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Here are some OCD-related questions I’ve been asked by blog readers. As always, keep in mind that I’m not a doctor or a therapist, just an OCD survivor. (Note: I’ve been using the term “OCD survivor” a little bit lately, and sometimes I wonder if I “deserve” to use the term survivor— but I remember that OCD is an incurable disorder, a medical illness, and hellish torment. I’m gonna own that survivor title.)

How have medication and therapy worked hand in hand to help you?

The two of them were a dynamic duo for me back in 2008, when I underwent exposure therapy (if you’re new to this blog and don’t know what ERP or exposure and response prevention therapy is, WELCOME! You can read a lot more about this at http://www.jackieleasommers.com/OCD.). Medication, in a way, got me into a place where I was able to approach ERP. Then ERP was the heavy lifting. Since then, medication continues to keep me on the right track.

Everyone has differing thoughts on medication, but all experts agree that ERP is the number one treatment for OCD.

An imperfect metaphor: if ERP is the playing field, meds can sometimes be the bus. The real work, the real healing, happens on the playing field, but you have to be there. For some of us, we can’t get to the playing field without riding the bus. The way our bodies work won’t allow us to get there on our own.

How does OCD compare to other common mental illnesses when it comes to treatment (therapy, medication, etc.)?

This is such a great question and worthy of someone so much wiser than I am. That said, I will say that ERP is not your standard “talk therapy”– you know what I mean, right? ERP is not talking about your feelings one hour a week. It’s doing real homework every day– exposures, things that are tremendously uncomfortable– and moving on to more uncomfortable things. It’s not about being reassured or a pat on the back, and it makes you feel worse before you feel better.

But then.

Something clicks.

And everything changes.

How has OCD shaped your faith? Did you ever feel OCD was stealing your faith away with you kicking and screaming? Did you ever feel your faith wouldn’t recover? Was there ever a point where you feared you believed the OCD lies?

Likewise, If you could narrow it down to one generalization, what’s the biggest impact in your opinion that OCD has had regarding your faith?

OCD goes after what is important to a person. For me, that is my faith. Sometimes people worry about telling me the details of their obsessive themes– but, honestly, it’s hard to imagine that my mind hasn’t already gone there. I turn 35 next month. Twenty of those 35 years were spent cycling through religious obsessions. If it had to do with God or sin or heaven or hell or Jesus or … I’ve battled through it. Did I feel like OCD was stealing my faith? Yes. How did OCD shape my faith? It made it into an enslaved mockery of what faith should really look like. Did I worry my faith wouldn’t recover? Constantly. And did I believe the lies? Yes. Or enough to change my behavior, enough to ruin things, enough to no longer find enjoyment in the one who embodies joy.

One giant generalization for the way OCD impacted my faith: it enslaved me in a cage of lies.

One giant generalization for the way ERP impacted my faith: it freed me to understand the truth of grace.

God didn’t change in all this. But the way my brain is wired did, and that changed the way I relate to my unchanging God.

I know people can’t be “a little OCD,” but what about people who have obsessive-compulsive tendencies but aren’t diagnosed with OCD? Do you have advice/thoughts for that?

If the obsessive-compulsive tendencies don’t hurt, then I would encourage you to enjoy your quirkiness!

If they hurt, well, you might have OCD. Get that diagnosis and begin exposure therapy.

I would like you to describe your experiencing with OCD when it was at its worst. I believe that this allows fellow OC’ers to recognize that they are not alone.

It was bad. Really, really dark, low times. I’ve tried to detail in a few places on this blog. Check out:

* What It Was Like
* The Darkest Days
* A Portrait of Uncertainty
* OCD & Suicidal Thoughts
* What It Feels Like (yes, this is different than the first link!)

But let’s not end on a downer note, friends. There’s no reason to. Because there IS a treatment for OCD and it WORKS. After twenty years in bondage to OCD, twelve weeks of exposure therapy loosed my chains. The last nine years have been different in every way from the twenty before them. If you can relate to any of the post above, then why not start here with my message of hope to OCD sufferers?

If you have questions, you’re welcome to ask here. Anonymous questions are fine!

Is Mental Illness a Spiritual Issue?

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

The question is complicated; my answer is too.

Yes and no.

As a Christian, I believe that basically everything is a spiritual issue because I believe in a sovereign God. My particular set of beliefs means that I believe that writing is a spiritual practice for me, that the food I eat represents my spiritual discipline, that my obsessive-compulsive disorder has a spiritual purpose (one that was hidden to me for many, many years) of refining me, showing me the beauty of freedom and the glory of grace. Because I am a spiritual person, all things are spiritual to me. There is no way that I can separate my OCD from my experience of Christ because it is so clearly evident to me the way that God has worked in my life through my mental illness, recovery from it, and subsequent advocacy. I would be a liar if I tried to tried to divorce these two items in my own head and heart and speech.

