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156. Developing Healthy Routines Without Obsessing about Them with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

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

If you’re looking to make healthy changes in the new year, you’re in the right place. 

In this episode, Carrie is diving into the topic of routines, but from a perspective that doesn’t involve getting obsessed or perfectionistic about them.

Episode Highlights:

  • How to create healthy routines that support your mental and emotional well-being without feeling overwhelmed.
  • Practical tips for reducing stress by establishing structure in your day-to-day life.
  • Ways to combat perfectionism and embrace progress over perfection in your routines.
  • Simple hacks to make routines easier to stick to, such as prepping ahead and using reminders.
  • The importance of flexibility and grace in your routines, allowing room for God’s plan.
  • How to align your routines with your God-given desires for a more fulfilling and peaceful life.

Episode Summary:

For those of you trying to make healthy changes this year, we’re in the middle of a series called New Year’s Desires. Let’s focus on living out the God-given desires of our hearts, connecting with Him and others.

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, a Christ follower and licensed counselor helping Christians struggling with OCD find deeper healing. We’re here to break through the shame around OCD struggles in the Christian community and replace uncertainty with faith.

Today, let’s talk about developing healthy routines without letting them become obsessions. Routines bring stability, save mental energy, and create purpose—but they shouldn’t turn into compulsions. How can we stay balanced?

A simple routine like meal planning or laying out your clothes in advance can make your day smoother. But sometimes, life happens, and we need to let go of rigid routines for connection or special moments. This is especially important for those with OCD, who may feel the need for perfection. But remember, it’s okay to have flexible days.

If you’re finding that OCD is getting in the way of your routines or perfectionism is causing you to shut down, I want to encourage you to take small, manageable steps and focus on consistency rather than perfection.

If you’re ready to dive deeper into breaking free from OCD’s grip on your life and developing healthy routines that work for you, listen to the full episode for more practical tools and encouragement.

Explore Related Episode:

112. Finding Motivation to Finish with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

For those of you trying to make healthy changes in the new year, we’re in a midst of a series called New Year’s Desires because resolutions somehow were meant to be broken, but we want to be living out of the God given desires of our heart to connect with him and other people in our lives.

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.

Today I want to talk with you about developing healthy routines without becoming obsessed about them. We all have something that we know we should be doing, and we want to get into this healthy rhythm, routine experience, but it’s just challenging for us to do that. And also, there may be concerns that if you do get into some type of routine, that it will become compulsive, or you’ll become perfectionistic about it.

And then if you miss a day, you end up shutting down and just saying, well, Let’s see, I wasn’t meant to do that because I messed it up over here. So how do we find this balance? If you’ve been around a little while, you know that I like to talk about the why that we do things. So we’re going to talk about that first.

What are the purpose of routines? Why do we need healthy routines and rhythms in our life? Well, first of all, they create a level of stability and predictability. When you have a routine, it provides a certain anchor in your day to know, hey, this is my time to do this thing. And that helps us really prioritize and accomplish that which is most important to us.

If you see someone’s calendar and you see someone’s bank account, you’ll see what’s truly important to that person. Routines help us feel safe. They’re really great for children, if you have children. They help us feel a sense of connection to other people because we know, like in our family, when we sit down to dinner every evening, we know that that’s a time to connect with each other, to talk about our day.

to eat nourishing food, and that’s a routine and a rhythm that we have in our home. Routines also keep us from having to think all the time. If you make a meal plan on the weekend, and you know what you’re going to eat for the week, and it’s on the calendar, you don’t have to be thinking or scrambling at five o’clock or 530 every night going, Oh no, what’s for dinner?

I don’t have anything. I don’t have any meat thawed out in the fridge. I don’t have Maybe an ingredient that I wanted to have to make something. Oh, let’s just do something really quick or spend more money. Causes this weight on our mental activity as well if we don’t have a plan or we don’t have a routine.

This is a secret hack that I’ve been doing. You know how Steve Jobs wore black. He had like a certain outfit that he wore all the time, so he didn’t have to think about what he wore. And I decided earlier this year that I was going to start picking out my clothes for the week, the work week on Sunday.

Like on the weekends, I’ll just get up and decide what I want to wear. But sometimes the mornings can be really hectic, and I don’t want to use that extra brain energy. So I’m able to look at my schedule and see, well, how many in person clients do I have or virtual, what outfits might be most appropriate based on the weather report, et cetera.

And it allows me to exercise that thought process then, and then I don’t have to think about it during the work week, which has been really great for me. I don’t know if that would work for everybody, but just a little small hack that I’ve been doing is making my clothing decisions on the weekends. Now, we’ve talked about the purpose of routines, but there are maybe times where we intentionally break our routines.

I will give you an example. We are pretty strict about getting our daughter to bed between 7 at night because That helps her rhythms. It helps our rhythms as a family. And sometimes she has a hard time falling asleep or different things. She may not be asleep, but at least getting her in the bed in that timeframe.

But there are times where we certainly have our daughter up later. Because we may have friends over, we may have gone out to eat with some friends, or we may be doing something fun as a family together. We might be involved in a church event that’s in the evening where we keep her up a little bit later.

Sometimes we break routines in order to have fun or to connect with others. And I know some of you are saying, wait a minute, you said the purpose of having a routine was to connect with others. That’s also true, but we have to recognize when the need of the moment is more important than the routine itself.

This will help you in terms of value based decision making. What do I value more right now, getting my daughter to bed at a certain hour? Or do I value more this time or experience that I’m having at church or with my friends? Now, there certainly are times where we say, Hey, if you’re going to go out to dinner with us, we need to meet you at like five, because that gives us time to eat, socialize, go home, et cetera, put our daughter to bed, even though some of our friends without kids probably would rather eat at six or six thirty.

That’s just not a good situation for us. You may need to break your routine if OCD is getting in the way or wanting you to do it perfectly. I know I’ve talked with a lot of people that really obsess about a variety of things regarding their schedule. They might obsess about what they’re actually doing.

They might obsess about how much they have to do. They might obsess about not being able to accomplish certain things. And maybe I know I need to get something done. I need to run over and do this errand, but I don’t have time today in my schedule. The end result of all of these scenarios ends up being that you just shut down and you do nothing.

Which is so not helpful. What we want to do is help you break out of, like, whatever your current spiral is. And, you know, OCD really likes avoidance quite a bit. So that makes sense that there becomes this shutdown and doing nothing. We spend so much time thinking about doing the things that we don’t actually do the things.

You may have to do a shorter version of the routine you wanted to do, you may have to break things down into smaller steps. I don’t know your specific situation. I was talking with someone the other day about a routine issue, and what we noticed was that It was a daily routine that a lot of us normally engage in, but for this individual, it was extra hard because OCD was telling them that they had to do it this prescribed way or with these steps that took them a long time.

So I said, I know it’s going to be uncomfortable for you, but what if We were able to do this routine sometimes this way and that other times we’re able to do a shorter version of this routine. And I want to just clarify, it was not a compulsion per se, it was more of just a way that they like to do things.

Sometimes when we like to do things a certain way, there’s nothing wrong with that, but maybe we don’t have time to do it and then that was causing problems because then this person wasn’t doing the daily routine that they needed to do at all. Right? It was an all or nothing thing. Either I have to spend an hour doing this, Or, I just won’t do it at all, versus saying, well what if you spent a half hour on some days and then some days you spent an hour, that’s fine, when you have more time.

And as you know, OCD’s rules are completely arbitrary and it just makes it up as it goes along. If you’re going to develop a specific routine, first let’s think of the reason for your routine, start with your why. And know that your goal is not perfection, but stability or creating that anchor to your day.

Number two, write down the steps to your routine and utilize technology if that helps you. Now, I know this may sound really basic and simple, but if you’re having struggles Like, for example, getting ready in the morning on time. Maybe there’s all these things that you know that you have to do to get out the door, but your brain feels really scrambled and they don’t end up in any kind of order.

Everything’s rushed and you end up forgetting something. If mornings are really chaotic and hectic for you, it might be helpful for you to do things in a particular order so that you can keep track of where you’re at in the process. Especially if you have children that are interrupting that process, you want to have approximate time frames that you’re going to engage in your routine because you need to know how long certain tasks take you.

And if you don’t know how long certain tasks take you, then you may need to just evaluate that first before setting up that routine. For example, I have to buffer a little time in my morning for me to actually wake up and get dressed before I can start working out, because initially I would be like, oh, well, I can start working out at this time.

And if I do a 30 minute workout, then I will be done at this time. However, things were not working like that and I was getting pushed back. So then I had to originally kind of push my get up start time a little bit earlier in order for me to get acclimated and adjusted, make sure that I had all of the tools laid out for my workout.

If I was going to need weights or bands or other things that I had those in front of me too. You can get super idealized about how you think things should work, and then as you start to do it, notice that you need to tweak or make changes. That’s totally fine. Making changes is not a problem. You can do that.

Don’t send it to an all or nothing where you just throw out the routine completely. And you want to be able to use some technology, if that helps you, in terms of reminders. I have certain reminders on my phone that pop up, and it was funny because I was sitting with my daughter the other morning, and I was like, Oh, my phone just made this calendar noise.

Like I have an appointment in 30 minutes. And then I was like, Oh yeah, I do have an appointment online in 30 minutes. I mean, I was together and fine, but I was like, Oh, I am going to need to go upstairs in a little bit. I had completely forgotten because it wasn’t an every week type of situation. It was a little bit of an off day.

I had reminders in my phone for a long time to make sure. That my daughter had lunch money because there’s one day a week where they buy lunch for the kids that I need to actually have cash and bring that to her school to give to the teachers. So I would have a little note in my phone, make sure you bring five dollars.

And whether you write things down in a paper planner, or you use reminders on your phone, or you have a Google calendar, whatever you do, just be really consistent about how you’re tracking those tasks or those routines or rhythms that you need to get done. until it becomes just an ingrained habit of something that you do all the time.

Step number three is to set yourself up for success. In a sense, make sure that you have what you need. So great mornings, I know I’ve talked a lot about the morning routine, but great mornings actually start the night before. It’s when you have the clothes picked out, or you have your workout stuff laid out, or you have your meal prepped, breakfast prepped, or you have some things chopped up for dinner.

Whatever it is, making sure that you’re taking the time to set yourself up for success and that you have all the materials, that the lunch boxes are laid out so that all you have to do is put the lunch in and put the cooler pack in in the morning. You should be able to set yourself up to have just a gentle rhythm and flow to your routine so that it’s easy.

You’re wanting this process to be what we call a low barrier to entry. You’re wanting to make it so that you get up and it’s like, okay, I’m up and here are my clothes and here are my things that I need to get ready and here is my Bible and it’s right by my chair where I’m going to sit and read it, just making everything so ready to go so that you don’t have to put a ton of energy into going, Oh, what was I going to do next?

Oh, where did I put my Bible? Oh, I had it in the other room last night. Just making sure that things are getting put where they go. Obviously, that’s a big task that we all need to work on. I know I’m guilty of leaving things and not putting them back where they go, but I’m working on it. It’s a progress.

It’s not perfection. I have developed this rhythm of planning meals on Thursday nights. Thursday night after my daughter goes to bed, I will go through and plan our meals for the next week, I will order our groceries online, I will make sure that it’s gonna be a good time for them to come, whatever, so usually then we’ll get groceries on Friday, and there may be some meal prepping or chopping that happens on Saturday or Sunday, whether that’s cutting up fruit, or cutting up vegetables for the week, or, um, Making sure that meat’s thawed out or portioned in a container.

There’s things that happen sometimes during the weekend, and it’s not a perfect system. It doesn’t always happen. Some weeks that I know that we’re going to be super busy on the weekends, I’m not going to try to do all that extra. I’m going to just keep things very simplified. I have a list of items that we usually buy every week, so I can go through that.

It’s on an index card. I can go through that index card pretty quickly and go, if we don’t buy it every week, it may be an every other week thing, so I’ll just check the pantry or the fridge. Okay, how much of that do we have? Do we need more? Yes, we do. Add it to the cart. I usually can run through that pretty quickly, and then I will buy whatever we need for the planned meals.

And my husband also knows too, like when I’m going to be doing the grocery list, if there’s anything that he wants, he’ll add that those things to the grocery list or say, Hey, when you do the shopping, make sure we get some of this or that. But I will tell you what used to happen so that you know what life used to look like.

It used to be, I kind of did the meal planning and the grocery list, like, when I got around to it. So it’s like, sometimes it might be Thursday night, but then other days, times it might be Friday. And then I’m ordering the food on Friday, but then I’m not really getting it till Saturday. And then I might not have an ingredient for something I need.

Oh, no, I have a brunch I’ve got to go to Saturday morning, but I didn’t have the order in time to make sure that the ingredient got here. So then I’m running to the store and nobody quite knows when groceries are arriving or not arriving. Do you see the difference there? One feels a lot more chaotic and one feels a lot more safer or comfortable because everybody knows kind of what the routine is and what the structure is, and we know when we’re going to be getting items in the house.

And I know too that that time is dedicated and blocked off on my calendar and in my life for that purpose. And understand that everything that I’m telling you, there’s a flexibility and a rhythm and a flow to it. If I am sick as a dog Thursday night, I’m not going to be planning meals for the next week.

I’m going to be resting and rejuvenating and just telling my husband, we’re going to eat what’s already in the house for a little bit until I can get back on my feet. Or if there’s something I really need, I might have him order the groceries. Don’t allow OCD to make you some type of slave to your routine.

Where it says, well, you said you were going to do the groceries on Thursday night. So therefore you have to do them Thursday night. No, I don’t have to. It just makes life a little bit easier or the rhythm a little bit better. But the world is not going to collapse if I don’t order the groceries until Friday or Saturday, things will be quite OK.

Leaving room to be flexible and adaptable is really healthy for your brain. Step number four is to focus on one routine at a time until it gets really solidified in your brain, until you get in that rhythm. Don’t try to create a completely new schedule for yourself where if you’re currently getting up at 7 a.

m. you’re wanting to get up all of a sudden at 5. You’ll be able to do that for a few days. But then you’re going to burn out, probably crash, be exhausted. And if you want to get up two hours earlier, you’re going to have to adjust the time that you go to bed. Morning success starts the night before type of situation.

You don’t want to be white knuckling through routines. That’s not the design of them. Remember, there should be some element of ease and flow. When you make one small change at a time, you’re much more likely to stick with it. That’s why I’m saying focus on one routine, and you may just focus on getting that one healthy routine established, solidified in your life for a month, and that’s okay.

You’re going to learn it, you’re going to flow with it, you’re going to recognize pieces that aren’t working, that might need to change, you’re going to feel probably really good and accomplished, even 20 days, for example, that if this was a daily routine that you were trying to establish, for example, right?

That’s good. That’s still much more than what you were doing before, which might have been 10, or it might have been zero. I don’t know the particular routine that you’re trying to add to your life. When we try to make large, drastic, all at once changes, typically our brain and our body resists that. And like I said, we can do it maybe for a little while or white knuckle our way through it, but then eventually we will go back and revert to our old behavior.

This is an example that I use with clients pretty frequently, is that if you change the rudder controls, what direction the ship is going to go in, even if you make a minor adjustment to that rudder, over time, that boat is going to be going in a vastly different direction. You may not see it at first, when it first goes out.

But over give it time and all of a sudden, wow, that ship will be very far from the direction that it was originally going. There’ll be a big gap between where it was if it had just kept going in the same direction versus if it just changed slightly. And so you want to think about slight changes.

measurable changes that you can make that can lead to long term different results. And then the last thing I would tell you is not to give up. This can be a challenge for you in your life. And when you try to do healthy things for yourself, OCD might get in the way. Doubt or self confidence issues might get in the way.

