VOLUME 13 |ISSUE 3 |2022 5
we were obedient (Monson, 2013). It seemed I was the only
person who did not. I had joined the church after having been
promised it would give me a place to belong and a connection
to God that would assure me of His love. I was told Jesus could
make my sins “white as snow” (Isa. 1:18) and yet, I felt the
wrongness lurking within me, like a cancer on my soul.
During my seven-year tenure as a devout Latter-Day Saint, I
did all I could to be a good Mormon girl and hide or disguise
the wrongness in me. There was rarely a day that I did not
have something church-related to attend to. I cleaned the
church buildings, held multiple callings, paid a full tithe, gave
up my love of tea, attended the temple, fasted regularly,
signed up for every service project, served homemade
meals to the missionaries, studied scriptures daily, had a
very popular Mormon blog, prayed many times each day,
and, yes, I wore the special Mormon underwear. When I did
not want to do one of these tasks, I was sure it was Satan
attacking me, exploiting the wrongness within me, luring
me to disobey the church and anger God. I would push the
wrongness, Satan, my emotions and doubts aside, as I dove
deeper into my church service. I held fast to the hope that if
I worked harder and were more obedient to church leaders
and commandments, I could finally absolve myself of the
wrongness I felt inside.
LDS policies against LGBTQ+ people made me realize how
much of myself I had hidden
The pressure to tick all the boxes to be deemed worthy and
keep every commandment was immense. I had daily panic
attacks and frequently contemplated leaving the church, but
the promise of a path to being lovable kept me from straying
too far. However, in 2015, the LDS Church announced several
policies that were openly discriminatory against LGBTQ+
people (Weaver, 2015). In addition to being infuriating, these
policies also made me realize that no one would ever be good
enough within the LDS Church. Mormon policies and doctrine
condemned people for who they are and for failing to reach
the unattainable standards set by the LDS Church.
My mind had long convinced me that there was something
wrong with me, but the policies the LDS Church enacted in
2015 began my realization that Mormon doctrine and culture
were designed to cast all but an extremely select group of
(cisgendered, heterosexual, male) people as fundamentally
inadequate. The LDS Church has long taught that sex is only
acceptable between a married couple. However, the 2015
policies made marriage between people of the same gender a
sin worthy of excommunication. D. Todd Christofferson, of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles within the LDS Church (one
of the highest positions in the entire church), called same-sex
marriages “wrong” and a “serious kind of sin” (Weaver, 2015).
Anyone who was in a same-sex relationship would be barred
from the temple, serving in a calling, or participating in sacred
ordinances (Weaver, 2015). I was appalled at the thought that
a gay person would be told they and their children had no
path to God, and no place within the LDS Church, unless they
renounced the most fundamental parts of themselves. This
was completely in contradiction to what I believed about God,
love, and humanity. This was not a path to God I wanted to be
on.
In recognizing the hypocrisy and discrimination the LDS
Church was showing towards LGBTQ+ people, I realized how
much of myself I had hidden since joining the church. I had
forced myself to keep quiet about things I felt were wrong, and
my self-loathing had intensified as I struggled to quiet doubts
and questions that were not acceptable within the LDS Church
or its culture. I still felt the wrongness within me, but I was
finally ready to stop trying to purge it from myself. Perhaps I
was perpetually unlovable, but I was willing to accept this if
doing so allowed me to have my life and my mind back within
my own control.
I came to understand the wrongness I felt through a
psychotherapy training about scrupulosity OCD
I had attained my master’s degree in social work while still an
active member of the LDS Church. I joked that I had chosen
this career because it allowed me to help people for a living.
In truth, I had hoped that having a career helping others
would allow me to further hide the terribleness within me. It
took me a long time, and a lot of psychotherapy, to process
all that led me to join the LDS Church, remain for so long, and
eventually leave. I had been labeled as anxious since I was
a young child, but it was only as I attended psychotherapy
that I truly understood what this meant and how it had
affected my life. I recognized how my anxiety had manifested
in self-loathing, and this had led to my belief that there was
something fundamentally wrong with me that caused me to
be unlovable. This new understanding led me to reconsider
nearly every aspect of my relationship to the world around
me. It was an overwhelming, terrifying, and beautifully freeing
process.
My passion for helping others continued, but I found different
ways of channeling this passion that best suited me. I wanted
to help others struggling to find peace within their own
minds. I pursued my clinical social work licensure and pursued
further education to become a psychotherapist myself.
I was appalled at the thought that a
gay person would be told they and their
children had … no place within the LDS
Church, unless they renounced the most
fundamental parts of themselves. …This
was not a path to God I wanted to be on.

