Alternate title: OCD has entered the chat.

I hadn’t believed in god before I joined the church, but I already had an obsession with being a good person.

After joining, I felt like it was a race to strengthen my faith and do all the right things before my sin dragged me to the bottom of a pit of quicksand.

The more I learned, the more I realized all the ways I was sinning, and the more I had to do to cleanse that sin.

It wasn’t long before the feeling of being dirty overrode any ability to critically think about what I was getting into. I needed to get spiritually clean, and they taught me that doubts and questions dirtied my faith, so I stopped asking questions, even in my own mind.

What if it’s all true? I thought. I need to do everything right just in case. I need to believe 100% so I can be clean. So I pushed away any thought or influence that went against the church doctrine.

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OCD didn’t start in the church for me. It was always around since I was a child. But the church’s teachings fed it and shaped it.

The church handed me compulsions. If you feel dirty or bad, do these things. Clean the church. Go preaching. Take care of your brothers and sisters.

And I always felt dirty and wrong.

The longer I was in the church, the less what I was doing felt like “enough.” And the messages every service reinforced that feeling—it’s never enough, you’re never enough.