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227. Finding Paternal and Maternal Love in God: A Personal Story with Chris Russo

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

In this episode, Carrie sits down with pastor Chris Russo to discuss how religious OCD, intrusive thoughts, childhood trauma, and fears surrounding salvation shaped his relationship with God and how counseling, community, and faith became important parts of his healing journey.

You Will Learn:

  • How scrupulosity can create intense fears surrounding salvation and judgment
  • Why childhood trauma and loss can quietly affect your relationship with God
  • How intrusive thoughts can distort the way Christians interpret scripture
  • The difference between intellectually understanding God’s love and emotionally receiving it
  • Why counseling, community, and healthy relationships played a major role in Chris’s healing journey
  • What practical OCD recovery can look like while continuing to pursue faith, family, and purpose

Christian Faith, OCD, and the Fear of Losing God

What happens when your relationship with God becomes driven more by fear than freedom? In this episode, I sat down with Chris Russo, a pastor, husband, and father of three who has spent years navigating the complicated intersection of faith, intrusive thoughts, childhood loss, and religious OCD. Chris shared how losing his mother at nine years old quietly shaped the way he viewed safety, relationships, and eventually God Himself. After becoming a Christian in college, what should have felt life-giving slowly became overshadowed by intense fears surrounding salvation, judgment, and the possibility of losing his relationship with God. What I appreciated most about this conversation was Chris’s honesty about how exhausting it felt to constantly seek reassurance while secretly believing God might reject him at any moment.

Why Do Christians With Religious OCD Feel Constantly Afraid of God?

Chris described spending years terrified that he could accidentally cross a spiritual line and lose his salvation forever. One scripture in particular around blasphemy against the Holy Spirit became an obsession for him, even after talking with pastors and searching for reassurance. He explained that no matter how many answers he received, the fear never fully settled because OCD kept demanding certainty. I think this is something many Christians dealing with scrupulosity quietly wrestle with but rarely know how to explain to others.

How Does Childhood Trauma Affect Your Relationship With God?

As we talked more deeply, Chris connected his fear of losing God to losing his mother so suddenly as a child. He shared how that experience created this underlying belief that anything meaningful or safe could be taken away without warning. Hearing him make that connection was incredibly powerful because so many people carry similar wounds into adulthood without realizing how much those experiences shape their faith, relationships, and emotional responses. Sometimes what feels like a spiritual struggle is connected to unresolved grief that has never fully been processed.

Why Is It So Hard to Believe God Truly Loves You?

One moment from this episode that stayed with me was when Chris shared that someone once told him, “God adores you,” and it almost sounded unbelievable to him. Even though he knew scripture and had gone through seminary, he still struggled to emotionally believe that God genuinely delighted in him. He talked about how counseling and healing relationships slowly helped him recognize how distorted his view of God had become over time. I think many believers intellectually understand grace while emotionally living as though God is constantly disappointed in them.

What Does Healing From Religious OCD Actually Look Like?

Toward the end of our conversation, Chris shared that he intentionally structures his life in ways that “annoy” his OCD every single day. As a pastor, husband, and father, he refuses to let fear isolate him from the very things God has called him to pursue. Instead of waiting until every intrusive thought disappears, he continues showing up for relationships, community, ministry, and growth anyway. I think that picture of healing is incredibly important because recovery is not always about eliminating fear completely. Sometimes it looks like learning how to keep moving forward while trusting God in the middle of the uncertainty.

If you’ve ever struggled with intrusive thoughts, fear surrounding salvation, or feeling emotionally disconnected from God’s love, I really encourage you to listen to the full episode.

Connect with Pastor Chris here:

www.officialchrisrusso.com

Transcript

Carrie: Okay., Chris, welcome to the podcast today, and just tell, give us a brief overview of who you are.

Chris: Yeah. So,, I’m Chris Russo, and I live in the Charleston, South Carolina area., I’ve been a pastor for about 20 years. I’ve got three sons who are,, one actually just turned 16 today. Okay. So I’ve got a 16-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 10-year-old, and my wife Abby and I are coming up on 20 years of marriage in January.

Chris: So yeah.,,, I’ve been pastor… I’ve been the lead pastor of a church for about three years, and before that I was on staff at Seacoast Church,, in the Charleston area for about 18 years. So,, yeah, I became a Christian when I was in college, and that was a crazy experience and it’s been a, it’s been a cool journey.

Carrie: Awesome. A wild ride ever since.

Chris: Yes.

Carrie: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about, like, your OCD story in terms of when did you, the symptoms come out and when did you make the connection like, “Oh, hey, this is what’s actually going on,” and

Chris: Yeah, so I think that probably,, it initially started when I lost my mom at age nine to cancer.

Chris:, I, I think it, it was at that point that I subconsciously adopted a script that the world is a really scary place that can take anything from you at any time. But I wouldn’t say I was really… I, I u- throughout middle school and high school, I used so many numbing techniques when it came to any anxiety.

Chris: And on, on top of that, mental health lingo, at least I,, growing up in Connecticut, really wasn’t, like, a popular thing. Like, I don’t even know that I knew about anxiety until later on in life. So even though there may have been some prevalence throughout middle and high school, I would say,, it really started actually when I became a Christian.

Chris:, I, I wouldn’t say it necessarily started, but it really showed up in force because I stopped, I stopped the drugs. I stopped,,,, I stopped the use of pornography. So I stopped a lot of the numbing agents that I was previously using, and then I really didn’t ha- I mean, all of a sudden, I’m starting this walk with God without these crutches that I’d used for so long, and these struggles started coming, what felt like out of nowhere.

Chris: Yeah. And then it wasn’t… And so I became a Christian when I was 18, and, and I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD by a psychiatrist until I was 27. I mean, it wa- it was a hard road.

Carrie: Yeah. I’m sure., what were some of the, like, themes that,, have come out for you that you struggled with?

Chris: So the first one, I mean,, I didn’t grow up…

Chris: Like, I grew up,, going to Catholic church once a year. So I mean, I went to catechism, but I, I was not a practicing Catholic. I had no real relationship with God. I,, I would pray that I would sink a putt on the golf course or win a baseball game., but it was when,… And sorry, repeat the question.

Chris: I just wanna make sure I understand it.

Carrie: Yeah., like what are some of the themes that you dealt with?

Chris: Yeah. So as soon as I became a Christian, I was so filled with life like I had never felt before. But as I was reading the Bible, I had no previous understanding of scripture. So I’m like, I went from a worldview, and I don’t think a l- a lot of people that didn’t grow up in church can really appreciate this.

Chris: I went from an agnostic, like maybe there’s something out there, maybe there’s a God, maybe there’s heaven, that thing- Mm-hmm… to reading this Bible, talking about heaven and hell, and angels and demons, and all this stuff that I really,, didn’t even believe in 20 seconds ago. And then I started coming across scriptures that through, for a variety of reasons, started to feel like, “Wow, there, maybe there’s a possibility that I could lose this wonderful salvation, this wonderful relationship with God that I just received.”

Chris: So the major theme that I felt like would never end was the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Like, I just, I didn’t understand it really, but to me, I felt like I had stumbled across a crack in the salvation landscape. And it didn’t matter who I talked to. I would talk to as,, I would seek reassurance from pastors and as many people as I could.

Chris: And no matter who I talked to, and no matter what theology text I saw, there was still something that was like you could ste- It felt, it felt like, honestly, as silly as it sounds, it felt like you could step on a crack and break your mother’s back. I felt like I had to tiptoe around God because somehow, and it’s a terrible Trinitarian view, but somehow I’m like, “Okay, the Father is really loving.

Chris: Jesus still creeps me out because all the stained glass windows that I saw growing up, he was never smiling. He never seemed happy.” So I was always, like, a little freaked out about Jesus. But the Holy Spirit, I’m like, “Apparently, he’s, like, the really sensitive member of the Trinity, and if you say the wrong thing to him, he’s gonna peace out and you go to hell forever.”

Chris: So I was terrified of the Holy Spirit.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and, and you can joke about it now, but, like, when you’re in the midst of that, like, storm, it feels, like, so super real. Like, this is, like, this is really, really bad. And, and I think that that’s interesting, that parallel between losing your mother and at a very young age, which,, impacts you profoundly developmentally, and then this sense of,, now I’m afraid that I’m gonna lose God.

Carrie: I’m gonna lose this, like, really positive connection that I have, and, and childhood taught me basically that things could be ripped away from you, and now,, there’s this parallel over here that,, my relationship with God could be ripped away. Like, how do you feel like losing your mom and, and maybe some other things that you went through as a result of that affected your view of God?

Chris: Yeah,, that’s a really interesting insight you brought up that I remember– I’ve been in,, professional counseling now for,, about 10 years, but that insight that you just brought up, I mean, I can’t remember how many counselors have told me, like, “Chris, like, it happened to you.” Like, everything was ripped away so quickly that, — A-and just drawing the connection between that and that fear, like, it,, I, I still– I, I wouldn’t say I’ve worked through that, but I would say that definitely made me feel– I think that sort of, and I really don’t understand it, but I would say that sort of primed me for feeling like, yeah, like, this, this could happen.

Chris: It has happened, and I don’t think I sub– I don’t think I consciously, like, logged as a nine-year-old- Sure… like, everything could be taken away from you, but su-, however subconscious priming works, I think that, that developed,, a mindset or a defense mechanism in me where it’s like, yeah, the most important things in your life can be stripped away regardless of what they are.

Chris: So,, don’t,,, don’t,, don’t get too excited. Don’t allow yourself to enjoy or to really rest in anything because it’s probably not gonna last.

Carrie: Yeah. I think a lot of people,, buy into that, to that lie. Like, don’t, don’t hope too much, don’t get too excited, don’t feel too good because it’s,, just– it’s all gonna be dashed and all gonna be taken away.

Carrie:, so h- tell us about, like, your view of God, like from this really fearful lens, it sounds like,, to a more loving father heart of God view.

Chris: Yeah. So it’s,, it’s definitely been a journey. So I would s– I remember actually being at a worship service one time, and this lady came up to me. And this is when I started to– One of the moments when I started to realize that I had a really,, warped view of God.

Chris: I remember her coming up to me in this service. Her name was Migsy, and she came up to me in service and she said, “God just adores you.” And I, I was probably in my twenties at that point. I’m forty-three right now. And I just remember how ridiculous that idea sounded, like God adoring you. I just felt like,,, like I was at a place right then that- E-even though, like, intellectually I sort of understood the gospel, I was at a place right then where I thought, “God’s definitely frustrated with me.

Chris: Maybe He’s rejected me. At best, He tolerates me, but adores?” Like, that sounded psychotic. And yet there was some deep resonance even when she said that, that felt like that was true, but why can’t I absorb that? And so– And then I,, once I started really seeing a Christian counselor, she told me that through the concoction that we’ve talked about, losing my mom,, not having a super close relationship with my dad growing up, that me receiving the gospel…

Chris: And she wasn’t trying to be mean to me. She was just like saying, “This is what we’re up against, like we’ve gotta drain the swamp.” She said a lot of the theology that I had voraciously taken in through seminary and,, a million books or whatever, it was like pouring water on a rock, that I just couldn’t receive it.

Chris: And so I started to realize that, okay, may… And that’s when I started to think, “Okay, maybe God is way more loving than I, than, than I can, than I can conceive of,” but it still was, like, a long time from that point to really actually believing that He, that He was truly loving. So, like, people would tell me things like, “Quote Matthew three seventeen,” like, “Hey, Chris, like, G-because of the gospel, God sees you as His, as His beloved son with whom He’s well pleased.”

Chris: And there’d be some part of me that, like, the, the ice would chip a little bit.,, I, I think I started to ask the question like, “Okay, God can be a great,…” G- I, I hear all these messages about how God can re-father you and all that stuff, but can God re-mother you? Like, I, like, that, I just didn’t hear that message, but I didn’t have any reason to think otherwise.

Chris: So then a passage like First Peter five seven, like that really, that really stuck to me. Like, “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” And I think that idea of God caring for me was really one that, that hit that maternal point where it was like, “Oh, like, so You’re, like, in the water with me.

Chris: It’s not, You’re not this austere God that sits on the far off side of some chasm or,, sees me drowning from the beach, hopes the best for me, maybe throw out a, a raft, but isn’t gonna come and, isn’t gonna come and get me.”, it’s actually funny. I do remember actually a vivid– I don’t have many memories of my mom, but I do have a vivid memory of I was like, I was probably like, I’ve always been short, but I was really short when I was growing up, and I was like in probably five feet of water, and I might’ve been five one or something like that, and I was like starting to drown, and my mom came into the water in a, in a full sundress and rescued me.

Chris: She’s the only one that saw me. It was a crowded pool. It’s random that, that, that came up. But yeah, so slowly but surely, and I think through some… I’ve had all female counselors, and I think that that’s been,, except for one. I’ve had all female counselors, and that’s been really restorative for God to work through.

Chris: Not,, I don’t think I like deified or idolized any of these women, but the, but God working distinctly through, the, these women to show me more of his caring, maternal qualities has all, ha- has all contributed to me feeling like, okay, God pursues. He’s close. He, He cares., but it’s still a struggle.

Chris: It’s still, like, one of those spots that I need more strengthening in, but I believe it. I’ve at least learned to doubt my doubts a little bit. Like, I know that when- That’s good… I know that when the tube of toothpaste gets squeezed,, when life hits, the storms hit and whatever, and I default to, “God, you probably don’t care,” I can at least flag it in my mind and say, “Wait a minute.

Chris: Hold on. That’s a familiar message. I don’t trust that. God, I know you care.” like a, “Lord, help my unbelief” moment.

Carrie: I think it’s one of the things I wanted to touch on, the seeing a counselor of the opposite sex because,, and I almost recorded an entire podcast episode on this one time and I ki- and I scrapped it.

Carrie: So I may run back to it at some point or another, but I think that in,, certain church circles, it’s very taboo. It’s like, if you’re a man, you need to see a man. If you’re a woman, you need to see a woman. And there are things that we can get from the opposite sex that we can’t get,, from the same sex.

Carrie:, the things that you’re talking about. Like, like, there were some type of, like, unmet needs that God really used these female counselors in a very professional and appropriate way to give, to show you that love and that caring, and I think that that’s so valuable., I know for myself, because of what I’ve just spoken at, I know that there are, are several men that have seen me and they’re like, “You’re my first female counselor,” and they’re just a little bit terrified about that.

Carrie: So I guess I wanna talk,, just throw that out there,, not to derail the conversation, but I think that that’s, that that’s important for people to know, like, it’s okay to see a counselor of the opposite sex as a Christian, and that can still be a really professional place for you to get certain needs met.

Carrie:, I went through, when I was going through trying to date again at,, post-divorce,, I saw a male counselor and it was incredibly helpful because I needed that opposite point of view,, in essence, and I needed him to speak certain things into my life that I don’t think I could have gotten from, from a female counselor.

Carrie: So I think that that’s, that… I, I believe that’s really beautiful that God,, used those people in your life for that purpose.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause I think I’ve always responded pretty well. Not that, not that I d- haven’t– ’cause I’ve had male mentors before. Sure. Like, I’ve sought them out. So I’ve had,, restorative,…

Chris: And my relationship with my dad has gotten much better since when I was a, a hell-raising teenager., so I’ve had b- between him and a lot of,, male mentors, I’ve had those, those,… I’ve had my dad, I’ve had different father figures. But,, yeah, it– as I think about, it wasn’t like one day I set out and I’m like, “I need to see a female counselor.”

