Introduction and Episode Overview

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 229

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org. Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. My name is John Dehlin. I'm your host and today I'm very excited to discuss a topic that has become near and dear to my heart. The topic today is a psychological condition called scrupulosity, which defined technically is religious or moral. Moral based obsessive compulsive disorder. Some of you may know that about a year and a half ago, I started a Clinical Psychology PhD at Utah State University. And because I was interested in psychology, studying the nexus of religion and mental health, and because my supervisor, Michael Tuig was a was one of the world's experts in the treatment of ocd, I decided to do my master's thesis work on scrupulosity. And so I've been doing the study for about, oh, eight months or so. And just coincidentally, my guest Eric, which is not his real name, contacted me a while back and said, hey, John, I think it'd be cool to do a podcast on scrupulosity. And I thought that was a fantastic idea as well. And in addition, a few weeks back, a reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune contacted me, asked me to be a part of an article where they discussed scrupulosity. And from that, there was an article that came out in the Logan Herald Journal, and I asked Eric to to be a part of that article, which he was. And funny enough, the Associated Press wrote a little excerpt of that article, put it on the AP wire, and last Monday, Jay Leno himself on the Tonight show made a joke about our scrupulosity study. So it's been a fun little ride and scrupulosity has gotten a lot of almost national attention because of these articles. And so I thought it'd be really cool to bring Eric on, who was raised LDS as I understand it, and to hear his story about what it's like to deal with scrupulosity within the LDS paradigm. And the only other thing I'll say is that I'm looking to start a separate podcast series called Scrupulosity Stories where I interview different people with scrupulosity or people who treat it just to kind of help build education. So this, this podcast may be repurposed to be used there as well. So with that, Eric, thanks again for joining us on Mormon Stories podcast.

Eric [00:02:53] It's good to be here, John. Thank you.

Guest Background and Early Life

John Dehlin [00:02:56] So why don't you just giving give us a little Bit of background on your early years and whatever you think would be relevant to help get us into the discussion of. Of when these symptoms started developing.

Eric [00:03:09] Sure, no problem. Well, sort of. Like you mentioned, I was raised in a very large orthodox LDS family. I grew up on the West Coast. You know, my heritage goes all the way back to the original members of the church, like Benjamin Johnson, Newell Knight. And, you know, while my family or while my parents raised us very orthodox, I'm lucky to say that my parents were not overly dogmatic. And so, you know, throughout this podcast, you won't actually see me attribute any of my OCD scrupulosity issues to them in particular, because they were very good about not being too dogmatic about religion in general. Nevertheless, I was completely the perfect product of Mormonism in terms of my family background. My parents, of course, going to byu. They got married in the temple. They had a lot of kids immediately, the whole thing, our entire lives revolved around the church. And based on my biological makeup and my personality type, I really plugged in hard to the. To that frequency. And I took everything very seriously, very literally. There was no ambiguity in my life. Everything was black and white. And so I was basically a perfect setup for this mental condition. As you mentioned in your introduction, I had the typical sort of LDS upbringing in terms of graduating from seminary. I went on a mission in the United States, got home, got married in the temple, had several children. I'm in my mid-30s. My education, both my undergraduate and graduate studies were in business. And that's the kind of work I'm engaged in now to kind of give you a. Give us a launching pad into how scrupulosity came to literally run my life. When I was growing up as a young boy, at the age of about 35, my mom was diagnosed with OCD. And I don't know if you're going to describe the several flavors of ocd.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that for a second.

Eric [00:05:43] Okay, sure.

John Dehlin [00:05:44] So I'll tell you what I know, and then you can add some stuff. Okay, sure, sure. So OCD basically has two components, the obsessions and the compulsions. And they're very. They're very distinct. Usually in my. In my experience, the. The obsessions are known as intrusive thoughts. So they're unwanted thoughts that come into your mind, sort of against your will, against your volition, and they're usually highly disturbing, causing a lot of anxiety, that they're a little bit different from, let's say, schizophrenia, which would be hearing voices or seeing visions. And they're a little bit different from other conditions in the, you know, in the diagnosis manual in the sense that sometimes people can have intrusive thoughts that they actually, well, they can have thoughts that are disturbing, but they actually like them or welcome them or want them to some degree, or in the case of schizophrenia, they really can't recognize that these are either excessive or that they come from an external source. And one of the really important distinguishing features of OCD is that people can at some point recognize that they're excessive, recognize that they don't want the thoughts, but not be able to control them. And the way that so, so the obsessive thoughts come, they can be about safety, they can be about germs, they can be about health, they can be about loved ones, they can be about anything, basically, that you care about. And the person who's struggling with these intrusive thoughts basically has to figure out what to do with them. And because they cause so much anxiety, what they often do is they develop behaviors or activities that can hopefully help neutralize or get rid of the anxiety that they're feeling. And so, you know, it can start really innocently. People can be told to sing a hymn, or they can be told to say a prayer. And the hope is that you could do some type of little magical thing or systematic thing, wash your hands if you're feeling dirty, etc. And it'll make the anxiety go away. And, you know, that seems all right and good. And for a lot of people, the. Those things can work. So I'm not condemning singing a hymn or saying a prayer necessarily, but for certain people who are wired with a certain level of consciousness or a certain level of fear or anxiety, I know it totally depends on the condition, but there's definitely going to be some type of biological and let's just say psychosocial contributing factors to this that are required to make it happen. But. But for some people, that act of saying a prayer or singing a hymn, or washing their hands or tapping on wood, or flipping a light switch on and off, or locking a door two or three times, it can give a short term immediate alleviation of the anxiety, but it can often lead to long

Eric [00:08:57] term

John Dehlin [00:08:59] exacerbation or acceleration or amplification of the anxiety. And so what, it ends up almost being like a drug. You need more and more and more of whatever compulsion that you started engaging in to be able to satisfy the anxiety that keeps creeping up. And so people get caught in this trap of more and more and more compulsive behavior to satisfy and to alleviate the anxiety that they're feeling. And slowly the compulsions grow and grow and grow. And the person's quality of life shrinks and shrinks and shrinks as their entire life begins to be managed and organized around performing these compulsions. And so there are several types of, you know, primary types of screw of ocd. I probably won't be able to remember them all, but, you know, checking is a very common one where people feel like they have to check things. So check to see if the gas is turned off, check to see if the lights were turned off, check to see if the door is locked. You know, checking is a very common one. Sanitation or health issues are very common. So you'll see people who wash their hands 50, 100 times a day who will put their hands in boiling scalding water, or use chlorine or bleach to get the germs off their hands, or they'll scrub the kitchen floor over and over and over and over again in a certain routine to try and get it clean. You know, it can manifest itself in all sorts of horrible ways. Another very common type of scrupulosity is called hoarding. And that's, I'm sorry, of OCD is called hoarding. And hoarding is basically where you, you don't want to throw anything away. And you know, maybe you guys have seen some of those shows that have come out on cable TV where people just the trash and the momentos stack up and pile higher and higher and their life becomes very, very small as their house fills up with garbage and junk. But those are some of the stereotypical forms of ocd. And scrupulosity is its own flavor because it has to do with religion or morality. And usually scrupulosity tends to take the form of a heightened conscience, in other words, a heightened desire to follow religious mandates to the letter of the law, or a heightened sense of guilt for things that have been done or that might possibly be done. A heightened sense of a desire to repent or to seek forgiveness for behavior. And it can also manifest itself simply in intrusive thoughts, like, let's say, sexual thoughts that come into your mind that you can't get rid of. And so you develop any type of compulsion to help alleviate the suffering. And I'll just close my little speech by saying that some of the most common religious based compulsions are things like excessive reading of the scriptures, excessive praying, excessive engagement in religious rituals, excessive confessing to ecclesiastical leaders, and excessive rumination where your mind just ruminates and ruminates and ruminates as you're trying to deal with these thoughts. And the final thing I'll say is, you know, I had a past, I think some prominent evangelical leader respond to the article on scrupulosity, saying that we were being anti religious and discouraging people from praying or reading the scriptures. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Because what often happens with scrupulosity and is that people, their religion causes, their engagement with the religion causes them so much unhappiness or their interpretation of the religion causes them so much unhappiness that they actually stop participating in their religion. Our treatment, if employed successfully, would allow someone to actually return to church. And what characterizes a compulsion from just, you know, meaningful religious activity is that compulsions are often engaged in not out of sincere devotion or a desire to worship or to celebrate or to engage in a joyful way in the religious activity. It would be a prayer that lasts two or three hours, that has to follow a certain pattern. And if you mess up in the pattern and you get sort of off track, you have to start over. It would be bugging the bishop four or five times a week and the bishop saying, you're fine, don't worry about it, everything's okay. Yet you still feel like you need to confess or you're not going to be okay. And so it's religious behavior that is well beyond what's normal for people who engage in the religion. And it's not done meaningfully or reverently. It's done more with the function of alleviating the anxiety than it is engaging meaningfully in the religion. So having said that, where would you, Eric, where would you fill in the blanks with what I said?

Eric [00:14:37] John, I think you gave a great description. I'm starting to wonder if you have ocd. You described it so well.

John Dehlin [00:14:44] Really?

Eric [00:14:45] That was quite comprehensive and beautiful. You're absolutely correct that the foundation of this problem is anxiety. And the anxiety is such a monster and it can, it can cause so much havoc in an individual's life. And one other thing for the listeners to recognize is that these compulsions, as you mentioned, don't provide the person any pleasure. So we talk in society about a person being obsessed with chocolate and they just have to have their chocolate and they eat the chocolate and they feel good and pleasure and relieved, et cetera. And with OCD and scrupulosity, there is no pleasure whatsoever as a person carries out these compulsions. I think you mentioned the word that the anxiety can be alleviated. To a certain degree or completely. Temporarily. And that's correct. Another thing in the studies that scientists have done on this issue is they found that most people with OCD or scrupulosity issues are just normal people. I mean, intelligent, educated, normal people who have become masterful at covering up their compulsions, their simultaneous ruminating while they're having a conversation with you. And that's something that certainly occurred in my life, which of course, we can talk about a little bit later. But there would be so many people in my life who would never have had any idea that I was completely under attack while talking about the San Francisco 49ers football game, talking about it, laughing about it, simultaneously being eaten alive by a monster during that conversation. And so it's quite an interesting ghost like condition. That is something else.