Your past might get in the way. But don’t give up on those positive things that you really feel convicted by the Lord that you need to be doing, whether that is spending daily dedicated time with him, whether that’s exercise, whether that’s putting healthier food in your body, whether that’s connecting with more social relationships or friendships.

Instead of shutting down, giving up and doing nothing or reverting back to former behaviors. Recognize where things went awry, and actually expect that sometimes things aren’t going to work out as planned, or aren’t going to go according to your routine. And that is an opportunity for you to then tweak and make changes as necessary.

And you can continue tweaking and continue making changes until things are really solidified, and you have these healthy routines without obsessing about them. That is what I hope for all of you in this new year. I hope you will join me next week as we have a very special guest. Brittany Poppy is going to share her story about how she felt like she could not be forgiven for something that she did and how God broke through through his word to show her that she absolutely is.

So next week, our episode is going to be when God forgives what you can’t forget. And I really hope that you will join us for that personal experience episode. To receive weekly encouragement, find out about our monthly meet the podcast host zoom meetings and receive information on exclusive sales, become an email insider today.

All you have to do is go to carriebock.com and scroll towards the bottom of the page. You’ll find a spot to put in your email and receive a free download in your inbox from us. 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.

155.  I Can’t Sleep! 3 Tips While Struggling with OCD 

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

In this episode, Carrie dives into the connection between sleep and mental health, sharing insights from her journey with sleep apnea and the transformative power of better sleep habits.

You’ll also hear snippets from past episodes, including discussions with Martin Reed and Dr. Charles Page, who offer fresh perspectives on insomnia.

Episode Highlights:

  • Practical tips for improving your sleep habits.
  • Common symptoms of sleep apnea and how to address them.
  • Why striving for “perfect sleep duration” might be harming you.
  • The benefits of embracing natural sleep patterns.
  • Insights from Martin Reed and Dr, Charles Page on managing insomnia effectively.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to episode 155 of Christian Faith and OCD, part of our New Year’s Desires series. Instead of just setting resolutions, I want to help you act on what you truly desire. For some of you, that might be a good night’s sleep. If that’s you, I’m here to offer insights that might help you get better rest tonight.

Before diving into today’s tips, I want to mention a great opportunity: Christian’s Learning ICBT is closing soon, and I’d love for you to join us. For more info, head to carriebock.com/training.

Now, onto better sleep. My first tip is to rule out physical causes like sleep apnea. In episode 116, I shared my own experience with sleep apnea, even though I didn’t fit the typical risk profile. I didn’t realize that my family history played a role, but once I got tested, I learned a lot about how sleep apnea affects not just your physical health but also your mental and emotional well-being. If you suspect you might have sleep apnea, get tested—it’s treatable, and untreated sleep apnea can lead to serious health risks.

Sleep apnea happens when your airway collapses during sleep, causing you to stop breathing for short periods. This can happen many times throughout the night, leading to excessive daytime fatigue, snoring, trouble focusing, and even depression. The good news is CPAP therapy can help, and technology has improved to make it more comfortable than ever. .

Sleep problems might not always be about sleep apnea. If you’re struggling, speak with your doctor and consider a sleep study. Episode 68 featured Martin Reed, who discussed how CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia) helped him sleep better after traditional advice failed. You might not need 8 hours of sleep, as sleep needs vary from person to person. Instead, focus on creating an environment that supports rest.

Another tip for improving your sleep is to reflect on if God might be trying to speak to you. This insight goes back to episode 51, where Dr. Charles Page, a sleep expert, shared how he handles being woken up in the middle of the night. Many of you might relate to this feeling—you fall asleep just fine, but then wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep. This tip is especially for you.

Tune in to learn more tips if you’re struggling with insomnia and looking for practical ways to find peace and rest.

Explore Related Episodes:

116. Why Am I depressed and Tired All the Time? Could it be Sleep Apnea? with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

Welcome to episode 155, where we are in a series called New Year’s Desires because we don’t want to just make resolutions. We want to be acting out of our desires. I know that some of you are just really desiring sleep. And if that’s you. This episode is hopefully going to help you know what to do to sleep a little bit better at night.

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. Genuinely, one of my desires for 2025 is to know how to serve you, the listening audience, better. So if there’s anything that I can do in order to do that, I’d love to hear from you. You can always contact me through our website, carrriebock.com/podcast. There are forums on there you can fill out if you just want to leave a comment, episode suggestion, whatever you want to do.

We’re also currently in the homestretch. If you want to get into Christian’s Learning ICBT, I would love to have you. You can go to carriebock.com/training for more info. My first tip for better sleep is to rule in or out any physical causes that might be causing you sleep disruption. I talked about my own journey of being diagnosed with sleep apnea back in episode 116.

I’m going to play you a snippet from that episode, but before I do, what I want to add is that I was not your typical sleep apnea risk factor individual. What I mean by that is typically someone who has a larger neck circumference or is significantly overweight is at higher risk for sleep apnea.

However, I believe that, based on other family members who also have sleep apnea, that some of my condition is genetic. I can look back and see now that I know more about sleep apnea, I can see how my mom had some of the symptoms, and definitely My father did as well. Neither one of them were treated for it.

Because of what I’ve been through, I often will talk with clients or friends or family members that have some of these same sleep apnea symptoms and encourage them to get a sleep study because we’re in a day and age where that’s not hard to do. You can do it at home, you can get a device that they put on your finger and it will measure how many times you stop breathing, roughly.

It’s not a perfect, accurate measurement and if it comes out undetermined, you may have to do an in person sleep study. But it’s worth it just to know or to rule this in or out because it’s very treatable and the results of not getting treated are detrimental to your health physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

LRE. Sleep apnea is when the muscles in the neck relax at night, causing the airway to collapse, causing someone to stop breathing for a short period of time. This can actually happen many times in a single hour of sleep. So imagine multiplying that by the number of hours that you sleep at night, meaning that you could potentially stop sleeping 30, 50 times in a night easily.

The symptoms of sleep apnea are daytime sleepiness, fatigue, snoring. I didn’t realize that snoring meant that somehow your airway was constricted. I thought it was just a thing that some people did. Observed episodes of stopped breathing. Sometimes that may happen if you have somebody that you’re sleeping with at night, like a spouse.

Waking up during the night, gasping, choking with a rapid heartbeat or in a panic. This is an important symptom for some of you who are struggling with anxiety. You may not know that just waking up in a panic might be a symptom of sleep apnea. Morning headaches. And when you lose oxygen to the brain, your head hurts.

Trouble focusing, even on tasks that should be routine or pretty simple. Depression, blood pressure fluctuations can happen with sleep apnea. Restless leg syndrome or jerking movements during sleep. If your legs or arms just seem to be jerking a lot. That’s your body trying to wake you up. And the treatment for sleep apnea is CPAP therapy, which is where a machine blows air into your airway to keep it open, keep it from collapsing.

You may have heard all kinds of horrors about CPAP therapy, but I really didn’t have too much trouble adjusting. CPAP machines and masks. Slowly making them more and more comfortable, getting you fitted the right way so that it’s easier to get adjusted to. So often, we assume that mental health problems are always based in our mind alone.

And you have to understand that our physical health and our mental health are so intertwined. Sometimes there is a genuine medical route that is either causing your mental health symptoms, or it could be exacerbating those symptoms. Maybe you have a propensity already towards anxiety and depression, but lack of oxygen to your brain due to sleep apnea is just exacerbating that problem so much more.

If you have any of these things, symptoms that I listed before and they just seem chronic, they’re not going away, they’re not getting better. All your blood work looks fabulous but you know something’s wrong. Please get tested. Don’t let the CPAP horror stories deter you. Untreated sleep apnea puts you at greater risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

So please get tested. At least rule it in or out if you suspect that you may have sleep apnea at all. It’s been over a year since my sleep apnea diagnosis and I can tell you that I am a dedicated CPAP user. It has honestly transformed my life. I feel so much better, so much more able to think clearly, be productive, feel alert, and present with my family.

There is no reason to continue feeling horribly if you don’t have to. Maybe it’s not sleep apnea, but there could be another physiological reason that you’re not getting sleep. Make sure that you talk to your doctor about it and get a referral for a sleep study if needed. In episode 68, we talked with Martin Reed about approaching insomnia differently.

He had a story of being taught all of the general information that there is about sleep, about how to create a good sleep environment, make sure that you’re in a positive sleep routine, etc, etc. And found that he was still having a lot of trouble sleeping, which caused him to pursue further information on CBT I for insomnia.

One of the things that I asked him about was regarding, is it true that we all need eight hours of sleep? Because maybe some of you are putting pressure on yourself to try to get a certain amount of hours of sleep at night.

Martin Reed: There is a lot of misleading information out there about sleep. A lot of it does focus on sleep duration.

So many of us can have the belief that we need to get eight hours of sleep, or we need to get a certain amount of sleep. The thing about that is anytime we read information about we should be getting a certain amount of sleep, it’s always just based on averages. It’s a bit like saying everyone should be five foot, 10 inches tall, just because that’s the average height.

I don’t know if that is, but I’m just guessing here, you know, that all I’m just getting at is it’s just one of these things that’s based on averages. So there are always going to be happy, healthy people that exist outside of these averages and. Just like with our height, we can’t control sleep duration.

We can use our behaviors in a way that creates good conditions for sleep, but in terms of how much sleep we’re going to get, we have no control over that. And often we get most caught up in the struggle when we do try and control that. They don’t need to aim for eight hours or seven hours of sleep. You know, they just need to allot an appropriate amount of time for sleep.

You know, give themselves the opportunity to get sleep. And the body is always going to generate, at the very least, the bare minimum amount of sleep we need, no matter what, as long as we’re giving it the opportunity to generate sleep. We never lose the ability to sleep. So it’s really about just trying to not control things that we cannot control.

And sleep duration is one of the things that we can’t control, unfortunately.

Carrie: Are there any helpful tips for people who just have a hard time shutting their mind off, want to go to sleep?

Martin Reed: Yeah, definitely. Well, I think first and foremost is making sure we only go to bed when we’re. Truly sleepy enough for sleep.

I’m talking about finding it hard to stay awake because our sleep drive system will always overpower like that arousal system or the mental chatter. Once it’s strong enough, no matter what, without fail, it might take a night or two, but sleep will always happen. That sleep drive will always be strong enough at some point.

So we can always get ourselves one step ahead by making sure we only go to bed when there’s that strong sense of sleepiness. And then in terms of all that mental chatter, all the mental gymnastics, really all that is, it’s our brain looking out for us. You know, it’s not our brain trying to cause us problems.

It’s like our brain is being a really overly enthusiastic friend who’s trying so hard to help us out. It’s just kind of getting in the way. I think just recognizing that, you know, this isn’t an adversarial relationship. It’s just our brain trying too hard to help us out. That can be helpful. And just recognizing that that’s what our brain does.

Our brain’s number one priority is to look out for us. Often we get most caught up in all this mental stuff when we quite understandably try to fight them or avoid these thoughts, these feelings, these emotions, because they’re unpleasant. So naturally we don’t want to experience them. But unfortunately, that’s when we usually get most caught up in the struggle, trying to fight them, trying to suppress them.

It’s not usually helpful over the long term. Short term, sometimes we can like push feelings and thoughts away. They always come back and then when they come back, they tend to be stronger. It’s a bit like pushing a beach ball down under the water. You know, it’s just going to push back harder and harder the more we try and push it away.

Sometimes I think it’s just helpful to recognize like, this is my mind looking out for me. I’m feeling, identifying and acknowledging everything you’re feeling. This is my anxiety coming back. This is my frustration, my anger, whatever it is you’re feeling, just identifying it, labeling it, recognizing it, not trying to fight it or push it away can be really helpful.

Just the fact that we’re thinking Thinking certain things or our mind is racing doesn’t mean we’re not going to be able to sleep. We can still sleep when we have difficult thoughts and difficult feelings and difficult emotions, but it becomes a lot more difficult for that to happen when we try and get engaged in controlling them and pushing them away or trying to avoid them, trying to fight them.

And I think, you know, as a last resort was if you’re just spending a lot of time in bed and it really just does not feel good to be in bed. It might be helpful to just get out of bed and just do something a bit more pleasant until conditions feel a bit better for sleep.

Carrie: I wanted to share that I know what it’s like to not be able to sleep.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had very intense restless leg syndrome, and nothing would relieve that. There wasn’t any medication that I could safely take while pregnant. I remember just crying and begging God in the middle of the night that I would just be able to sleep. I will say that God didn’t always give me rest during those periods, but what he did give me.

was his strength and power to keep going through those difficult times until I could get to a place where I could sleep again. One thing that often troubles us and keeps us up at night is stressing about not sleeping. We will watch the clock. We will think, Oh, I only have three more hours and then I have to get up for work or, Oh, no, what if I can’t fall back asleep?

It’s 2 a. m. right now. So if you can come to an acceptance of things outside of your control, even though you can create the optimal environment for sleep. That may not mean that you get the sleep that you need. That’s a hard thing when you feel like, okay, well, I’m avoiding the caffeine, and I have a dark, cool room at night, and I’m going to bed around the same time, and I’m, etc.,

etc. All the things that people tell you to do. So what we can do is do the best that we can, and then we have to rest everything else in God’s hands. So Martin there really gave us tip number two, which I labeled as resist the urge to fight your inner experience. We talk about this a lot on the podcast, learning to be in a state of mindfulness.

It takes practice. It takes intentionality. It is not going to happen overnight. But learning to really be present and say, Okay, I’m feeling angry. I can sit with that for a moment. I can be curious about it. I don’t have to immediately make it go away. I don’t have to immediately judge it. I can create space and allowance for this emotion, and in doing so, that often gives the freedom for that emotion to dissipate.

Emotions are like waves. They will come up, and they will go down. If we try to block them or stop them at some point, it usually makes the entire process last longer, and we end up in a longer period of suffering than we really need to be in. Mindfulness helps you create a sense of distress tolerance, being able to tolerate difficult thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.

And our third tip is to reflect. On if there is something God is trying to speak to you. This comes way back from episode 51, Surrendering Our Insomnia to God with Dr. Charles Page. And he shares how he handles being woken up in the middle of the night. As I know some of you feel like, hey, I can fall asleep just fine, but then I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back to sleep.

So this tip is for you.

Dr. Charles Page: Sleep was God’s idea. We were created to sleep. And I think one of the big ideas that the scriptures tells us, and it kind of fits in with the rest of our lives. One of the reasons I think we were to sleep is God really wanted us to turn off. You think about the creation story, I mean, starting in Genesis one, it says in the evening and the morning were the first day.

And so it’s funny, you know, we get it the other way around. We think, well, you know, when the day starts, when the sun comes up, when I get up in the morning, that’s when the day starts. When a competing thought or worrying thought enters our mind, we can’t just take it out of our mind because it’ll boomerang back into our thinking.

We have to replace it. And that’s where meditation comes in. For example, Philippians chapter four, you know, talks about there’s anything good, anything noble, you know, think about these things, just talking about that kind of that art of meditation. And I think that’s so key for us, you know, because, you know, you show me your focus, I’ll show you your future.

And as we begin to focus on the scriptures, It begins to fill our minds with the good stuff. You can even go back to the Psalms. For example, if you think about David, one of the Psalms is the fourth Psalm. It was an evening Psalm that David prayed when he was going through the toughest time in his life.

