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Author: Carrie Bock

I am a Christ follower, wife, and mother. I seek to bring a calm, compassionate, and hopeful approach to my practice. I am direct and transparent, ensuring no guessing games or hidden analyses. I believe in taking my own advice before sharing it with clients as we strive towards physical and emotional health together. I’ve been a licensed professional counselor since 2009, but I’m still learning every day. I’ve been practicing EMDR since 2013 and became an EMDR consultant in 2019, which is the highest level of training in EMDR. I also host the podcast “Christian Faith and OCD.” This started with a hesitant “yes” to God in 2020, and has grown into a world wide ministry.

144. God Loves Me, But I Don’t: 5 Ways to Increase Self-Compassion

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie dives deep into the importance of self-compassion and how it is essential in overcoming perfectionism, OCD, and healing from past trauma.

Episode Highlight:

  • How self-compassion is rooted in faith and mirrors the love and grace of Jesus.
  • Why self-criticism often leads to increased feelings of guilt and shame.
  • How to recognize and counteract negative self-talk.
  • The importance of nurturing your inner child to cultivate more compassionate self-talk.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 144 of Christian Faith and OCD! In today’s episode, we’ll explore the transformative power of self-compassion, a crucial element for those facing the challenges of OCD and perfectionism. Many of us struggle to reconcile God’s love for us with how we view ourselves, often leading to feelings of shame and self-criticism.

Join me as I explore how to cultivate self-compassion through a Christ-centered lens. We’ll discuss practical strategies for letting go of self-criticism, embracing imperfection, and viewing ourselves with the kindness that Jesus offers. I also share insights on how to engage authentically in Christian community and live a fulfilling life, free from the burdens of shame and judgment.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by trauma, OCD, or anxiety symptoms, I invite you to explore therapeutic retreats or multi-day intensive sessions designed to provide healing and hope. I would love to sit down with you for a consultation to discuss these options further. Remember, there is hope and healing on the other side of what you’re dealing with right now. For more information, visit my website at carriebock.

Transcript

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.

Happy October. I hope that you are enjoying all the fun things that fall has to bring. Here on the podcast, we are doing a very special giveaway in October. We are going to be giving away a 100 gift card to Amazon for anyone who is an email subscriber to the list and who rates and reviews our show on iTunes.

There will be full instructions for entering the giveaway in our show notes, because I don’t want to take up too much time here. You can always reach us for further information at karybach. com slash podcast. Hey, if we’re going to develop more self compassion, first, let’s define what self compassion is.

I believe that’s responding to ourselves in a way that Jesus would respond to us. Jesus knows there are going to be times where we mess things up, where we make mistakes, where we sin, where we have areas of our life where we need to grow, that we have things we need to work through in our relationships.

And we need to be able to connect with that love that God has towards us and be able to point that towards ourself in our own flaws. Otherwise, we get stuck. We get paralyzed. We end up not doing things for the kingdom of God. We end up not taking risks because we say, God can’t use me. We disqualify ourselves from ministry and putting ourselves down can also keep us from connecting authentically in Christian community.

As Christ wants us to do when we look at the greatest commandment of love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And also love your neighbor as yourself. If you do not like yourself, it’s going to be really hard to put yourself in situations where you’re around other people trying to authentically connect in community, because you’re going to say, nobody wants to be my friend, or I’m unworthy, or I’m not enough to be in this particular circle.

They don’t know what I’ve done in the past. I want to be really clear that we’re not talking about some kind of woo woo, I love myself and I’m giving myself all kinds of positive affirmations about how wonderful I am. We’re not trying to bend towards this direction of pride. We’re trying to say, how can I have a balanced.

View of myself, love myself and others the way that the Lord loves me. Speak kindly to myself as Jesus would speak kindly to me. Even if it was in correction, I can still speak kindly to myself. So if you have a lot of self criticism in your life, and you’re trying to grow self compassion, step one, let’s be curious and find the function of this self criticism.

It didn’t just show up there out of nowhere. There’s some reason it got built into your system. And I find that we often criticize ourselves. To avoid criticism from others, so just take a moment for yourself and reflect on where did I start doing that? Where did I start holding back and saying, Oh, no, I can’t do that here.

That’s too much to avoid other people from criticizing me. When did I pour over what I was doing? In an unhealthy way, just so that in an effort to keep someone else from putting me down, whether that was a friend, mentor, a teacher, a parent, pastor, whoever that was. Usually we internalize a critical spirit from someone else who was constantly critical of us.

That’s not always the case. I have had clients that have just always been critical of themselves, and I think it can come somewhat from personality subtypes that are harder on themselves, and maybe their parents weren’t necessarily harder on them or weren’t particularly strict, but you can think about this even in terms of if you were raised in a very strict religious environment, you were that you may have felt the need to be perfect or be a certain way in order to please God.

So finding the function of that self criticism and then realizing that the function is actually working against what you’re trying to accomplish. People say, well, if I wasn’t so hard on myself, then I wouldn’t be pushing myself to do certain things. But then you find out that they’re so critical of themselves, they don’t end up doing the things that they want to do.

I want you to think about this. You’ve all had different types of employers. If you’ve been in the working world, now which boss would you rather work for? Boss A is always pointing out everything that you do wrong. He or she doesn’t see anything that you do well. Just says, okay, you need to go and you need to fix that.

Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Don’t say that. You look stupid over there. What are you thinking? Would you rather work for that boss or would you rather work for boss B who says, Hey, you did a great job on this area over here. You’ve got some needs improvements in these areas. How can I support you in that?

Let’s work together. Let’s develop a plan to help you get to a different place in your work. But hey, I just want to also say that area C over here, you’re doing amazing with that. You’ve got great working relationships with your co workers, always supportive, always encouraging. How can I help you? How can I come alongside you?

Of course you would want to work for Boss B. I don’t know that I’ve ever met anybody who said, Oh yeah, sign me up for that horribly critical micromanaging boss that points out everything I do wrong. You may have had a boss like that. It’s not very comfortable working for them. Why do we do this with ourselves then?

Why do we think that having boss A with ourselves and pointing out everything we do wrong? Why do we think that that’s helpful for us? It’s not. Instead, we can take a much more balanced approach when we’re evaluating our own behavior and say, Okay, here are some things that seem to be going well in my life.

I have set aside time with God in the mornings. I have developed a healthy rhythm. I have made changes to pray for specific people or at specific times of my day, but I know I’m lacking in this area of my life. I know that I have some forgiveness prayers that I need to pray and work through and some resentments I need to let go of.

I have too quick to anger at times. Whatever the situation is in your life that you’re dealing with, it’s healthy for us to examine ourselves. There are, self examination is scriptural. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. I think it was Paul that said, test yourself to see if you’re in the faith. So this sense of self examination is not bad.

Now you can overdo it if you have OCD, so don’t go down a huge rabbit hole where you’re self examining forever. Step two is to expect imperfection. One thing I used to do to myself all the time was I would create these really long to do lists and I never sat down and thought Actually, how long are these tasks going to take me?

I would just think okay I need to get all of this stuff done today because these are important things and they need to be done And I’m sure I would get distracted in the process, whatever But then I would just beat myself up if I didn’t accomplish enough things off the list And I’ve had to realize that I have to have more realistic expectations for myself, that I can plan out my day, but that life happens, crises occur, unexpected things happen.

My husband woke up sick one day and that meant that I had to get my daughter ready and it meant that there was a lot more TV time in the morning because things were just shuffled around. And it’s okay because it’s life, but I also know too that I can be really hard on myself if I feel like I didn’t make a good decision about something and maybe you struggle with this too.

We have to be able to not only expect the unexpected, but to expect that we’re not always going to get it right. And that can be very difficult if you have perfectionistic tendencies because you would like to get it right every time and you would like to make good decisions and you would like to make sure that things work out well for you because you’ve made a good decision.

All very good goals, excellent goals, however sometimes we make the decisions based off of the information that we have and when we have later information, we go, oh man, now that I have later information, I would never have made that decision back there. This happened to me so recently, guys, I know I will tell you about it more in detail on the podcast sometime, but I was sitting in shame for days about a business decision that I had made and a group of people I had decided to work with.

And I told myself I should have known better than to get involved in this situation with these people. That was a really unfair judgment on myself because there was a lot of information that I didn’t know and I was acting on the information that I did know. The positive reviews this company had, how many years they had been in business, the information, the meeting that I had with the head of the organization.

All of these different pieces, but then later on down the road, other things transpired and other information was received and other things happened without going into all the details or throwing anybody under the bus. And I sat there and I was so upset that I had made the decision to work with these individuals.

That was It’s really, really hard for me to sit with and acknowledge. And what I came to a place of peace about today is that God knew that this was going to happen, number one, and that I can use this as a learning experience. I’ve had a lot of hard learning experiences, which happen when you do new things in your business that you’ve never done before.

New things in your life, you learn, you grow, sometimes you learn by making mistakes, and even though those decisions were made cautiously, prayerfully, with consideration, I did not see the outcome coming out the way that it did, and there was no way for me to predict that. So I can’t judge the present information that I know and that I have right now.

I can’t judge my past self based on that information that I know now. This is point three that I wanted to give to you. I’ll have clients that are processing through trauma, things that they did when they were in active addiction, things that they did when they were far from God. They may have been a Christian, but they ran away from God.

Things that they did before they were Christian and they’re like, man, I cannot believe that I did that. And I’m like, okay, but where are you now? Bring yourself back into the present. Would you do those things now? Well, no, of course not. You’ve grown and you’ve learned from them and you’re in a different place spiritually.

So you can’t judge your past self based on your present self of where you are today. If you are stuck in a place of shame, and I was just stuck in some recently, so I know how bad that feels, stop judging your past self on your present self. You’re not doing those things anymore. And you have different information, and you’ve grown, and you’ve learned from your experiences.

Transcribed As far as the east is from the west is how far God has removed our transgressions from us. Scripture says there’s a reason for that. God is not living in the past bringing up your past. The only ones that do that are us and our enemy. Those are the only ones that bring up the past and hold it against us.

Your past is under the blood of Jesus Christ if you are a Christian. My fourth tip is to picture your inner child. Now this may sound a little far fetched for some of you who have never done this type of work, but if you’re having a really hard time speaking kindly to yourself, if you’re overly critical, would you imagine saying some of the things that you say to yourself to a child?

The dialogue that goes, you’re stupid, or you’re worthless, anything negative. How would you kindly guide and direct a child as they’re going through life? You know, we are to come to God as children. And we need to learn to retrain our inner self talk, to be kinder and to speak to ourself in a way that’s more patient, and to be kinder and to speak to ourselves in a way that’s more patient.

and gentle in that process. So if you can picture your inner child, if you’re struggling with having self compassion towards yourself, can you love on that inner child who is lost, Wounded, sometimes lonely and broken, and hurting at times. Can you love on that inner child? Can you sit with some sense of care or reassurance?

If you can’t think of your inner child or that seems a little weird for you, you can also think about, would I talk to my best friend like this? Would I put someone else down this harshly? No, you probably wouldn’t. You’d probably have a lot more grace or compassion for your best friend. My fifth tip is to meditate on a time where you felt a positive, healthy connection with God.

If you can bring that up from a sensory level experience, where were you, what were you doing, or what was going on around you? What were you feeling? What was that sense of being connected with God like in a healthy way? And from there, really looking at what does the Bible say about God’s love for you?

Maybe you take some of those verses and meditate on those. You can also meditate on verses that talk about God being a good father that may be hard for you to connect with, but allowing God to restore this view of who you are in a healthy and balanced way so that you can respond to yourself in the way that God would respond to you.

What I’ve seen time and time again is that many people have difficulties with self compassion due to past trauma and wounding relationships in their life, broken attachment relationships with parents or other caregivers. If that’s something you’re dealing with, I do therapeutic retreats or multi day intensive sessions with individuals who have a lot of trauma and OCD symptoms or lots of trauma and anxiety symptoms.

I would love to sit down with you over a consultation when you talk about those options further for you. Know that there is hope and healing on the other side of what you’re dealing with right now. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple podcasts App on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. 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.

143. What if OCD is Telling Me I Don’t Have OCD?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie explores the common obsession of doubting whether you actually have OCD. She discusses how this uncertainty can impact your sense of self and shares strategies to help you embrace your diagnosis and find peace.

Episode Highlights:

  • How to identify and address doubts about your OCD diagnosis.
  • Strategies to confront and manage the anxiety that accompanies these doubts.
  • Ways to differentiate between genuine symptoms and self-identity concerns.
  • Techniques for dealing with the shame and stigma surrounding OCD.
  • How to process grief and sadness related to accepting an OCD diagnosis.

Don’t miss our October giveaway! We’re offering a $100 Amazon gift card to one lucky winner.

To join, follow these instructions:

  1. Subscribe to our email list. 
  2. Rate and review our podcast on iTunes.
  3. Screenshot your review and email it to us at podcast@carriebock.com.

👉 Watch out for more details coming soon on Instagram @christianfaithandocd!

Join the fun and good luck! 

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD!

OCD can be tricky, feeding doubts and making you question your reality. This is a common experience, especially when OCD leads you to obsess about whether you’re truly a bad person or if your intrusive thoughts reflect your true self.

In this episode, we’re addressing the common struggle of accepting an OCD diagnosis and the shame or uncertainty that often accompanies it. 

OCD thrives on creating a story that draws you in, often through avoidance or excessive reassurance-seeking. Accepting that your symptoms might not always fit the “typical” OCD mold, like obsessive thoughts about spirituality or relationships, is part of the journey.

If your OCD leads to severe anxiety or doubts about your functionality, professional support, such as intensive outpatient treatment, may be necessary. This doesn’t mean you’re losing your mind—it’s simply a step toward stability and healing.

Join me as we explore how to navigate the emotions tied to an OCD diagnosis and find support through faith. 

For more support and information, visit carriebock.com. 

More episodes to Listen to:

139. Is There a Test for OCD?

Transcript

Have you ever had that experience where maybe you’ve been diagnosed with OCD but then you go back and you start to actually doubt? Is that actually accurate? What if I don’t have OCD? What if I really am this horrible person with deep, dark desires to harm someone?

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 in to today’s episode.

Happy October. I hope that you are enjoying all the fun things that fall has to bring. Here on the podcast, we are doing a very special giveaway in October. We are going to be giving away a 100 gift card to Amazon for anyone who is an email subscriber to the list and who rates and reviews our show on iTunes.

There will be full instructions for entering the giveaway in our show notes because I don’t want to take up too much time here. You can always reach us for further information at karybach. com slash podcast. There’s one thing I know about OCD, and you probably do too, is that it is super sneaky, and an inference based cognitive behavioral therapy, or ICBT that we talk about on the show, We say that OCD is really good at drawing you in with a story.

Everyone loves stories and we can get just really sucked into the imagination of the story. If you’re denying the existence of OCD, potentially it could be a way of avoiding it. Avoidance is super common with OCD. It’s kind of like, if I don’t have to acknowledge it, I don’t have to deal with it, or the need for treatment.

If I don’t go to that restaurant that I find triggering, I’m fine. I won’t have any triggers, and I’ll be okay. Or if I don’t try to do the really hard, scary thing that OCD is telling me not to do, then I give in to that avoidance, but I actually feel okay. And it can be hard to accept this diagnosis. It doesn’t always look the way that people think it should look, right?

So it doesn’t always look like cleaning or checking. Sometimes it can look like a lot of ruminating about spiritual things or getting stuck on relationship obsessions, lots of reassurance seeking. Things that people don’t typically associate with OCD. Hopefully we’re changing that and we’re letting people know more and more, Hey, OCD looks like a variety of different things.

