We had a fantastic time staging Night Watch this week and I really will try to write a full blog post about it tomorrow! More pics to follow in the next few days.
A friendly reminder that a GIANT MAN called IRON BULL with a HUGE AXE liked PINK STONES and LOST HIS EYE DEFENDING A TRANSGENDER MAN and DATED MEN AND WOMEN and did NOTHING WITHOUT CONSENT so FUCK TOXIC MASCULINITY
Solidarity fist-bump to all my fellow OCD brethren and others.
It’s hard. It’s sometimes almost unbearably hard. And nobody ever talks about it.
But it’s OK. I promise. You’re not a monster. If you were, you wouldn’t feel this bad.
All right fuck it I’m going to write about this in some detail because 1.) somebody asked me to and 2.) maybe it will be helpful for somebody out there.
First off, a disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, and I do not claim to be any kind of authority on this topic. I’m speaking only as (1) person with OCD, who has also sometimes talked to others with similar issues.
Now that’s out of the way.
What the fuck is scrupulosity?
Scrupulosity is a type of obsessive thinking centered on moral or religious belief. It’s a concern with issues like purity, sin, evilness, etc., that may or may not be tied to ritualistic compulsions to ease those feelings of guilt. It’s a diagnostic criteria of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Not everyone who has OCD experiences scrupulosity, and probably some people have scrupulosity-like thought patterns without any other OCD tendencies.
In formal scientific literature, scrupulosity is almost always only described in terms of religious belief, which is maybe why other variants get overlooked. Maybe at some point we’ll come up with a different name for non-religious scrupulosity, but for now that’s the term most of us have been using so it’s what I’m gonna stick with it for the sake of clarity.
Okay but what does it FEEL like?
OCD is, at its heart, a disorder about uncertainty. It’s about second-guessing and looking for ways to externally validate your thoughts and experiences because you never feel quite 100% sure, and that uncertainty makes you feel very anxious. And while this is something I think everyone experiences from time to time, folks with OCD have it much more frequently and to a degree that is disruptive to their lives.
For example: Have you ever gone on a road trip and thought, “Did I turn off the stove?” and then worried about it?
You probably have. Most people have at some point. And you probably thought back to the last time you used the stove and remembered turning it off, or reminded yourself that you ALWAYS turn off the stove, or that you weren’t even using the stove, and then you go on about your day. If you’re a particularly self-aware person, you might even realize that you’re only worrying about the stove because you’re ACTUALLY worrying about the road trip and your brain latched onto the stove thing as just A Random Place To Put This Free-Floating Anxiety.
But if you have OCD Brain, you won’t be satisfied by those explanations. You might:
Start catastrophizing, ie, be unable to stop thinking in great, disturbing detail about all of the things that could go wrong if you didn’t turn off the stove (your house catching fire, carbon monoxide poisoning, your pets dying, your neighborhood catching fire, etc.)
Obsessively go over and over it in your mind, trying to remember the exact moment you shut off the stove, how it felt, are you sure, are you sure you’re not remembering a different time, are you positive.
Call someone to go to your house and check.
Call that person’s roommate to make sure that the person actually did go to your house and check.
Turn the car around, drive home, and check yourself.
Check the news on your phone to see if anyone has reported a fire in your neighborhood.
And then repeat any combination of the above things until you have satisfied some arbitrary condition and/or resign yourself to death and/or become exhausted and/or cancel your trip.
This isn’t just a mental thing, either. While you’re doing this, you are feelingthe worry in a very physical, visceral way. Your skin might flush, your fingertips might tingle, your heart might pound, your guts might twist, etc. etc. etc.
There are a few big things you have to understand about OCD brain:
Magical thinking. Nobody has 100% control over what they think, and thoughts are not actions. But when you have OCD, it feels like they are. Thinkingsomething creates guilt like you’d feel from doingsomething, even if you didn’t mean to have the thought and have no idea where it came from. And OCD brain likes to supply these thoughts, frequently, and without warning.
Rationalizations.You know you’re being illogical. Or, well, maybe you don’t. But a lot of people with OCD do know that their thoughts are illogical. It’s not a delusion type situation where we’re convinced of things that aren’t objectively true – it’s a doubting situation where we know rationally that something probably isn’t true but we can’t quite get over that niggling little voice in the back of the mind saying, “But what if it is?” And so we’ll find ways to rationalize our distorted thought patterns. Like, “Of course so-and-so says I’m not a jerk, they’re my friend! They’d say that no matter what!”
