If you don’t know who Mark DeJesus is on YouTube and you struggle with OCD/scrupulosity, it would bless you to go check his channel out here; he’s a wise brother in Christ with a heart for helping others and has helped me personally in a lot of ways. He answered a question I submitted to him one day in one of his live chats and used an illustration that stuck with me. He said intrusive thoughts are like the Muppets named Statler and Waldorf. I didn’t watch the Muppets show growing up and in case you don’t know what they are either, they’re a pair of puppet characters that are known for their constant criticism and heckling. They crack themselves up as they sit in their balcony and hurl insults and negative opinions; that’s their only purpose. Intrusive thoughts are exactly like that– you take a step to the left and they laugh and say “You should have gone right!” So you take a step to the right and they laugh even harder and say “You should have gone left!” They’re expert trolls who will say anything just to make you miserable and afraid.
Thinking about OCD in this way can be really helpful because when we realize that our intrusive thoughts aren’t there to help us and that their only purpose is to heckle and induce fear, they begin to lose their power. We come to see that they cannot be reasoned with or fought with logic because the problem isn’t a lack of reason or logic. The problem is that we take them seriously. And don’t hear what I’m not saying; they absolutely do feel deadly serious in the moment and our attempts to try and resolve whatever is causing our distress can consume our lives. But when we can acknowledge what they are (trolls who lie) and that their goal is to cause unnecessary fear, we can begin to practice ignoring them. That is the answer to intrusive thoughts: Nothing. We don’t give evidence, we don’t reason, we don’t interact with them at all; we ignore them as we focus on truth because any attention we give to them is just more material to use against you. From my experience and what I’ve heard from professionals this is the hardest part to do but the most important, because the more we feed these trolls the attention they want, the more we train our brains to think they need to be taken seriously and so continue the OCD cycle. Remember, nothing you say back to them is satisfying enough; you can gather up all of your best, finely-crafted answers to its countless questions and still by the end it will say, “Are you sure?” So we need to ignore them and gently re-direct our attention to truth; that’s where we want to keep our focus.
I want to emphasize gently really quickly. More condemnation and beating yourself up will just pour gasoline onto the fire of OCD and especially scrupulosity. That’s not how God handles His children so it shouldn’t be how we treat ourselves. Renewing our minds is a life-long process and it’s not a straight uphill progression, just like all of our sanctification is full of ups and downs. But as is the case with any type of battle, the goal isn’t just to overcome and get better. The point of everything is communion with God in our union with Jesus, so turning to His word in the midst of our weakness and fear is always progress and another opportunity to look again to our Savior. When we find ourselves in an OCD spiral we can remember Statler and Waldorf and gently turn our attention back to God’s promises.
As the Lord continues to renew my mind in His word and the more I practice ignoring my intrusive thoughts, I notice the thoughts don’t really go away. They more or less are just fading into the background and becoming a hum rather than constantly screaming in my face. I don’t know if they’ll ever go away completely, but I do know that God is with me and His word stands true above every lie of the enemy and even my own brain. It reminds me of when Paul begged God three times to take away the torn in his flesh (that he calls “a messenger of satan”) and God’s answer to him was “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). I pray God’s grace would be sufficient in our hearts always no matter what we’re going through, and that His voice would be louder than any other voice yelling for our attention– whether that’s the enemy, the world, or our own mind.
– Katrina
Gospel Assurance 