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198. How Do I Deal with Sexual Thoughts as a Christian?

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

As we continue the Healthy Perspectives on Sex series, Carrie explores what it means for Christians with OCD to face intrusive sexual thoughts with faith and honesty. She opens up a deeper conversation about shame, healing, and renewal in Christ.

Episode Highlights:

  • How OCD can distort normal sexual thoughts and create unnecessary guilt.
  • The key differences between intrusive thoughts and sinful thoughts.
  • Why trying to suppress or “neutralize” thoughts often makes OCD worse.
  • How faith and therapy work together to break shame cycles and bring healing.
  • What Scripture teaches about renewing your mind and embracing grace.
  • Practical steps to find peace and freedom as a Christian living with OCD.

Episode Summary:

Ever feel like no matter how hard you pray, those unwanted thoughts just won’t stop — and you start wondering if that means something’s wrong with your faith? You’re not alone.

In this week’s episode, I’m diving into a topic that’s rarely talked about openly but deeply affects so many believers: how to deal with sexual thoughts as a Christian who struggles with OCD.

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in fear, shame, or confusion about your own mind, this conversation will bring clarity and compassion. 

OCD can twist normal, passing thoughts into spiritual panic, making you question your heart, your purity, and even your salvation. 

I’ll walk you through how to tell the difference between intrusive thoughts and sinful thoughts, why trying to pray or “fix” your way out of them only makes the cycle worse, and what it looks like to actually renew your mind through grace and truth.

We’ll talk about how God designed you as a whole person — including your sexuality — and how embracing that truth can help you find peace instead of fear. You’ll learn practical, faith-based tools for responding to OCD in a healthy way, grounding yourself in Scripture, and letting go of the perfectionism that keeps you stuck. Healing is possible, not through striving harder, but through surrendering to the renewing work of the Holy Spirit.

If you’ve been searching for hope, encouragement, and real strategies to help you walk in freedom, this episode is for you.

Tune in to the full episode of Christian Faith and OCD to learn how to break free from shame, quiet the noise of OCD, and experience the peace and confidence God has already promised you.

197. Is it Normal? Child and Adolescent Sexual Development

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

As The Healthy Perspectives on Sex series continues on Christian Faith and OCD, Carrie explores what healthy sexual development looks like from birth through age 25. She discusses how OCD can complicate perceptions of sexuality and calls for open, grace-filled dialogue about faith, the body, and healing.

Episode Highlights:

  • What healthy sexual development looks like from birth through age 25.
  • How curiosity, modesty, and body awareness naturally evolve as children grow.
  • The importance of teaching age-appropriate boundaries and correct body terminology.
  • How OCD can distort or shame past sexual experiences and thoughts.
  • The effects of sexual abuse on development and the importance of early intervention and healing.
  • Practical, faith-based ways to have open, grace-filled conversations about sex, faith, and identity.

Episode Summary:

As we continue the Healthy Perspectives on Sex series on the Christian Faith and OCD Podcast, I’m diving into an important and often misunderstood topic — what normal sexual development looks like from birth through age 25. My goal is to bring clarity, compassion, and a Christ-centered perspective to conversations that are too often filled with shame, confusion, or silence.

Sexual development is a natural, God-designed process that unfolds in stages — from a child’s early curiosity about their body to the complex emotions of adolescence and the longing for connection in young adulthood. 

In this episode, I break down what healthy exploration looks like at every stage and share how parents and caregivers can talk about these topics with wisdom and grace.

Unfortunately, many Christians struggle with guilt or uncertainty around sexuality — especially when OCD is involved. OCD has a way of twisting memories, amplifying fears, and attaching shame to experiences that were never meant to define you. I share how OCD can complicate perceptions of sexuality, particularly when intrusive thoughts or past trauma are part of your story.

For those who have experienced sexual abuse, this episode also addresses how trauma can affect development and why healing requires both professional support and the restorative love of Christ. We’ll talk about what healthy boundaries look like, how to build open conversations about sex in faith-based families, and how to reclaim a godly understanding of your body and identity.

If this topic feels heavy or triggering, please give yourself permission to pause or take care of your heart as you listen. Healing happens at your pace, and God’s grace meets you exactly where you are.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present, abundant life God has for you. So, let’s dive right into today’s episode.

Today, we’re talking about normal sexual development, ages zero to twenty-five. And I’m gonna break this down into different stages and ages so you can kind of know a little bit more about what to expect. I know that OCD, a lot of times, lashes on to past experience; it has a tendency to distort things. So, we’re gonna talk about how OCD gets involved at different ages.

We’ll also look at how things may have shifted or changed for someone who was sexually abused, if that’s part of your story. Now, many years ago, I was at a church program, and we were watching my friend’s son, who was probably maybe around three years old. He was standing next to a little girl in the children’s program.

Towards the end of the program, he just kind of got this look on his face and just pulled up the skirt slightly of the girl next to him, and I think my friend was a little embarrassed. He did that in front of the whole church. We all got a good laugh, right? Children at this age, they’re just curious.

They’re just trying to find answers to their questions. They’re learning about their bodies—how they move, how they work. As a part of just that curious exploration, children may explore their own bodies and touch themselves. They may show an interest in other people’s bodies. If you have really little kids, sometimes they’ll just rip off their clothes or rip off a diaper and run around the house naked.

They don’t even think twice about it. All of that is very normal behavior for this age, and so, at this stage, it’s just really important for caregivers to talk about appropriate boundaries—what types of things are okay to do on your own, by yourself, or in the bathroom, and what types of things you don’t want to do in front of other people.

Children just begin to understand that boys and girls are different and may start to understand that they have different private parts. I think it’s really important for child safety, for children to know the correct name of their body parts, just weaving it into general conversation about their body so it doesn’t have to be a strange or uncomfortable thing.

A weird thing—if they’re washing, just say, like, “Okay, did you wash your leg? Did you wash your penis? Did you wash your arm?” And just by weaving that into conversation, normalizing it, we don’t make up funny, strange names for other parts of our body, so why would we make up funny, strange names for our genitals?

There’s a really great book called Your Body Belongs to You, which just provides a very casual overview about bathing suits, covering up private parts, and kind of goes into a little bit of safe and unsafe touching. It’s required, mandatory preschool curriculum in the U.S.—I know at least in Tennessee it is.

Anyway, if your child is in any kind of public preschool or Head Start program, they start at age three and start communicating some of these messages—who it is appropriate to touch you in certain areas of your body. And I think that all of this is really great for sexual abuse prevention and helps increase kids’ ability to be able to report if something does happen.

