- Date posted
- 17h
(Buzz) Lightyear and OCD
I’m watching Lightyear and something in the movie triggered a moral-scrupulosity loop for me. There’s a really sweet storyline involving Buzz’s friend, who falls in love with a woman, gets engaged, gets married, has a child, and grows old with her family. It struck me because it reminded me of an uncomfortable conversation I had with a colleague some time ago. My colleague was complaining about gay and trans people and about children supposedly being “taught to be gay" by LGBTQIA + teachers. I disagreed with her, but I also desperately wanted the conversation to end because we were at work and I didn’t want to have a political/religious argument with a colleague. The problem is that she can be extremely relentless in conversations. Even when I try to politely disagree or I stay silent she keeps going. I’ve had similar experiences with her making comments about foreigners, vegans, other religions, etc. During the conversation about LGBTQIA+ people, I tried to explain that when I was growing up, there were children’s books that introduced kids to different kinds of families and circumstances — divorce, single-parent households, different backgrounds, etc. My point was basically that children learning that people live differently doesn’t somehow change who the child is. It can simply teach them that different people and families exist. Also it can make LGBTQIA+ kids feel free when the time comes in their teens that we start liking people romantically. But because I was speaking spontaneously and trying to get out of an uncomfortable conversation, I muddled my explanation. I know that there's a strong chance that in my muddled speech I could've lied by omission or confusion that I read books on gay parenting as a child. Ever since then, my OCD has latched onto the possibility that my muddled explanation may have made it sound as though I personally remembered reading children’s books about gay parents when I was young. Now my OCD keeps saying: I (accidentally) made it sound like I personally saw children’s books about two mothers when I was young? she interpreted me that way? I didn’t correct that possible misunderstanding, thus I was lying by omission? Should I go back and clarify exactly what I meant months later? There’s another layer too. I sometimes feel enormous guilt if I don’t defend my actual political or moral beliefs “correctly.” I start thinking I’ve been a bad ally, that people will assume I agree with prejudiced views, or that some imaginary audience is going to expose or “cancel” me for not saying exactly the right thing. Watching Lightyear made me think, “THIS is what I was trying to explain.” The storyline isn’t sexual like my colleague was implying children book stories on the LGBTQIA+. It’s basically: she fell in love, got engaged, married, had a family. The exact same storyline could have been written for a heterosexual couple. Children simply see that another kind of family exists. And immediately my OCD turned that realization into: "youre a liar (even if it was due to confusion)! You arent moral at all. You let someone misunderstand you." On the day of the chat with the colleague I spoke to chatgpt about the incident & was advised not to reopen the conversation just to obtain certainty or morally “clean up” everything I said. So I tried to sit with it. Now it pops up again during this film months later and OCD wants the case reopened. Does anyone else with moral scrupulosity get this urge to revisit conversations or (possible) mistakes and make sure you were completely accurate, morally consistent, and impossible to misunderstand? Or feel bad when there was a misunderstanding liar. It feels like OCD turns every imperfect conversation into a courtroom transcript.