John Dehlin [00:16:48] Yeah. So let's jump if you want. Oh, did you have other things you wanted to add or. No, no. Okay. So let's jump into how it first started bubbling up, the symptoms.

Family History and OCD Onset

Eric [00:16:58] Sure. Well, my mother, in her mid-30s, was diagnosed with OCD. Now, she was a checker, like you mentioned, and you described that. Great. Her issues were checking under the beds, into the cabinets to see if there was a live fire in there. She would lock the doors over and over again. If you herald journal article, you'll see sort of a description of that. With my mom for years, I guess you would say, her whole life, she never knew what was going on. And she got married and then had all of us children, and we just thought she was just very odd. We'd go on a family vacation and she'd send us all, including my dad, out to the van and have us stay there. And she would then go from A to Z throughout the whole house, large house, looking under every bed, in every cabinet, looking at the stove for 10 or 15 minutes, we'd be out there honking the horn. We didn't know what was wrong with her. She finally got some help and was diagnosed. Now, when it comes. So my point in that is I clearly have a genetic disposition to this issue. Where it started with me, John was at a young age. I remember being fairly obsessed with symmetry. And, you know, many people have this on the continuum somewhere where, you know, their desk is disorderly and they need to make sure the pen is parallel to the edge of the desk. And they align the notebook and the books and their laptop just perfectly. And that was really no big deal to me. It never caused me much anxiety at all. I wouldn't say that that was a problem. I could have Gone my whole life and considered myself total normal. But those are the earliest recollections of anything strange in my behavior. I think I was just one notch more anxious than a normal person with regard to symmetry, with sort of everything around him. Now, where it really hit the fan with me was about the age of 17, you know, as I was approaching my mission. I, of course, had gone through the Young Men program, and since, you know, I was in diapers, had heard all the talk of the need to be totally worthy. And I'd heard the stripling warrior story so many times about obeying with exactness. And these scriptures, like Alma 12:14, really, really affected me in my life. For our words will condemn us. Yea, all our works will condemn us. We shall not be found spotless, and our thoughts will also condemn us. And in this awful state, we shall not dare to look up to our go. And we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us, to hide us from his presence. Yes, I was so plugged into that frequency that was being broadcast from the church since the day I was born, and that the talk of purity and the conference talks about having clean hands and a pure heart and cleaning the inward vessel and all of these metaphors that I really latched onto clearly, much more than the typical person, I think. And so at about 16 or 17, I was dating and enjoying my high school years, living a great life. I got so ramped up on becoming worthy for my mission that I went so overboard. You want some specifics?

John Dehlin [00:20:38] Let me jump in and ask you a quick question.

Eric [00:20:39] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] There's two things that. That are particular about scrupulosity, maybe compared to some of the other types. The first is that. The first is that it can easily be. Well, for. Is there a chance that in some ways this tendency towards OCD for you was something that actually benefited you early in its manifestations? And in other words, it made you a little bit extra careful, a little bit extra conscientious, and helped you and made you feel. It kind of reinforced you in a way, saying, hey, good things happen when I'm a little bit extra conscientious. Did that happen with you at all?

Eric [00:21:27] Yes, I think so. You know, I'd say from in my younger years till about the age of 16, I was a fairly normal young person, got into some trouble, you know, pushed the boundaries, broke some rules, and. And then at the age of, like I said, 16, 17, that's where, John, I really plugged into this morality frequency. And so to answer your question directly, yes, I do look back and I say to myself, well, there are some peripheral benefits from having OCD or scrupulosity. As we'll get into the interview, however, you'll see that that became so serious with me that I, that I later on during my mission started to confess sins that I never actually ever did.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] Right, right, right.

Eric [00:22:16] And so we'll get into that.

John Dehlin [00:22:17] So I'm just saying that it's a little bit deceptive. It seems like in that it, you can originally, you can initially be reinforced. Yes. And the other reinforcement that I was going to mention is that once you start becoming extra pious or extra careful, the people around you take note.

Eric [00:22:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:38] And they'll praise you for your behaviors. And so in some cases, it goes undiagnosed because the person actually thinks that they're doing what's right and because everyone around them says, you're such a spiritual giant, you're so amazingly righteous that that, that can almost reinforce you to, to go down the cycle.

Eric [00:23:01] That is absolutely correct in my case. I was called all of those things. You're a modern day stripling warrior. Wow. What a son of helaman you are. You're so pure. The girls I dated said that several times. And later, as we'll discuss the nature of my confessions to my mission presidents and my bishop, they. They said it more than anybody, you know. Wow, Eric, you are so honest and transparent and you are willing to confess anything in order to make it to the celestial kingdom. And I praise you. And you know, if you'll stay like this the rest of your life, there's no chance that you'll ever go astray, you know. So you're correct, John. I was definitely reinforced in that way and praised and it did fuel the fire.

Pre-Mission Struggles and Scrupulosity

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Okay, so talk about pre mission and what led to your mission.

Eric [00:23:56] Sure. Well, as this got going and as I became more and more hyper vigilant about morality, I had a girlfriend tell

John Dehlin [00:24:06] some of the ways that you started becoming hyper vigilant.

Eric [00:24:08] Sure. Well, before your mission.

John Dehlin [00:24:11] Before your mission.

Eric [00:24:12] Sure. No problem. I had a girlfriend and she's now my wife. Well, thank you very much. We spent a lot of time together and it got to the point where I felt that if we kissed for more than, oh, literally one second, maybe 1.56 seconds. You're talking to a person with scrupulosity here. To get really specific, if we were to kiss for more than one second and maybe more than one or two times per date, so a total of 2 to 2.5 seconds.

John Dehlin [00:24:51] So you're counting, you're counting. You got a timer out and you got a little notepad and you're ticking away the count, right?

Eric [00:24:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:00] Yeah.

Eric [00:25:00] She was lucky. I was quite a romantic, wasn't I? Anyway, so if we would kiss for more than a second or two, I would start to feel that I had crossed the line. And you hear all of these talks in priests quorum and from the pulpit about brothers, young men, if you do such and such, you have to wait for a year before you can go on your mission to complete the repentance process. And that was so in my face all of the time that

John Dehlin [00:25:34] I couldn't

Eric [00:25:34] let go of it. So the kissing became an issue. You know, if we were snuggling, holding hands on the couch, watching a movie with our families or whatever, and I felt those wonderful feelings that every boy and girl should feel when they hold hands, I would start to think that those feelings were so sexual that clearly I had crossed the line. And these talks come to mind about the Standards for Youth pamphlet. I'm paraphrasing. You have within you the powers of procreation, and those never need to be activated. And as long as you don't activate those, you're good to go. And again, I'm very roughly paraphrasing, but I felt that I kept crossing the line. And so I would go to my bishop and I would confess these things. And I remember one time my girlfriend and I went into my bishop together to confess something like this. And again, the reinforcement that I got every time was, eric, you're doing well. You're on the right track. You're going to be a great, pure young missionary. Keep up the great work. Stay.

John Dehlin [00:26:44] So what would you confess? What would you say to the bishop?

Eric [00:26:48] The sorts of things that I'm telling you right now.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] So like I kissed her too long or we kissed four times instead of two.

Eric [00:26:56] Exactly. I had all these feelings, that sort of thing. Okay, Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] I've been feeling bad things.

Eric [00:27:02] Yeah, feeling bad things. And again, I want to reiterate that I was fortunate that my parents were very moderate instructors in these areas. I mean, they never taught me that sexual feelings were bad or anything like that. Quite the opposite. But irregardless of their moderate instruction to me and my siblings, I was just dialed into that frequency so closely that it just took off with me.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] Gotcha.

Eric [00:27:36] Yeah. So then in order. So I eventually got so wound up that I got some help, went to a psychiatrist, an LDS psychiatrist who put me on some medication.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] Before your Mission before.

Eric [00:27:47] Yes, this is before my mission, about the age of 17. And the medication was called Anafranil, which is clomipramine and it's about a 30 or 40 year old anxiety medicine. Before the SSRIs, the serotonin reuptake inhibitor class of drugs came on the market, I got on that. I didn't have any therapy or behavioral help and I just got on the pill. And so once it came time for my mission call, I had to get special permission from Salt Lake City given that I had some mental health issues. So that was approved. I got my mission call to the United States. And that's when things really got very bad. And we're not talking about kissing for a second or snuggling on the couch and feeling great inside. We're talking about a lot bigger issues.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] Like what?

Eric [00:28:41] I went back and accumulated all of the sins that I had ever, ever thought I committed and all the mistakes and indiscretions, transgressions, anything I could possibly think of. And I kept going back again and again to my bishop and I would wipe my slate clean and then I would get home and I would think of something else. Great. Two or three more things I forgot to say I did when I was 14 or when I was 9. And I would call the bishop again, who was a great, sincere and loving gentleman who had no background in mental health or anything like that. He took the time each time to listen to me and work with me. Now he would conduct our interviews in the normal repentance LDS methodology process, you know, the five Rs, you know, restitution, confession, etc. Etc. So I kept going back again and again. And finally, three days before my mission, maybe it was the day before my mission, he said, eric, why don't I give you a priesthood blessing? I said, great. So in this blessing, it was just him and me in my bedroom, at my house a day or so before my mission. All my bags were packed, I was ready to go and I was having such an anx attack that I couldn't function normally. In this blessing. He said, you know, of course, as a direct representative of Jesus Christ, I hereby declare that you are forgiven of every single thing you have ever done. You have no need to repent of anything that you've done since the day you were born. When you go into the mtc, you will hear talks about the need to repent. None of those apply to you. You're a completely clean vessel. I mean, he said it in about 17 different ways. It was Total amnesty.

John Dehlin [00:30:44] So he was, maybe he was tired of, he was tired of the confessions that he was worried that you would keep doing this.

