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Author Topic: Question about sleep, dreams, and scrupulosity.  (Read 6349 times)

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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Question about sleep, dreams, and scrupulosity.
« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2025, 10:22:46 PM »
Unless you're subjecting yourself deliberately to various stimuli during the day that would contribute to these dreams, there no sin whatsoever.  If you meditate more on the things of God at all times, they will dissipate and decrease over time, where you might find yourself even in your dreams rejecting temptations against purity.  But even if that doesn't happen, there's no sin.  I find it worse in terms of physical reaction to NOT wear extremely loose clothing.  But people are different.  I can't stand having my feet covered where's my wife likes to be stuck under a tightly fitted sheet.  I would choose clothing primarily based on what you feel comfortable with ... and other circuмstances such as if you have children not wanting to walk out of your room looking obscene in case you need to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, things line that.  But outside of that you're under no strict moral obligation to change how you dress for bed based on their tendency to cause dreams.  As another poster pointed out, you may want to time some workouts to dissipate testosterone levels overnight.  I can't recall the cycles but you can look them up.

Änσnymσus

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Re: Question about sleep, dreams, and scrupulosity.
« Reply #11 on: December 28, 2025, 05:22:27 AM »
Why didn't you reply to wearing tighter clothing?


Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Question about sleep, dreams, and scrupulosity.
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2025, 06:28:00 AM »
Why didn't you reply to wearing tighter clothing?

To whom are you addressing this?  If to me, I did address the question above.  You're not required to wear tighter clothing to sleep just because you've come to the conclusion that looser clothing somehow contributes to impure dreams, since the latter are not sinful in and of themselves.  Now, this doesn't prevent you want doing it if you so prefer, but there's no strict moral obligation that I can see.  You may WISH to do it if you find the dreams troublesome, and if they cause you issues after you wake up and if you remember them, but you're not obliged to do so ... especially if wearing tighter clothing will disrupt your sleep.  I'm not sure of the connection, but in my case, tighter clothing tends to increase the incidence of such dreams, due to various forms of pressure being put on certain areas on the body, but perhaps you could find something in between, where something is a bit more restrictive than what you currently have, but not super tight.  Now, it could also be the case that the reason tighter clothing results in fewer dreams is that it's somehow messing with your sleep patterns, where you're getting less good uninterrupted sleep due to the discomfort, and so you either have fewer dreams (due to less REM sleep) or else you don't remember them because of where in the cycle you tend to wake up.

You can but do not have a strict moral obligation to wear tighter clothing to sleep ... but obviously may do so.  If you find that these dreams are resulting in near occasions of sin after you awake, then you may have to take some steps.

Pray to Our Lady to prevent such dreams.  There's a section in the Traditional Compline prayers specifically asking God to ward off the noctium phantasmata, which includes specifically such types of dreams.  So you may benefit from saying those prayers, also adding the Salve Regina, or even the entirety of Compline, and then of course add the "3 Haily Marys" shortly before going to sleep.  These will do much more for you than wearing restrictive clothing.

Generally try to pray and meditate more where you habitually tend to resist such things, and they even become disgusting to you, and then you're going to dream less about them.  This isn't a "quick fix", but takes years.

Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Question about sleep, dreams, and scrupulosity.
« Reply #13 on: December 28, 2025, 06:42:28 AM »
Why didn't you reply to wearing tighter clothing?

So, the fact that you asked this question, even though I did address the question of wearing tighter clothing ... confirms the diagnosis of scrupulosity.  That's a red-siren indicator of scruples, where you keep asking the question even after it's been answered, since the very definition of scrupulosity entails the inability to come to a definitive practical judgment about a matter, so the mind cannot rest with making a decision and just going with it, where you're always questioning your own judgment, but this also manifests itself in questioning the judgments of others, and the fact that you didn't "see" in my response that I had in fact answered this question confirms the diagnosis of scruplosity.

Now, I know about scruples, since I had been afflicted with it for some years, but my spiritual director at STAS cured me instantly of it, by simply commanding me to never confess anything (or refrain from Holy Communion as a result) unless I could basically swear to him that I had committed mortal sin.  He said that even if I were mistaken, God would not judge me for it, but that it would be on him.  Given the fact that I considered disobedience worse than these struggles, this was an instant cure for me.  Never had another problem with scruples again.  And, once cured thusly, I was able over time to develop the proper more balanced perspective regarding sin, so now I fully understand what I did not at the time, the distinction between some motion of the lower faculties and an act of the will.  I was able to see this clearly after the fog of scruples had been lifted.

That's one root cause of scrupulosity ... where our lower faculties often can engage in a certain amount of movement that can resemble "consent", where the mind (not the intellect, but the mind ... a hard concept to get hold of if you haven't studied scholastic philosophy), the mind "grasps" the thoughts, but that's just because, it's what the mind does, and the mind might even engage in recursive consideration of said thoughts ... and this might leave an individual with the impression of having grasped onto the thought with the will.  But it's a false impression.

So, one way to discern is to let the fog settle for a bit.  Once you realize what's going on, fight off the thought.  Then wait some time, perhaps 15 minutes, after the thoughts have cleared out.  At that point, ask yourself, now that the perception of what was going on had passed, ask yourself after the thoughts had passed, whether you consented to the thought.  With these situations, most of the time you won't even remember the thoughts themselves, or if you did, will clearly realize, "no, I did not consent".  In this way, you can "shake off" the impression in your mind at the time they were occurring.  If you don't shake that off and reconsider it a short time later, then you'll only remember that during the fog or heat of the battle a judgment you had made that you may have consented.  But if you want for things to settle a bit before making the final judgment, it'll become much clearer to you.