So accepting the diagnosis, there can be this element, for sure, of grief and loss. It’s scary, it’s unknown, and a lot of times it’s just easier in the general populace to tell people, like, oh, I’m dealing with anxiety, I have some anxieties about driving. Because a lot of people have anxiety and people feel like they can relate to it.

Unfortunately, in our society, it’s a little bit become a badge of honor, like, Oh, I have anxiety, somehow means that you’re, I don’t know, really striving or succeeding or pushing yourself really hard. That’s not always a good thing. That’s just a side note. What I want you to know is that OCD telling you, You don’t have OCD is actually a really common obsession.

I’ve had several clients come back to me saying that they’ve doubted the diagnosis, or maybe that they’ve tried to find evidence in their life that they didn’t have OCD. And they can get really stuck on this, like maybe what if I’m making excuses for a sin in my life, like I’m saying that this sexual thought is an intrusive thought, but maybe it’s just really me lusting after this person.

What if I really am going to harm someone and you’re telling me it’s actually OCD and I’m using that OCD as an excuse. Or, what if this obsession is not really OCD, but it’s part of my identity, it’s who I am, like in sexual orientation OCD. What if I really am gay, and then I’m using OCD as some type of excuse to deny my inner feelings?

If you are dealing with this particular obsession about whether or not you have OCD, the first thing to do is identify that this is OCD. That’s your first step, always, is being able to identify when OCD is knocking on the door to say, Okay, I know what this is. I know this is OCD coming to call. The reason I know it’s OCD a lot of times is because it is connected to a very specific anxiety that shows up in your brain, in your body.

It can feel like you want to crawl out of your skin. It can cause your heart to race. It can cause you some mild panic symptoms. And a lot of times these things can happen very fast and you can get sucked into that imaginal story very quickly. Your second step is to identify the emotions that come up for you surrounding the diagnosis of OCD.

Is there shame for having this diagnosis? You need to know that you didn’t cause this. Lots of other Christians struggle too. This is how we can have an entire podcast called Christian Faith and OCD where we get hundreds of downloads every week for people just like you who are also dealing with some of these same struggles.

Doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad Christian. Didn’t cause it. It’s just something that happens to people. Is there sadness connected to this diagnosis? It’s okay to grieve that. Don’t. I remember my husband getting his health diagnosis around the time that my mother died. And I thought I was sad because my mother had died, obviously I was certainly sad over that.

But the piece that was missing was that I never really got to grieve that the person that I married was not going to be able to do some of the things that I had envisioned us doing, or being able to travel as freely as we hoped to be able to travel. When you have someone with balance issues, certainly you’re not going to be hiking up to waterfalls like we were doing when we were dating.

I had to grieve those things. I had to grieve the fact that no one understands this. We go to doctors and we’re literally like explaining stuff to them. Or we’ve had medical professionals say, I’ve never heard of that before. And that is really a challenging place to be in. And I know some of you with OCD can relate to that.

Because your OCD doesn’t look like textbook, typical OCD of what people identify with. And it’s okay to grieve that you feel strange or have to constantly explain things to people all the time. It’s something that we’ve just kind of learned to open up about with relatively quickly with people in our scenario because they can see it, it’s a little bit different than with OCD, and it’s gotten easier to deal with over time, but at first it was super awkward and uncomfortable.

And not something that we wanted to talk about all the time, because we were still trying to wrap our minds around it ourselves, you know, and you get all kinds of different responses when you share this type of information, you have the people that are trying to fix you, you have the people that are just really sad or feel sorry for you, you have the people that just don’t know how to respond or aren’t sure what to say.

If you’re sad about your diagnosis, just know that that’s okay, and like, you can process that emotion. Give yourself time to grieve it, and to really work through it, that you have challenges that other people don’t have. You have challenges that other people aren’t going to understand, even if you try to explain it to them.

Maybe the diagnosis for you feels really anxious or overwhelming. It can be pretty common for people struggling with OCD to fear becoming non functional, go into a hospital, or quote, going crazy, like developing schizophrenia that is not the same as OCD, but it can become an obsession for people. I feel like I’m going to lose my mind, is what they will say, which of course is a very vague term.

When you’re having those obsessions, it’s important to bring yourself to the present of what is actually going on right now. I’m not experiencing that. I am functioning in my day life. I do have supports around me and people that can help me through my process. I can also add additional professional supports to that at any point in time.

So if you are at a really low place in your OCD, where you’re constantly obsessing and compulsing, You might need to go to an intensive outpatient treatment, or you might need to be hospitalized until you can get to a place of medical stability, and that is okay. That does not mean that you are not going to be able to be functional again.

It does not mean that you’re losing your mind or going crazy. We all have different needs at different points in our life, and that’s not anything to be ashamed of either, so I want you to hear that as well. Just knowing that you can feel these variety of different feelings, whether it’s the anxiety, the sadness, the shame, and you can work through them to get you to a place of acceptance.

You may be angry about your diagnosis. I know some people are mad at God. Why is he allowing me to go through this? Why won’t he heal me? What’s going on? Anger is a common emotion connected to grief and loss. So feeling those feelings, working through them, talking through them with somebody else, like your therapist or your loved ones, will help you get to a place of acceptance.

And then when you’re in that place of acceptance, then you can really move forward and know what to do. If I’m really, really stuck on the fact that I’ve lost my mom, I can’t move forward and figure out how to live without her. And essentially, that’s what I’ve had to do in this process, is I’ve had to figure out I think that’s a big task of grief that people miss.

Now I have a missing person in my life. I have a missing piece that was there my whole entire life. Your parents are there your whole life until they pass away. And then you have to figure out, like, how to live without them. You’re not ever going to replace them. There’s nothing, like, magically that shows up there.

But it’s almost like things get rearranged and reconfigured in your life. And that’s okay. I want you to see what happens when you say to yourself, I am struggling with OCD. What is it like to sit with that? Some of you may have had a visceral reaction to that when I said it, like, ugh, that doesn’t feel good at all.

But I like to tell this story because I think it makes a lot of sense in these situations where I volunteered for a short period of time and I went through massive amounts of training to be a victim advocate with the police department in Colorado, and they said, if you’re going to go out and give a death notification, which I never actually had to do, but if you’re going to tell someone that their loved one died, you have to actually say the word died, dead, death, You can’t say, so and so, I’m really sorry that your brother is no longer with us.

What does that mean? Where did he go? You have to say, so and so died. I’m sorry your brother died. Because that sinks into that person’s brain. It starts to help them realize this is real. If we start to use all these euphemisms and other things, they’re not getting the full message. And so that’s what we have to do sometimes within ourselves, is sit with hard truths that we don’t like.

I remember going through the divorce process. I was reading this loss book, and there were different things that they wanted you to kind of write on your mirror. And one of the things that I got actually not out of that loss book, but it was out of divorce care. And it was something to the effect of like, I can’t have plan A for my life, which was a huge deal because life had kind of been, you plan out your life in your twenties.

So having that acceptance of now being like a young 30 something saying I can’t have plan A, but I can do the best that I can with plan B. So maybe your plan A of life. Involved not having OCD or not having to deal with the suffering that you’re dealing with right now, and you can’t have plan A, that’s okay, but you can have plan B, and plan B can look really, really amazing and beautiful.

And you know what? God is in the midst of when life throws us a curveball. He is still there and He is still walking with you on that journey. He loves you incredibly. What’s so interesting was I started out this episode Wanting to just come on here and tell you, hey, it’s a really common obsession to have an obsession about having OCD.

And I realized how much of this whole episode has become about grief and loss and getting our way to acceptance, which is so important. So thanks for tuning in for that. You may be struggling. And when we had our monthly gathering, someone said, I’ve shared several of your podcasts with other people in church so that they can understand what I’m going through better.

I just loved that. I thought it was so beautiful. And so if you need someone else in your life who is close to you to really understand what you’re going through, and if these podcasts help you are a good vehicle to do that, then I am so happy for you to share it with someone else who can help you and support you along in your process.

Be blessed as you go today. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show.

Christian Faith and 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.

142. How Do I Tell Someone I Have OCD?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie dives into the challenges of sharing your OCD diagnosis with others, offering practical guidance on how to navigate this delicate conversation. 

Episode Highlights:

  • Key traits to assess if someone is reliable enough to share your OCD diagnosis with.
  • Understand how much detail to provide based on your relationship with the person and the context of the conversation.
  • Effective ways to inform others about OCD beyond common stereotypes, using resources and examples.
  • Insights on how to respond to different reactions, whether supportive or not.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD! In today’s episode, we’re tackling the question: How do I tell someone I have OCD? Whether it’s a coworker, friend, or romantic partner, this conversation can be daunting. But I’m here to help break down how you can approach it with wisdom and care.

Let’s start by considering who you want to tell. Is this person trustworthy? Sharing personal information like your OCD diagnosis requires discernment. Remember, different people require different layers of information. You don’t need to dive into every detail with everyone. 

It’s also crucial to educate those around you about how OCD impacts you personally. People often have misconceptions, like thinking OCD is just about being overly clean or organized. To help them understand better, you could direct them to resources like our podcast or share helpful educational material.

Vulnerability can feel scary, but it’s often healing. You may be surprised at how sharing your struggles opens the door for others to share theirs.

Instead of focusing on worst-case scenarios, try imagining a positive outcome. Pray through the process, asking for God’s guidance in your words and in how you approach the conversation.

Thank you for joining today’s episode. If you want to connect with me further, be sure to sign up for our email list at carriebock.com

More Episodes to Listen to:

118. How Do I know if this Thought is an OCD Obsession? with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

Welcome to episode 142. We are talking today about how do I tell someone that I have OCD? This may seem intimidating. Maybe you’re wanting to tell a coworker that you’ve become close to. Maybe you’re wanting to tell a friend or maybe you’re dating someone. You feel like things are getting more serious and you think, you know, it’s time to let them in on my secret.

That’s what we’re talking about today. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christian 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, 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.

We had a good time at our Zoom Q& A meeting earlier this month. I think I’m going to try this out for about six months and just see how it goes, how many people show up, what the engagement level is like. So if you want to get in on these meetings where you can ask a question, where you can show up on Zoom and get to know me a little bit better, or.

Have a greater understanding of OCD. The only way to do this is to get on our email list. Super simple. You go to karybach. com. Link will be in the show notes. You scroll all the way down on the homepage, like right before you get to the footer, and there will be a place for you to subscribe to the email list.

When you get that first email, you’ve got to click on it and confirm that you want to be a subscriber that protects us from spam. So join the email list, get on our Q& A sometime. We’d I’d love to see you face to face and meet you over zoom and it’d be awesome. I want you to think of a couple different considerations when you’re looking at telling someone that you have OCD.

Obviously, this is personal information. Some people are more open about their mental health than others, so it just depends on where you are at on that continuum, but most people that I meet, this is not something that they necessarily want everyone to know. Partially because it’s so misunderstood and people will be making comments like, I need to have you over to clean my house or organize my closet.

As we know, that’s not everybody with OCD. So why do you want to tell this person that you’re thinking about telling? Is this person worthy of the information? Do they have the ability to keep a confidence? Are they trustworthy? I had an experience recently that was It’s kind of funny where someone was sharing some information with some of my other friends.

And first of all, the information was actually wrong and inaccurate. So my other friends came to me and said, yeah, so and so said such and such was like, no. And then I realized I’m probably not going to be telling this person other things if they’re like going and sharing this information with other people just for gossipy purposes.

You know that friend that’s always gossiping about somebody else? I guarantee they’re gossiping about you, too. It took me a long time to figure this out. I’m a pretty smart person, and I don’t know why that didn’t click for me, but it has clicked for me, for sure. I’m just more careful about who I talk to regarding certain things.

I am incredibly thankful as well that I do have trustworthy people in my life that I can talk to about very personal things without it going anywhere. So let’s say that the person you want to tell is a trustworthy person, and you know they’re not going to be spreading this around for gossip, and Maybe you’re wanting to tell them because you want this person to understand you a little bit better and why you’re acting the way that you do in certain situations.

Maybe you want to tell this person to include them as part of your support system. This would be really huge if you’re dating someone and you believe that the relationship is moving in the direction of marriage. It still may be. A little too early to know that, but it’s kind of at that tipping point where we need to have more vulnerable conversations to continue to make sure that we’re moving in the right direction.

Another question I would want you to ask yourself is what exactly do you want to tell this person? You can think about explaining things in layers of information. Some people just need the glossy top overview layer. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you have certain ways that you like to do things at work, and it may cross the line over into perfectionism or just right OCD.

You may have some concerns about your boss being upset if things aren’t done a certain way. So you may say something to your boss like, Hey, I just want you to know that I struggle sometimes with perfectionism. And I’m okay if you need to tell me to move on to another task that I’m taking too long to try to make this one perfect.

That would be kind of a high layer glossy overview. You’re not going into the details of Just Write OCD and how it affects you. Probably your boss doesn’t necessarily need to know all that information. But they may need to know that there are some levels of this that’s affecting your work, just so that you don’t get stuck.

Or they don’t ask you, well, why did this project not get done? And it’s because you didn’t feel confident that the boss was okay for you to move on from the first project. Maybe you had it in your mind, like, oh, they’re not going to be okay with this. They’re going to be upset with me if it’s not exactly perfect or exactly done a certain way.

My point is that what you tell a boss probably is going to be completely different or a different layer of information than what you would tell someone you’re dating. How much you tell might also depend on the severity of how this is impacting your work. or your relationship. Let’s say that you have a friendship where you’re always concerned.

There’s some relationship obsessions about whether or not you’ve offended other people and you keep asking that person and now the person is kind of withdrawing a little bit or they’re frustrated with you. Might be helpful to give them a little bit more of an explanation of what’s going on from your end.

This is going to give them a little bit more compassion for how you’re struggling, as well as if you can tell them certain things of how they can best support you. Often people in your life probably need to know that when you’re reassurance seeking, them reassuring you is only going to help very temporarily in the moment.

It’s going to help for a little bit. There’s going to be that slight relief, and then it’s going to toss back into that obsessional cycle, and next thing you know, you’re going to be asking for reassurance all over again. So it’s important for your support systems to know. What’s going to benefit your OCD and what can actually harm your recovery process?

If you are late every day to work because you can’t stop checking things before you leave the house, that might warrant a conversation with your boss regarding this being a mental health issue versus your boss just thinking, oh, you’re lazy, can’t get up on time, or you can’t manage yourself in the morning to get here on time.

Obviously, if someone understands what you’re going through, then they may be able to help problem solve it with you. Like, what can I do to support you in this? Do we need to make sure that you’re getting off of work early or during lunch so you can go to a therapy appointment so you can get help for this?

What are you going to need so that the needs of your work are met as well as your mental health needs are met? If you have relationship OCD or scrupulosity or other themes, you plan on getting married to someone someday, you think you’re in a positive, supportive, helpful relationship, You want to share with this person, Hey, this may show up in our relationship.

I may have doubts about whether or not I love you. I may have doubts surrounding whether or not God loves me. And this may cause difficulties for me in our interactions or in my interactions with the church. Here are some things that you can do to help support me. Here are some things that I’m working on within myself or with my therapist.

How that person responds is going to tell you quite a bit about the relationship and the level of safety that you have. We’re hoping that this person is going to be supportive and say, okay, let me learn more. Or how can I help you? Or how can I support you? When this gets bad, what do you need me to do?