Chris: It was, it felt… I would say when I think back on each female counselor that I did see, it was pretty serendipitous in the way that I connected with them. Like, it was recommended. It was,, it, so I, it really felt provisional. It wasn’t– I don’t think I, there was some part of me that felt like I need to…

Chris: ‘Cause the approach in counseling in general, especially in the beginning, was such a mysterious realm for me. I mean, I’m thankful for– it, it feels like the church has really,, and the mental health community have really formed a closer relationship. But when I first was starting on this journey,, I, it, it felt very mysterious to me.

Chris: So there wasn’t some part of me that was like, that n- I didn’t have any idea what I needed. So I’m really thankful that I feel like God helped lead me to these different female counselors, because now in retrospect, I look back and I’m like, gosh, I really think them being females really helped in that,,, in that nurturing, that,, providing some things that maybe I couldn’t have gotten from a male counselor.

Chris: But that was not really an intentional, calculated decision on my part., that was more a, a provisional thing if it, when I really think about it.

Carrie: Yeah. I was thinking too, as you were talking about these,, female characteristics, how, like, Jesus said about Jerusalem, like, “I long to” something like, “I long to gather you like little chicks,, but you were unwilling,”?

Carrie: And, and just this picture of seeing their,, their need for God and their, their brokenness, and it’s like, “I really wanted to nurture you in that way.” I know in the Old Testament, there are some scriptures about,, comparing,, I’d have to look those up, but talking about, like, nursing and nursing mothers and things like that.

Carrie:, we’ll look those up and we may put that in the outro. But,,, there are, there are these pictures of God. So if your, if your view of God is this harsh, staunch, male, militant figure, it might be helpful for people to meditate on some of those other scriptures and really look into that.

Chris: Yeah, I, I think I would benefit more from that because it is, it’s super easy.

Chris: I mean, especially, I mean, and I won’t even start going through them ’cause I don’t wanna trigger anybody, but there are definitely passages of scripture that I… And I,, I just, my wife and I just read through the New Testament, and right now we’re doing a whole Bible plan, so I really try to, like, go th-, embrace God’s Word for what it is.

Chris: But there are definitely passages where I have to, that, that trigger that fear response of like, oh,. And I’ve just learned to just sorta like,,, allow the emotions to sit and not to just trust that the lens that I’m seeing them through, it must be the way that they are.

Chris: Because there are some times where I’m like, “Jesus, you seemed really harsh.” Like, there have been times where I’ve heard people talk about the Bible as a love letter, and ultimately I believe it is. I really do. But there are times where I hear people say that, and I’m like, “Have you read it?” Like- There’s

Carrie: a lot of people that die in there too, right?

Carrie: Yeah.

Chris: There are moments, there have been plenty of times where I’m like, “God, why did you provide this book that feels so scary?” But I,, as I learn the difference between exegesis and eisegesis, seeing what,, the difference between seeing what scripture actually says versus seeing what,, through my,, brokenness and my, my personality, my dysfunction,, all those different things, I’ve learned to not just take my initial gut reaction as gospel, so that, that, that’s really helpful.

Carrie: Yeah., we’re coming with our own lens that we often don’t realize that we have. And I, I can think of a, this is a non-biblical example, but I think it shows the point., the analogy is I watched a certain movie, and let’s say it was about some women that struggled in a time in America where there was, like, a lot more racism and,, different things that were happening that were clearly not godly.

Carrie: And I watched that movie and it,, it talks about these women’s struggle to overcome. My friend watched the movie and she said, “I couldn’t watch it all the way through.” She said, “I, I had to turn it off.” And I was like, “Why?” And she was like, “It was just, it was just too much,” like what they were going through was too much.

Carrie: And so she missed the, the overcoming piece and the inspiration, I think because of her own lens and her own probably experience with racism- Mm-hmm… and other things, that,, that was her, that was her lens of how horrible it was versus, hey, there were some things that were, that were overcame here, and there was a- actually, like, the whole point of the movie is to be inspirational, like that you can come o- overcome hardships.

Carrie: Yeah. And we, we bring, like, different lenses to, to the Bible, the lens of how our parents raised us, the lens of how,, that, the really harsh teachings that we have heard in the church,, and, like- You gotta, you gotta get it together. And, and unfortunately, I think like Like, I don’t know. I heard a lot of teachings growing up that it was like, it was almost like you gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like the Christian version,?

Carrie: It’s like, get it together, get your spirituality together, stop playing games with God, that type of language. And I– it was like, “Oh, hey, here’s the gospel that saves you, but you get to sanctify yourself.” And I was like, a- as an adult now looking back on that, I’m like, what is that? That makes absolutely zero sense.

Carrie: Like, we have to kill the works-based sanctification and, like, it needs to die. Die. Because we have to be able to say, like, the same God that saved me by grace is purifying me. Like, and leading me to be more like Jesus with that same grace, and that same love, and that same fruit of the Spirit., he’s not sitting there going, “Gosh, Jeri, can’t believe you really messed it up today.”

Carrie: He’s like, “Yep, you need me more today.”? “Here I am.” I’m like, “Yes, I messed up again. Thank you. Like, I need, I need you to, to rescue me once again and tell me what I need to do differently so I don’t fall into the same hole that I keep falling into.” Amen. Cool process.

Chris: Yes. Amen.

Carrie: Yeah., talk with us about, like, just other things that, that…

Carrie: So I think what we’re– Sorry, let me re-say that. I think what we’re learning from your story is, like, there’s been a lot of healing in community, which I think is, is a really beautiful thing. As picture of the church, you’re a pastor. Mm-hmm. We’ve got more people,, not showing up at church than ever before.

Carrie: Look, COVID’s over, y’all. Stop trying to phone it in online, okay? Like, find a local body and get in there. That’s my, that’s my little soapbox. But because we need that, like, face-to-face, like, we need to hug some believers on a Sunday. Like, we need people who are gonna text us a scripture on, like, a Tuesday morning and be like, “Hey, I was thinking about you, and God gave me this verse, so I just wanna share this encouragement with you.”

Carrie:, we need those people that are gonna,,, show up and say, like, “Here’s a meal,” or, “Let me pray for you as you’re going through this hard time.”, and, and even if they don’t understand the OCD piece of your story, they’re just so important for us to have that biblical connection and community.

Carrie: And so I just really encourage people, if you’re not there at that point, like in your, in your walk with God, that you look,, continue that church search, show up, visit,, check, check things out. Yes. Meet some people. Don’t– And don’t just show up and leave and sit in the back row of a mega church and never get in a small group and never serve anything and never,, never get to know anybody.

Carrie: That’s To me, that’s not church either. I’m glad that people are showing up and doing that, and hopefully that’s a step on the front porch to get them all the way into the door.? We would like to, like, keep, like…, I think we just have this distorted view of what, what it means to be, I don’t know, in the church almost.

Carrie: It’s like, it’s not just about being in the building and sitting on the back pew. It’s about really being involved in the community, and that’s where these healing relationships can happen., and, and so I love that about, about your story and this, like, the mental health piece as well was really important for you.

Carrie:, a- anything else that has really helped shift some of the OCD for you? Like, are, are you just more aware of, like, when it comes around now?

Chris: Yeah, there’s been– I mean, gosh, I, one thing I am on is a learner, and so I,, I love…, there are times where I’ve gotten discouraged, and I think in the beginning of my journey, I felt like I had this thing that– and I didn’t know what it was, and even when it was labeled OCD, I,, I can’t tell you the number of men’s hikes or,, prayer sessions that I just thought God’s gonna take it away.

Chris: And once I started to,, embrace that this was gonna be more of a, a road and a journey that I was gonna be delivered through rather than from,, I would say there have been moments and I– that occasionally still resurface where I’ve gotten, I don’t know if jaded’s the right word, but discouraged, felt,, felt moments of despair like, gosh,, life would…

Chris: I can’t even imagine what life would be like without this,, gorilla on my back. But at the,, where I’ve gone in healthier moments and that has been, that has kept me, I, I tend to be a,, I don’t know how many Enneagram followers there are out there. I am a seven and I,, I d-, and hopefully a somewhat healthy seven, so the joyful, the joyful person.

Chris: And, and I do tend to be optimistic and I am, and I am a learner. So,, as I connect to,,, podcasts like yours and,, I’ve, and all kinds of,, different books,, on this,, not just on this subject but,, different apps that help me to slow down,, that help me to,, rest in God’s love.

Chris: I’ve really found that there’s,, a lot of gold to be dug up in this journey and so I’ve found,, like you said, healing relationships and I’ve, I, I don’t know if this is– I don’t know how healthy or prescriptive this is. This is just what I’ve done. I’ve got, like if I told you every… Like I’ve got a spiritual director who’s also, she’s also a licensed counselor but she serves as, as a spiritual director.

Chris: I’ve got a Christian counselor. I’ve got a couple of different men’s groups that I’m in. Like I’ve got so many,, between exercise and worship music and just encouraging voices I have in my life, I feel like I just have tried to turn the volume up so high on,, on the, on positivity, on God’s Word that,, not that it makes the OCD go away and there are still really tough days,, but I just have felt like I just am like, what?

Chris:, I’m, I’m not gonna back down. I’m gonna feel the fear and I’m gonna try to steer into the things that I’m afraid of. Like, honestly, as a pastor, I feel like there, and having kids, like, there’s a lot about my life, like if I were to go along with the OCD, I would sequester myself. If I did what, like just what the OCD wanted me to do, like being a pastor would be the worst idea ever.

Chris: Like, I would sequester myself. I would be alone. I probably wouldn’t have kids. I don’t know that I’d be married, and I would stay away from every environment I couldn’t control. Hmm. So I, I feel like I’ve really structured my life to shortcir- Like the, the OCD, I, I would say I, and I w- I, I don’t think I’ve ever said it like this before, but sort of intentionally, I annoy my OCD every single day.

Chris: I like it. Like my life is structured around annoying my OCD. So,, a- and, and I’m thankful for that. Even though there are days where I’m just like, “I wanna just go along with it, hide alone in a room, stay in a protective bubble, and never interact in any environments I can’t control.” I’m like, my life is structured to,, upset the OCD.

Chris: ‘Cause I fundamentally, I mean, as much as I’ve learned about from the physiological side of neuroplasticity to the emotional, mental side, I’m like,, and even, yeah, I mean, just knowing that Jesus overcame the grave itself, I’m like, there is nothing… And not to be like overly preachy, but I just am like, I fundamentally know that you can overcome this, God.

Chris: And I’m like, “I don’t know how it’s gonna happen, and I don’t know what the process is gonna look like, but I’m not gonna stop putting myself out there.”

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. That’s so great. I think that’s such a great,, witness for the people who are listening to say, “I’m not gonna let OCD get in the way of my values and pursuing what I know God has for me,” whether that’s parenting or wait, ’cause somebody needs to hear that.

Carrie:, or whether that’s,, sharing the gospel with other people, or whether that’s speaking on a stage. Like, whatever that, that looks like that people know, hey, God’s calling me to this. Just having that sense of,, in righteous, indignant anger of like, “Not today, OCD.” Nope. Like, “It is not happening. We are gonna,, fulfill and walk in, in what God wants us to do.”

Carrie: Well, that’s, that’s awesome., it sounds like,, for you recovery looks like engaging in all these positive things that are gonna be helpful for you, whether that’s,, exercise,, mentorship, and having other people pour into you., being really honest about where you’re at.

Carrie: I think that that’s great.

Chris: Yeah, it’s, it,, it’s, it continues to humble me. Nothing, I, I, I haven’t fully adapted the whole, like, this is the thorn in my side, like,, 2 Corinthians 12. But,, it, nothing draws me to my knees more. And,, I’m not… I wouldn’t say I’m, like, so thankful for that.

Chris:? Like, I wish there were,, I,, but at the same time,, I, it, it is really humbling, and I’m thankful. And I, and I will say, I am thankful for the number of times it’s brought me to the feet of Jesus saying, like,, I think it was C. S. Lewis that said something like, “Some of our questions are like asking God is yellow a circle or a square?”

Chris: Or how many hours are in a mile. And I’m like, sometimes that’s my brain. I’m like, I’m going to God, and I’m like, “I recognize that I am so confused. I’m asking the wrong questions,” and I’m, like, going to the doctor, and I’m like, “I just need you to do whatever it is in my life that you wanna do, and I’ll follow you no matter how ridiculous the road may feel because I fundamentally don’t know what’s wrong with me.

Chris: And so whatever you wanna prescribe, I am open.” And that’s the mentality I try to embrace.

Carrie: Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Well, thanks so much for,, sharing your story with everybody today. I’m glad that you, you found the podcast and- Mm-hmm… got connected., I think it’s gonna be encouraging for others.

Chris: I hope so.

226. Found ICBT after ERP Wasn’t Effective: A Personal Story with Dr. O. Alan Noble

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

Carrie sits down with author and professor Dr. O. Alan Noble to share his deeply personal journey through years of OCD treatment, intense suffering, and ultimately finding hope through ICBT.

Episode Highlights:

  • Why traditional talk therapy and reassurance can unintentionally keep OCD cycles going
  • How ERP may help some people while still leaving others feeling stuck and exhausted
  • The key differences between ERP and ICBT in treating OCD
  • How ICBT helps people recognize the difference between reasonable doubts and obsessive doubts
  • How faith, community, and hope can sustain people during seasons of deep despair
  • What real recovery from OCD can look like, even when intrusive thoughts still occur

Episode Summary: 

What Happens When ERP for OCD Stops Working?

I never expected to sit across from someone who had done everything right and still felt stuck. Dr. O. Alan Noble is a professor, author of four books, and a contributor to outlets like The Atlantic and Christianity Today. But behind all of that, he spent years battling severe OCD, doing ERP faithfully, and still watching the relief disappear every time. If you have ever wondered whether ERP is truly enough for everyone with OCD, his story will change how you think about treatment.

Can You Spend Six Years in OCD Therapy and Still Not Get Better?

This is something I hear more than I wish I did. A caring therapist. Reassurance given session after session. A client who left feeling okay until the doubts rushed back in before he even got home. Six years of that same cycle. There is something in this pattern that every person with OCD and everyone who loves someone with OCD needs to hear.

What Is ICBT and Why Did It Work When ERP Did Not?

When his ERP therapist finally admitted “this isn’t working,” it cracked open a door. Inference-Based CBT introduced ideas that ERP had never touched, including that not all doubts are created equal and that the content of OCD thoughts actually matters. What Dr. Noble discovered on the other side of that door is something you need to hear him describe himself.

What Does ICBT for OCD Actually Look Like in Real Life?

Dr. Noble still gets intrusive thoughts today. What changed is what happens next. Using tools from ICBT like the bridging exercise, he described working through an intrusive thought that very morning in about three minutes before moving on with his day. Three minutes versus hours of rumination. That shift is what his wife calls miraculous, and after hearing his full story I completely understand why.

How Do You Stay Hopeful During OCD Recovery When Nothing Seems to Work?