What you want to do is just provide age-appropriate explanations if children come to you with questions—just to be able to tell them something on their level, like, “Boys and girls have different parts.” “No, you can’t go into the bathroom with Dad because boys and girls have different parts,” and that type of language.

Now, if you have a child who has been abused in the preschool age range, oftentimes that may lead to them touching themselves more often than you would see in a normal child because, as we said before, even children who have not been abused—it is very typical for them to touch themselves, explore their bodies.

It’s not sexual; it’s not to be referred to as what we would call masturbation. That’s not what we’re talking about here. All that child has learned at a very young age is that, if I have stimulation to a certain area of my body, it feels good. And so, they are going to want to replicate that, and they may act that out or play that out with stuffed animals. If they have seen particular sexual content, you may see that come out in their play.

That’s how children essentially think, reason, and understand their world—through play. And so, it is important for them to get that specific type of therapy if they’ve been abused at a very young age—for them to be able to work through the things that are coming up for them and also, along with parents and therapists, to get healthy education surrounding who is allowed to touch them and so forth.

Now, let’s talk about the elementary ages, ages six to ten, for healthy sexual development. Over ten years ago now, my first husband and I were foster parents. Our very first placement was an eight-year-old girl, and she had asked me, probably on the third day of me parenting anybody, where babies come from.

I don’t remember exactly how I responded to that. I think I just kind of responded with, “Are you asking me where babies come from?” and then moved on and changed the subject because, as a foster parent, I just wasn’t quite sure if I should even be the one answering that and how to respond. Those types of questions, obviously, are very typical for this age range.

They’re going to have more questions about getting married, about where babies come from. When my daughter was taking swimming lessons at the Y, some of the elementary school kids were convinced that the swimming instructors were married or were dating, and they told them several times, “No, we’re not together. We’re just coworkers. We’re not married; we’re not in a relationship.” Somehow, the kids really didn’t believe them. I don’t know why.

But these are the kinds of things that children have. There are a lot of stories and fairy tales and princesses and princes, etc. It’s very common for kids to maybe compare their bodies with someone else’s, notice differences between peers, and have an increased sense of modesty.

They’re no longer just ripping off their clothes and running around the house naked. Now, they don’t want anybody in the bathroom with them. They want to change on their own, etc. All of that is very normal. Some females will start the puberty process towards the end of this age range, but I’m going to save talking about puberty for the next section—adolescence.

It’s really important at this age, as things come up, to just talk about how we treat our bodies, how others treat our bodies, how we treat others, etc.—friendships, appropriate touching. My daughter just ran around one day (she’s younger), but she ran around and slapped me on the butt, and I just said, “Please don’t touch my butt.”

She got kind of upset by it or whatever, but her dad came and talked to her and said, “All Mommy asked was that you just not touch her butt.” That’s it. We’re kind of teaching things like tickling—if you’re tickling a child or wrestling or something like that and they ask you to stop, it’s really important that you respect their boundaries as a parent and stop.

Sometimes my daughter will go through this like, “Tickle me!”—she wants to be tickled—and then other times she doesn’t want to be, and it can change in five seconds flat. So, it’s like, “Hey, tickle me!” “No, don’t tickle me at all!” But just in that process, we’re teaching her that she can ask for what she wants in regard to how other people treat her body, and that we’re going to respect her boundaries.

It’s really important for younger children to know that if they do feel uncomfortable with anybody for any reason, they can come and talk to you about that. I know it can be really boring at times when your kids want to talk to you about Minecraft or whatever else is popular out there—what’s happening on a Bluey episode—but if you really plug in and listen to your children and talk with them and communicate about all of these little things, they’re going to feel more safe and comfortable to come and talk to you about bigger issues.

If you minimize their concerns, then it’s going to be really hard for them to bring up something that maybe is a bigger concern. It’s really important that we’re plugged in and that we’re invested.

If a child has been abused in these elementary ages, you’re going to see some different things happening than what would happen in the typical sexual development. You may see kids that are more comfortable with exposing their bodies. You may see kids who are reenacting certain sexual acts, and, of course, this can be very scary and uncomfortable. They may try things out with other children that have been done to them. That’s sexually reactive behavior.

If this has happened to you or you have gone through sexual abuse and you reacted, that was what your brain and body were trying to do to process what you experienced at a younger age that you were never meant to experience at that age. It’s really important because OCD will come in and potentially shame you if you acted out reactively, either with another child or if you reacted by masturbating, which I wouldn’t even feel like it’s fair to call it that at that age, because going back to what we talked about before—if a child is touching themselves, all they know is, “Hey, that feels good, and I’m trying to repeat that process that feels good to my body.”

They’re not thinking of that in a sexual nature. It can often be misconstrued by other people, especially if other parents are aware that that’s going on. There’s a lot of secrecy and shame if you have experienced abuse. You may have felt like you couldn’t tell anybody, like you were going to get in trouble. You may have had a lot of repeated thoughts about it. It affects how you view others, how you view the world, how you view yourself.

That’s why it’s so important to get help if you have experienced sexual abuse. But just know that OCD may have taken some of those traumatic experiences and twisted them, or made them say something sexually about you. OCD may have convinced you that you are oversexualized in some way, shape, or form.

Just know that once these things essentially get turned on in our body, it changes the trajectory of your path.

Now, let’s talk about middle school—the early adolescent ages, around eleven to thirteen. And I want to spend some time talking about puberty because I know, for many clients that I’ve worked with, there weren’t healthy conversations for them about puberty. Maybe they learned about it at school. Maybe their parents just kind of handed them a book and walked away and didn’t really go into it. Maybe it was a total shock to them.

There’s all kinds of different scenarios and things that can happen in families, but it’s really important—and what should happen—is for someone to communicate with you about puberty before it starts because it’s obviously a very uncomfortable time. People are very insecure; their bodies are changing very rapidly. Girls will have crushes on boys and vice versa. With puberty and all the hormonal changes, there’s an increased interest in sex and romance.

What adolescents view as romance, obviously, is a little bit different than what adults view as romance, but that’s where all of this puberty stuff gets turned on. And going through the process of becoming, from a child to a man or a woman, there’s a lot of exploration of identity, and with that, some of that comes with experimentation.

I want to say something here for Christians who may have had some same-sex experimentation and OCD is now using that as evidence that, yes, you kissed a girl when you were in middle school, and so therefore you must be gay, or you fooled around with that boy of the same sex, and so then that means you’re gay.

And what I want to say about that is that not all experiences are aligned with your identity of who you are today, but we have to focus on where you are today and not allow OCD to pull in all of this other evidence.