This was when Absalom had usurped the throne and he was running for his life, crossing the sea. Jordan River. I mean, just multiple stuff that was robbing him of sleep. And as he goes through this process, you know, at the end, he says in Psalm 48, I will lay me down in peace and sleep for you, O Lord, let me dwell in safety.

And so this process of prayer and meditation, I think, is huge. For me, when I am woken up in the middle of the night, one thing that I’ve learned to do many times. When I’m kind of tossing and turning in my bed is take a step back and listen to God. Sometimes those are opportunities that God is trying to get our attention.

I think most of us in the culture that we live, man, we’re going so fast during the day that we don’t have time to really stop and listen. God wants to speak to us and sometimes He has to wake us up at night to get our attention. In 1 Samuel, you know, the story of Samuel, he has a little boy and he’s there and he’s there at the temple with Eli and he’s going to sleep, you know.

God’s saying, Samuel, Samuel, when he gets up and goes to Eli, it’s back and forth, you know, and all the time God’s trying to get his attention to give him a message and he doesn’t catch it. And I wonder how many times I’ve done that. It’s actually an opportunity to meet with God and think about what Samuel would have missed out on if he hadn’t.

He would have never stopped and heard that when that was the beginning of a series of steps that set Samuel in the direction. So often when I’m waking up in the middle of the night, just kind of keeping in my mind, you know, God, are you saying something to me? And sometimes he’s not. I always try to keep a journal at the bedside because, you know, sometimes a thought will come into my mind.

It may be just a random thought, or it may be something that’s really something that God has woken us up to tell us.

Carrie: To sum up, our sleep tips are the three R’s. Rule in or out any physical causes that may be causing sleep disruption. Two, resist the urge to fight your inner experience. And three, reflect on if there is something God is trying to speak to you.

I hope these tips helped you, and if they did, feel free to share with a friend.

To receive weekly encouragement, find out about our monthly Meet the Podcast host Zoom meetings, and receive information on exclusive sales, become an email insider today. All you have to do is go to carriebock.com and scroll towards the bottom of the page.

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153. What if I Can’t Relax? How to Start

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

In today’s episode, Carrie discusses the challenge of finding true relaxation when your mind is constantly racing. She offers insights on how our bodies hold onto stress and provides practical tips on how to begin retraining our brains and nervous system for relaxation.

Episode Highlights:

  • Why relaxation can feel impossible when you’re constantly performing
  • The value of rest, as Jesus exemplified, and how to apply it in your own life
  • How to begin retraining your brain and body to embrace relaxation, even in small doses
  • Practical tips on mindfulness and distress tolerance to help you relax and be present
  • How to use spiritual practices and reflection to discover the root of your tension and find healin.

Episode Summary:

Do you ever feel like your mind is constantly racing, and your body is tight, tense, and unable to let go? 

Why is it so hard to relax? In our Western culture, we place a lot of value on performance and productivity. We’re constantly running, whether it’s in our jobs, parenting, or personal health. But Jesus, our Savior, modeled a life of simplicity and focus on God’s will, not on personal achievement or status. As Christians, our worth isn’t based on what we do but on God’s love and purpose for us.

If you’re finding it hard to relax, it might be due to a cycle of constant performance – whether for your boss, your family, or even for God. But the truth is, God wants us to honor Him by finding balance and rest.

Sometimes, the struggle to relax also stems from our past – whether from growing up in a high-stress environment or dealing with trauma. Our nervous systems often remain on high alert long after the threat is gone.

Relaxation isn’t just about taking a break—it’s about retraining our minds and bodies to slow down and trust in God’s timing. In this episode, I’ll guide you through practical steps you can start using right now where you can fully disconnect from the hustle and experience true relaxation. 

Tune in for more insights and practical tools to find deeper peace in your mind and body, and learn how to grow in your walk with God while overcoming OCD.

Explore Related Episode:

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

Transcript

Do you feel like your mind is always going, just constant movement, constant thought process? Is your body just so tensed up and tight? Your stomach’s tight or your chest feels constantly tight? These are the kinds of things that I hear about from clients regularly. I just can’t seem to relax. My body just won’t be able to let go.

So I thought it would be a good time right before hopefully you have some time off to talk about what to do if you can’t relax and how to get started with that process.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bach. 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. Before I forget, I want to say Merry Christmas to everyone. A week from today is Christmas Day, so we won’t be producing an episode that week. It will be worth the wait, though, because on January 1st, I have Jen Tucker back on the podcast. If you remember, we did an episode back with her on breath prayers, so catch up on that one during Christmas week if you haven’t already listened to it.

Jen is coming back on the show to talk with us about a ancient form of Christian meditation that she’s implemented in her own life to help her grow deeper in her walk with God as well as reduce anxiety. So it’s a great episode when you’re not going to want to miss. What if you feel like you can’t relax?

You may even be asking yourself this question, why is it that I have difficult time relaxing? One reason is that we place so much value, especially in Western culture, I don’t know if it’s the same in other cultures around the world, but we place so much value on performance. And what are you doing? We don’t place a high value on rest, which means that we’re constantly trying to run around and be productive.

We’re productive in our parenting by taking our kids to extracurricular activities. We’re productive in our work life by producing something and then, oh, we have to have a side hustle because Jenny down the street does and she wants to get out of her corporate job. Not really asking ourself if that is even right for this time or season in our life.

Then we’ve got to be productive in our health, doing some type of exercise, workout program, hit this, or, oh, I’m doing this XYZ cleanse on my body. I’m not that crunchy, but these are the things that you hear people talk about, right? Everybody’s like, We have to have goals and what’s your goal for your life right now and achievement, achievement, achievement.

We take that and create some type of meaning about ourselves. Here’s the deal though. When you look at Jesus, we’re trying to follow a Savior who wasn’t about self promotion. In fact, a lot of times when he did miracles or certain things for people he would say, don’t tell anybody. Of course, they were just healed, so they were telling everybody, but he was almost like trying to keep things under the radar until the right time or didn’t want.

People didn’t necessarily make a big deal out of him. Jesus didn’t have a fancy house. He didn’t own a lot of land. He was so focused on what does God want for me today? And just a beautiful thing about that that I am reflecting on is that sometimes that meant taking time with a Samaritan woman at the well, talking to someone who Was at a different racial, class, socio economic level, maybe, than he was.

Sometimes it meant hanging out with the quote, sinners. What was most important to Jesus wasn’t the activity. It wasn’t the money, obviously. It was about really ministering to people and pleasing God. Loving God, loving others. That’s what we need to get back to when we boil it all down as Christians. Our value is not even based on how much quote religious activity we’re engaged in because unfortunately there’s some people listening right now who are doing so much at church that you are on the brink of burnout.

I’ve been there, I know how that is, and you feel like, well, got to do all these things for God. In order for God to be pleased with me to one reason we might not be able to relax is because we are in this frenzy of performance. I want you to evaluate, is that you? Are you trying to constantly perform for your boss, for your spouse, for your kids, for God?

The reality is that we need to have an audience of one and constantly be filtering what we’re doing through, are we honoring and serving God and doing the things that He wants us to do? We’re told to seek His kingdom first and everything else will follow. By dropping your internal performance requirements for yourself, that’s going to get you into a healthier place to be able to change your mindset in order to relax.

Sometimes we have to shift our mind and our body will follow. Sometimes we really have to work on calming our body, and that will help us relax our mind. Those are those two different helpful ways, and we have to know how to do both of those, because our minds and bodies are constantly interacting. It may be time to reflect on whether or not you saw your parents relax and take time off.

Was dad working 70 hours a week and that’s just what you knew therefore followed suit with that? Maybe even you had a stay at home mom But she was constantly running or constantly going or constantly cleaning something and she couldn’t ever just sit down and watch TV Or couldn’t ever just sit down in silence Maybe you’re struggling because you’ve come out of a difficult season where you did have to be on high alert You Due to some type of trauma or due to being in a toxic work environment.

Maybe you’ve gotten out of an unhealthy relationship and your nervous system, a lot of times, it takes time for it to come down, recalibrate, and adjust to what’s actually happening right now. If you have not heard, trauma is not something that’s just stored in your brain, it’s stored in your body as well.

Oftentimes our body has not caught up to what our brain already knows. This is why people come into counseling and say, I know that OCD is being ridiculous. I know when I’m in a clear headspace these things are not true, but they feel intensely true and my body is responding in a real way to the sphere.

And I’m like, yes, it is. Learning to regulate your nervous system in small doses is the key here. That’s what I want you to pick up as a main point from this entire episode. You are literally having to retrain your brain and body if you’re in that high alert, fight, flight, or freeze state constantly. And there are some people who come in And what I say is, it’s like their nervous system is on fire.

So if your nervous system is on fire, number one, please remember that medication is an option for you. And know that there isn’t a quick fix to this. It’s going to take some time to re regulate your nervous system, to re train your brain. There’s no magic wand that we can zap over you and help you to be more calm, but it is going to take consistent retraining where you say to yourself, all right, let me sit here for one minute and not do anything.

If you’re one of those people that’s constantly on the go, constantly moving, constantly performing. Just take a minute to sit and purposefully not do anything because what that’s doing is it’s telling your brain This is okay. The first time you do it, it’s gonna be super uncomfortable. Just prepare yourself for that You’re not gonna know what to do with yourself.

You might be fidgety. You might be feeling not so great But the more that you do that and then slowly kind of increase some of that time like okay nervous system I just want you to know We’re just sitting here, we are valuing rest, we are valuing relaxation, we are valuing what the scripture teaches us about Sabbath, that is one of the big reasons for Sabbath is to rest in the dependency that we have in God, it’s not all about us.

That one minute that you’re sitting there not performing and doing anything. It’s a great time to start practicing mindfulness. What mindfulness does is it increases our awareness and helps us develop what we call distress tolerance. Distress tolerance is what it sounds like. It’s your ability to tolerate uncomfortable emotions, to tolerate anxiety, anger, sadness, whatever is coming up in your internal experience.

mindfulness. It helps you be able to tolerate the distress of thoughts that are there while at the same time creating this third person perspective where you’re becoming an observer of your own experience without being caught up in the middle of it. Becoming an observer, being curious about your experience, allows you to increase your awareness of what’s actually going on in the present moment.

And when you are able to isolate the present from the past and the future, that reduces a lot of distress. Because we only have to worry about right now. I can’t fix tomorrow. It’s like Jesus said, let tomorrow worry about itself. It’s another day. I think a lot of times people try to practice mindfulness or meditation and they give up too early because it’s hard and it’s uncomfortable and it’s not a clear one, two, three step process to a new life.

It is a deeper level work. It’s an introspective level work that often we’re not taught how to do that. Going back to, we just stay busy and we focus on doing. God is not just interested in what we do, God is interested in who we are. So if we’re going to have true character formation, we have to go a little bit deeper.

I want to give you a little bit of an example of something that as I’m recording this I’m processing through in my own life. I’ve been noticing that I’ve been more irritable lately and noticing that and it has allowed me to pray about that. Ask God, okay, what is going on in my spirit? What is happening with me emotionally that is causing me to be more irritable?

Irritability is getting in the way of me producing the fruits of the Spirit that I want to be producing, like patience and kindness. Becoming aware of this process within myself and my recent behavior allows me to confess this to God and it allows me to become curious and to say, Okay, God, I am submitting myself.

To the transformational work in the Holy Spirit. I cannot do this on my own. I cannot fix this irritability on my own Give me wisdom and guidance and I’ve asked so many questions. Like what is contributing to this? Is this a Physiological change hormonal change that’s happening. Is there something that I’m angry about?

Is there someone that I haven’t forgiven that I need to forgive? It’s a process. It doesn’t happen necessarily all at once. As you’re reflecting and maybe taking this difficulty to relax before the Lord, God will give you wisdom. God will give you spiritual peace. God will give you guidance on whatever your next step is.

But if we don’t take the time to even sit and acknowledge, Hey, this is an issue. And I know for my, the betterment of my physical, emotional and spiritual health, I want to be able to learn how to relax, how to let go, how to trust, how to really know deep in my soul that God is in control. I don’t have to control everything in my environment.

What we’re talking about is sanctification. This process of becoming more like Christ, and for me, meditating on scriptures about anger, I want to be slow to become angry. For you, it might be meditating on scriptures that have to do with Sabbath or trust or that God loves you. Really allowing those scriptures to sink down deeply into you.

Another thing I will tell you in terms of being able to relax is that sometimes we can put too much pressure on ourselves to relax. I don’t know if you’ve ever been at the doctor’s office or getting a massage and they’re telling you to relax and then you’re having struggles like, Oh no, now that I’m thinking about trying to relax, it’s just really hard to.

I had a situation with a doctor where they were trying to look at my throat and she had the dreaded tongue depressor on my tongue and I felt like I was going to gag. So she tells me just to relax. I’m like, okay, Carrie, I understand this. Because when you’re anxious, one of the things that can happen is that your throat can close up.

I don’t know if my throat was constricting or if my tongue was, like, stiff. I don’t know what was going on, but clearly she knew that I was having trouble at this moment. And I also thought, how do you relax when somebody has this tongue depressor so far back in there? It’s a trouble. But I did breathe, and I think we were able to get the throat looked at.

This is why sometimes people will say that deep breathing exercises don’t work for them. First of all, some people do have obsessions about breathing when they start to focus on their breathing. So notice if that’s you, you probably don’t want to be doing deep breathing exercises. And there may be other people who do deep breathing exercises where they don’t get obsessions, but they get so focused on trying really hard to relax that it actually makes them more tense because they don’t feel a level of safety in order to be able to relax.

Typically, that’s a trauma response to something that’s happened in your life, like your nervous system is like, no, that feels too vulnerable to relax. Sometimes it may be difficult to relax in front of other people where you feel like you can’t actually relax on your own. That’s also a thing. I had to learn this very early working with clients with chronic anxiety or PTSD to be super nonchalant about if they weren’t able to relax in session and just roll with it and try something different.

Now, with Parth’s work, we’re able to explore a little bit more. Okay, well tell me about that part that doesn’t feel safe to relax or that part that feels like it has to be going all the time or has to be performing. Maybe there’s a sense that you feel like you have to be managing or somehow on all the time, if that makes sense.

In your process of learning to relax, I want you to see if you can find some things that bring you joy. It’s okay to let go and have a little fun. We don’t have to be serious all the time. Is there a movie or TV show that just makes you laugh out loud? I’ve shared about this before, but one of the things that I find relaxing is Paint by Numbers, because I don’t have to think about what color I have to paint it.

I don’t have to think about freehanding something, which, first of all, I do not have the artistic talent for, but it’s a slow, kind of steady, easygoing process. I can do a little bit and then put it down for a little while. I can come back to it. And it feels good for me to be creative. Maybe you’re not a creative person, but you like fixing things or tinkering with different projects.

Maybe you find just laying out in the sunshine to be relaxing. Some people like baths. They find those as relaxing. I went through a period with that. I can find baking relaxing sometimes, I don’t do that as much anymore, but there was a period of my life where work was really crazy, I never knew what was going to be thrown at me, but I knew that I could come home, throw some ingredients together, put it in the oven, and come out with banana bread, and something felt really wonderful and magical about that because it was predictable when everything else was not predictable.

What is it for you? What is a small step that you can take to retrain your brain to learn that relaxing is okay, and that you can relax and let go a little bit? Don’t try to change this one overnight. But if you do have some type of trauma in your past that you feel like is keeping you from being able to relax, I would say definitely find a trauma therapist, somebody that can do some type of EMDR, brain spotting, something that’s really going to get your brain and your body engaged in the process.

