My OCD Didn't Make Me a Better Person

I get varied reactions when I mention that I live with a subtype of OCD called primarily obsessional OCD and that my obsessions tend to be religiously and morally based. Some people are confused but curious because they never knew OCD could be more than the stereotypical contamination or checking type of OCD. Some people think I'm joking when I tell them that I can't lie. Some people are dismissive because the particular type of OCD I live with doesn't seem like a "real" mental illness. Then some people say things like, "Well, at least your mental illness makes you a better person."

I know, or at least I hope, the person is saying that statement from a place of kindness. I try to remind myself that the person is probably trying to find the silver lining in a situation that they don't really understand. However, statements like the above really hit a nerve with me. 

On the surface, the statement feels dismissive of my mental health struggle. On a deeper level, it feels uncomfortably close to the "transformed by suffering" trope we see over and over again in movies and books in which something tragic happens to a person who consistently lives in a moral shade of gray, and then they suddenly realize they need to be a better person after the tragic thing happens to them. It feels, to me, like the person is softly implying that my OCD is the tragic thing that turned me into a better person, which isn't really how OCD works.

The thing about OCD, according to my therapist, is that it tends to attach to the areas of a person's life that are most important to them, and then it tortures them with it. For people with morally based OCD, sometimes called Scrupulosity, those people are already morally upstanding people that are doing their best to be honest, kind, and helpful, but OCD makes them doubt that and then tortures them with intrusive thoughts related to falling short of their version of moral perfection. For people with religiously based OCD, they're already walking in a path of faith and doing their best to live their lives according to that faith, but the OCD torments them with thoughts related to their sins, their higher power's anger at them for falling short of perfection in their religious practice, and terrifying blasphemous thoughts. This aspect of life that the OCD is attached to is so important that the person often feels a crushing amount of guilt and shame. With OCD there is no such thing as "good enough"; it has to be complete perfection or we're complete garbage. 

I was already doing my best to be a good person. I was already doing my best to walk thoughtfully down my faith path. My OCD didn't make me a better person or a more devout Christian. All it actually did was give me an unhealthy dose of moral perfectionism, and it made me hate myself so much that I thought it would be a blessing if I didn't exist anymore. I didn't need all the mental anguish that comes with living with a mental illness to grow as a person or to push me to strive to be the best version of myself. What I needed was to be able to love myself while allowing myself to be as human as possible so that I could learn from my mistakes and grow as a mentally healthy person without the rigid black and white thinking and self-loathing that comes with OCD. 

I'll end with this: Some people think that certain mental illnesses like morally themed OCD and religiously themed OCD make the people that live with them better people. On the surface, sure, it might look like that because the person is really honest and kind or really devout. But...that's not actually how OCD works. OCD actually attaches to an area that is really important to someone and then basically tortures them with it. Since that area was already super important, the person was actually already trying their best to be morally upstanding or trying their best to walk thoughtfully down their faith path. They didn't need to be made into an even better or more devout person by irrational fear, mental anguish, and self-loathing.