It’s important to let those close to you know that during times of high stress, even positive stress like planning a wedding or having a baby, there is a tendency for OCD symptoms to go up because the higher your stress level, the more that can cause you to get triggered and get derailed by OCD, even if you’re in a manageable state.

You’re most likely going to have to do a lot of education. of this other person regarding what actually OCD is because the average person thinks of monk and that’s their picture of what OCD is. It’s really a shame if any of you work in TV or movies. We need a different representation. We need someone who’s having some type of relationship obsession or scrupulosity obsession or sexual obsessions of some kind so that other people can understand how vastly different these subtypes present within OCD.

You’re going to probably want to give the person that you’re telling some educational information either from a website or you can point them to some of our podcast episodes, the ones that you feel are most relevant to you. We have a great FAQ episode on OCD. We don’t talk as much about treatment on there specifically, but I just kind of go through these different themes and how OCD shows up and so forth.

Regardless of what your story is, learning to be vulnerable and learning to share your story with other people is so important. When we get vulnerable in safe relationships, it can be so therapeutic and so healing because we grow closer. to that other person as we share with them, and oftentimes it allows them to open up about themselves and say, you know what, I really appreciate you telling me that, and I want to share this piece with you so that you know that this is something that I struggle with, or this is something that I’m going through right now.

If you’re concerned about how that person might respond, I encourage you to grab a resource, and it’s going to sound a little strange for this episode. But it’s called Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. It’s a marriage book. However, the best part of this book really is not 100 percent about marriage.

It’s about confrontation and relationships and sharing what he calls the four healing emotions. There’s a chapter, uh, I think, I believe it’s chapter 13, where he goes through these different emotions and writing what he calls a love letter to your spouse, but he also talks about writing a response letter.

Maybe that person doesn’t know how to respond to you, or they’re not exactly sure, like, what you’re needing. You can write a response letter of, these are some things that I really feel like, after I share this with you, that I need to hear from you. So, And it could be like, I support you, I love you, it just depends on the relationship, obviously, what the response letter might be.

It’s really valuable for you to think through what you want to say to someone else, maybe even jotting down on a post it note a few major bullet points so that you can express yourself well. This is something that I’ve had to learn over time when you have hard conversations, sometimes your brain, you know, isn’t fully online because that anxiety puts you into the whole fight, flight, or freeze situation, or maybe it triggers some like fear of rejection coming up for you or feeling unworthy.

If you have your little post it note with like the three main points maybe that you want to convey, that’s a good start and just say, Hey, I jotted a few things down and I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget to tell you these specific pieces. I realize that OCD may throw some worst case scenarios at you about how this person is going to respond.

Our brains have a natural inclination to veer towards the negative in efforts to keep us safe. So what we have to do consciously to combat that is ask ourselves, what if this went well? What would that look like? What would the situation look like if it went really well and was really positive? Focusing on that outcome, praying through that process.

While it may not go exactly the way that you want it to, communicating to your brain how you would like it to go is so powerful. Ultimately, spiritually, we then lay these things before the Lord and say, this is what I sense is the next step in the relationship. You know, give me guidance and wisdom on what to say, how to say it, and that I can be an acceptance of whatever the result of the conversation is.

That’s all for today. I want to read one of our recent reviews that says, I just started to listen to this podcast and Carrie Bach does a great job with multiple topics and great questions. I really appreciate the hard work she puts in and intend to support further. This is from Rob. Thank you, Rob, for saying that.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show.

Christian Faith and 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.


141. Is OCD Keeping You From Reading the Bible?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Blog, OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie explores how OCD can disrupt regular Bible reading, leading to either obsessive or avoidant behaviors. She offers practical advice for engaging with scripture in a healthier way.

Episode Highlights:

  • How obsessively engaging with the Bible can feed the OCD cycle and strategies to manage this behavior.
  • How past experiences or distorted beliefs might influence your OCD symptoms and relationship with God.
  • Techniques for limiting your Bible reading to prevent it from becoming a compulsion while still engaging with spiritual practice.

Episode Summary:

I know how much you want to make Bible reading a regular part of your life, recognizing its importance as a spiritual discipline. Yet, OCD often gets in the way, complicating this sincere desire. Let’s dive into this issue together.

In episode 78, we touched on moving from “should” to “want” in Bible study. Today, we’ll look deeper into the struggle when OCD disrupts your Bible reading.

OCD often manifests in one of two ways for Christians: overdoing or avoiding. Some feel the need to read the Bible for hours, obsessively studying and over-analyzing every word, driven by anxiety and the fear that they’re not doing enough to please God. On the flip side, others avoid Bible reading altogether, overwhelmed by anxiety and intrusive thoughts when they try.

For those who find themselves overdoing it, it’s crucial to set limits on your Bible study time. While it may feel uncomfortable, this is necessary to break the OCD cycle of compulsive activity. Remember, your relationship with God is not about how much you do, but about resting in His grace.

For those avoiding Bible reading due to anxiety, start small. Engage with scripture in ways that feel safe, perhaps focusing on specific verses about God’s love or peace. Gradually, as you feel more comfortable, you can expand your reading.

Whether you’re overdoing or avoiding, it’s important to examine the underlying story you’re telling yourself about God and your relationship with Him. Are your thoughts rooted in grace and the truth of Christ’s work, or in performance-based theology?

Remember, healing is possible, and I’m here to help. Reach out to me through carriebock.com, and let’s work together to find a healthier approach to your Bible reading and spiritual growth.

Explore Related Episode:

78. Bible Study from “Should” to “Want” with Keith Ferrin

Transcript

Hey Christian, so you want to read your Bible, you know it’s an important spiritual discipline. You’re striving to have this in your life on a regular basis, and then bam, OCD gets in the way. Let’s talk about it. Insert the jingle here. Happy to announce to you all that carriebock.com is live. We will make sure you have that link in the show notes.

I always like to tell people verbally, it’s Bach, like the chicken sound, not like the composer. Anyway, this website project has been massive and ongoing to combine my counseling practice website and podcast website together. What’s really cool is if you go down to podcast breakdown, it’s a page. You can actually search all of our episodes, so if there are specific topics you were looking for like prayer or ERP or ICBT, you can search for those specific episodes, which is really cool.

We’re also working on fixing our categories so that hopefully on the side of the page you’ll just be able that everything will be categorized the way we want to. If you want to hear about personal testimonies from other Christians, you can click on those. Those tend to be early. Popular episodes, and we are certainly looking for new guests.

So if you want to tell your story or know someone else who wants to tell. Their OCD story. We’d love to talk with you about being on the podcast. You do not have to be a big celebrity. Not a requirement at all. Just an openness and a willingness to talk about what God has done in your life. Today we’re talking about reading your Bible.

So we had a previous episode on Bible study from Should to Want. That was episode 78. If you want to go back and Check that one out where I interviewed Keith Farrin. It was a really good conversation. But I want to talk with you more specifically today about, let’s say that you are struggling with your Bible reading because OCD keeps getting in the way.

Usually what I see in my practice is that this goes one of two ways for Christians. Either they are obsessively reading the Bible, Like, I need to be reading the Bible hours at a time. I need to be studying or poring over and understanding what does this one word mean. And even with all of that study, there’s still this level of anxiety that somehow it’s just not enough.

I’m not doing as much scripture reading as I feel like I should or as I feel like God wants me to in order to please Him. I like to say with OCD that we have doers and avoiders. So this would be the doer category. I’ve got to do, do, do, perform, perform, perform, then perhaps God will be pleased with me. Or at least I’m going to do everything that I can in order to not have this anxious feeling.

And then we have the avoiders. Who say, okay, if I don’t go do the hard thing, then I’m not going to feel the anxiety, and so therefore I’ll just be over here, not doing that thing. Yeah, I know I’m supposed to read my Bible, I want to read my Bible, but every time I sit down to read my Bible, I get super triggered, I have a lot of anxiety, scrupulosity obsessions come in.

What if God doesn’t love me? What if God isn’t real? What if I don’t have enough faith? All the what ifs that OCD likes to throw at you. What if I commit the unpardonable sin? What if I didn’t really read that correctly and now I need to go back and re read it so that I make sure I fully understand it?

As you can tell, this can go a lot of different directions. Ultimately, it’s frustrating, right, because the very thing that you desire to do and you want to engage with, you can’t find a way to engage with it in a healthy way. This can happen with other areas of your life as well, like eating or cleaning or, or practicing caution.

None of these things in themselves are bad, but then when it comes to OCD, Things get taken to an extreme and go off the rails. So let’s talk more specifically. What do you do if you’re that person who approaches a Bible study and it just feels like it’s never enough. You feel like you need to be spending more time.

You need to be understanding more. You need to be diving deeper. You don’t feel like God is pleased with you because you’re not reading all the time. To kick OCD in the pants, you’re really going to need to limit yourself, and that may be hard to hear, but if you are reading compulsively, then you are feeding that OCD cycle of, I’m hearing this obsession and then compulsively responding to it with massive amounts of activity.

So it’s going to feel uncomfortable, but you’re going to actually have to dial back your Bible reading and limit yourself to a certain amount of time or a certain amount of chapters, something of that nature, so that you don’t get caught up in doing this spiritual practice compulsively. I wouldn’t say don’t go to an extreme and not do it at all, although I think some people might encourage that for a time period.

I wouldn’t necessarily encourage that because you want to be able to practice your spiritual disciplines in a healthy way, in a way that is typical of other practicing Christians. I would also encourage you to examine the story behind this compulsive Bible reading, because there’s a story there, right, that you’re telling yourself that a lot of times is rooted in performance based theology.

That’s what I’m going to call it, for lack of a better way to call it. It’s not rooted in grace. It’s not rooted in Christ’s work on the cross. It’s rooted in What I’m doing to maintain my relationship with God, and unfortunately, you think it’s more spiritual because you think you’re focusing on God more, but really you’re focusing more on you.

And your own activity. And I know that that’s super hard probably to hear because that’s not where you want to be. And that’s not what you want to be focused on or your heart. But if it’s all about what I’m doing to maintain my relationship with God and not resting and being and trusting and abiding in who God is, then I’ve got things backwards.

Speaking from a place of personal experience of living with performance based theology in my earlier walk with Christ, I did not have obsessions or OCD about it, but I definitely felt like, oh yeah, Jesus saved me, I’m saved by grace, but now that I’m a Christian, it’s my job to jump in here and do all the things that I’m, quote, supposed to do that are the good.

moral right things and spiritual disciplines, whether I feel it or not. And there was so much weight and so much burden. And I never understood that scripture where Jesus said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I was like, I feel so heavy all the time. Like there’s a list of rules. And there’s a checklist, and there’s all these things that I have to do, and I’ve got to get it together, and if I mess up, it’s like, I’m done.

Like, it’s all over, and I’m a horrible person, and I’m worthless. That is not how we are to be living as Christians. Our actions are to be an overflow of the Holy Spirit’s work in our life. Here’s what I have come to learn through study of the Bible and walking with God. Is that if I could not save myself, I certainly cannot sanctify myself, meaning I cannot make myself more like Christ on my own.

Let’s look at Philippians 2, 12 and 13. Paul is saying, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is working in you, both to will and to work according to His good purpose. We have the responsibility to show up and engage with God, but God is doing the work within us. So awesome.

So awesome. We can’t idly sit by and say, Okay, just, like, fill me up with the Holy Spirit. We do have to engage in that process. But if I’m trying to make everything happen, that’s only going to lead to more frustration. So, More disappointment in myself, more feelings of not good enough and worthless. It’s a never ending cycle.

I would love nothing more than to help you get off that hamster wheel. Send me a message through karybach. com and would love to talk with you about what opportunities we have to help you get there. Let’s talk for a moment if you are in the avoidance category. Maybe you would say, I haven’t read my Bible in days, not because I don’t want to, but because OCD really runs rampant and throws a bunch of obsessions on me when I try to engage in scripture reading.

I would really encourage you to re engage in small ways that are going to feel safe for your brain and body. Once you do that, you take the small steps, and you can certainly always add to them a bigger step, right? Sometimes people will say, okay, I am avoiding certain passages that then grows and maybe leads to more and more avoidance.

So you want to find ways to like dip your toe in the water, maybe even just meditating on one or two scriptures where you really feel like the Lord wants you to focus in on. It could be a topic for example, like peace or God being our father. It could be that you meditate on specific verses about God’s love for you.

If that’s something that you’re having trouble connecting with emotionally, maybe you’re struggling with uncertainty and need to meditate on specific scriptures. involving faith or trust. One thing I do know is that God is so gracious and he will meet you where you are at. Be honest with him about what you are thinking and feeling.

Then we have to ask ourselves too if God doesn’t feel safe to sit with in terms of reading, his love letter to you. Where did that come from? Did that come from a church hurt experience? What’s the story? What’s the deeper story behind that? Did that come from a harsh parent and now you’ve projected that onto God?

What’s the story that you’re telling yourself about God? And what’s the story that you’re telling yourself about you in terms of your position into who you are in Christ? So whether you’re doing too much and you’re overdoing your Bible reading or whether you’re avoiding, what I’m learning so much with scrupulosity is you have to be willing to look at your theology.

What are your actual thoughts about God? And then where did those things come from? Are they rooted in foundations of scripture and healthy spiritual practice, or are they coming from a place of woundedness, hurt, or intense fear? You can get caught in a thought loop and thinking the same thing over and over and over.

Or you can take a step back and re evaluate and re examine. One of the things I love about doing ICBT with Christians is that we can look at the reasons for the obsessional doubt. Like, there’s a reason that you are stuck on this particular OCD theme. There’s a reason that you’ve come to the conclusions that you’ve come to.

And sometimes once your eyes are open to that, even though it’s a early stage in the treatment process of building awareness, sometimes people are like, Oh, that’s an OCD reasoning structure. This is OCD getting in the way versus before maybe they just thought, Well, I’m anxious about this situation. It’s like, No, I actually have a doubt that I’m believing and holding on to, and it’s a lie that OCD has told me.

I want you to know that if you are struggling with scrupulosity, that there is hope. Healing is possible, and I’m thankful for each one of you who are tuning in to listen to this. I hope it helps you engage with your Bible reading in a healthier way this week.

140. Help! I Don’t Feel Close to God

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie explores the feelings of spiritual distance and how to navigate those times when you don’t feel close to God.

Episode Highlights:

  • Understanding the connection between OCD and feelings of spiritual distance.
  • Insights from Elijah’s story and how it relates to modern struggles with faith.
  • Practical steps for reconnecting with God during times of doubt and anxiety.
  • Encouragement and biblical wisdom for Christians dealing with OCD and spiritual uncertainty.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD! I’m Carrie Bock, a Christ follower and licensed professional counselor committed to helping Christians struggling with OCD find healing and peace. 

Today, we’re diving into those difficult seasons when you don’t feel close to God—when life feels chaotic, and you’re left questioning His presence in your struggles. Many of us, especially those battling OCD, have been there, wondering if our faith is faltering because we don’t feel that initial “on fire” connection with God anymore.

I discuss how sin can create a sense of distance between us and God—not in our standing with Him, but in our relational closeness. Yet, through confession and repentance, we can restore that intimacy. The story of Elijah, who, after a significant victory, found himself in despair and needed God’s gentle care, serves as a powerful reminder of how God meets us in our lowest moments.

I also share some personal reflections on times when I believed lies during difficult seasons—whether it was thinking my life was over after a divorce or feeling the deep sense of loss after my father’s passing. In each of these moments, God gently reminded me that He sees the bigger picture, even when I can’t. These experiences have taught me that our feelings, no matter how strong, don’t define our faith.