But I also believe that mental illness is an illness like any other. Just as I wouldn’t hyper-spiritualize someone’s fight with cancer or diabetes or even a common cold, so I wouldn’t approach mental illness as anything other than a medical illness. I wouldn’t assume that someone got pneumonia as a direct result of their sin … or that they were spiritually unfit … or that something demonic was going on. I feel the same way about OCD and other anxiety disorders. I feel no shame– spiritual or otherwise– over my OCD, just as I wouldn’t feel ashamed if I were to break a bone. (Granted, it’s taken me a long time to get to this point; a heaping side of shame comes quite standard with your plate of religious scrupulosity!)

So, do I pray about OCD? Yes, of course. But I pray about my headaches too.

I realize that this is a touchy subject for many people, and I hope that I’ve presented my thoughts in a balanced way. Because I believe that so many people would misinterpret my “yes,” I usually bellow out a resounding “no,” but in this post, I wanted to try to delineate my thoughts on each. I’d love to hear your thoughts and continue this conversation, and I hope that you’ll extend grace to me as I try to tiptoe through this minefield!

Image credit: Unsplash, modified by me

OCD Scrupulosity: Is ERP Sinful?

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Sometimes people with religious scrupulosity fear that ERP therapy itself is sinful. It’s true that ERP therapy will definitely ask you to do things outside of your comfort zone, things that will probably make you sick. (This is how ERP works, and it is crafted specifically around your own deepest anxieties.)

But once embarked on this ERP journey, I think it’s unwise and counterproductive to try to convince yourself (or convince others … or let others convince you …) that your therapy is not sinful. (After all, the whole point of this therapy is to embrace the uncertainty!)

If you are a Christian and concerned about ERP therapy, I suggest you say a prayer like this then dive in headfirst:

Lord, I am terrified about what I am being asked to do through this therapy, and I worry that it might be sinful. But there is at least some part of me that believes this is connected to OCD, so please cover over all I have to do with your grace. I am doing these things in the hopes of restoring my right and healthy relationship with you. Please be honored by my therapy and my choice to fight for my freedom (which you won on the cross) and my relationship with you (again, made possible by the cross). Be glorified in my therapy, and cover anything sinful with your incredible grace. Make me strong enough to complete my exposures. Provide the strength I need to press through this scary therapy, and let these hard exposures and choices (that may sometimes seem wrong to me) glorify you. Amen.

There were definitely times when I (and others– wow, that was hard!) wondered if I was doing something wrong with my ERP exposures, but in my heart of hearts, I knew that this was my last and best chance at freedom and health and hope. I held onto that and pressed through, and I will tell you this: every. single. thing. in my life is better post-ERP, in particular, my spiritual life is now thriving and health

y. I am growing in my faith. I have the joy of salvation. I trust Christ more.

And I believe that ERP was God’s tool to bring me into this way of life.

To learn more about OCD, ERP therapy, religious scrupulosity, go to jackieleasommers.com/OCD.

Image credit: Fernando Rodriguez

my darkest, lowest days

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Jackie Lea Sommers

Tonight, I have been thinking about that deep, dark pit and the moments of my life when I was at the very bottom, nowhere lower to go and my head too heavy to look up. I have been thinking about the things and places that remind me of those times.

You might guess that it was those months after college graduation, when I would wander from the laundry room to look over the balcony to the pool area two floors below and think about what would happen if I let myself fall.

Or maybe that it would be one of those evenings when I was wild-eyed and manic, scream-weeping in the bathroom while my roommate sat outside the door and prayed.

But when I think of myself at my lowest, I always picture myself in the Caribou Coffee in Long Lake, Minnesota. I’d arrived to town too early to visit Orono High School, and so I stopped into Caribou off of Highway 12 (which has since been re-routed), ordered hot cocoa, and sat alone at a table. In my car I had been listening to “Spirit” by the band Switchfoot, letting the chorus hammer into me that all I wanted was Jesus … exactly whom I believed I could not have.

Interestingly, the emotion that I seemed to feel the most was this odd, lonely marvel. Don’t get me wrong– it was not good, as marvel usually is. It was this dark, lost, inconceivable wonder that I could be so damned and that there was nothing I could do about it. I sipped at my cocoa, thinking how there was no joy left available to me, no rescue coming, no prayer I could whisper to make things okay again. A marvel and a sort of understanding washing over me that this was my reality and there was no way out.

sadcoffee2

For years, I could not listen to that song (which truly is a lovely one!) without feeling a stale depression steal over me. To this day, when I drive by that Caribou, I think to that dark day. Nothing impressive or strange or particularly triggering had occurred, but it is my lowest, loneliest moment of my life.

I could not have pulled myself out of that pit. I didn’t even have the strength to lift my eyes.

(Oh gosh, I’m going to start being known as That Girl Who Cries in Barnes & Noble, LOL!)

Jesus Christ rescued me. He led me to the right medication and the right therapy and carried me out of the pit himself.

In the past couple of weeks, I have gotten several emails from fellow obsessive-compulsives who are in that same pit. I write this post to say that there is hope– and it’s not in ourselves.

JACKIE LEA SOMMERS

Author & Advocate

Tag Archives: religious scrupulosity

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Is Mental Illness a Spiritual Issue?

OCD Scrupulosity: Is ERP Sinful?

my darkest, lowest days