Hello. I want to talk with you today about a trend that I’ve seen with several of my clients that are dealing with OCD, this connection between working too much and OCD. We’re also gonna look at, do you feel like stuck working too much? Do you feel like you have to? There’s no other option. Has work become the most important thing in your life, even though you would identify it’s really not the most important thing.
Maybe your family is your friends, the social life that you wanna have, your church community.
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.
Let’s face it, the history of work has changed. We used to be that everyone went into a physical location back in the day, a little time card or something where you clocked in and you clocked out for an hourly wage. Now, some of you still do have that. That still does exist, but for many, many workers nowadays, people are much more likely to be working remotely, either on a hybrid basis or a full-time basis.
So it’s very easy for people to get up in the morning, slug down some coffee, not even eat breakfast. Hop on their computer and immediately start dealing with work stuff. It may be that you’re even lying in the bed, opening up your work emails. Ugh, we don’t want to do that, right? That’s not healthy for our brains and for balance in our life.
I’ve talked with many people though, who have no morning routine. You know what I’m talking about? Um, basic things, things that you do with your children. Get up, brush your teeth, eat breakfast. Put on real clothes. Don’t just stay in your pajamas half the day. Our brain really loves. Containment and compartmentalization, whether that’s physical containment in terms of where you are doing your work time containment.
You don’t necessarily have to have a huge office space at your house. Maybe that’s not conducive to where you are. During COVID and I was having to work from home, I literally had a corner of a room that had a chair in it and it had something to set my laptop up on. I had a laptop stand. I had a way to type, and that was what I was working from during the majority of COVID.
In that sense though, even though it was just a corner of a room, it was a small section. Even my home office right now is like a corner of our bonus area upstairs. It’s nice because when I go into that space, I only do work in that space. So my brain knows, Hey, when we sit down in this office chair in the corner of the upstairs bonus room, that’s where the magic happens.
Right now, I’m in my physical office, so I know when I drive in here and I come here and get to my desk, I am doing work here, and that really helps our brain. If you’re doing emails from the kitchen table, and then you might be in a chair in your bedroom at some other point working on a work project. You might be in your living room, but you also use those rooms and those areas for other things.
So then your brain doesn’t have that compartmentalization. What I see post COVID is that people are working now more than they ever have. It seems like because we can work more remotely, we have the opportunity to work, can just easily suck more hours of our day. We actually wanted to, and people end up working a lot of hours, but not necessarily getting more done, and we’re gonna be talking about that later in this episode.
Another thing that’s happened, a trend I’m seeing is people not valuing arrest. And this can be super hard for people with OCD. Who have been driven to be very productive. Maybe it was a huge value in your family to work hard. I know that it was in mine. Both of my parents were very hardworking people, and so it was a huge value that if you wanted something in life that you needed to work for it.
The problem is on the flip side, that we also need to know how to rest well. Yes, it’s good to work hard. That’s a great value to have, but it’s also important to take time away from our work and to rest as Christians. We do not want our work to become an idol. We don’t want it to be the thing that we are worshiping that’s consuming a ton of our time and energy.
Now if you feel like you’re been stuck working too much, you may have some warning signs of burnout. So I’d like to go over those with you really quick. Let’s say that you used to enjoy your job, but now you don’t. You don’t wanna go in there, you don’t wanna touch your computer. It feels like a have to, not a wanna, like you are just struggling through trying to get out of quicksand.
Maybe it feels like you’re just demotivated. You don’t feel like doing anything, and even though you don’t feel like doing anything, the problem is that your mind is consumed with work all the time. I’ve gotta do this for work. Oh no, I’ve gotta follow up with that person. I’ve gotta send this email. How am I gonna fix this problem?
Oh, maybe I need to do this. I gotta talk to so and so about that. And it’s just can be constant if you are not compartmentalizing. Kind of going back to what we were talking about before, your brain is gonna be if you’re constantly switching from work to home task or constantly getting interrupted.
You’re going to have a lot of these disorganized, random thought processes. Let’s say maybe that you don’t have much of a life outside of work and your family is suffering, or your other relationships are suffering. Maybe your relationship with God is suffering your relationship with yourself. And what I mean by that is your physical health has decreased.