There were days Dr. Noble sat on the edge of a bed in tears, convinced nothing would ever change. What kept him going was not a clinical strategy. It was something much deeper. The people, the scriptures, and the perspective that carried him through his darkest moments are all part of this conversation, and honestly this section moved me the most.

Can Christian Faith and OCD Treatment Actually Work Together?

Dr. Noble’s journey started with a biblical counselor who offered scriptures to meditate on. For most people that feels like a lifeline. In his case it became more fuel for rumination. This tension between Christian faith and OCD treatment is one of the most misunderstood areas in mental health, and Dr. Noble speaks into it with honesty that only comes from living through it.

If you have been searching for hope around OCD recovery, wondering whether faith and evidence-based treatment can coexist, or just looking for proof that things can get better, this episode is for you.

Connect with Dr. O. Alan Noble here:  

x.com/TheAlanNoble

www.instagram.com/oalannoble/ 

//substack.com/@oalannoble

To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times

Transcript

Welcome, OCD warriors, to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast, where we are all about reducing shame and stigma of struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories, and replacing uncertainty with faith as you develop practical tools for greater peace.

I’m Carrie Bock, Christ follower, wife, mom, and licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. I pray you are blessed by today’s episode. If you have been around the podcast a little while, last summer we did a personal story series, which was really great. And always whenever we have personal stories of Christians who have struggled with OCD, we always get really good feedback.

It helps reduce a lot of stigma, and people feel encouraged to keep going and feel like there’s hope for them when they hear someone else’s story. So I’m excited to bring that back to you this summer. And today on the podcast we have Dr. O. Alan Noble. He’s the associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and author of four books, including his latest, To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living- That was a really challenging book for me.

I’ll just throw that out there. Definitely prompted a lot of thoughts and took me back to definitely some times where I felt depressed and didn’t wanna get out of bed. That was rough. You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, is that also the name of your Substack?

Dr. Alan: Yeah, You Are Not Your Own Substack is the name of it.

Carrie: If you have not read Dr. Noble’s Substack, we’ll put a link in the show notes. You need to get over there and read the posts. They’re good. He’s had also a variety of articles published in different places, The Atlantic, Gospel Coalition, First Things, and Christianity. And you’re also married with three children.

Dr. Alan: That’s correct.

Carrie: We decided kind of talking ahead of time to really focus your interview on your treatment and kind of your shift from talk therapy and ERP, eventually over to iCBT, and that was how I got connected with you, actually, was one of our podcast listeners has a Substack, and she had, I think, linked one of your articles or talked about your book on getting out of bed.

That was how I found out about you, which is a really great connection. So if anybody has any guest suggestions out there, please always share them with us. We enjoy hearing those as well. Tell us a little bit about your journey of what it was like for you trying to find the right treatment for OCD.

Dr. Alan: I started with biblical counselor. That was my first move, was with a biblical counselor, and that was not helpful. This person really tried. He was a very sweet man. He really had a heart for God, and he was very kind and gave me a lot of scriptures to think about. But the scriptures just gave me more to ruminate about, trying to make a decision about what I was ruminating about and trying to figure things out, right?

That’s one of my ruminations, one of my fixations, is trying to figure things out. Those scriptures just gave me more fodder to figure things out. He did tell me one thing, the last thing we said to each other that was helpful and was true, which was that I needed to understand God’s grace for me better and the meaning of the cross.

And I’ve found through my therapy that that piece of truth was true. Even though he couldn’t help me with ERP or iCBT, he did understand that I do struggle with understanding God’s grace. So I went from that. I came from a church background where seeing therapists was not what was done. That’s why that was my first step, and then I went off to grad school, and my next step was after talking to a pastor, I decided I’m gonna take this big leap and I’m gonna see an actual therapist, a quote unquote secular therapist who is actually a Christian, but they studied in secular school, so it didn’t count.

And a secular psychiatrist, and this was a big step, and I prayed about it and I talked to a pastor, and he’s like, “Yes, you should do this.” And so I felt like, okay, I’ve got this blessing. I’m gonna do this. And the psychiatrist was helpful with the medication side, but the therapist, we did some light ERP and didn’t really help too much.

I moved to Oklahoma, was in a small town, and the only therapist I could get was somebody who did talk therapy. And at the time, because I’d only done some light ERP when I was in Texas, I really didn’t know that ERP was the quote unquote gold standard. I didn’t know what I was missing out on, and I just thought therapy was therapy.

And the therapist I got in Oklahoma said, “Yes, I treat OCD. I’ve treated OCD before.” So these were the magic words I was looking for, right? I didn’t know any better. I was expecting– That’s what I was looking for, somebody who says, “I’ve treated this before.” And I went to her for about six years, and she gave me reassurance for about six years.

I would come to her with various fears I had. My doubts have to do with fears about having harmed people and being negligent, and she would be like, “No, you haven’t been negligent. You’re okay.” And I would walk away feeling fine until I started my car and then The doubts would come back, ’cause that’s how OCD works, and I would say, “What if she doesn’t know?

What if she doesn’t understand? What if? What if? What if?” So I kept going back to her because it was almost addictive really. Wow.

Carrie: Did she ever, like, say, “Hey, you’re coming back with some of the same things, and we’ve already talked through this”? Did it create any kind of red flags for her, like my- No … the client isn’t getting better?

That’s really concerning, kinda scary. Uh, however, I will say that your pathway is very familiar to me, that I’ve heard this from a lot of- Yeah … different people that I’ve talked through the podcast or who have sought help from me. It’s like, “Well, I went to this person that was a Christian, and they really understood my faith, but then they didn’t understand the OCD piece or didn’t know- Yeah

how to help me.” Unfortunately, there are therapists out there saying, “Oh, yeah, like, I work with OCD no problem,” but then you get in there, and they’re not providing evidence-based care, which is problematic.

Dr. Alan: Yeah, and again, very kind person, very caring, concerned about me, but was not equipped with the tools to address what needed to be addressed with me.

And then I got connected with somebody who actually treated OCD with ERP. I started actually listening to some podcasts, I think, and that’s what sorta tipped me off. And I saw this person who treated OCD in Oklahoma City, which is 45 minutes away from where I lived at the time, so it was a sacrifice. But I said– I reached out to him and asked, “Maybe you can help me.”

And I explained my symptoms, and he said, “Yeah, you have OCD, and there’s this thing called ERP, and that’s what you need.” I was like, “Okay, let’s try this.” And so I tried that with him, and then I tried it with another therapist, and I tried some intensive ERP. I tried it for at least two years of just intense ERP.

And you introduced me as Dr. Noble, and I do have a PhD. I’m a good student. I would imagine. I’m good at doing my homework. I have four books. I’m good at doing my homework. So when you give me an assignment, I’m doing my homework. And so I did my ERP homework. And I really wanted to beat this because it was severe on the scale.

It was not light OCD. It was taking up long hours of my life and really disrupting my family life. I was serious about beating this because I needed to get my life back. And so here I was practicing the ERP for two years, just doing the exposure scripts. I was listening to exposure scripts. I was doing different exposures that I was assigned, doing everything that I needed.

I would see some relief. I would see some improvement, but then it would just come back again.

Carrie: So it was, like, a little bit of relief, but it seemed to be temporary or short-lived. That

Dr. Alan: was exactly- Yeah … the problem. If my OCD was at an eight out of ten, it would come down to, like, five. And stay there for a little while after practicing ERP just vigorously, and then it would just go back up to an eight again.

It wouldn’t come down. I was applying the tools. I was doing what I was supposed to. Really, applying the tools was my life. Wow, yeah. This was what I was doing.

Carrie: So then it was like recovery was taking all of your time, it seemed like. Did you almost feel– I think sometimes people can get obsessed about their recovery.

Did you feel that way? Like, “I’ve gotta do this, and I’ve gotta do it exactly as prescribed,” and all the things. I

Dr. Alan: didn’t feel obsessive about it, but I did feel obsessed about it. So it wasn’t like a compulsion, but I was obsessed about it in a non-compulsive way. I was like, “This is what I have to do. I’ve gotta beat this.”

It was in the back of my head almost all day. I was either doing a compulsion by ruminating in my mind, ’cause that was my main compulsion, was rumination, or I was practicing ERP or thinking about practicing ERP all day. So it was like my life was OCD. That was it. And it was just so draining, and also so boring.

It’s like, I don’t want OCD to be my life. My life is so much bigger and richer than this. I thought it was, and now it was just this.

Carrie: When you were going through that level of intense suffering with the OCD, how did you remain hopeful to keep going? Yeah. Because I think a lot of people just say, “ERP is the gold standard.

It didn’t work for me. I’m just giving up. I’m tapping out right here.” And there are some people that just say, “Well, I’m just OCD. You gotta live with me. Like, this is all there is to it.” Like, how did you keep pushing or keep going?

Dr. Alan: That’s an excellent question because there were times when despair was tapping at my door when I thought that exact question.

I thought, “Okay, this is the gold standard. This is what I’ve been told. I’ve heard all the podcasts I’ve done. I’ve read all the books. They’ve said this is it. This is how you get better, and I’m practicing this religiously, and I’m not getting better. I’m not seeing these results.” Maybe this is as good as it gets.

Maybe I’m not gonna see any more improvement over this, and I just have to come to peace with this. And a couple of things gave me hope. One is in Romans 8:28, Paul tells us that God works together all things for our good. So just believing that God is somehow working my good through this suffering, and I didn’t know how.

I didn’t know the particulars of what that good looked like. I didn’t know how he was redeeming that good, but I knew that he was working my good through that suffering and just resting in that. Also having a group of friends and family who are cheering me on and telling me, “Don’t give up. Keep going Keep fighting, keep pressing on, keep striving for wellness.

Because God desires our good, because we are given stewardship over our body, which includes our mind- Yeah … it is honoring to God for us to desire recovery. We’re not gonna get perfect bodies and minds until the resurrection, but it’s good for us in this life to fight for, to strive for, to work towards healing.

So I was committed to that, and I would look at my kids, I would look at my wife, and I would say, “I have a duty to do this. I don’t get to roll over and give up.” The other thing is that even though these therapists, these ERP therapists, they were great therapists. They were just wonderful therapists. They weren’t seeing the results that they wanted to see in me, but they were great therapists who were using all the tools that they had, and they didn’t give up on me.

They said, “What is it gonna take to see you get better?” It was the last therapist I was working with who actually introduced me to iCBT- Okay … who said, “Allen, this isn’t working” What we’re doing isn’t giving you the relief and the progress that we need to see, that we want you to see. Why don’t we try something different?

And if I can’t provide that for you, maybe somebody else can, because I don’t want you to give up. I know that you can improve. And hearing that meant a lot because, like I said, I wanted to give up. I did wanna roll over. Maybe I’m still gonna have some intrusive thoughts, but it doesn’t have to take up hours and hours and hours and hours of my day.

That’s what I needed to hear.

Carrie: Therapeutically, I’ll just say from the therapist side, that’s a really hard conversation to look at somebody and say, “I believe in you and I believe in your health, and I am in the way of that now.” Like, “I have-” Yeah “… literally given you every tool I have in the box, and I want you to succeed, and that means that you have to kind of fly on away from me.”

Because sometimes people can take that personally of like, “Oh, you’re giving up on me?” It’s like, “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you need a different toolbox than what I have-” Yeah “… right now. And for your best interest, it’s not good for us to keep on clients for long periods of time that are not making progress.”

That’s not ethical.

Dr. Alan: Yeah. It was a hard transition, and starting iCBT was hard too, but it was what I needed, and that’s what made the difference for me. I still clung onto that hope. I needed that hope, that belief. What I’ve come to realize myself is that desire for recovery, in my opinion, is the most important key to recovery.

It was at least the most important key to my own recovery because all throughout this journey that I just described, the ups and downs, if I gave up desiring to recover at any point, it would’ve stopped. I had to have this drive to recover. I had to have this belief that it’s my responsibility before God and before my family and before my friends, before my church, and before myself.

Like, I owed it to all those individuals and myself to get well, as well as I could get. I had to have a hunger for that. I had to advocate for myself. I had to keep looking for therapists, the right therapist, the right medication, and that took a drive.

Carrie: Yeah. I think the beautiful thing about living in Christian community is there are days where we don’t have it for ourselves, but somebody else can have it for us.

Yeah. And in your book, on getting out of bed, you talked about this guy that you just kept calling him- Yeah … all the time and felt bad, “Sorry, I’m calling you all the time to help me through these dark places,” and he’s like, “That’s what I’m here for.” And we need that inside ourselves, that drive to get better, but we also need other people to hold us up on the days that we just don’t have it.

Dr. Alan: Yes, absolutely. There were definitely many, many days where my desire was not there, and it was other people carrying me. Three or four friends, plus my wife and my children in their own way, and who I would contact when I was in despair or tempted to despair, and they would give me the hope, comfort me with the comfort of Christ when I didn’t have that comfort, as Paul talks about Corinthians, I believe.

Just give me that comfort when I felt like I didn’t have it, and they would share that with me, not to reassure me, but just give me that comfort so that I could move forward.

Carrie: Was there a particular concept in ICBT that stood out for you or that you found particularly helpful?

Dr. Alan: Just the basic premise that there are reasonable doubts and obsessive doubts.

Just that basic premise itself is really powerful for me, I think. So there are a couple things. That one’s really powerful for me, that I can look at my doubts and say Based on my senses, is this a reasonable doubt? Do I have sense information based on, including my common sense, to evaluate this as a reasonable doubt?

Is this relevant to the here and now? And that kind of rocked my world and flipped it upside down and made it seem like, well, okay, this makes a lot more sense, as opposed to just seeing things in terms of, well, just not even thinking in those terms at all. That really helped me, I think especially because I’m somebody who thinks a lot, and so just having that ability to use my mind without getting stuck in the weeds of the content- Yes

was really powerful. Another really important concept is the feared possible self. Just that idea that this is coming from somewhere, that these thoughts aren’t random. That’s another thing that ERP always felt like it was lacking that didn’t make sense to me from ERP, is that the content is totally irrelevant.

Well, is the content totally irrelevant? Because it seems like it has a pattern. It seems like it all stems from somewhere. So like for me, like it all centers around being a negligent self. Well, that tells me something, and that probably points to something, and that probably matters. So why aren’t we talking about that?

That seems worth poking at, and why aren’t we poking at that? And so ICBT does a good job of addressing that, of bringing that elephant into the room. I really appreciated that.

Carrie: Yeah. And I like that spiritually in the context of the- Yeah … real self. If we’re saying the content doesn’t matter at all, then the content is connected to things that you value.

So it’s like, well, so you’re saying my values aren’t important- Right … versus recognizing like, okay, this is a lie, a false self, and then this is who I really am. What are your thoughts about this spiritually, just in terms of like sense data evidence? ‘Cause we have a lot of people that wrestle with things like sin.

Yeah. Did I sin versus not?

Dr. Alan: That’s a great question. I think we can trust our senses. I think that God has given us senses to use as reasonable tools as best we can to make sense out of the world, and I think that our senses can be fallible. I think there are two things to think about. One is that it’s reasonable for us to trust our senses unless we get evidence otherwise, and that’s what ICBT teaches, right?