Confirmation Bias. Because we harbor this uncertainty, we might constantly be on the look-out for evidence that will affirm our secret suspicions about the world. Which means that if 99 things say “it’s fine” and 1 thing says “it’s not fine,” we will believe the 1 thing. Also note that this is very selective. OCD brain might be extremely rational and logical about all kinds of things and then have a very obvious blind spot for one specific thing, ie, the subject of your obsessions.
Our obsessions are unwanted. This is the big thing that you have to understand, if you take nothing else from this. OCD brain supplies thoughts/images/urges that are sudden, unpleasant and unwanted. We do not act on these urges. We would neveract on these urges because just thinking about them sends us into a physically painful stress response. People with OCD who have obsessions about rape, murder, cannibalism, whatever other awful things, do not do those things. But even knowing this….we wonder.(”What if I don’t actually have OCD? What if I actually am a rapist murdering cannibal?” yes it is that stupid sometimes. take it up with my brain chemistry)
So how does that relate back to the scrupulosity thing?
Okay. So if you’re following along so far, you’ve got the foundation. What you have to understand next is that this “fearful uncertainty” thing can be triggered by all kinds of things, not just stuff like a stove.Basically anything you can imagine that 1.) Would be bad and 2.) You might be uncertain about, is fair game.
Enter scrupulosity.
“Am I a bad person?” Scrupulosity asks.
“Would I know if I were a bad person?”
“What if I AM?! What if I am a TERRIBLE person? What if I need to MAKE IT UP TO PEOPLE? What if I need to PROTECT PEOPLE from MYSELF because I am a MONSTER?!?!?!” <– this is where the physical anxiety symptoms kick in
In a classic scenario, a person with religious scrupulosity might be excessively worried about going to hell and might pray compulsively to deal with it.
But in, for example, woke/social justice spaces, a person might worry about other things: am I racist? am I abusive/toxic? what if I were a pedophile? what if I’m a rapist? etc.
And in order to reassure themselves, the person might engage in various compulsions, for example: asking for reassurance/validation, reading compulsively about the topic, avoiding certain types of interactions, trying to atone or make up for perceived transgressions, etc. In an effort to identify “rules” of behavior (and thus avoid accidentally breaking them), the person may also seek clarification….over-enthusiastically, or to a pathological extent.
Guilty Conscience
Now, if you spend any time whatsoever in “woke” internet spaces, maybe you’re feeling uncomfortable because you can see where this is going.
There are a lot of bad takes on the internet. Lots of black-and-white thinking. Lots of insinuation of thought crimes in the form of “If you think such-and-such you are a Nazi” or “Reading dub-con fanfic makes you a rapist” and whatnot. The takes range in degrees from “well-meaning advice that makes perfect sense in the context in which it was intended” to “really stupid and inflammatory statement.”
But when you have scrupulosity – when you are deeply concerned with Being A Good Person and Afraid You Might Actually Be A Monster – every single hot take and sub-tweet can feel like it’s criticism aimed at you, personally. It can feel like you’re under attack. The tone of some of these messages sounds a whole lot like that nasty voice in your mind that tells you how awful you are, and it reaffirms that confirmation bias.
And then the very worst part is that outsiders, who either don’t know how this works or don’t care, exacerbate the problem by saying things like:
You wouldn’t feel so guilty if you did nothing wrong
If you’re so worried about doing X, then you’re probably going to do X
The only people who think about X are X-ists
Being anxious about (thing) is Good, Actually
And so on and so forth.
The psychological damage of validating the worst thoughts of OCD brain is intense. It can create this sort of spiraling terror, where everything gets worse and worse (and worse).
And, god bless our poor neurotic souls, sometimes we try to deal with that anxiety by asking for reassurance on the internet.
This can backfire disastrously as, from an outside perspective, it can be hard to tell the difference between whataboutism or sea-lioning or other similarly shady tactics…and some poor neurotic desperately floundering against scrupulosity.