Eric [00:30:49] Absolutely. He knew the pressure cooker I was about to go into when you go into the MTC and you see people get sent home for things. And he knew what was coming. And so, yeah, this was, this was,

John Dehlin [00:31:02] it was a nice gesture. Okay, I'm gonna pause because I'm really interested in this, but I don't want to lose one question to the rest of the world. Were you this mousy, timid, self conscious kind of kid that we might imagine, or were you high school quarterback, popular, you know, president of everything? Like, where were you in terms of how your peers would have, would have seen you and your family and friends would have experienced you in terms of, you know, your overall personality to them?

Eric [00:31:36] Sure. People around me, my family, my friends, my peers would, would at that point describe me as an athlete, a normal looking person, fit, intelligent. I was into all sorts of hobbies. I was assertive, I was a great public speaker. I was outgoing and social. They would describe me as being a completely normal person, just an extra pure vessel, like a modern day Nephi.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] Right. So you were smart and you were articulate and you were well received among your peers as a competent and sharp kid.

Eric [00:32:21] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:32:21] Yeah.

Eric [00:32:22] Definitely the opposite of what you described.

John Dehlin [00:32:25] Not this cowering. Not this cowering person who's afraid to talk to people and.

Eric [00:32:28] Oh goodness, no.

John Dehlin [00:32:30] In other words, you can hide this and nobody has a clue that you've got it.

Eric [00:32:34] Absolutely no one would have a clue unless they were my missionary companion or my wife or my parents. Absolutely.

Mission Experiences and Compulsive Confessing

John Dehlin [00:32:43] So you got the Uber blessing? The Uber, yeah.

Eric [00:32:46] Oh, it was great. So that lasted what, maybe 48 hours? I was okay, so get this, John. Immediately after the blessing, you know, I'm in tears and everything's wonderful and you know, I like heard the voice of Jesus forgiving me for everything, you know, every swear word, every caffeinated beverage, you know, everything you can imagine. Right. And I, my bishop was very insightful. He said, eric, you're going to forget what I said. So I'm going to now write this down for you exactly what I said on my blessing. So you can have it on paper and you can show it to your presidents. You can keep it in your back pocket for these two years so that you'll never have a doubt. And so he then wrote down everything. It was a certificate of worthiness and it was all in the name of Jesus Christ and by the priesthood and his Name. It was amazing. And it did help me out for a few days.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] Okay, real quick. Did he forgive you for any sin you might ever commit? Because if he did, that would be awesome.

Eric [00:33:55] Oh, I mean, yeah, that's better than an indulgence, I'm telling you.

John Dehlin [00:33:59] Okay, I'm sorry. I was just kidding there. Okay, so you say 48 hours. Well, why didn't it work?

Eric [00:34:05] Because my biology didn't let it work. I was entering into such a high pressure situation in the MTC where there were so many rules, and if you do not obey the rules, you will not have the spirit. If you don't have the spirit, you will not bring souls to Christ. Your job is to bring souls to Christ. You were saved till the latter days to carry out this work. You have special gifts that no one else has, and you will reach people that no one else can. So everything was on the line. It wasn't just the salvation of the people that I was supposed to go teach. It was, of course, my salvation. And the reason it didn't work is simply because, like you said, it didn't cover everything that I may do in the future in terms of my sins.

John Dehlin [00:34:53] Right. Okay.

Eric [00:34:54] But ironically, I immediately got to the mtc, John, and literally within days, started calling for private meetings, confessing things that I did when I was 13, 14, 15, whatever. And this certificate of worthiness, this amnesty document, it became completely ineffectual. And I would go through in my mind and just say, well, clearly, clearly I was so deceptive to my bishop that he missed something or he just wasn't in tune with the Spirit and so he really wasn't speaking for Jesus. And then that would set off a cascade of another kind of scrupulosity that reared its head that I felt that I had then denied the Holy Ghost because I didn't accept the complete forgiveness of the Savior communicated through my bishop's blessing. And we can get into the blasphemy issues later. But it was terrible, John.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] Yeah. Okay, so. So the mt. MTC was just guilt on guilt. Turbo turbo guilt.

Eric [00:36:01] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:36:01] Okay, so what'd you do?

Eric [00:36:04] Okay, I just kept confessing to whoever my branch president was. Right. I would write letters home. I would confess to my parents, anyone who would listen to me. I would confess to my mission, my companions, and we'd talk for two or three hours and I would say, what do you think? You think I need to go to the branch president and confess this? I French kissed this girl when I was 15, and I don't know if I confessed that to my bishop yet, or whatever it was.

John Dehlin [00:36:31] Right, right, right.

Eric [00:36:32] And so then I got out of the mtc. I got to my first area, and by this time, my scrupulosity had blossomed and developed into three major themes. Number one, sexuality. Number two, hyper honesty. And number three, blasphemy. And what direction do you want to go at this point?

John Dehlin [00:36:54] Take each one and give examples of how it would manifest.

Eric [00:36:59] Sure. Okay. Well, here's a good example that your listeners will probably get a kick out of. And you'll see why I'm using a pseudo name here once we get into a few of these examples. Once I hit the mission field, the days of confessing actual sins just repeatedly were over. Now I was beginning to need to confess more. Sort of like you said in your introduction, John, it's like a vicious cycle that just gets larger and larger. In order to alleviate the anxiety, you have to come up with these more elaborate compulsions. And eventually, graphic details didn't do the trick for my anxiety anymore. I had to confess things that I thought I did, but that I never did. Here's an example. Let's talk about sexuality first. I was no longer concerned about kissing for one second or snuggling and having good sexual feelings. Now, if I was in an elevator going up to the third floor of an apartment, and I. We were in tight quarters and I brushed by a woman or a man or whoever, a dog, and my elbow barely brushed their coat or some part of their body, I was immediately convinced that I had made out with that person. I had fondled their breasts, I had grabbed their butt, I had kissed them, whatever. So it started out with these situations in which very slight contact was made, and my mind then would imagine that I had done this. And once my mind imagined I did it, the anxiety response would kick in. And then the thrust to carry out the compulsion, which was confessing it came full force. And I got to the point where multiple times per day, if I brushed up against someone, my anxiety got so bad, I would immediately run back into the elevator and say to my companion, you know, elder so and so, come here. Come here real quick. Stand right here. And I would run in with my big black and white name tag and say, excuse me, I'm sorry, did I just bump into you? And they would say, no. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. I thought I bumped into you. Did I do anything inappropriate? And they would say. They would look at me like I was an alien. But, no, of course you didn't do anything inappropriate. Are you sure? If I did, I want to say I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to do that. And then I would go and write it down to save for my next appointment with my mission president. And then I would go through these huge, long lists of these immoral acts that I did. But of course, I look back and I can laugh at them. I never did any of them that I confessed.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] Right.

Eric [00:40:00] That's not all. I mean, you know, if a dog would come up and sniff my crotch. I'm sorry to be crude or anything, but, like, you're.

John Dehlin [00:40:06] Like, just to be clear, you're. You're sitting, you know, maybe teaching a discussion.

Eric [00:40:10] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:11] On a couch, and the family dog would come up and.

Eric [00:40:13] Yes, okay, you're sitting on. Exactly. The family dog would come up and sniff my crotch, and I would push it away violently. And everyone's sitting there watching. And I was absolutely certain that I had just participated in a sexual act with that dog. And I did it so discreetly that no one noticed in the room. And there was nothing anyone could do or say that could convince me that I did not participate in a sexual act with a dog. And, you know, here's another example. I get a new mission president. We go to the mission home to take a picture of me and my companion and the mission president's wife and whatever to send back to my parents. I'm standing next to the mission president's wife. When you have to take a picture, you have to get close. Right?

John Dehlin [00:41:04] Right.

Eric [00:41:04] They take the picture. My elbow barely touched somewhere around her breast. I therefore immediately became convinced that I fondled my mission president's breasts. And now get ready and sit down, listeners, for this one.

John Dehlin [00:41:21] Wait. The president or his wife?

Eric [00:41:23] The president's wife.

John Dehlin [00:41:24] Okay. Okay.

Eric [00:41:25] And there's no way I'm going to risk my exaltation and hold this sin for the rest of my life. No way. Didn't Jesus say, let me quote a scripture real quick. Didn't I hear all my life, that if thy hand offend thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, and if thy foot offended thee, cut it off, off. It is better, you know, etc. And so here I'm thinking, okay, I just made out with the mission president's wife. I have to confess this in order to go to heaven, the celestial kingdom. I don't care what consequences I face. Do what is right. Let the consequence follow. Mission president can I talk with you for a moment? Sure. Elder Lankford, Come on in. I just have something I need to tell you. I'm so sorry to say this, but I. When we were taking that picture, I reached over and I fondled your wife's breasts.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] Oh, my goodness.

Eric [00:42:30] And clearly they had some kind of file on me and knew that I had these issues. Of course. But nonetheless, in order for my confessions to be effective in God's eyes, I had to be so sincere and absolutely convinced my priesthood holder that I committed the act that I did. For example, if they said, oh, Elder Langford, you never did that, I would have to then take 20 minutes and convince them that I did, and therefore Jesus would forgive me and I could go to the celestial kingdom now.

John Dehlin [00:43:04] Right, right, right, right. Yeah.

Eric [00:43:07] So just a couple examples there.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] Oh, that's terrible. So was this wrecking your mission or were you able to have an awesome mission and have this problem? Sure.

Eric [00:43:16] Good question. I look back on my mission with many positive feelings. I experienced all the wonderful things that many people talk about after their missions. I met a lot of good people, I had great relationships, I learned a lot, I matured, etc. At the same time. It was a dark two years for me. The scrupulosity was so intense that I could not enjoy what was going on around me. I was ruminating 24 7. If I rolled over in bed at night to adjust, just roll over, I would immediately start obsessing, couldn't get back to sleep. So, John, it was hell on earth for me in terms of these scrupulosity issues.

John Dehlin [00:44:08] Okay.

Eric [00:44:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:11] And I just have to say that in some ways, well, from the traditional, let's just say orthodox, true believing Mormon perspective, you did quite well. Because there's some people who wash out in the first week of their MTC experience because of this. And I've spoken with several, and there's also several people who can't make it through their mission because of this. So to make it through the MTC and through your mission is in some cases very exceptional, I'd say.

