While you may be here due to guidance from your priest, pastor, or other religious leader, scrupulosity is a sub-type of OCD that can latch onto morality, either from a specific religious standpoint or from a moral standpoint. This subtype drives us to experience excessive guilt and feelings of responsibility, ruminate about accidentally harming or offending others, and constantly question if we really are a good person. We might compulse through prayers, reassurance seeking, avoiding situations we think might harm others or the world, take extra precautions to try to mitigate potential harm, confess or tell others about things we think we may have done, rumination, Googling, and many other ways that OCD convinces us will finally resolve our doubts.

While traditional talk therapy may provide temporary reassurance and feelings of relief, it can ultimately worsen symptoms through strengthening the doubt. I specialize in the treatment of scrupulosity through Inference Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT). You may fear that engaging in treatment for scrupulosity will lead you not to engage with your faith or other moral causes that are important to you. On the contrary, treatment can help you reach a place of engaging with your faith or moral system out of joy instead of fear or anxiety.