If you’re struggling today, I hope this episode brings you comfort and reminds you that God is with you, even in your confusion and pain. You’re not alone, and your current feelings don’t determine your relationship with God.

 For more resources and to stay connected, visit my website at carriebock.com.

More Episodes to Listen To:

2. Unanswered Prayers for Healing with Pastor Troy Powell

Transcript

What do you do when you don’t feel close to God? Maybe you just feel like you’re praying and your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. We’re going to look at one character from the Bible and try to apply some biblical principles to our own lives when we feel this way.

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.

If you have not checked out our new website, karybach. com, I am so So proud of this thing. It has been such a big process combining my By the Well counseling website and the podcasting website into one after we went through this rebrand from Hope for Anxiety to OCD into Christian Faith and OCD. For those of you who maybe haven’t been around that while or are just now tuning in, that’s where you can find all things about my counseling, the Christian Faith and OCD podcast.

Click on the podcast page for more information. You can also leave comments there and let me know that you’ve been listening and what you think about the show. Any guest suggestions or topics you want me to cover. I love to hear from you guys. One of my favorite things. I’ve definitely had times like this in my life, I don’t know if you’ve had times like this in your life, and if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you probably have.

You probably have said, I’m going through a season and I just don’t feel close to God right now. I don’t know where he is, I don’t know what he’s doing, everything seems chaotic or a mess. Maybe you’re feeling lost, going through a grief and loss process. So if you’re feeling that way right now, I just want you to know you’re not alone.

Anybody that’s been a Christian for a while has probably experienced this. And also sometimes we just feel this in general in our long term relationships, right? OCD is going to use that as evidence, like, oh, well, you’re not a Christian because you don’t feel close to God, or you don’t feel connected to Him, or you don’t feel the same way you did when you became a Christian.

This is something I hear from a lot of Christians who struggle with OCD. Well, I don’t feel as on fire. As I did when I first became a Christian. Well, that’s an emotional high time in your life. Just like when you get married, that’s an emotional high time in your life. You ask anyone who’s been married for five years, do you feel the same exact way that you did on your wedding?

They’re going to tell you, no, I mean, your love grows and it shifts and changes and that’s not always a negative thing. Sometimes that can be a really positive thing. We may not get the butterflies in our stomach over our spouse. But we can be very committed and devoted and caring and show concern for them.

So hopefully that parallel helps give you a little bit more of a glimpse or make sense to you that our feelings can change over time. That doesn’t mean that they’ve gone away or have dulled or that we don’t really love God anymore because we don’t feel the same way that we did before. I’m going to say just a short piece about sin, but this is not the main focus of this particular podcast in general.

We know that sin separates us from God in a relational sense, not in a positional sense. So you can still sin and you’re still going to be God’s child. You’re still going to be in the family. Now, OCD may tell you otherwise, OCD may say, Oh, well, because you messed up over here, God doesn’t love you, you failed, you’re going to hell, that type of scenario.

That’s not the case. What sin does is it does create a level of separation, just like if you hurt someone’s feelings like family member or friend, there’s going to be some relational distance possibly between you and that person until you come back together, reconcile, talk it out, forgiveness, and so forth.

This is how it is in our relationship with God. Sin separates us from Him. Isaiah 59 1 says, Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear, but your iniquities, that’s sin, have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

We also know that 1 John 1, 9 tells us that if we confess our sin, He’s faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So just as sin has that ability to separate us from God in a relational sense, that confession of sin brings us back into right relationship with God.

Today, I want to talk to you more about those times where you’re in the midst of your sanctification process. You’re doing your best to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, as it talks about in Philippians 2. 12. You don’t feel like God is there. Maybe it’s a confusing time in your life, maybe you’ve been going through suffering.

Why is God allowing this situation? You might be really struggling with your OCD right now. Like, why in the world is God allowing me to go through this process right now? Why is he allowing this to torment me? And sometimes in life situations, we understand things better on the other side of the suffering or on the other side of the situation.

But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes there are things that we may never understand until we get to heaven. And that’s okay. We’ve got to live in that wrestling. Paul talks about, we look through the glass dimly, but one day we’re going to see face to face. We’re not going to understand everything from our position here on earth.

But how do we get through these situations where we don’t feel close to God? We don’t know where he is and what he’s doing. We’ve We pray, but it feels empty, or our spiritual practices, we’re just going through the motions. I want to talk to you about Elijah, who’s an Old Testament hero of our faith, and how he made it through a similar situation.

So Elijah was a prophet during a time where Israel had a wicked king and queen. And his story starts out in 1st Kings 17, if you want to look that up later. God calls Elijah to prophesy about a drought that’s going to come on the land. And this really makes Ahab and Jezebel, that wicked king and queen, quite mad.

He ends up having a showdown in 1st Kings 18, amazing chapter. with the prophets of Baal to prove to Israel that God’s real and this false god that you’ve been serving, Baal, he’s fake. He’s not real. God prevails, sends down fire from heaven on the altar, and Elijah goes and slaughters the false prophets.

Jezebel’s not happy about the prophets of Baal being slaughtered, because remember, she’s not following Israel’s god, she’s following these false gods. So she threatens to kill Elijah, and Elijah ends up fleeing for his life. So in 1 Kings 19. 4 it says, But he himself went on a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree.

And he asked that he might die, saying, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my father’s. He was serving God, but he felt like he couldn’t go on, and so if you’ve ever had a time where you felt like you couldn’t make it anymore, I mean we did an episode a while back on suicide, there were people that struggled with this in the Bible, there were people that cursed the day of their birth.

I think Jeremiah did that. I know Job cursed the day of his birth. I mean, look at this. The people in the Bible were just like us. They had struggles. They had human emotions. We need to stop acting like they didn’t have struggles, or they were somehow superhuman people. They were wrestling with some of the same stuff that we’re wrestling with today.

It’s how we handle it and what we do and how we bring it to God. So interestingly, here’s how God handles it. Elijah ate and drank and slept, basically was fed by an angel in the wilderness, which shows us that God cares about our physical needs. And that our physical needs are connected to our emotional experience.

If Elijah was eating, drinking, and sleeping, and he goes through a process in verses five through eight, and this happens about three times, to me that says that there was something in his physical body that was lacking. He needed physical nourishment, he needed water, he needed food, and he needed sleep.

Some of y’all would be feeling a whole lot better if you could just get some sleep. I have been sleep deprived. I know what that feels like. It’s horrible. I know what it feels like not to be able to fall asleep because you got emotional stuff going on. It’s not fun. And I also know that when I’ve been relieved at points, that when I’ve been able to get that sleep, it has impacted my mood profoundly.

So keep that in mind as well. Going down to verses 9 14, God corrects Elijah’s thinking. This is the next piece. So he meets his physical needs, and then he corrects his thinking. And the word of the Lord came to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? He replied, I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty.

The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword, and I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too. Elijah says, I’m the only one left God, I’m the only one here serving you, they’ve killed everybody else, and the people that are still around are the people that are not following you, and they’re killing the people that are trying to follow you.

And interestingly, down in verse 18, God says, Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal, and whose mouths have not kissed him. So God says, Elijah, you’re wrong. You’re stuck on this thought that you were the alone in serving me, that you have worked so hard and you’ve done all the things I’ve asked you to do, and now it’s over.

But Elijah’s mission was not over yet. So my question is, are you thinking something right now that’s not true? Are you stuck in a lie? I wrote down just a few times in my life where I believed a lie. I’m sure there are more than these. But these were times where I was really low and I was convinced during these times that something was true when it wasn’t.

So back in 2015 when I went through a pretty rough divorce, I remember having the thought, My life is over. And I was just so fully convinced of that. I was like, this is it for me, Lord. I now have this scarlet letter on me. Divorce gal in the church. I’m not gonna have children. I’m not gonna be able to get remarried.

Nobody’s gonna want me. I mean, the whole multitude of thoughts that went past just that thought of my life is over were not true. Not one of those things was true, but I was so down and I was discouraged and felt like, Hey, I have tried to do the right thing here. God, I tried to marry somebody in the church.

I’ve tried to serve you. I’ve tried to read my Bible and pray and do the Christian thing. Right. And it just didn’t work out the way that I wanted it to, or the way that I hoped it would. I remember being a single woman for several years and saying, Lord, there are no good Christian men left in this world.

I don’t see them. They’re not on the pews of the church. Nola, we have photos. I should pull one up. Where we had like a row of single women at my church is like, where were the guys? And there were maybe a few, a handful, but it was mostly single women who were there, who were devoted, who were trying to serve God.

And I thought, where are the men? Where are the good Christian men? I don’t see them around. And I think about this time in my life and how I’m telling God, right? God knows the future and he knows his plans for me. And I’m telling him. Lord, you’re not going to be able to find me, a Christian man, I don’t think you can do it.

And there isn’t one around here. And God’s like, hee hee hee hee. I don’t know, God’s just like chuckling over there going, Carrie, you have no idea, I got one saved right up for you. You just don’t know yet. He hasn’t been brought into your life, because it’s not the right season for you. I remember when my dad died just really thinking I am alone in this world.

I’m just alone. I’m an orphan. I have no parents left. Losing my mom was hard for sure, but when I lost my dad six months later, there’s something about losing that second parent that nobody prepared me for this, probably because most of the people I’m around hadn’t lost both parents. When you lose that second parent, you go through this, like, lost moment where you’re like, Who am I?

Like, I know who I am. It’s very strange. I don’t know that I’m doing it justice, but you do feel like an orphan and like, I don’t know, someone pulled up your roots or something and you have to kind of re find them. It’s like, you go through a little bit of an identity crisis, I think, almost. Even if you have a good sense of who you are, it’s just like, Man, I don’t have any parents anymore.

Like, I had parents my whole life and now I don’t have any parents. It was a strange thing. I felt very isolated and alone because even a lot of my grandmother on my mom’s side is still living. Well, I was like, my aunts haven’t even lost both of their parents. I was like, this is a really weird phenomena situation here.

Like, who do I talk to about this? It did feel very isolating alone, but God got me out of that pretty quickly because he brought just supportive people around me to let me know, like, I’m not alone. I don’t have to go through this alone. But I do remember feeling very isolated and alone during that time, even though I was married, even though I was in church community, I was just felt very lost when we’re going through hardships, tragedies, traumas, whatever it is.

We can’t always think clearly. Elijah fled for his life. I’m sure that that was a tough experience to go through. Having this evil, wicked woman who’s in charge of the country tell you, I’m gonna send somebody to kill you. Obviously, that’s scary. He ran from Jezebel. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s saying, I’m the only one left.

And sometimes God needs to come in during these times and correct our thinking. We have to be open though. We have to be willing to say, God, am I believing a lie right now? Can you show me in my life what I am believing and let me know, is that the truth about my situation or do you have something that you want to speak into this situation that is the truth?

Sometimes, we can’t sense God or know what he’s up to because he’s not where we think he is. I’m going to show you. In 1 Kings 19. 11, the Lord said, Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. This is after Elijah stated his complaint initially. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of a cave. God is not always where we think he is.

We want to look for God in the big moments of life. Sometimes people will even say, I want to see a big move of God, but you don’t realize all the small little pieces, the tiny interactions. If you are having an interaction with another human being, that can be incredibly powerful. You don’t know if you’re the only person that is going to smile at that person today, or maybe they’re in a difficult customer service role and you have a way to just bless them or speak kindness to them.

You might be the only one that handles it that way. You don’t know. And we can’t miss these opportunities that God gives us, but also in the hard times when you’re in the valley, look for the flowers because there are usually some type of small bright spots that God gives you. I’ll give you a little bit of example.

I don’t know if I’ve shared this before, but It was during that single season where I was struggling, I was having a hard time because of just the lack of touch in my life, for lack of a better way to say it, but I think physical touch is just an important human need that people have, and when you don’t have a built in husband at home, it’s hard to get those needs met, right?

So I was just talking to my friends about buying this. Pillow. It was almost like a pregnancy pillow that like wraps all the way around you or something. I was like, maybe I should buy this pillow. Maybe that will help me. And was just talking about some discouragement over still being single and not being able to find anybody.

They were like, yeah, maybe you should get pillow, whatever. You got to figure out ways to get your needs met in a healthy way, right? And I went into the grocery store. This is going to sound so weird, but I’m going to say it anyway, because somebody is here. So I went in the grocery store and there were like the first pomegranates of the season, and I was like, Oh, this is just so great because pomegranates have just a short season that you can get them in the winter, and it’s like they’re really good.

And I love pomegranates. It’s hard to find a good one sometimes, but I was just so happy, like, that I had found these pomegranates, and it was this little flower in the midst of my desert, or like, a flower in the midst of the valley. It was something beautiful, and I was just like, thank you, God. Thank you, God, the pomegranates are back.

It just kind of made my day in such a small way, and it was just this glimmer of God’s love for me and God’s grace. So I would encourage you to look for God in the small pieces. If you can’t see him in the big puzzle pieces of your life, know he’s working behind the scenes. But look for him in the small, good pieces.

There was a period of time where I wrote down one good thing about my day. And let me tell you, if you practice that exercise, it’s not always an easy one. Like some days, it’s easy. Oh, wow, this thing happened, it was so great. There’s other days that are rough, and you have to really search, like you have to really put your magnifying glasses on to find something good about the day.

But if you’ll do that, what it does is it creates more thankfulness in your life, but it does, it causes you to start to look for those small things. That are God’s goodness all around you that oftentimes we don’t recognize. That’s another exercise for you that you can do if you think it might help you.

One good thing about your day, jot it on the calendar somewhere, or one area that you saw God that day. Back to the story of Elisha in verses 15 through 17, God gives Elijah directions and next steps about where to go. So if you’re feeling a little lost, maybe you’re praying about wisdom, about a decision, you don’t feel like God is pulling you one way or the other, just know that God will give you directions and next steps about what to do.

And in that way, God was saying, once again, your life’s not over. I’m not done with you. Keep moving forward. So, what do we learn from this? What do you do if you don’t feel God in your life? Is there a blatant sin? This episode is not mainly on sin, but what if there is? I’m not talking about OCD telling you that you didn’t confess that you stole your third grade teacher’s pen.

Okay? That’s not what I’m talking about. Are you living in a pattern of sin where, that you have not repented from, that you are not working on getting right? Get that right first. See if there are any physical needs you need to pay attention to, like sleep or eating or exercise. Diet. Continue to spend time with God.

Look for God in the places where you might least expect Him. Talk to Him about how you feel. Be submissive to God in correcting your thinking. Sometimes when we’re going through hard things, we’re just not thinking clearly. You may need to go to counseling to bounce some ideas about what’s going on in your head with somebody else.

Or you may say, I know I’m not thinking right about this, but I don’t know how to shift it. It’s okay to get help for that. Reflect on the past things that God has done for you. So important. Just remember, remember, remember areas where you’ve seen God show up for you. If He’s shown up for you in the past, He’s going to show up for you again.

He’s going to do that again. And keep moving until God steers you in a different direction. Elijah had done the specific things God called him to do, but he didn’t know quite yet what his next direction was. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode?

If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. Thank you. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and 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.

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

139. Is There a Test for OCD?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

Carrie explores whether there’s a test for OCD and delves into the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) Version 2 in this insightful episode.

Episode Highlights:

How OCD assessments can help differentiate between OCD symptoms and other mental health or spiritual issues.

What to expect from the Y-BOCS assessment

The benefits of using assessments like the Y-BOCS 2 to guide treatment decisions

The importance of getting a formal OCD diagnosis from a trained professional.