Now, this applies of course only to the scrupulous.  Lax people should not act on similar criteria, but it's clear that you are not lax given that you're struggling with the problem.  Lax people might want to grasp onto these principles to give themselves even more slack, but they would do so without hesitation, taking advantage of whatever they can.  But their judgment regarding whether they had consented is impaired in the other direction.  Of course, the problem is that scrupulous people might even start questioning ... whether they might not in fact be lax rather than scruplous.  If you're asking that question and bothered by the thought of being wrong about that judgment, you're not lax.  Lax people are rarely going to be "troubled" by such judgments.

If you are distressed by the thought of being mistaken and then go back and forth about whether or not you might be, in a state of distress, you're scruplous, not lax.

Finally, another consideration about scruples is that there's a certainly amount of selfishness or self-absorption behind it, where the scrupulous are more worried about offending God with regard to the impact it has on THEM, and THEIR souls, rather than the harm it would do to God's glory and the sorrow it causes to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  There's some element of self-absorption involved.  That can become evident if after an individual falls into sin, then they start committing more and more sin because, well, they're already in a state of mortal sin, so they throw up their hands and stop caring.  That's a very strong indicator of a selfish motivation behind not wanting to sin.  If they cared about the offense to God, then they wouldn't just slide into sinning with reckless abandon after having committed the first one, since the offense to God would be no different.

Änσnymσus

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Re: Question about sleep, dreams, and scrupulosity.
« Reply #14 on: December 28, 2025, 07:03:17 AM »
So, the fact that you asked this question, even though I did address the question of wearing tighter clothing ... confirms the diagnosis of scrupulosity.  That's a red-siren indicator of scruples, where you keep asking the question even after it's been answered, since the very definition of scrupulosity entails the inability to come to a definitive practical judgment about a matter, so the mind cannot rest with making a decision and just going with it, where you're always questioning your own judgment, but this also manifests itself in questioning the judgments of others, and the fact that you didn't "see" in my response that I had in fact answered this question confirms the diagnosis of scruplosity.

Now, I know about scruples, since I had been afflicted with it for some years, but my spiritual director at STAS cured me instantly of it, by simply commanding me to never confess anything (or refrain from Holy Communion as a result) unless I could basically swear to him that I had committed mortal sin.  He said that even if I were mistaken, God would not judge me for it, but that it would be on him.  Given the fact that I considered disobedience worse than these struggles, this was an instant cure for me.  Never had another problem with scruples again.  And, once cured thusly, I was able over time to develop the proper more balanced perspective regarding sin, so now I fully understand what I did not at the time, the distinction between some motion of the lower faculties and an act of the will.  I was able to see this clearly after the fog of scruples had been lifted.

That's one root cause of scrupulosity ... where our lower faculties often can engage in a certain amount of movement that can resemble "consent", where the mind (not the intellect, but the mind ... a hard concept to get hold of if you haven't studied scholastic philosophy), the mind "grasps" the thoughts, but that's just because, it's what the mind does, and the mind might even engage in recursive consideration of said thoughts ... and this might leave an individual with the impression of having grasped onto the thought with the will.  But it's a false impression.

So, one way to discern is to let the fog settle for a bit.  Once you realize what's going on, fight off the thought.  Then wait some time, perhaps 15 minutes, after the thoughts have cleared out.  At that point, ask yourself, now that the perception of what was going on had passed, ask yourself after the thoughts had passed, whether you consented to the thought.  With these situations, most of the time you won't even remember the thoughts themselves, or if you did, will clearly realize, "no, I did not consent".  In this way, you can "shake off" the impression in your mind at the time they were occurring.  If you don't shake that off and reconsider it a short time later, then you'll only remember that during the fog or heat of the battle a judgment you had made that you may have consented.  But if you want for things to settle a bit before making the final judgment, it'll become much clearer to you.

Now, this applies of course only to the scrupulous.  Lax people should not act on similar criteria, but it's clear that you are not lax given that you're struggling with the problem.  Lax people might want to grasp onto these principles to give themselves even more slack, but they would do so without hesitation, taking advantage of whatever they can.  But their judgment regarding whether they had consented is impaired in the other direction.  Of course, the problem is that scrupulous people might even start questioning ... whether they might not in fact be lax rather than scruplous.  If you're asking that question and bothered by the thought of being wrong about that judgment, you're not lax.  Lax people are rarely going to be "troubled" by such judgments.

If you are distressed by the thought of being mistaken and then go back and forth about whether or not you might be, in a state of distress, you're scruplous, not lax.

Finally, another consideration about scruples is that there's a certainly amount of selfishness or self-absorption behind it, where the scrupulous are more worried about offending God with regard to the impact it has on THEM, and THEIR souls, rather than the harm it would do to God's glory and the sorrow it causes to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  There's some element of self-absorption involved.  That can become evident if after an individual falls into sin, then they start committing more and more sin because, well, they're already in a state of mortal sin, so they throw up their hands and stop caring.  That's a very strong indicator of a selfish motivation behind not wanting to sin.  If they cared about the offense to God, then they wouldn't just slide into sinning with reckless abandon after having committed the first one, since the offense to God would be no different.
I am the OP and I did not actually ask the question of why you didn’t “respond to wear tighter clothing”. However, this is extremely helpful to me as I have struggled with very bad scrupulosity for a long time. Thank you!