Eric [00:44:42] Well, it's really surprising. I can't believe I wasn't sent home. And I can't believe I didn't go to prison. I confessed all sorts of things that I never did and that were illegal. You hear of some people with OCD watching the news and hearing of a homicide in another town, and they immediately call 911 and confess that they were the one who committed the murder last night. And that was like me. I confessed almost anything. Imaginable and it was. Yeah, it was a miracle I didn't get sent home.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Right, right. So you had a good bishop before your mission. Sounds like you had some good branch presidents in umtc and sounds like you had a good mission president.

Eric [00:45:33] Well, yeah, they were great men, very sincere, very loving, and they had every intention to have my best interest in mind. I clearly recognized they were dentists or surgeons or farmers and they didn't have training in these issues. And I regret that every time I went in to confess, they would walk me through the repentance process and they'd read the scripture, you know, go thy way, my son, and sin no more. And they'd say, you know, Elder Langford, you are forgiven. Now's the time to get out there and go tracting tomorrow and bring souls to Christ and let thy heart not be troubled. You know, all this stuff. And if someone had called me on it even one time, it may have changed the course. And I certainly don't blame them. My goodness, I hope I'm not coming across that way. I. I just regret that every confession was accompanied with the standard LDS repentance methodology. When I was confessing things, I never.

John Dehlin [00:46:32] Right. So let's save what you wish they would have said to your getting better because I think it will fit in there. Okay. Any other major happenings or events on your mission? Are you ready to move to post mission?

Eric [00:46:48] Well, do you want me to? Just to touch on the two other themes. Hyper honesty.

John Dehlin [00:46:51] For sure. For sure. Okay, for sure.

Eric [00:46:52] So the hyper honesty issue was. Was a desire to tell the truth in all situations. The temple recommend interview question. Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men? That haunted me. And so every time I thought I stepped on a sprinkler head, I would knock on the door and say, I believe I broke your sprinkler. I'd like to give you $5. When we would go into a house to teach a discussion, I would take off my shoes eventually on my mission because I. I was certain that I was the one who left that little mark or that little stain on the rug.

John Dehlin [00:47:27] Or on the rug.

Eric [00:47:27] On the rug. Exactly. And I was the one who broke that tile. So I offered hundreds of people money to fix all the damage I did. If I made a copy at Walmart or Kinko's on the copy machine, I was sure I was the one who scratched the glass. And I would go to the owner and say, I'd like to pay for this. I would send people money in the mail if I. If they didn't take it from me at the time. And I would send a little letter and I say, really apologize, please do not throw away this money. You know, consider it restitution. Right, yeah, that was the hyper honesty theme.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] Okay, okay.

Eric [00:48:06] Then lastly, blasphemy was the third theme that plagued me. I got to the point where I kept becoming convinced that I had denied the Holy Ghost. And so certain words or phrases became so taboo to me or such triggers that I had to avoid them altogether. For example, I wrote a couple down here, words like death. If I ever said death, then that to me could trigger a cascade reaction in my mind that I had just said that God is dead, and that would be denying the existence of God, and therefore that would be denying the Holy Ghost. And that therefore would ruin my chances for any tradition. Exactly. And if I would say the word none or gone, I immediately would have a reaction mentally that thought I said, there is no Jesus or Jesus is gone, or just ridiculous connections like this that my mind would make. And for about six months, I literally thought that I had denied the Holy Ghost and my chances for ever even making it to the telestial kingdom were shot. And I had consigned myself to a life of simply trying to help anyone else out who could possibly have a chance for salvation. I can laugh now, but it was excruciatingly painful. Sure, 15, 20 years ago.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] No, I can imagine. So did your companions hate you? They did.

Eric [00:49:42] Many of them. We had a lot of good times, but they knew I was crazy and they had no idea what was wrong with me. I never told any of them, except perhaps one of them after so many times. Say, will you knock on this door, Elder? Because if I knock on it, I'll damage it, and then I'll have to offer to pay for the door. They were so aware. I mean, they saw me take off my shoes every time we entered a door. They saw all the times I gave people or offered them money for the things I had destroyed. And so there was a lot of aggravation there. Absolutely. I can't deny that.

John Dehlin [00:50:18] Did people ever lose their patience and say, elder, get over it, just chill out?

Eric [00:50:23] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:50:24] Oh, they did?

Eric [00:50:25] Yeah. One time one of my companions went to my mission president and said, what is wrong with this person? And, you know, my mission president took the liberty to tell him all about it. And that seemed to settle a few of his. Few of his questions.

John Dehlin [00:50:43] But you never sat them down and said, I've got this thing. And, you know, trying to understand.

Eric [00:50:48] No, just. Just one of my Companions that I was with for quite a while. And he had a, he had a high level of empathy and I really appreciated it. But I was so embarrassed and so ashamed and I thought I was so crazy that I never, I never explained it to anybody except for just probably one companion.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] And did this make you a second class citizen in the mission where you never really got the good leadership callings and you kind of was always a junior companion kind of thing?

Eric [00:51:14] Well, it's hard to say because my mission presidents constantly praised me. I mean, even though I probably drove them nuts by all the time I took and consumed out of their day, they at least to my face, would say, wow, you are so pure Elder Lankford, you are the cleanest vessel in the mission, all this stuff. And so no, I was never in any leadership positions as far as being a second class citizen. It's hard to know what, it's hard to know how other people perceived me. I am confident that they perceived me as a fiercely obedient missionary. And clearly that was the sign of a righteous person, in their view. And so I got a lot of praise for sticking to the white handbook or the white, the white missionary book or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:52:02] Yeah, white Bible. But was there also this back channel potentially of, you know, Eric's crazy or Elder Langford's crazy?

Eric [00:52:12] Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure there was a lot of that. I didn't have access to it, but I wouldn't doubt it at all.

Self-Awareness and OCD Recognition on the Mission

John Dehlin [00:52:20] And last question before we move on. Did A. So did you ever sit in your quiet times and say, you know, okay, this is ocd. I know I'm being excessive here. I need to rein it in. Like, did you have an awareness? As I mentioned in the intro, usually people recognize that they're. Did you recognize it? And why didn't that recognition, if you had it, spurn you to or lead you to tone it down?

Eric [00:52:54] Yes, to answer your question, I absolutely had a recognition. Every single obsession or compulsive act or rushing of anxiety that I had, I was simultaneously completely aware that I have this diagnosis. There's something very wrong with me. This is craziness. And these issues, as you well know, when you have this thought that you just had a sexual act with a dog, it's not like a hallucination. It's not as if there's some vision that comes to your mind and you play it out in your mind. With the dog, it's nothing like that. It's just a thought that flashes by that I had a sexual act. With the dog. And then the other voice kicks in and says, you are crazy. You have this disease. Clearly, you know, you didn't do this, Eric. And then all sorts of voices start chiming in. And then, okay, that's the spirit. And the spirit just told me. The spirit just told me, and if thy hand offend thee, cut it off. It is better to enter. And then I would think of the story of Abraham, God telling him to slaughter his son on an altar and stick a knife into his stomach. Stomach and kill him. And that was a test. And I would think of all these other crazy tests that had allegedly been asked by God. And I would just think, John, that this is my chance to prove to God that I am willing to do anything in order to go live with him and my family again. And so, yes, I knew I was crazy. Yes, I would sit there in these quiet moments and contemplate all these things. But the more I did, the more my anxiety would take control of what I decided to do. And at this point in my life, I had not had five minutes of therapy. All I had was dozens of examples of going through the repentance confession process with my priesthood leaders. I hadn't seen a therapist or anything. I was just on pills. I had no tools at this point, no behavioral tools to combat this issue. And we'll talk about that later, I'm sure. Which eventually helped me to overcome it and change my life completely.

John Dehlin [00:55:16] And real quick, what did the medication do for you?

Eric [00:55:20] It took off. Well, it took off the edge. The medication just dampened the edges of the anxiety and rounded them out. When I did start engaging in behavioral therapy and going to support groups and reading books and really working at it after I got home from my mission, then the medication certainly helped quite a bit in allowing me to take those steps I needed to.

John Dehlin [00:55:48] But before you started the therapy, the medication took the edge off? Yes, but it definitely did. Did it have any side effects, negative

Eric [00:55:56] side effects for you? It did. Fatigue. I don't know what the medical term for fatigue is. You know, dry mouth. Sometimes I would shake. I also have forgotten the medical term for that tremor, I believe. Anyway, I was on about six different pills. I was on Prozac, Anafranil, Luvox, Paxil. You know, all the SSRIs that were on the market at the time, we would just go from one to another.

John Dehlin [00:56:27] Not all at the same time. You just.

Eric [00:56:28] No, right.

John Dehlin [00:56:29] And I just have to mention this, and it may not have been part of your experience, but one of the most I don't know. One of the most common triggers that I see with people is that maybe they masturbated before their mission and they knew that they couldn't masturbate on their mission or felt like they couldn't masturbate on their mission.

Eric [00:56:50] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:51] And that became an overwhelming source of guilt, shame, and anxiety.

Eric [00:56:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] Was that a part of your particular situation, if you don't mind my asking?

Eric [00:57:02] Sure, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up. I have that written down in my notes here. That issue got to the point where when I would go to bed at night, I would fear that if my hands were down near my waist anywhere, if my thumb so much as touched my hip bone, I would be sure that I had just masturbated, and then I would go confess, whatever. So I eventually, probably a few months into my mission, went to bed every single night with my hands clutched together, holding hands with myself above my head until I fell asleep to force myself not to masturbate. And I can. And I can just tell you that I didn't masturbate on my mission, but any movement or any contact with my private areas, I definitely thought I did. So bathing was very difficult. Anytime I would wash, it became very complicated in terms of trying to prevent a situation in which I became convinced I had just masturbated. Yes. That was a severe theme ongoing in my ocd.

John Dehlin [00:58:21] And I've heard of people developing a technique to go the bathroom where they didn't have to touch themselves. Developing a method to shower where they could wash themselves but never actually have to touch themself.

