Scrupulosity

I counted on the belief that being baptized would solve the problem. It didn’t. Before I got home from church on the night I submitted to baptism the first time, the overwhelming sense that I was unworthy of God’s love and so full of sin that I was too rotten to save engulfed me like a title wave of quicksand. Over the years, intrusive thoughts that I was unsaved because of my inability to perform perfectly to a standard that I wasn’t quite sure of led to cycles of depression, hopelessness, giving up, deciding to retry, depression, hopelessness, and on and on and on. I was a compulsive confession-maker in my mid-teens. I remember feeling the compulsion and wracking my brain to think of what to say in the confession. I often resorted to “I haven’t been a good example” because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. In my late teens, I gave up. It felt useless and hopeless to try. I couldn’t gain any ground. I resorted to seeking comfort where I could find it. I did things that a person caught in the clutches of satan would do. Desiring reconciliation, I resubmitted to baptism at twenty. Consolation eluded me entirely. I’ve had two periods of peace that each lasted about two years. The last five years have been the hardest of my life. My lows got lower than I thought were possible. All of these intrusive thoughts led to a dark period of doubt, endless rumination, and trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. Words have so much power. Reading this one and learning what it means felt like a plug I didn’t know existed was pulled from my spirit, and all of the anxiety drained. I felt seen for the first time. Scrupulosity. It’s under the umbrella of obsessive-compulsive disorder but seems to affect religious people particularly. My story with this word is way too long to tell in one essay, but it’s been life-changing. Realizing that all of these terrible thoughts aren't true, that there is a name for this, that I'm not the only one, and that there is an established protocol to help is an answer to prayer. The level of gratefulness I feel is indescribable.