How to tell it has outgrown reading

Nobody draws a line and tells you when you have crossed it. There are markers though, and they are about your days rather than about your faith.

Time. Rituals that now take real time, or hours a day going on checking, reviewing and asking.

Function. Prayer avoided or taking hours. Work, study or sleep gone. Relationships being damaged by confession that keeps escalating.

Duration. Not a difficult fortnight. Months, in the same form, and not lifting.

And the ones that go faster. Any thought of ending your life, especially alongside a settled belief that you are damned and it is already decided. A belief that a thought has made you unforgivable. Doubt that arrived suddenly and out of character, or alongside hearing voices or fixed unusual beliefs, which needs a medical assessment first.

None of these says anything about your faith. They are the markers any clinician would use.