Episode Summary:

Hi, I’m Carrie Bock, your host of Christian Faith and OCD. Today, we’re diving into an important topic: the YBOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale) and its role in OCD assessment.

In this episode, I’ll explain how the YBOCS 2, an essential tool in OCD treatment, helps identify and measure obsessions and compulsions. This assessment, which you can complete on your own, provides insight into the severity of your symptoms and guides our therapeutic approach. I’ll share how it’s used at different stages of treatment and why it’s crucial for understanding and managing OCD effectively.

Understanding your OCD through assessments like the YBOCS can clarify your symptoms and improve your treatment plan. It’s not about labeling but about gaining insight into your struggles and finding the best path to healing. If you’re interested in learning more about my services or scheduling an intensive therapeutic retreat, visit carriebock.com.

You can learn more about my services here.

Related Resources:

YBOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale)

More Episodes to Listen To:

118. How Do I know if this Thought is an OCD Obsession? with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

Episode 139. Is there a test for OCD? Hang on, you’re about to find out.

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 in to today’s episode.

We have our first Zoom hangout coming up next week. This is where we let individuals on our email list submit questions for me to do a q and a chat with you once a month. We’d love to have you join us, and there’s still just a little bit of time to hop in on that to be in the know and become an insider.

Join our email list@carriebach.com. I wanted to talk with you today about an important OCD assessment called the YBOX 2. This stands for Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale. It’s in its second version. We’ll put a link in the show notes for you if you’d like to take it. It can be completely done on your own.

The first section talks with you about obsessions that you may be having and you can answer yes or no depending on your experiences with those. I like it because each one has a little bit of an example with it too that helps. There are questions right after that ask you to rate on a zero to five scale how severe these obsessions are bothering you.

Then the next part of the assessment has to do with compulsions. And once again, there’s a zero to five scale on how badly they’re bothering you or impacting your life. This assessment is scored from 0 to 50, and a lot of times we find it helpful in the counseling process. Usually I’ll give people the Y box at the beginning of treatment.

We can also look at it maybe in the middle to see if what we’re doing is working or see if we need to switch course at all. And then it’s a nice follow up at the end. I don’t usually necessarily give it to people at the end, but if they wanted to see how their scores decreased or were impacted over time, that would be a good objective measurement for you as you’re going through your process.

It’s interesting to me how many people I’ve talked to that have received OCD treatment before, yet never been assessed with an assessment like this, or maybe they did and don’t remember. When we know how much OCD is impacting someone, we can make guidance and recommendations regarding next steps for courses of treatment.

It may be an objective way of saying, hey, this is really impacting you. Have you thought about getting on medication? If the score is very high, it may be a conversation surrounding intensive outpatient therapy or if the person’s just really not functioning well in their environment, they may need some type of residential program until they can get to treatment.

a place where they can function well enough to be at home or to be back in outpatient treatment. Obviously, we want people to receive the best care as possible, so they’re getting everything they need, while at the same time balancing that we don’t want someone to be in what we’d call a higher level of care, like intensive outpatient, if they don’t need to be.

If they can manage their symptoms at home with medication and outpatient therapy, that’s the ideal, right? One thing I hear from people after they take the Y Box, clients that have come in, will usually tell me, wow, after taking that and seeing all the different examples of obsessions and compulsions, I didn’t realize how many of these things were OCD.

I had chalked some of them up to maybe anxiety. So even just taking the assessment provides a greater level of awareness sometimes for people. I find the majority of people with OCD who are coming into therapy are what I call self diagnosed. They found something like this podcast or they found blog articles or talked with other people maybe that have had OCD who guided them down a pathway of receiving information.

I think all of that is very helpful and beautiful because People didn’t have that type of information at their fingertips regarding mental health 20 years ago, probably not even 15 years ago, the same amount of information that’s out there now. It’s not uncommon for people to seek therapy and tell me, I think I have OCD.

But I’ve never been formally diagnosed by a counselor or by a psychiatrist. Having this objective measure of the why box gives us a glimpse inside of what people are thinking and feeling without them having to necessarily name every single obsession they’re having. That’s another thing that I like about it.

It’s a lot easier for someone to click, yes, I’m having harm obsessions. then to verbalize those things to a therapist, that can be really difficult for people to express. If you have a child that might have OCD, there is also a child version of the Y Box, and the questions are better worded and suited for children.

Other assessments that I am not as familiar with are the Dimensional Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale and the National Institute of Mental Health Global Obsessive Compulsive Scale. So you may be asking yourself, why does it even matter if I have a diagnosis or not? What’s the benefit of having a diagnosis?

I OCD I really struggle with this concept of do I have this OCD diagnosis or am I making excuses for poor behaviors, whatever they determine the poor behaviors to be? Am I saying it’s OCD when it’s really a spiritual, moral issue? Am I saying it’s OCD when really I’m just being reckless, careless, or negligent in some way?

Is it OCD or relationship problems? This is exactly the benefit of a diagnosis. If you sit down, talk with a professional who’s trained in OCD, take some of these assessments, explain to them your symptoms. We don’t just base diagnosing on an assessment, obviously. Obviously, we’re going to talk with you and find out what your experience is like.

Take those two pieces into consideration before making a diagnosis. It’s not about just giving someone a label. It’s about helping you understand and explain your symptoms, helping you know why your brain works the way it does, how it’s getting stuck on certain things, what you’re engaging in to try to relieve that anxiety.

So oftentimes these assessment tools are really the first step in treatment to say, okay, here’s where we are and where can we go from here? It’s very similar. If you went to the doctor and got some blood work done and they said, hey, your A1C is high. Let’s try these lifestyle changes or let’s try this medication, whatever you’re going to throw at that first that you and your doctor determine, and then you’ll go back for blood work in a prescribed amount of time to check your A1C to see if it’s gone down.

It’s the same thing that we’re doing in a psychological sense of, okay, where are you at right now? What’s the best method of treatment for you considering your symptoms? And then we’ll reassess. We can always circle back around and say, Hey, is what we’re doing working? Is this medication that you’re on working?

Is the therapy component, are you really able to utilize the skills that you’re learning? Is that working? Do we need to try something different? Do we need to look at a different kind of care for you? I would encourage you not to see assessment or a diagnosis as a bad thing. It can be a really good thing and a good first step in your journey towards a healthier you.

If you’d like to see what services I provide, you can always go to karybach. com. I would love, love, love to book some intensives this fall, so if you are ready to dive into the deep end of the pool, work through some OCD, tackle some trauma, if that’s part of your story, then I’d love for you to schedule a consultation and we’ll talk about how an intensive therapeutic retreat may or may not be right for you.

We also have a previous episode on this. If you want to go back and listen to it. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and 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.

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

138. The Connection Between Trauma and OCD

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

Carrie delves into the profound connection between trauma and OCD. Drawing from her experience as a licensed professional counselor, she discusses how childhood trauma and family-of-origin issues often overlap with OCD symptoms.

Episode Highlights

  • How childhood experiences can impact mental health and contribute to OCD.
  • The surprising statistic that many individuals with OCD also meet the criteria for PTSD.
  • How trauma affects the nervous system and manifests in physical symptoms.
  • The role of healing trauma in improving OCD symptoms.

Episode Summary

Welcome to episode 138 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host, and today we’re delving into the connection between trauma and OCD.

Many people I see in counseling have been impacted by childhood experiences or trauma but might not meet full PTSD criteria. In fact, statistics show that about 25% of those with OCD also meet criteria for PTSD. Given this, it’s surprising that trauma often isn’t considered in OCD treatment. If we include those affected by trauma but not meeting PTSD criteria, that percentage might exceed half of the OCD population.

Trauma, as defined by the American Psychological Association, includes disturbing experiences that result in significant fear, helplessness, or other disruptive feelings that have long-lasting negative effects. This can overlap with what people with OCD experience, such as intense fear and behavioral impacts.

Often, clients describe early OCD symptoms as traumatic due to a lack of understanding and stigmatization, especially if their family didn’t recognize or know how to address it. This can create a sense of shame and confusion.

Today’s episode explores how trauma influences OCD symptoms and offers practical strategies for addressing both conditions. I also discuss how faith can play a vital role in the healing process, providing a holistic approach to overcoming these challenges.

You’re not alone in this journey. There is hope and healing available, and I’m here to support you every step of the way.

Explore Related Episode:

107. Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) with Diana Rice, LMHC, CIMHP, CTP, QS

Transcript

Welcome to episode 138. Many people that I see in counseling, they’ve been impacted by their childhood, or they’ve been impacted by trauma, but they wouldn’t necessarily meet criteria for a full blown PTSD diagnosis. Not only do we have one fourth of the people, if we were to add in people that were affected by trauma, I would imagine we’re probably over half of that OCD population.

We should be talking about this. We should be taking it into consideration in terms of treatment. 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. We are going to have our first podcast hangout via zoom. on September the 9th at 7 15 p. m central standard time. This is just an opportunity for me to meet you, the listeners, to hear what’s on your heart, maybe answer a few questions that you have in the time that we have.

So if you’d like to get involved in that or receive the zoom link, definitely subscribe to our email list and we will put that link in the show notes for you. Our email subscribers are insiders. They know things first before anyone else, before you hear it on the podcast. So if you want to be one of our email insiders, definitely sign up for our list and we would love to have you.

Today we’re talking about trauma, the connection between trauma and OCD. I know it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot and some people will say things like, My childhood wasn’t really that bad. I don’t know if I necessarily have trauma. I wasn’t getting beat in my household. or I didn’t grow up with a parent that was a raging alcoholic, we didn’t have massive things happening, we were just your normal average everyday family.

We weren’t living in extreme neglect or poverty. However, a lot of times you can grow up in an environment that impacts you profoundly and impacts your relationships profoundly in a way that you have to process through as an adult in order to move. Beyond how you were raised. This is especially true if you feel like you are repeating the same exact patterns that you saw in your family that you don’t want to carry into your family right now.

So we would call those types of things family of origin issues, things that you saw growing up or experienced growing up in your family, but you don’t want to repeat that pattern or pass those same things on to your children. The main reason I wanted to do this episode on the connection between trauma and OCD is the statistics that I heard recently that 25 percent of people who meet criteria for an OCD diagnosis also meet criteria for a PTSD diagnosis.

Now I was surprised and not surprised by this at the same time. If you’ve been around here and you’ve been listening for a little while, one of the overlaps that I see quite frequently is a history of childhood trauma and an OCD diagnosis. So I wasn’t surprised, but I was surprised at the same time in the sense that oftentimes when people are talking about OCD treatment, They don’t ever talk about trauma and we’re talking about one quarter of the people meet a PTSD diagnosis.

It’s not easy to get a PTSD diagnosis. There’s very specific criteria. Many people that I see in counseling, they’ve been impacted by their childhood or they’ve been impacted by trauma. But they wouldn’t necessarily meet criteria for a full blown PTSD diagnosis. Not only do we have one fourth of the people, if we were to add in people that were affected by trauma, I would imagine we’re probably over half of that OCD population.

We should be talking about this. We should be taking it into consideration in terms of treatment. Let’s start by defining trauma. I like this definition from the American Psychological Association. They said trauma is any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, that’s where you’re disconnected from your present moment experience, confusion.

or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long lasting negative effect on a person’s attitude, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. They often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place. When we look at this definition, I see a lot of overlaps between the definition of trauma and what people with OCD experience.

Looking at disturbing experiences, having OCD, Is that traumatic? That’s a very interesting question. It’s very disturbing to have these thoughts. There is significant fear, that was in the definition. Feelings of helplessness, for sure. Intense emotions that have an effect on someone’s behavior. Obviously, OCD is a behavioral disorder.

And they often challenge the individual’s view of the world. Certainly, The individual’s view of the world is affected by OCD. I never necessarily, early on, thought of OCD as traumatic until I started to hear more and more stories of my clients explaining to me what it was like when they first had an onset of symptoms.

This usually happens in childhood, Or adolescence for most people and they discussed with me trying to having this intense fear inside, trying to communicate that to parents who weren’t aware that this is what their child was experiencing. Maybe they were in a system where their parents didn’t have OCD and so they didn’t really understand or know what to look for.

Then this process of getting help, sometimes that felt very stigmatizing to them, or they were looking at their life, recognizing, I’m erasing my paper so hard I’m burning holes in it, but none of the other kids around me are doing that. I’m spending two hours studying for a math test, but nobody else is doing that.

Or, my family is able to go into a public restroom, but I feel like I can’t. All these little pieces cause a shame to build up and oftentimes they didn’t really understand. What they were experiencing and so we’re able in the process of going through like some EMDR or trauma therapy to go back to those places where those experiences first started to happen and Unravel and provide this level of adult care and compassion to their younger self of hey You didn’t know that this was going on back then but now we know And if we could just even paint this like perfect scenario of healing what would have been what you absolutely needed in that point was somebody to come and tell you, Hey, this has a name.

You’re not crazy. It’s called OCD. Let’s get you some help. Let’s figure out how to manage this. Fortunately, we’ve come so far now that people are starting to get diagnosed earlier than they used to, but for many people listening to this, you may have lived with OCD for years without even knowing it.

Another thing that I would point out that I’m seeing in a lot of clients I work with, as a family of origin issue, as a trauma issue, But probably is not going to meet full criteria for PTSD would be a rigid family systems that people grow up in. Let me give you some different examples of this. A lot of times what I see is there’s a rigid religious rules, maybe even just the structure of the household of we go to church every single Sunday, every single Wednesday.

Doesn’t matter if you feel up to it or not. Doesn’t matter what else is going on in our household. Could be there is only one right way to do things. And if you don’t do it that way, you’re made to feel bad or feel a sense of shame. If you know that dad is coming home and you’re anxious every day because dad’s going to find that one spot in the house that’s not clean or that one thing in the house that’s not put away, the one surface that isn’t wiped down properly, that’s obviously going to put you in a state of high alert.

A state of watching for potential danger if mom goes off because she felt like you didn’t clean the dishes exactly the way they were supposed to be cleaned or you didn’t follow an OCD ritual, you didn’t come in and take a shower right after school. That’s very stressful to a child to experience those types of things over and over again.

It has a cumulative effect on your nervous system versus a one time, very scary, very intense, I almost died type of trauma. There’s also this sense of developmental trauma, and we do not have a diagnosis for this in the DSM, but we absolutely should. That is another tangent. I won’t fully go down. There is a difference.

When something happens to you, when your brain is fully developed, Versus something that happens to you in the process of your brain developing. You’re going through trying to figure out who you are, who the world is, whether or not the world is a safe place. The people closest to you that are supposed to be providing safety and connection and support you may feel like I never can be good enough for these people or I have to be perfect in order for my parents to love me because they have such high standards or such unrealistic standards.

It could look like a situation where your parents demand that you bring home straight A’s, and if you get a B plus, they shame you for it and say, why were you so stupid? Why didn’t you study more? It’s really important in the process and development of children for them to feel competent, for them to feel like they can do something and do it well.

Part of kids learning to feel competent is allowing them to take healthy risk and make mistakes. The very beginning of that is when your kids are really young, obviously you’re not letting them run out into traffic or jump off, you know, a bookshelf in your house. Those things would be very unsafe. But you’re letting them make small choices to have a sense of agency.

And you’re the parent, you’re creating those choices. So for a toddler, for example, or a preschooler, you’re saying, would you like the blue cup or the red cup? And this gives the child a sense of like, oh, I get to choose. I get to make a decision. That’s the very beginning of teaching your children about decision making.

