Treating scruples and/or OCD

I sent the following comment to Aimee's great Historical Christian blog and since scruples and OCD are such important topics, have posted my thoughts here also.

Dear Aimee,
I think your writings here about vocational discernment and spiritual direction are among the most accurate, beautiful, and balanced I've read on the subject. You are to be praised for your true guidance and your friend for opening the conversation.

Your reader does raise the important challenge of scruples. Priests and spiritual directors are correct to be cautious not to exacerbate a case of scruples. Yes, some of the saints suffered from scruples, but theirs was of a totally different nature than what people suffer from today. (I'm speaking as both a spiritual director and a psychiatric counselor.) Maybe I'll write more at length on my blog because this is an important topic. But for now here are a few differences to discern. In the day of the saints we did not have the high paced technological pace of the present times. So our society encourages scruples, because there is a high penalty for failure in too many situations. A moment of distraction behind the car. The feeling of "it could have been I at that accident" and so forth. And the violent and high stimulation of the surrounding media. These encourage "magical thinking" and "OCD" as kind of extended protective mechanisms. Scruples and OCD are like hyper sensitized radar. When this "radar" is pointed toward God, it is scruples. When it is pointed toward society or magical thinking, it is "OCD" (and sometimes, it is an inflated substitute for God - you see this a lot with New Age magical thinking). I had patients in the hospital who had classic OCD (counting, checking appliances and so forth) and they suffered from what I discussed above - the over stimulation of society by effect of the high potential penalties of failure in a social or technological sense (fire, accidents, so forth). To cure them I taught them how to link between the threat (which is sometimes unconscious) and a close ended way of dealing with the threat (check the stove once and then set up a sign saying that she had done so with time and date stamped, for example).

Religious scruples are similarly, an over extended radar in God's general direction, with the mistaken impression that there are danger signals in every physical and mental manifestation. Aimee very correctly shows how one's spiritual radar should correctly be pointed toward God, in an open flowing but structured by the liturgy way. The saints emblazoned the way with their candor about the pain of scruples (and the error associated with scruples) because there is the danger of Satan using what someone afflicted by scruples is experiencing. If you read about some of the saints with scruples, one would wonder why they, such holy people, experienced sometimes fierce satanic attacks. They should have been immune from those attacks. But by being afflicted by scruples, a door is opened to stimuli that, how shall I put it politely, "are not of God" but are of either humankind's weakness or of Satan's deception. Satan is perfectly capable of suggesting to a vulnerable person that counting one way is of God, and counting another way is not. Likewise a mental illness can suggest this, or overexposure to some societal trend via media. So there can be several sources for thoughts that are excessively scrupulous and tormenting. The saints did those who came after them a great favor by writing of their trials, but I think people do not think about the differences between their environment and the over stimulation of today, in the treatment of scruples.

One other way to look at this is to study those who have experienced a great tragedy and how they deal with it. How many times do we see people who lose a child, for example, establish a foundation, or join a group such as MADD, or the Center for Missing and Exploited Children as a result of their loss? That is a correct response to what could otherwise develop into scruples (looking for some chastisement or message from God in what happened, when it was a flaw of humankind and the nature of life that happened.) So that is an example of directing a high penalty event's outcome into a practical, non-scrupulous direction.

And likewise, the saints are warning people that scruples can UNDO the holy work they have done, and open themselves to attack by demonic forces. That is why priests are so cautious (properly so) about a case of the scruples, because the saints who suffered from scruples are not recommending them and in fact, are warning against scruples. Scruples are like a constantly scratched wound that permits infection to enter, instead of grace. It is also how Satan attempts to rob believers of their love and trust in God, by suggesting that God is setting traps and messages for the believer in their day to day life, which certainly is not true. Scruples drowns out the voice of the Holy Spirit and guardian angels too. As does societally induced OCD (so busy worrying about one obsessive behavior that other risky behavior is ignored or worse).