That’s another warning sign of burnout. Maybe you’re skipping sleep, relying too much on caffeine, not taking care of your physical body, not exercising. You’re exhausted all the time. The only thing you have energy for is you get up, you work, and then at the end of work, you just crash. You’re done, and you do not have the physical energy to pursue the other things that you wanna do.
You may have noticed as part of this physical burnout that you are experiencing, chest pains, heart palpitations, or other signs of stress, stomach and digestive discomfort when you are in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze, that arrest your digestive system and keeps you from being able to process food in a healthy way.
The last warning sign of burnout is that you feel like you can’t take a day off. You feel just absolutely uncomfortable. When you do have time off, maybe you’re twiddling your thumbs, feeling like you should be doing something you don’t know what to do, and you have determined that taking a vacation will be more work in the long run.
Now I can relate to this because at a previous job we had an expectation to have a certain number of client hours in our month, and it didn’t matter if you took a week off, your expectation was still the same. What did that mean? That mean we really had to front and back load our vacation with client hours.
And let me tell you, that’s stressful. It makes you not wanna take days off. So when I left there, I ended up taking some PTO money with me because it just wasn’t worth it a lot of times to take the time off. That’s a sad place. I hope that you are not in that same scenario with your work, but you might be.
I want to talk with you now about some beliefs that will keep you feeling stuck working too much. These are really important. Whenever we are trying to change our behavior, we have to look at what are our belief systems and what is our identity. Your belief systems are going to drive your behavior and how you view yourself.
Your identity is also gonna drive your behavior. So first belief that’ll keep you feeling stuck is my value and worth is based on my performance. You may have decided that your value or worth is determined by how much money you make by having to continually increase that amount, and so you are on this constant treadmill because it’s just never enough.
It’s like, well, if I could make a little bit more, everything would be better. I could think a little bit more, it’d be okay. So it doesn’t matter if you have this belief or this value that I’ve just gotta make a little bit more money, and then things will be okay. But then you get to a little bit of that point and then you say, well, things really aren’t okay, and you don’t feel good about yourself.
Maybe I need to be making even more money, whatever the case is, or you feel like I have to achieve a certain educational level to be valuable or have worth, I have to achieve certain accolades in my position. In order to do that, that is going to keep you just constantly, constantly striving, but left empty.
It doesn’t matter if you achieve those things, there’s still gonna be some other target that you could be going for. If you make a million dollars, you could still say be unhappy with that. I find that a lot of people have fallen in to this performance trap. You are valuable and love just the way that you are by God.
He sees you. He knows you inside and out. If you want to do things with excellence to please the Lord, that is a good thing. But know that if you’re trying to please somebody else, or if you have to prove something to a parent, or you have to prove something to yourself, you’re going to just continue this same cycle over and over again.
Second belief that will keep you stuck working too much. I don’t deserve this paycheck unless I put in massive amounts of hours. You may say, Carrie, you don’t understand. These people are actually paying me really well, and I would say, good, that’s awesome. That’s because you have a certain skillset that they need in their company.
You are meeting a need there. They have decided to pay you that amount to get that job done. That doesn’t mean that you have to work 50, 60, 70 hours in order to accomplish that. People really struggle with this when they move from an hourly job to a salary job. They’re used to trading a certain amount of time for a certain amount of money.
However, that is only one way of working. So it can be a huge mental shift to change out of that time for money exchange. Now we have to realize that working more hours does not produce a better product. Whatever your product is, it may not actually be a physical product. It may be a service. I think we need to say it again.
Say it a little louder. For the people in the back, working more hours does not produce a better product. If you are working more hours, you are more likely to make mistakes. You are less likely to have new, spontaneous, creative ideas. Because you’re not giving your brain a break. Your brain needs time and space to rest, to problem solve.
And if you’re not giving your brain that it’s not functioning at its optimum capacity, I love Mondays. Let me tell you why I am so productive on a Monday. I wake up, I work out, and I take my daughter to school. I hit the ground running on Mondays because I have had time and space away from work. I feel refreshed.
I feel rejuvenated if I go away on vacation or even to a conference because it’s still like work, but it’s a different type of mental reset. I’m around people that are doing some of the same things that I’m doing and there’s energy there. It, it doesn’t matter if it’s a counseling conference or a podcasting conference.