An example I witnessed a few years back (recalled by memory so the details may be inaccurate but it still works as an example):
A guy sent a question into an advice blog. He was a student, and his question was something along the lines of “How do I interact with women without them thinking I’m a rapist?” He explained how ever since he’d heard about the anxiety some women have about guys on the bus or walking behind them etc. that he was really worried that he might be frightening women, to the extent that he would not talk to them or interact with them at all, including his female professor, and his grades were suffering as a result.
Now, when I read his question, my OCD antennae immediately went up. But a lot of other people – including the advice-giver – did not read it kindly. They saw it as a “what about the men” type redirection, and reacted pretty snarkily, and said something along the lines of “If you can’t talk to women without harassing them you shouldn’t talk to women.”
Needless to say, they Missed The Point pretty badly on that one (I believe they did have a private discussion and apology, though, and policies got changed at the blog).
But that’s just an example. Stuff like this happens all the time.
And like. I don’t have a good answer to this? I don’t really know how you solve it. Because obviously it’s not your responsibility to manage the responses of people who engage with your content, and I’m not expecting anyone to do that. But, at the same time….like. If you can make some concessions regarding, for example, tone when talking to people with autism, maybe you can extend some similar courtesy or benefit of the doubt to folks with scrupulosity?
All I’m asking is…take a second to pause before you respond to someone who’s asking a question like this. Just take a second and think, does this person seem like a troll? Or might they be asking from a place of deep terror?
Just…be kind. As much as you can, however you can, be kind. You never know if the person you’re arguing with, or who’s silently reading your posts, is shaking and nauseous with terror on the other side of the screen because of something as “simple” as words.
**** I am welcome to answer further questions/clarify things on this post, to the best of my ability, for as long as I can dredge up the spoons.
“[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be together for a long time. But you will never know what I really think of you, and I will never know what you really think of me.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s kind of beautiful.’”
Fayum Mummy Portraits, dating from around 30 BC to the mid 3rd century AD.
The portrait heads were attached to Egyptian mummies of the Roman period, covering the faces of the deceased In the top pictures, you can see now they were bound to the mummy. Dating from the time of the Roman occupation of Egypt, they are closest to Graeco-Roman artistic traditions. Around 900 are known to survive and they are some of the only surviving evidence of Classical panel painting traditions. Due to their burial in hot, dry conditions with the bodies, many have survived in excellent condition.
The term Fayum comes from an area of graveyards (necropoli) where they were found in large numbers, buried in communal catacombs.
Painted on wooden board (and sometimes on cloth), either in encaustic (wax) or egg tempera.
Stardew valley elligibles at the beginning of the game: This backwater town sucks and I hate it here
Stardew valley elligibles when they realize the new farmer is cute and nice and making a lot of money: Actually I love this town and also farming. I would totally love to live here in like, idk maybe a nice rustic farmhouse (just for example) for the rest of my life. Also I’m single and did I mention that I love farming
I hope one day that Brendan Fraser gets to see this post with several thousand (one day perhaps several hundred thousand?) people who have all banded together, united for one single common purpose: to hope that he is having a nice day.
Person: *approaches a building that says ‘GROSS PORN’ on it*
Person: *grabs the handle to the door, it is locked*
Person: *knocks*
Person: *tells the greeter that they want in and agrees that they are willing to see the gross porn*
Person: *goes inside*
Person: *goes to the front desk, signs in their name*
Person: *verifies their e-mail and everything*
Person: *gets taken to the gross porn room*
Person: *gets told “Wait, you need to confirm that you’re willing to see the gross porn at the member access station on the other side of the building”*
Person: *goes to the other side of the building, confirms, etc*
Person: *comes back*
Person: *goes inside the room with the gross porn in it*
Person: *looks through the entire gallery since not all of it is gross*
Person: *finds a gross one*
Person: This is disgusting and the person who made it should be ashamed for making me see this.
Person: *takes the gross porn out of the building*
Person: LOOK AT THIS GROSS PORN I FOUND
Person: *shoves the gross porn into the faces of passersby*
Person:WHY CAN’T THE GROSS PORN PEOPLE KEEP THEIR GROSS PORN IN PLACES FOR GROSS PORN
Thank you so much for this contribution I’ve been laughing for 5 minutes
Does this have something to do with people who go on Pornhub then complain about nudity and porn even though they knew what was gonna happen?
