Learning to Trust Yourself with OCD
Even when the heart is desperately sick
One of the main tricks that OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) (and I suspect other mental conditions) plays is that it profoundly undermines your basic, reasonable trust in your own senses and yourself. So that a person who knows they aren’t going to harm their children will have terrible, unwanted intrusive thoughts about harming their children that keep them stuck in bed out of fear of acting out. And then that knowledge that they aren’t going to harm their children is doubted over and over again until they are confused and begin to doubt themselves, their very character. They have no inner intent or desire to harm anyone. They have never harmed anyone before. So their senses are telling them they are safe, but the doubts keep them locked up in “what ifs?” “What about that story I heard of someone who suddenly snapped?” “What about that time I lost my temper and yelled?” “What about this feeling of anxiety?”—all of which are not direct evidence that they are a threat to their children. They are just irrelevant doubts. In the practice of I-CBT (Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) for treating OCD, we learn to trust ourselves and our senses normally so that we can navigate life without getting caught up in endless doubts.
But for Christians with OCD, there is an extra layer of doubts. We are told in Jeremiah 17:9 that:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
So why should we trust ourselves? Isn’t it foolishness to trust ourselves? Isn’t it prideful and arrogant to believe in ourselves? Proverbs 3:5-6 says:
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
This feels like a direct rebuke of what I-CBT teaches regarding trusting yourself and your senses. Is there a way to reconcile these teachings? Is there a way to rightly believe the Word’s truth that we must trust in the Lord with all our heart and yet also learn to trust ourselves and our senses “normally” in order to navigate daily doubts according to I-CBT? I think so. And I’d like to explain how.
