's also important to remember that just because someone follows rituals or they're very rigid in their religious practices, That doesn't necessarily mean that they have OCD. So if someone is doing a lot of giving of their time, energy and efforts to their higher power, as long as they're giving out of devotion and the kindness of their heart, and it's more of a spiritual fulfillment type of practice, that's not OCD. OCD comes into play when it's like, There is the fear because, again, you got to have those intrusive thoughts or [00:09:00] OCD brings the intrusive thoughts where it feels like you have to do certain things in order to neutralize the fear or the feared outcome.
And OCD likes to do things that are out of proportion, whether that is out of proportion of the situation or it's an out of proportion reaction. That's what OCD does.
Now, when you are working with an OCD specialist, they again, are going to do some ERP exercises that align with your beliefs. And it's not going to be appropriate, nor would it be helpful for you to do anything that goes against your beliefs. What we are challenging is the OCD itself. We are not challenging your higher power.
We're not challenging what you believe in. So what you believe in. is between you and yourself or between you and your higher power. For example, let's say you have. An intense OCD fear, or you just [00:10:00] have the OCD fear of accidentally taking the Lord's name in vain, right? Like you may go through that whole debate within your mind of checking and reassurance Hey, did I accidentally say the Lord's name in vain?
So you may do a lot of mental checking or reassurance trying to double check if you took the Lord's name in vain. Now to challenge that, it wouldn't be appropriate to force you or encourage you to say the Lord's name in vain.
We're just going to work on the actual mental checking part, or we're going to avoid the reassurance seeking. part. So does that make sense? So we don't need to expose you to sins or ask you to commit sins on purpose in order to desensitize you. There are ways to challenge your OCD and more than likely you may have another theme going on as well.
And so you're going to learn the strategies and the skills you need in order to boss up and [00:11:00] overcome your OCD. And as an OCD specialist, you have to lead the way in these exposures, because what you want to also do is show you the client how to move through these exercises. Or let's say you're the parent and you've got a kid with OCD.
Your OCD specialist will help you in building that confidence and those coaching skills to help you help your child. Let me back up for a second before I get into the exposure examples. Now, this is like a one sided conversation we have going on with the podcast right now. This would be a different dialogue if you're sitting across the room or across the screen from me, which, by the way, the online virtual therapy for exposure and response prevention is just as effective as in person exposure and response prevention therapy.
So these examples, they're just going to be general, all right, and [00:12:00] We would do these in stages and in that hierarchy I've talked about.
So there are a lot of scenarios and a lot of ways that you can address the religious OCD. And honestly, I'm, trying to be careful and mindful of your belief system. And I'm not at all trying to offend anyone or persuade you to do these exposures. What I am trying to encourage you to do is get in to see an OCD specialist.
We're partnering with NoCD to raise awareness about OCD. OCD is more than what you see on TV and in the movies. Imagine having unwanted thoughts about your relationship stuck in your head all day, no matter how hard you try to make them go away. That's Relationship OCD. It comes with unrelenting, intrusive images, thoughts, and urges about your partner or loved one.
If you think you may be struggling with Relationship OCD, there's hope. NoCD offers [00:13:00] effective, affordable, and convenient OCD therapy. NoCD therapists are trained in Exposure Response Prevention Therapy, the gold standard treatment for OCD. With NoCD, you can do virtual Live face to face video sessions with one of their licensed specialty trained therapists.
It's affordable and they accept most major insurance plans. Breaking the relationship OCD cycle takes effective treatment. To get started with NoCD, go to nocd. com slash savage.
With these examples, I hope you can understand what the intentions are behind the exposure and response prevention practices, so that ultimately you or your kid can get freedom from the OCD thoughts. Then the OCD thoughts are no longer like the master or the center of the focus. So in leading the way for these exposure [00:14:00] exercises, what we ultimately want to teach you or teach the brain or teach your child's brain is that just because we think it, it doesn't mean it's true.
And just because we feel it, it doesn't mean it's dangerous. And ultimately, like we're recognizing that Words don't have power, or these OCD thoughts do not have power over our lives, or our universe, or our spiritual beliefs, or our higher power,
for that matter.
Our OCD thoughts do not have power over our higher power. No, not at all. Okay. All right. So let's say your kid has a fear of going to hell We may do some lower level exposures depending upon their stress level before we get to the actual hell Fear and what I may do I may ask you to Draw pictures of hell.