If you get data that says that the video you watched was AI, then you change your information, right? Mm-hmm. But otherwise, you trust your senses. But for the person with OCD, the analogy I always like to use is they come up to the street corner and instead of crossing the street, looking once, checking for cars, I know for me, I wanna check like a million times before they cross the street, over and over and over again, instead of trusting their senses, right?

Right. Normal person trusts their senses. They look once, they trust their senses, and then they cross the street if there’s no cars coming. It’s reasonable. God has given us good senses. It’s reasonable for us to trust our senses. And the other thing we can do is, and James talks about God giving us wisdom, and I think that we can pray for wisdom and clarity and trust that God gives us those things, and trust that our senses are good, and let it go at that, and not doubt our senses.

I don’t mean that compulsively. I’m not saying compulsively pray for wisdom, but just in general, pray that God gives you wisdom and trust that He does that, and then move forward in confidence, resolute.

Carrie: How have you wrestled at all, like, with the concept of healing and desire for healing and recognizing, like, okay, God allowed this intense suffering as a part of my story?

Dr. Alan: Yeah, that’s hard. There have been a couple of things that I’ve thought about. What’s hard about this, it’s not just my suffering, but it’s affected other people, right? Sure. That’s the reality, is it’s affected my family, it’s affected my friends. It has ripple effects. Even if you’re living alone, it’s gonna affect your coworkers, your neighbors.

Suffering always ripples. That’s what makes it so difficult, is that you can’t say, “Well, my suffering taught me this lesson, and so it’s been redeemed.” You also have to acknowledge that other people were hurt by it. But I’ll say a few things. I’ll say, one, Paul teaches as a truth, in Romans chapter five, I believe, “Through suffering, I’ve been taught perseverance, I’ve been taught endurance.”

And he says, “Endurance builds character, and character builds hope.” And that’s been true for me. When I look back at what I have been through, this just hit me a couple of days ago. I was just walking along or driving or something was happening, and I just thought, “Allen, do you remember how much despair you were in?”

Just sitting on the edge of a bed crying, just hopeless, just the OCD, just absolute control, feeling like you were the worst monster in the world. You made it through that. Isn’t that amazing what God has taken you through? I didn’t mention this, but thanks to iCBT, through the last year and a half or so, my wife calls it miraculous, the change that has happened because of iCBT compared to ERP.

“It’s just been miraculous,” she says, and I agree with her, and I thank God for it. Yeah. But just seeing that change, part of what I’m looking back at is I’m looking back the change that’s happened in me, the hope that I have, knowing that God can do miraculous things, that He can take me through hard times and bring me through them, and I’m not the same person Another thing that’s happened is that I have been able to help a lot of other people through my own suffering, and Paul again talks about this when he talks about comforting others with the comfort of Christ.

It doesn’t mean that my suffering isn’t serious. It doesn’t mean that my suffering didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean that other people didn’t suffer because of me. But it does mean that that suffering has meaning, that it does something. I have been able to walk with other people who have OCD and tell them that they have hope, that they can get help, that they can do something, that they have agency in their lives, that they can advocate for themselves and get the proper therapy, whether it’s ERP or iCBT, whatever it is, get the proper help.

I can pray for them. I can encourage them. I can teach them not to get reassurance. I can do these things because I have been there, and I can love them. The gratitude I’ve received from that is just so powerful. And then finally, again, I just go back to Romans 8:28. Somehow, God is working my good through this suffering, and He’s working the good of my family through their suffering that they experienced through my suffering and my friends and anyone else who was affected by this.

I don’t know how God is weaving that But I know that God is good. I know that He loves us. I know that He’s just, and I know that He’s caring for us, and I know that He’s almighty, and I know that He’s a good God, and I know that He’s gonna work these things out. I have hope that somehow He’s working these things for the good.

And somebody could look at that and say, “Well, it’s just wishful thinking,” but I would say, “No, I’ve seen Him work miracles.” Yeah. I, I have hope.

Carrie: I think that one of the biggest lies that people believe when they’re in the midst of suffering is it’s always gonna be this way.

Dr. Alan: Yeah. It’s

Carrie: always gonna be this bad.

I’m never gonna be able to get out of this. And that’s the lie, and we know that God can use anything and to change and transform people. And I’m glad that you got over that hurdle of getting into, quote, “secular therapy from a Christian person.” Yeah. And you went on that journey and eventually found the right help.

And the idea behind having podcasts like this and people finding your writings is to get people in good treatment faster so that they don’t have to- Yeah … go through that long journey where everything is just- Getting more and more difficult, and think that this is very hopeful for our audience. Yeah. I think sometimes people think the goal is, like, to never have another intrusive thought again.

Mm. And so we just wanna debunk that as well. Yeah. When you think about recovery- Mm … what does it look like for you today?

Dr. Alan: Yes. I mean, even for today, I still have intrusive thoughts. I still have things that come up, and I use my tools, and I apply them. So today, intrusive thought hit me, and I used the bridging tool that it, ICBT teaches, and visualized myself on a bridge, and made a choice not to go into the bubble, and moved on with my day.

For today, it took me about three minutes to make that choice. Now, later on today, I might not make that choice. I might slip up and make the choice to go in the bubble, and that might happen. But overall, my recovery looks like making that choice less and less and making the choice to move towards my family and what I believe is the life that God has given me, has called me to over and over again.

As I said, overall, this change has been miraculous. There have been bad days. There have been bad weeks. Sure. There have been bad months. That is a reality, and a reality that I work on with my therapist still. But the overall trajectory has been so much better that it is still amazing. Thank you for bringing that up.

Yeah, that’s a really important point. It’s not that I don’t get intrusive thoughts. It’s that they don’t run my mind anymore. I have tools that I can use to choose what I’m going to do next, and most of the time now, I can choose to move toward my life.

Carrie: Awesome. I know a lot of people have told me that they found the bridge exercise very empowering.

It’s like, “Oh, I feel like, hey, there’s a pause here.” If I can find that pause, right? And you don’t always find it, but the more that you become aware of how you get there, the more you find it, and then I feel really empowered to know, “Hey, I found the pause. I have a choice right now.” Yep. Yep. I can either go right or I can go left, and I know what the consequences are gonna be depending on what I choose.

Awesome. Tell us a little bit before we go about your latest book that just came out.

Dr. Alan: Yes. It is called To Live Well, and it is a book about the seven virtues, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and love. It’s about how to live well in a chaotic time. I think we live in very chaotic times. I don’t think that’s too debatable.

It feels very confusing to live in the modern world. It feels like everybody’s values are up in the air. It feels like the definition of love and of justice and of what is true is constantly being contested, and that makes it hard to move, hard to act, and very easy to get stuck. And so this is a book about how to move, how to live well, how to act in the modern world, the contemporary world.

And so I move through these classic virtues Grounding them in the Gospels, because it’s a biblical book, and grounding them in Jesus and His actions in the Gospels, and work through what it looks like to be a virtuous person for God. Not to earn God’s favor, because we already have that, but because God loves us, we wanna act virtuously and understand what it looks like to live virtuously in, uh, chaotic times.

Carrie: Yeah. It’s a crazy world out there. There’s a lot that gets thrown at us, and things are changing all the time, so any help for how we can live out Jesus in this environment I think is helpful, for sure. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you for sharing today. I’m really thankful for Dr. Noble for sharing his story, because I think there are many other people out there with this story that feel like they’re doing all the right things that they’re supposed to be doing and just aren’t getting better.

It’s important for people to know that there is hope out there, and to not give up, to keep going. I think for a long time in my own life, I was like, “Yeah, God has a plan for all this craziness,” but I really doubted whether or not it was a good one. And looking back, I can now see, like, God’s goodness in the course of my life, and I’m so thankful for that.

If you’re in the midst of just a really dark place with your OCD, I want to remind you that God hasn’t given up on you, and just encourage you not to give up on Him, to keep leaning in even when things are hard and they don’t make sense. I am currently working my way through to live well, and it’s been a slow go for me because I keep having to stop and think about things.

Definitely challenging in a good way, for sure. I hope that you guys will come back next week and join us as I interview a pastor about his OCD journey. 

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or 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.

225. Is Empowered Mind Right for Me?

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

In this episode, Carrie shares why so many Christians feel trapped in exhausting OCD cycles and how Empowered Mind: Christian ICBT for OCD offers a different approach to finding peace, clarity, and lasting healing.

Episode Highlights:

  • What makes inference based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) different from traditional OCD treatment
  • Why so many Christians struggle silently with scrupulosity and intrusive thoughts
  • How Empowered Mind helps simplify OCD recovery into practical, faith based steps
  • Why being “functional” doesn’t always mean you’re truly free from OCD
  • Who Empowered Mind is designed for and how to know if it’s the right fit for you
  • Why lasting OCD healing requires consistency, self awareness, and intentional change

Why Are So Many Christians Secretly Struggling With OCD?

I’ve heard from so many believers who feel trapped between their faith and intrusive thoughts, silently wondering if they’ll ever experience real peace. That’s one reason I created Empowered Mind Christian ICBT for OCD, to help Christians finally understand what’s actually happening beneath the fear and shame.

For many Christians, OCD doesn’t just create anxiety. It creates confusion, guilt, and spiritual exhaustion that can feel impossible to explain to others. In this episode, I share why so many people suffer silently for years and what starts to change when shame finally loses its grip.

Could ICBT Change the Way We Approach OCD Recovery?

What drew me to inference based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) is how differently it approaches OCD. Instead of constantly battling anxiety, it teaches you to recognize obsessional reasoning before you get pulled into compulsions. That shift alone can completely change how you respond to intrusive thoughts.

I also talk about why ICBT has been such a game changer for many Christians struggling with scrupulosity and fear based thinking. Once you begin understanding how OCD builds its stories, you start seeing why trying harder or seeking more reassurance never truly brings peace.

What Makes Empowered Mind Different From Other OCD Resources?

Empowered Mind isn’t a quick fix or another overwhelming pile of information. I created it to simplify ICBT into practical, faith based steps that Christians can actually apply in real life. The course walks through the OCD reasoning process in a way that feels understandable, approachable, and deeply connected to faith, especially for those struggling with scrupulosity.

Inside the course, I guide listeners through examples, exercises, and real life applications designed to help them recognize OCD patterns more clearly. I also explain why healing takes consistency and practice, not perfection or instant breakthroughs.

Who Is Empowered Mind Actually Designed For?

I created Empowered Mind for Christians who are tired of OCD running their lives and are ready to start making meaningful changes. It’s especially helpful for people who may not have access to specialized OCD therapy yet or who want a faith based approach that truly understands scrupulosity.

I also share why this course requires self motivation and intentional effort. Healing from OCD isn’t about passively consuming information. It’s about learning new mental patterns, building awareness, and slowly stepping out of the cycles that have kept you stuck for years.

Is Being “Functional” Really the Same as Being Free?

So many people tell me, “I’m functional,” while internally battling intrusive thoughts all day long. But surviving isn’t the same as living abundantly. In this episode, I share why OCD recovery is about more than coping. It’s about finally stepping out of the exhausting mental cycle.

I want listeners to know there is hope beyond constantly fighting mental compulsions in the background of everyday life. Freedom may not happen overnight, but healing becomes possible when we stop accepting exhaustion as normal.

Don’t miss the deeper stories, faith insights, and practical ICBT tools shared in this episode.Tune in now.

Use code MEMORIALDAY25 at check out to receive 25% off Empowered Mind. Sale ends Monday, May 25 at midnight.

224. Remaining Hopeful When Past OCD Treatment Has Failed

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

In this episode, Carrie shares how to move forward when OCD treatment, ERP, prayer, or recovery programs leave you feeling stuck, discouraged, and questioning whether things can really change. 

Episode Highlights:

  • Why failed OCD treatment can feel emotionally devastating for Christians
  • The mindset shift that changes how recovery and progress are viewed
  • What may actually be missing when therapy does not seem effective
  • Why more people are exploring ICBT after difficult ERP experiences
  • How faith, resilience, and growth can still emerge from disappointment

Episode Summary: 

Why Does OCD Treatment Sometimes Fall Short Even When You’re Committed to Recovery?

I’ve worked with many Christians who invested significant time, money, and emotional energy into OCD treatment, only to feel discouraged when the results did not match their expectations. Opening up about intrusive thoughts, scrupulosity, anxiety, or fear takes tremendous courage, which can make disappointing treatment experiences feel especially painful. But what if those setbacks are not the end of the story?

Could Your OCD Recovery Be Limited by the Way You Measure Progress?

One of the biggest mindset shifts I’ve learned is that healing is rarely linear. Progress does not always look like immediate symptom relief or dramatic transformation. Sometimes the earliest signs of growth are quieter, and if you are only looking for huge breakthroughs, you may miss the deeper changes happening underneath the surface.

What Happens When OCD Treatment Is Not Truly OCD-Informed?

I’ve seen many individuals enter therapy believing they were receiving specialized OCD treatment, only to later realize their therapist lacked a deeper understanding of intrusive thoughts, scrupulosity, or evidence-based OCD care. When faith is involved, that disconnect can feel even more discouraging and confusing than people expect.

Why Are More Christians Exploring ICBT for OCD Recovery?

Many Christians have shared with me that traditional OCD treatment approaches felt emotionally overwhelming or failed to address the deeper reasoning process driving their fears. That is one reason I became passionate about Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, because it approaches OCD from a completely different angle that many people have never heard explained before.

Could the Fear of “Never Getting Better” Be Strengthening OCD?

OCD often keeps people trapped in constant analysis about whether treatment is working, whether they chose the wrong path, or whether they are somehow beyond help. I’ve seen people spend years searching for certainty instead of taking the next healthy step forward, and that cycle is more common than most people realize. Sometimes the deeper struggle is not just the OCD itself, but the hopelessness and discouragement that quietly grow alongside it. And when that happens, it can start to feel impossible to believe that things could ever change.

There’s more hope here than OCD wants you to believe. Tune in now.

Transcript

Accordion Content

223. How Mindfulness is Helpful for ICBT

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

In this episode, Carrie shares how mindfulness and Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) can come together in a powerful way to support your OCD recovery journey. 

Episode Highlights:

The difference between mindfulness and meditation, and why it matters

How mindfulness helps you create space from intrusive thoughts

Why building distress tolerance is key for OCD recovery

What ICBT is and how it reveals what’s really happening behind OCD

How faith, Scripture, and staying present support your healing journey

Episode Summary: 

How Can Mindfulness Actually Help Me Break Free from OCD Thought Loops?

I used to think mindfulness was just about calming down, but I’ve seen it become something much deeper. It creates space between you and the intrusive thoughts that feel so real. And in that space, something begins to shift. Instead of reacting, you start noticing. That small change can open the door to a different kind of peace, especially in the middle of OCD struggles.

Why Do I Keep Getting Stuck in Worst-Case Scenarios Even When I Know They Aren’t True?

Your mind can take one moment and turn it into a future disaster that feels completely real. But what if the issue isn’t the thought itself, but how we respond to it? I’ve seen how OCD pulls us out of the present and into imagined fear. When we gently return to what’s actually happening right now, things begin to loosen, even if just a little.

What Happens When I Stop Fighting My Thoughts and Just Sit with Them?