Eric [00:58:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:35] And I've even heard of people walking around with their hands kind of in the air so that. So that their hands would never go down close to their private parts, just in normal, everyday situations. Right?

Eric [00:58:51] Yeah. That doesn't surprise me a bit.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So anything else you want to talk about in your mission or do you want to start talking about post mission?

Eric [00:59:02] Sure. Well, just to wrap it up, I guess the more socially deviant the obsession or the act that I had been convinced I had just committed, the more gripping it would be and the more elaborate and graphic the confession would have to be. And one of the common themes of people with this type of scrupulosity is that a heterosexual person will become convinced that they're gay. And this certainly was the case with me. And if I was gay, I think I'm the type of person that would be open about it. My life has changed so much that I'm quite nuanced and open in the things I'm able to discuss and consider. But I am a heterosexual individual, and yet I would become convinced that I was attracted to men. And that was so socially deviant. That would be a great one to throw at me with any monster called scrupulosity. And so my confessions and obsessions not only extended to women, but also to men. And so hugging my companion, for we have our goodnight prayer, and then you typically hug. Well, I was sure that I was committing a sexual act with him every time I did that, you know, type of thing where I had to start shaking hands and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [01:00:39] Right, right.

Eric [01:00:40] So that's. That's common. I don't know if you've run into that.

John Dehlin [01:00:42] No, I'll validate that. There's a. There's a measurement tool that measures OCD severity called the Y box, the Yale Obsessive Compulsive Scale or something like that. And on there, one of the questions is, you know, unwarranted confusion about gender identity. So in other words, you are not gay, but you're. You're obsessed with the idea that you are gay or you might be gay.

Eric [01:01:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:01:07] Even though you're not attracted to the opposite sex.

Eric [01:01:10] Right. You know, a man runs by jogging, and I notice that he has a good body, which I think is a very normal thing. I notice men with excellent physiques all the time, and I'm very comfortable saying, wow, he has a great body. Yet in that time of my life, I would think, oh, my gosh, I am gay now. What am I supposed to do? Got to go confess this and learn how to be straight. You know, all this stuff.

John Dehlin [01:01:32] Okay. Okay. Gotcha, Gotcha. All right, man. You had a lot. Pretty heavy. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your ward bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an E. S K Y E pixton.com thank you.

Eric [01:02:36] The sun gone down.

Life After the Mission and Seeking Help

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 230

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] So Eric, we spent some time talking about sort of an overview of OCD scrupulosity. We've talked about your upbringing a bit and, and your pre mission time and your mission time. So let's talk about what happens after the mission.

Eric [00:00:35] Sure. Well, my first issue coming home from my mission was that I was convinced I did not fulfill a quote, honorable mission. So when I got the certificate of successful honorable mission completion, I the that immediately became an obsession where I was worried about sometimes you're in gospel doctrine or elders quorum lesson and someone will say, could all of the returned missionaries raise your hands? And so I was starting to prepare how I was going to deal with a life of not raising my hand. Because if I raised my hand and said I completed a mission, that would indicate it was an honorable mission, which therefore would be a lie. And so that was kind of the first one I had.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] So it just continued continues basically.

Eric [00:01:25] Oh yeah, it just, it continued. And the last compulsion I had on my mission was with a. This is so sad. This is in the blasphemous arena. Blasphemy arena. I had a long flight home and I sat next to a little about a 9 or 10 year old Jewish boy and I thought that if I didn't convince him that Jesus was the Messiah, that I would have failed my entire purpose for serving a mission. And he was alone, he didn't have his parents. And I sat there and I just kept saying, this is so sad and so funny at the same time. I kept saying Johnny or whatever his name was, I want you to know that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the savior, the son of God, et cetera. And I just kept testifying to this kid again and again and again in order to make sure I didn't deny the Holy Ghost in withholding my testimony from a poor lost Jewish boy. That was my last. I went out with a bang.

John Dehlin [00:02:38] Okay, how do you like that?

Eric [00:02:41] How do I like what?

John Dehlin [00:02:42] How did he like that?

Eric [00:02:43] Oh, how did he like that?

John Dehlin [00:02:44] How did he take it?

Eric [00:02:45] Oh, the poor kid just, you know, he just dealt with it. He just sat there and tried to act interested.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] Okay, all right, so you're struggling back in your wards, hesitant to say you fulfilled an honorable mission, Right?

Eric [00:03:06] The week after I got home, I met my new bishop and my sister in law at the time was living with my parents and my family. And there was one occasion where she stood in the doorway of my bedroom. And she stepped in probably about a foot just as she was standing there, moving around as we were talking. And at that point I realized I was alone with a girl in a bedroom for the first time in two years. And so I had become convinced I just had sex with her. And I went to my new bishop and this is the first time I met him. And I confessed that I had sex with my sister in law.

John Dehlin [00:03:48] Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's just. It's just. It's just continuing, huh?

Eric [00:03:56] Yeah, it just continued. You want me to tell you what, what, what really started me on the path of healing and overcoming this?

John Dehlin [00:04:03] Well, was there. Yeah. Was there a big climax where you just knew you had to do something different?

Eric [00:04:10] Absolutely. Here's what happened. My. My girlfriend from before my mission, I got home and she decided to serve a mission. So several months later, she went on a mission. And so I now had this year and a half to get my act together. And by the time she got home, I was absolutely determined to be healthy and to be in control, whatever it took. Because I knew when I got married and had children and tried to live a normal adult life, I could not be running to the police station and confessing that I murdered this person or stole this or whatever it was. I knew I had to get control. And here's where the turning point really occurred. And I will forever be thankful to my father for this. This is a few weeks after I got home. My dad took me out to a movie. We went out on a date. And the night before, I had gone on a d date with a girl, just a friend. And as we were hugging goodbye, I became convinced. I fondled her breasts and made out with her and everything. Of course I didn't. And when I was telling my dad this in the driveway as we were parked before coming in the house after we went to our movie, he did something that no priesthood leader or. Or anyone ever did. He called me on the carpet and he really verbally shook me up. And what he did was he said, eric. Well, first I said, dad, and then I grabbed her breast and we made out in the car. And I don't know what to do. I'm so sad. I just came home from my mission and now I've been immoral already. And he stopped me and he practically yelled at me, had a very strong, firm voice and said, eric, you tell me right now, did you do that or not? And he knew I was full of crap and he knew I didn't do it. He'd heard enough of this stuff. And he put my feet to the fire, and it shook me up so bad. And I kept saying, well, Dad, I don't know. I'm not sure. I think I did, but I don't know if I did. All this, all this typical mental process that I went through every single time this happened, and he would not back down until I gave him a yes or a no. And after five minutes of wrangling and being very firm with me, I finally gave in and I finally said, no, Dad, I didn't do it. And I knew that I possibly was ruining my chances of going to the celestial kingdom by denying the sin I committed. But on the other hand, I knew I could not. I could not continue this kind of life.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] Okay, so let's. Let's break that down just really quick. This is obviously a really important part.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] So in your mind, it wasn't that you realized. Tell me if I'm wrong. It wasn't that you realized that you didn't do. Was that you had to accept the fact that you may not go to heaven and you could admit to your dad that you didn't do it. In other words, you had to not deny or try and fight with the scrupulous impulse, but you had to just sort of accept it and. And be willing to have whatever consequences that you feared happen. Is that right or not?

Eric [00:08:07] Yes, that is correct. And that was the ultimate tool that I developed. Well, I didn't develop it, but that's the ultimate tool I utilized in overcoming this. Eventually, over the next several years, some of your listeners may be wondering and want to ask me, you know, Eric, didn't you know deep down inside somewhere in you, that you really didn't do all these things at that time? And if anyone is asking that, I would say to you, that is an impossible question to answer. The anxiety becomes so acute and intense that it clouds everything. And you think you know you didn't do it somewhere down in there, but then the other voice kicks in, and you think it's the spirit telling you, but you know you did. And you know, then my mission presidents would say, the devil is the one putting these thoughts of doubt that you're worthy in your mind. And so now I've got the devil voice. I've got the spirit voice. I've got Jesus voice. I've got heavenly fathers. I've got my fathers. I got all these voices. And it's not like I'm literally hearing voices. But to answer that question, I'M telling you, no, I did not know deep down inside somewhere that I really didn't do these things. In my 10 years after this issue, I can look back with 100% certainty and say, no, I never did any of these things. I confessed. But at the time, the anxiety was so intense that I was so smothered and clouded over that I could not discern reality in a sense. So, John, to answer your question, that is correct. The ultimate tool that I had to develop was to live in ambiguity and to have to accept the possibility that I was going to go to hell. And I had to be willing to go to hell in order to stop this vicious cycle of confessing. And I had to sit there in my discomfort for month after month after month and not alleviate the anxiety. And we could talk about specific methodologies later if you want, but for now, does that answer that question?

Understanding What Makes Scrupulosity Worse

John Dehlin [00:10:26] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So. So thank you.

Eric [00:10:29] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [00:10:30] Keep.

John Dehlin [00:10:30] Keep going. I just wanted to make sure I understood that.

Eric [00:10:33] Sure. So my dad roughed me up. He really did. And. And it was very difficult, and it hurt at the time, and yet it made me take a stand. And I had to say yes or no to my dad. He would not let me out of the car. And. And I said, no, Dad, I did not fondle that girl's breasts last night. And he said, well, there you go, Eric, and I will be darned if. The next morning, the anxiety had dissipated a little bit, and I did not confess it to anyone. And so that was a check mark in my little book. Wow, look what happened. I didn't confess it. The anxiety dissipated overnight. That kind of emboldened me. I started reading books. I joined the Obsessive Compulsive foundation, local chapter. I started actually getting behavioral therapy. As the months ticked by and my girlfriend was going to get home from the mission, I became more and more motivated to become healthy. And through.

John Dehlin [00:11:41] Through those.

Eric [00:11:42] Through those steps, I was able to.

John Dehlin [00:11:47] So, you know, one of the things that we have to be very careful about is we don't want to suggest that any parent or sibling or loved one of someone who is probably struggling with scrupulosity, that you just want to get them in a car and shout at them in the right way and they're going to be fixed. Right.

