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

Film & TV

30 May 2025

4 min read

Ethan Hunt is MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous

The final instalment of Mission Impossible warns about AI, yet plays out as if written by a chatbot.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Tom Cruise playing Ethan Hunt in an open necked shirt looks perplexed.

Tom Cruise in action.

Is this the FINAL reckoning? I’m not sure. I hope so. There has been speculation whether Tom Cruise will reprise his role as Ethan Hunt in further franchise instalments. He has expressed interest, while also suggesting that the use of the word ‘final’ is purposeful and indicative. Let us all pray that he’s being honest. I mean…he must be exhausted. The stress and strain, the pressure and pain, that he puts his body through for every Mission Impossible film is approaching elder abuse – he is 62 after all.

In a departure from tradition, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is an immediate sequel to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, which released in 2023. The series which has thrived on a formula of releasing stand-alone spy stories, allowing us to enjoy familiar characters in new scenarios, has decided to make a two-parter…although you wouldn’t know it. You don’t need to have seen Dead Reckoning to pay your money to watch Final Reckoning, as the script assumes you’ve not only missed the immediate prequel, but have never viewed any other Mission Impossible film.

Goodness me, the film is plodding. It begins with a message from the President (Angela Bassett), delivered to Cruise’s super-spy Hunt. In previous instalments such messages have been a punchy way to set the stakes, roll the pitch, and then give the rest of the screen time over to remarkable action set-pieces. On this occasion we have an interminably long, and irritatingly portentous, monologue detailing why Ethan Hunt is the best of spies, the best of men, and essentially MI Jesus. The only man who can save the world from a literal apocalypse.

The premise of the film is that the malevolent, power-hungry AI known as ‘The Entity’ (could no one have thought of a better name, REALLY!?), which Hunt failed to stop in the previous film, is now at large and tipping the world towards destruction. It is manipulating the media, gaslighting governments, and slowly infiltrating the nuclear arsenals of the world, all in preparation to annihilate most of the human race in a nuclear holocaust. It then plans to rule the remaining vestiges of humanity and create a new utopia for itself. Only Ethan Hunt can stop it…just as long as he convinces world leaders to trust him, finds the nuclear submarine where ‘The Entity’ originated, defeats hundreds of bad guys, and infiltrates a top-secret bunker in South Africa.

We’re a world away from the lean and mean story of the first MI, where we only had the identities of CIA assets at stake!

Its rubbish. Genuinely rubbish.

The script is ripe. Nay! It is overripe. NAY! Burn the whole house down, because the brie has grown limbs and the fruit bowl is plotting your death. Every other conversation involves either Cruise pontificating on how the only way to defeat ‘The Entity’ is love and trust and the age of Aquarius, or someone explaining to Cruise how this mission is his destiny, because only he is good and pure enough to succeed. He’s MI Jesus, and it’s ridiculous.

The film plods and plods and plods. The whole point of this franchise is to provide the viewer with regular, breath-taking action, and yet the first hour-plus is a litany of exposition and call-backs. Ethan travels to several European capitals, for about thirty seconds apiece, before formulating his plan. This is confusing and jarring, but to add to this pain, the audience is tortured with disorienting, quick-cut montages of Hunt’s previous adventures. The plot seems to be determined to link this final, world-ending catastrophe to his past escapades…except MI2…no one has love for that.

Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert.

By the time the action really kicks in I was exhausted and in no mood. This is a shame, because the action is truly spectacular. A long sequence in a submarine – which is both well below safe diving depth, but is also slowly falling of an underwater cliff. A breath-taking fight between two biplanes. Gunfire galore. I recognised its brilliance on an intellectual level, but enjoyed none of it. I was too damned bamboozled by over an hour of nonsense beforehand.

The performances are fine. Cruise is the last remaining true action star, putting himself through a gruelling regimen to ensure he performs his own stunts. This shows on the screen and is very much appreciated and commendable. Simon Pegg returns as Benji to provide the comic relief. Ving Rhames’ Luther has a brief appearance which is bitter-sweet and lovable. Henry Czerny and Rolf Saxon are delightful additions – the only call-backs to the first film which don’t irritate, and actually elevate the film.

Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning is fine. It is serviceable. It delivers the heart-stopping thrills. It has timely theme: of what true humanity and human relationship is in a world dominated by AI, technology, simulated reality, and simulated interaction. This is all good. Unfortunately, all these positives are packaged in such a self-aggrandising and cack-handed manner as to be rendered inert. For a film whose story serves as an (admittedly histrionic) warning about the dangers of AI, it plays out as if designed by chatbot.

The Mission Impossible films have always been a vehicle for Tom Cruise. This has been their greatest strength – he is the last true movie star after all, and we may never see such a charismatic and powerful screen idol again. This has also been their greatest weakness. What a shame this only became apparent in the (potential) final outing.

2 stars.

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