This is where it gets uncomfortable, but also where growth begins. Instead of pushing thoughts away, mindfulness invites you to stay present with them. To notice without judgment. And over time, you may begin to see that thoughts don’t hold as much power as they once did. That shift can feel quiet, but it’s meaningful.

How Do Mindfulness and ICBT Work Together to Rewire My Thinking?

When mindfulness and ICBT come together, something powerful happens. ICBT helps you understand the story your mind is telling, while mindfulness helps you slow down enough to see it. Without awareness, it’s easy to stay stuck. But once you begin to notice the patterns, you’re no longer completely led by them.

Why Does OCD Feel So Real in My Body Even When I Know It Doesn’t Make Sense?

OCD doesn’t just live in your thoughts. It shows up in your body, your emotions, and that sense of urgency. It feels real because your body believes it is. Mindfulness helps you stay present with those sensations without reacting right away. And over time, that builds trust that you can handle what you feel.

How Can My Faith Support My Healing Instead of Adding Pressure?

Faith was never meant to increase fear. When we come back to stillness, daily dependence, and God’s presence, it aligns beautifully with mindfulness. God meets us in the present moment, not in imagined fears. And learning to sit with Him there can bring a deeper, steadier kind of peace.

If this stirred something in you, there’s more waiting for you in the full episode. Listen now. 

222. Can AI help with OCD? 

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

In this episode, Carrie explores the concerns of using AI for OCD and shares practical ways to use it wisely while staying grounded in truth, community, and your identity in Christ.

Episode Highlights: 

• Why using AI during a mental health crisis can be harmful and what to do instead

• How AI can become a form of reassurance seeking that feeds the OCD cycle

• The ways AI may unintentionally reinforce negative thought patterns

• Why human connection and godly community are essential for healing

• Practical ways to use AI as a tool without replacing real support

• How to stay rooted in truth and your identity in Christ while navigating technology 

Episode Summary:

Should Christians with OCD use AI for mental health support?

I have been noticing how often AI shows up in conversations about productivity, business growth, and even mental health tools, and I have used it myself in simple ways for my podcast and content. But when it comes to OCD, I find myself asking a more thoughtful question: is this actually supporting healing, or could it be quietly pulling us away from the kind of help God designed us to receive?

Can AI make OCD symptoms worse without you realizing it?

One of the concerns I see in the mental health space is how easily AI can turn into a form of reassurance seeking, which we know keeps the OCD cycle going. When you are already feeling anxious and reach for quick answers, it can feel helpful in the moment, but over time it may keep you stuck in patterns that God is gently inviting you to step out of.

Why does AI feel comforting but not truly healing?

AI is designed to be affirming, quick, and easy to engage with, and that can feel like a relief when your mind is overwhelmed. But true healing often involves being lovingly challenged, gaining new perspective, and sitting with discomfort in a safe way, and that is something technology simply cannot fully provide.

Can AI replace therapy, Christian community, or real relationships?

From both a faith and mental health perspective, the answer here is important. God created us for connection, for relationship, and for being known by others, not just interacting with something that reflects back what we give it. When we begin to rely on AI in place of people, we may miss the depth of healing that comes through safe, supportive relationships.

How can you use AI in a healthy way with OCD?

I do believe there are practical ways to use AI responsibly, especially for things like reducing stress, organizing your life, or finding general information. When used with intention and boundaries, it can support your overall well-being, but it should never replace the deeper work of recovery, therapy, and spiritual growth.

How does your identity in Christ shape the way you use technology?

At the heart of this conversation is something much deeper than AI. It is about where you go for truth, peace, and reassurance. As Christians, we are invited to root our identity in Christ, not in quick answers or external tools, and to trust that God is present with us even in the uncertainty.

If you have been wondering whether AI is helping or hurting your OCD recovery, this episode will walk you through what to watch for and how to move forward with wisdom. Take a few minutes to listen, you may begin to see both your technology use and your healing journey in a new light.

221. Your Scrupulosity Question Answered

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

In this episode, Carrie answers listener-submitted questions from email and a recent survey about scrupulosity to help you better understand it and respond in healthier ways.

Episode Highlights:

  • Carrie’s answers to listener questions about intrusive thoughts and scrupulosity, drawn from real experiences shared through email and survey responses
  • How to recognize intrusive or critical thoughts as OCD, not your true beliefs
  • Why scrupulosity targets what matters most, including your relationship with God
  • How to identify the core fear beneath obsessive doubts
  • The difference between God’s voice and fear-based thoughts

In this episode, I’m answering your questions about scrupulosity and intrusive thoughts that were submitted through email and a recent survey. If you’re a Christian struggling with OCD, especially distressing thoughts about God, you’re not alone, and this conversation is here to help you better understand what’s happening in your mind and how to respond in a healthier way.

Does anyone else struggle with intrusive or critical thoughts about God?

One of the most common questions I received is about having unwanted, intrusive thoughts that feel critical or even blasphemous toward God. If that’s you, I want you to know this is a common experience in scrupulosity. In this episode, I begin to unpack why these thoughts happen and how to recognize them as OCD, not your true beliefs.

How do I handle different interpretations of scripture without falling into OCD fear?

Another question we explore is how to navigate different or stricter interpretations of scripture without spiraling into anxiety. If you’ve ever worried about getting your faith “wrong,” we talk about how OCD can latch onto these fears and how to start shifting out of that pattern.

How can I tell the difference between God’s voice and OCD thoughts?

This is such an important question for many Christians with OCD. If you’ve felt stuck trying to figure out whether a thought is from God or from fear, I share some gentle guidance to help you begin discerning the difference so you can move toward peace instead of staying in that mental loop.

Throughout this episode, I offer simple, practical ways to respond to intrusive thoughts without getting pulled deeper into the cycle of scrupulosity. My hope is that you walk away feeling less alone, more grounded, and reminded that God’s heart for you is peace, not confusion or fear.

220. Getting Unstuck from Spiritual Mental Rituals

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

In this episode, I talk about how spiritual mental rituals are actually mental compulsions in OCD, and five steps to help you recognize these patterns and begin stepping out of them.

Episode Highlights:

  • The connection between spiritual mental rituals and compulsions in OCD
  • Ways to become more aware of when these patterns are happening in your mind
  • Practical strategies to create distance from intrusive thoughts through mindfulness and thought diffusion
  • The underlying fears and “feared possible self” that drive spiritual mental rituals
  • Why OCD’s reasoning process keeps you stuck and what helps you step out of it 

Episode Summary:

Why do I feel stuck even though I’m praying more and trying harder?

I hear from so many of you who are doing everything you know to do spiritually. You are praying, rebuking thoughts, quoting Scripture, and trying to replace negative thoughts, yet you still feel stuck. That can be incredibly discouraging because your heart is in the right place. At the same time, some of these responses, like repetitive praying or trying to cancel out a thought, may actually be mental rituals that keep OCD going instead of bringing peace.

Why are mental rituals in OCD so hard to recognize?

These patterns often become automatic, which makes them easy to miss. You may be responding to intrusive thoughts all day without realizing how much energy it takes. Many people describe it as a quiet background murmur in their mind. As this loop repeats, it strengthens, which is why awareness is such an important first step.

How should Christians respond to intrusive thoughts?

Many Christians feel they need to respond to every thought right away. When an intrusive thought shows up, it can feel urgent and important. However, that urgency is often part of how OCD keeps you engaged in the cycle. There is a different way to relate to your thoughts that allows you to stay grounded in your faith without being pulled into anxiety.

Why does OCD make me feel like something is wrong with me spiritually?

OCD often targets your relationship with God, making you feel like you are not doing enough or that something is off. These thoughts can feel real, but they are often rooted in a feared possible self rather than your true identity in Christ.

What is actually keeping the OCD cycle going?

There is a deeper reasoning process that pulls you away from the present and into a stream of anxious possibilities. Without recognizing this, it is easy to stay stuck even when you are trying your best to do the right thing.

If you have been feeling worn down by intrusive thoughts and mental rituals, this is not an episode you want to miss.

Listen now to begin finding peace and share this with someone who needs encouragement today.

Transcript

 Repetitive praying, rebuking thoughts, quoting scripture or a short phrase, or intentionally thinking a positive thought to neutralize a negative thought. What do all of these things have in common? They are all mental rituals in OCD. Today on the Scrupulosity series, we’re gonna be talking about five steps to get unstuck from spiritual mental rituals.

Welcome OCD Warriors to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast where we are all about reducing shame and stigma of struggling with OCD as a Christian sharing hopeful stories. And replacing uncertainty with faith as you develop practical tools for greater peace. I’m Carrie Bock, Christ follower, wife, mom, and licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

I pray you are blessed by today’s episode. Number one is be aware of when you are doing it. If you’re gonna change any type of behavior, you have to become aware of how and when it is happening. You wanna know what the triggers are to this mental compulsive ritual. You probably already know that, but sometimes when you’ve been doing something for so long, you don’t even realize that you’re doing it.

It’s just almost happening kind of in the back corner of your head. I’ve met a lot of people with OCD who tell me there’s kind of like this murmur almost in the background going on in their mind. You may be responding at times and you’re not even fully aware of how much time you’re taking to respond to these types of things.

Ultimately, neurons that fire together, wire together, so the more time you engage in this obsession compulsion loop. The stronger it gets and the faster that goes. One thing you can do here is to practice mindfulness. If you’re not familiar with mindfulness, mindfulness is a component of acceptance and commitment therapy.

And what it involves is focusing intentionally on the present moment with a sense of awareness, acceptance, curiosity over judgment. And by doing so, you’re helping yourself be able to slow down, be aware, and take stock of what’s actually going on right now. Many people in today’s culture are moving at a hundred miles per hour.

Our brains are taking in all kinds of information and we’re just moving through life, not really as present as we could be, and mindfulness helps us get back to this sense of being present. I believe this is a very important component for us spiritually as Christians. Because we need to be able to sit in God’s presence and hear what he has to say to us.

And if we don’t slow down enough to even do that and learn to quiet our minds, learn to just let all of the dust settle, then it’s gonna be really hard for us to be able to connect even in our devotional moments that we have with him. Number two, we wanna create a distance, create some separation between you and your thoughts.

You need to understand that you are not the sum of your thoughts. You don’t act on all of your thoughts. We have thoughts all the time that we don’t pay any attention to, and we’re like, oh, that was kind of weird. Or. Oh no, I really shouldn’t do that. Or, Ooh, I wanna say that, but that would really be a bad idea.

Right now the filter comes in, right? We don’t need to super align ourselves with our thoughts and say, oh, well, because I had this thought, then that means something about me. Or create some type of additional meaning that doesn’t need to be there to create this distance. You can do a couple different things.

One, you can look at it from more of a metacognitive approach of, I am having an obsession right now. Or I always say, even if you can’t stop the compulsion, you could say in a mindful sense, I am engaging in a compulsion right now. This lets you and your brain know. Hey, I know what’s going on right now.

Even if I’m not in a place to combat it or stop it, I know that I am on this cycle of obsession and compulsion. That awareness piece, as we talked about is important. Another exercise you can utilize to create some distance between you and your thoughts is called thought diffusion. This is something I learned from dialectical behavioral therapy.

We borrow from a variety of different things on the podcast because I think different therapeutic approaches have little snippets and pieces that can be helpful for OCD, and these are actually considered adjunct therapies. If you go onto io CDFs website, that’s how they would define like acceptance and commitment or.

Dialectical behavioral therapy. I believe they’re under the adjunct approaches, not entirely sure could be under secondary. In order to practice thought diffusion, you’re gonna do something like, imagine your thought is on a leaf, going down a stream, or imagine your thought is on a cloud in the sky.

Imagine your thought is on a car and you’re watching the cars pass by on the highway. And what this does is it allows you to really examine your thought and recognize that you don’t have to immediately get roped into it. Ruminate on it, figure it out, can be really great strategy for rumination to practice this.

It does take practice. It takes time to learn. So you can’t just do it once and think that you’re good to go, but when you do this and you kind of imagine these thoughts moving by, it lets you know, okay, I’m creating some separation between myself and the thought. I’m also noticing I don’t have to act on the thought right now, so that can keep you from compulsing.

I don’t have to immediately do anything about this right now, even though OCD is screaming, you really need to do something about this, and you need to do it right now because OCD is super urgent like that. But when you practice these exercises, you go, okay, I’m having this thought. I don’t have to continue to hold onto it.

I can train my brain. To be able to let the thought come and let the thought go out. Like I said, that takes some intentional practice. It’s not an easy one and done type of scenario. Number three, understand what is contributing to this fear. We know that with OCD, it convinces you that some things are true about yourself that are not true about yourself.

An inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy call this the feared possible self. It’s like if I don’t engage in these compulsions, if I don’t entertain these obsessions in these specific ways, could mean a variety of things. Could mean I’m negligent, could mean I don’t care about my spiritual life, this sense of carelessness.

It could mean that I’m going to be some kind of spiritually unclean, dirty if I don’t immediately rebuke this thought. So figuring out what that is, what the feared consequence is, what the feared possible self is, can be really helpful and beneficial because the feared possible self is a lie. People that are worried about being spiritually negligent are engaged in their spiritual life.

They’re engaged in spiritual practice. Even sometimes when it’s hard or even if you’re maybe avoiding certain spiritual practices, you still care about it. It’s still a value. It’s still on your mind as something you desire to engage in. So understanding that feared possible self is a false sense of self.

It’s not actually who you are. And then looking at what is the story that you’ve told yourself regarding what you have to do with these thoughts? Oftentimes, Christians are told by spiritual leaders, Hey, you’ve gotta take that thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. So anything that comes in their mind, they feel like they’ve gotta immediately pounce on it.

And deal with it. Like, oh, if it’s any kind of negative thought, of course we know that this is not helpful for OCD and actually just reinforces the whole obsessive compulsive cycle. So we’re trying to get out of that by recognizing that taking these thoughts captive means I need to let them alone so that they don’t continue to grow, multiply.

And become an even bigger issue than they are right now. If you believe the thoughts are some type of spiritual attack, it may be really hard for you to let them alone and not feel like you have to rebuke them. Really examining maybe some of the teachings that you’ve heard from spiritual leaders or the council that has been given to you can be really helpful in these types of scenarios.

What have you been told about your thought process and how to handle specifically intrusive thoughts? Maybe the people that you were going to, they may not have known this was OCD, or you may not have known it was OCD, so they weren’t able to provide you a really balanced, helpful Christian clinical standpoint of that.

Hello, that’s why we’re here. Welcome to the podcast. That’s what we’re hoping to do, provide that really great balance for you. Number four, and I think this is crucial if you’re following an ICBT path, is really understanding the inferential confusion, the obsessional reasoning process. If you read resolving OCD one and two, actually it’s covered in volume two.

It’s the OCD trifecta. Essentially where if you understand how you reasoned your way into OCD in this obsessional reasoning process and that you have an everyday reasoning process, it really helps you know how you can get out of that obsessional reasoning process and back into the everyday reasoning process.

In the obsessional reasoning process, I’m going to try to simplify it for you. It’s a little bit complicated and I love that there’s a bit of a depth to it because the more that you learn about it and read about it, the more that you can grow an understanding of it and start to see it in real time is essentially where you’re distrusting whatever the sense data is of the moment.