The metaphor’s not too intense. Basically the first 5 are: a person on the internet going to any multitude of social media, image board, or forum sites that are known for adult content, trying to access and getting stopped by a warning. They accept the warning and sally forth.
Then the next few are account creation: they sign up for an account, verify their account and that the information is as correct as they want it to be. Then they go in to look at the images posted, but they don’t actually get to see any pornographic images yet because they have to go to their settings (other side of the building) and manually disable content filters and approve of adult content being shown to them. Then they’ll finally find the lewd stuff, see that most of it just solo pinups and maybe some dirty tangos until they eventually find something of some degree of disturbing to their sensibilities.
Doesn’t have to be PornHub. Some sites include more or less than these steps to actually get to the weird porn, but the point is, you have to go through far too much effort to actually get to the weird stuff and typically agree to seeing it multiple times in some form or another before you can actually see it. Some sites like PornHub or Rule34 or, to an extent, e621 skip a few because they’re primarily used for porn so just accessing it in the first place is forms of consent. But places like Twitter, (used to be) Tumblr, DeviantArt, FurAffinity, and even Newgrounds (surprisingly more and more relevant lately) require you to put in more legwork to find it.
Sometimes I have an entire conversation with Ripley before stepping back and realizing how cool that is.
I arrive home late from a potluck and the house is dark. From the bottom of the stairs I say, “Hey Ripley, I’m back.”
“Wanna come out,” he answers, which is a pretty standard reply when I first get home. It’s midnight, way past his bedtime, but he hasn’t been out of his cage at all today because we’re dog sitting my mom’s very untrustworthy dog (with whom Ripley is unfortunately fascinated). So I say, “Sure.”
As I walk into his room he lifts up a foot in a way I recognize as meaning “I’m ready to step onto your hand,” so as I open his door I say, “Let’s go in the kitchen.” I offer him the chance to poop in the trash can, but he declines with a small clicking noise. I ask him if he would sit on a chair, but warn him that first I need to move Coat Shirt off of it (shirt is his catch-all word for clothing), and he makes a little “hm” of acknowledgment.
After he steps onto the back of the chair I say, “I’ve gotta go downstairs, can I leave you up here for a minute?”
“Okay,” he answers as I leave the room.
Upon returning I say, “Thanks for waiting in here.” It’s taken years of practice for me to talk to Ripley like he’s a person (he is), but now it’s second nature. He gets insistent if I’m quiet for too long.
“Do want a carrot,” Ripley says, leaning toward the fridge.
“I can get you a carrot.” My usual reply when he asks for a healthy food. I hand him a baby carrot from the fridge.
He takes a couple bites and shakes the carrot around gingerly in his foot. “I like it.”
“I’m glad. Can I touch you?” I reach out to pet his back but he gives me a subtle look: a twitch of his pupils and a fractional declination of his head that means “no thank you.” Ignoring this is a serious offense.
“Okay, no touch. A kiss, then?” He leans toward me and squints: an invitation. As I lean back, he makes a trilling sound and smushes the top of his head against my face. “Thank you,” I say.
After several more kisses I ask him what kind of bedtime treat he wants. “A peanut.”
A lot of our conversation is verbal, sure, but a good deal of it is also nonverbal. Most parrots don’t talk, but all of them communicate with their flock in very precise, intentional ways.
![amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog](https://64.media.tumblr.com/55aabb27b68b435577779275fe5a09e0/844202117202dd99-ea/s400x600/8b3f179afbaa856d98575800c9b7c24300ebb852.gif "amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog")
![amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ecadc24b3ae2a6174cd3992ae7867c49/844202117202dd99-85/s400x600/89c4e581c8b279d0bff931b04332ccce03fe9a68.gif "amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog")
![amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog](https://64.media.tumblr.com/30fa99de05636c88c85ba4d30cbf0da1/844202117202dd99-44/s400x600/ad9316bf25656bdc0164e26282219f38b5ef2b30.gif "amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog")
![amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0560f34d104a9a9a8f8a6b1eb11be9e2/844202117202dd99-6a/s400x600/c3f0ab1204308199e4141bd6de959e849000d836.gif "amarakaran: “[My wife] said, ‘You know, we’ve been together for nine years, and I think we’ll be tog")
