Article

Culture

Psychology

10 November 2023

6 min read

When obsession shakes certainties and challenges beliefs

What happens when questions of belief are subject to obsessive behaviours? The impact of OCD on key life moments.

Paula Duncan

Paula Duncan is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, researching OCD and faith.

A close-up of a complex clock mechanism featuring small statues within it.

The Millennium clock tower.

National Museum of Scotland.

I’m eleven years old and I’ve been given a New Testament in our school assembly. This is the first time I’ve owned a copy of the Bible. So far, I’ve only heard it read to me in school or the few times I’ve gone to church with my family. I flick through it that evening, taken by the table at the front that directs you to different verses that speak to how you might be feeling. I find myself reading Revelation. The imagery frightens me. The tone, the threat, the fear, and the condemnation… would this be me if I didn’t believe in the right way? If I didn’t believe enough? I’m terrified of this book, these words, terrified of God, even. Mostly, I’m terrified by my own doubt and uncertainty about all things religious, despite wanting to believe. What if God isn’t real? What if God is and I just don’t believe enough? God will know I’m not sure. I tell myself not to think about it. If I’m to avoid thinking about it, I can never read the Bible again. I accept this as a rule.

I’m twelve years old and I’m standing in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, listening to one of Bach’s minor key concertos playing from the Millennium Clock. To me, it looks like it depicts some sort of hellscape straight from the book of Revelation. Death, suffering, and evil are everywhere in this model with its eerie red glow at the bottom. It brings up all the thoughts I’ve been trying to avoid – “you don’t believe enough” and “this is what hell looks like.” I tell myself to forget about it. If I’m to forget about it, I need to make sure that I never talk about it and don’t tell anyone how afraid of it I am. Talking about it makes it real, I think. I accept this, too, as a rule.

I’m thirteen years old and I’m sitting in a church trying to concentrate on the service. I can’t because I keep having the thought that I don’t believe enough. I’m worrying about what the reading might be – I’m still too scared to read the Bible and I can’t prevent myself from hearing it in this space. I’m afraid of thinking that I don’t believe enough, and that God will know because this is God’s church after all. I tell myself that I do not belong in this place if I cannot control my thoughts. If I can’t do that, I can never go to church again. This too, becomes a rule.

I’m fourteen years old and I’ve started praying every evening. I’m not sure what prompted this, but I also know that I must do it correctly. If I pray and forget to conclude with “amen”, then it seems obvious that God will continue to listen to my thoughts as if I’ve forgotten to hang up the phone. I try to keep my thoughts corralled and pure when I pray. If I don’t end my prayer, God will hear all my worst thoughts – the ones I am ashamed of, the ones that scare me, the ones that fill me with doubt. I tell myself that I can no longer run that risk. If I’m to prevent this, I shouldn’t pray. Another rule.

I was scared to say these things aloud – to voice my fears or doubts in case they somehow became worse if I acknowledged them.

I’m now in my late twenties, and I have been diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and I’m slowly unlearning the rules I’ve created for myself over the years. Each of them, in their own way, was designed to keep me safe from harm, safe from thinking about something that frightened me, or acknowledging difficult emotions like doubt and uncertainty.

It has been a long road to reach that diagnosis. OCD is regularly misunderstood and presented as punchline of jokes – “I’m so OCD!” is one that I’ve heard far too many times when someone simply means that they’re organised. The problem with these jokes is that it disguises the reality and makes it that bit harder for people to recognise what it is they’re really dealing with. OCD-UK, a charity to whom I owe a great deal, describe OCD as follows: “Obsessions are very distressing and result in a person carrying out repetitive behaviours or rituals in order to prevent a perceived harm and/or worry that preceding obsessions have focused their attention on.”

Obsessions could cover virtually any topic, and everyone will experience compulsions in slightly different ways. I didn’t recognise that I was living with OCD because almost all of my compulsions were mental rituals or avoidance behaviour. I would try and avoid thinking about things, check whether thoughts upset me, avoid reading the Bible… Layers and layers of compulsive behaviour in response to frightening intrusive thoughts that became associated with faith. I was scared to say these things aloud – to voice my fears or doubts in case they somehow became worse if I acknowledged them. I now know to call this “magical thinking” but I still find it difficult at times to accept that I cannot cause something to happen simply by saying it.

It can be particularly difficult for people with OCD to cope with uncertainty. I can see why anxiety and doubt about the existence of God has been hard for me to tolerate. I also know that I can never achieve absolute certainty and part of learning to live with OCD is learning to accept that and make choices despite it. Last year I attended the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) Faith and OCD conference and was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there. So many people with the same worries and doubts as me, and many more who had found that OCD impacted them in different ways.

But it was hard for a doctor to diagnose me until I could find the words to articulate what I was experiencing. It wasn’t until I started reading books about other people’s experiences with OCD that I started to recognise my own thought patterns, my own fears and doubts in other people’s words. Author and video creator John Green shares a very powerful video titled “What OCD is like (for me)” where he shares what his experience of having OCD and says:

“I can say what it is like more than what it is.”

This gives me a little more courage to tell people what living with OCD can be like and represent some of the diverse experiences of the condition. For someone who was too frightened to open a Bible, I think it’s a little ironic that I am now a theologian. My doctoral research project is focusing on faith and OCD, and in particular, how it might affect someone’s relationship with God. I hope to make use of some of my own experience along the way – examining my fear of not being sure enough, my worries that my intrusive thoughts would somehow offend God… I hope that by sharing this, I can raise a little more awareness of an experience that so many of us try to keep secret or just aren’t ready to speak about.