Eric [00:12:06] That's a great point.

John Dehlin [00:12:08] Yeah.

Eric [00:12:08] This is. This is the study of one. I mean, n equals one here. I'm no therapist, and I don't have any longitudinal or broad data. This is just that thing that worked for me. After four years of Being pandered by priesthood leaders, sending me through the repentance process. Finally, someone shook me up.

John Dehlin [00:12:27] What was the worst thing someone could do? Those who were well intentioned, and you've alluded to this with the bishops, but I just want to make it explicit. What's the worst thing you can do for someone with scrupulosity?

Eric [00:12:42] Take them seriously. And worse than that is give them airtime. And I know that sounds terrible, but if they're engaged in a treatment program and you make yourself as a priesthood leader, as a representative of Jesus, accessible to this person, it's the worst thing that could happen. Eventually, as we'll talk later. Eventually, every one of my family members, my wife, my mother, my father, my brothers, my sisters, everybody had to boycott me in terms of allowing myself to corner them and manipulate them into hearing one of my confessions. And so they shut me out in that sense. But that was part of the whole process. We all read the same books and we were all following the same plan for me. And every time I would become so desperate that they would not let me confess. And so taking the person's confession seriously is very damaging. And again, I am not a psychologist and I would never claim to have any authority in terms of what is good for most people. But for me, I wonder what would have happened if one of my mission presidents were to say, okay, Elder Lankford, you need to tell me, did you do this or not? If you did, you're going home on the next plane tomorrow morning. If you didn't, you can stay.

John Dehlin [00:14:13] Call your bluff.

Eric [00:14:14] Call my bluff? Call me on my crap. You know what? What would have happened? I don't know. I don't know if I would have been ready for that kind of boldness. I don't know if it would have sent me over the edge. I don't know. Maybe it would have got me sent home. I'm not sure. I just wonder sometimes.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] And that's interesting and potentially viable. Let me ask a different option. What if someone were to have said to you back then, maybe you are going to hell? Who knows?

Eric [00:14:45] You mean during the peak of my.

John Dehlin [00:14:48] What if a bishop or branch president or a mission president had just said, you know what? We don't know. You know, maybe, you know, maybe none of us have. Have certainty and it could be right. Maybe you. Maybe you really are. What. What do you. Can you put yourself in the mindset of what that might have done?

Eric [00:15:08] That's a great question.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] In other words, not. Not confront you so forcefully, but sure, but just. It sounds like the worst thing they can do is say, oh, you're so wonderful. Oh, you're so honest.

John Dehlin [00:15:19] Right?

John Dehlin [00:15:20] Don't worry, your sins are okay, because that seems to be feeding in to what you were seeking. Is that true or not exactly.

Eric [00:15:30] I was seeking the final word from Jesus through my priesthood leaders to declare to me that I was forgiven. And bingo, I got it. I confessed when I heard those words, go ye therefore, my son, and sin no more. The anxiety would alleviate immediately until the next day, or whatever it would be. But if a bishop or priesthood leader said to me, maybe you will go to hell. Elder Lankford. Frankly, John, I don't know. It's hard to know. But on those lines, the tool that I did not have growing up in this religious environment was a tolerance or an acceptance or even an embracing for ambiguity in general. Everything was so black and white and clear cut. And here's the answer to this, here's the answer to that. It's all mapped out. Here's the formula. You input this, here's the output. And so I had no muscle in my head to deal with any level of ambiguity. So at this point in my life here in my mid-30s, I've come a long way, and I actually think ambiguity is quite wonderful in all sorts of areas. And right now, if I don't have certainty about this claim or that claim, that is just fine to me. And so back then, I don't know how it would have affected me. Right now, I would be just fine with not being certain about everything relating to the supernatural and the afterlife. I'm very comfortable with that.

Treatment and Healing Approaches for OCD

John Dehlin [00:17:12] So you talked about the OCF foundation, you talked about the OCD foundation, you talked about some other things. Talk about that healing process, because certainly it was a little more effort than just, okay, dad, it wasn't true. And your girlfriend comes back and you get married. Was there a long journey back or a medium journey back?

Eric [00:17:35] It was long. It was from. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:17:37] And what did that entail? Yeah, what did that entail for you?

Eric [00:17:39] Okay, I'm looking for a book right now that I read. I read a number of books. The journey entailed, like I said, therapy, regular therapy, psychiatric help. I stayed on medications. I got put on the highest dose of this particular final medication that I was on that was possible in my situation. The books that were very instrumental to me were Brain Lock by Jeffrey Schwartz. I followed his four steps in his book. Another very good book is called the Doubting Disease. Another one is the Boy who Couldn't Stop Washing, Even Though that's more dealing with classic OCD and not scrupulosity. But the best book on this topic is the Doubting Disease. I believe it's by Joseph Karaochi. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] I've heard it pronounced different ways, Shiroki.

John Dehlin [00:18:35] I've heard different things.

John Dehlin [00:18:36] Things.

Eric [00:18:36] Okay, so it was a long road to answer your question. It was not just one conversation with my dad. That just was the first time something like that ever happened. And that's where I sort of noticed for the first time that if I did not carry out a compulsion, the anxiety would alleviate. So in total, it was several years of very, very difficult therapy. And I've read some books that say you can conquer this thing in a few months. And that certainly wasn't the case for me.

John Dehlin [00:19:11] So you had talk therapy?

Eric [00:19:12] Yes, yes. A lot of it. A lot of it.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] And do you know what kind? Can you talk about that a little bit?

John Dehlin [00:19:21] Sure.

Eric [00:19:22] Well, it wasn't the kind where, for a person obsessed with germs, where you would go and wipe your hands on a toilet seat and force the person not to wash their hands. You know, it wasn't exposure. Well, it was a type of exposure and response prevention. Erp, I guess you could say.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] Let's talk about that for a second.

Eric [00:19:43] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:19:44] Let me.

John Dehlin [00:19:44] I'm sorry, I just asked you a question, then I jump in.

Eric [00:19:46] But no, it's fine.

John Dehlin [00:19:47] No problem.

John Dehlin [00:19:48] So it's important to mention that currently, I would say the number one recommended treatment for OCD is a treatment, as you mentioned, called exposure and response prevention or ritual prevention. The R in ERP can be the response or ritual. And it basically. Basically, it seems like the. And I'm no expert on erp, but I know a little bit about it, and what I understand about it is the idea is to expose you to your obsessional thoughts, your anxiety provoking obsessional thoughts, and in as much, with as much frequency and as force as you know is acceptable. And that over time, by confronting them directly and learning that you'll be okay if you are exposed to them and you can make it through by facing them instead of running away from them or trying to neutralize them in an indirect way, that over time you will learn that nothing bad is going to happen from your obsessions. And more significantly, prolonged exposure to these things will eventually decrease your anxiety levels.

Eric [00:21:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:21:12] And so, you know, if it's a phobia, you know, and they're scared of spiders, the first thing you do is you would. You would talk about spiders, and then, you know, in a couple sessions, you would show them a picture of a spider. And then in a couple more sessions, you would have them touch the picture of the spider. And, you know, this exposure could be, you know, an hour long or 45 minutes long or 2 hours long. I don't know. I've heard different variations of duration, but, you know, it's just prolonged, repeated exposure where basically, you know, let's say for five minutes, you would, you know, touch this, you know, picture of a spider, and then they'd ask, okay, at the end of that five minutes, okay, how are you feeling now, on a scale of 1 to 100, and you give a number, and then, okay, for another five minutes, touch the spider pitcher. And then eventually they'd show you a video of a spider. And then eventually they would, you know, bring a live spider in and keep it in a cage. And, you know, maybe the climax of the therapy would be that you're holding the spider for prolonged periods of time. And in the case of a phobia, such exposure over time would cure you of the spider phobia because you would realize that spiders aren't as dangerous as you feared, and you would get so much exposure to them that you would no longer fear them. So an ocd, as you mentioned, if your fears are germs, they would have you exposed to germs. If your fears are driving in a car that you may have run over somebody, they would literally have you drive around, and they'd sit in the car with you. And as you had the anxiety that you may have run over something, they would have you keep driving and not allow you to perform your ritual. They would not allow you to perform that response that seek to neutralize. And over time, you would break out of the habit of falling back to the ritual whenever you had the anxiety, and you would learn that you can, in fact, get by with the obsessions, and hopefully the obsessions would diminish and you'd be okay. So that's my understanding of exposure, ritual prevention. Before I discuss a little bit more about it, do you have anything to add or take away from that?

Eric [00:23:32] No, that was great.

John Dehlin [00:23:33] Okay. The other things I'll say about ERP is that it is problematic. Well, let's just say this. It's the best treatment out there that's been sort of consistently, reliably, empirically validated. And it's probably the number one treatment that the OCD foundation would recommend, along with medication, as a psychiatrist might dictate. So I don't want to ever give the perception that I'm steering people away from it or knocking it. I'm not. That would be the number one treatment that we in our clinic would recommend here at the university. There are a couple problems with it. One problem is that at least, let's just say I'll pick the number 25%. But there's a decent chunk of people who simply will refuse to do it. They would find that treatment so terribly burdensome that they will simply just say, I won't do that, and they'll leave. There's another decent percent, and let's just say it's somewhere between 10 and 20%. But I, you know, it could be bigger or smaller who will engage in the treatment but then drop out because for one reason or another, it's just, they find it too distasteful. Now, if you then factor out the people who either refuse or drop out, then you've got, you know, decent success rates, let's just say somewhere between 50 and 75%. So that's the good news, that if you can, if you're willing to do it, erp, and if you're able to make it through, you've got a better chance than not that you're going to get better. And that's why the OCD foundation recommends it. Now, here's where the glitch might come for scrupulosity. And again, I want to hear what your experience was or what your reactions are. But here's where I've read in the literature that it could be a problem. Let's say your obsessive thoughts are sexual. Well, it wouldn't take you much thinking to hear my description of exposure and ritual prevention to know what the, what the, what the exposure would be. It would be, let's invoke your sexual thoughts as much as possible in whatever ways you will tolerate. Now, I will acknowledge that on the one hand, that could be seen as a gross violation of someone's religious or moral standards. Or let's say that the, the F word comes into their brain as an obsession. Well, the, the exposure would be to expose them to the F word as much as possible so that they became desensitized to it. So on the one hand, I imagine that listeners would say, well, that's terrible, that's unethical. You're basically inviting someone to engage in sinful, immoral activity. And I could see why someone wouldn't be down with that. Or I could see why ecclesiastical leaders would object. And I'm Sure. You could imagine a scenario where, you know, your therapist is showing you pictures of naked ladies or asking you to think about naked ladies and you're in front of your bishop and you tell the bishop that. I could see a bishop feeling like maybe that wasn't the right thing to do, even though empirically that's a very well supported treatment. But on the other hand, it's a fair thing to say that God knows the difference between sin and scrupulosity. And a religious person who did believe in all these moral standards could probably even with the endorsement of an enlightened ecclesiastical leader, engage in the very exposure that I just mentioned and do it in a way that the church and God would provide their blessings for. Because God doesn't want your life destroyed by your fear of the F word. So who cares? Get exposed to it so you can get over it. Right? Or let's say that exposure to your sexual thoughts and images really did help you stop being controlled by them so that you could get back to church and serve a good mission or live a meaningful life. Would you agree that it's reasonable that God would be okay with that, potentially be okay with that kind of treatment?