And then as they get older, And they talk about situations that are happening at school instead of just jumping in and saying, Hey, do this. Don’t do that. You know, that’s right. This is absolutely wrong. You can say, okay, let’s look at maybe the different options for how you could handle this situation and allowing them to evaluate the choices saying, okay, well, you could yell at your teacher, but what do you think will happen if you do that?

Okay, like, you’re probably gonna get in trouble, so do you think that that’s the best choice? Or as you’re guiding younger children, and they’re acting out in some way, or pouting, or stomping, or whining, you might prompt them, hey, can you say that a little bit of a different way? Or let’s try that again one more time.

You might say something like, is there another way for you to ask that to get what you need? But in very rigid systems, these types of conversations don’t happen, and as a result, kids don’t feel competent to choose. They don’t feel competent in making decisions. Because there’s been no guidance, literally all the decisions are made for them.

I’m going to tell you that to wear this shirt on this day, and there’s no options. Or, you know, absolutely not. You cannot hang out with that friend. You can hang out with that friend, but they need to come to our house because it seems like maybe their house isn’t the best environment for you to be in.

Conflict resolution is modeled in healthy family systems where we can have conflict but still know that we love each other or we can have differences of opinions and still be in the same family and still love each other. If you have an enmeshed family, you don’t have that freedom to make your own decisions or make your own choices and know that that’s going to be okay.

What does this lead to in adulthood? It can lead to overdependence on others. It can lead to massive amounts of reassurance seeking because I haven’t ever felt competent in being okay with what I’m doing or knowing that I can do something. I will talk with clients sometimes about how They may be going through what I’d call a delayed adolescent period.

A healthy adolescent period is where you are given some boundaries, structures, rules, but then you’re also allowed the freedom and you go out into the world. And yes, you have the freedom to make some mistakes. You know, we hand teenagers the keys to cars knowing that it’s quite possible they might get in an accident.

But before we let them do that on their own, we’re in the car with them, we’re showing them how to drive, we’re teaching them, we’re training them. But we also know that when we give them those car keys and give them the freedom, they may get in an accident. For some families, that’s just the It’s too much, you know, and they can’t handle it or makes them too anxious.

So then the kid is restricted from having that freedom because we’re so afraid that the bad thing is going to happen. And the idea here is not just in the driving accident sense. is that while you’re in the safety of your family system, you can go out into the world, you can make mistakes, but you can come back and process it.

You can say, Hey, I did this in a friendship situation. It didn’t go so well. How should I have handled it? Or what do you think? Or I have this paper due on Friday. I don’t know how I can break down my studying to make sure that I get my studies done and my paper done by this Friday. Like, you have this healthy accountability and guidance system while also looking at all of your options.

One of the trainings I received in working with teenagers is we would have the kids make a list of all the potential solutions to their problem. Knowing that as an adult, we just throw some of those out, right? Like, oh, that’s a really bad idea. It doesn’t matter. The idea was to get them to think through healthy problem solving.

Just put all of the options on the table and then we can go through each one to get them to think through. Okay, so if you did do that, what do you think the consequences would be? Would you have a positive outcome? Would you have a negative outcome? This keeps people, teenagers, from being impulsive and allows them to to think through their choices in a more logical, reasonable fashion, not based on emotion or just what they want to do right in that moment, getting them to think a little bit longer term.

What I’m finding is that many individuals who are dealing with OCD now were never taught how to make decisions as a child and adolescent. And know that if that’s your case, that’s okay. You can learn those skills in adulthood. It’s just a delay because it’s something that you should have been gradually eased into as a child and adolescence.

Our daughter likes feeding the cats sometimes. So she knows how to get the scoop and scoop the cat food and put it in the bowl and say, Hey, good job. That’s awesome. You scoop the cat food. If there’s a crumble or two that falls out, not a big deal. Who cares? I’m not gonna say, oh, you didn’t do that. Go back and do it again.

But if you’re in a very rigid household system, those types of things happen. It’s either the standard’s perfection or you’re nothing. And that can keep you on this performance, people pleasing hamster wheel where you’re just going around and around again. Trying to make someone proud of you. I was in this training eons ago, this was so profound to me, and one of the things they asked us to do, it was a little weird, to be honest with you, because I think it was some type of ministry development training, I can’t even remember.

But, we had split the table in half, and half of us were walking around the table to the people that were sitting down, and we were supposed to whisper stuff in their ear that we wish we had heard more of as a child. Like I said, this was a very strange activity, never seen it repeated. However, I’ll tell you the two things that people repeated most often.

One was, I love you, and another one was, I’m proud of you. So if you have kids, that’s your cue. Go find some way to tell them today that you love them and that you’re proud of them. Because those are just so important for us to hear. And when you’re trying to please your parents, it’s not just a matter of, Yes, I want them to approve of me.

Yes, I want them to love me. When you’re a child, you are dependent on these individuals for survival. You can’t just check out and say, Hey, I’m going to go live with the neighbor down the street because their parents are nicer. Or, I think I’ll get a hotel tonight because all y’all are doing is screaming at each other.

That’s another situation that can cause this being on the edge of your seat, feeling like you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop. In trauma therapy, we call that hypervigilance. If you feel like you’re in that fight, flight, or freeze mode all the time, there’s some trauma work to be done. I don’t care what you call it.

It’s not healthy for your nervous system. It can cause all kinds of problems to you digestively. Because your digestive system shuts down when you’re in that survival state, you’ll have issues, irritable bowel, constipation. You can have autoimmune deficiencies from complex trauma, fibromyalgia. I’ve had people come in and do EMDR surrounding chronic pain, constant headaches, things like that, really have been able to get some relief.

Because we can help them get out of that fight or flight state. Let’s say you’ve had some trauma from your childhood. Then we throw in OCD on top of that, which is already, can be traumatic in its own way. Now OCD is using the trauma and past painful experiences or memories as reasons for possibility. Oh, see, because this happened to you over here, that means that it’s gonna happen again automatically.

We really have to do some work to tease these things out as we’re going through this process of being trauma sensitive in terms of OCD therapy. And it depends on the situation. There are times where we really focus on the trauma first, and then after we clear through a lot of the trauma, we’re talking about, like, severe, ongoing issues, then we’ll see, okay, what remains of the OCD?

And a lot of times, Whatever’s left over is a lot easier to manage or to treat once the trauma response is reduced. In other situations, someone may say, No, like trauma’s not really on my radar. All I can see right now is the OCD. That’s all I can focus on, all I can think about. I really need some help with this.

Okay, so as we start to work through modules of ICBT, And we get to like reasons for obsessional doubt and we get to the obsessional story, then we’re starting to see family of origin issues or things be untangled. Oh, you were told this as a child and that really got stuck, like OCD latched onto that.

And then seared that into your brain as a truth. Is that really the truth? What you’re believing? And it could be something about God. It could be something about yourself. But being able to work through and dismantle some of these beliefs, look at, is there an alternative story that I can tell myself about the situation?

I’m telling myself that. I have to perform for God or otherwise he’s not going to love and accept me because that was my experience growing up with my family. Is that the character of God that I know to be true in the scripture? We have such a hard time with this because our earthly father sets that tone for how we view our heavenly father, positive or negative.

I’ll tell you, it was a long time and process and healing that the Lord brought me through. Before I could even say, Dear Heavenly Father, that was tough for me for a long time. Not because my father was not loving, but because there wasn’t a lot of emotional vulnerability and connectivity. I carried that into my prayer life and had a hard time really connecting emotionally and authentically with God until he healed me from some things that I experienced.

So if you’re on that same journey or process, I just want to let you know that I’ve been there. It takes time. It does take a process with you and God and healing emotionally and spiritually, but you can get there. If this episode has resonated with you and you’d say, Yes, I have experienced trauma. I have experienced OCD.

Then what I want to encourage you to do is to make sure that you’re getting trauma informed OCD treatment. That may look a lot of different ways, but making sure that whoever you’re seeing is taking that into account and is able to treat both of those issues effectively and interweave what needs to happen.

I know I have many people who contact me from out of state that have a hard time finding a good fit of a Christian. OCD therapist in their area. And I just want to open it up and let you know that I do quite a bit of EMDR intensive therapy. I have done some multi day intensives with individuals who are out of state or out of this local area who were able to get to a deeper level of healing with EMDR.

We can certainly incorporate EMDR ICBT, parts work. Whatever it is that you’re needing, we can incorporate those things and customize a treatment plan to help you achieve your goals. If you’re interested in that opportunity, please go on the website and contact me, I’d love to hear from you. I want you to know that there is life on the other side of what you are wrestling with right now, so hang in there and don’t give up.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show.

Christian Faith and 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.

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

137. This One Thing Will Make OCD Worse Every Time

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie dives into a crucial yet often overlooked factor that can make OCD symptoms flare up. Discover how to recognize and address this challenge to better manage your OCD.

Episode Highlights:

  • What often makes OCD symptoms worse.
  • How to recognize this hidden trigger in your life 
  • Practical tips for managing this issue effectively.
  • Strategies for finding the right support and resources.

Episode Summary:

Today, we’re diving into a critical issue that exacerbates OCD every single time—stress. It’s something we need to recognize and learn to manage with self-compassion.

Why Stress Amplifies OCD

Stress is the one thing that will make your OCD worse every time. Whether it’s a positive stress like a job promotion or a negative one like a health issue, stress triggers OCD symptoms to morph and intensify. It’s crucial to recognize this connection and learn to mitigate stress to prevent OCD from taking over.

5 Tips to Mitigate Stress and Manage OCD

  1. Recognize and Be Compassionate: Understand what you’re going through and be kind to yourself. It’s okay if you’re not coping perfectly—God’s grace is sufficient, and acknowledging your struggles is the first step to healing.
  2. Exercise Regularly: Even if it’s just a 20-minute walk, moving your body can significantly reduce stress and improve your mood. Exercise has been shown to be as effective as antidepressants in many cases.
  3. Focus on What You Can Control: Accept that you can’t control everything, especially other people’s actions. Learn to let go and trust in God’s plan, knowing that you’re doing your best.
  4. Learn to Say No: It’s okay to decline opportunities that aren’t right for you in this season. Saying no to some things means saying yes to your well-being and to what truly matters.
  5. Ask for Help: Don’t hesitate to reach out to others when you’re struggling. Sharing your burdens allows others to support you in meaningful ways.

Stress can be overwhelming, but by applying these tips, you can take control and manage your OCD more effectively. Remember, you’re not alone in this journey—God is with you, and there’s hope for a more peaceful, abundant life.

Tune in for more:

123. Three Reasons You Don’t Prioritize Self-Care with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcripts

Episode 137. There’s something that I have seen that makes OCD worse every single time. We need to be aware of it. We need to be on the lookout so that we can be self compassionate and also know how do we deal with it? How do we mitigate it? We’re gonna talk about that today.

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.

Our new website is up and running. I want you to check out all of my offerings, therapy offerings, as well as what we have going on with the podcast at karybach. com. If you really want to stay in touch with what’s going on definitely get on our email list so that you can be the first to be notified about certain things.

I’m going to be seeking to just kind of hang out with you guys once a month on Zoom. So once I have all of that squared away and scheduled we will be letting you know about it on via email. What’s the one thing that will make your OCD worse every single time? That is stress. Okay, when your stress goes up, your symptoms are going to go up.

Doesn’t matter what kind of mental health condition you have, this is the case, but it’s especially true with OCD. Part of the reason that is because OCD does this thing where it likes to morph. It likes to shift and change themes on you. You’re plugging along and you think, ah, things are going okay. And then some stressful life event happens, and OCD is like, Oh, hey, let me hop on that bandwagon and now throw in some other theme for you to be dealing with.

When we talk about stress, there are some things in our life that are considered, quote, positive stress. These are the type of things that we want to happen, okay? You get a job promotion, you move into a new house. Steve and I moved this year. Incredibly stressful. Like we did everything possible to make it as least stressful as possible.

It was still stressful. Like we took our time. We really, you know, had a long process of packing things up. We labeled, we did easy meals during the process. There was just so much, and it was still incredibly stressful. Getting married. It’s a joyous time. I mean, Getting married is a good thing, but it can be very stressful.

There’s a lot of logistics you’re trying to figure out and put in a row. Having a baby, you’re not sleeping as well, you’re eating maybe thrown a little off. All of these different things that are positive, even your kids sports schedules. If you have a kid that, you know, it’s really a high sports season for them, and you’re gone 2, nights a week, it What I’ve learned from parents is if you have one kid in sports, you’re probably gone about two to three times a week.

You have two kids in sports, you’re gone every night of the week. It’s just like hanging up, you know, sometimes Monday through Saturday is toast. These are things that you’re wanting to do, let’s say, and wanting to be involved in. So it’s positive stress, but we’ve still got to learn how to take care of ourselves, and how to factor in how to manage that stress, or reduce it as much as possible.

How can we mitigate it? And then you’ve got those positive stress things, but you then Negative stress happens to all of us at one point or another. You’ve got illness, whether it’s, you know, I’m sick right now getting over an illness that I got from my daughter that has kind of put me out of commission a lot this week.

It could be a chronic health issue that you’ve been dealing with. You can’t seem to get rid of it. You keep going to the doctor, this doctor and that doctor. And you may have that, or you may have a family member who’s dealing with health issues that you’re caregiving for. Caregiving can be a lot. You may experience something happenings at work.

You either lose your job, like unexpected layoff, write up, maybe your boss is just out to get you, doesn’t like you, or is trying to micromanage you in some way. Job stress is the real deal. I worked in a toxic work environment in the past. I know what that experience is like. I know what it’s like to be afraid of getting fired.

To the point where I threw up one night over it. And then I finally just said, I cannot let this affect me this way. And had to get to the point where I said, God is in control and if they fire me, they fire me. I can only do so much. I have done all that it is that I can do to please these people. And that is all I can do.

It’s not worth your health. Take it from me. If you have conflict in any of your close relationships, especially intimate relationship, like with a spouse, that can be highly stressful. If one person has their foot out the door, maybe you’re the person that has your foot out the door, that’s stressful, okay?

If you’re going through a situation in hard economic times, You don’t know how you’re going to put food on the table, clothing for your, you or your kids, housing. You can’t find the housing in your price range that you need. That’s, you know, a huge issue in today’s society. If you have a death of a loved one and you’re going through a grief and loss process, all of these things.

It can be stressful and take a toll on you. So I have come up with five tips that I want to give you today to mitigate stress. If you say, yes, I raised my hand on several of those different things, I mean, I can tell you in my own life, as far as getting married. Having a baby, having a family member with a chronic health issue, and going through grief and loss.

I went through all of those things in probably a three year period. It was a lot, okay? And so when you have multiple of these things going on and it’s compounded, here’s some ways that you can mitigate stress. Number one, recognize what you’re going through, how stressful it is, and go easy on yourself, okay?

Open yourself up to a sense of compassion. You’re not perfect, you’re not gonna be perfect, and I would say even you’re not gonna cope you. perfectly. Like, what does that mean? You’re not going to cope at 100 percent capacity. Maybe you feel like, Oh, I was doing so well at managing my day to day stress. I had a workout routine or I was putting healthy foods in my body.

I was meal planning and you were on a really good flow and you got thrown off by one of these unexpected health things that came up. You know, maybe you got sick. Maybe you had a job stress and all of a sudden they were wanting you to work 45 hours a week and you got thrown off your course. Be compassionate towards yourself.