OCD will also say things around this time about POCD—“Remember when you were eleven and you had a crush on that nine-year-old, and therefore that somehow means that you’re a pedophile.” OCD says some really strange stuff when it comes to the sex department, so pretty much nothing is off-limits for it.

Of course, if you’re eleven years old and you like someone who is nine, obviously, logistically, we know that’s only a two-year age difference and does not make you a pedophile. But just know that sometimes OCD will pull in some of these past experiences, whether it’s experimentation, whether it’s liking somebody that was younger than you, to somehow prove something about who you are now.

Now, in ICBT, we like to look at what is the sense of data of where you’re at right now. And people who are dealing with sexual orientation OCD are struggling because they feel like OCD is convincing them that they’re attracted to the same sex, even though they would tell you, in a clear-headed moment, “No, I’m attracted to the opposite sex.”

Masturbation is really common in adolescents, young adolescents, and older adolescents. Some of that can increase over time. There are very mixed views about masturbation among Christians. You’ll find some who will tell you it’s okay, others who will tell you it’s not okay at all. Some will tell you it depends on the content of what your thoughts are when you’re doing that, regarding lusting and other things.

It’s really somewhat of a gray area. I’m not here to settle or unsettle the masturbation debate. I probably land somewhere in the middle of the extremes because I do believe it’s a gray area. I also have compassionate understanding that people are desiring to be sexually pure, save themselves for marriage, and that’s very, very hard to do when your hormones are kicked in.

We also know that the media plays a role, and friendships and relationships play a role in beliefs about sex in the adolescent time period. It’s really important, if you are a parent, to know that your kids are already getting information about sex. And so, if you don’t want to be that void, you want to be that voice of truth and of wisdom and understanding, kind of meeting them where they’re at—not overly scaring them, but just letting them know, like, “Hey, sex is a beautiful thing. Here’s why it’s beneficial for you to hold off and wait to have sex.”

We know that parents who actually talk with their children about sex are more likely to have teenagers who delay having sex until later than if it’s not talked about at all. I think sometimes parents just think, “Oh, we won’t talk about that, and then they won’t do that.” Well, no—it’s the opposite.

If kids know that they can come to their parents and ask questions, or their parents can provide them certain resources so they don’t always have to come to their parents, if you can provide some of those things, that just continues to open those lines of communication to where there can be healthy conversations surrounding sex.

We also know that more and more children and adolescents are being exposed to pornography via the internet. This has essentially become a huge thing, and pornography is a billion-dollar business—it makes more than all of the major sports leagues combined. You can look that up, those statistics.

We want to make sure that you have safeguards in place on electronic devices that your children are using and accessing. Be very careful even about some of the things that are targeted toward kids. Even some YouTube content is not necessarily healthy. I would not give a kid unfettered access to YouTube for them to just look up whatever. Even what was labeled as YouTube Kids—I don’t know if they have changed some of those parameters—but I know that there was a lot of disturbing stuff that kids could still access.

You obviously want to talk with them about online communications—that, hey, not everybody on the internet is who they say they are. They may say that they’re a thirteen-year-old boy but really be some seventy-five-year-old man. You just want to be careful about what information you’re sharing.

Things like camera phones—adolescents don’t always make the best choices, so we really need to talk through and think through that. There’s a lot of sexting that is happening in today’s day and age that, of course, is very troubling, and so we want to talk about our body in a healthy way but, hey, let’s keep some things private. We don’t need to be sharing and exposing ourselves to everybody.

If you have someone who has been abused, either as a child or as an adolescent, they can be more prone to sexually act out, to have multiple partners, to engage in sexting behavior. For them, sexual behavior has become more normalized, and they may not have that same sense of self-respect for their body. So, it’s important to build that into someone—to say, like, “Hey, this is your body. You get to decide what happens to it.”

It’s not the only way to engage in a relationship—to show yourself—or the only way to be close to someone is to have sex with them. A lot of times, there’ll just be this empty void where girls have been trying to find that connection and acceptance, and they feel like the only way that they can do that is to be used sexually.

We also want to have conversations about adolescent boys and respecting women. I think those conversations are obviously really impactful as well. I think helping adolescents understand the potential gravity of some of their choices sexually is important and helpful.

Now, with high school and later adolescents, ages fourteen to eighteen, obviously there’s a more heightened interest in sex, discussions about sex, learning things from peers, more likely to be dating or engaging in relationships, and teens are starting to develop more and more solidified ideas and values surrounding sex.

I think it’s just a continuation of the conversation. If you look at this as a lifespan situation where you’re communicating to your child about sex, then it doesn’t have to be just this uncomfortable conversation that we bring out in early and late adolescence—now we gotta have “the talk.” No, it’s a continuation of conversations that you’ve had about their body when they were younger, conversations that you’ve had about boundaries, conversations about having babies or getting married, or those types of conversations, to where your children now hopefully feel like they can come to you when they have concerns about these issues.

And I also know that a lot of people didn’t receive that. A lot of people may have grown up in a home where sex wasn’t discussed, or there were some things happening in the home where their boundaries weren’t respected. Maybe it wasn’t overt abuse, but maybe people were walking around naked, and it caused them to feel uncomfortable, or maybe comments were made about their bodies that caused them to feel uncomfortable.

So just know, if any of those things happened to you, that may have impacted how you view yourself and how you view sex. When we talk about OCD, this is also where, because of all the hormonal changes that are happening, sometimes OCD can get worse during this period of adolescence, and kids can really be in a place where they can have certain sexual themes come up, such as POCD, such as HOCD, or sexual orientation OCD.

Those may become really, really heightened around this time—just like some of those themes can be heightened around pregnancy and postpartum. If an adolescent that’s dealing with OCD feels a strong, like, connection—even just like a mentor relationship—to a younger child, OCD may twist that and say, “No, you’re really attracted to that child.”

Someone may have a platonic friendship, and OCD may get them very confused about whether or not they really like that person, and that’s really hard to tease out, because obviously, that could be potentially an everyday doubt that someone might experience: “Do I really have feelings for this person or not?”

Of course, with OCD, you’re looking at, is this creating some type of problem that I need to solve? Is this causing an intense, heightened anxiety, and I can’t seem to get out of this loop? Once again, I really just want to stress and emphasize that kids whose parents talk to them about sex are more likely to not have sex than kids whose parents don’t talk with them about it at all.