Somatic experiencing is also really great. Wherever you are in your journey, remember to just be very kind to yourself. And remember, these small steps, even one minute of mindfulness can add up and cause a ripple effect to bigger change. 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 Law Counseling.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for, seeking mental health treatment in your area.

152. Struggling with Motivation in OCD Therapy? A 4 step process to get going!

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

In this episode, Carrie shares practical insights on overcoming barriers to motivation, especially when dealing with OCD. She breaks down how to identify what’s holding you back, practice self-compassion, and approach challenges with grace and curiosity. 

Episode Highlight:

  • Why it’s hard to motivate yourself, even when you want to make changes
  • How OCD therapy can be challenging and exhausting, but you can keep going
  • How focusing on priorities, rather than making excuses, can help you make time for recovery
  • Why saying “no”  to OCD opens up time for self-care and better habits
  • How to get specific about what you want in your life and why it’s important for motivation
  • How rewarding yourself and tracking progress can help you stay motivated on your recovery journey

Episode Summary:

Have you ever felt stuck, wondering why you can’t just motivate yourself to do the things you really want to do? Trust me, you’re not alone.

Today’s episode is all about the struggle with motivation. You know that feeling when you have a goal, but somehow can’t bring yourself to take the next step? It’s common in OCD therapy. 

As a counselor, I’ve worked with many people who struggle with motivation because of OCD. They spend hours on rituals like washing or seeking reassurance, leaving little time or energy for the healthy habits that are essential for healing. If you’re feeling stuck or frustrated with your progress, I want to help you shift your mindset. Let’s stop being hard on ourselves and instead ask: What’s in the way, and how can I overcome it with God’s strength?

In today’s episode, I’ll share practical tips to help you stay motivated, whether it’s focusing on therapy, prioritizing self-care, or simply setting small, achievable goals. We’ll also talk about how rewarding yourself for even the tiniest victories can keep you moving forward, one step at a time.

Tune in to learn how to embrace progress over perfection, stay motivated, and lean into God’s strength as you work toward healing.

Explore Related Episode:

130. Need More Than Weekly Therapy? Is a Therapy Retreat Right for You? with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

Have you ever felt like, why am I not doing the thing that I say I want to do? Why can I not motivate myself, get my butt in gear to do the things that are important to me? That is 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 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. You may know that Christians Learning ICBT is starting January 13th. And while this training is geared towards lay people, not necessarily professionals, we did have one professional join us this fall.

So I wanted to play you a little snippet of what her experience was like. Hello, I am Erica Kesey. As a therapist and a coach, I have been able to take this information and use it with my clients to be able to actually break them free from those obsessions. It’s been absolutely amazing, and now it has totally unlocked them in ways that we would never been able to do it without this training. To find out more information about Christians Learning ICBT, go to carriebock.com/training. I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you may have had a particular goal in your life that you were wanting to achieve. But then when you actually go to put the steps in place, it seems like you just can’t push yourself to do it.

You just can’t seem to get there. What I see in OCD therapy is a couple different things. One, it’s hard. It’s not easy in this recovery process. You guys, the OCD warriors out there, It’s hard to keep going day after day when you feel like you’re fighting all of these thought processes and you might have struggled to get particular help that you’ve been looking for.

You might have tried a couple things that haven’t worked for you, and it just seems hard to pick yourself up to keep going and going again. With clients, what I see is that, well, I’ll give them homework, or they’ll have a specific goal they’re working towards, or some small actionable step that they’re going to take that week.

It could just be reading their ICBT homework, writing their obsessional story. It could be a goal towards stress management and reducing their stress level at home. And then we come back the next week and maybe they haven’t done the thing. And I think for a lot of us, it goes towards this road of shame.

Like, oh, I didn’t do the thing I said I was gonna do. I feel awful about it. I’d like to take a different perspective and say, okay, well, let’s reduce the judgment and reduce the shame on it and just be curious about it. What got in the way of you doing the thing? Or what do you feel like is the roadblock or the barrier?

I think your first step really is to be curious about this motivation issue. Like if you were an employer and you had an employee that wasn’t working very hard, you could go really hard on them and say, why aren’t you doing the thing that I told you to do? Or you could take a more gentle approach and say, Hey, I noticed your performance standards haven’t really been up to par lately.

Why do you think that is? Help me understand. Tell me what’s going on. Because you might not know. Maybe that person is caring for an aging loved one. Maybe they’re under some health stress that they’re not gonna tell you about. This is a way that we want to be with ourself. Just very gentle, self compassionate.

Okay, so I didn’t do the thing that I set out to do. Let me be curious about that. Are there thoughts connected to that? Is there a sense of hopelessness? Like, I could try this, but I just don’t feel like it’s ever gonna get any better. It could be that you feel like you don’t have any time for your OCD therapy, or you don’t have time to engage in the things that your therapist is asking you to do.

When we say we don’t have time for something, what I hear is, I’m prioritizing other things over that. So what am I prioritizing over engaging in strategies that are actually going to help move the needle and get you to a positive place with your OCD recovery process? And it’s amazing when you say no to OCD, just a little bit, imagine how much time you can get back.

Because what I hear is people telling me that they’re spending two hours washing something. Or they went down the YouTube rabbit hole trying to get some type of reassurance for their relationship issue that could have been funneled into doing something more healthy for their self care or for their OCD recovery.

You might not have time to do things that will be helpful to you, like journal, or meal plan, or other healthy habits, taking a walk, exercise, because you are spending a lot of time scrolling. We have to be honest with ourselves and take a hard look. I took the Facebook app off my phone because I was habitually going into it.

I still struggle some with habitually checking my emails, it’s like, oh, is there a new email in there? I don’t know why I get so excited about email, it’s still gonna be there, it can wait. My point is, how much activity are you spending on things that are mindless and not really helping you with your physical, mental, or emotional health?

I know some of you out there are my caretaker individuals, and you are so focused on taking care of your children, making sure that your household is run well, taking care of your husband, taking care of parents, other people, everybody else but yourself. And so in your curiosity process, as you’re going through and examining, why am I not engaging in things that are healthy for me?

Are you feeling guilty because you’re doing things for you instead of doing things for others? This is where I have to go back to Jesus example, where he took time to retreat, to get away from everybody else, to go spend time with the Father, to fill up before he could pour out. Jesus also said no to people.

He took time to rest. He took time to socialize, slow down, dine with people. He was serving, loving, and meeting other people’s needs, but he also knew that he had physical needs and spiritual needs that needed to be attended to. I think some of us who are knee deep in the trenches, doing a lot of work at church, being involved in a lot of Christian activities, I think we forget that our spirituality and our relationship with God is more about being than doing.

Our doing has to flow out of our being, otherwise we are going to get burnt out because we’re going to be reliant on our own strength instead of plugging in and relying on the strength of God. After you’ve been curious about what’s going on, why am I not doing the things, then we need to go back to, like, get super specific about what is it that you want and why do you want that.

I’ve worked with so many people who will come into counseling and honestly they don’t even know what they want and part of our process is really helping them sink down and tune in and dial into when you say I want to be free from OCD, when you say I want to have peace, Tell me what that looks like. I need to know.

Okay, well, I’m spending this much time taking an hour and a half shower that I could be spending with my child. I’m asking so much reassurance from my spouse that they’re now annoyed and frustrated with me and almost a little cringey when I come to talk to them about something. I need to get back to that friendship relationship with them.

That’s what I want. This is your time to get super specific. You may often look at what you want to remove from your life and I would say that’s not a good place to start because if you remove something from your life, it’s going to have to be like filled in with something else and if we don’t even know what that something else is, there’s not much motivation for us to start removing stuff.

A greater analogy would be that if you have a bunch of weeds in your garden maybe and you want to pull those up so you can pull up the weeds but then if you don’t plant something else there that’s going to flourish and grow and use that soil and expand and spread out eventually like if you were to plant enough plants they would crowd out the weeds logically for the most part.

Or, there might be still a little room for the weeds to grow, but they wouldn’t have the whole garden territory. What are some positives that you can plant in your life that will rowd out the weeds of OCD? I know a lot of you are incredibly smart people, deep thinkers. And you are going to need a healthy way to engage that mental activity.

If we just say, okay, let’s just pluck out the OCD and then you don’t have any other way for your brain to be challenged, that might really hurt you and the OCD just ends up creeping back in there because it’s a way of your brain, like, expanding and problem solving and mulling over things. You might need a healthy project that you can get knee deep in the weeds with and have that level of focus and instead of it going towards OCD problem solving, have it go towards a hobby or a new skill that you want to learn.

Before my daughter was born, I was really engaged in trying to learn Spanish, and I was on the app, and I was playing the different games and trying to figure out what was going on. I have not kept up with that, but my point is, when you are really focused in on a task like that, you’re expanding your brain, you’re using your mental energy, but it’s really hard to focus on anything else at that point, to have other things competing.

So what is it that you really want? Is OCD keeping you from engaging socially? Is it keeping you from dating? Is it keeping you from having more friends? Or going out to restaurants? My point is, you don’t just want OCD to go away, just like someone doesn’t just want to lose weight. There’s a reason they want to lose weight.

They’re looking for more confidence, or for greater health numbers, or the ability to do certain things that they’re not physically able to do now. When you dial into what you really want, it helps you know And stay motivated to move forward. If you can visualize yourself in these positive avenues that you’re looking for, if you can visualize yourself getting in a dating relationship, for example, and I know that that may seem really far off.

It may seem super hard. You may feel very insecure about being able to do something like that because of OCD. For some people, I know it’s having children. They feel so nervous about having children because they’re struggling with OCD. Whatever the thing is, if you can picture it and have that positive picture in your mind going forward, that’s so going to help you stay motivated.

That’s what I’m after. That’s what I’m moving towards. It’s a new identity. A lot of times it’s a new version of yourself. Once you have that positive picture in mind, then I want you to think about what is going to actually motivate you to get there. Now, motivation is interesting because different people are motivated by different things.

There might be something that motivates me that really doesn’t motivate you. And this goes back to what do you want? There are all kinds of different things that you can use to celebrate or reward yourself along the way. We do this with children all the time and we forget to do it as adults. I had a cousin that worked for a major brand, I probably shouldn’t say it, but anyway, this individual worked for a major brand and my aunt said one day, they run that place like a kindergarten classroom.

And I thought, Well, they haven’t been in business for a long time, so there must be a really good reason why they’re running it like a kindergarten classroom. What she meant by that was it wasn’t like they were talking down to them. She meant it in a positive that they had all kinds of goals and rewards and stars and swag that they could get.

Because it works, because those types of things motivate people. So for you, it might be a coffee, it might be, let’s go to this new restaurant that I’ve been wanting to try, let me go get a pedicure. Some of those rewards might be naturally built into what you’re wanting to do. So for example, if someone’s afraid of flying and we help them work through that, They’re able to now go on vacations that they weren’t able to go on before.

Some of the rewards might be naturally built in, but if they’re not, then that’s an opportunity for you to say, Okay, how am I going to make sure that I’m tracking my progress? That I’m really celebrating that I’m talking, it could be as small as when I have a victory over OCD, for example, if Googling is a problem when I say every time that I say no to Googling.

I’m putting a sticker on my calendar, or every time I get away from the sink in ten minutes or less, I’m putting a sticker on my calendar. I’m gonna really celebrate that, and then when I get a certain number of stickers, I’m gonna have this type of reward. Kindergarten classroom it for yourself. Some of you are really motivated by positive words, or by verbal praise.

That’s great. You can do that for yourself or you can have other people around you engaged in that process. Like if you tell your spouse, Hey, whenever you see me really struggling and I don’t ask for reassurance or you see me like, say, start to ask and then stop. Will you please acknowledge that? Will you please say something positive?

Or will you write me a note when you feel like I’ve been doing a little bit better with OCD? It is helpful to have others acknowledge when we’re doing a little bit better, but it’s also important to be able to acknowledge your own accomplishments in this area. When we have praise, that reinforces and makes us want to do that more.

Like I said, we have no problem doing this with children all the time. We’re like, good job, kid. You put your plate in the sink after dinner. My daughter right now, we’re doing the whole like potty training deal. Here’s a gummy bear if you sit on the potty, like, woohoo, we have songs, we have a little book with plays music, all the things to make it a positive, happy, praiseful experience so that she wants to do that more.

The other thing that we do with rewards very easily is we can say, let me get this done and then I’ll go do that, a less preferred task and to a more preferred task. For example, if I say, oh, I’ve really got to write this email out or I’ve really got to work on this report, let me do this first and then I’m going to take a break and do that and go outside and rest for a little bit.

Let’s work really hard as a family to clean the house together and then we’ll order a pizza or go out for dinner. Maybe you’re working on exposures or you’re working on ICBT homework and you say okay after I do this Then I’m going to do something more preferable I’m not gonna watch that show that I have saved in my queue until I’ve done this piece right here So now that we’ve talked about rewards a little bit, and rewarding yourself to be motivated, I want to talk to you about who is on this supportive journey with you.

Do you have friends that know that you’re going through this? Do you have family members? Do you have a spouse? Do you have parents? Like, who is on the journey with you? That you can have healthy accountability with that you can say to that person, like, Hey, ask me, have I done this thing next week? When you see me, I have a business bestie.

We meet once a week and we just talk about it. What are you doing in your business this week? What are you going to be working on? What’s the next step? And just having that healthy check in accountability regularly is so important. And it has helped both of us be able to move our businesses to a healthier place.

You can do that in your OCD recovery process, you can get some friends or family together to check in with you, that you can provide information, I don’t think it’s always just having somebody else, like, ask you, you need to be able to share yourself and be okay asking for what you need, like, hey, hey, Whether that’s what we were talking about before, like asking for praise at certain times, asking, can we go do this together if I meet these certain goals?

I would love to be able to support you in January with Christians Learning ICBT. I am in Tennessee, but we have people from all over that are going to be on there just learning these modules together, learning how to have a healthier, relationship with their OCD, learning to manage their thought process differently, and to say no to OCD’s demands, to give in to compulsions.

I would absolutely love to have you on there. If you go to karybach. com slash training, we’ll also put that link in the show notes for you. But it’s karybach. com slash training. You can find out all about Christians Learning ICBT. You’ll find out when we’re meeting once a week, but even if you aren’t able to meet at that time, we’ve had several people, this cohort who weren’t able to make the lives, but they did go back in and watch the course material.

They set aside an hour and a half a week to really engage with the video and then do the homework and have seen progress. 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.

150. Five Reasons You’re Not Progressing in Your OCD Recovery

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

In this episode, Carrie dives into why you might feel stuck in your OCD recovery and shares powerful strategies to help you break through those barriers and make real progress. 

Episode Highlights:

  • How past experiences and mental health challenges can affect your progress.
  • The role of hopelessness in hindering progress and how to overcome it.
  • How stress management plays a crucial role in OCD recovery.
  • Why trauma can be a major obstacle in your OCD journey.
  • The importance of having the right tools to manage obsessions and compulsions.

Episode Summary:

I’m Carrie Bock, your host, a Christ-follower, wife, mother, and licensed professional counselor who helps Christians navigating OCD find healing and peace.

Have you ever found yourself thinking, Why does it feel like I’m stuck in my OCD recovery? Maybe you’re feeling like you just can’t get ahead, like things should be progressing, but they aren’t. Well, I’ve got you covered.

Today, we’re talking about five reasons why you might be feeling this way.

Reason 1: Hopelessness is Blocking Your Progress.
You might be feeling like there’s no way out, like it’s all too much, and that maybe nothing will work for you. I’ve seen this come up so often in my intensive therapy sessions. It’s normal to feel skeptical if you’ve tried a bunch of things that haven’t worked. But I want you to know something: you can get better. The work we’re doing today is advancing, and we have better tools than ever to help people manage OCD in a more Christ-centered way. The healing God has for you might look different than what you expect, but it’s still available.