Eric [00:28:10] I think that's reasonable, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:12] And I've even had people tell me who have had scrupulosity at the same or increased levels of severity that they were willing to do this because they felt like God understood that they were trying to get better. And so. But I think our listeners could understand why ERP could be problematic for scrupulosity because it could, in some people's view, ask them to engage in activities that directly and explicitly violate their religious morals. So having given that background about erp, you said that your treatment was a derivative of erp. Why don't you talk about that?

Eric [00:28:55] Sure, yeah. And to get back to your question a moment ago, if I think that's reasonable, you know, we're dealing with, in my case, a person who was confessing egregious acts that he never did. These acts could get him thrown in prison for years. And so desperate times take desperate measures. In my case, I actually never, in my therapy, I never engaged in that type of exposure and response prevention. For example, I never was with a therapist. And they would explain, okay, here a dog comes up and sniffs your crotch, explain all this. That never occurred with me. It was, correct, a derivative of erp. I guess the exposure, for me, the exposure element came from my day to day life. I would come to my therapist with, okay, I went on the State last night and, okay, I hugged this guy today. And I would list all these things that had triggered obsessions in my mind, and so those served to be my exposures. We never came up with any artificial stimuli. In other words, the response prevention in my case was very simple. And it seems so simple. It's like, eric, why didn't you do this right off the bat? And I apologize that I didn't have these tools and I wasted a lot of years. But the only thing I didn't need to do, the only thing I needed to do was simply not confess. I just needed to not open my mouth. That was the ritual or response prevention

John Dehlin [00:30:47] was to not what?

Eric [00:30:48] Not to confess. So when I thought I dinged this person's car, when I thought I exaggerated on my resume, when I thought that I lied in a job interview, the thing that I needed to do was simply not to confess. When I thought I denied the existence of God, I needed to not confess that. So I followed. Jeffrey Schwartz, Brainlock. Four steps. And how that worked in 60 seconds or less would be this. The four steps are, number one, relabel. So when a person is attacked with an obsessive thought, the person needs to recognize that the intrusive obsessive thoughts and urges are the result of something called ocd, right, or scrupulosity. So it's simply relabeling it what it really is. Step two, reattribute. To realize that the intensity and the intrusiveness of the thought or the urge is caused by the ocd, and it's probably related to a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Those two steps typically go together. Step three, refocus. Work around the OCD thoughts by focusing your attention on something else, at least for a few minutes. Do another behavior. So, for example, my therapist would help me to set a time limit. Okay, Eric, you thought you did xyz. You need to commit that you will wait three days before you'll confess it to your bishop. And if you do, go confess it to your bishop, and you just can't handle it, that's fine. Just admit you lost this battle in the big war, and let's move on to the next battle. So for three days, I had to sit with the anxiety, and I had to sit with the discomfort, the pain, and the ambiguity. And eventually, what would happen in every occasion would be that miraculously this anxiety would die down. And if I would just be patient enough and wait long enough and just force myself, sort of white knuckle it, not to confess, the anxiety would lessen and then the fourth step is to revalue that whole experience. So to not take an OCD thought at face value and realize that it's not significant in itself. And so over several years after my mission of engaging in this behavioral therapy and this four step process, this sort of pseudo ERP process that would occur mostly with myself in my head, I eventually started to have the courage and accumulate all that experience to devalue these thoughts and just to not take them as seriously and realize, okay, I've felt this anxiety before. If I just wait long enough, it will go away. And it eventually does. And sometimes it takes four or five months, but it eventually does. Now I can look back and laugh at all of these experiences and my siblings and my parents to this very day. We'll be together at dinner for a family reunion and I'll hug my mom, hey, Mom. And she'll say, oh my gosh, Eric, you just grabbed my butt. Or my brother will say, you just kissed me, or whatever. And so it's a big family. It's a big family joke that we can all laugh about now.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] Wow, that's amazing.

Eric [00:34:19] Isn't that incredible?

John Dehlin [00:34:21] So you're cured?

Eric [00:34:23] You know, I'm not cured. I still have obsessive thoughts that come to mind. But I have so many years of experience now at devaluing those thoughts and not taking them seriously that I have not confessed anything in years. I don't. Well, first of all, my views are quite different on the confession process as defined by the LDS Church now in general. But I, But I don't follow through on my obsessions anymore. I do still have them. And in times of stress in my life, whether through my employment or whatnot, my OCD scrupulosity does kind of surface. But it's to the point where it's so manageable now that I wouldn't say I'm cured, but I am over it, 99%.

John Dehlin [00:35:16] That's amazing.

Eric [00:35:17] It really is. I look back and so do my family members and my wife, who knew me again from a very young age. And I am not the same person that I used to be. I cannot believe that with all the support and help and the tools and the professional help and just the raw courage and willingness to go to hell and to risk it all in order to overcome this, that I made it or that we made it. It's incredible.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] Yeah. I'm really encouraged to hear that you were able to have such success. And it almost sounds too good to be true, but that's. My advisor has done a large randomized clinical trial on the treatment that we offer for scrupulosity, which is called acceptance and commitment therapy, and very high acceptability rates and very high success rates. So I know that this is something that if you catch it and if you catch it early, it's totally treatable for a lot of people. And that's what I love about it. It's interesting people, it's fascinating cases. It's good people who just are really conscientious. And it's totally something that people can get better with.

Eric [00:36:46] Yes, A wise psychiatrist told me, he said, be careful never to think you're totally over it, because OCD or scrupulosity is like knowing how to ride a bike. You could ride a bike for the first 30 years of your life and then put the bike aside for the next 40 years, and when you're 70, you can get back on that bike and you will know exactly how to ride it. And so he said, similarly, when it comes to scrupulosity and ocd, the wagon ruts are so deep in your brain and your chemistry that you'll never forget how to obsess and to carry out your compulsion. So don't be surprised if someday you're caught off guard. And just remember, you'll always know how to ride this bike. And don't put too much value on it, and don't listen to that voice. And so that's been actually really helpful advice for me as I've had children and advanced professionally where things get really stressful. And I start to realize that I'm starting to have these obsessions and think I'm doing things that I'm really not. And then I remember those comments, and I go back and review the four steps, and I would consider myself a very healthy person now and very moderate and very relaxed about these issues. And I have a high level of tolerance for ambiguity. I'm very, very glad about that.

John Dehlin [00:38:14] Wow, that's fantastic. Really happy for you. And I'm really grateful that you'd be willing to come on and try and share your story with others.

Eric [00:38:27] Absolutely. I've been over this, quote, unquote, over it for about 10 years now, and I haven't talked to anyone about it except my wife and my family. And of course, I've written thousands of pages in my journal about it. And I'm sort of to the point, John, where I want to reach out. I'm no psychologist or therapist, and I would never attempt to be anything like that. But I don't know. I was willing to come on the podcast and have an interview with you just simply to share my story. I was so lonely for so many years. And I knew there were checkers and germaphobes and washers out there, but I never knew. And I still actually, to this day, except for the exception of maybe one or two people, don't know anybody that had scrupulosity like me. So I sort of thought I was the only person in the whole world. And I would love to chat with anyone who may be going through it, not in a therapy way, but just simply to, you know, to be a person of encouragement.

John Dehlin [00:39:28] Sure, sure. Okay. So we'll get. We'll put your. We'll put your email address up on the site.

Eric [00:39:34] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:38] And maybe we'll put the. If you can email me the list of books that you mentioned.

Eric [00:39:43] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] And maybe. Maybe a few of those steps that you mentioned that might be really helpful.

Eric [00:39:48] Okay, sure.

Is Religion to Blame for Scrupulosity

John Dehlin [00:39:50] Let me ask you one more question before. Well, I'm going to ask you two more questions before we go.

Eric [00:39:56] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:57] So the first question is. Well, some people, there's a really tricky question about whether or to what extent a religion is to blame for scrupulosity. In other words, if I read the scientific literature today, it goes to great lengths to say you never blame the religion for scrupulosity. That basically people get ocd, and OCD attacks the thing that the people care most about. So if they care most about their health, it's going to attack their health or their concerns about their health. If they care most about their children or parents, it may attack their concerns about their parents or friends or family safety. And if they care most about their religion, well, that's what the OCD is going to attack.

Eric [00:40:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] And so on the one hand, I want to be very careful to say, as you tried to say in the beginning, that we should be very careful in assigning blame to the church or the religion. And we should acknowledge the fact that in any given religion, the vast majority of the people in the religion don't have scrupulosity. So if ever you want to blame the religion for the scrupulosity, ask yourself why so many people can have the same things taught, read the same scriptures as you did, and just sort of take them reasonably. So that's the one hand. On the other hand, I have read about cases where the cure for the person was found for some in their loss of faith, that they actually, when they stopped believing, when they stopped taking the truth claims literally, when they stopped being wrapped around the Axle of belief, let's just say a literalistic, orthodox belief, either a deliteralization or a softening or a weakening of their belief. Or let's say you could also use, you know, softer language and say a more sophisticated belief or a more nuanced belief or metaphorical belief instead of a weakening of a belief could be the answer for some. Or a simple cessation of belief altogether could be helpful for some. You know, I've read some cases where that has been the case. So I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are on all this and if any of it relates to your experience.