If I am able to get away for a little bit and then come back, I just feel so awesome to be at work. I’m like, yes. I’m gonna step in there and crush it today. And I don’t know if you have had some of those experiences or can think back on those times, but that is such a beautiful thing when we are able to shift gears or sometimes maybe even do a different type of work within our position, like get a different project.
It just allows you to have a different perspective to be able to come back and think more literally about what you’re working on. That, that kind of stuff just really lights me up instead of working more hours. You’ve gotta work smarter, not harder. And prioritization here is crucial. So important. You’ve gotta know what is actually the most important task to get done today.
What are my top two or three items? Because you will get so like swamped by every crisis, every slack message that pops up, every email that comes your way there, everything is coming at you. Even an idea in your own brain. I’ve had situations where it’s like, I have this great idea and creativity and I wanna work on this right now, but that is not the thing that I need to be doing getting done today.
So I have learned over time with having my own business that I have to say, well, what am I focusing on for today? What am I focusing on this week? What am I focusing on this quarter? Those types of questions are really gonna help, you know, because the reality is, is that everything else is fluff, and if you have time to work on fluff.
That’s great or it is a crisis and sometimes you have to deal with the crises when they come up, but sometimes they’re not really a crisis. They’re just, someone thinks they’re having a crisis right now and needs to be put off till later. So it just really depends. You have to evaluate some of those things, but you can get super distracted and switching gears.
Is very taxing on your brain. That’s one thing that you need to know. If you are constantly moving from task A to task B, to task C, and then back to B, and then tomorrow morning it’s like, oh, where do I even start? Which thing do I need to work on? That is not good for your brain. It creates a mental drain.
So if you are able to stay in one lane, really dig in and focus on something, you are going to feel so much better and be so much more productive, and that’s part of the working smarter. Not harder. When you do that, you are able to prioritize output over any amount of hours. So it’s not necessarily about the number of hours that you’re working, it’s what is the actual product that you’re coming out with on the other side, and recognizing that if you are getting a salary, you are getting paid for that output, not the number of hours.
Number three is I have to do it perfectly. I have been subject to this one in the past. I probably told you guys before, I would consider myself a recovering perfectionist, and what happens when you have perfectionism is that mistakes feel super intolerable. You go, I cannot make a mistake and understand that perfection.
It’s an impossible standard. It can lead an OCD to a lot of checking, a lot of rechecking. It can lead to paralysis where you just sit there and don’t do anything because you feel like you’re gonna mess it up and you can’t do it perfectly, or it will leave you saying, well, I need more information before I even start on this.
That’s not always the case. Sometimes it is the case where we say, okay, I really don’t know how to do this. I need to talk to somebody else, get some training, get in the weeds and figure it out. But a lot of times we do know how to do it. We just know it’s gonna be messy in the process. You’ve gotta get in there, you gotta be a little messy, and things that are not perfect can still be effective and still be very helpful for people.
So get in there and do the thing and stop telling yourself it has to be perfect. Number four, no one can do it like I can. I have been guilty of this one as well. Now, if you are in a position where you’ve moved up in your company and there are certain tasks maybe that you used to do, but now you don’t need to do them anymore because you have delegated them to someone below you to an assistant, there’s probably things that you don’t need to be doing anymore, but you’ve held onto them because you feel like.
No one is gonna do this with the same excellence that I can do it. And what I’ve learned over time from working with different assistants and working with different contractors, I’ve had to say, you know what? I can train people with expectations. I can share a video with them. I can like screen record what I’m doing and let them see that I can provide written instructions.
Depending on the person, they may prefer one over the other. Some people are like, Hey, I need the visual. I need you to show me exactly what you’re wanting. Other people, they do just fine with going into the file and reading about it and then implementing things step by step. Some things you may have to break down into smaller steps than other things, and that’s okay.
Sometimes we have to do less. In order to do more, and that is a tough concept really to wrap your mind around. That goes back to prioritization, but also delegation. Fifth belief that’ll keep you stuck is other people around me are working more hours than I am. And there’s a very short phrase that I say to that, let them, you are running your own race with this company.
It is between you and your boss, how your work is going and because oftentimes you’ll be getting feedback from various people throughout your company, maybe people next to you, maybe even people that are below you, whatever kind of feedback you’re getting. You wanna make sure that you are providing the company with the role and the job if you are fulfilling your job description?
