Lesson 2 of 6 · Two things that look identical from outside
Why answering it makes it stronger
Here is the mechanism, and it is uncomfortable because the thing causing the trouble is the thing that helps.
Reassurance works. That is the whole problem. You ask, you read, you find the answer, and the distress genuinely drops. It drops quickly and it drops a lot.
Something is learned in that moment, and it is not what you wanted to learn. What is learned is that the discomfort was unbearable and that the asking is what removed it. So the next arrival comes sooner, it feels more urgent, and it takes more asking to settle.
In the religious version the reassurance is a scholar, which puts a scholar inside the loop without anybody intending it. They answer honestly, you are relieved, and you are back a fortnight later with the same question in slightly different words.
That is not this platform criticising scholars. One of the largest Arabic fatwa sites has reached the same conclusion about its own answers, and now declines questions of this kind as a matter of stated policy, saying that answering them feeds the illness rather than helping the person recover. It sends the person to treatment instead. Reported here, not ruled on.
What the research says
A widely read religious reference site states that answering the questions of a person with this condition feeds the illness and barely helps them recover, likening answering to scratching an itch. Reported because you may meet it, not because it settles anything.
Reported, not endorsed. The site states that responding to the person with obsessive compulsive disorder by answering his questions in fact feeds the illness in him and barely helps him recover, and it likens answering to scratching an itch. It directs the person to specialised psychological treatment, to cognitive behavioural therapy, and to medication where a doctor judges it appropriate. It is declining because it judges this a matter for treatment, not because the person is beneath answering.
IslamQA. Why the site apologises for not answering questions about obsessive compulsive disorder, fatwa 411605. IslamQA, Arabic, islamqa.info/ar/answers/411605
Clinical guidance describes asking a religious authority for reassurance as a compulsion in this presentation, and describes bringing that authority in as a collaborator who declines to keep supplying it. Nobody here is telling you to stop asking your imam anything.
Written for clinicians. It describes reassurance seeking from a religious authority as a compulsion in this presentation, and describes enlisting that authority as a collaborator who declines to keep supplying the reassurance. Clinical guidance rather than a trial.
Huppert JD, Siev J (2010). Treating scrupulosity in religious individuals using cognitive-behavioral therapy. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 17(4), 382 to 392 doi
Asking for reassurance works exactly like checking: it lowers the distress now and keeps the doubt alive over time. The relief is real and it is short, and that is the whole trap.
Reassurance seeking behaves like overt checking. It lowers distress now and sustains the doubt over time.
Parrish CL, Radomsky AS (2010). Why do people seek reassurance and check repeatedly? An investigation of factors involved in compulsive behavior in OCD and depression. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 24(2), 211 to 222