We may [00:15:00] read Bible verses about Hell, we may also write down I hope Aaron goes to hell, and I'm okay to be in that driver's seat for that because I know that these words do not have power over my eternal life. Yeah, so even if the client were to write that. It's okay for them to write it down, tear it out of the notebook, put it in their pocket, and go home.
Because those words do not have power over the way I live my life. And that's what we are ultimately teaching you. and how to overcome these intrusive thoughts. And that's what your OCD specialist will do. Like your OCD specialist, at least this is how I operate. I'm not going to ask you to do anything that I wouldn't do myself or that I wouldn't ask a loved one to do.
The exposures will be age appropriate and [00:16:00] appropriate for your level of stress and in helping you overcome those intrusive thoughts.
All right, so let's say you've got fears about telling a lie because when you lie, that means you sin. And then when you sin, that means you're condemned by your higher power. Okay? And then your OCD will lead you to believe that you will not be forgiven. And again, it doesn't matter how many times you read scripture about forgiveness, or you go to your priest or pastor and ask about the whole forgiveness concept, like OCD doesn't care.
OCD wants you to suffer, wants you to keep getting reassurance and do the compulsions and feeding the fears. So what we will do. Is, let's say, and we'll agree upon some kind of white lie, and it may even be hard to even get to that point for a client at first, so we may do a little white lie about saying the wrong color shirt, or we'll go into a debate [00:17:00] about, I've done this many times, that the sky is
purple or green or orange or you know all the things. Even though we know logically that the sky is blue, we're not trying to lie, but we're doing this debate. Try to invite in that Discomfort and a little bit of that mental reworking of how we're handling these situations of a quote unquote white lie and it not leading to compulsions.
So we're going to be resisting asking for reassurance or we're going to. resist researching online if we committed a sin. Which leads me to my next idea here when it comes to exposure and response prevention. And again, this one is part of that trigger warning. So let's say you've got the fear of accidentally watching porn.
Now, and I say accidentally [00:18:00] because That's very different than being intentional. But let's say you have a fear of accident and this is where OCD can be out of proportion and irrational. So you've never wanted to watch porn, nor are you interested in watching porn, but your OCD will say, Hey, what if you did click on something or search something Or open that spammy email, and now you've got porn in your search history on your browser.
And then what if some of your loved ones find your computer and then Spiral, spiral spiral, right? So what the person will do is, They will go through their computer to make sure that they haven't, in fact, clicked on anything. Even if maybe their computer hasn't been open that day, or they've been or they've never searched up any type of porn related things
and so they will go through their [00:19:00] computer, they will double check, try to get reassurance that they didn't search it up, and then they may go as far as deleting their search history just to be sure. And so the exposure, maybe we're going to open up your computer. The response prevention is we're not going to allow you to double check if you have searched up any porn.
We're just gonna leave it alone. We're not gonna allow you to clear out your search history. So you see where I'm going with that? So it's we're not going to allow you to do those compulsions. And there again, I'm not asking you to do anything sinful. What I'm asking you to do is not to give in to the fear.
Now, there's also times where someone may feel like they have to say a prayer before every single activity. I know that has happened so many times where it's you have this, Ritual of you have to pray before you eat and your prayer has to be a certain prayer and you're allowed to eat [00:20:00] but let's say you are in a rush or you just get sidetracked and you start eating and you forget to pray and then it's Oh, no, am I being disrespectful to my higher power for not praying before I ate?
And now am I going to be condemned? And again, all the things. So
what we can do in that scenario is I'm not going to allow you to, first of all, do your ritualistic prayer, like maybe still say your prayer, keep your good intentions and then have your meal.
We may have a discussion about does your relationship with your higher power change because you ate a couple bites of your sandwich before you remembered to pray. What's more important here? Now I've also come across those clients who question their beliefs or question their salvation, because it's am I saved?
So they may question if they're saved and by doing that, they will try to go to [00:21:00] reassurance. Measures of looking up information, like how do I know I'm saved or they may look in the Bible to get that reassurance.
So they're going to ask their loved ones and it's like, how do I know I'm not going to hell all circles around. And so again, that exposure and response prevention is not going to allow you to ask for reassurance. And that's where we will also loop in your loved ones. And coach them and encourage them in ways to not give reassurance.
Now it's not going to be this cold, like you're cut off. I'm not going to answer your questions kind of conversation, but it's I understand that this feels stressful. So you're offering that validation. And then the other thing too, the confidence is, I know you can overcome this. I know you can get through this.
