While Halloween is a holiday meant for fun, dress-up, and sweets, its themes surrounding horror, mortality, and superstition can bring uncertainty for those with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). When OCD thrives on control, the changes and uncertain themes prevalent in Halloween can be very distressing.
How Halloween Feels Harmful
Halloween is a time full of gruesome decorations, horror movies, and things like haunted houses full of unexpected scares. For those with OCD, this can exacerbate obsessions surrounding harm fears, where an individual feels extreme responsibility for actions within or outside of their control. Harm fears often present as fears of causing motor vehicle accidents, house fires, or accidentally poisoning someone. Around Halloween, there are new fears that can come into focus. People with OCD may watch horror movies and worry the events of the movie will happen to them or a loved one; they may worry that trick-or-treating candy is poisoned or contaminated; they may have extra worry about causing motor vehicle accidents on Halloween when so many kids are walking around in the dark. While these kinds of worries are understandable due to all the horror-themed stimuli and extra events, those with OCD feel uncontrollable fear and focus on these possibilities.
Another prevalent theme of Halloween is superstition. Halloween relies heavily on imagery around crimes, death, witchcraft, and the devil. These can affect those with religious/superstitious obsessions. People with religious obsessions often have worries about inadvertently offending God, concerns with sacrilege or blasphemy, worrying about having committed a sin, and more. Someone with religious OCD might have anxieties related to their religion, sinning, and guilt, which can cause religious practices or rituals to become compulsive. Halloween’s inclusion of the devil, witches, and more can bring up worries and obsessions that even being near Halloween events can be blasphemous or associate you with evil.
More superstitious elements present during Halloween, like black cats, witchcraft, and chants like “bloody mary,” present other opportunities of obsession for those with religious/superstitious fears. Some people with OCD have superstitious obsessions, like focusing on lucky or unlucky numbers, significant colours, or surrounding beliefs, like avoiding stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. Halloween’s themes can intensify these fears or present new worries and compulsions like avoiding black cats in case they really are unlucky. Religious and superstitious fears are natural with the influx of stories and imagery that come along in October but, like other fears in OCD, are excessive.
Control and Focus on Fears
Halloween’s focus on harm and superstition can bring forward distressing worries for those with OCD. However, these fears, like all fears in OCD, can be treated. Those with OCD can work to recognize the irrationality and excessiveness of their fears and put their focus on what they can control. The Behavioral Wellness Clinic can help to teach this focus and treat the worry that comes with OCD’s fears.