Leno-featured prof sudies moral obsessions
A few weeks ago, Jay Leno’s opening monologue mentioned a study that recently began here at USU focusing on scrupulosity. He joked that researchers are looking into people obsessed with morals and religion and the punch line was, “Yeah, we call those people parents.”
Assistant professor Michael Twohig, who is heading up the study, explained that scrupulosity is a type of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). He said OCD is when someone has obsessions, thoughts, urges or impulses that occur often and they are unwanted and disturbing.
These thoughts cause the person to engage in some behavior to get the thoughts to go away, which is the compulsion. OCD can occur about any topic, usually about the topic you care about most. Most often we have heard about compulsive hand-washing or cleaning. Scrupulosity is found in people who are highly religious. They obsess about things that are religious or moral in nature.
Twohig said he had a client obsessed with not engaging in premarital sex. The obsession led the individual to question what is and is not a sexual activity? They began to ask themselves if even shaking someone’s hand was a sexual activity.
The individual’s thoughts led to the question, “I am a sexual being so anything that I touch would have my sweat on it, thus, I have left my sexual mark on that door handle, so if you touch that door handle after me, you have had some type of sexual relation with me, which you did not consent to, so I am harming you and myself.”
This person couldn’t interact with anybody, which meant they couldn’t be out in public. So this person, who cared very much about their religion, couldn’t actually attend church.
They eventually got to the point where showering was very difficult because they became to believe that the water would go over their body and then enter the stream of water that all of us are using. They felt like they were contaminating other people.
Another individual had a thought that if he didn’t do his prayers in a certain way that something could happen to his family. It took anywhere between three and six hours to go through the prayer process. If it got interrupted, he would have to start over. If you asked them how many hours they spent in meaningful prayer, the answer would be zero.
Twhohig uses a type of therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. He said there is a great deal of research on using it to treat anxiety disorders, depression, substance use and chronic pain.
He said ACT teaches people how to notice thoughts and urges lightly, to not buy into them and get pushed around by the thoughts. He said people learn to let the thoughts be there without fighting them and then decide on a direction to go in life.
When they follow that direction, the thoughts and feelings are going to get louder and yell at the individual to stop, but through practice, people learn how to let the thoughts be there and continue on. It gets easier and easier.
“There is a reason that therapy takes three months, not one week. It takes a while to get good at it,” Twohig said.
Twohig said he first became interested in psychology when he took a class in human behavior in high school. When he was in his master’s program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee he realized his interest in publishing and research. He went on to get his doctorate under the developer of ACT, Steven Hayes, at the University of Nevada.
Twohig recommends that students interested in this field of study find ways to collaborate with faculty in USU’s psychology department. He said this will give them an edge, which is crucial as the programs are highly competitive.
Twohig said he was a distance swimmer in college, which earned him a scholarship. He said that the rigorous training was good preparation for the work it takes to get a Ph.D.
“I learned to keep working even when I was tired. Sitting at a desk and typing is relatively easy compared to the 25 hours per week that I was in the pool,” he said.
Twohig came to USU four years ago and said he can’t picture a nicer place to live and raise his family. He loves mountain biking and snowboarding. Of his 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter he said, “They certainly test my knowledge of human behavior.”
Twohig said students might be surprised to know that he was a drummer in a goofy high school band and that his tastes in music are on the heavier side. The band he listens to the most right now is Rise Against, though he tends to listen to Explosions in the Sky while working.
Twohig said he is interested in creating more effective and accepted therapies for disorders.
“The current therapies are really effective, but there still seems to be a stigma against seeing someone and getting help,” he said.
He also said students have a huge resource in USU’s free counseling clinic.
“The staff is highly trained and the fees are already included in the tuition,” he said.
Twohig said if he could say one thing of importance to the USU population it would be this: “If there is something you notice about yourself that isn’t working, deal with it now.”
He said many students don’t realize how many people are dealing with the same things around campus.
“If you notice something about you that is not working for you in life, I would go get help with it now, so you don’t have to deal with that for the rest of your life.”
– tam.r@aggiemail.usu.edu