Cosmophobic
Recluse
- Aug 10, 2025
- 283
This is a long post and possibly boring post.
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Moral OCD or scrupulosity is a type of OCD characterized by the intense fear that you're an irredeemably bad person.
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When I look back at the time I wasted in my teens and througout my twenties battling some imagined moral arbiter in my head I cringe. While others were building a life I was always fighting an invisible war in my mind just to convince myself I wasn't a uniquely twisted individual deserving of punishment. The first time I was only about 8 and the fear was laughable in hindsight. The thought that I could be gay. Keep in mind this was the 90's in a religiously conservative country.
At around 12 I became obsessed with the idea that I could seriously harm or kill someone. Just the fact that it was physically possible to do so was enough to make me fear every movement I made. I was convinced I was destined to become a serial killer. This "went away" and came back much worse at 17 which landed my in a psych ward for 3 months.
Throughout my twenties it was various fears of being a sexual deviant. No need to spell it out. I'm sure you can imagine.
About 10 years ago, I think (my memory sucks) I started taking effexor, the maximum dosage of it, and it worked. It stopped the obsessions but not without a cost. It stops me from fixating on something to the point of obsession but apparently does this by stopping me from being able to think clearly at all. I have constant brain fog, anhedonia, mental fatigue and incoherent thought patterns. I'm sure I sound incoherent in my posts sometimes.
Only in the last few years I've come to recognise that the underlying fear throughout has been that of abandonment. Being "evil" was only ever the means by which it would come about.
If I ask myself where this fear of abandonment comes from I'm immediately drawn to a certain answer. When I was a toddler, aged 3-4, my mother was suffering from a severe depression. A few times during this period she would threaten to drown herself in the local river and would leave the house for hours. Those are my earliest memories and they're of the most insane fear. The impotent screaming and crying and raging of a child that can't accept what's happening.
I must have blamed myself or something. I must have.
I don't get obsessions anymore but I still feel wrong, dangerous. I suppress everything. I don't get angry because I don't trust myself to carry an emotion like that without snapping. I hate myself when I as much as raise my voice. When it comes to sexuality I feel rotten, unlovable. I don't and have never sought companionship. But of course I'm still a desperate, hungry animal in this regard, and I suppose that feeds into the cycle of self-hatred quite well.
I contemplate giving therapy another go sometimes and digging deeper than I could have when I was younger . It's hard to want to do anything at all though.
--
Moral OCD or scrupulosity is a type of OCD characterized by the intense fear that you're an irredeemably bad person.
--
When I look back at the time I wasted in my teens and througout my twenties battling some imagined moral arbiter in my head I cringe. While others were building a life I was always fighting an invisible war in my mind just to convince myself I wasn't a uniquely twisted individual deserving of punishment. The first time I was only about 8 and the fear was laughable in hindsight. The thought that I could be gay. Keep in mind this was the 90's in a religiously conservative country.
At around 12 I became obsessed with the idea that I could seriously harm or kill someone. Just the fact that it was physically possible to do so was enough to make me fear every movement I made. I was convinced I was destined to become a serial killer. This "went away" and came back much worse at 17 which landed my in a psych ward for 3 months.
Throughout my twenties it was various fears of being a sexual deviant. No need to spell it out. I'm sure you can imagine.
About 10 years ago, I think (my memory sucks) I started taking effexor, the maximum dosage of it, and it worked. It stopped the obsessions but not without a cost. It stops me from fixating on something to the point of obsession but apparently does this by stopping me from being able to think clearly at all. I have constant brain fog, anhedonia, mental fatigue and incoherent thought patterns. I'm sure I sound incoherent in my posts sometimes.
Only in the last few years I've come to recognise that the underlying fear throughout has been that of abandonment. Being "evil" was only ever the means by which it would come about.
If I ask myself where this fear of abandonment comes from I'm immediately drawn to a certain answer. When I was a toddler, aged 3-4, my mother was suffering from a severe depression. A few times during this period she would threaten to drown herself in the local river and would leave the house for hours. Those are my earliest memories and they're of the most insane fear. The impotent screaming and crying and raging of a child that can't accept what's happening.
I must have blamed myself or something. I must have.
I don't get obsessions anymore but I still feel wrong, dangerous. I suppress everything. I don't get angry because I don't trust myself to carry an emotion like that without snapping. I hate myself when I as much as raise my voice. When it comes to sexuality I feel rotten, unlovable. I don't and have never sought companionship. But of course I'm still a desperate, hungry animal in this regard, and I suppose that feeds into the cycle of self-hatred quite well.
I contemplate giving therapy another go sometimes and digging deeper than I could have when I was younger . It's hard to want to do anything at all though.
