Judo Your Scrupulosity

Many Catholics struggle with scrupulosity.

Scrupulosity hijacks the anxiety loop in your brain and keeps you from living from the heart. It can run wild if not put in check. When helping someone overcome scrupulous tendencies, I keep a couple of key insights in mind.

1. Scrupulosity is a defense like other intellect-based defenses. It spins the wheel of the mind in a giant distracting game of control, a cycle of obsessive doubt and reassurance-seeking. This is good news. It's not just some "thing" that happens to you. There is a good reason the scrupulosity is there - it is trying to protect you.
2. Once you see it as a defense, you can wonder what's underneath it. Memory healing techniques can help to unearth the root cause. The root cause is different for each individual, but it doesn't take long to make a connection to present day triggers and past unresolved memories or emotional wounds. "Parts work" can be helpful to uncover and heal the parts of us that hold on to negative beliefs and God images.
3. Deeper spiritual warfare may be helpful to renounce pride, fear, or despair getting in the way of a greater dependence on grace and openness to the virtue of hope.

At the level of habit, some exposure and response prevention (ERP) may be warranted to lessen the OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) aspects of the scrupulosity. However, typical interventions for healing memories and integrating defenses can go a long way in bringing relief.

What's on the other side?

Essentially, one learns to judo intrusive thoughts about sin as a means to focus more on God's mercy and to increase humility and hope. Judo means "gentle way" and is about adapting well to attack, or even using an opponent's strength against him to master him.

From a cognitive self-talk standpoint, it might sound like this:

"I prefer to be morally and spiritually perfect and never sin. If I sin, it's unfortunate but bearable, and it shows that I am an imperfect human being in need of God's mercy."

Instead of submitting to a paralyzing agony about my human weakness and sin, I use every intrusive thought as a means to increase my faith and trust in God's grace.

This is in contrast to the scrupulous mindset: "I must be morally and spiritually perfect. If I sin or even think I might have have sinned, it is awful/terrible/horrible, the end of the world, and I can't bear it, and it means that I am abjectly shameful, defective, doomed, etc. Therefore I have a duty to obsessively control and neutralize/compensate for any sin or possible sin. It would be crazy for me to let my guard down...morally wrong and reprehensible." Notice how the focus is excessively on my sins, my shortcomings, and my efforts.

Let's try an exercise. Imagine a pink elephant. Okay, now let's say that riding on a pink elephant is a mortal sin. Try not to think about pink elephants. Definitely do not think about riding on a pink elephant. Try really hard to not think about pink elephants. Wait, did you just picture a pink elephant in your head? Did you just think about riding that pink elephant? Quick. Think about a different image to neutralize the pure evil of that. Maybe you can try to only think about cats for the next several minutes. But, you know what happens eventually. The intrusive thought about the pink elephant will pop in your head. Going to confession will give a short term relief. But then the guilt and shame of thinking about pink elephants will come back. Trying to fight the attack gives it more power. Getting reassurance from a confessor only gives a short term relief.

Now try the judo approach. In the judo approach to sin or intrusive thoughts about sin, I acknowledge the badness of pink elephant thoughts, but I don't try to control them. I just tolerate them and offer them up to Jesus when they come. I accept myself as an imperfect human being who struggles with pink elephant thoughts just like anyone else.

I give up all brute force mental tactics of trying to control sin and focus on the one thing I can control: accepting God's grace to be the true source of my okay-ness. If I sin, it's unfortunate but not dooming. The only dooming thing is if I were to reject God's mercy.

The lesson from scrupulosity is primarily a shift of focus, from my shortcomings to God's grace.

Peace,

Dr. Marcel

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