OCD and Guilt

Hello Everyone,

I hope all of you are doing well and that you found my last post on dealing with Panic Attacks helpful. Today’s post is about OCD and guilt. Virtually all of my OCD clients struggle with guilt to some degree or another so it seemed like an appropriate topic for a post.

OCD and Guilt
I’ve written before at some length (here and here) about how tricky OCD can be and how it easily makes my clients believe things that simply aren't true or at least are greatly exaggerated. In today’s post I want to discuss how OCD can make people feel guilty even though they’ve done nothing wrong. This comes up usually within the scrupulously version of OCD, but it can also pop up in other versions as well. The “trick” that OCD pulls on people is that it makes them believe that if they feel guilty then they must’ve done something wrong. This is simply not the case at all. Or the transgression that the person may have committed is so minor that for most people it would just be easily dismissed, but for my clients, OCD doesn’t permit that to be an option.

Uh Oh…did I do Something Wrong?

An example I often use is a client of mine some years ago who after buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks and after putting some sugar and cream into her coffee, realized when she left the store that she had inadvertently dropped an extra sugar packet into her purse.  She immediately felt terribly guilty because she thought she had “stolen” a pack of sugar from Starbucks.  Another  example is a client  who on returning home after shopping at a local grocery store realized that the clerk had given her $.15 extra in change, felt very guilty and immediately rushed back to the store to return the extra money.  

In other cases my clients feel terribly guilty because they think they “might” have done something wrong. A recent client, for example, would frequently check the clothes dryer fearing that she had accidentally and mindlessly put her cat in the dryer. Whenever she couldn’t find her cat somewhere in the house, she would immediately rush to the dryer to check for her cat (by the way, she never found her cat in the dryer, but that did nothing to prevent her from continuing to check). This entire experience left her feeling quite guilty, but as you can see, she didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that she feared she might have done something wrong. Another recent theme that has been brought up a lot lately (mostly by my male clients - probably because of the “me too” movement) is feeling guilty because they fear they may have coerced a previous partner into having sex when they really didn’t want to. Another common example is feeling guilty because you fear you may have said something that offended a close friend or relative. In all of these examples, guilt leads to compulsive checking of the clothes dryer, carefully reviewing one’s history for evidence that you may have done something inappropriate or repeatedly asking a spouse or partner if they think you offended your friend or relative by what you said.

While one can admire my clients for being so honest about the extra sugar packets, extra change from the store, and concern that they offended someone, in these cases OCD led my clients to feeling guilty over things that the vast majority of people would simply overlook or things that never actually happened. And if my clients rarely had this type of worry come up, then it wouldn’t be such a big problem, but for my clients these types of worries come up multiple times per day and the amount of guilt they experience far outweighs the actual level of the supposed transgression they committed or think they committed.

OK…So I see the problem…How do I fix it?

While the examples above might seem far-fetched, they are actually quite common with my OCD clients. So what is one to do with this guilt issue within OCD? I think that first of all being able to step back from the guilty emotions and recognize that this very likely could be the OCD pulling a trick and not automatically believing that because you feel guilty you did something wrong. Learning to become skeptical of your thoughts and feelings. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, then you’ll recognize this technique of getting better at observing one’s thoughts and feelings as opposed to automatically buying into them and letting them take you off into OCD land (this is one of the many benefits of practicing mindfulness). It is important to recognize that just because you feel guilty doesn’t mean you did something wrong.

A story that I heard in a recent training workshop I did with Sally Winston and Martin Seif illustrates one of the best ways I know of to manage these guilty thoughts and feelings. Imagine you’re walking down a street and see a rather sketchy guy walking towards you. He looks like he hasn’t washed his clothes or taken a bath in quite a while. As he walks by you he turns to you and makes a disgusting comment of some sort. In this situation, what should you do? The best answer is that you should do nothing! If you engage this person in any way, it is not likely to go well. Ignoring what was said and just keep walking is your best response. This is exactly what you should do with these guilty thoughts and feelings - just keep walking and act as if they don’t mean anything, because they don’t! In fact this strategy works for most, if not all of the various tricks OCD tries to pull on you. I always add to this story that after you keep walking, expect to still feel guilty, but don’t let the guilt cause you to go back and engage this sketchy guy in some way. When you notice guilty thoughts/feelings popping up, don’t automatically assume you’ve done something wrong, take the chance that this is yet another trick that OCD is trying to use on you and don’t do any checking - just “keep on walking”.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Stay safe,

Dr Bob