Is it Blasphemous to Watch the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives? A Scrupulosity Therapist's Take

If I had to describe my clients this week with one word it would be “triggered.”

My clients tend to be LDS affiliated and worry a lot about right and wrong, good and bad, and blasphemy. If they could all be perfect people and never make mistakes they 100% would be. So, a show called The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives felt a little threatening to some of them.

My own scrupulosity ended up showing up and in the back of my mind I wondered “is watching this a sin?” That’s when I knew I had to watch it because otherwise my OCD was going to try to take control and ask me to avoid other things. It would start with minor things like a reality show and then jump to bigger things like church, and books, anywhere I might hear a swear word, my car’s radio, and leaving the house. OCD starts with things that seem almost practical but then quickly loses all practicality. Scrupulosity has a way of convincing you that even breathing is a sin. 

So how do we treat it? We all know we have to do the things that make us anxious. But scrupulosity isn’t something harmless like a fear of public speaking or a phobia of spiders. Scrupulosity is fear of blasphemy, punishment, and an eternity of hell. How do we do stop avoiding our anxiety when some things actually need to be avoided? Yeah scrupulosity tells you you should be afraid of being a murderer, you shouldn’t try that one out!

My personal take is that you have to learn to sin normally. You have to do the little things everyone does, like telling white lies and watching a trashy reality show that shows your religion in an unkind light and just sit with it. You’re allowed to feel guilty without it being OCD and a big part of scrupulosity treatment is learning to have a normal relationship with guilt. 

So, is watching The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives blasphemous? I don’t know. But if you’re a Mormon who believes that God loves you and that hell doesn’t exist and your OCD is going crazy trying to convince you that you will be punished for watching it, you probably need to at least try an episode.