Bonnie Young: Damned by Perfection

from A Thoughtful Faith for the 21st Century

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This is the story of how my perfection almost damned me. That is, how my relentless quest for flawlessness undermined my happiness, my health, my orientation to the world, and my faith. It is a story, too, of a girl becoming a woman and in the process making room for grace.

I was barely twelve the first time I worked up the courage to see my bishop and confess. I’d learned that bishop-confessions were what you did when you committed particularly serious sins, but I never imagined that I would be the one in the bishop’s office. I was so overcome by guilt immediately following my mistake that I confessed to my parents, but their reassurances weren’t enough to quench the fire of condemnation that I felt so tortured by. (I’ll elaborate, but for now, just understand that I feel guilt in an unusual way.) When I asked them if I needed to confess to the bishop, they were a bit surprised and told me that I could confess if it would help me feel better. Now I understand that they didn’t think it was necessary for me to go, but they also must have felt discomfort at seeing their daughter in so much torment. I wanted to show God that I wanted to be good, and I desperately needed to know that he still accepted me. I needed someone who could tell me, with authority, that God forgave me and still loved me. I don’t remember how the conversation went, other than that I wept and was met with overwhelming love and compassion from my dear bishop. When I walked out of his office, an immense weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt so free.

I remember similar feelings of distress-then-relief when I was baptized. I suspect most children don’t worry much about their worthiness before being baptized, but I felt burdened by my childhood mistakes (what to my seven year-old brain felt like mortal sins), and I craved a fresh start. But at the same time, I worried that my wrongs made me unworthy to be baptized. If I didn’t tell the bishop every detail of every mistake, would my baptism count? Adding to the question of my prepubescent worthiness, there were other uncomfortable moments on my baptismal day – my mother made me wear a floral dress with shoulder pads that I really did not want to wear, I worried about my underpants showing through my white baptismal jumpsuit (my activity day leader told me that she had accidentally worn pink ones on her baptismal day), and I felt embarrassed that all of the messages during the service were directed at me. But the relief that I felt as I emerged from the water – that I was all the way clean and totally forgiven – was powerful enough that if I meditate today on that moment, I can feel it again. It felt delicious to have a divinely-sanctioned fresh start.

As I rode home from the service, my wet hair dampening the despised shoulder pads of my dress, I lay horizontally across the back seat of our Dodge Grand Caravan with my hands behind my head and gazed out the window into the night sky. With the same innocent logic that led me to believe that if I tried hard enough I could dig to China from my backyard, I thought to myself, “I am totally clean, and if I try hard enough I can probably stay that way.” I didn’t want to feel the dread I’d felt before my baptism again, and I was naively but sincerely committed to putting in the work necessary to avoid needing repentance.

I took my spiritual journey, including the decision to be baptized and to remain clean, very seriously. I took a lot of things seriously as a child. Many of my day-to-day activities were touched – and often interrupted – by my carefulness and worries. Neither I nor my family understood how to make sense of my anxieties. I have some names and a couple of diagnoses for it now (one of which is “scrupulosity,” a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that is characterized by excessive fear of sin and reassurance-seeking rituals), but I remember it being called “a very sensitive spirit.” My scrupulosity expressed itself in many ways – sometimes through repeated safety rituals or asking my mother for reassurance, but most often in the form of confession. I confessed everything, even if I was unsure if I had actually made a mistake. For example, if I had set an open pen on someone’s floor, I confessed that I might have made a mark. I had an unusually low tolerance for dishonesty, uncertainty, and risk, and I felt guilt in a way that most of my peers and family couldn't relate to. I was much more careful than anyone else I knew and was much harder on myself than anyone ever was with me. The love and peace that the gospel could offer me were often replaced with guilt and fear about my standing before God.

Like most youngsters, my understanding of God as a child and adolescent was based on a transactional model of divine reward or retribution: I obey, he blesses. I disobey, he punishes. Although I held hope that God and Jesus loved me, my anxiety and developmental abilities made it difficult to emerge from my fear of doing something wrong and disappointing them. My perception of God’s nature and my relationship with him was also complicated by contradicting teachings about him. My parents taught me that he was gentle and loved me always, but the Bible talked about a jealous and rageful God. How could I make sense of a God who was a hen gathering chicks in some verses and a wielder of a terrible and swift sword in others? I was unsure of who was listening to my prayers. I feared how he felt about me, especially when I made mistakes, and was desperate to know I was enough in his eyes.

There were glimpses of transcendent love and light that burst through this transactional and fear-based God-view from time to time. My baptism, attending the temple, reading the scriptures, singing hymns, hearing the testimonies of my dear parents and trusted leaders – these were moments when I genuinely felt the Spirit and tasted God’s mercy. When I wasn’t worrying about my mistakes or experiencing disturbing intrusive thoughts, I felt happy when I attended church. My tight-knit ward family loved and supported me. But scrupulosity often lurked just beneath the surface, preying on my good desires and fanning the flames of uncertainty about my worthiness. The resulting unease propelled me to cling to the safety I was promised if I was exactly obedient.

My natural inclinations toward perfectionism found fertile soil to thrive within the programs and standards of the church.The need for reassurance that I was “enough” fueled my enthusiastic participation in my various classes. In many ways, my life held evidence that a simple transactional model of the divine order worked. I was following the rules, my home life was peaceful and stable, I attracted good friends with similar standards and goals, and together we avoided the consequences of mistakes that some of our peers struggled with. I attributed these successes – my happy, good life – to living the standards of the gospel with exactness. I could ignore the few times when the transactional model didn’t work because there were so many times when it did (“work” meaning I saw myself blessed in obvious, outward ways). But there came a time when I couldn’t ignore how poorly this model actually worked for me.