Through advocacy and research, I’d like to share a little of, as John Green says, what OCD looks like (for me). I’d like to add my voice – now that I’ve found it – to the discussion in the hopes that someone might read this and recognise what they’re going through. And if that’s you? You’re not alone. There is help and there is hope.

Review

Culture

Death & life

Film & TV

Trauma

14 February 2025

5 min read

Bridget Jones: a brilliant mess of a movie

A fresh expression of lost, stolen, love.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A couple sit on outdoor seats, her resting her head on his shoulder.

Working Title Films.

I cannot overstate how low my expectations were going into this film. I love the first Bridget Jones, a classic of the (specifically British) romcom genre. The two sequels were tedious retreads, and the idea of number four in the series elicited the opposite of delight. I went to see Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy out of parochial duty – many of the film’s beautiful exterior shots were filmed in my parish, at the church school and the surrounding streets. I wanted to ‘represent the parish’ and show some local pride. I wasn’t alone; I saw many faces I recognised from the school gates, and I ended up sitting next to a parishioner. Thank goodness cinemas are dark!

You’ll understand by the end of the review.

The film opens on Bridget, rather disorganised and dishevelled in just the manner we’ve grown to love, getting ready for a night out while also preparing dinner for her children. She and Mark Darcy now have two children, and the house looks like a cyclone has passed through. She calls Daniel Cleaver, who engages in some raunchy chat, and then insists he’s on his way. Oh no! Have she and Darcy divorced? Has that bounder and cad Cleaver wormed his way back in?

Cleaver arrives at her home…to babysit!?

Bridget hurries off to her dinner, and as she approaches her host’s front door she smiles. Darcy is walking towards her from the other end of the street. They meet at the door and lovingly complement each other’s appearance. They ring the bell. The door opens. Bridget in standing there. Alone.

Bridget is a widow and a single mother. Her children are adorable, but hard work. She hasn’t worked properly since Mark died. She is both overwhelmed and yet also numb. She has no life or purpose outside of the chaos of her home. Her friends – especially her gynaecologist – encourage her to re-invent and re-emerge. Go back to work, go back to socialising, go back to dating.

This is the first five/ten minutes of the film and sets the scene.

To begin with the positive. The script is very funny. The direction is competent and even throws in a few unexpected and moving tableaux. The cast are on fire! Renée Zellweger could sleepwalk this role, scrunching her eyes in that endearing way on command. Leo Woodall is smouldering and hunky as the young lover, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is pure charisma and chemistry as the new science teacher Mr. Wallaker. Emma Thompson chews the scenery and delivers the best jokes as Bridget’s gynaecologist. The standout is Hugh Grant, who has immeasurable fun turning the roguish lothario Cleaver into the wittiest silver-fox we’ve seen on screen for many a year. He is at the peak of his career, and it is a joy to watch.

But…

None of it really hangs together. There is no real plot; there are little comedy sketches and episodes that jump from one to the other – never entirely unrelated, but never entirely coherent.

This is a film of many subplots. The subplot of Bridget and the mums at the school gate. The subplot of Bridget getting back to work. The subplot of Bridget smoothing the rough edges off Mr Wallaker (who uses a whistle like a weapon). The subplot of Daniel, of her friends from the first film, of her parents, and so on and so on.

There is the subplot of Bridget developing a new, modern, Tinder romance with a hunky Hampstead Heath ‘ranger’ (the ‘boy’ of the title). It could be argued this is the main subplot: Bridget finding new confidence and a new lease of life via a summer romance with a handsome younger stranger. It is also the most forgettable. It’s shallow, and is really only an excuse to make updated references to the original film.

The film is a mess.

And yet…

I cried. I cried more than once, and proper tears. Thank goodness cinemas are dark, because no priest wants their parishioners to see them blubbing, especially while watching a Bridget Jones sequel! This mess of a film has a single strand that runs through it, gives shape to its episodic nature, and turns it from an ‘okay’ film into a brilliant film.

Grief.

Bridget is grieving Darcy. Her children are grieving their father. Cleaver is grieving the life he could have had – so committed to debauchery was he, that he has no one permanent in his life (except Bridget) and he hasn’t spoken to his son for nearly two decades. She and her friends are grieving the passing of the years, and the reality that they are 25 years older. Through the raunch, and crude jokes, and slapstick set-pieces, this film surprised me by being a slow-burn meditation on grief. I won’t say too much more about the film because – and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Bridget Jones film – this film really does need to be experienced fresh.

This is a welcome supplement and corrective to the Valentine season: an exploration of love that is lost or stolen away, and is sorely missed. It is a life-affirming bit of cinema, that takes you through the stages of grief (there is even a scene where her friends debate just how many stages there are) and the various methods we have for dealing with them. It even includes a clumsy little science/faith debate, and yet manages to conclude by encompassing all views.

The film has a truly pastoral message. Grief cannot be avoided. Grief is a sign that love was real, and also that love cannot be snuffed out…even by death. Bridget intermittently has visions of Mark, and by the end of the film she has managed to make peace with those visions. They won’t leave her – her love for Mark won’t leave her – even as she experiences new love. Bridget ends the film recognising that her grief won’t leave her…and she can still live the fullest and happiest life possible.

Go see it. It’s good to have a cry sometimes.

4.5 stars

Join with us - Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what I’m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief

Find out more and sign up