Ethical existence with OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) does not only manifest in the ways we see in films. There are plenty of people who struggle with contamination fears, and who wash and clean repeatedly, but I have never been one of them. For me, OCD has primarily manifested internally with some physical/external compulsions. Learning how that shapes the way my brain works has made me painfully aware of how intricate our identities are, and how difficult it can be to uncover core values under all the doubt.

Today, I want to talk about trying to exist ethically while having a mental illness that disrupts any certainty around good versus bad, and how I have tried to be true to myself even when that doubt threatens to destroy me. It is not something I have seen discussed elsewhere, so if you resonate with this, I would love to discuss it with you.

Let me start with an example for those who might be wondering how OCD can show up in this way. I believe in attempting to be a good person with the information and context you have available at the time; I am aware this cannot be perfect. Logically, I know our world is far too complicated to be so binary, and I do not hold anyone else to such strident standards. However, when I am trying to decide what to do in an ethical dilemma, there is no room for error for me. If I even briefly consider a course of action that does not seem morally pure, I become obsessed with it, which often leads to a mental spiral that leaves me barely able to function for days at a time.

This ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking is common in other types of mental illness too, so you may be familiar with it in its many forms.

Moral scrupulosity describes the tendency for some with OCD to harbour deep fears about what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’1. When I came across this term for the first time, it helped me understand that it was normal and common; I was already familiar with religious OCD, where some suffer from fears associated with thir faith, but it had not occured to me that I could have the same issues without the associated religion.

This moral scrupulosity had me believing for years that I was a bad person, and it’s not a belief I have managed to shift completely. Perhaps I never will. It has, however, transformed the way that I approach the morality of others, and has given me a strong belief that any binary right/wrong ethics do not fit my worldview.

This subject has been coming to me more and more in the past months. Thanks to the support and safety I feel in my life now, I have been able to process some of the trauma that has put me in this position in the first place. The obsessions and compulsions rear their ugly heads often, but I find myself able to recognize them before the spiral begins. I see the pothole in the road before I stumble into it.

I am much more stable these days thanks to medication and an abundance of therapy, but this way of thinking has shaped my worldview; perhaps not in the way you might imagine. Instead of becoming more binary in my approach to ethics, I am far more open. I seek out the discomfort of uncertainty even as I tire of it. The fact my dysfunctional brain tries so hard to shove me into those corners makes me even more certain that the purity of thought is not possible, and that I do not have to be perfect to be a good person.

1 https://iocdf.org/faith-ocd/living-with-ocd-religious-traditions/moral-scrupulosity/