Sometimes, the healing you’re asking for might not be what God is offering. Maybe you’re hoping for complete freedom from OCD, but what God wants for you is healing in your heart, teaching you how to trust, persevere, and grow stronger in Him. Don’t give up. Healing can come in many forms.

Reason 2: Stress is Unmanaged.
Let’s face it—life is stressful. Work, relationships, kids, family… It can all feel like a lot. And if you don’t have the right tools to manage that stress, it can fuel your OCD. I’ve talked about this before, and it’s so true: Stress makes OCD worse. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you have to prioritize taking care of yourself—physically, mentally, and spiritually. Stress management might look like saying “no” to some things, setting healthy boundaries, and making time for self-care.

To hear the rest of the reasons and how to overcome them, be sure to tune in to the full episode!

Let’s keep moving forward together. And as always, I’m here to walk with you on this journey of healing and restoration in Christ.

Explore Related Episode:

124. What to do When Compulsions Become Habits and Routines

Transcript

Episode 150. Have you ever wondered why you feel stuck? You feel like you can’t get ahead in your OCD recovery and you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, what is the problem? So I’m going to give you five reasons why 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. Just so you know, we are going to be off for Thanksgiving next week. So we hope that you have an amazing Thanksgiving with your family. You won’t see an episode come out from us. What you will see is an amazing flash sale coming out via email. If you want to be a part of that and get the biggest discount you’re going to see on our January launch of Christians Learning ICBT, you can do that by signing up for our email list, carriebock.com/ocd. One thing that we know about OCD is that it’s a chronic condition that waxes and wanes, typically due to stress. People will tell me, I had years where I wasn’t severely bothered by OCD, or at least it was at some type of manageable level where I could handle it. Then, something hit me, I got triggered one day, next thing you know, I’m down the rabbit hole, and now it’s really hard for me to manage my symptoms.

Obviously, this is very frustrating, because you’re thinking, how did I go through this period of my life and I was doing okay, and then I get to this period and things feel completely unmanageable, and you may feel like, well, I should be able to handle this. If that’s you, just know you’re not the only person who’s felt that way.

Sometimes you need different tools for different seasons of your life. That’s reality. Maybe you’ve done a round of ERP before, and things were flowing really well. And then when you started to have more mental compulsions, you found that some of the things you were doing before with ERP, you weren’t able to apply to your present situation, or you’re struggling with knowing how to apply what you learned in the past to your current symptoms.

One reason you may not be progressing with OCD recovery is you feel hopeless. You may feel like, there’s no way I’m going to get any better. And when we tell ourselves that, it blocks our progress, it blocks our ability to open up our mind and think about potentials. Think about creativity with small ways we could make changes, different types of help or treatment that we could get if we are completely closed off saying, no, I’m just probably going to be this way my whole life.

I’m never going to get better. I’m just going to continue to suffer. And I guess I’ll just have to deal with it and figure it out. I would say if you are experiencing this, I don’t blame you because you probably have tried many different things in the past. It’s interesting since I’ve been doing these intensive therapy sessions, one thing that usually shows up in the very beginning of a multi-day intensive is hopelessness.

Even a one day intensive people will say, I am coming in. I’m nervous because I don’t know how this is gonna go, and I don’t know if it’s actually gonna work for me or not. I can almost predict that people are going to say something similar to that and I’ve just started letting people know that’s completely normal.

If you feel like you’ve tried a lot of things that haven’t worked and then I’m asking you to try something new, of course you’re going to be skeptical and maybe feeling hopeless that it might not work. The reality is that we are learning new ways of helping people and growing in clinical skills every day.

We have different options. You can get better. You can have a better relationship with your OCD than you do right now. Will it go away completely? I don’t know. Only God knows that. It may not go away completely, but you can learn tools to manage it differently. And I really hope that you will join me in January on that journey.

I’m a firm believer that if you are not dead, that God is not done working in your life. God is the author of all healing. Sometimes we look for complete healing and our idea of healing is not necessarily the same healing that God wants to give us. Let me explain. You may want to be healed of the disorder when God wants to remove the shame.

You may want to never have an intrusive thought again when what God wants for you is to learn perseverance and strength under trial. You may want to never have to wrestle with a compulsion again, and God may be calling you to a place of greater dependence and trust in Him. Through learning the twelve modules of ICBT, I would love to have you there as a student just soaking in information, working on homework worksheets, and applying those principles to your life.

The second reason you may not be progressing in your OCD recovery is that your stress isn’t managed well. Maybe you just have a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces, whether that’s work stress, whether that’s home or relationship stress. Whether that’s stress with your children, I don’t know what your particular stress is, but if you don’t have the tools or the boundaries or the ability to calm yourself down, to be able to relax and be able to decompress when you need to, you’re going to continue to struggle with OCD.

I had An entire episode on this talking about how your stress is going to make OCD worse every single time. Stress is important to manage regardless of what mental health issue you’re dealing with, but especially with OCD, you have to have skills and tools and a plan and boundaries and self care to manage your stress.

Otherwise, your symptoms are going to continue to be out of control. And look. Some things are completely outside of our control, related to our stress, there may be other people in your life that are making certain choices that are causing you stress, whether that’s a boss or whether that’s a sibling or whether that’s a coworker or a friend.

And the reality is we have to, in these situations, look at, evaluate, what’s actually in my control about this situation? What can I actually do? Can I evaluate my schedule and determine if I have too much on my plate and see if something needs to come off? Not everything is for this season, so it’s okay to say no, have boundaries, to say, hey, you know what?

I would love to help you in the church nursery, but I just know that I’m having to travel a lot of weekends for work, and so when I’m home, I would like to just be worshipping with my family. I am so sorry that I am not able to help you out in this season, but that may change in a different season. Part of stress management and healthy self care is taking care of your physical body.

You have to be able to make sure that you’re working on things like sleep, eating, exercise, movement. We cannot expect our mental health to be in a good space when our physical health isn’t in a good space. If you were eating junk food all the time or constantly running through the drive thru, that’s gonna affect your gut health, that’s where your serotonin is produced in your gut.

And even though I don’t have specific research to support it, because I’ve looked for that research related to diet and OCD, I have had several clients tell me that their diet makes an impact on their symptoms. Oops. I know when I don’t eat well, I feel lethargic, run down, lacking in energy. When I don’t feel well, that means I’m more impatient with my loved ones.

I’m more quick to anger. I’m not the person that I want to be when I don’t take care of myself. We want to make sure that we’re being good stewards of the body that God has given us. And if you have a lot to work on in this area, it’s okay. Start small. Take it one step at a time. One healthy change is going to lead to another healthy change, to another healthy change, and it’ll just be this beautiful ripple effect.

The third reason you might not be progressing in your OCD recovery is that trauma is in the way. Here’s the deal with trauma and OCD. I mean, I’ve talked about this before on the podcast. If OCD is fire, then trauma is the gasoline. When you take away the gasoline, there still may be some fire, but it’s not going to be raging as intently as it was before.

There are two modules that we look at in ICBT where trauma really shows up. One is the obsessional story of module three, where people will cite personal experience as being relevant to why their obsession is relevant. The second is module four, it’s what we call the feared self. It’s who OCD is telling you that you’re going to become if you don’t engage in these compulsions.

If it doesn’t come out at intake, a lot of times what I see with my clients when we go through modules three and four is that there’s something from the past that they’re stuck on. They may not identify it as like a major traumatic event, But it may have been an intense emotional experience that affected them or something that somebody said.

That really got stuck in their head that they can’t seem to get out. As we unpack those past experiences, it really helps people to have clarity, to be able to move forward. Even something as simple as recognizing I’m not stuck in that past time anymore. I can move forward. I am in a different space in my life.

I’m a different person than who I was in the past. Even just some of those simple things can help people. For situations where there was chronic childhood trauma or a traumatic event that seemed to trigger, OCD symptoms, that is where I will utilize EMDR with individuals to help them clear out that trauma and come to a place of resolution so that they can then jump back in and continue the ICBT work.

This is one of my major criticisms with ERP is that it’s not always trauma informed. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s completely not. Where I’ve seen situations where individuals have been been through ERP and had reported trauma that was never processed or dealt with in any specific way in treatment.

And sometimes going through ERP when people have not dealt with the trauma tends to exacerbate their trauma PTSD symptoms. Remember, we talked about this before, 25 percent of people who qualify for an OCD diagnosis also qualify for a PTSD diagnosis. That’s 1 in 4 people in OCD recovery. If we as the clinicians are not looking at trauma as part of this picture, we are doing you a serious disservice.

I also did a show a while back on being highly sensitive and how that impacts treatment. If you are highly sensitive, you are going to view more things as traumatic than the average person. That’s just the reality, because you’re more sensitive to your emotional experience and empathizing with others, taking things in.

That also has to be taken into consideration. Depending on your situation, if you have a lot of trauma, you may want to pursue trauma treatment prior to pursuing OCD treatment if the person that you’re seeing isn’t able to do both or incorporate those for you. I have to make clinical considerations about this all the time and usually I’ll talk with my clients and help them and we’ll talk through, hey, does this make sense as far as if we go down this pathway and we start with some EMDR, start with some trauma processing.

And then shift over into ICBT, how does that sound to you, or does it sound better to start some ICBT, get some skills under your belt, and then go into some trauma processing, like I said, when we get into modules three and four, it depends on each person’s, like, individual situations. Sometimes if you haven’t had a certain level of OCD treatment, it can get in the way of your ability to process trauma because you’re just going into your head and you don’t have those skills to really be able to sit with your emotional experiences.

If you’re not in touch with your body, you’re not going to be able to process the trauma fully. You may be able to process it from a mental cognitive level, but trauma processing needs to really be a whole body experience. Look at the book The Body Keeps the Score for more information about that. Trauma is really stored in the body.

Number four, you haven’t learned the right tools to manage obsessions and compulsions. This is for my friends who have been in talk therapy, really getting a lot of just reassurance seeking from their therapist, or maybe they’ve had some Christian counseling with someone who has given them the typical Christian tools, like, hey, you’ve got to take every thought captive, or you’ve got to pray about this, you’ve got to learn to let it go and give it to God, These might be some things that would be helpful for if someone doesn’t have OCD, but if you have OCD, you need a specific set of tools to be able to know how to manage obsessions and compulsions as they come up, how to respond to them instead of reacting in that same loop, same cycle over and over and over again.

Some people have tried therapy in the past and felt like it hasn’t worked for them, or Unfortunately, I’ve talked with people that have had negative experiences with therapy. And when you’ve had negative experiences, I feel like it’s about two times as hard to go back and get up and try again. I really want to encourage you, find a therapist you can have a consultation with, whether that’s a short phone call or email exchange or learning what you can about them online.

Reading a blog post, something that they’ve written. That’s one of the beautiful things about this podcast, is that so many people have felt more comfortable about being able to come and see me because they’ve heard my voice, they know how I talk, they know my style and approaches to treatment. I definitely can tell a difference when I’m sitting down with somebody who has listened to the podcast versus just someone that doesn’t have that context or doesn’t know that much about me.

If you don’t feel like you’ve learned the right tools to manage your obsessions and compulsions, please join us in January for Christians Learning ICBT. ICBT is an incredible tool that allows you to see your compulsions as irrelevant. It helps you to slow down your thinking and get in touch with your true identity, not who OCD is telling you you’re going to become.

And that’s the beautiful thing for Christians is that it integrates really well with Christianity. And the fifth reason that you may not be progressing in your OCD recovery is that you’re resistant to trying medication. This is true for many Christians that I’ve talked to, and look, I hear you. I know so many of you want to take a holistic route with your health and not have to be on medication.

I know so many of you feel like you don’t want to be on medication for long term, or you fear becoming dependent on it. I would say that over the past year, I have massively changed my approach to medication when it comes to OCD treatment. Whereas I used to just say, Oh, okay, it’s all right if you don’t want to take medication, let’s try therapy first, see how things go, and then you can reevaluate and determine if you want to get on medication or not.

And now what I’m doing is talking to people in the very first session. about what is your openness or willingness to try medication. Research shows us that people tend to have the best outcomes when they are utilizing medication and therapy together. Oftentimes I will see people who either have one part of the equation but not the other.

They’re willing to do therapy but they’re not sure about medication or they’ve been on medication for a while but they haven’t done therapy and so you need those pieces really to work together. Not to be a pill pusher or cause people to feel like they’re forced to do something, but I do really encourage people that it is so helpful when someone is more at a medically stable, medicated state to learn these skills, to grow, to utilize them, than if they’re constantly having to fight obsessions and compulsions.

And it somewhat depends on the severity, obviously, that someone is dealing with. As I started to see more and more people who were dealing with higher levels of severity, I started to having more conversations initially about medication. If someone comes in and they have more OCD tendencies or they have a mild case of OCD, maybe they’re only dealing with one theme and it’s not affecting their functioning level, then we can say, okay, maybe that person doesn’t necessarily need medication.

But if you’re spending hours a day on your OCD, it’s time to consider medication if you haven’t already, especially if you haven’t made progress in therapy. So keep that in mind. Certainly, talk to a medical provider, get all of your questions answered. Look into the medications that are specifically FDA approved for OCD.

Express your concerns, ask about side effects. It’s important to know that information if you are going to take something. But you also don’t want to let OCD or anxiety about taking medication to keep you from potentially feeling better. We did an episode much earlier on medication. You can always go to our website and search for specific episodes if you go to karybach.

com and under the podcast breakdown page there’s a search bar at the top so if you want to search for specific types of therapy Or you want to search for medication, you want to search sleep, you can pull up episodes via different topics that you search for. I’d love to have you guys utilize that because it’s a great feature that we have.

But just for a quick review, we’re going to go through the five reasons you’re not progressing in your OCD recovery. You feel hopeless, your stress isn’t managed well, trauma is in the way, You haven’t learned the right tools to manage obsessions and compulsions, or you’re resistant to trying medication.

Have an amazing Thanksgiving, and I’ll be back the first week in December to talk about three ways to be mindful this Christmas season. 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 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.

149. Writing an Alternative Story to OCD’s Default Narrative with ICBT

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

In this episode, Carrie gives you an exclusive sneak peek into the upcoming Christians Learning ICBT live training launching in January. She takes you behind the scenes as she explores the process of writing alternative stories, sharing a personal experience that illustrates how she crafted an obsessional narrative and transformed it into a healthier perspective.

Episode Highlights:

  • How to rewrite your obsessional stories by crafting alternative narratives that empower you to see situations from a different perspective.
  • Practical tools to stay grounded in reality and navigate the uncertainty that OCD often magnifies.
  • Examples of stories including Carrie’s personal experience with a car accident and how she used alternative story to reshape OCD’s narrative. 
  • A sneak peek into the ICBT (Integrative Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) training modules, including a breakdown of how they can help you or someone you know struggling with OCD from a Christian perspective.

Episode Summary:

Are you tired of battling OCD? Maybe you’ve tried exposure therapy or sought help from a Christian counselor who didn’t fully understand your struggles. If that’s you, know that I’m here to support you. 

I’m thrilled to announce that starting in January, I’ll be teaching through the 12 modules of ICBT, diving into one module each week until the end of March. Can’t make the live sessions? Don’t worry! Everything will be recorded and available in an online course. If you’re even slightly interested, join the waiting list at carriebock.com/ocd.