So, having comprehensive education, talking with your child about what the Bible says about sex, talking to your child about things like contraception not being a hundred percent on preventing pregnancy, the emotional side of having sex, the spiritual connectedness that you have with another person, and that we don’t want to just have that with anybody—that there are reasons that God has put boundaries in place for us.

There are really great reasons to save sex for marriage and to note that not everyone is out there having sex, even though that is the lie that is perpetuated by our society to adolescents and to young adults. Next week, I’m going to be talking about “How Do I Deal With Sexual Thoughts as a Christian,” but what I want to say about this young adult period, from, say, 18 to 25, is that I’ve met many young people who are Christians who are somewhat troubled by normal sexual thoughts. Usually, they’ll tell me, “Oh, I have these sexual thoughts, and it’s not good.” And I’ll say, like, “Okay, you’re a warm-blooded young person—congratulations!” It is completely normal at this age if you are desiring to connect with another person sexually; that’s completely normal, and it’s okay.

It can be really hard to be a single young adult and desiring to be married and not having that experience yet, and being in that sense of waiting and wondering, “Is God going to bring me a spouse, or what is happening here?” And so, just know that all of those pieces can be very frustrating if you’re single and you’re a young adult.

Also, know that it’s very challenging in our culture to remain pure and to have a godly sexuality if that is something that you are wanting to strive for. I’m going to talk about that a little bit more next week, but I just wanted you to know that it’s totally normal to have sexual desires, urges, thought processes, desires to masturbate, and sexual dreams.

All of these things are very normal for young adults—almost like if you didn’t have some of these experiences in adolescence and young adulthood, we would really kind of wonder, “Why? What is that about? Is there a lack of desire of connecting with other people in this way?” I think that wraps it up for today’s conversation.

Thanks for hanging in here with me on the podcast. If you have questions, I’d love to have some more Q and A. I’ve received some from those who are on our email list that I’m going to be addressing in a future episode. But if you have questions, you can always reach out to us via the website at careba.com.

Definitely get on our email list, because you’re the first to know about new things that are happening in the podcast. I try to send out a little encouraging devotional-type message, letting you know when new podcast episodes are coming out. We typically, in a normal cycle, only email about once a week—unless we have some other juicy, good stuff going on—and then I may email you a little bit more. But you can always opt out and unsubscribe if you try it and dislike it.

It’s okay. We all are trying to clean up our email inboxes at one time or another, and so I want that content that I’m sending out to be valuable to you. I hope that you will tune in next time for more of this Healthy Perspectives on Sex series. 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.

196. Healthy Perspective on Sex Series: How Do I Recover from Purity Culture?

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

In this episode, Carrie launches the Healthy Perspectives on Sex Series, opening up about her personal journey of recovering from purity culture and how its messages shaped her faith, identity, and view of sexuality. She also explores how purity culture has impacted many Christians struggling with OCD and intrusive sexual thoughts, offering insight, grace, and hope for those seeking healing and freedom.

Episode Highlights:

  • How purity culture shaped a generation’s beliefs about sex, faith, and shame, and why many are now seeking healing.
  • Why fear-based messages from both secular and Christian cultures created confusion around sexuality and intimacy.
  • How purity culture can intensify struggles with OCD, scrupulosity, and intrusive thoughts related to sexuality.
  • How to begin identifying and challenging false beliefs about sex that do not align with God’s truth.
  • Practical steps for healing from sexual pain, trauma, or shame, both emotionally and physically.

Episode Summary:

This is one of the more vulnerable episodes I’ve recorded in a while. I really wrestled with whether or not to share this story, but as I prayed and felt the Holy Spirit nudging me, I knew it was time.

If you grew up in the church during the height of purity culture, with the “True Love Waits” pledges, purity rings, and all the “just don’t do it” conversations, you probably know how complicated that message could be. For me, those teachings shaped my faith and my view of sexuality in ways I didn’t even recognize until years later.

As I’ve looked back over the podcast, I’ve noticed that episodes about OCD and sexuality are some of the ones you listen to the most. That tells me many of you are wrestling with intrusive thoughts and shame connected to faith and sexual themes. I think purity culture has played a big part in that, and it’s time we start talking about it openly with both truth and grace.

In this episode, I’m opening up about what recovery from purity culture has looked like for me, how God has been bringing healing and freedom, and why I believe it’s so important for Christians to start having honest conversations about sex, shame, and grace.

This isn’t an easy topic, but it’s such an important one. My hope is that by sharing a bit of my own journey, you’ll feel less alone and maybe even take a step toward healing yourself.

So if you’ve ever felt caught between the messages of purity culture and what you sense God’s heart truly is for intimacy and wholeness, this episode is for you.

Explore Related Episode:

132. Sexual Obsession or Lust? Scrupulosity Wants to Know with Steve and Carrie

194. Getting Insurance to Pay for OCD Therapy with Joe Feldman of Cover My Mental Health

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

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, Carrie is joined by Joe Feldman, founder of Cover My Mental Health, who shares his family’s battle with insurance companies and how that experience led to creating free resources that help others get the care they deserve.

Episode Highlights:

  • What “medical necessity” means and how it impacts your insurance coverage for OCD and other mental health care
  • Why documenting your provider search is crucial when navigating insurance barriers
  • How to file a formal insurance complaint to get your case taken seriously
  • Ways to advocate for yourself (or a loved one) when seeking specialized OCD treatment
  • Where to find free worksheets, letters, and resources through Cover My Mental Health

Episode Summary:

Getting insurance to cover mental health treatment can feel overwhelming, frustrating, and at times even hopeless. I know so many families who end up paying out of pocket, putting treatment off, or walking away discouraged because the insurance system feels impossible to navigate. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to take no for an answer.

In this episode, I sit down with Joe Feldman, founder of Cover My Mental Health, who knows this struggle firsthand. When his family’s insurance company denied coverage for life-saving residential care for his teen, Joe and his wife refused to give up. They fought back with documentation, appeals, and ultimately a federal lawsuit — and they won. But along the way, Joe realized families shouldn’t have to go through years of litigation just to access care. That’s why he created Cover My Mental Health, a nonprofit providing free tools, template letters, and resources to help individuals and families push back against unfair denials and get the coverage they deserve.

We talk about the realities of navigating insurance: outdated provider directories, limited access to specialized care, what medical necessity letters really mean, and how documentation can become your most powerful tool. Joe also shares practical steps you can take — like filing a formal insurer complaint or enlisting the help of a family member, clinician, or even your elected officials — to level the playing field with insurance companies.

For those of us in the OCD community, where finding trained providers is already a challenge, these tools can be life-changing. Joe’s story and expertise shine a light on what’s possible when you advocate with persistence, clarity, and support. 