And so even if, it's one thing to. Encourage you to not get reassurance, but then it's like extra backup to teach your loved ones. And that's why it's also [00:22:00] important. To bring in mom's dad's spouses, those people in your support network so that they know how to respond to you so that they are not accidentally enabling or contributing to the OCD cycle.
So some other examples and scenarios I've come across is people worrying that someone will see them do something immoral, like through their webcam, and they second guess if they've done proper things. So that's not necessarily like a higher power scenario, but just a moral basis. And so they may cover up their webcam or they may delete all the files on their computer just to be sure that their webcam didn't accidentally record them doing something.
We're going to be preventing you from going in and checking and deleting or putting that sticky note on your webcam. We're going to take it down, let it be, and you know what, why not just do [00:23:00] something silly? Like you're not recording. I'm not saying that I'm not saying you're going to record yourself.
And again, we're not going to do anything inappropriate or harmful, but we're going to challenge those OCD fears. So why not just have your computer open? Maybe even have your computer on. don't have the webcam in recording or anything like that, but we're gonna like just have you dance around the room or sing or do something silly or something that you feel would trigger your OCD.
And that's where it's going to be unique to you. And then you are not going to delete. anything or you're not going to go in and double check if it got recorded, just gonna let it be. And you'll be surprised how quickly your stress can come down whenever you are doing these exposures for extended repetitions, for multiple repetitions.
Alright, last scenario I'm going to give here, and there [00:24:00] is like a whole plethora of religious situations or even moral examples of where your OCD could get triggered. But let's say you are a religious follower. You would normally go to church, because see, this is what OCD does. Whatever you love, OCD will latch onto it and will take it away from you.
So let's say you loved going to church, but because of your OCD fears, and maybe that fear is worried about doing something sinful at church, and then that leads to being condemned by your higher power. So then that leads to no longer going to church. So what we're going to do is whether you're online or in person, like we are going to get you to go to your place of worship, probably in gradual stages, depending upon your comfort level, and eventually get you back to sitting in that worship service [00:25:00] where you're not going to be allowed to avoid.
And you can sit through the worship service and recognize Oh, like I didn't act out.
I didn't commit a sin or hey I did accidentally misspeak or whatever may be considered a wrongdoing and finding that adaptive way to be like, I'm human. I wasn't intentionally trying to be. X, Y, or Z. I am doing my best to worship my higher power, and that's what I'm here to do.
And one silly example in thinking about these, in thinking about scrupulosity is, you remember the times when you were a kid, and you were asked to say, Sunshine City. Five times fast It's so hard to do without saying a curse word but that's like just a silly way to get your mind thinking about like We're not intentionally trying to sin sometimes and there is grace and compassion and [00:26:00] forgiveness.
We're all human yeah,
but that may be a funny Exposure you could do with your therapist or even on now that one you could probably do on your own Because it's like you're not trying to sin. You're not trying to say a curse word. It just happens you get tongue twisted
We're partnering with NoCD to raise awareness about OCD. OCD is more than what you see on TV and in the movies. Imagine having unwanted thoughts about your relationship stuck in your head all day, no matter how hard you try to make them go away. That's Relationship OCD. It comes with unrelenting intrusive images, thoughts, and urges about your partner or loved one.
Breaking the OCD cycle takes effective treatment. Go to N O C D dot com to get evidence based treatment.
Okay. In preparing for some episodes ahead I've got a special guest coming up next week and I'm gonna [00:27:00] You will learn about a free OCD support group and so in thinking about the weeks ahead next week, you're going to learn about a free OCD support group that's happening in our Huntersville area.
And I talk with my special guest, Hannah, who has had a positive experience with no CD and getting help for her OCD. And she is the one that leads that OCD support group. So come back next week to learn about her story and what, and all the good things that she's doing for the OCD community.
And as a reminder, check out the links in the show notes so you can get some of those hand picked recommendations.
I've got that Rakuten link in the show notes, so be sure to check that out, and I hope you get some awesome cash back.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Bossing Up Overcoming OCD. This information is intended to be helpful and not a [00:28:00] substitute for professional counseling. If you're struggling with any mental health challenges, I encourage you to seek help from a qualified therapist or health care professional.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and don't forget to check out the affiliate links in the show notes for free. For hand picked recommendations that can brighten your day. Your support through these links helps keep the show running and provide valuable content.
You're not alone in your journey. Stay strong, stay resilient, and keep bossing up. See you next time.