I think sometimes when we sit down and we recognize, wow, I’ve got a lot going on. And this is something that I have to do for people. in therapy sometimes, just give them a reality check. Like you do realize what you’re telling me, right? Like you’ve been through some stuff and you’re here and you’re putting one foot in front of the other.

That says something, you know, sometimes you hear people that have been through a lot of trauma and I’m like, how did you make it to this point without dying? I don’t even know how you’re here. So just recognizing that God gives us this sense of, Resilience, and it’s by his grace and mercy that we have even made it as far as we have in this life.

I do not know how I would still be standing if it were not for the Lord. Just recognizing, like, it’s okay. That I’m not coping at 100 percent capacity. It’s okay that I have relapsed a little bit with my OCD and I’ve gotten sucked into some rituals and some routines that I normally would have said no to, but I’m going through this stress and it’s kicked up into high gear.

Just being compassionate with yourself. Tip number two is to exercise. I know that this can be hard sometimes because you’re thinking I’ve got so much going on I don’t have time to exercise. Find that 20 minutes to take a walk outside. Do a little bit of walking on your lunch break. Do a few squats when you first get up in the morning or some planks.

Do something, move your body, stretch before you go to bed. Just do something that’s really going to help your mind and your body. I’ve talked about this before, antidepressants and exercise have gone like head to head with each other in psychological studies. Whether the people were taking medication or not, the people that exercised always fared really well as far as their mood goes.

So exercise is really good for your mind and for reducing the level of stress and anxiety that we hold in our body. Tip number three for mitigating stress, this one’s so huge, recognize what is actually in your control. Okay, back to toxic work situation. I got written up over some stuff that was flat out lies, just gonna throw that out there.

Some of it was flat out lies and I realized I cannot control if these people are over here lying about what kind of work I’m doing. I am showing up. I am doing the very best of my ability. May not be the best at my job. But I am putting in the effort and I did care and I think that’s why it upset me so bad because I was like, man, I’m like, I really do care like about doing a good job.

It was not in my control. Some of the things that happened in that work environment, there were expectations that were put on me. It’s like, I don’t have control. control always on meeting those expectations because they had to do with other people were involved, right? So you can only do what you can do about a situation.

If you are working with other people and if you’re pulling your weight and they are not pulling their weight, there’s nothing that you can do about that. You’ve got to let it go. We can get super worked up over other people’s poor behavior. Not just in a work environment, but in family situations, people not doing what they need to do, not carrying their weight.

What you have to learn to say is, I’ve got to have grace. I’ve got to let some things go. I’ve got to set boundaries where necessary and healthy, but then that’s it. That’s all I can do is speak my piece, speak the truth and love, and move forward. You cannot control other people. You cannot make them do things they don’t want to do.

The problem that I see with OCD is it’s going to tell you that you can control some stuff that you can’t really control. It’s going to tell you if you jump through this hoop, or you seek that reassurance, or you research this, then you really can stay safe. Nope. Nope. Not in control of that. You can do all the googling you want and still get a health issue.

You can seek all the reassurance you want, and you can still be more confused than when you started. Don’t believe the lies the OCD is telling you. Number four, this goes along with setting boundaries. Don’t be afraid to say no. There are some things that I would really love to be doing right now. I can think of some volunteer work I’d love to get involved in.

I can think of some extra things that they would love for me to be doing at the church that I have been asked to do and I would love to do. However, I cannot do it all. I’ve had to realize that. Certain things have come up recently and just something in my spirit was like, no, I am not doing that. It’s not bad.

It’s a good thing, but it’s just not for me right now. I need to not get burnt out, not get overwhelmed. And some things are good things, but they’re not for this season. And if you’re in a season of stress and busyness and struggle, it’s okay for you to say no. It’s okay for you to say, man, that’s a great opportunity.

Thank you so much for thinking of me. It’s just not the right season for my family right now. Oh, hey, you want me to work on that project with you? Can we do that after soccer season is over? Is that okay? When we say no to some things, that means we’re saying yes to other things, even if that is yes to rest for this season, because you have a lot of stressful things going on, or if that is yes to taking care of yourself and giving yourself time.

time to reflect or journal or be with God, be in contemplation because you’re going through some emotional things right now. That’s okay. It’s okay to say no. Tip number five for mitigating stress is to ask for help. Other people cannot throw you a life preserver if they don’t know that you’re drowning.

I’m talking to myself on this one because this is one I’ve struggled with for a long time, asking for help. I would like everybody to think that Carrie has it going on over here and all her ducks are in a row. They are not, most of the time. God has shown me that I need to live in humility and allow other people to love me.

because I do have people in my life who do care about me and want to step in and help when needed. So I don’t need to be afraid to reach out and say, Hey, I’ve got this going on. Or, Hey, can you pick up my daughter? Because I’ve got to be over here dropping my husband off at this appointment. Can you watch my daughter for a couple hours so that my husband and I can get a much needed date?

It’s hard sometimes to be vulnerable. It’s hard to reach out for help. Sometimes you may not feel like you have the support system or you have people that you can ask. And I’ve definitely felt that at different points in life. or had those seasons that felt more lonely than others. But what I’ve noticed is usually there are people in our lives somewhere, even if you may not have talked to them in a little while, or it’s somebody that you haven’t taken the full time to cultivate the relationship.

We’re really worried sometimes about burdening people or being Too needy or too much. But if you are the kind of person that you’re going to go out of your way to help somebody when they need something, they’re going to know that about you and receive the relationship as reciprocal. You know, we can’t be asking all the time and not ever giving to others.

There has to be a balance there. Even if you don’t have a physical need or that someone can meet, I would still encourage you to share with other people how they can be praying for you too. That’s a huge one. Be vulnerable and let people know, hey, this is something that I am wrestling with God with. Even if you don’t give them all the details, you just say, Hey, I’ve been really stressed out with work or I’ve been just stressed out with the kids or a variety of different things going on in my life.

Please pray for me. That goes a long way and people will be willing to lift you up in prayer and love and support you. If you’re going through a period of stress right now, Just know that it’s not always going to be this way. You’re not always going to feel as stressed as you do right now. And hopefully, if you can put some of these tips into practice, it’ll help you get through this stressful season when your OCD is flaring up.

If there’s some way I can help and support you in this process, I would love to be able to do that for you. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show.

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.

How Do I Pray about OCD Besides Take it Away - Carrie Bock

136: How Do I Pray about OCD Besides Take it Away?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode.

Carrie explores four ways to pray about OCD that go beyond asking for removal. She shares how praying for key aspects of your journey can bring new strength and perspective to your path with OCD.

Episode Highlights

How prayerful guidance can help you navigate your personal OCD treatment journey.

How asking for spiritual clarity can help you manage and respond to persistent OCD doubts and fears.

Ways to build resilience and trust in God’s plan throughout your recovery from OCD.

Episode Summary

Hi, I’m Carrie Bock. In Episode 136 of Christian Faith and OCD, we explore a question many of you have grappled with: how to pray about OCD when it seems like God isn’t removing it from your life. As a licensed professional counselor and someone deeply rooted in faith, I understand how difficult it can be to find relief from OCD through my work with clients. Over the years, I’ve learned that there are several effective ways to approach these prayers.

Here are four ways I believe can transform how we pray about OCD:

  1. Pray for Wisdom: OCD is tricky, and it’s not always easy to distinguish God’s voice from the intrusive thoughts. James 1:5 reminds us that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God, who gives generously. I encourage you to pray for discernment in recognizing what is truly OCD and what is not.
  2. Pray for Guidance in Treatment: Whether it’s deciding on therapy, considering medication, or finding the right support, pray for God’s guidance in every aspect of your treatment journey. I’ve seen firsthand how God provides exactly what we need when we need it, so don’t hesitate to ask for His direction and provision.
  3. Pray for Courage: Facing OCD requires courage. It’s hard to move forward when uncertainty and fear are holding you back. Just as God called Joshua to be strong and courageous, I believe He calls us to take bold steps of faith in our recovery. Pray for the strength to do the hard things, knowing that God is with you every step of the way.
  4. Pray that God is Glorified in Your Weakness: This one isn’t easy, but it’s powerful. I’ve learned that God’s power is made perfect in our weaknesses. When we allow God to work through our struggles, He can use them for His glory. Remember, you are not disqualified from serving or ministering because of OCD—God can still use you in amazing ways.

In this episode, I also share some exciting news—we’re starting monthly Zoom hangouts! This is a chance for me to get to know you, answer your questions, and build a community of support. If you’re interested, make sure you’re on our email list to get the details.

These four ways to pray about OCD are just the beginning. I’d love to hear from you—what other ways have you found to pray through your OCD? Visit our website and share your thoughts. Let’s continue to support each other on this journey.

If this episode blessed you, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews help other Christians struggling with OCD find the show and start their own healing journey.

Thank you for being part of this community. Until next time, may you find comfort in God’s great love for you.

Explore Related Episode:

134. Three Strategies to Help Stop Obsessive Praying Today

Transcript:

Episode 136. I know so many of you who I’ve talked to have just said I have prayed over and over and over for healing from this OCD. I have been praying that God would remove it from my life and take it Out of here.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, and 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.

I’m really excited to let you know that We are going to have some monthly Zoom hangouts. So this is just for me to get to know you, the listeners, a little better, answer any questions that you have. If you are interested, I will be sharing the Zoom link with our email subscribers at the time of this recording.

I’m not sure day or time of this event, but if you want to become an insider of these types of things, definitely get on our email list. I always enjoy hearing from our listeners. I thought about activating up and firing up a Facebook group, but I just don’t think that I have the bandwidth for any potential drama that may come from that.

We are going to just hang out on zoom maybe once a month, see how that goes and go from there.

I’m excited for today’s episode to be talking with you about four ways. to pray about your OCD differently. So if you just feel like you’re stuck in this repetitive cycle of asking God to take it away from you, asking God to heal you, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for that.

I think that that is a beautiful prayer. But after a little while, you may just become frustrated if God doesn’t supernaturally take that away from you, or maybe you’ve been in treatment and it just still feels like that thorn in the flesh. So I want to give you some different ways that you can pray through this that I think will help you as part of your recovery process.

One is to pray for wisdom. James 1. 5 says that if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. Let me tell you, OCD is tricky. Module 10 of ICBT, we go through all the tricks and cheats of OCD. One example is maybe this time. So you think it’s OCD, but then OCD says, maybe this time I’m not actually OCD.

And this is a real threat. So you actually do need to pay attention to it. My personal favorite is living the fear. You hear about the norovirus and your stomach starts to hurt. You experience a headache and you’re like, maybe this is a brain tumor. And then all of a sudden you focus on that headache. The more you focus on it, the worse it feels and you worry some more.

And just your, your mind and your body are interacting in that way. The more afraid. you are, the more your head hurts and vice versa. I believe that if you pray for wisdom, the Holy Spirit is going to guide you in those moments to build awareness of what is OCD and what is not. What is God’s voice? What is OCD?

And we’ve talked about this on the show before. So pray for wisdom. Two, pray for guidance in terms of your treatment process. What types of treatment should I pursue? If you’re thinking about getting a medication, pray about that. You know, there’s so many different options, and I know a lot of people have reservations about medication.

But what if that’s something that God uses to help you? You know, each person is individual. And so pray about the decisions that you make in regards to your treatment. And if you’re looking for a therapist, praying that God connects you with the right person. Pray for financial provision to get the help that you need.

I know therapy can be expensive. And also I know God is amazing at providing for exactly what you need at exactly the right time. So pray for guidance in terms of your treatment process. Number three is courage to walk in faith and do the hard things. God calls us to God sized tasks and we need faith and his strength to be able to do those hard things.

OCD recovery can be really hard and scary to move forward in faith and dealing with uncertainty and not knowing. God told Joshua after Moses died, before they went into the promised land, to be strong and courageous. And the strength and courage Joshua had came from his connection and partnership. In God’s work, God knew he was giving Joshua a God sized task, so while he told him to be strong, he had to be dependent on God to be able to have that strength.

It’s interesting how those two things play together. So pray for courage to walk in faith and do hard things. Number four, pray that God would be glorified in the midst of your weakness. This isn’t necessarily an easy prayer because we don’t want people to know about our weaknesses. We’re all about hiding those, but sometimes we just can’t.

We have story after story in the Bible of God using insignificant, broken people to accomplish his purposes. In 10, this is from the famous Thorn in the Flesh passage, Paul is speaking and says, But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I’m weak, then I am strong. Paul had a thorn. We don’t exactly know what that was, but I think there was a reason that God didn’t put it in the Bible for us is because we all have something in our life that feels like it’s holding us back.

But also in this passage, Paul talks about that being given to him to create a sense of humility. I’ve spoken to many of you who are involved in vocational ministry or para church ministries, missionaries, all kinds of different people with OCD, even people who are volunteering in their church, and I want you to never ever think that you are disqualified from ministry because you struggle with OCD.

That is a lie straight from the enemy, so do not give in to that. You’re not qualified by what you’ve done, or by worldly success, or trainings that you’ve had, but by what God has chosen to do through you. And when you are weak, He is strong. If there’s someone who exemplifies this really well, it’s my husband.

There are plenty of times where he’s physically weak, struggling with fatigue. Can’t really walk very long distances, but this summer he had the incredible opportunity to go to Guatemala with his former pastor and preach the gospel to kids and teenagers. And he allows God to work through him even when it’s not a good day physically for him.

Can God be glorified from OCD? You may be thinking, that’s ridiculous. I don’t even see how God could use this or use my situation to help anybody. It’s just so messy. But if you’ve been through something, God wants to give you a testimony. And we don’t always get to see what that looks like right now when we’re in the middle of it.

But know that maybe one day you’re going to be sharing that with somebody else, and you’re going to be able to help them. Maybe they don’t know they have OCD, and you’re going to be the one to say, yeah, all those spiritual questions that you have. I had all of those and here’s what it is. I found out it’s scrupulosity and I don’t want you to suffer one moment longer than you have to know that you can go get help for that and that this is not a spiritual issue of what you’re dealing with.

Like how powerful would that be if that was your experience, if you were able to help somebody or just to say, Hey, I know what that’s like. I’ve been there and I’ve wrestled with some of those same things that you’re wrestling with right now. And I just want you to know that there’s hope. And maybe you’re sharing your story with somebody, or God prompts you to share something that you struggle with, like OCD.

Not because that other person is dealing with the same thing, but maybe they’re going through something hard too, and they think, Oh, I don’t wanna, you know, go to therapy, I know I probably should, or I probably have a lot going on. Maybe you can help them work through that stigma. You know, there’s so many things that I don’t know why God allows them, but I have learned to say, okay, God, I want you to be glorified in the midst of this difficult situation.

I know this is a short episode and I gave you four different ways to pray about your OCD besides take it away. Certainly this is not an exhaustive list. There are so many things that you could potentially pray to God about. regarding your OCD. So I’m curious, what else would you add to this list? Find us on the website.

We’ll put a link in the show notes. You can let us know maybe some ways that you’ve prayed about your OCD that you feel have enriched your prayer life or your connection with God. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and 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.

Highly Sensitive - How This Affects OCD Treatment - Carrie Bock

135. Highly Sensitive? How This Affects OCD Treatment

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

Inspired by a suggestion from our listener Ashley, today Carrie is diving into how being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) affects OCD treatment. She explores why sensitivity matters and how it can shape your therapeutic journey.

Episode Highlights: 

  • What it means to be a Highly Sensitive Person and how it impacts daily life.
  • How being an HSP can influence the approach to treating OCD.
  • Carrie shares her own experiences with sensitivity and how she manages it.
  • Adjustments therapists can make to accommodate highly sensitive individuals in OCD treatment.