Most importantly, this episode is about encouragement: you’re not alone in this, and there are ways forward even when the system feels stacked against you.

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193. When Colors and Numbers are Bad: Associations OCD Makes

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

In this episode, Carrie shares how our brains link colors, numbers, and events in ways that can trigger OCD. She offers relatable stories and practical tools to help break these patterns.

Episode Highlights:

  • How everyday experiences can form powerful associations in our brains.
  • How trauma can create associations that fuel OCD symptoms.
  • Examples of how OCD attaches meaning to colors, numbers, and routines.
  • The difference between ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) and ICBT approaches to breaking associations.
  • Practical ways to challenge OCD’s “last time, this time” thinking and reframe anxious beliefs.

Episode Summary:

Have you ever noticed how your brain links things together in ways that don’t really make sense? My daughter taught me this lesson in the funniest way—through bowling and Skittles. What started as one small treat quickly became a routine, and now in her mind, bowling and Skittles will always go hand in hand.

That’s cute when it comes to candy. But in today’s episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I’m talking about how OCD does the same thing with things that aren’t so sweet. Numbers, colors, places, even clothing—OCD can convince us they’re connected to fear, guilt, or something bad happening. And once those associations take hold, they can be incredibly hard to shake.

I’ll also be sharing why these patterns feel so real in the moment, how trauma can make them even stickier, and what it looks like to gently untangle the fear-based connections OCD creates.

This is such an important conversation, because OCD loves to trick us into believing that a color, a number, or a shirt can hold power over us. But that’s not the truth—and learning how to recognize these lies is a huge step toward peace.

🎧 Tune in to the full episode for the full story and practical ways to break OCD’s grip so you can walk in the abundant life God has for you.

192. What I Wish Pastors Knew About OCD with Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW 

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

Carrie is joined by Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW, a therapist with lived experience of OCD, to discuss how pastors can better support those who struggle through insights on discipleship, treatment, shame, and spiritual warfare.

Episode Highlights:

  • Rachel’s personal journey with OCD and how her faith community played a role in her healing.
  • How pastors can discern between normal spiritual wrestling and scrupulosity.
  • The role of safe spaces, gospel-centered preaching, and grace-based discipleship in supporting those with OCD.
  • The overlap of OCD and spiritual warfare, and how to navigate it without fear or confusion.
  • Resources for pastors and helpers to grow in their understanding of OCD.
  • Rachel’s upcoming book Gap Filler: Captive to Captivated and the hope it offers to both sufferers and shepherds.

Episode Summary:

Struggling with OCD in the church can feel overwhelming and deeply misunderstood. What if pastors had the tools and insight to offer real, gospel-centered support instead of leaving people stuck in shame and confusion?

In this episode, I sit down with Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW, a therapist who not only treats OCD professionally but has also lived through it personally since childhood. Rachel shares her story of intrusive thoughts, scrupulosity, and the long road to finding help through both pastoral care and effective treatment. 

We dive into the powerful connection between OCD treatment and discipleship, the ways shame and intrusive thoughts take hold in the church, and how to discern the difference between ordinary spiritual wrestling and scrupulosity. 

We also talk about the overlap of OCD and spiritual warfare—not as something to be feared, but as a reminder that the enemy wants to distract us from Jesus and shrink our world down to our doubts. 

Rachel’s story reveals how pastors, counselors, and the gospel can work together to point people back to hope.

If you are a pastor, a mental health professional, or someone walking through OCD yourself, this conversation will encourage you to see God’s grace more clearly and help you understand how to move toward freedom.

🎧 Tune into the full episode.

Connect with Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW: 

re-vivinglivescounseling.com

www.instagram.com/revivinglivescounseling

191. Can’t Let Go of Your Stuff? The Stories and Emotions that Keep You Hoarding

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

In this episode, Carrie explores the hidden stories and emotions that make letting go of items so difficult. Drawing from conference insights and personal experiences, she shares practical wisdom to help anyone declutter and create a home that feels peaceful, joyful, and welcoming.

Episode Highlights:

  • The stories we tell ourselves about objects, including how joy, identity, and memory influence what we keep.
  • Why letting go can feel like loss and the connection between grief, trauma, and possessions.
  • The trap of “I might need this one day” and how scarcity thinking fuels clutter.
  • How acquiring can be just as much an issue as discarding, including the cycle of bargains, “great deals,” and aspirational buys.
  • Ways to reframe decluttering as generosity by shifting from guilt to joy through blessing others with unused items.

Episode Summary:

Have you ever tried to declutter your home and felt completely stuck? Maybe you wouldn’t call yourself a hoarder, but you know you’re holding onto too much. 

You tell yourself things like, I might need this one day or this reminds me of someone I don’t want to forget. And before you know it, your home feels overwhelming instead of peaceful.

Clutter isn’t always about laziness or disorganization—it’s often about identity, memories, grief, or even responsibility.

In this episode, I talk about why letting go feels so hard, how our emotional attachment to things keeps us stuck, and the ways scarcity thinking and “just in case” habits fuel clutter. I also share why buying new things can be just as much of a problem as not being able to let go, and how shifting your perspective can help you finally make progress.

Clutter isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. When our homes are full, our minds often feel full too. But when we can step back and challenge the stories we’ve been telling ourselves about our stuff, we start to find freedom, joy, and more space to actually live.

If you’ve ever felt guilty, overwhelmed, or emotionally stuck when it comes to decluttering, you’re not alone. This episode will encourage you to see your possessions in a new light and give you practical ways to let go without feeling like you’re losing a part of yourself.

👉 Tune into the full episode now.

Explore Related Episode:

69. Let’s Talk About Hoarding with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

 

 Hello. Today we are talking about hoarding the stories that you are telling yourself that are keeping you from letting go of items. Even if you feel like, well, maybe I’m not quite a hoarder. I wouldn’t describe myself that way, but I do really struggle to let go of things. I keep way too much stuff. And I have a hard time emotionally clearing out my items and making my home a place of happiness and health and socialization that I want it to be.

I went to a couple interesting sessions on hoarding at the International OCD Foundation Conference, and I wanted to just share some of that information with you that I learned on the podcast because. It’s really insightful. It might be helpful for some of you that are struggling to get rid of items.

Hoarding is a topic that I’m super interested in. It’s hard to find people who are hoarding, who are actually motivated to get the help that they need, so I always enjoy working with people. Also, they typically aren’t in a financial situation to get the level of intensive help that they need. But if that is something that you are struggling with, just know that that’s one of my interest areas.