When we say sense data, we mean things like common sense. Your five senses, your sense of self, who you are. So let’s say I’m distrusting who I actually am. Then what happens? Well, step two of the process is this unchecked and boundless imagination. So I’ve closed the door to what’s actually happening right now.

And in doing so, it’s opened up this alternate door where the imagination runs wild, dumps a bunch of what ifs on there. Scary stuff that I feel like I’ve got to address creates this internal crisis. And then once you believe something or you believe like, okay, this is possible, this really could happen to me.

Then you start to justify it with facts and reasoning and logical arguments. Well, yeah, this could happen. And the reason I know that is because I read a news article on it, or I know somebody that that happened to, or I read this scripture and it seems to support this belief that I believe about God being harsh and not really caring about me, or I’m gonna use this scripture from the Old Testament to support the fact that I believe that God is.

Harsh and judging me right now, even though I’m saved. And even though when God looks at me, he sees the blood of Jesus, I’m gonna take something out of context and utilize it in that way. And you see this all the time in terms of people making arguments for a variety of different things in the world.

And you can find some people that. Very convinced of some things that aren’t true, right? Or they’ve only seen one side of the story. Maybe it’s a complex issue and there are two sides, but they’re really only concerned with their side because that’s all the facts that they’ve gathered. That’s all the evidence that they’ve gathered, all of the arguments, and so they really only know like their side of the story.

And I think OCD. Is very similar in this way, is very selective about what it actually pays attention to. The reason we know this is because if you meet someone with, let’s say, contamination OCD, somebody may be really, really concerned about getting the flu, but they may be, let’s say, less concerned about or not concerned at all about getting the Norovirus.

Someone else with OCD, they are super concerned about any kind of stomach bug out there. They are not concerned necessarily about the flu as long. It doesn’t make them throw up. They’re like, whatever. I’m not really concerned about catching those specific germs. Sometimes people can be super focused on touching objects surfaces and believing that they’re going to be contaminated that way, but they’re not bothered about what’s in the air.

And people would look at that and say, that doesn’t make any sense. ’cause certainly many of our illnesses are airborne. However, that’s just how OCD works. Because if you understand the reasoning process is starting in the imagination and then we use the facts and the logic to back it up, then it makes sense that way.

But if you don’t understand that obsessional reasoning process. Then you just say, yeah, I know this is really weird, but this is what I think and and how I feel. Instead of going, yeah, this is how I got to this point. OC also has this way of starting with a particular belief and then neglecting all of the other things that may be true.

One thing that we learn in ICBT is this concept of affirming the consequence. What this looks like is making a statement like, well, God heals people that he loves, which is true. And then the next part of the equation would be. God hasn’t healed me, therefore he doesn’t love me. It’s like this way of reasoning backwards instead of looking at the situation saying, okay, there are many different reasons why God hasn’t healed you, but you’re focused solely on.

He hasn’t healed me because he doesn’t love me, instead of there may be other things that he’s trying to cultivate in my life and is gonna use this suffering in order to do that. Another example might be serial killers have poor relationships with their mothers. I don’t know if that broad generality is true, but let’s just pretend it’s true and then to say, I don’t have a good relationship with my mother, therefore, I may turn into a serial killer.

OCD can be very sneaky like that and make all kinds of arguments. Number five, if you’re gonna get unstuck from spiritual, mental rituals, may really need to bring in some reinforcements, get some help, whether that’s finding an ICBT therapist online. There’s a great. Resource list where you can do that, or I also have a course called Empowered Mind, Christian ICBT for OCD, and especially for individuals dealing with scrupulosity who have mental rituals or ruminations.

I’ve had many individuals go through this course who have found incredible hope and help for dealing with the mental rituals, the compulsions. They’ve been able to learn the ICBT process through a Christian lens, which helped them feel safe and comfortable having the faith integration piece. And if that’s something you might be interested in, you can just go check it out at kerry b.com/training.

We would love to see you take advantage of that self-help course. It is way cheaper than 12 sessions of therapy. Historically, in the past, there have been 12 modules of ICBT. The way that they’re being taught now is differently than when they were originally proposed in a treatment manual. So I have them broken down and all the concepts in there without specifically them being based on particular modules.

I’ve tried to make them easy to understand, breaking down some of these hard concepts and giving you a lot of different examples. We also are in the process of creating a custom workbook to go along with that course for the students that are in the live training right now. So I’m very excited to release that workbook as part of the course coming at the end of May.

So we are just around the corner with that. If you buy it now, you will have six months access to it. So when everything gets dropped in there in May, you’ll be able to see the most revised version of the material. Thank you so much for listening today, and as always, you can reach out @carriebock.com anytime.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian faith in OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

219. The Holy Spirit and Blasphemy Concerns with Pastor Jeremy Pickwell

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

In this episode, Carrie sits down with Pastor Jeremy Pickwell, founding pastor of Alinea Church, to talk about the Holy Spirit, the fear of blasphemy, and how to find peace when your thoughts make you question your relationship with God.

Episode Highlights:

• What the Holy Spirit really is and why He is personal, not just a feeling

• How the Holy Spirit helps guide, comfort, and strengthen you in daily life

• What the Bible actually means by blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

• Why intrusive thoughts are not the same as rejecting God

• How to stop overthinking and trust God with uncertainty

• How to find peace when you feel afraid you’ve “messed things up” spiritually

Episode Summary:

What Is the Holy Spirit and Have I Committed the Unforgivable Sin?

As I was planning our scrupulosity series, I realized we had never really slowed down to talk about the Holy Spirit in a clear, practical way. We also had not addressed one of the most fear-filled questions I hear from Christians with OCD: Have I committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

So in this episode, I sat down with Pastor Jeremy Pickwell, founding pastor of Alinea Church, to have a conversation around both of these topics.

What is the Holy Spirit and why does it feel so confusing?

Depending on your background, you may have received very different messages about the Holy Spirit, and for many people, that leaves them unsure of how to relate to Him in everyday life. Sometimes it can feel overly complicated, or even like something easier to avoid altogether, but what if understanding the Holy Spirit is actually more simple and personal than you’ve experienced before?

Why do I feel so much pressure to get my faith exactly right?

If you struggle with OCD or anxiety, your relationship with God can start to feel like something you have to manage perfectly. You may notice yourself overthinking decisions, questioning your motives, or worrying that one wrong thought could change everything, and that kind of pressure can feel exhausting over time.

But what if your relationship with God was never meant to feel that fragile?

What if I’ve committed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

This is one of the most common fears I hear, and it often starts with a single thought that feels alarming or out of character. From there, it can spiral into deeper questions about your salvation, your heart, and whether you’ve done something that cannot be undone.

In this episode, we explore what this passage actually means and why it may not apply in the way you think it does.

Do my thoughts reflect my relationship with God?

Intrusive thoughts can feel incredibly convincing, especially when they go against what you truly believe. They can make you question your identity, your intentions, and your faith, but it’s important to step back and ask whether every thought deserves that level of meaning.

There is a difference between what your mind produces and what your heart truly desires.

How can I find peace when I don’t feel certain?

Many of us long for clarity and certainty, especially when it comes to our faith, but part of the Christian walk involves learning how to trust God even when things feel unclear. That tension can feel uncomfortable, but it can also be a place where deeper trust begins to grow.

If you’ve been carrying fear, pressure, or confusion in your spiritual life, I want you to know that you don’t have to navigate that alone. God is not distant from your struggle, and He is not waiting for you to get everything right before drawing near to you.

We go deeper into all of these questions in this conversation, and my prayer is that it brings you clarity, peace, and a greater sense of God’s presence with you.

Transcript

As I was planning out episodes for our Scrupulosity series, I realized that we’ve never really done a deep dive into the Holy Spirit, and we’ve never addressed blasphemy of the Holy Spirit concerns. I chose to interview our pastor because I really feel like he has been able to communicate very clearly some of these spiritual truths about the Holy Spirit from scripture, and I know that I have been learning and growing in my own journey in this area of my spiritual life and wanted to share a little bit of that with you all.

Welcome, OCD Warriors, to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast where we are all about reducing shame and stigma of struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories and replacing uncertainty with faith as you develop practical tools for greater peace. I’m Carrie Bach, Christ follower, wife, mom, and licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

I pray you are blessed by today’s episode.

Pastor Jeremy Pickwell is the founding pastor of Alinea Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which began in 2021. He is passionate about helping people grow in their faith, discover their purpose, and take meaningful steps in their relationship with God. Jeremy is married to his lovely wife, Jennifer, for 22 years, and they have two sons, Wyatt and Weston. They’re a very adventurous, outdoorsy family who likes visiting national parks and have visited 36 across the US. I appreciate Pastor Jeremy’s transparency and authenticity in the stories that he shares in this episode. Okay, Pastor Jeremy, so how would you explain the Holy Spirit to a new believer?

Pastor Jeremy: It’s a great question. The Holy Spirit ultimately is God. He’s not a force. He’s not an influence. He’s not a vibe. He’s the third person of the Trinity, so fully God with personhood, which I think is important because he speaks to us. He grieves. He intercedes. He leads. I remember someone once said that the manger is God with us, and the cross is God for us, and Pentecost is God in us. It’s the Holy Spirit who comes and indwells us. One of the most fascinating scriptures in the Bible is when Jesus said it was better for him to leave so that the Spirit would come, which I think is kind of staggering.

Carrie: Yeah, that must have been kind of shocking to the disciples. What do you mean it’s good that you’re going away? We need you here.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah, I know better. This is not good. We need you here. So I think that’s a fascinating thing. So the Holy Spirit is God in us now and leads and guides the believer, and unfortunately we tend to treat the Holy Spirit as kind of like the weird uncle in the attic that we don’t wanna talk about. We either ostracize him as some kind of theological abstraction or we lean so hard into charismatic experiences, and I don’t think either one of them really does him justice. So he’s the third person of the Trinity. He’s a person to know, not a concept to figure out. He’s there to help us.

Carrie: Yeah. This is really great. I shared in our last episode, and you wouldn’t know about this information, but I’m gonna repeat it for anybody that missed it. I’ve been on this journey where I grew up in a very knowledge-based faith and then swung over into some more charismatic, Holy Spirit-led expressions. I’ve been struggling, I think, for a while to find the balance and find the middle ground and have felt very much like, okay, this camp over here is too far to one side and this other camp is too far to the other side. And I think my husband has had his own wrestlings with that because we grew up very, very differently. When we got together, he was on the knowledge-based side and I was on the charismatic side. Anyway, it’s been an interesting journey, but I just say all that to say that it’s okay for people to examine what they have been taught in the church and to continue to seek God through the Word and the Holy Spirit and prayer to reveal things to you. Maybe you were taught some things that are not in alignment with the Word of God.

Pastor Jeremy: Absolutely.

Carrie: How do you see the role of the Holy Spirit as being different in the Trinity versus God and Jesus?

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah, man, this is like back to my many years ago, my master’s program, my MAR. Scripture reveals that they have distinct roles of Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s work in the believer’s life: it says that he convicts of sin.

Carrie: Right.

Pastor Jeremy: He regenerates us. He indwells us. One of my favorite scriptures is that he is a sealing, a guarantee of our inheritance. He illuminates scripture to us. We just went through as a church in 2025, looking through Acts, and all throughout Acts is the Holy Spirit, who is the power for us to complete the mission that Jesus has set us out on. He produces this character in us through the fruit of the Spirit. He intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray, which is also another beautiful verse. When you just kind of get to those moments where you just don’t know what to do, the Holy Spirit is right there like, hey, I’ll take it from here. He truly is a helper. That’s what Jesus called him, the Paraclete, the helper. And I think that as Jesus has given us this mantle to bring heaven to earth, he has also given us the Holy Spirit. One of the most frustrating things as an individual is when you’ve been empowered to do something but you’ve not been equipped to do it. You’re responsible for this, but I’m not gonna give you the tools to complete it. Well, Jesus empowered us to do what he’s called us to do, and then he’s also equipped us with the Holy Spirit indwelling us. That’s my view of the Holy Spirit, that he is transformational power to complete the task that Jesus has for us.

Carrie: Yeah. And I just wanna insert something in here about OCD recovery too, because when God calls you to do hard things and you feel like, I can’t do this, I can’t do this thing that you’re asking me to do, that’s what you’re saying. It’s not supposed to be something that we’re supposed to strong-arm and muscle through, but God gives us the Holy Spirit to empower us to do that work that he has called us to do. And I think that people can get that really confused. It’s that whole idea of, I don’t wanna surrender my life over to God because he might call me to go be a missionary in Africa and I don’t wanna go be a missionary in Africa.

Pastor Jeremy: Right. I think when we say, well, I can’t, I would say, yeah, you’re right. We can’t in and of ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit. So when God calls us to do something, where God calls, he equips and he provides. And the thing about how I am wired is that a lot of times I won’t attempt something because it’s not perfect. A lot of times I won’t attempt something because I can’t see the win, or I can’t see an end game that makes me feel good about myself, and that’s not what we’re called to do. When Wyatt was in kindergarten, he’s my oldest and he’s 18 now, he got a note sent home because in kindergarten he would not draw a picture of his family. We sat down with him and said, why won’t you draw? Are you not proud of us? What’s the deal? We love you. And he said, I’m not drawing stick figures because it’s not going to do the family justice. He was not gonna draw something that didn’t represent who his family was. And I think a lot of times for us, we can get locked into that as well. But as a parent we would’ve said, I don’t care what you draw. This is beautiful. This represents me working through you. And I think that’s what the Holy Spirit wants us to understand. Stop worrying about what you think about the situation. Let me work through you. You may see it as imperfect. I see it as beautiful because I’m the one who’s working through you. It’s in your weaknesses that I’m shown strong.

Carrie: Yeah. I wanna shift things over to more personal life examples. God took you through this process where you were called out of Virginia and moved to plant a church in Murfreesboro. How did you see the Holy Spirit work through that process of basically uprooting you from one area and planting you in another?

Pastor Jeremy: Man, I wish I could take so much credit for that. I wanted to be part of just a growing, life-giving church. We were part of a church plant in Texas originally and we knew that God was calling us out, but we didn’t know where. I applied everywhere. Resumes sent out everywhere and nothing worked out. We ended up going back for me to get my master’s just as a fallback plan. When I did that, I ran into a guy who had been asked to come up and preach on the weekends for a church. I asked him if he wanted somebody to lead worship, just let me know. So that was in 2005 and that was 50 people. I remember when I went to get my master’s, I was angry. I was bitter. God hadn’t opened up a door. I was going back to get my education. I wanted to be at a church and no one thought I was good enough. That was primarily why I got a lot of no’s. I was just not good enough in their eyes. And so it really kind of messed with how I felt about who I was. We ended up at this church, and I thought at the time it was just a short-term thing. I get to lead worship, I get to pursue my masters, it’s gonna be fine. 15 years later, we went from 50 people to 5,500 to 6,000 people in six locations. And I had no part in that in the sense that I wasn’t smart enough to pick that. And I think that is evident when you look at how I left LifePoint in Virginia to start Alinea in Murfreesboro. It was not a clean, linear line of us hearing God and then leaving. It was kind of like the same thing when we left Texas. It was a lot of ups and downs. It was a lot of feeling like you’re twisted around like a pretzel. It was a lot of, okay, we’re gonna stop worrying about this. We would lay it down and then we would pick it back up and worry about it again. We would pray and we would go on long walks. We just couldn’t get a clear answer. I knew I felt something. Someone once told me that when God’s calling you, there’s a push and a pull. You feel like there’s a push. I remember even speaking with my pastor at the time and he said something very clear to me. He said, if you don’t feel like you can accomplish everything God has called you to do here, then that’s a great push. That’s a great understanding that maybe there’s something else in you. And then there’s also a pull. We had been homesick for Tennessee for 15 years. I was born in Tennessee. Jennifer was born in Tennessee. Songs about Tennessee would bring tears to our eyes because we missed Tennessee so much. And so there was definitely a pull. There was a guy who wrote a book called God at Work. He’s a businessman from England. His name’s Ken Costa. He’s very measured, very sophisticated, very academic, and he came and preached at LifePoint. It was kind of not really the kind of personality that fit who we were at the church. I mean, we had power preaching, powerful worship, and here you have this kind of guy that feels like he should be teaching at Oxford or something. So he comes and preaches for us. Then he does a staff meeting, and in the staff meeting he says something so out of character, like, what in the world is he talking about? He said these words: if you’re praying about leaving here, stop praying about it every day. You’re going to drive yourself nuts.

