Hello, OCD Warriors. On today’s episode, we’re talking about the three risks of feeling better. I know normally we think, hey, feeling better is a great thing. That’s what everybody wants, but it also can be a little risky.
Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.
We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing. And helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.
One of the reasons I’m doing this episode right now is that, hey, it’s getting warmer outside. Isn’t that awesome? And people are starting to think about vacations, they’re gonna be taking, I’m just imagining that I’m gonna be on a tropical island somewhere. I don’t have any vacations like that planned yet, but girl can dream, right?
We’re coming out of this cold and flu season. Praise the Lord, because it has been a bad one for so many people. There’s more sunshine, less darkness, and we’re getting towards this time period where people drop off in therapy. Last summer I did an episode on why summer is the best time to get counseling.
So it’s episode 1 27. If you wanna go back and listen to that one. The first risk of feeling better is that it’s risky to think that OCD is magically going to go away. It’s not, it does wax and wane with stress, but it’s a chronic condition. So sometimes someone will switch medications or they’ll be going through a less stressful period or time in their life, like their summer, and it might cause them to go, ah, I feel better.
I don’t really need to like super engage in my recovery process. Or maybe I don’t really need to go to therapy. Let me tell you, the best time to learn the skills is when you aren’t constantly getting triggered by OCD. It’s better to learn these things in small doses. Like Christians Learning ICBT. The info builds one module at a time so that you can learn things in bite-sized doses, get what you need, and then be able to apply it to your recovery.
This is also true if you’re feeling better because you’re avoiding everything and you’re avoiding all your triggers, and that’s why you’re feeling better. Well, you might be feeling better and avoiding all your triggers, but you’re probably living a very limited life and not really the full life. You want to be living.
That’s not really recovery. That’s just continuing to feed the OCD, and it’s going to be demanding and continue to ask more and more from you over time. The second risk of getting better is that it requires you to get in touch with your true self. Who you really are, what things you actually like, what things you actually value apart from OCD rituals.
Do you know that information or do you feel like you would be completely lost without all of these OCD handwashing rituals and dressing rituals and showering rituals, and eating rituals and cleaning rituals. If your life is completely filled up with all of that stuff and that is what you have created your identity around, or you’ve created your identity surrounding being dependent on other people, then it’s going to be really hard to know yourself and.
That is a process that’s needed in order to get better identity work is something I’ve realized is super involved in OCD treatment. It’s just a part of it. Even if you’re looking at it from an acceptance and commitment therapy stand of moving towards your values, you have to know what your values are and what’s important to you and what you want in order to be able to move towards those values.
Sometimes it’s really scary to dig down and get to know yourself. Maybe you’re afraid of what you’ll find. Maybe you’re very self-critical or view yourself as bad. Ultimately, I want people that I work with to connect with who they are in Christ. If they’re saying they’re a Christian, I want them to be able to connect with being a child of God, with being wholly and completely loved unconditionally with being a hundred percent forgiven.
And so OCD is gonna rub up against those things. If you’re struggling internally with who you are, if you view yourself as a bad Christian or somebody that you just can’t wrap your mind around how God could ever love you or forgive you, well yeah. Yeah. I know God’s forgiveness and love is for people, but that’s doesn’t apply to me somehow.
If you feel like OCD is consuming a lot of time or a lot of your life, I would really encourage you to think through what would it be like if OCD didn’t cause you to have to take a two hour shower? What would you do with that extra time? What if OCD didn’t rule what restaurants you could eat at and which restaurants you couldn’t eat at?
Where would you go? Who would you spend that time with? This really helps you dig in and also find some motivation for treatment, but I think so many times. People are scared of change or scared of that identity work that they get stuck in those OCD rituals or there’s a lack of belief that they’re going to be able to do this even with support.
A third risk of feeling better is if you feel like recovery might disconnect you from those closest to you, such as family members, spouses, parents. If you’re in a codependent relationship with someone where they’re enabling you, they’re going along with your OCD rituals. Now, they may be expressing frustration and resentment, but they’re still doing it, or they may be inconsistent.
Sometimes they give in, sometimes they don’t. You’ve developed this dance with this other individual and they’ve adopted this caretaker role where maybe you’re used to, depending on them for reassurance, you’re depending on them for how to do things. This is the dynamic that you have and you want to be able to.
Have an adult to adult relationship, even with an adult parent, and definitely with your spouse as well. You might not want to upset this dance because the other person is kind of used to now taking care of you or making sure that you are okay. There can be this interrelationship where you feel like, okay, if they aren’t okay, then I’m not okay, and they may feel similarly.
That’s what codependency is. I can’t be okay unless this other person is okay. If you disrupt that relationship dynamic by getting better, even though that other person may say, yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do. They may try to pull you back into an unhealthy pattern of being dependent on them, if that’s what they’re used to, and they may actually be threatened by some of your independence or being able to do more things on your own because they’re lost in terms of that caretaking role.
Well, what do I do now? They don’t need me to take care of them, or they don’t need me to do all these things, and they might subconsciously sabotage your recovery, tell you, oh, I don’t think that you can do this. This is gonna be too hard for you. Just let me take care of it. They’re used to kind of jumping in.
Doing things for you. They’re the rescuer. They’re the hero in the dynamic. Well, after a little while, even heroes get tired, rescuers become persecutor and become victims. There’s a whole triangle on that. It’s called the Copman Drama Triangle. If you wanna look that up, it’s very insightful. Talks about codependency and this pattern that happens, right?
Somebody feels good, they run in and help you and rescue you, but then they get frustrated, become resentful, attack you, and then they just feel like, well. I’m this victim to your OCD, and I guess this is just never gonna get better, and I’m just gonna have to continue to suffer alongside you, and it’s a negative cycle to be in.
But if that’s in your dynamic, either with a spouse or with a parent, would really encourage you to get some help as part of your recovery process. It’s important to have the support of family members and for them to know how to support you. Way possible because they might be trying to prevent you from experiencing any discomfort or any suffering.
Of course, we don’t want our children to suffer. As a parent, I can understand that, but at the same time, like sometimes we have to suffer or we have to at least be uncomfortable. In order to grow and in order to learn new skills and in order to have the ability to do things on our own. My daughter is learning how to dress herself and certainly still needs a lot of help, but we are trying to coach her and support her through that process.
If every day I come in there and just pull the shirt over her head, she’s never gonna learn to do it on her own. There’s a little bit of struggle with that. Sometimes her head gets stuck and she can’t get the shirt on, or sometimes it’s hard to pull her clothes all the way on or whatever. But her wrestling through that with the support is important and you can do many hard things.
With God, all things are possible. So just remember that. So let’s just review the three risk of feeling better. One, it’s risky when you feel better and you think OCD maybe just magically is disappearing and going away when you haven’t had treatment. Now, if you’ve had treatment than that’s a different story.
It’s risky if you don’t know who you are apart from your OCD rituals and it’s risky if feeling better, might disrupt the codependent relationships that you’re in. This is a short episode, but hopefully we packed in some value for you. Since summer is a great time to get the therapeutic help that you need, how about booking a Nashville therapeutic vacation for yourself where you can come and do an intensive for two or three days and then have a little bit of fun?
In Tennessee, we’ve got some great parks and great things to see, concerts, all kinds of things happening this summer. I’d love to have you. There’s more information on my website@careybach.com. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian faith and OCD is a production of Buy the Well Counseling.
This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.