I’ll throw that out there. It’s not something that I would say I have a ton of experience, but I have worked with several people who are struggling with hoarding and found it to just be very rewarding and fulfilling for me. Now, I think also I probably can relate a little bit to some of the things that they’re experiencing just because I grew up in a family of what we like to call pack rats.

People that keep way too many items out of scarcity, out of thinking that, Hey, I might need this one day, or. Hey, I could really use this for this. Those kind of ideas certainly were tossed around in my family. I got rid of some round cake pans one time because I told my mom, you know, I really wasn’t using those.

If I’m gonna make a cake, which I hadn’t made a cake in a long time, I was like, I really just use the rectangle one. I don’t use the round ones. And she was a little horrified that I got rid of them, even though it was something I wasn’t using and probably wasn’t going to be using. She was like, oh no.

Like you didn’t get rid of that, did you? And when we went to clean out my parents’ house, there were just all kinds of things that were thrown in the trash that they really didn’t need to hold onto. I’m talking about like cassette tapes from a conference they went to, if you remember that very old computer paper that had the, uh, dots on the side where you had to feed it through.

I have no idea why my mom still had some of that, but she did. We didn’t have any kind of printer like that. We found a very old school Walkman in the house, baby teeth, from when I was a baby. I have no idea why she kept baby teeth for as long as she did. Like when your children are. Full grown adults?

Like are you looking back, being sentimental? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll understand it when I’m older. My daughter hasn’t started losing teeth yet, but needless to say, there were just tons and tons of items that had not been gone through. My mom taught preschool like years and years ago. She had preschool lesson plans on the top of her bookshelf.

She kept a lot of stuff and at that time in their lives they had a bigger house where they had room and they had storage and they had cabinets, and they had closets where they could keep all of these things that they deemed that they wanted to hold onto. So that can be really tough. Just know if, if you need to do a little bit of what they call Swedish death cleaning so your kids don’t have to do it, please go ahead and do that.

It’s quite challenging enough about my story. I wanted to talk with you about the emotions and the thought processes that might keep you holding onto items and the ideas that people have around objects and really the story that you tell yourself. One of them is that you may say like, well, I just really like these items, whatever they are, and I enjoy them.

They bring me joy. I don’t wanna get rid of them. It could be little figurines that you’ve collected since you were a little girl. It could be a variety of things. Not everything necessarily has a specific use. Some things are just decorative. Not everything has a specific use for it. We have little knickknacks and things.

I have things right now that I could look at that are on top of my bookshelf. You could say. I’m not using them actively, but I am using them for decoration. Of course, but we hold on to things that we enjoy or that bring us joy. But then what can happen is that you have way too many of those items for the actual space that you have to hold them, and that’s when it becomes problematic, right?

You may enjoy looking at certain things, but then you get so much stuff and it just kind of gets covered and covered, and then you’re not even really enjoying those items or able to enjoy those items. Because you’re not able to get to them or you’re not able to get them out anymore, and that’s where you really have to kind of pair those things down to what’s most important and sometimes something that you might have found enjoyable in the past.

Maybe you look at it now and you go, why did I ever buy that? Or, I’m not even sure I really like that anymore. The problem with hoarding is that there’s a lot of bringing items in and then those items don’t get reevaluated. That becomes an issue, right? Maybe there are certain things that you have created or crafted.

I have like the only thing that ever made it off of the pottery wheel. In college, the pottery wheel and I in pottery class, had a really hard time. We had a rough go at it. So I have this little piece that I have held onto because it’s like a sense of accomplishment. It represents that I did actually successfully get something off the pottery wheel without it falling apart beforehand.

I don’t think that I really had the patience or the time or the right, proper training on how to do what I was doing. Our teacher just kind of left us a little bit to our own devices. So maybe that’s something I will go back to at a later date. But that is something that I have really held onto. Like I am not getting rid of this thing ’cause it’s the only thing that I only pottery that was successfully completed on the pottery wheel.

And there may be other things that you have little crafts that your kids made and. Just makes you think of them at a certain age, could be a variety of things that fall into this pleasure category, right? We have to be able to evaluate what is the space that we have to hold onto these things. How large are they?

How many of them do you have? And so there may be times where you might need to take a picture of something. So that you have it digitally instead of actually having it physically, that can end up saving you a lot of space, right? Sometimes people hold onto things because it’s an identity that they used to have that they don’t have anymore, and so it’s almost like they’re grieving that identity that they used to have.

This could be a mother that has held onto like an enormous amount of children’s clothing or baby clothing, just really kind of sad. I’m not gonna have any more children. And it could be that she’s held onto these four, like her children are now fully grown. Or in the training they give an example of kind of an aspired identity that someone was holding onto.

So this woman wanted to cook and she had hundreds of cookbooks in her house because she just really wanted. To cook and to cook Well, the problem was that she couldn’t get to anything in her kitchen because her kitchen was overrun with items. So she was holding onto this identity of somebody that she wanted to be, and she felt like if she let go of the cookbooks.

It would be like losing that aspirational identity that she really wanted to have. I know for me, there were a lot of things that I cleared out of my old attic when I got divorced because there were representations of me being a foster parent and even though I wanted to be a parent in the future. I didn’t know when that would happen or what that would look like.

It was hard for me and I had to come to an acknowledgement that this was a life that I was no longer living and holding onto these items continuously was not serving me for the life that I was trying to live right now. That was a tough one. So you may have experiences like that. It could be just little trophy that you got as a kid, or bonding time that you remembered having and some type of representation of that.

Even the identity of being a daughter, maybe you lost a parent. Oftentimes hoarding and grief and loss can go together. Because you might have items from that loved one who passed away, or you might have things that remind you of them, and so getting rid of the item feels like you’re losing that parent or loved one all over again, and that just can feel really intolerable for people.

Typically, people are holding onto items to avoid this sense of loss. Or other negative emotion, maybe regret that comes up as a result of having to let go of those items. So when you can take the time to really sit with things and say, okay, why am I actually holding onto this? What is the thought process behind it?

How do I feel about holding onto it right now? How do I feel about packing it up to give it away? Or how do I feel about selling it? How do I feel about it no longer being here? If you can answer some of those questions, that really helps you get to a place where you come to understand why you’re holding onto the item and what you’re avoiding as a result of trying to get rid of a particular item.

There might be things that have been really painful or traumatic that have happened to you. You have items that remind you of that pain or of that trauma because you haven’t fully processed that. It might be hard to let go of those items. So just be aware that you may say, okay, well, I can pare down the things that really bring me joy.

