Encouragement for Those Suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

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Take heart. Your obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is not you. It is not your conscience. It is not your desire. It is not your inclination. It is not your compass. It is a part of you, of course, but it is a defective part of you, a sick part of you, thus a disorder. It mysteriously afflicts body, mind, and soul, and thus is physical, mental, and spiritual by nature, an opening through which the devil torments you. It is that obnoxious, intrusive, subtle or brash, attention-demanding deformity that would distract you, accuse you, convince you, afflict you, tyrannize you, occupy you. But, as a disorder it has no right to do any of that, does it?

So, that means you may have to change your relationship to it. You may have to decide to recognize it as the deformity it is. You may have to live with it, but you may want to start to corral it, dissociate it, disempower it, ignore it. You may want to stop running from it, hiding from it, wrestling with it, attending to it. You may want to just let it be, let it throw all that it has at you and let it all just go on by. What it throws at you is from it, not you, and it cannot hurt you if you let it go on by, if you attach no danger, morality, or ownership to it. Changing your relationship with it will take practice, and it will take patience, but is it not worth a try?

Remember the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila: “Let nothing trouble you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything passes. God never changes. Patience obtains all. Whoever has God wants for nothing. God alone is enough.”

Spiritual help can be found in the confessional and in counsel with priests, rabbis, or ministers that are knowledgeable about OCD and scrupulosity, and in a plethora of books like Dan Burke’s Spiritual Warfare and the Discernment of Spirits. Knowledgeable psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors can help with the mental aspect of it, as can books like Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz’s Brain Lock. And the physical nature of OCD may make it vulnerable to modification by means of nutrition. Dr. Michael Nehls, MD, PhD, (

Michael’s Substack

) has long extolled the benefits to mental health of micro-dosing lithium as in his article “Lithium, the Essential Trace Element.” Dr. James Greenblatt, MD, shares nutritional approaches to treating OCD in “Integrative Therapies for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.” And there is plenty more research out there for him who will look.

And then, of course, when the suffering does afflict you, there is the age-old Christian practice of joining our spiritual, mental, and physical sufferings to those of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in all of his Passion, and offering them up for the benefit of our brothers and sisters living and dead.

Peace be with you and God bless.

Thank you,

P. A. Ritzer