Now, let’s talk about alternative stories. Often, the narratives we tell ourselves about our obsessions can become our default. The more we dwell on them, the more ingrained they become. But remember, your brain can change! We can rewire those patterns and explore new possibilities instead of just following the old, anxiety-ridden trails.

I’ll be sharing my own obsessional story related to a car accident Steve and I had shortly after buying a new car. While the actual event is true, my initial thoughts were full of obsessional doubts. I questioned whether I was being greedy for buying the car or if it was a sign from God. But after reflecting, I realized these thoughts were rooted in anxiety rather than reality. My faith reminds me that sometimes things happen for reasons we might not understand right away.

Through this training, we’ll learn to identify and replace those obsessional stories with healthier narratives. It’s important to understand that we’re not arguing with OCD but rather acknowledging the uncertainties in life and leaning into our faith.

I’d love for you to join us on this journey of healing and discovery. Let’s create new stories that lead us to peace and freedom from OCD.  Sign up for the waitlist today!

Explore Related Episodes:

148. Your Obsessional Story: Christians Learning ICBT coming Jan 2025! 
133. Looking for an Alternative to ERP? Find out if ICBT is Right for You

Transcript

Episode 149. Last week, I gave you a behind the scenes sneak peek into my self teaching Module 3 for our group this fall, where I taught all 12 modules of ICBT. This is happening again in January, and I want you to get on board. But today, we’re talking about Module 9, which is writing an alternative story to OCD. I can’t wait for you to hear a snippet of this training.

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. Brothers and sisters in Christ, OCD warriors. Are you sick and tired of fighting with OCD? Have you tried exposure therapy or tried finding counseling from a Christian perspective and just have come up short? I know so many people have told me that they have a Christian counselor, but that person doesn’t know about OCD or they’ve gone to OCD counseling and something just didn’t feel right because the person didn’t understand their faith.

I want you to know that I’m here for you, and that’s why I’m excited to announce that in January, we’re going to be teaching through the 12 modules of ICBT. We’ve talked about ICBT in more depth in episode 119 and episode 133. I will be teaching one module per week from mid January to the end of March.

If you can’t make the live trainings, everything’s recorded and put in an online course platform for you to access. If you think you might even slightly be interested, or you’re interested in being interested in finding out more information. Please join our waiting list at kerrybach. com slash OCD. About three fourths of the way down the page, there’s an option for you to put in your name and email address.

The obsessional story does not have to be your default narrative, and you can consider an alternative story. These stories that you’ve been telling yourself have been rolling around in your brain, and like, the more that we focus on them, like, the more that they’ve grown, the more that they’ve solidified, the more that they’ve become a automatic, right?

Your brain can fire very quickly, like with all those neurons kind of wired together related to your OCD. And so much of this process has been slowing down your thought process, really slowing things down to get into like, what is the obsessional story. And so now what we’re trying to do really is rewire that pattern.

And recognize, like, okay, my brain’s default is to go down trail A. And I’m starting to retrain it to go, well, I could go down trail A, and I know where that’s going to lead. That’s going to lead to more compulsions. That’s going to lead to more anxiety. That’s going to lead to being stuck. Or I could, like, go down trail B or C, even.

And recognize, like, maybe this story that I’ve been telling myself isn’t valid. And maybe there’s an alternative story. You’re drawn in with this really believable story. It’s sensational and OCD is causing you to fear you’re going to become this version. You don’t want to be. I don’t want to be that person.

So then I do these compulsions and that obsessional doubt. It comes from the imagination and that makes it irrelevant. Not actually based on sense data of what’s happening right now. And once you cross over into that OCD bubble, remember our little bridge, it’s difficult to get out. It doesn’t feel good in there, but it doesn’t feel good outside of there, and kind of the more like you get sucked in further and further, the harder it is to get out of there.

But we can use that sensory information in the here and now to stay grounded in reality, stay on that, that different side of the bridge or to get out of the OCD bubble. Important things that we need to know that the alternative story is not the following. We’re not trying to argue with your OCD. We’re not trying to say things like, Oh, well, you know, it doesn’t look like I’m going to die because I went to the doctor last week and I got a clean bill of health and they said all my any health conditions are like managed in a healthy way, blah, blah, blah.

We’re not trying to argue back with it. It’s not to be used as a compulsion, so it’s not like, Oh, okay, OCD is telling me this story, and I’m repeating, like, compulsively the alternative story in my head. Not what we want to do there, either. It’s not really a true versus a false story, because sometimes there are uncertainties of life that we have to accept.

We don’t know, sometimes. It’s not a, oh, this is the right story and the OCD is the wrong story, or this is, like, the true narrative and the OCD is completely, like, false. We know OCD, like, the obsessional doubt, right, is based in the imagination. And so in that sense, the obsessional doubt is false and is not relevant.

Here’s what we are trying to do with the obsessional story. We’re trying to dislodge it as a default narrative, just like I was talking about before, where it’s the thing that kind of has made the loop, it’s made the rounds in the brain and like it’s become that well worn neural pathway. So we’re trying to introduce a different neural pathway into the brain so that we can say, You know, like it could be this over here.

What do we think about that? And if we’re talking about possibilities, you know, we also have to talk about if we’re going to say that that’s a possibility, then we have to open up our minds and our ideas to other potential possibilities. It’s a possibility that I could get in a car accident on the way home.

It’s also possible that I could have a normal, everyday life, you know, drive home that happens on a regular basis. You know, takes me about 15 minutes to get home. Could be just completely normal. It could be that there’s an accident on the interstate and it takes me an hour to get home. Like, there’s many different possibilities here.

When you’re writing your alternative story, as you’re going through this process, it’s a tangible OCD thing, it might feel a little bit easier to do that one, but if it feels like, okay, it’s something spiritual, or it’s something more existential, it might be, if you can write like a potentially different alternative of that story, if there’s multiple alternatives, that might be a good process for you.

For this next snippet of the training, I’m going to be going through an obsessional story that I wrote about a car accident that Steve and I got into. You may have noticed last week that when we write obsessional stories, they have reasons for the obsessional doubt. There’s a variety of those in ICBT.

rules, hearsay, personal experience, and all the way down to it’s possible, which is a pretty much catch all category because OCD tells you that anything is possible. We then spend some time examining the obsessional story and then going into the alternative story. Here’s my story about the car accident.

This first part of the story is completely true, and I wrote an obsessional piece about the next part of the story. Steve and I received some money from my parents passing away, and after some consideration, we decided to buy a newer used car. After two years of squeezing a walker, stroller, and other things into a sedan, we decided to look at a Honda CR V.

Everything went smoothly through the selection and buying process until we went out, went to pull out of the dealership lot. A man driving a truck was in a hurry. He thought I had pulled off when I had only slowly moved up to survey the traffic. He accelerated and hit us in the back. This is a now kind of a funny story about being hit on the way out of the dealership, which who does that happen to except for my crazy life.

All right. Here’s my potential obsessional story related to the accident. This part is made up. Surely, this is a sign from God that I was not supposed to buy this vehicle. Maybe I was being greedy in doing so. What if this was a sin, or God is angry at me, or punishing me in some way? There’s a whole lot of things that we could potentially break down there, but I’m going to call that the obsessional doubt.

My treasure should be in heaven according to the Bible rules. I could have spent this money on feeding starving children in Africa. That is a fact. I watched this YouTube video warning against greed and how the wrath of God is going to come on down to Americans. That’s completely made up, but we’ll call that hearsay.

And I shouldn’t have been greedy last week when I ate that piece of pie instead of offering it to my husband. Personal experience, I’m going to repeatedly repent and confess the sin of buying the car and then ruminate about whether I should sell it or not as a sign of true repentance. That’s the compulsions there.

We had gone through the potential obsessional story. These were some things that came out of it. Like felt positive about buying the car. Maybe this was some kind of like vulnerable self, like maybe it was my fault, distrust, a connection with God. And so this was what we had originally wrote, like, something bad happened.

I don’t have any evidence in the present to support this obsessional doubt that I’m a greedy person who shouldn’t have bought this car. I don’t have any spiritual sense data to support that God is upset with me. Like, I’m not sensing anything from the Holy Spirit. In fact, this decision was made prayerfully and carefully.

My recent personal experience of being greedy and the YouTube video is irrelevant to this present moment experience with the car. This is actually this last paragraph here that I’m going to share with you. The next paragraph is actually something, my genuine feelings about the car accident. And. It’s interesting because it’s very vague of like, why does God allow certain things to happen in our life?

Like, I don’t really know, you know, sometimes we don’t always have a clear answer. Sometimes we have the answer when we look backwards like, oh, like, it makes sense that I went through this because then I met that person or like, yeah, why God led me here and then here makes sense. But some things don’t always make sense like that, or we can’t always see it at the time.

I got into a car accident, I’m not really sure why God allowed it to happen right after I bought the car. I wonder if the accident was a wake up call to the guy driving the truck to be more careful. He saw our car seat and recognized that our daughter could have been in the car. This seemed to bother him.

We’re very thankful to God that no one was hurt. In faith, my daughter was not in the car. Maybe it was a reminder to me that my family is much more important than things. Maybe it was an opportunity to show grace to the other driver instead of freaking out on him as he expected us to do. I understand that i’m not going to have all the answers and this gives me the opportunity to trust god in face day by day.

And obviously, you know, this was not a huge issue. Everything got fixed, you know resolved and it’s fine And we didn’t have to pay for it because it wasn’t our fault. But you know when we go through situations in life Um, you may have been through something a lot bigger where you might be questioning like some of these things like why Is God allowing this to happen or you could even be having this thought process maybe about your OCD?

You want to think through like going back to that acceptance piece that we were talking about earlier The piece that I’m having to accept in the uncertainty is I’m not going to have all the answers or I’m not going to understand everything that happens in my life. And that may be something in a mindful space that’s really hard to sit with.

Just like if you’re having an obsession about death, it may be really hard to sit with not knowing when that’s coming. Or if you’re having an obsession about Something spiritual and maybe there are some things that people get stuck on spiritually start obsessing about like Calvinism versus Arminianism is one of them that people can get really stuck on or how do we explain some of these things that happened in the Old Testament where the Israelites were told to wipe other people out?

Like how do we reconcile with our faith and who God is? When you look at all those things, like, there has to be this level of acceptance of faith, and that faith, I like to say, faith requires faith. So, it means that there is some element of trusting God outside of yourself, and that you’re not going to have all of the answers, or understand everything.

I wanted you to hear the connection between the obsessional story, and the alternative story. However, in ICBT, these two are taught weeks apart as the obsessional story is module three and the alternative narrative is module nine. In between, we’re learning a lot more information about how to stay grounded in reality instead of moving towards the imaginary outcomes that OCD is telling you will happen.

I would love, love, love for you to come and join us. There is going to be a huge Black Friday sale on these trainings happening in January from mid January through the end of March. Please go to karybach. com slash OCD to get on the waiting list and you’ll receive all the information about ICBT, these trainings, and the sale.

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.

148. Your Obsessional Story: Christians Learning ICBT coming Jan 2025! 

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

In this episode, Carrie takes you behind the scenes of one of her ICBT training sessions, which she designed specifically for Christians dealing with OCD. She shares a snippet of Module Three, exploring how OCD weaves compelling narratives that can draw you in and offers guidance on rewriting those narratives to gain a deeper understanding of OCD’s mechanisms.

Episode Highlights:

  • The power of stories: How OCD creates vivid, relatable narratives that captivate our attention.
  • The importance of self-awareness in recognizing and rewriting your obsessional story.
  • Common pitfalls of telling ourselves negative stories and the role of shame in our experiences with OCD.
  • Exploring the concept of obsessional doubt through relatable examples.
  • Writing alternative stories as a method for reframing experiences and perceptions.
  • And more about what’s inside the Christians Learning ICBT live training, including practical tools and resources to deepen your understanding and application of these concepts.

Episode Summary:

I’m Carrie Bock—a counselor, Christ follower, wife, and mom. I’m here to help Christians facing OCD find healing through faith. Today, I want to share a bit about my ICBT (Intensive Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) training, focusing on Module 3, where we learn to recognize and rewrite those pesky obsessional stories that OCD throws at us.

Feeling Stuck with OCD?

If you’re tired of battling OCD on your own or have tried exposure therapy without much success, I understand! Starting in January, I’m launching a 12-week course where we’ll go through each ICBT module together, wrapping up in March. If you can’t join live, don’t worry—you’ll get access to all the recordings!

Join the Waiting List!

Interested? Sign up for our waiting list at carriebockcom/OCD. Together, we can transform your relationship with OCD in 2025!

Let’s Talk About Stories

We all have narratives that shape our lives, influenced by our past and our beliefs about God. It’s important to ask: Are these stories coming from God or from our fears?

OCD is great at creating emotional stories that can feel very real. Think about how a gripping movie can make you feel intense emotions, even if it’s just a story. That’s how OCD works—it hijacks our thoughts and feelings.

For example, if I tell you about an “amazing” pen found in a sketchy place, your feelings about that pen would change based on the story. This shows how changing our narratives can change our perceptions.

Rewriting Your Obsessional Stories

Today, I’ll help you recognize and reframe those obsessional stories. Instead of getting stuck in doubt, we can challenge those thoughts and find clarity.

Tune in to the full episode to learn practical tips for identifying your obsessional narratives and rewriting them in a way that aligns with the abundant life God wants for you. Let’s start this journey of healing together!

Explore Related Episode:

133. Looking for an Alternative to ERP? Find out if ICBT is Right for You

Transcript

Hello, do you love going behind the scenes? Well, today I am taking you behind the scenes to one of the ICBT training sessions that I did this fall on module three. Module three is all about how OCD draws you in with a really good story and then teaches you how to write your obsessional story to become more aware Of how OCD works and gets you drawn in.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bach. I’m a Christ follower wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christian struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. 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. Brothers and sisters in Christ, OCD warriors. Are you sick and tired of fighting with OCD? Have you tried exposure therapy or tried finding counseling from a Christian perspective and just have come up short? I know so many people have told me that they have a Christian counselor but that person doesn’t know about OCD or they’ve gone to OCD counseling and something just didn’t feel right because the person didn’t understand their faith.

I want you to know that I’m here for you, and that’s why I’m excited to announce that in January, we’re going to be teaching through the 12 modules of ICBT. We talked about ICBT in more depth in episode 119 and episode 133. I will be teaching one module per week from mid January to the end of March. If you can’t make the live trainings, everything’s recorded and put in an online course platform for you to access.

If you think you might even slightly be interested, or you’re interested in being interested in finding out more information. Please join our waiting list at kerrybach. com slash OCD. About three fourths of the way down the page, there’s an option for you to put in your name and email address. Let me help you have a different relationship with OCD in 2025.

Today we’re talking about stories, the obsessional story. As I started to think about this obsessional story process, I thought, we tell ourselves stories all the time, right? And it’s not always an OCD story. We go through life, we have experiences, and we interpret them, and we tell ourself a story based on our past experience, based on other things that we’ve heard, based on what we know about God and scripture.

It’s not just about OCD. It is, that’s what we’re here to talk about and have a better relationship with, but just noticing, like, When you have experiences, what are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself the shoulds? I should have done better, known better, been better, whatever. Are you telling yourself, yeah, you know, you should have expected that to happen because it happened in the past?

Uh, you know, a trauma story of, yep, you know, there you go again, experiencing this. Just kind of be aware of that. So, you are, as a Christian, tasked with not trusting everything that you see or hear, but really testing and seeing, is this coming from God or is this from falsehood? So, our main ideas are that OCD draws you in with a good storyline.