ICSA TODAY 6
I inadvertently came to understand the wrongness I had felt
within myself in a new way during a training I attended. Dr.
Edna Foa and her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania
presented a brief course on obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD) and its many subtypes. To my surprise, I recognized
myself in the course materials. What I had deemed to be
wrongness was an obsession about being a terrible person,
unworthy of love or belonging. High-control groups so often
promise to fill voids or vulnerabilities we feel in our lives or
in ourselves. For me, religion had given me compulsions to
soothe the intolerable anxiety that my obsession with being
a bad person caused (Foa &Franklin, 2001). I had been a
licensed mental health professional for six years, and this was
the first time I had ever heard of scrupulosity OCD.
Scrupulosity is a term used to describe a specific manifestation
of OCD. in which the person becomes overwhelmed
(obsessed) by near constant thoughts about right and wrong
or being a good person or a bad person. It is often, but not
always, associated with religion:
...scrupulosity is best regarded as a pattern of beliefs
and behaviors associated with excessive worry about
having committed a sin or engaging in immoral acts.
Concern may focus either on thoughts or actions
already taken or the possibility of committing sins
in the future. This results in significant emotional
distress, guilt, and despair. (Seay, 2012)
This obsession leads the person to engage in specific
behaviors (compulsions) that they hope will help to prove
or solidify their goodness. Depending on the person,
the compulsive behaviors can take the form of excessive
confessing, hours of praying each day, or fixating on details of
specific rituals. They may seem to be the only way the person
can find relief from the anxiety their obsession produces
(Hershfield, 2018). Ultimately, the relief derived from the
compulsion is short-lived. As a defining feature of OCD, the
obsessive thoughts will return, and the person will again be
tormented by the anxiety until they perform the compulsion
perfectly. This is the never-ending cycle that plagues those
with OCD (Foa, 2010).
As I write this, I am worried I have not sufficiently explained
scrupulosity OCD. I fear that those who read it will not
understand or will think I have intentionally confused them.
My anxiety tells me this will lead to people thinking I am
stupid and a bad therapist. All my colleagues will lose respect
for me, and I will lose everything I have worked for. My
anxiety is screaming at me to go back and fix the preceding
paragraph. Surely, this is the only way I can avoid the demise
of my career. If I were to go back, I would inevitably find more
things to fix. This article would never be finished. I take a
breath and remind myself to move on. My war against anxiety
may never be over, but it is getting easier to win the battles,
and I am learning to be okay with that.
High control-groups offer a mirage of relief from anxiety
In retrospect, both as a person who has been treated for OCD,
and as a clinician trained to understand and treat the disorder
in others, I see that the comfort I sought in diving deeper
into my LDS orthodoxy was actually the spurious reassurance
that compulsions often give those plagued by obsessions.
The relief I was seeking was not God’s confirmation that I
was doing enough to overcome the wrongness it was the
temporary relief of anxiety that compulsions provide. It is the
same relief I find in locking the door three times to ensure it is
truly locked.
Locking the door multiple times is a somewhat stereotypical
compulsive behavior associated with OCD (Ladouceur, 1996).
For those with scrupulosity OCD, specifically in regard to
religion, obeying commandments, following authorities, and
doing whatever may be necessary to be good are equally
enticing and necessary compulsions. Failing to do so can
cause tremendous distress and diminished functioning
(Greenberg, 2010).
While I was Mormon, I did not understand my anxiety. I only
knew the desperation I felt to soothe it. People outside of the
LDS Church told me it did not make sense that I was pinching
every penny so I could ensure I was paying a full ten percent
of my income to the LDS Church each month. It also does not
make sense that I was filled with crippling anxiety if someone
did not smile at me at church, and this would cause me to
become convinced that they, and every other person in the
world, hated me. Anxiety does not make sense. It does not
care about logic. When anxiety takes hold, all that matters is
finding relief.
High-demand religious groups often promise relief from
anxiety in the form of everlasting peace. I would sing hymns
such as “Be Still My Soul” and cling to the hope that I could
feel such stillness in my soul.2 Church leaders would tell me
peace was possible if I prayed more, followed commandments
more obediently, and did all I was told to do. When such peace
eluded me, it was always my fault. In reflecting on this now, I
see how a high-control group such as the LDS Church presents
a mirage of relief from anguish that is tantalizing to those
desperately seeking it. High-control groups seem to offer
answers and clear paths. When the group then fails to deliver
on such promises, it is easy to place the blame on the person
who is seeking. The person perpetually feels close to attaining
the comfort they seek, and so they are willing to do yet
another thing, in hopes this might bring them to their goal.
I had been a licensed mental health
professional for six years,
and this was the first time I had
ever heard of scrupulosity OCD.