Carrie: Wow.

Pastor Jeremy: He said, pick it up every two months, every 30 days, every three months, and then revisit it and pray about it again. And that’s what I needed to hear because I was obsessing over it. My wife and I were wrapping ourselves in pretzels.

Carrie: That’s just a timing thing. Like God has given me certain visions for this podcast or for my business, and I’m just not sure right now. I’m trying to find clarity, like what is the timeline on this? And I just trust God that when it’s the time, he’s gonna open the right opportunities or the right doors, and I’m gonna know, okay, walk through that. Do you think that was part of it, or do you think it was more like God was preparing you personally, on a heart level, to be willing to do that?

Pastor Jeremy: In that moment, I feel like he was rescuing me from myself.

Carrie: Okay.

Pastor Jeremy: That was probably a Monday. I think our staff meetings were Mondays or Tuesdays. My job was to visit all the campuses. So we had six campuses. I’d drive with my two boys and Jennifer and we’d go visit the campus that was a county above us and see how the pastor was doing. My wife and I were sitting outside talking about this very thing. How often are we gonna pick this up? Are we gonna pray about this? Every three months we’re driving ourselves nuts. And in that moment the phone rang and it was a friend of ours who was part of the church, and it was one of those people that you trusted. They weren’t far out in left field and you didn’t roll your eyes when they said something to you. And she said, I need to talk to you and Jennifer together. We went to the car, put her on speakerphone, and she said, I had a dream about you. If I do not tell you this, somebody else is gonna tell you. I know God wants me to tell you something. And I said, what? And she told me this dream. We were like, she’s about to tell me I got cancer. I’m gonna die. What’s going on? And she said, I’m supposed to tell you it’s not time yet.

Carrie: Wow.

Pastor Jeremy: And we just bawled, both of us. I think that God always has a way, when we are seeking him and seeking his will, to ensure we get the message. I think we can be like, what if I miss it? What if God’s trying to tell me something? What if I miss it? People may disagree with me. This is just where I’ve landed. I just believe that God’s will is not a tightrope.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: I think a lot of times when we are pursuing, when we are seeking the Holy Spirit’s guidance, James says ask for wisdom, right? Don’t doubt. Well, then we’re like, what if I’m doubting? I feel like I’m doubting. And so we just kind of wrap ourselves in pretzels and we get up on this rope and we’re tightroping God’s will like, oh my goodness, if I miss his voice, I’m gonna fall off and all hope is lost, and God’s will for my life is thrown out the window. I just don’t think I’m that powerful. I don’t think I am the type of person who can derail God’s will from my life to that extent, as long as I’m the one who’s pursuing the will of God.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: Right. There’s the opposite of that, like I could care less what God says. I could care less what his will is. I’m not even pursuing him. But if you’re pursuing him, seeking him, I could fall off, I could have missed that, but I feel like he knows what he’s doing. He can get me back on track. And I think moving from Texas to Virginia was like that. I think moving from Virginia to Tennessee was like that. Maybe there were some on-ramps that I missed where I was just too hardheaded or I was too afraid or whatever. But I feel like God is just able to keep ordering our steps and getting us where we need to be.

Carrie: That’s so good. And I think very relatable to this audience as well, who often feels like, I’ve gotta get it right. I’ve gotta get it exactly right and I’m gonna mess it up and I’m gonna somehow miss God’s voice. But God is very loving and gracious to us and redirects us as needed. Like, nope, not that direction. You thought you were going there, but sorry, over here. You said something several weeks ago that I was like, this is so comforting. You were talking in church about how we had prayed and I was like 85% sure that we were supposed to do this. I was just praying that God was really in it and that this was what God wanted us to do. That was so comforting to me, because our faith does require a level of faith. It’s not always just this clear map outline of what we’re supposed to do. God wants us to take these steps and trust him with the rest and trust him with the results.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah, and I think 85% might be high. Again, I think it really comes back to pursuing the heart of God. I don’t think a lot of the things that I say really translate if you’re not pursuing him. I remember my mentor, you’ve heard me talk about him all the time, Ted Wilson. He’s gotta be like in his nineties. I can’t remember how old he is. He’s probably still out mowing lawns or something. I was coming out of college and I talked to a church in another state about coming on and being their music director, and I really hit it off with the pastor. When I went down to visit, I told my parents, this is where I’m going. I don’t wanna live here. I agonized over it, turned myself into a pretzel, and started asking everybody’s opinion about what I should do. I just felt like I was Jonah in the whale and God was calling me somewhere and I was saying no. I remember calling Ted and I said, this is how I’m feeling, blah blah blah. He listened to me and he finally got kind of fed up with me, I think, and he said, what do you wanna do? I said, I don’t wanna go. He said, then don’t go. And I was like, is it really that simple? And it was the first time in my life that I realized that there are certain filters you can filter God’s will through. I should do this. I shouldn’t do that. Some of them are clear what to do. Some of them are clear what not to do. Paul gives us a lot of latitude, like some things are permissible and profitable, some things are permissible and not profitable. So you can kind of filter through that. But then after that, it’s just like, does this honor God? Does this elevate others? Is this good for others? You can still be like, well, this doesn’t really filter anything. You can ask yourself, what do I wanna do? Where’s my heart at? I think a lot of times when you’re praying and you really have a heart for something, you should listen to that and maybe scratch that a little bit and see what God is trying to do in your life.

Carrie: Yeah, not all desires are bad. I think sometimes people have been taught in the church that if I want something, that’s bad, because it somehow means I’m not surrendered to God. But you have to surrender those desires over to God and pray about your motives and things of that nature as well. I do that a lot. God, I think I want this. Do I want it for the right reasons? Is this what you want for me? I think if you’re seeking him and filtering in that way, God gives you desires and that’s a good thing. Someone asked me recently, how in the world did you get into OCD work? And I said, it was God. I wasn’t really looking for this direction and God has just really broken my heart for this people group and the lack of resources they have, especially resources speaking directly to Christians. I just can’t really explain that to anybody. I can sort of explain the process of how I got here, but where God has brought me to is not anywhere that I chose, and at the same time I love it. I love what I’m doing. So we receive the Holy Spirit when we’re saved, right? But I wanna talk a little bit about being continually filled with the Holy Spirit. I took some scripture references from one of your sermons where you were talking about this repeated phrase of “filled with the Holy Spirit” that comes up in Acts. Acts 4:8 refers to Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 13:9, Paul is filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 15:52, the disciples were filled with joy in the Holy Spirit. Talk to us about the difference between receiving the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. I come from a theological background where I believe in a baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I think that can be controversial, but I don’t think it should be. When we say baptizo, we just mean immersed.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: And I wanna be immersed in the Holy Spirit, and I think all of us do. But I also grew up in a kind of Pentecostal background where I saw some things that I wrestled with theologically through college and seminary. I really kind of dug into the scriptures, and I heard a preacher say one time, and I loved it, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, you’ve got Pentecost in Acts chapter two, but we should also be believers who want to be filled with the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter four.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: Like this continual filling. I think that for me, it’s getting under the blessing and the provision of God. I think being filled with the Holy Spirit is a lot about aligning ourselves. It’s like an umbrella. A lot of times we can get ourselves out from underneath the protection of God and then we get out there and we’re like, God, why did you leave me? And he’s like, what are you talking about? Just get back under where my protection is. I think being filled with the Holy Spirit is a continual thing because the Holy Spirit is the person who empowers us to be able to do the things that God’s called us to do. And that’s why you see it all throughout Acts. It’s a continual filling. I made the joke in that sermon that it’s not set it and forget it. Some of your listeners will get that, a lot of them won’t. But it’s not this thing where you just say, oh, I’ve been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Well, that’s not the way the disciples operated. The disciples always operated from a position of, I need to decrease so he can increase. I need more of the Holy Spirit today. I pour out so that I want to be filled up. You’re a conduit. So if you’re a conduit, maybe conduit’s not the right word, maybe we’re water towers of the Holy Spirit, filled up with the Holy Spirit, and then you pour out. And I think it’s a continual process.

Carrie: Awesome. Well, I wanna talk briefly about this concern about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. This is a very scary scripture passage for some people. Matthew 12:31 and 32 says, “Therefore, I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come.” What in the world does this mean?

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. I think this is such an important question, especially when it deals with OCD, because there’s so much fear and worry behind it.

Carrie: Yeah.

Pastor Jeremy: Like, have I committed the unpardonable sin and is all hope lost for me? I really wanna be very careful and precise here. I think what’s important about that passage is Jesus says every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit. I think that one of the things we should start with is, wow, what a grace-filled passage. Like everything. Everything is gonna be forgiven. Think about the world and how broken it is and what a swath of grace Jesus just laid out there. But I think that when he is talking about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the context is that he has just cast out a demon. The Pharisees are watching this in real time, and they attribute his work to Beelzebub. And the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in that moment is not careless and not final. It’s not a season of doubt. I think we’ve all had seasons of doubt.

Carrie: Sure.

Pastor Jeremy: I still continually have seasons of doubt where I’m like, God, where are you? What am I doing? And think about David in the Psalms, how often he is pouring his heart out to God and a lot of these prayers are not elegant. A lot of his prayers are very angry. Like, what is going on? Why have you left me? I think that’s the heart that God wants us to have. He wants us to be real. But in this instance, it was settled for the Pharisees. It was settled. It was deliberate. It was eyes wide open.

Carrie: It was basically saying that something God was doing was attributable to demonic forces.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. And I think it’s unforgivable, not because God refuses to forgive. That’s not what’s going on there. It’s because the person has permanently rejected the only means of forgiveness. It’s like refusing to take the only medicine that cures the disease. The cure is available, but the person won’t take it. I’ve heard someone say, and I think this is beautiful, that if you’re wrestling with that, then chances are pretty good, a hundred percent, that you have not blasphemed the Holy Spirit, because what you’re worried about is your posture with God. The Pharisees were not worried about their posture with God. And I think what we’ve gotta understand is that intrusive thoughts are not the same as a settled, volitional rejection of Jesus. That’s my take on that particular passage.

Carrie: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, I think our brain makes a lot of noise. There are thoughts that just come into our head that are intrusive and that we don’t have to create extra meaning out of. We can say, that was an intrusive thought, I’m not gonna go down that pathway. And sometimes that takes a lot of treatment, practice, and intentionality. But then there are thoughts that we intentionally think, and God knows how your brain works better than you do. God knows the posture of your heart and your desires to please him. Sometimes in spiritual life, even just as you’ve been talking about in this conversation, we want certainty. There’s a general desire to know, yes, exactly, a hundred percent. This is God. This is exactly what he wants me to do. But our relationship with God means we’re looking through the glass dimly. Things are a little bit messy right now until we get to heaven. One day things will be a lot clearer. So I appreciate your perspectives and your stories on this. I think they’re very relatable.

Pastor Jeremy: Yeah. I think on that particular passage, the fear is just indicative of a soft heart. I think the soft heart is what we’re called to have. That’s why I think if you’re fearful of that, you’re not there. You’re not blaspheming the Holy Spirit. You’ve got a soft heart, a soft and contrite, broken heart. That’s what the Lord gravitates towards.

Carrie: When we got off the air, I told Pastor Jeremy that some of what he said today was for me and I really appreciated it. I think I had been stuck on some business decisions, trying to make sure that I was making the right ones or focusing on the right projects for my business and the podcast. And it helped me to be able to let go and say, you know what? I’m surrendered to God and he’s gonna lead me in a direction when the timing is right, and I don’t need to continue to mull over this so much or have it all figured out right now. That may be a great thought for you if you struggle with rumination, to just say, you know what? I don’t have to have it all figured out right now, because there are many things in life we can’t figure out right now, and that’s okay. We’re living in that tension and that everyday uncertainty that we can trust God with.

Pastor Jeremy: Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Carrie: Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or 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.

216. How Do I Know I’m Saved?

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

In this episode, Carrie dives into why salvation doubts can feel so real for Christians with scrupulosity and how OCD can pull believers into convincing fear-based stories about their faith.

Episode Highlights:

• Why salvation doubts can be common among Christians

• How scrupulosity creates fear-based faith narratives

• The difference between grace-based salvation and work-based thinking

• Spiritual seasons and why feelings of closeness with God change

• Understanding the OCD bubble through Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT)

Episode Summary: 

What if I’m not really saved?

For many Christians, this question can feel incredibly unsettling. If you struggle with scrupulosity or religious OCD, those doubts can become even louder and harder to ignore.

In OCD treatment, we often talk about the obsessional story, which is the way OCD builds a narrative in your mind using bits of truth, imagination, and fear.

Before you realize what is happening, you may find yourself pulled into OCD bubble, where everything feels urgent and emotionally real.

This conversation explores what that process can look like and why it often feels so convincing.

Why Some Christians Question Their Salvation

There are several reasons believers begin questioning their salvation, even when they genuinely love God.

Sometimes it happens because someone was saved at a young age and later wonders if they truly understood what they were doing.

Other times it comes from comparing your faith story to someone else’s.

You might also question your faith during seasons when you do not feel close to God or when you are struggling with ongoing sin.

These experiences are more common than many people realize, and we take a closer look at some of the reasons these doubts surface.

The Role OCD Can Play in Spiritual Doubt

For people dealing with religious OCD, faith is often one of the things they care about most. Because of that, OCD can target those beliefs and turn them into intense mental battles.

You may find yourself replaying thoughts, analyzing past experiences, or searching for certainty about your salvation.

OCD has a way of mixing together facts, fears, and past experiences to create a story that feels believable, even when it leads to unnecessary distress.

Understanding this process can be an important step toward finding peace.

A Different Way to Look at Salvation Doubts

Many Christians have been taught that spiritual life should always feel strong and confident. But the reality is that faith journeys include many different seasons.

There are mountaintop moments where you feel deeply connected to God.

There are also quieter or more difficult seasons where things feel dry or uncertain.

We also look at how scrupulosity and OCD can influence these fears and how understanding the reasoning process behind those thoughts can help you begin moving forward.