That’s a good question to ask yourself, am I fulfilling the job description that is required of my role that I was hired on to do? Now if people way above you are sending emails at 2:00 AM that doesn’t mean that you have to. If Joe next to you is answering his slack on the weekends, you don’t have to let them.
You are in a place. I hope that if you are listening to this podcast that you are pursuing physical, mental, and spiritual health. And if they are not doing that because they’re engaging in some of these types of behaviors. Then that is on them, and you want to be in a healthy place and there is nothing worse than being stuck, not being able to make progress in your OCD recovery because you have all these other things that are not properly boundaried in your life.
This idea that other people are working more hours than me, it’s interesting. It’s almost like we’ve created this, keeping up with the Joneses. Uh, situation in the work department. Now, if you’re not familiar with that phrase, it’s kind of this idea that if the Joneses live next door and they get a new car, then you’re like, oh, well, wow, their car looks nicer than mine, and maybe I need a new car too.
I’m not sure. Or if your neighbor gets a pool, then you’re like, Ooh, I want a pool. That sounds like a good idea. And if other people around you are working more than you, you don’t have to keep up with them. It is quite okay. Are you doing your job? Are you pleasing God with your work? Are you pleasing your boss at some level with your work?
Then move on. Number six, I’m receiving a lot of pressure from a variety of places. Therefore, I must figure out a way to do more. Now, I have talked with many different people who are experiencing this. The line from their job is essentially something to, Hey, we’ve gotta be all hands on deck here. We’ve gotta work together, we’ve gotta get this done.
And it’s not just like we’ve gotta get this done. It’s like some kind of crises. Oh gosh, we’ve gotta get this done like yesterday. And it’s imperative. And like, hurry up and if you need to work more hours, work more hours. Like we gotta get it together now. Pressure does not produce better performance. So this is a problem if you have somebody over you going just micromanaging you to the hilt or constantly saying like, what are you doing?
Why is this taking so long? That is not really gonna motivate you to work any faster or harder other than it is gonna make you more stressed, which goes back to when we’re more stressed, we don’t think as clearly, and we’re more likely to make mistakes. Then our brain isn’t getting that space to rejuvenate and refresh, et cetera, et cetera.
Number seven, belief that will keep you stuck is I am going to get fired. I have heard this from so many different people, and I would say, I would encourage you to evaluate, are you actually in danger of getting fired now? Have you been written up? Have you been reprimanded? Have you been told that if you don’t work a certain number of hours on this thing, you’re going to be written up?
That may or may not be the case in your scenario at your company. I’ve not actually ever heard anybody tell me that it’s just this very vague pressure to work more hours because other people are working more hours or because. We’re all stressed that this thing needs to get done. Whatever the thing is Now, is that fear coming from an imagined scenario in your mind because OCD really likes to spin stories about you getting fired and next thing you know you’re homeless and you’re on the street and begging for quarters or something like that.
And I know it’s completely irrational, but that’s just how OCD is. It will take you down like this really long trail. It’s irrational for many of the people that I talk to because they have some level of either education or training or combination of both or tons of experience in what they’re doing.
But OCD will still convince them that they’re gonna get fired and be homeless, and it’s. Completely irrational. So just know that that is coming from some feared version that OCD has convinced you that you’re going to become. It is not coming from actual reality unless you are at your employer and they have put you on some kind of remediation plan.
They have warned you about firing. When I talk with people about this, it’s interesting because OCD has this way of course of going into all or nothing thinking. We just had an episode on overcoming all or nothing thinking. So go back and listen to that one if you missed it. But people will then say, well, maybe I should just quit my job then, or maybe I should just get another job.
Here’s the deal. You can do that. Of course, it’s always an option, but just remember that you are taking you into the next job. And so if you have poor work-life boundaries, if you have poor stress management, if you have poor self-care, just remember you are taking that person into the next company that you will be working at.
There are great opportunities for you right here and now to work on having better work-life balance. So in order to do that, let’s adopt some new beliefs about work. How about it? Number one, work is my job, not my life. So many people have this messed up work is supposed to fuel your personal life. It’s supposed to be the vehicle that provides a living wage so that you can go home, that you can relax.
At the end of the day, you can spend time with your family that you can maybe go on a vacation. Some of you don’t have time for ministry in your church because you are working entirely too much that’s rubbing up against a value. You don’t like it, but you’re not sure how to change it. So remember, work is supposed to fuel your personal life.
