How Switching from Religious to Spiritual Helped Ease My Religious Scrupulosity

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The first time I remember asking someone permission to be myself was when I was in fifth grade. My family and I were attending a Baptist church, and I asked one of the church leaders if it was ok to celebrate Halloween, a holiday I was already in the habit of celebrating. He said it was ok as long as I wore an appropriate costume. Although I can’t remember if he gave any suggestions, I can imagine that angel, princess, and ballerina costumes would have been on the list.

I believe this act of asking someone else for permission to be myself led to a pattern of me seeking outside guidance for decisions about how to live my life.

And when I say outside guidance, I’m not only talking about authority figures in the church. I’m also talking about listening to the voice in my head when it tried to tell me what was and wasn’t appropriate to do as a Christian. I consider this a form of outside guidance as opposed to the inner guidance that comes from my true self.

Religious Scrupulosity and Mental Health

Michael A. Singer talks about this idea of listening to the voice in your head in his book The Untethered Soul. And based on what I learned from that book and my own experiences with mental health challenges, I have a theory that most mental health problems come from listening too closely to the voice in your head.

Religious scrupulosity is a form of OCD that causes you to live in constant fear of displeasing your Higher Power in some way, resulting in punishment. But one thing I learned about OCD from the book Brain Lock by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. is that it’s really just another voice in your head. I sometimes refer to it as the voice in your head on steroids.

Listening to that voice is a common thing to do, according to Michael A. Singer’s book. I look at it as an addiction, and it can be a particularly hard one to break. I’ve found this to be very true when it comes to religious scrupulosity.

When you’re a religious person who earnestly wants to do the right thing, you become willing to listen to guidance from wherever it comes, whether it’s a religious leader like I stated above or the voice in your head (on steroids). And when that voice echoes things that authority figures in your religion or religious teachings have said—like that some things are appropriate while others aren’t—it can be especially hard to ignore it. You don’t want to risk offending or displeasing your Higher Power because you don’t want to be punished.

And also, even if someone tells you that something is ok, something that the religious voice says is off-limits or unacceptable, there can be this sense of, “But how do I really know it’s ok?” Like, how do you still know everything is ok in the spiritual realm?

It would be nice to have some tangible evidence that everything is ok. Otherwise, you feel like you’re better off dwelling on obsessions or performing compulsions, just in case.

How Being Spiritual Has Helped With Religious Scrupulosity

In my own experience with religious scrupulosity, I’ve found that religion doesn’t really help when dealing with it. Why? Because religion can teach that some things are clean while others are unclean, that some things are appropriate while others are inappropriate, that some things are right while others are wrong.

And so, when the religious voice in your head tells you that you did something wrong or that you need to perform a certain complusion or avoid doing something so your Higher Power won’t punish you, it can be hard not to listen.

What has helped me tremendously with religious scrupulosity has been making the switch from being religious to being spiritual. When I was religious, I believed in a Higher Power that judges. Judgment involves discerning between right and wrong, good and bad. And judgment can lead to punishment when you don’t live up to the standards you’re supposed to.

In my case, the more I listened to that religious voice, the more I felt I needed to avoid, give up, or obsess about. I just wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing. But that voice became stricter and stricter about what the right thing was.

The thing about religion is that it’s based on other people’s beliefs and other people’s experiences of their Higher Power, something I learned from the book Reading the Bible Again for the First Time by Marcus J. Borg. This book was instrumental in helping me make the transition from religious to spiritual.

Although the author continued to practice religion even after reading the Scriptures in a new way, he introduced me to a new way of reading them, which opened the door to spirituality apart from religion for me.

And when I became spiritual, I came to a new understanding of my Higher Power. The book The Untethered Soul introduced me to the concept of a non-judging Higher Power. And it was such a freeing concept to learn.

With this new understanding, I’ve come to realize that it was never my Higher Power asking me to give things up or avoid things to please or appease it. All that time, I had been trying to please and appease the voice in my head. All the obsessions I was dwelling on and compulsions I was performing were an effort to satisfy that voice.

With religion, I had to live according to other people’s beliefs and perform rituals they established. And that meant I was never really sure if I was following them as well as I should. And it also meant I had to seek outside guidance on things, which opened the door to listening to that religious voice in my mind.

But with spirituality, I only have to live according to my own beliefs. The only standard of right and wrong I have to pay attention to is my own. And the only one who’s judging what I do—at least, the only one whose judgments matter to me—are my own. Because my Higher Power isn’t judging. Only my mind is doing that. So, when I have a question or concern about something spiritual, I only have to consult myself.

Final Thoughts

While I still have some work to do when it comes to religious scrupulosity, I’ve come a long way from where I was when I was in the middle of a spiritual crisis that began in 2017, something I talk about here. And being spiritual instead of religious has helped with that.

It might be possible to heal from religious scrupulosity while staying in religion. But it wasn’t an option for me. Once I discovered a new way of reading the Scriptures, I realized there was no need for me to practice any particular religion at all. And that left me free to establish my own standards. And now my task is to make sure I’m living up to them.

As someone who tends to set high standards for herself, I find that my mind can still be a hard taskmaster, though. But at least now I know it’s my mind that’s doing the judging, not my loving Higher Power.

~ Ashley C.

P.S. If you’re currently religious but would like to make the transition from being religious to being spiritual, I offer spiritual coaching services that you might be interested in. Feel free to click here to learn more.

But please know that spiritual coaching isn’t a replacement for professional therapy or counseling. If you’re in need of either of these services, please see a qualified professional.