Constantly Questioning Whether You’re A ‘Bad’ Person? Experts Say ‘Moral OCD’ Might Explain Why

Here’s what experts recommend you should do if the signs of moral OCD sound familiar.

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It’s common to have fears about being a “bad person”, but for most people, these are fleeting thoughts and not true fears about being immoral.

However, this isn’t the case for people who suffer from a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as moral scrupulosity or moral OCD.

For folks with moral OCD, these “Am I bad?” thoughts can become permanent, leading to guilt, worry and rumination.

According to Joshua Curtiss, an assistant professor in the applied psychology department at Northeastern University in Boston, moral OCD is “a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder that’s characterised by really intense, intrusive thoughts of being immoral, bad or unethical in some way”.

It’s all centred around the fear of being a “bad person,” added Erin Venker, the founder and executive director of the OCD and Anxiety Center of Minnesota.

This can also come out in someone’s relationship to religion, leading someone to worry that they are acting against their religion or offending God, said Meredith Hettler, the national director of the OCD and anxiety program at Newport Healthcare.

These kinds of thoughts can be debilitating and are very different than a quick worry about being “mean” or “bad.” Here’s what to know.

Moral OCD comes with compulsions

In OCD, compulsions are repetitive thoughts or behaviours that someone does in hopes of relieving anxiety. “And the compulsions are designed to neutralise or undo these types of thoughts or fears about being ‘bad,’” Curtiss said.

Compulsions look different depending on the type of OCD, but in the case of moral OCD, they could look like someone seeking reassurance from others to prove that they are “good”........

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