Work is not your life. Number two, it is my responsibility to set and keep boundaries with my employer. That’s a new idea for some of you, but it is not their job to create work-life balance for you. It’s your job. Now, I wish that companies were healthier. I wish that they would encourage their employees to have work-life balance to take time off to care for themselves in really great ways.
And there may be companies out there that are doing that, but many are not. And it’s unfortunate that there are many toxic workplaces out there now. So welcome to it. It’s time to stop constantly checking your work email. Take it off your phone. Some of you just gassed right now. Some of you just were shocked when I said that.
Block the work apps at a certain time. Do what you need to do. If you are working for a greedy, toxic company that is going to work people to the bone and all they care about is making money and getting the job done, just know that if you aren’t there, they’ll replace you with somebody else. They’re not valuing you at that point.
They’re just valuing having a person in your position, and there’s a big difference there. It’s time to talk with people about cutting out the fluffy meetings that could have been an email. People waste so much time in companies in worthless meetings that don’t need to happen or that need to be prioritized.
Much more short, concise, and to the point. Here’s why we’re doing it. Let’s discuss for 10 minutes and move on. It’s time to possibly help show that the job can get done and without massive amount of hours, over 40 hours, you may need to have a scary conversation with your. Something to the effect of, Hey, I know I’ve been working a ton and I’m noticing that’s not really helping us things along any faster.
And I’ve noticed that I actually do better when I’m able to have time to take care of myself, to rest, to have time, to have this work-life balance that I want, and I’m happy to get this job done efficiently and effectively. In order to do that, here’s what I need from you. I need some carved out time to really focus in on something without getting interrupted.
If that’s what you’re needing, can I take myself off the work messenger on Tuesday from two to four so that I can really dive into project to be? Would that be okay with you? Maybe you need more help in your position and you’re saying, Hey, there’s a limit to how much I can get done that you’re throwing at me.
Can I have an assistant? Is there somebody else that might be able to pick up this task over here that’s dragging me down and taking a lot of time away from other things that you might deem are more important for me to focus on? And those are conversations that are worth having. And they might say no, like, well, no, you’re not getting any other help.
Okay. And then. At least you asked, at least you were assertive, and put yourself out there and you kind of know where they’re at. But if you never asked, you are not gonna know if you possibly could get more help. Now, a really good company is going to want to keep their employees. It takes a lot of money to go through all this searching and hiring and onboarding and training, and blah, blah, blah.
And good companies are gonna wanna keep their employees relatively happy to the best of their ability because here’s a news flash. People who are happy and enjoy their work are not burnt out. They actually are the best producing employees and they’re who you wanna keep around and have on your cheap.
Understand if you are working towards OCD recovery right now. I’ve talked about this ad nauseum, I’m sure OCD thrives in really stressful environments, and I see many people who are not managing their stress well, and they’re coming to me and saying, Hey, I need some help with my OCD, and I’m responding to them, Hey, I’d love to help you with your OCD, but until you get your stress.
To a more manageable level. It’s gonna be really hard for us to make progress. It’s gonna be really hard for you to absorb and apply the ICBT information to your life or to dig into trauma therapy or whatever it is they’re needing to do. It’s gonna be super hard if they’re stressed out the max, and I would say pretty much impossible in many cases.
This is something we have to work on. Even just from a very baseline eating, sleeping, breathing, having times of rest, taking a Sabbath. These are all really great foundational building blocks. And if you haven’t already built into your OCD recovery process, please make sure that you are doing that. This episode is very near and dear to me because I have been burnout in my work in the past.
I have been the person stuck working too many hours, and sometimes that has been of my own doing, not because anybody else wanted me to work that many hours. I’ve not always been the person who worked smarter. I definitely worked in a way that was discombobulated and not helpful to me. Were the people that I was serving.
If this is something that you’re struggling with or you know somebody else that is stuck working too much, I hope that you’ll share this episode with them for a little support, hope, and encouragement. You can make changes in these areas and may feel really daunting and may feel hard. It may make you feel super anxious and sick to say something to your workplace, but continue to work on this.
Pray about it. God will give you wisdom and lead you and guide you in the right path. So thanks so much for listening today. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian faith in OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.