Along the way, there are reminders about the nature of salvation and the role of God’s grace in our lives.

Scriptures Mentioned in This Episode

Ephesians 2:8–9

Romans 10:9

Romans 8:15–17

If you have ever wrestled with questions about your salvation or felt trapped in spiritual doubt, this conversation is for you.

Tune in to this episode to explore navigating salvation doubts with faith and wisdom.

Transcript

Today we’re talking about, “How do I know that I’m saved?” And I’ve really struggled to put this episode together because I didn’t want it to be just some kind of giant reassurance-seeking fest for people. However, I know that this is a big question that many Christians with OCD are wrestling with. Even if you don’t have OCD, lots of Christians have some everyday doubts about whether or not they’re saved.

The problem is that if you have a religious form of OCD called scrupulosity, it can take these everyday doubts and blow them up into a giant horror movie in your brain where you’re separated from God forever. And in inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy, we talk a lot about the obsessional story and how these doubts don’t just exist in isolation. They draw you into a storyline, and the plot is based on a mixture of fact and fiction. So there’s real emotion that gets laden onto these things. And even though you’re being led into an imaginary worst-case-scenario outcome, you don’t necessarily realize that you’re going into the imagination. You’re crossing over this imaginary bridge into what we call the OCD bubble.

Once you’re in the bubble, it’s very hard to recognize that you’re in the bubble. Everything feels real and scary, and it doesn’t feel quite safe to stay in that place, but it also feels really irresponsible, or it doesn’t feel okay, to leave.

Let’s talk for a moment about why people have doubts about their salvation. So for some people, they doubt their salvation because maybe they were saved really young. Maybe they don’t have a full memory of the experience. Maybe they remember it, but they feel like, you know, there were a lot of pieces spiritually that I just didn’t understand. And to that, I would say, of course there are things that we’re going to understand at a different level when we’re an adult than when we were a child. But did your child self understand it on a child level?

Other people would say, well, I’ve been listening to other Christians, and they have these dramatic testimonies, these extreme conversion experiences. They were using drugs before, and they didn’t care anything about God. They were an atheist. And then God met them somehow, and they knew it was Him, and now they’re not using drugs, and they are fully devoted to Jesus and telling everyone else about Him. And sometimes when you hear drastic and dramatic testimonies like that, it can cause you, if you don’t have one of those, to think, well, did I have a real experience? Am I really a Christian? So I think that’s why some people doubt.

Each person’s experience with the Lord is different in our meeting with Jesus. You can even see that with Jesus’ disciples. There were some that were kind of like, “Hey, come and meet Jesus. Come and see what’s happening.” And then you have, of course, Paul on the road to Damascus, and he has a dramatic conversion experience.

Maybe you don’t have a specific day or time that you can point to in regard to when you decided to follow Jesus. Maybe it was a gradual process. Over time, you slowly started to engage in spiritual practices, and at some point along that line, you made that decision each and every day to get up and to follow Jesus, to be His disciple. And I think people who have that version of their story struggle because they hear other people say, “Well, I know I was saved on June the first in 1985, and that was the day that I gave my life to Christ.” And so someone who has a more gradual conversion story may really struggle, like, is my experience real?

You may doubt your salvation by saying, “You know what? I just don’t feel close to God.” We’ve talked about this on the podcast before, that I do believe feelings are important. I don’t believe that we should just dismiss everything that we feel. We have to find this balance of our feelings do provide some helpful information for us sometimes. And there were certainly emotions that led me to start this podcast, whether those were sadness, deep empathy, and a little bit of anger about maybe easy answers in the Christian community. And all of that was very helpful for me and propelled me to do something positive after having that emotional experience.

So when we talk about, “I don’t feel close to God,” this is somewhat nebulous. Because you think about the other relationships in your life, whether it’s a parent or a spouse or a best friend, there may be times that you feel really close and connected to that person, and then there may be other times where you don’t feel as close and connected, but you know that you love them. You know that you care for them. You know that you wouldn’t want anything negative to happen to them, that you would want to rush to their aid if they needed you. So we can have that sense of love for God even if we don’t feel close to Him right now.

Sometimes people will say as part of their obsessional story, “Well, I don’t feel the same way that I did when I got saved.” I think you could ask a lot of married people, “Do you still feel the same way that you did the day that you got married?” That is a mountaintop, exciting experience, full of love. You’re surrounded by lots of friends and family. It’s a beautiful thing, but we may not feel that same exact way two years later. That doesn’t mean that we don’t love our spouse. It just means we’re in a different season right now, and we have different seasons spiritually.

We have these mountaintop experiences with God. Think about when you are a teenager going to youth camp, if that was part of your experience. Everyone’s so excited about God, and they’re like, “Yes, I totally want to follow Him and live for Him the rest of my life, and I want to tell all my friends about Jesus.” And then slowly that starts to fade as you get back into the real world, and some of that is just normal. So don’t allow OCD to use these types of things as evidence that you’re not saved or that you don’t love God.

We just recently, in January, went through a period of prayer and fasting with our church. I would say that was a recent mountaintop experience for me. It was exciting. We just saw some answered prayer, very profoundly felt close to God, very connected in prayer. We had a lot of corporate gatherings of prayer early in the morning. It was cold, but we went there. It was just a beautiful time.

And then February hit, and even toward the end of January and into February, it was like my family was super sick. Just things were very different going on there, right? It’s a different experience, not feeling maybe as connected or as close to God. We still love God. We’re still participating in spiritual activities. We’re still reading our Bible. We’re still praying. It’s just a harder season because we went through a lot of sickness and didn’t feel good, had some rough weather. It was a rough winter this winter, but that’s okay. Spring is here or coming.

There are also times in your spiritual journey, or I’ve experienced this as well, where you’re going through immense suffering. You’re sad, you’re depressed, you don’t even know if you want to get out of bed. What is the point of all this? Why am I here? And those are the valley experiences that we have spiritually. Those are the desert seasons.

There’s a song that I really love called Desert Song, and it’s been around a while, but it’s really just kind of followed me through different hard seasons of my life. I’ll put that song back on, and the whole idea behind it is I’m going to praise God regardless of the season that’s going on in my life. When things feel really dry and empty and lonely and dark, God is still here. God is still worthy of praise.

You may doubt your salvation if you’re struggling with an ongoing sin. And this is something that we talked about in the confession and repentance episode, so I encourage you to flip back to that one and listen to it. It’s really good. And we talk about how the struggle that you’re going through shows that you are battling with sin and can confirm to yourself that you are a believer, that you are connected to God, because you are actively working toward eradicating that sin out of your life. That struggle means that you’re a work in progress, that God is still working on you and in you, and that you are still partnering with the Holy Spirit in that sanctification process.

The final reason for salvation doubts that I want to talk about is that people have bought into a works-based salvation. They’re depending on what they are doing and determining whether or not that’s good enough for God. And it’s interesting because I’ve talked with many people who have these doubts, and they will say, “Well, yeah, I know that’s not the gospel, but I feel like this.”

So I want to share that all of these things that we’ve talked about are all things that OCD uses as part of the obsessional story to draw you in and cause you to believe something that’s not true. And so it’s helpful for us to know that because if we know that, and we know these potential contributions to the obsessional story, other potential contributions may be people that you know who have walked away from the faith. That may be a huge contribution to some of this. “Well, I thought that they were really dedicated, and they walked away from the faith, and so what does that mean about me?”

Feelings of inadequacy, of feeling bad about yourself, can cause you to feel like, yeah, the Scripture promises and Word are for everyone else. Somehow I’m outside of that. That’s not really for me. This is very common in scrupulosity.

Oftentimes, I’m running into people that have read the Bible, they’ve studied the Scriptures, they’ve been under the teaching. They’ve done their fair share of Googling about their spiritual doubt process. And what we know is that OCD does use specific facts. It uses personal experience. It uses hearsay, the things that we’ve heard about other people. It uses news articles. All of these things are thrown into this obsessional story, and we can write a convincing story and make it sound really believable, and we can put fear in there or anticipation. And that can cause people to feel real emotions.

So that’s why they might say, “I know that this doesn’t make sense, but I also know that it feels real,” and it gets very, very confusing internally, right? That’s what OCD does. Because there’s this blend of fact and fictional elements, it seems like it’s true. It stirs up a lot of emotion, and you get stuck in that fear.

Really, the way out of that is by being able to examine that story differently, recognize the thinking errors that are happening, not to challenge the negative thoughts, but to recognize the reasoning process that got you there in the first place. If you can recognize the obsessional reasoning process that got you there in the first place, then you can work your way backward to untangle that obsessional reasoning process so that you can get out of the OCD bubble.

And this is what inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy, or ICBT, teaches you how to do. You learn all of these different pieces. You learn about the reasons for the obsessional doubt, the obsessional story, what going into the bubble is like, and then what are the doorways out of that bubble so that you can get back to what’s actually happening in the here and now.

When we look at salvation at a very basic level, God has a part, and we have a part. God is the main character, the major player in the story. We have a minor part in accepting the gift. Salvation is based on the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ. It is not based on what we have done. It’s not based on what we did before we were saved. It’s not based on what we’ve done since we’ve been saved.

Ephesians 2:8 and 9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

If salvation is not based on earning God’s merit, then that means that we don’t need to strive for God’s love and approval. Our part of the equation, that’s very small, is to believe in what Jesus has done for us and to trust in the work of the cross of Christ.

Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

This can be something that’s really hard for a lot of Christians with OCD to understand and accept. Salvation is not based on you and your behavior. Salvation is based on what God has done for us, and that’s a beautiful thing because if I can’t do anything to earn it, that also means that I’m not going to do something to mess it up.

If I am seeking God on a day-to-day basis, if I am involved and engaged with my faith, then you’re not just going to mysteriously, magically, somehow, maybe kind of walk away someday. That is a fear based in OCD and what OCD is telling you, all kinds of things that you’re going to lose your relationship with God, telling you that you’re going to walk away from the faith. It may tell you that you’re outside of the family of God, that you can’t really truly know if you’re saved. And understand that this OCD story, it comes with a lot of fear dumped on top of it. That fear makes the OCD story feel so real and so believable. But the problem is that it’s not. This is a lie, and you have to be able to identify, how in the world did I get into this reasoning process?

And I understand, as someone who grew up and felt like a lot of my sanctification, this process of becoming more like Christ, I thought this is all up to me and I’ve got to work really hard and I’ve got to check the boxes and I’ve got to do the right thing and I’ve got to be very conscientious. And I did all of that when I was younger and in my twenties. And you know what? It was exhausting.

Not only was it exhausting because there was so much effort that I felt like I was trying to put forth, there really wasn’t joy in my spiritual practices. And what I learned when life hit me on the backside and I went through suffering and came to a different understanding and realization of who God is and my relationship with Him, I recognized that if I can’t save myself, then I also don’t have that ability to do all this effort to make myself more like Christ. That has to be a partnership between me and the Holy Spirit as I am daily surrendering to God’s work in my life, as I am denying myself and taking up my cross every single day.

So I want to tell you that our salvation is not based on feelings, that you may or may not feel close to God right now. That doesn’t affect the truth of the situation, that you are saved based on what Jesus did in dying for you on the cross. You may feel like God isn’t there or God has abandoned you, but I want you to hear that He loves you very much and went all the way to give His Son for us in order to have a relationship with us. If that doesn’t speak volumes to you, I don’t know what will.

I think, unfortunately, we have become so desensitized to this salvation story, and we know all the quote-right answers as Christians. The joke is that the Sunday school answer is always Jesus. Whatever the question is, the Sunday school answer is, “It’s Jesus.” And so we can recite to ourselves, “Well, I know salvation is through grace, and I know Jesus died on the cross for me.” And then there’s this gigantic “but”—I’m emphasizing that word. It’s like, “But I feel…” is usually what comes next, or, “But I have this thought…” to that such-and-such. And you really have to do some work, and I encourage you to do some work, to unravel that thought process, unravel that feeling process, figure out where that story has come from.

And I’ve talked about this before, but oftentimes we’re putting things on God that we have received from other people in our life, or we are putting this perspective of who God is based on maybe some harsh church teachings that you might have experienced, judgmental believers in the church. There are all kinds of different ways that our view of God is formed. Most early and often, it’s our parents and how they respond to us, how they respond to us emotionally, how they respond to us in discipline situations, and then how they speak to us about God. And that certainly affects how we view God.

The last thing that I want to talk with you about is this concept that I’ve been rolling around in my mind that I refer to as spiritual sense data. Now, ICBT tells us that we have a variety of senses that we use in our environment on a normal everyday, day-to-day basis. So we have our five senses, we have our common sense, we have this sense of self, the real person who we really are. We also have internal senses. Those would be things like beliefs, desires, feelings, emotions. And if we are able to tune into all of these senses and trust those senses, that helps you get out of the trap of OCD, get out of that thought spiral.

I really believe that as believers, we have a sense of spiritual sense data if we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, in that Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. This is what Romans 8:15 through 17 says: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” That’s awesome right there. “And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.”

And that means that we’ve all had some type of experience where our spirit has connected with God’s Spirit. And I would encourage you to really not distrust those experiences that you have. Maybe it’s been a while because OCD has been so loud since you’ve had one of those spiritual experiences. Maybe it’s been a long time ago, but you were out in nature somewhere, or by a beach, or in a worship service, and you really felt the presence of God, or you had some type of spiritual peace or reassurance that God was with you. Maybe it was in a time of deep suffering and you were sorrowfully crying out to God, but God gave you, not all the answers to your problems, but just a sense of presence or a sense of peace.

And understand, I’m saying not all things are about feelings, but if you have these points in your life that I would call anchor points, I would encourage you to tap in and really remember those. Sit with those experiences from a full sensory level. And when you’re able to do that, I think that’s going to help you know that you belong to Christ.

We also know that there is a fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And look, nobody has all of those things all the time. If we were perfect, if we had all the fruit of the Spirit all the time, we must be in heaven. That doesn’t exist on earth. But there are probably some of those things that you can identify. Look, I have become a more loving person since I became a Christian. Due to knowing Christ, I am a more patient person than I would be without Him. There is more kindness flowing out of me than there would be if I didn’t know Jesus. I think you may be able to see certain experiences in your life and say, okay, that’s something, that’s sense data that I can lean into, that shows that I love the Lord.

If you are having spiritual obsessions, the idea that this is something that you value, that OCD attacks, that it attacks your faith because it’s something that’s important to you, and if you’re just constantly wrestling with all of these doubts, I want you to know that there is hope, that there is healing, that I am going to continue to spread these messages that you can receive really great treatment that incorporates your faith, where you don’t feel like you have to either choose therapy or your faith.

If you’re struggling to find a strong Christian counselor in your area, I really encourage you to look into Empowered Mind. This is a course that I have for Christians that’ll teach you ICBT principles from a Christian faith lens. And if that’s something that would be helpful or beneficial to you, you can go to carriebock.com/training to find out more information.

Thank you so much for listening. Please stay tuned with us. Next week, I have an interview with a dear friend, and we’re going to be talking about when the suffering won’t end. He has been living with terminal cancer for seven years, and I think he’s just a wealth of godly wisdom for you. And we’re going to apply it to OCD, and I think you’re going to take a lot out of that episode.