I have a hundred angel figurines. I really don’t need that many. I compare that down to 20 or to five, whatever feels good. Whatever your space allows. I compare down the things that I enjoy, but I have a really hard time letting go of these reminders of trauma. Sometimes people are motivated to hold onto items due to a sense of responsibility, feeling like I have to be responsible and with the items that I have, I can’t be wasteful.

I can’t just throw things away, so I’ve gotta hold on to these water bottles because I could really make something out of this recycled material. I could make art out of this, or I could use it for a child’s craft project. So you may just have toilet paper tubes and the paper towel rolls and other things.

Certainly you could theoretically use those in other ways or use them for craft projects. If we are really looking for a use for an item, I’m sure that we can come up with one. I’m sure that you can be creative, right? I think we could do this with this, Hey, here’s a piece of styrofoam from the Amazon packaging.

I might need that for packaging something else in the future. And so you may have these types of odds and ends and you feel like, well, if I throw that away, I’m just kind of being wasteful. And you might wanna look at like your history and your family story and what things were told to you. You might have been told, Hey, hold onto that.

You might need that one day. Or we might not be able to get some of that. I don’t wanna have to pay for that later. So let’s hold onto this. So just noticing these are for people who have like a ton of. Items in their home that they feel like they can reuse instead of throw away. And there can be an avoidance of guilt.

There’s a feeling of guilt maybe of letting go of these items and not holding onto them, because then maybe I’m not being morally responsible or ethically responsible. I’m not being a good steward of something if I just throw it away. Or oftentimes people get stuck in this trap of, well, I could make money off some of these items.

I do have some nice stuff, and I could make some money and I should go on Facebook marketplace and sell it. Or I should have a big yard sale, but I’m not really in a good area where I could have a yard sale. So it’s going back and forth, back and forth of how to get rid of the items, and so it feels irresponsible.

To just go give it to the thrift store because I could make some money off of it, and then that just allows the items to linger longer in the household. You have two issues with hoarding that we can talk about. One is the getting rid of items. That certainly is an issue, but another is an issue of acquiring items.

Someone may find things at at yard sales or thrift stores and say, Hey, like I could really use this. I think that I could put this with some other stuff that I have, or, it’s such a good deal. It’s such a good bargain that I’m gonna go ahead and get that. Then I’m going to somehow use it, but then the day never comes for them to use that item again.

Think of maybe 10 different uses for it, but that doesn’t actually happen. And once you start noticing these stories and these thought processes like, oh, I could use that one day. I might need that. I might know someone who needs that. I can use that, no problem. This goes with another piece that I have, or I just really like that and it’s on sale, or, I’m getting a great deal, but are you really getting a great deal if it’s something that you don’t need?

So you have to learn to start telling it yourself. A different narrative when it comes to acquiring and when it comes to getting rid of items. And so your change or your shift in narrative might be just in a place of contentment. Like, I have everything that I need. I don’t need anything else. And something that I have to tell myself sometimes.

’cause I can see things and go, oh hey, I could use that, or I could put this there. And I might tell myself, yeah, I probably could, but I really just don’t need that. I don’t need, it’s going to eventually become clutter in my house and I don’t wanna have that. I wanna live in a space that feels really peaceful to me, that doesn’t feel overwhelmed by stuff.

And changing that narrative about getting rid of items. I think for Christians, this can be a really big deal because we have a calling to be generous and to share with others. So if you have items in your home that aren’t being utilized, that could bless somebody else, like someone else might really be able to use that.

You have an opportunity, opportunity to give that to them or to give it to an organization that you really care about. Maybe your church does yard sales for mission trips. Maybe they have items that they donate to the pregnancy center, or they’re doing some type of fundraiser yard sale for someone who wants to adopt a child.

It’s all really great opportunities to bless people and that will help you put yourself in a place of joy. When you do get rid of items, when Steve and I got together, we just had duplicates of a lot of things. We had a bunch of Crockpots, which was kind of funny. He had a couple. I had a couple, and I said, two people don’t need four crockpots.

So we had this yard sale and we just said, Hey, it’s a donation yard sale. We’re gonna donate whatever you decide to give for these items to our local charity that supports foster children. And it was super fun and it was really great because then we didn’t stress about how much money we were making or not making off of things, weren’t frustrated by that.

And we were able to get some things out of our house, and then whatever didn’t sell, we just shipped off to the local thrift store and were able to. Bless some people with some good deals, and they were able to find some stuff that they needed. So if you can do something like that, that may help change your mindset on getting rid of items.

I know that hoarding is something that can be really overwhelming for people. A lot of times they don’t get help until they’re already in a really challenging and really difficult situation. And so if that’s you, I just would encourage you to get some support, whatever that looks like. It might be personal support of somebody that it can help you go through things.

It might be professional support of somebody that can help you really examine some of these beliefs and emotions that you have connected to items. I will say too that there’s a great book called Buried in Treasures you can get ahold of, and it also has guidelines if you know someone who is hoarding and you’re struggling to try to help them.

It does have some guidelines for friends and family who are helping people who hoard, and if you are struggling with that, it has quizzes, it has activities. Has worksheets, all kinds of things that you can utilize in there. Don’t buy it and hold onto it if you’re not gonna use it, but if it’s something that you feel like, Hey, I’m gonna take a little bit of time every day to work on tackling this, I think that that’s really great.

An intensive option might be a really great option for you to just dive in and work with either a therapist, professional organizer, somebody who can help you go through those items. Sometimes you might be telling yourself a story about having something to a level of perfection. You might say, Hey, I need all of these Christmas items in order to have a great Christmas.

I need to have multiple Christmas trees with all of these ornaments. But then it’s just taking up all of this time. Energy to decorate, or you just have boxes and boxes and boxes of things and you keep Uping Christmas stuff because maybe Christmas was never magical at your house. People were always fighting or your parents were just really poor and couldn’t get you much, and it was kind of depressing.

So now you’ve decided that your Christmases are no longer going to be like that. You see how like we weave these narratives in our mind and then we live it out? Or maybe you tell yourself, well, I’ve gotta buy my kids the best, latest and greatest toys. So we just have massive amounts of toys all over the house, and that’s what really needs to happen.

And that might be coming from just economic insecurity that you grew up with, et cetera. And noticing that these stories are highly emotionally charged, especially when you’ve told them to yourself over and over and over again.

So we can add this to. This section that talks about the different emotions or processes in hoarding that I talked about earlier.