And that awareness of that storyline is the first step to changing it. I like to say that OCD has like these lifetime movie versions that they tell you. It’s so vivid. Sometimes you can see it happening. There’s a lot of intense emotions that goes along with it. Just thinking about stories in general, I put this little Incredible Hulk guy on here.

They draw us in with a certain level of emotion. Stories are believable or relatable. Even though we’ve never seen a guy turn into this giant green man and start destroying something. We feel related to this story because we’ve all had anger in our lives. Maybe we’ve been destructive at different points and he doesn’t want this to happen.

It just is something that kind of takes over him and happens. So even though you look at Marvel comics and things, there’s lots of stuff happening or people being able to control time or see all of the outcomes, right? That’s one of the characters, I guess, can see all the potential outcomes that could happen and people are flying and different things happening, but they’re, it.

Some of the core storylines, the characters, we really relate to them, we feel for them. I wasn’t really into a whole lot of these movies, and I went with one of my friends, and people were just, like, wanting to go see Endgame, and people were just crying in the theater, right? Like, these are characters, you know, they’re not real, but we are drawn in and we feel something, and that’s what makes a good story, right?

Like, that’s a really good story that draws you in. There’s some kind of outcome or ending to them. So there are some factual elements that can be woven in even to OCD stories. All right, now for a story about my pen. This is a pen that I have in my office. It’s a purple pen. I like the color purple. So let’s say that if you were in the office and I was like, Hey, do you want to write with this pen?

You probably would say, Sure, why not? Like, I don’t know, it looks like a good pen, it clicks, it works, you know, I’ll tell you, yeah, it writes really well, I like it. So you probably would feel okay with this pen, unless you like had major contamination and you were like, no, I don’t touch other people’s stuff, that type of stuff, and then you might be like, I’m not sure about that.

But if I could tell you a story about this pen, where And I said, yeah, this is a really great pen and I want to tell you the story of how I got this pen. I mean, I didn’t just get this pen at the store. I was out in, you know, the park and there was a pile of dog poop and I noticed this pin sticking out and I thought, oh, that pen looks like it would write really good if I cleaned it up or hey, my favorite color is purple.

I think i’ll take that pen and I took it out of the dog poop and I washed it off and I Clorox wiped. It’s fine. Everything’s good. It’s all right. Like I mean, what’s the problem? Do you notice feeling any differently about wanting to hold the pen now versus when I first started talking to you about it?

Most people, when I tell them the story, are then like, Oh, that’s gross. Like I’m not touching that pen. You know, who does that? But the point is, what changed? Did the pen actually change, or did we just change the story about the pen? And then when we changed the story about the pen, that caused us to feel differently about it.

Not only your five senses, which do get distrusted at times in OCD, but internal sense data. What do you really want? And how do you know that? Like, I can say, just random example, like, I really want pizza for dinner. Like, how do I know that? I’ve been just craving pizza, I like pizza, whatever. I’m just making stuff up as we go along, right?

But really being able to tune into your own emotional experience or your own desires is really important. I’ve talked to people before OCD will make you feel like you have an urge to do something but an internal like urge or pull towards something is not the same thing as a desire is actually wanting to do that.

So that may be something that you have to tease out in your own story and then what you actually value or believe. Jenny’s obsessional story goes like this. My husband didn’t kiss me this morning before he left for work. That is a true statement. That did really happen to her. But now this obsessional doubt injures then, what if he has fallen out of love with me?

I mean, Sally is going through a divorce right now and her husband just left her out of nowhere. That’s the hearsay evidence. Just because it happened to Sally doesn’t mean it’ll happen to Jenny. But that’s what OCD wants her to believe that it will. My ex boyfriend did something similar. Personal experience.

OCD feels like it’s really like, hey, I’ve really got some evidence here for you. I read an article about how if your man doesn’t kiss you before you leave the house, that is one sign he’s out the door. He could be cheating on me. It’s possible. Now we’ve got like, you know, almost like another obsessional doubt coming in there, right?

Like, oh, what if he’s cheating? People leave and get divorces all the time. Yeah, I really can’t argue with that fact. Um, What if I’m next? I couldn’t handle it. Consequences of obsessional doubt. This piece, like, of not being able to handle it, that kind of dips the toe into the water of the feared self theme.

You may be saying, like, Oh, well, that’s a nice story carry. Now what do I do with it? Just remember that you’re still in the phases of building awareness. We’re not necessarily intervening right now, but if you can intervene, or you may pick up on like, oh, now that I pick up on that OCD, I’m not gonna give into it as much as I would have before.

I’m not gonna entertain it like I would have in the past. So just kind of be aware of that piece coming down the pike. All right, talking about having a shameful thought, maybe it’s a sexual or blasphemy thought, and then like, oh, that goes into, I shouldn’t be having this as a Christian. What does this mean?

What if this means I’m not a good Christian or don’t love God? And I think I stuck with the don’t love God, because obviously some of these could be going a lot of different directions, right? And then these are some of the things that I’m, the potential consequences that I’m calling myself. What if I don’t love God?

Well, not everyone does. That’s a fact. Rules, you know, take your thoughts captive. Watch the things that come into your mind that you think about. Lots of information on that in various places. Spiritual guidance, pastors, teachers, authors, podcasts, so much, so much information out there now. Personal experience of maybe what a former church taught and then anything possible according to OCD.

So let’s look at this obsessional story. So I have these intrusive sexual thoughts. It’s a fact. I can’t change that. What if I don’t really love God and that’s why I have these thoughts? So that would be our obsessional doubt that we stuck with for this example, but it could have gone, as you see, there were other obsessional doubts.

And so whichever one you choose, that probably is going to take the story a little bit different in a direction. That’s okay. That’s what my previous church said. hearsay. I have to rebuke this thought in the name of Jesus. That’s a compulsion. I have to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

That is true according to the Bible. When I was addicted to pornography, I was dwelling on thoughts I shouldn’t. That would be a personal experience. And if I don’t win the battle of my mind, I’m giving the enemy a foothold. The consequences of the doubt. So some of you may be, um, a little bit overwhelmed too on, okay, Carrie, I have a lot of different obsessions.

What do I write my obsessional story on? I’m going to give you some guidance. Sometimes, very occasionally, the anxiety about writing the obsessional story or seeing it out like Just out there can be super super high for certain themes So I would say if that’s the case We’re really in the interest of you learning the process right now, right?

If that’s the case if it is too anxiety provoking I mean like gonna give you a panic attack is what i’m trying to say Not to say that writing obsessional stories shouldn’t cause you any anxiety But if you’re like panicking trying to write your obsessional story You Maybe try working on something that is either a past experience, like it’s not bothering you now, but it did in the past, just so that you can learn and process it and sit with it, or picking something that is still an obsession, but it’s a lower level, like not going to send you into a panic.

And then once you feel like you have the flow of what you’re writing and the process of putting those pieces together, then that is going to help you be able to. probably sit with the harder one. Even if we have multiple stories, the feared self or vulnerable self theme is going to run between those stories.

So they’re going to be similar. A lot of times there is a common thread and that’s going to be your common thread. So if you do end up like writing a couple stories, if you feel inclined to do that. I wouldn’t literally like write more than two. I mean, remember, we’re not wanting to like obsess about treatment.

So if you wrote a couple stories and kind of compared them, I was like, Oh, okay. Like there should be some type of overlap or pattern that you’re seeing. Rely, whether it’s, hey, I’m seeing in both of these stories that I’m really relying on hearsay evidence, or I’m seeing in both of these stories that I’m really relying on past personal experience that may be related to my trauma, or I’m noticing it’s like the same exact personal experience, even though the themes may be different for you.

And you would want to look at like, okay, what can I glean from this? What’s the pattern here? Because obviously you’re not wanting, like I said, if you have a lot of different themes, you’re not wanting to run the gamut for every single thing in your life. You don’t want to have to do this, I guess, is what I’m trying to say for every single thing.

And usually information like this will generalize. So, recognize that you only got about 12 minutes of a 50 minute training. Obviously this was not intended to be comprehensive, but just to give you a snippet and a sneak peek inside the training and the examples that I use to help people understand the concept.

mindfulness, a prayer. There’s a scripture verse for every week. And we dive into the lesson, and all of that is so intentional so that we can put our mind, heart, and spirit in alignment and in the right place. We’ve had some amazing question and answer times in the beginning and end, so know that you completely have the freedom to ask questions.

People will type them in the chat or they will email me privately and I can answer it publicly. So there, even if you aren’t able to attend live, there’s still opportunities to ask questions so that you can really get in there and apply these materials. Next week we’re going behind the scenes again to talk through writing alternative stories and I’m going to share a true experience that happened to me, how I wrote an obsessional story about it, I did make up that part, and then what a potential alternative story would be.

Definitely tune in for part two next week. 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.

147. Does Talking About OCD Make It Worse?: 3 Reasons Why

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

In this episode, Carrie delves into the reasons why talking about OCD can sometimes exacerbate the condition. She discusses how reassurance-seeking, co-rumination, and the urge to “go deep” can create unhealthy cycles that hinder healing. 

Episode Highlights:

  • The harmful cycle where temporary relief from anxiety can lead to increased obsessive thoughts and compulsions.
  • Why traditional talk therapies may be ineffective for OCD and can sometimes reinforce compulsive behaviors.
  • How to identify when OCD is influencing your thoughts and behaviors, enabling you to take proactive steps towards healing.
  • Discover practical strategies for staying grounded in the present moment, which is essential for overcoming OCD and resisting its narratives.

Episode Summary:

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

In today’s episode, I’m exploring whether talking about OCD can actually make it worse, sharing three key reasons why it might. As a therapist, I naturally see value in discussing problems, but when it comes to OCD, traditional talk therapies often fall short. Many people mistake their symptoms for general anxiety, spending sessions sharing worries without finding lasting relief. Here’s why this approach may not work and what we can do instead..

Here are three reasons why:

  • Reassurance Seeking: Repeatedly asking for validation to ease anxiety may offer temporary relief, but it reinforces the OCD cycle, causing obsessions to resurface.
  • Co-Rumination: Constantly discussing worries, especially about unsolvable issues, can deepen distress and worsen OCD symptoms.
  • Going Deep: Trying to understand issues at a deeper level often leads to obsessive thinking instead of grounding you in the present.

Tune in to learn more about these traps and how to avoid them. For additional support, head to carriebock.com/OCD

Explore Related Resources:

5 Ways Therapy Can Make OCD Worse

Transcript

Episode 147. Does talking about OCD make it worse? Let’s find out. I’m going to give you three reasons why.

Hello, and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Keri Bach. 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.

If you are like me, you like talking through problems. I mean, hello, I’m a therapist, obviously I do this on a regular basis. I’m However, not just with clients talking through their problems, but if I have my own problems, a lot of times I’m going to friends or family members or other people to really try to sort through things, talk it out, and figure things out.

Here’s where we run into problems with OCD though, and this is why traditional talk type therapies don’t work with OCD. There are lots of people who don’t realize they have OCD, think they have anxiety. Go to a therapist to talk about all the things they’re anxious about. And next thing you know, they’re in therapy, they feel a little bit better, they leave, they don’t feel any better.

And they repeat this cycle week after week after week, like, hey, here’s what’s going on with me this week, this is what I’m worried about, it’s what’s bothering me. The therapist provides them some type of solution based or thought challenging or reassurance, and then it doesn’t ever seem to help. That’s why this topic is so important.

The first reason talking about OCD can make it worse is Reassurance seeking. This is a really common one with OCD, right? You have a question, you really want to ask your therapist, or your spouse, or your friend, do you think that I’m a horrible person, or did I offend you, or is this object clean, what do you think?

Reassurance seeking is a compulsion. I know it is super hard to not ask for reassurance sometimes, but it’s important to try to hold off if you can, because the reassurance seeking only continues and reinforces that OCD cycle in your brain, where you have an obsession, then there’s some anxiety. There’s a compulsion, and there’s temporary relief.

People seek reassurance because it works, they do get some relief from it, but then the next thing you know, they are becoming anxious again because the obsession just goes right back. And sometimes you may feel like the obsession comes back even stronger. I feel like we could do an entire episode on reassurance seeking, but I’m going to spare you that for right now.

If you think you might be reassurance seeking, you can ask yourself to evaluate, Am I feeling this urge to get this information? And do I feel like if I get that information, there’s going to be some internal calm or slight relief from this anxiety? That’s a good indicator because you may have gotten really sneaky about how you’re asking for reassurance.

It doesn’t always sound as direct as, is this object clean, or have I offended you or upset you in some way. The second reason talking about OCD can make it worse is that you may be participating in co rumination. I have a confession to make. I was working with a client who had some scrupulosity obsessions about a variety of different issues related to Christianity and the Bible.

I was receiving some supervision, so I was talking with another OCD counselor about how can I help this client better? What are we doing? It just doesn’t seem to be working. And she completely called me out on it in a very nice and loving way and said, you are co ruminating with this client because these issues are so important to you and you see that and so you want to talk about these things.

And I was like, oh my goodness, you know, sometimes you don’t even see what you’re doing and you need someone else to point it out to you. You might be co ruminating with someone if you were trying to solve a level of uncertainty. that we have to sit with. So I’ll give you an example. If you’re really stuck on whether or not God created the earth in seven literal days or periods of time, and you’re scouring over all this evidence for the seven day creation versus the, hey, the word for day means period of time, and so I don’t know, was it, how do we have a literal day when we don’t have the planets yet?

All very interesting and philosophical questions, certainly things that Steve and I have talked about, have talked about with other people, but in those conversations, we don’t have a high level of distress over this. We’re just saying, this is an interesting topic and there’s different views on it, obviously.

If you are spending a large amount of time trying to figure something like that out that’s not solvable, Because it requires a certain level of faith, you might be co ruminating with someone. If you have talked someone to death about the same topic and haven’t come to a resolution about it, you might be co ruminating with that person, or another person’s response might be like, I have no idea why you’re stuck on this, it really doesn’t matter that much to them, but to you, it feels like I have to resolve this, or otherwise that means I don’t know, whatever you’re saying that it means, that you don’t have enough faith or you’re not sure if you can love God unless you understand all of these different nuances of things that occurred in the Old Testament.

Reassurance seeking, co ruminating can be very sneaky. You may not realize you’re doing it, your friends and family may not realize you’re doing it. You can see how reassurance seeking and co ruminating can become really problematic in therapy Obviously, we’re here to talk with you about things, but there also has to be some kind of strategy behind it, and often redirection, for you to notice when you’re in the OCD bubble.

I’ve had clients where I’ve spent a lot of time helping them recognize that what they were dealing with was OCD. Because there may have been a level of lack of insight, just feeling like they’re ruminating about these things all the time and thinking, like, this is my own thought process versus OCD has gotten you completely down an unhealthy rabbit hole.

The third reason why talking about OCD can make it work is a trick that OCD will play on you called going deep. Going deep is where you feel like you just have to understand something more at a deeper level. This may cause a lot of research, but it may also be connected to these other two that we talked about, reassurance seeking and corruminating, because you may be talking to other people trying to gain more understanding. Like, “if I just understand everything there is to know about germs, then I will be able to keep myself safe and not get sick. If I really understand these deep theological issues then that means I will feel more secure in my salvation or relationship with God.” Going deep doesn’t work because it actually just moves you farther and farther into the OCD instead of grounding you back in reality.

This is what we’re trying to do in ICBT is keep you connected to the present moment experience instead of the narrative that OCD is telling you is happening right now or what OCD is telling you is going to happen in the future. There’s a distinct difference, and the more that you understand what we call the tricks and cheats of OCD, the The more that you understand your own obsessional story that OCD is crafting for you, the better that you can do in staying in reality and trusting your sensory experience.

