If you over-apologize, you might have OCD.
I recently came across an article that talked about the relationship between Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and over-apologizing, and wow, it nailed me.
Psych Central has a good read on it, as well, and here’s how it manifests.
You might have an obsession with keeping a relationship intact, or keeping someone else happy, or a deep fear that you’ve done something wrong.
That’s the obsession.
That turns into the second part of OCD — compulsion.
In this case, you turn to the other person and start saying “sorry.” And continue saying “sorry” until there aren’t any other ways of saying you’re sorry.
And when there aren’t any other ways of saying you’re sorry, you’ll invent new ones, or go back to the old ones – kind of like a band that’s run out of ideas for songs.
That is the compulsion.
For the moment, it feels good. You get the reassurance you crave.
You’ve said you’re sorry, and you’ve either heard them say a) “you’re forgiven” or b) “it’s honestly no big deal!”
But that only helps for a few minutes, and you go to bed, and obsess, “Is it really okay? Maybe I need to apologize again one more time tomorrow.”
Then the next day, you check on them to make sure they’re okay and apologize again (the compulsive behavior) and so it goes.
People with OCD have difficulty with uncertainty, and so we’re trying to reduce that uncertainty, but the more we apologize, the more we feed into this unhealthy pattern.
We don’t ever really feel better the 6th time we apologize, do we?
So our tendency to over-apologize can be reflective of OCD.
It doesn’t necessarily mean we have it. Experts say it could just be a reflection of childhood trauma (where you were desperate to please a critical parent, for example).
But it can be a warning sign that you need to be evaluated for OCD.
Personally, I over-apologize, all the time, and I over-apologize to God, all the time, as well.
There’s actually a term for this called “scrupulosity,” and it’s law-based, it’s rules-based, and it assumes that the God who forgave the thief in a brief moment won’t forgive you after a lifetime of sorry’s.
There’s a passage in the Bible that makes me think of this basic fact — we argue with God over his forgiveness.
And it’s when Jesus comes to John the Baptist for baptism (Matthew 3).
John has spent his entire ministry, telling his disciples that he’s nothing — absolutely nothing — compared to the coming, perfect Lamb of God.
In fact, every time, people fall down before John, he tells them, “STOP. I’M NOTHING.”
Now what happens when Jesus comes and asks John to baptize him?
John refuses.
And not just refuses. He “tried to prevent him.” He “tried to talk him out of it.” (ESV, NLT).
How strange.
In their first recorded interaction, John, in effect, tells Jesus he’s wrong about something.
John thought he knew better than Jesus. John wasn’t worthy. Even though Jesus clearly counted him worthy.
We do this all the time, in our religious OCD.
Just like John, we try to talk our way out of Jesus’ words, and in our case, it’s his words of forgiveness.
In effect, we try to talk God out of his love for us.
Just like John, we say stand there at the Jordan and tell Jesus he can’t possibly be right about us.
Brennan Manning wrote, “It is simply not possible to know the Christ of the Gospels unless we alter our attitude toward ourselves and take sides with Him, against our own self-evaluation.”
That’s what John the Baptist had to do.
He had to take sides with Jesus, instead of his own self-evaluation that said he wasn’t worthy to baptize Jesus.
John finally obeyed, but I can imagine that if Jesus and I were to meet on the banks of the Jordan, and Jesus were to say, “You’re forgiven,” I’d spend the next week telling him, “Are you sure? Really? Don’t you know…”
I’d talk his ears off about why he was wrong about forgiving me.
In a way, you could call it humility, but in another way, you can see that it’s actually telling Christ he’s wrong about something.
The fact is that Jesus has forgiven us, once and always, and the great battle for Christians with OCD is to, as Paul Tillich says, “accept that we’re accepted.”
There are some churches that claim they’re about grace alone, but in sermon-after-sermon, they provoke fear that we might just still be sinners in the hands of an angry God.
No, we’re sinners in the hands of a loving God.
I don’t know if someone with OCD can truly ever accept that we’re accepted, which is why treating our medical OCD will always help our spiritual OCD.
And so, I end, as always…
Find a psychiatrist here.
Find a therapist here.
[Painting: Saint John the Baptist Sees Jesus from Afar, Tissot]