Sometimes you might be. Telling yourself a story about having something to a level of perfection. You might say, Hey, I need all of these Christmas items in order to have a great Christmas. I need to have multiple Christmas trees with all of these ornaments. But then it’s just taking up all of this time.

Energy to decorate, or you just have boxes and boxes and boxes of things and you keep acquiring Christmas stuff because maybe Christmas was never magical at your house. People were always fighting or your parents were just really poor and couldn’t get you much, and it was kind of depressing. So now you’ve decided that your Christmases are no longer going to be like that.

You see how like we weave these narratives in our mind and then we live it out? Or maybe you tell yourself, well, I’ve gotta buy my kids the best, latest and greatest toys. So we just have massive amounts of toys all over the house, and that’s what really needs to happen. And that might be coming from just economic insecurity that you grew up with, et cetera.

Noticing that these stories are highly emotionally charged, especially when you’ve told them to yourself over and over and over again.

190. Dealing with Uncertainty and Why We Stopped Praying for a Miracle with Steve and Carrie Bock

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

In this heartfelt episode, Carrie sits down with her husband Steve to talk about one of life’s hardest challenges: living with uncertainty. They dive into what it looks like to live with faith, peace, and joy in the face of an unpredictable future.

Episode Highlights:

  • How uncertainty impacts whether you struggle with OCD, chronic illness, or everyday worries—and why acceptance is such a key step in the journey.
  • The power of living one day at a time, with practical ways to choose joy despite pain and limitations.
  • Why Steve and Carrie stopped praying for a miraculous healing, and how they began to recognize God’s blessings in unexpected ways.
  • How scripture, especially Paul’s story, can provide encouragement when life doesn’t go as planned.
  • What it looks like to trust God in seasons of suffering, and how shifting perspective can bring lasting hope and resilience.

Episode Summary:

Have you ever found yourself caught in a spiral of “what ifs,” wishing you could just know the outcome before it happens? For many living with OCD or chronic illness, uncertainty doesn’t just create worry—it can feel unbearable. And yet, uncertainty is something we all must face.

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I sit down with my husband Steve to talk about what it really looks like to live with faith when tomorrow feels unpredictable. Three years after his diagnosis with spinocerebellar ataxia, a rare degenerative neurological condition, our family has had to navigate a new reality shaped by unknowns. Instead of focusing on the miracle we once prayed for, we’ve learned to see how God’s grace shows up in smaller, everyday ways that are just as powerful.

We dive into how OCD can magnify uncertainty until it feels impossible to move forward, and why acceptance becomes such an important part of finding peace. Our conversation explores how prayer has shifted from asking God to take away the struggle to seeking His strength, endurance, and joy right in the middle of it. We also uncover the comfort found in scripture, especially in Paul’s story, which shows that God’s power is often revealed most clearly in our weakness.

This conversation isn’t about having all the answers or tying everything up with a bow. It’s about what it means to keep showing up, to trust God in the unknown, and to discover that even in the middle of uncertainty, there can be hope and healing.

Tune in to Episode 190 of Christian Faith and OCD to hear the full conversation and find encouragement for your own journey through uncertainty.

189. Are You Stuck Working Too Much?

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

In this episode, Carrie explores the link between overworking and OCD, sharing warning signs of burnout and offering biblical wisdom and practical strategies for balance, rest, and healthy boundaries.

Episode Highlights:

  • How overworking and OCD are often connected.
  • Key warning signs of burnout to watch for.
  • Common beliefs that keep Christians stuck in unhealthy work habits.
  • Why rest, boundaries, and compartmentalization matter for recovery.
  • Faith-based strategies to find balance and honor God through healthy work rhythms.

Episode Summary:

If you’re anything like me or the clients I work with, you know how easy it is for work to take over life. You start with good intentions—wanting to be responsible, productive, or to simply do your best. But before long, the pressure grows, the hours stretch longer, and what once felt like healthy drive begins to feel like an exhausting weight you can’t put down.

For Christians with OCD, this is especially challenging. OCD has a way of latching onto work, fueling perfectionism, fear of mistakes, and the constant belief that you have to prove your worth. 

Burnout isn’t just about working too many hours. It’s about believing lies that tie your value to your productivity. It’s about the guilt you feel when you step away. It’s about never letting yourself rest because there’s always one more thing to check off the list. And yet, God never designed us to live this way. Scripture calls us to rest, not as a reward when the work is finished, but as a rhythm of life that reflects trust in Him.

In this episode, I open up about how OCD and overwork become tangled, why so many Christians silently struggle with burnout, and how God’s truth offers a way forward. We’ll look at what burnout really looks like, how to recognize when OCD is driving unhealthy work habits, and how faith invites us into balance and freedom.

If you’ve ever found yourself glued to your laptop long after hours, replaying work tasks in your head, or feeling guilty when you take time off, this episode will encourage your heart and give you hope.

188. Stop Fighting Reality: How Radical Acceptance Might be the Key

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

In this episode, Carrie goes “off script” to explore a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skill—radical acceptance—and why it’s a powerful tool for Christians navigating OCD, grief, and life’s hard realities.

Episode Highlights 

  • What radical acceptance really means—and what it doesn’t.
  • How fighting reality keeps you emotionally stuck (and what to do instead).
  • Biblical perspectives on suffering and endurance from James 1, Romans 5, and Romans 8:28.
  • Practical ways to sit with and move through pain without falling into denial or despair.
  • How DBT skills can support OCD recovery and deepen faith-based coping.

Episode Summary

Today, I’m stepping outside our usual conversations on Christian concepts and OCD treatment to share a tool from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy that has been life-changing for me and my clients—radical acceptance. This is not about throwing in the towel or resigning yourself to hopelessness. Instead, it’s about fully acknowledging the reality of your situation, even when it’s painful, unfair, or confusing, so you can stop wasting energy on what’s outside your control and start moving forward in ways that honor God and protect your emotional health.

In this episode, I’ll share how radical acceptance has helped me through my own grief, losses, and frustrating situations, and why learning to sit with reality is so powerful for OCD recovery. We’ll talk about what scripture says about suffering—how God uses it to shape perseverance, character, and hope—and why embracing “what is” can actually free you to experience more peace, compassion, and resilience. I’ll also walk you through practical ways to apply this skill in your day-to-day life, whether you’re dealing with intrusive thoughts, relationship struggles, job loss, or deep grief.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, angry, or overwhelmed—caught in a cycle of wishing things were different—this episode will give you tools and encouragement to release that fight, trust God’s bigger plan, and take the next right step. 

Tune into the full episode to discover how radical acceptance can help you stop battling reality and start walking in the present, abundant life God has for you.