If you want to know more about that, our next ICBT Learning Sessions for Christians will be starting in January. Getting on our email list is the absolute best way to do that, and you can also join the waiting list at karybach. com slash OCD. Can I tell you a secret about our next learning sessions?

They’re going on sale in November. Okay, it’s not a secret. The cat’s out of the bag now. But in all seriousness, the only way to find out about the November sale for the January Learning Sessions is to get on the waitlist. So there will be information to our email subscribers about that and you can go to carriebock.com/OCD.

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 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.

146. One Step to Make a Change

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

In this episode, Carrie discusses the importance of making manageable changes in life, especially for those struggling with OCD and anxiety. Learn how starting small can lead to significant transformations as she shares personal stories and practical tips.

Episode Highlights:

  • The power of starting small and setting manageable goals for transformation.
  • How seeking God’s guidance can help clarify your path and provide direction in times of uncertainty.
  • How slowing down can help you recognize those OCD thoughts before they spiral out of control.
  • Practical tips for incorporating mindfulness and self-reflection into your routine.
  • Insights on how small changes can create a ripple effect in various areas of life.
  • Strategies for overcoming feelings of overwhelm and stagnation.

Episode Summary:

I’m Carrie Bock, a Christ follower, wife, mother, and licensed professional counselor dedicated to helping Christians struggling with OCD find deeper healing. 

It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing we must overhaul our lives overnight. I’ve been there—feeling overwhelmed and stuck, particularly when trying to make health changes. The key is to start small.

As I thought about the small changes I’ve asked my clients to make over the years, I wanted to share some ideas that might inspire you. I had a client years ago who was super stressed and driven at work. They had so much responsibility and anxiety, and I taught them some breathing strategies to help them relax. When I suggested they take time to breathe deeply, they responded, “I don’t have time for this!”

I said, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Can you commit to taking three deep breaths before getting out of the car?”

I also faced challenges organizing my home office. With a coach’s help, I broke the task into manageable steps and realized the importance of starting small. This approach not only eases anxiety but also creates momentum for further change, which is crucial for those dealing with OCD.

We need to learn to break things down into smaller steps and understand the ripple effect of doing so. You take one step, and then you realize you can take another, and then another. I’m reminded of how God’s word says that His word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, guiding us without revealing the entire route.

More Episodes to Listen to:

112. Finding Motivation to Finish with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

Episode 146. What is your one step to making a change in your life?

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, a 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 kerrybach. com slash podcast. Let’s talk about how people usually approach changes, making changes in their life. Typically goes with some all or nothing thinking, and you know we’ve all been guilty of this. Like, I have to do all the things all at once, I have to change everything, have a completely new life by Friday, I’m gonna reach for my entire schedule, I’m actually gonna get up early and I’m gonna eat right, exercise, throw out all the carbs. Have no sugar in the house, run a mile, read that entire book that I’ve been wanting to read, and spend five straight hours organizing my house.

Does that sound completely unrealistic when I say it back to you, but any of you find that familiar? I know that I’ve been in that space before where I want to do so much, and I want to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time. When we’re looking at making changes in our lives, we have to start small.

What happens when we see a huge task or huge area that we need to change, like our physical health or our mental health, the tendency is to feel overwhelmed and then frozen when it comes to making changes, so we end up doing nothing. Honestly, this has just happened to me recently in a couple areas, which partially was why I thought about doing this episode.

I was feeling really stuck trying to lose weight and had made some dietary changes. I was doing walking workouts, Pilates, different YouTube workouts that I found on a regular basis and I was like, okay, well, I’m in this rhythm of working out, I’m trying to watch what I eat, trying to eat more protein, less carbs, but not be super strict or religious about it.

And I went to the doctor and said, this weight loss thing is just really not going anywhere. I’m trying. I’m making the efforts. Here’s what I’m doing. And she said, I think you need to change your workouts. I was like, duh, why didn’t I think of that? I mean, I’ve been working out for years. Like, I understand the concepts of how this works, but it was something that I needed somebody else to say to me, like, make things a little bit harder on yourself because you’ve gotten used to what you’re doing and it’s a little too easy for you and your body’s not being stretched as much. So I decided, how am I going to motivate myself to work out, first of all, with something a little harder? And the best that I could come up with was let’s make it fun.

Let’s make it something that I want to do. So I got a miniature trampoline, partially because I’ve been watching my daughter jump on hers, and that looks super fun. But hers is a kid’s size, so I would break it if I got on it. I got a miniature trampoline. And I also thought back to what were some of the workouts that I really enjoyed when I was going to group exercise classes.

Now, it’s been quite a while, like pre COVID, since I’ve been to any group exercise classes. But there was a step class that I did when I lived in Colorado. And the gym I went to had, like, over a hundred classes a week. It was amazing. Never found anywhere else quite like that. But they had this step class on Monday nights that they got rid of because there were only about five of us in there and replaced it with some horrid boot camp class where the guy literally wore an army hat and yelled at people.

I thought, that looks terrible, I don’t want to do that. Side note. Back when I was in my twenties at this time and I was doing this step workout, which makes me sound just like an old person, old soul, I guess, but I thought, you know what? I’m going to get a step. I’m going to buy a step and I am going to do some step workouts at home.

So I found some online. I really enjoy it. It’s may not be everybody’s thing, but I enjoy it because it actually makes me have to think while I’m working out. And the thinking part makes me forget how much I’m actually sweating and feeling like I’m gonna die because it’s hard and I’m not as agile and I don’t move quite as fast as I did when I was in my 20s.

But the point is, I was stuck. I was feeling discouraged, and I don’t know what to do. And someone else said, Hey, here’s how you can make a change. Try something different. Well, the other thing I found out about the trampoline workouts is that if you jump for 20 minutes on a trampoline, it is equivalent of running for 60 minutes.

And I thought, Hey! More bang for your buck there. I like that 20 minutes versus 60 sounds good to me now If you ever jumped on a trampoline for 20 minutes, I cannot do that much right away. It is a lot Working my way up on that but the trampoline workouts They have you jump a little bit and then sometimes you do other things like get off and do abs or lift weights or other things Like that, so they’re good.

They’re fun And the only reason that I have a regular workout routine is because I have decided to take time to get up before my family members get up. Fortunately, they are both pretty heavy sleepers, so when I’m, like, stepping up and down or bouncing around on the trampoline, they’re not waking up.

Just super nice. The only reason I am able to get up before the rest of my family and have this time early in the morning is because I made a decision to go to bed earlier. What I’m trying to show you is that each of these little changes built on each other, the going to bed earlier, if I am typically asleep by 10 p.m. at night, I’m at least in the bed by 10 p. m. at night for sure, would love to be asleep by then, and I get up somewhere around 5, 5. 30. And that gives me time to work out and get a shower and a few days a week before the family gets up. And then other days I do more meditative activities in the morning and read and things like that.

It has definitely been a process. I did not become a morning person overnight. I did not just decide to stay up till whenever and then set my alarm for 5 a. m. The process of going to bed earlier then started naturally waking up earlier and I don’t have to set an alarm. Usually my body will just be done sleeping and wake me up and that feels really, really good to me.

So I never thought that I would be that morning type of person. I’ve always liked sleep and like to just lay in the bed. But lately, it’s been just a real gift to get up before everybody else and take that time for self care and for spiritual renewal, time to pray and connect with God as well. Another area of my life I was feeling literally frozen in.

I was organizing my bonus space upstairs. I have my little office space. I did organize quite a bit of that to get it to a functional level. But I have things that I took from the attic of the old house that I never had time really to go through and sort. And a lot of it was things I needed to get rid of, trash, give away and purge declutter and I got going on that process but got to a point where it just felt so big and I was getting down to more organizational pieces of I don’t know if you’re like this at all but I have bins and I have containers and I have little like drawer divide I have all these like organizational Things, a file organizer, and I don’t always know how to get the stuff in the bins or the organizing like in a way that makes functional sense.

So realizing that since we have a much smaller attic here and I can’t put all of this stuff in the attic. I have room for it for storage in the bonus space, but just figuring out how I’m even storing it was a challenge. And I was like, I don’t think that I have the right furniture, shelving, space, organizational materials that I need, even though I have all this stuff.

And I got together with someone else who I’m going through some business and personal life coaching with. It’s like a little bit about managing your personal home life, time, and managing your business, and how those two intersect, for sure, for moms. So I went to her and said, Here’s my problem with my bonus room, and I’m pretty stuck.

And she was able to get me unstuck and say, Hey, I want you to organize everything. Just put it in piles. All the like items. I want to have part of this as my workout space up here, but I’ve been working out downstairs. She said, okay, put all of your workout stuff in one area. Put all of the things that you need to store in another area.

Make sure all of your office stuff is in the office. And I was like, okay. I can do that. I feel like that is a much more doable way to break things down for myself into smaller steps. I ended up working on it on a rainy weekend that we had where I couldn’t really go anywhere and do anything. We stayed indoors and Faith came upstairs with me to hang out, play with her stuff that’s up here.

I was able to find two more bags of items to donate and threw away one and a half bags worth of trash. It’s not 100 percent yet, but it’s getting there. At least there’s movement. There’s progress. We have to learn how to break things down into smaller steps for ourselves and then understand that the ripple effect happens after that.

So you do one thing and then you’re like, Oh, I can do that. And then you do the next thing and then you do the next step. And I just think about how God’s word says that his word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. It’s so that we can see where we’re going. God guides us. But he doesn’t always give us the whole path.

Sometimes he does give us visions of the future. And it’s interesting because sometimes God will show you something like, okay, I believe the Lord wants me to do this. And I’m wrestling with one of those things right now. I’m like, okay, God, I believe that there’s some calling to do this, but I’m not really sure the middle part, like, I don’t really know how I’m going to get there, but all I really need to know is the next step.

God gives you that next step, and as you follow him in obedience, then he will give you the next step. Like the light will still be in front of you. It’s like this in movement towards behavior changes in our life. You’re not going to be able to wake up tomorrow and run a marathon. You have to figure out how to not even run your first mile, I mean, your first quarter of a mile, if you’re not a runner at all, and then your first half a mile, and then you can run three quarters of a mile, and then maybe you can run a mile, and learning that process and rhythm, I’m not a marathon runner, so I wouldn’t know, but I imagine it takes some time to become a marathon runner.

You don’t just do that. We live in such a microwave society that we want it all right now. I can flip through a bunch of videos on my phone and just swipe up if I don’t like part of it. And that’s not how change happens in our life. It’s not that quick, fast dopamine hit. Sometimes things take time to grow and nourish and develop.

I started to think about the small changes. that my clients have made or that I’ve asked clients to make in the past. And it’s been super interesting for me to go back and make this list for you, but I thought it might give some of you some ideas about what is your one step towards change. So I had a client, this was many years ago, Super high stressed, I’m very driven at work, had a lot of responsibilities, and I was trying to help this person relax because they had a lot of anxiety, and I was teaching some breathing strategies, like, okay, let’s really do some deep breathing together, focus on calming down your body, and he says to me, I don’t have time.

I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time to deep breathe. I’ve got too much going on and I said, okay, okay, here’s what I want you to do. Do you think that you could just make a commitment to yourself to take three deep breaths before you get out of the car and go to work? Is that manageable for you?

Do you think you could do that? Yeah, I think I can do that. And I don’t know what he thought I was asking him to do. Maybe he thought I was asking him to deep breathe for ten minutes or something like that originally. Maybe that was why there was some pushback. But what was interesting, the ripple effect of this starting point of taking three deep breaths before going into work eventually became You know what?

I decided yesterday that I was going to leave work and go take a lunch break and I went and took my lunch break and I didn’t think about work or get caught up in any work responsibilities. Wow! That’s incredible. And then slowly starting to develop more and more work life balance and work life boundaries.

Leaving work at work. Being able to have a personal life being able to enjoy time outside of work. It took a while It was a process, but what I want you guys to know is it started with those three deep breaths before work That’s where it started. It was small. It was incremental. It was manageable It was something that he felt like he could commit to Oftentimes we try to make commitments initially that are too big And then we get frustrated when we fail, or it doesn’t go as smoothly as we wanted it to, and then we give up.

Versus saying, let me set myself up for success and pick something small and manageable that I know I can do. I’ve had several clients that my first OCD treatment was, you need to stop Googling. Some of them were very new to the OCD diagnosis and didn’t realize how the Googling was a compulsion, how that impacted them, and if they were able to not Google, or if they recognized, Hey, I didn’t Google yesterday and I ended up feeling a whole lot better versus I noticed the day that I did.

I spent a lot of time on it and really got sucked down this rabbit hole to an unhealthy place. Clients who have a really hard time being in the present moment, either because they’re disconnecting due to trauma, dissociation. Maybe they’re having a really hard time sitting with their emotions or body sensations in the moment.

I said, Hey, why don’t you just try a mindful moment? One minute of mindfulness doesn’t have to be a super long 20 minutes of meditating on something. Just give yourself one minute and see how that goes and you can always build on that but starting small Once I told someone to do five minutes of something and apparently that was too much I didn’t realize at the time.

I thought it was a manageable or workable goal for them They came back and just felt really bad like being in this place of shame. Carrie. I couldn’t do the five minutes I’m like, it’s okay. It’s not a big deal Can you do it for two minutes or three minutes? It’s okay if you can’t do five, just use that as data and back yourself up a little bit.

And then once you feel really comfortable with what you’re doing, you can stretch yourself a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And oftentimes that ripple effect can just happen gradually and naturally as you become more comfortable with changes that are happening. have encouraged clients to make all different kinds of health changes, to cut back on caffeine to reduce overall anxiety, if they’re feeling nauseous in the morning, to eat some protein for breakfast.

If clients aren’t exercising at all, I’ll often encourage them to see what they can do for a short amount of time, whether it’s a short walk or some stretching, yoga exercises, and see how they feel afterwards. In working with clients with OCD, I often see that people may be working really hard to, quote, fix their OCD.

I need to know everything right now, give me all of the coping strategies, tell me exactly what to do. I’m going to binge all your episodes, Carrie, and figure it all out and fix myself. What I’m telling my students who are in our fall ICBT learning sessions is that sometimes we have to slow down to speed up.

This is very true in terms of learning ICBT. Learning to slow down your thought process, what is actually there, getting deep dive into the obsessional story. As they slow down and they start to recognize like, Oh, this is where this obsessional doubt is coming from. Oh, this is what OCD is using as justification, but it’s really irrelevant to everything that’s going on.

As they slow down is allowing them to make momentum to make change. to recognize OCD at the first go. If you can recognize it very early before it sucks you into the story and what we call the OCD bubble, then you’re going to be able to shift a lot more easily. And if you get way down, like, and engaging in a lot of compulsions, then it’s a lot harder to get out of.

I like to use a potato chip analogy. There was a potato chip. You can’t eat just one. But, and then the more potato chips you eat, the more potato chips you want. Like with compulsions. Instead, if you’re able to catch that first potato chip and say, oh, okay, whoa, I ate the potato chip. I don’t need to eat anymore.

I’m just going to put these down and instead get a better snack for me. That’s going to be a whole lot easier than if you just sit there mindlessly eating the potato chips and next thing you know, half the bag is gone. So it’s about learning to be intentional. It’s about learning to be present and mindful.

So my question is, what’s your one step? What are you going to do today to move towards positive change in your life? I would love to hear about it. You can email me at podcast at kiribach. com. That email will be in the show notes for you. Remember to enter our review giveaway. A lot of people are not going to follow these steps, so you’ve got a good chance of winning and you’ve still got a few more days to do 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.

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.