Reflecting on Faith and the Mormon Experience

Eric [00:42:34] Sure, those are great questions. As I look back, I will never know how my life would have been from the age of, oh, you know, 17 to 25, 26 during the height of my scrupulosity issues. I will never know what my life would have been like had I not been raised LDS or had I been raised Jewish or Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, whatever, I'll never know. I've done a lot of thinking about that. And I look back and of course, it's not rocket science that there were two major components to my scrupulosity. Number one, there was the biological component. Clearly it was in generations before me. And number two, it was the environmental component. And I can say that I do attribute almost 100% of the environmental component of my scrupulosity to the church, my church experience. I don't use the term blame. I don't feel resentful toward the church for causing this terrible condition in me for those many years. I do at the same time recognize that I plugged into the frequency and the frequency was loud and it was strong and it was explicit and I latched onto it all, the talk again of worthiness and purity and clean hands and masturbation and standards. I don't mean to sound critical here, but even what seemed to sometimes be Law of Moses type of requirements and, and I was just one of those what? I think it affects maybe 2% of the population who really was the perfect person to have this issue attack. So Mormonism was the stage on which my biology played out. And I'll never know what it would have been like had I not been raised Mormon. To address your second question or your second issue that you brought up regarding some individuals, maybe, I don't know, strategic decision to reevaluate their faith or. Go in a different direction in terms of the literal nature of their beliefs. With me, I. I have gone through quite an evolution in terms of My. Worldview. I actually don't describe my experience as losing my faith. I feel like I've gained much more than I've lost in this whole process. Yet I have to say that that's been a completely. Well, maybe not completely, but mostly a separate process from the scrupulosity plague that had its grip on me for all those years. My evolution and my reevaluation of my faith and where I place my confidence in terms of exclusive truth claims has been quite separate from my scrupulosity. It's only been in the past five years. I will say that where I am now at this point in time

John Dehlin [00:46:13] would

Eric [00:46:13] have been a really, really nice place to be growing up. And I think I would have dodged this scrupulosity bullet a lot better if I had had the tools and the openness and the acceptance for ambiguity that I now have. So I don't know if you're asking this, I mean, to describe my feelings towards my beliefs. I. My beliefs are definitely not, or my views are definitely not orthodox as they used to be. And they're quite nuanced at this point in time. Does that help?

John Dehlin [00:46:50] But I think the most important point is you got better from scrupulosity. This isn't the most important point, but what I'm hearing you say is you got better without having to deconstruct your faith.

Eric [00:47:04] That is correct. I. I got better long before I began to go through a process of re evaluating my faith. So reevaluating my faith was not at all a strategy to overcome the scrupulosity. I beat that monster five years before I began to think critically for the first time in just my personal life about, about my faith in general.

John Dehlin [00:47:36] But having said that, you kind of conjecture that maybe if you had been raised to view religion, morals, ethics, theology in a bit more of a nuanced, metaphorical, non catastrophic, non extreme, non literalistic way that maybe that could have been softened for you or maybe you might not have had it as bad as you did.

Eric [00:48:08] Well, we'll never know. But I tend to think that it would have softened it. I don't look back with regrets. I really have loved my life and I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's. But yeah, I do think it would have softened it. And I. I can't attribute any of the catastrophic the sky is falling extremist messages to my parents at all because while they were totally orthodox, they were not dogmatic. And so I tend to attribute nearly 100% of that to the environment in which I was raised religiously, but again, we'll never know.

Advice for Church Leaders Helping Those with OCD

John Dehlin [00:48:52] Okay, so if you had a suggestion to that bishop or that branch president or that mission president, because we know tons of bishops and mission presidents listen to Mormon stories, of course. So if you had recommendations for them or for parents or for loved ones, and you can deal with those separately if you want, what would those be to help maybe save someone like you in the future?

Eric [00:49:22] Well, that's really hard to say. I have to admit I'm not too full of advice for anyone. And again, I reiterate that my experience is just n equals 1. And so I have to admit I'm fairly ignorant in terms of how to guide anyone else. It would be difficult for me to say anything in those regards simply because. The actual structure and the doctrine of the Church may not be compatible with what I had to offer, if that makes any sense.

John Dehlin [00:50:08] In other words, the types of recommendations you'd make would. Would be things that the Church likely couldn't do.

Eric [00:50:14] Well, possibly. I mean, the Church's view on the repentance process and what needs to be repented of in the first place, or how that is completed, or the degree or the, excuse me, the percentage of grace versus works or, you know, those kinds of issues would be necessary to work around in the framework of the Church and its doctrine. And I just don't have any advice for parents or stake presidents or bishops or leaders, you know, outside of. Outside of those boundaries.

John Dehlin [00:50:48] I see, I see. Well, at a minimum, it sounds like in your case, not playing into the obsessions.

John Dehlin [00:50:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] Not praising people for their obsessions.

Eric [00:51:02] Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] And maybe easing up on the catastrophic, you know, guilt faced, fear based, dramatic consequences, emphasis within religion and maybe a little bit leaning more towards the love and forgiveness and the compassion. And above all, flexibility certainly, you know, might not be harmful for dealing with people like you in the future.

John Dehlin [00:51:34] True.

Eric [00:51:35] That's really well said, John. And you said it better than I did. Certainly. That's what I'm getting at. I guess what I'm saying is it is difficult to move away from these scriptures that say, for our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us. We shall not be found spotless, and our thoughts will also condemn us, et cetera. It's better to go into heaven with an arm cut off than not. And it's better to go ahead and kill your boy on an altar in order to follow God's will. It's better for Heber C. Kimball to give up his wife Violet just because it's this sick test that God is asking him to. Asking Joseph to perform, to see if Heber C. Kimball is faithful. So it's hard to move away from all of those really clear scriptural historical examples and then change that to a message of more compassion, more grace, more flexibility, more softness. Do you see what I mean?

John Dehlin [00:52:42] I do, I do. And, you know, I would add things like, you know, when a missionary got sent home from my mission, and this was actually played out in Richard Dutcher's second movie, States of Grace. But there's a quote that I think Joseph Fielding Smith said that it's better for a young man to come home in a pine box than without honor from his mission.

Eric [00:53:04] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:53:06] Yeah, go ahead.

Eric [00:53:07] Absolutely. The conference talks about, I'm late, but I'm clean. Try saying that to a person with OCD and scrupulosity and they will be willing to go to prison for the rest of their life in order to be clean. And so, as you can see, I kind of am showing some emotion. It's just me I'm thinking about. And you're right that, that most people are able to filter these messages in their minds to a level that's comfortable with them and not plug in so literally to those frequencies at the same time. I can't deny that I received those messages so explicitly and so frequently all my life that there was no way I could escape the monster that took me for those seven or eight years in my life, given my biological makeup and environment, which I found myself in.

John Dehlin [00:54:03] Right. And I do think that it's, you know, because so much of this is embedded in the Scriptures. Even Jesus saying, as a man thinketh, so is he, that it's going to be hard to ever fully shake this from at least Christianity. And I hear it's just as prevalent in Judaism and Islam. But what I will say, just as an encouragement to ecclesiastical leaders, I guess, is that we've become really good at ignoring large chunks of the Scriptures. You know, we ignore most of the Old Testament. There are all sorts of quotes in the New Testament that we ignore, such as, you know, women stay silent in the church. It's condoning of slavery. You know, there are all sorts of things that we found a way to work around with the Scriptures. So I guess I'm trying to give any ecclesiastical leader or family member out there, give them license to de. Emphasize or to even dismiss certain parts of the Scriptures in favor of other ones if they feel like it might help someone who's also struggling.

Eric [00:55:13] That's great advice, John. I think you're Absolutely right. A normal person could naturally do this as they read the Old Testament. And they could ask themselves, did God really command this prophet to tell the children of Israel to go over and destroy every child, every man, every woman? And a person may take that with a grain of salt and be very comfortable. A person like me back in the day would take every single word of the Scriptures literally and directly from God's mouth and have no choice but to believe it all. And I just didn't have the tools to think a little bit more critically about various possibilities of what those words meant at that point in time. And that's just where I was at the time. And I'm really, really. I'm really grateful to be where I am at this point. And again, I believe in God. I believe in the core claims of Christianity, and I take a lot of other elements that are tied to all of these and the claims of certainty with a large grain of salt. And so I'm not a. A faithless person in terms of a strategic method to overcome my scrupulosity, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:56:32] Sure, sure, sure. And, yeah, what I also hear you saying is that this is probably always going to be embedded in religion to some extent, as well trained as the ecclesiastical leaders might be, that it's kind of baked into the Scriptures and in some ways inescapable for some. Sure, yeah, sure. But I just have to acknowledge

John Dehlin [00:57:03] your

John Dehlin [00:57:03] graciousness and your generosity in being willing to spend a couple hours talking about this and to be able to extend the hand of sort of awareness and help for people who are struggling.

Eric [00:57:16] Well, you're very welcome. And you're also generous to take the time to do this interview and bring these issues out into a public forum. And you're very good at what you do, and you've raised awareness of a lot of very important issues. And, you know, certainly people can change. And I hope this particular podcast may reach one or two people that may feel very lonely out there and feel fairly helpless in terms of their inability to overcome scrupulosity. It definitely can be overcome.

John Dehlin [00:57:49] Well, that's a great message of hope. So, Eric Langford, thank you so much for coming on Mormon Stories. And take care. And we'll make sure to include all your references in our blog post@mormonstories.org for all those who want to check it out.

Eric [00:58:08] Thanks again, John. This was great.

John Dehlin [00:58:10] All right, thank you, Eric. Take care.

John Dehlin [00:58:13] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out at clayton brad pixton.com or skypixon.com that's sky with an e s k y pixton.com thank you.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.