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Key points
- A child who suffers from OCD scrupulosity, characterized by intrusive thoughts, may not display any apparent symptoms.
- Consumed by agonizing thoughts, they may suffer guilt and anxiety, and be incapable of finding relief.
- Children may not be able to explain what they’re experiencing to adults.
Religious obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), often referred to as scrupulosity, can be very difficult to detect in a child.
I bet I looked like any other kid in church. Fidgety. Bored. Mind deathly unoccupied, eyes glancing manically, seeking any kind of stimulation. Gazing up at the stained-glass windows and looking for patterns in the abstract geometry of the rose windows; finding faces, sometimes, or monsters. Looking up at the crucifix, and wondering how Jesus kept his loincloth on when he was hanging there.
OCD's Scrupulous Intrusive Thoughts
And, then, flinching as if struck: It is obviously wrong to imagine Jesus naked in church, and it is also kind of gay, and my parents said being gay was OK, but my CCD teacher said it wasn't. But, whether or not being gay is acceptable, it is probably better not to think about naked Jesus in church, specifically in church, at least, god darn it—stop, stop, you didn’t think the word “darn,” and you know it; you were really thinking the word “damn,” and if you didn't think it, then you still thought it just now (oh goddamnit)—see, you just did it again.
My CCD class taught me thought-action equivalency: Thinking a sinful thought is the same as committing a sin. For example, if you said, "I worship the devil" in your head, that's the same as worshiping the devil, and—you just said it, which means you meant it, which means you worship the devil and you're going to Hell, even though I love God and I pray to God (you worship the devil), no I love God and I pray to God (you worship the devil), no I love God, no I love God. I am sincerely penitent—am I damned? Do I deserve it?
This was my churchgoing experience as a child. I was often wracked with ceaseless, searching anxiety and guilt. I knew my punishment for failure would be existential and eternal.
There Are No Words
Words often fail us in matters of religion and spirituality. If you had asked me how church made me feel, I would probably have given you the same answers as any other kid: "confused," "guilty," "anxious," and only very occasionally "safe and welcome," and very, very frequently "bored."
Adults were usually satisfied by those answers. I was rarely asked to elaborate, but when they were willing to listen, I lacked the vocabulary to explain the horror of what I was experiencing. “Trauma” would have been a useful word, for example. “Dysphoria.” “Destrudo” is a good one, but, at the age of 6, I was unfamiliar with Freud’s esoteric terminology for the misalignment of libidinous energies into the thanatotic death urge. The most helpful words, I think, would have been “obsessive-compulsive disorder,” and, specifically, “intrusive thoughts.”
But, at that time, I did not have that language.
"You have an overactive imagination," they'd say, which was objectively true, but also flabbergastingly inadequate. "It's just Catholic guilt," they told me, but it wasn't "just" anything: It was a matter of eternity, and divinity, and a bone-deep sense of self-contempt and self-revulsion. I was terrified of Hell, and in trying to escape it—with a child's limited grasp of theology and unlimited imagination—I charted Hell’s various chambers and corridors. For a child afflicted with a mental illness, there is no meaningful difference.
Copyright Fletcher Wortmann, 2023. Please credit the original author, Fletcher Wortmann, and Psychology Today.