Episode Summary:

In this listener-suggested episode, we explore the intersection of being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and dealing with OCD. Ashley, a listener, reached out to share how understanding her HSP traits has aided her personal OCD treatment, and she wondered how this could factor into an effective therapeutic approach. I wholeheartedly agree that this should be considered, and in this episode, I explain why.

We first dive into what it means to be a Highly Sensitive Person, a trait characterized by heightened awareness and processing of environmental stimuli. I discuss my personal experiences as an HSP, from sensory overload in certain environments to needing silence after social interactions, and how this sensitivity can be both a challenge and a superpower.

The episode also covers the importance of tailoring OCD treatment for those who are highly sensitive. While Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the gold standard for OCD, it’s crucial to approach treatment with empathy and understanding, especially for clients who might feel overwhelmed by traditional methods. I emphasize the need for open communication with your therapist to ensure the treatment process is effective and manageable.

Finally, I talk about anxiety sensitivity and how therapists can help clients become more comfortable with the physical sensations of anxiety. My hope is that this episode helps you, whether you’re highly sensitive or not, understand that there’s a reason God made you this way—and that it can be your superpower, not your burden.

Transcript:

Today we have a listener-suggestion podcast episode. Just super fun. Ashley had reached out to me via email and she told me that she, for her own personal benefit and treatment, has found the research on the highly sensitive person to be super helpful helping her understand herself. She’s found that not every therapist has been open to hearing about that. And she wondered, how does being a highly sensitive person factor in to a treatment approach for OCD? In short, I agree with what Ashley is saying. It should matter. And coming up, we’ll see why…

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 in to today’s episode.

I wanted to let you all know that this is your absolutely last chance to sign up for the Freedom from Mental Compulsions Challenge, happening on August the 5th at noon central time. So go to hopeforanxietyandocd.com/challenge We’re going to be talking about ICBT and how this can help with mental compulsions.

I am giving away a few prizes, coffee gift cards, and coaching time with Carrie, so we can’t wait to see you there. We’re in the midst of shifting websites, so I’m not sure which one we’re going to be on by the time this episode comes out. Hopefully long term we will be on carriebock.com. We’ll have all of my counseling and podcasting info housed in the same spot, which will be really helpful.

Before we talk about how being a highly sensitive person can impact OCD treatment, let’s first talk about what does that mean, something you maybe never heard that term before. There is a test, a self-test for you at hsperson.com. This is Elaine Aron’s website, and she’s the one who has done a research on being a highly sensitive person, back since 1991, she’s written several books, The Highly Sensitive Person being her signature most popular book, and then she’s written materials about having a highly sensitive child, which would be very interesting to read as well.

Some of the questions from the self test, “Are you easily overwhelmed by such things as bright lights, strong smells, coarse fabrics, or sirens nearby? Do you make a point of avoiding violent movies and TV shows? Do you need to withdraw during busy days into bed or a darkened room or some other place where you can have privacy and relief from a situation?” Do you make it a high priority to arrange your life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations? Those are just a few sample questions. There are several more on the website for you to look at, but the main thing to understand is that highly sensitive people are really taking in all of this environmental stimuli that’s around them, and they’re getting a read on the situation, taking in information before acting or responding a little bit slower to process information because they’re getting so much in because they’re just sensitive to everything that’s going on. The lights, the sounds, the people, the emotions of the people, just all of these different things are factored in.

One in five people, so about 20%, are highly sensitive. It’s not the same thing as introversion, although the majority of them are introverts. About 70 percent of HSPs, that’s a shortened for a highly sensitive person, are introverts. It may be confused with shyness at times. It’s not the same thing as being shy, but a lot of times, especially if it happens in children, and this happened with me, they’ll say, “Oh, she’s shy.” It’s never a good connotation when somebody says that, so please don’t do that to your children, and I will not do that to mine. At least in my case, it was never said positively. It was always a negative. This is not a medical or psychological diagnosis like OCD. It’s more of an understanding of your own temperament and how you process sensory information.

I want to share with you how being a highly sensitive person has impacted my life a little bit and steps that I take to mitigate it. There’s a certain big box store, which shall not be named, but you can probably figure out which one it is when I describe it, that I prefer not to go in. I have gone in there plenty of times and bought things, but it’s not my preference because you go in there and not only is it all the fluorescent lighting, which they’ve made quote sensory-friendly hours now where you can go early in the morning and the lights are more dim, and I’m sure that does help people, but it’s not just the lighting for me.

It’s the massive quantities of stuff that’s in this store. There’s aisles and aisles of stuff. You have to go in there and find what you need, which is not always easy, unless you know where the stuff is in the store. There’s lots of stuff, and then there’s even stuff in the middle of the aisles, where you’re trying to go through. Then on the end of the aisles, like the end caps, if you’ve ever worked in retail, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s stuff even hanging from the end caps. There’s just stuff everywhere. And it’s a lot to take in, and it’s a lot to go, “Oh, there’s all this stuff, but where’s my stuff that I need? How can I get in here and get my stuff and not 80 other things?” Because that’s the whole strategy, right? That’s the whole strategy of having stuff everywhere, is they want you to look at it and buy it. It’s too much for me. Most days I just don’t want to do it. That’s one situation where being highly sensitive has affected me.

Daylight bulbs are really huge in our household. We have moved, and there isjust been so many little things that you want to shift and to move or change out. And one of those for us has been daylight bulbs. We got into our house, and we’re like, Ugh, it’s all this, like, orangey, fluorescent lighting.

Can’t take it. Went to the store, bought some daylight bulbs, and honestly, we’re still switching some of them out. We have some recessed lighting that we’re not happy with, and I’m not even sure we have to figure out how to change some of those pieces out, but Steve and I are both on board with the daylight bulbs.

We just do not like, in our home, in our peaceful space, we do not like the other type of lighting that there is out there. Another way being a highly sensitive person, one thing I’ve learned to mitigate with that is I can’t always be around constant noise. Some people just have, they have the radio on all the time or the TV on all the time, or they’re constantly getting something into them.

And I do listen to a lot of podcasts as my jam or whatever helps me relax or wind down or different things sometimes depending on the type of podcast to listen to. But if I have a really busy day or a day where I’m around a lot of people, this is a big one. If I am around a lot of people, I just have a need for silence.

I don’t want anybody to talk to me and I have to talk with people in my life. It’s, it’s no offense right now if I’m really quiet. I just had a really busy day. I just want to bitch. You can hang with me, but please don’t try to have a conversation with me right now because it’s just not gonna go well. I can get really irritable if I’m around people all day and I don’t have that time for silence or time to decompress for myself.

I think some of that is an introversion thing, but some of it is also a highly sensitive thing. If I go to a concert, and this can happen in movie theaters, not quite as much, not quite the same. If I was to see maybe a really intensely emotional movie in a movie theater, it might affect me a certain way, but as far as for concerts, So in Nashville, we have the Bridgestone Arena.

That’s where the hockey team plays. That’s where they have a lot of like big concert gatherings, things of that nature. There are smaller venues, obviously, in other places. But to go into the Bridgestone Arena, obviously, it’s huge. There’s going to be a ton of people there. But then as well, there’s also going to be a lot of noise.

It’s going to be super, super loud. I am going to want earplugs that I may or may not have forgotten. Lots of lights. So between the lights, the sounds, the people, when I leave that situation, it could be a concert that I really wanted to go to and I really love. Doesn’t matter. But if I leave that situation, the only way I can describe it to you is that I feel like my body is on vibrate.

And it takes me a long time to wind down from something like that. I just feel like I’m still in the concert when I’m not in the concert. Like my body is still trying to process that experience. The concerts can be a challenge for me. I talked about this in our episode on introversion, but one of my highly sensitive things, this one has to do with decision-making and contemplation.

If I’m going to a new restaurant, I will always look at the menu before I go. My husband and other people don’t get this. They probably think it’s really silly. But it’s funny because I remember my dad saying that when he first used to take my mom out to dinner that she would have a hard time choosing like something to eat and so maybe I just come by this completely honest, but I definitely want to see the menu because I want to look at all the options and really contemplate, “What do I actually want to eat?” This is better now because we have online menus and ordering and things like that, but heaven forbid they change the menu from what’s actually online and then I get there and I’m like, oh no, like the thing I wanted, it will be like, oh yeah, we don’t have that anymore or we’re out of that ingredient, so we can’t make that for you.

It’s, Oh no, back to square one, but thanks to the internet. It’s really easy, typically, to look at the menu before you go to the restaurant, and that’s a step that helps me out so much. I don’t know if that helps you out either, if you have a hard time deciding on what you want to eat. I don’t think it’s just a decision-making process.

I think it is the fact that a lot of times, especially go out to dinner with other people, you’re trying to look at the menu, and they’re trying to talk to you, and you’re trying to not be rude. They’ve decided what they want, you haven’t. It’s a whole thing. So I just prevent all of that the best I can. A big part of being highly sensitive is being super in tune to other people’s emotions and not just like picking up on other people’s emotions, but really feeling that and when you’re a kid and you don’t understand that you’re highly sensitive and you just feel everything really deeply, this feels like an absolute curse.

It does not feel like a good thing. You’re crying and somebody else isn’t, or you’re trying to hold something in maybe to not have a huge emotional reaction that you know is not going to go well. Being intuitive, picking up on the emotions of other people or feeling things very differently. As a kid, I never understood, or as a teenager, or even young adult, I didn’t understand probably until I was in my mid 20s how this was actually a positive thing for me and that this could be my superpower as a therapist.

It was hard to mitigate how do I separate my emotions of what I’m actually experiencing from other people’s emotions. and had to learn to be supportive of other people’s emotions without taking them on. And I wish I could tell you a cut-and-dry process to that, but I think it just happened over time.

I had to be comfortable with my emotional experience. I had to be comfortable with other people having their emotional experience. And then I could set up some healthy, just internal boundaries of allowing other people to have their emotional experience without taking it on, without creating responsibility for it.

Obviously, that’s a big thing. As a therapist, you’re there to come alongside somebody and support them through their process, not to just take bad feelings away or fix them somehow. And I will say that it can be challenging because society doesn’t always value being an HSP, especially if you’re a male.

That can be particularly tough. And I know that I’ve had males in therapy that are like, this is not a good thing. I have heard a statistic, although it’s been a while, that even though 20 percent of the population is HSP, about 75 percent of the individuals in therapy are HSPs. Which is why it’s really important for therapists to be understanding, even if they’re not a highly sensitive person, to be understanding how those traits are affecting a lot of their clients.

I love this quote from the highly sensitive person that sensitivity is anything but a flaw. Many HSPs are often unusually creative and productive workers, attentive and thoughtful partners, and intellectually gifted individuals, which is so beautiful. This can manifest beautifully in your life, whether that’s through creative outlets, whether that’s through being really attentive to your work, being able to connect.

That’s what I always tell people. If you are tuned into what somebody else is feeling, a lot of times it can help you connect with them in a really healthy way. Highly sensitive people are going to pick up on things maybe that other people don’t in the room. So in group work, this is helpful to say, hey, have you thought about how that wording comes across? Or because it seems rough to me, have you thought about, what about this person, can we include them? I know for myself if I walk into a social situation, and it’s been like this for a long time, probably because I was this person, but I can walk into a social situation and find that person sitting in the corner by themselves, not talking to anybody.

I can sense and read who in the room is anxious or edgy, and that is a gift in terms of ministry, in terms of being able to reach people. Now how does this affect OCD treatment? I couldn’t find a statistic on how many people diagnosed with OCD would also be considered highly sensitive, but I did find this comment in response to an article that someone had written about their experience, and I think it sums it up pretty well.

On the one hand, your mind is constantly processing everything around you in high detail, which can be exhausting. That’s the highly sensitive piece. On the other hand, your OCD tendencies can make you feel like you have to control everything around you, which can be totally exhausting. It’s a constant balancing act that can be difficult to manage.

Wow. That’s pretty intense there. How does this inform OCD treatment? OCD treatment tends to be pretty structured. There may be a therapist, let’s say they’re trying to follow ERP correctly, we would call that fidelity to the model. We’re trying to have fidelity to the model which has been researched and will, if we follow it the way that it’s written and supposed to be done, then our clients theoretically will get better.

That’s the goal and the idea. And so they may prompt a client to do an exposure that the sensitive person might feel is overwhelming or too much. They might need something broken down into smaller steps. So exposures are designed to be very gradual in nature. It’s important if you’re doing this type of therapy to make sure that you feel comfortable enough with your therapist to communicate when things feel overwhelming.

They’re not trying to give you a panic attack. That is not the point. Because you want to move through these hierarchies in a way that’s building confidence in tackling harder and harder things. But sometimes with ERP, there can be this mentality that’s a little bit like, hey, you’ve got to toughen up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just push through.

That can be damaging. I won’t say that with all therapists, but Just sometimes with that model, it can be like, Hey, this is hard, but you still got to do it. Especially working with very avoidant people. Obviously, you have to push people a little bit more and that makes sense. So finding that balance with the client and the therapist can be really hard because you don’t want to just be like, okay, whatever you want to do. After all, then that person is not going to get better.

So finding that middle ground. And I know I’ve had clients in the past drop out of EMDR therapy for similar reasons. Like, maybe they got overwhelmed, they didn’t feel comfortable enough to let me know they wanted to stop, or maybe they had residual effects after the fact, which can certainly happen. If things are really rough for you after your last session, if you feel like things are just not working or not going the way that you need or want them to, Your therapist needs to know that.

Like, we really appreciate the feedback because that helps us tailor things specifically to you. We’ve been trained in all of these therapy modalities, but the idea is really to tailor them in such a way that’s going to help you get better as that can be a challenge, right? Because people are so different.

So what may work for one person might not work for somebody else, and that’s okay. If you’re a highly sensitive person, just finding somebody that you feel comfortable with, that you feel that sense of empathy. Oh, they get it. They see where I’m coming from. Another thing that we can do in the beginning stages of OCD treatment is work on things like anxiety sensitivity.

Anxiety sensitivity is when you’re sensitive or afraid of the physiological sensations, the body sensations that accompany anxiety, like rapid heart rate, difficulty breathing, or dizziness. In session, your therapist may have you induce some of these distress states outside of a period of panic or high anxiety to help you get used to the body sensations and know that they’re not actually going to harm you. It’s not necessarily the body sensations themselves, it’s the feeling out of control of the body sensations when they come on sporadically. A lot of times it’s troubling for people. Ways to work on this, your therapist may have you turn in circles for dizziness, like run in place, or do jumping jacks to increase your heart rate, breathing through a coffee stir for dizziness.

These types of activities can be helpful because sometimes clients get triggered even during workouts, even though it’s normal during a workout to have some difficulty breathing or to have an elevated heart rate. You can learn, okay, I can be in this state, my body is not being damaged by it, it’s a normal reaction.

With OCD treatment, we’re working on retraining your threat detection system. So if you can feel those feelings in your body in a safe environment, like therapy, that would be the ideal. You can know and learn to tolerate them as uncomfortable as they may be. My hope is that this episode may help some of you understand yourself a little bit better and just know if God has created you as a highly sensitive person, there’s a reason that you are this way, and I pray that he shows you how that can be a superpower instead of a burden, because I know for me, for a long time, I just saw it as a burden.

And now I can see it as a superpower and I can do things in my life to take care of myself so that I am not overwhelmed all the time by sensory information. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you leave us a review on iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. 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.