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146. One Step to Make a Change

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Episodes to Listen to:

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

Transcript

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

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, a licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you. With practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.

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

There will be full instructions for entering the giveaway in our show notes, because I don’t want to take up too much time here. You can always reach us for further information at kerrybach. com slash podcast. Let’s talk about how people usually approach changes, making changes in their life. Typically goes with some all or nothing thinking, and you know we’ve all been guilty of this. Like, I have to do all the things all at once, I have to change everything, have a completely new life by Friday, I’m gonna reach for my entire schedule, I’m actually gonna get up early and I’m gonna eat right, exercise, throw out all the carbs. Have no sugar in the house, run a mile, read that entire book that I’ve been wanting to read, and spend five straight hours organizing my house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

145. Remaining Sane in Your Marriage While Parenting a Toddler: Our 4th Year of Marriage

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

In today’s special episode, Carrie is joined by her husband, Steve, as they celebrate four years of marriage. They share relatable insights about the joys and challenges of family life, and explore the realities of raising a toddler.

Episode Highlights:

  • How Steve and Carrie’s lives have changed since they got married.
  • The importance of navigating shared responsibilities as parents.
  • Steve’s reflection on how their daughter’s perspective on everyday things helps them appreciate the world anew.
  • The challenges of building friendships as parents.
  • The connections between parenting and God’s relationship with us.

Episode Summary:

Welcome back to Christian Faith and OCD! I’m Carrie, and in this special episode, I’m joined by my husband, Steve. Every year, we take a moment to reflect on our lives and share relatable insights about marriage and parenting, hoping to help you feel a little more normal in your journey.

In this episode, we celebrate our wedding anniversary and discuss the ups and downs of parenting our toddler. From her constant questions about the world to the challenges of potty training, we share our experiences with humor and honesty.

We also talk about the struggles of maintaining friendships as parents, navigating social situations, and creating a supportive community for ourselves. It can be tough, but we’re learning and growing together.

To celebrate October, we’re hosting a special giveaway! Anyone who subscribes to our email list and leaves a rating and review for our podcast on iTunes will have a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card.

To join, follow these instructions:

-Subscribe to our email list at https://carriebock.com/podcast/
-Rate and review our podcast on iTunes.
-Screenshot your review and email it to us at podcast@carriebock.com.

Join the fun and good luck!

Thank you for joining us on this journey of faith and parenting. Let’s dive into today’s episode!

More Episodes to Listen to:

81. On Becoming Parents: Year Two of Marriage with Steve and Carrie Bock

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to episode 145. I am back with my husband. Today, for those of you who are new to the show, every year we get together and do a anniversary episode and I think it’s still relevant. It’s helpful for people to know a little bit about our lives, but then also the things that we talk about on these episodes really are relatable as far as marriage and parenting and those types of situations that I know other people are going through too. So hopefully it helps you feel more normal.

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

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

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

There will be full instructions for entering the giveaway in our show notes, because I don’t want to take up too much time here. You can always reach us for further information at kerrybach. com slash podcast. I will tell you, Steve, that one of our more popular episodes on the show is our dating episode.

Would you believe that?

Steve: No, I would not.

Carrie: Anyway, well, I guess there are a lot of other people like myself who were anxious about dating, who are going through anxiety about dating. That’s a relatable episode to individuals who are struggling with that. And I know a lot of people have relationship anxiety based on past relationships.

So I’m glad that people are benefiting from that episode that we recorded over four years ago now on the floor of our old walk in closet.

Steve: Yes, thankfully we have upgraded slightly here, so that’s good.

Carrie: Yeah, people can’t see that now. Has it really been four years? Wow.

Steve: I mean, it makes sense, we’ve been married, but still, wow, time flies.

Carrie: Yes. That’s good. This episode is actually coming out on our anniversary day.

Steve: Well, that’s a good day for this to come out.

Carrie: Yes, it was a slightly chilly morning in October when we got married.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: At a park during COVID. So here we are, four years later, life’s quite different than it was back then. We got married and we had a daughter and now we are in the toddler parenting years.

Steve: Oh yes.

Carrie: Do you want to tell the folks some of the fun things that we get to hear on a regular basis and deal with? I love you so much. Me too.

Steve: I hear that one quite often. What else? She has a lot of phrases. What is this? I always was prepared for the constant question of but why, but why, but instead our daughter chose the route of what is this?

And it could be anything, it could be her foot, it doesn’t matter, and after you tell her she’s going to ask it again and again and again, but the same thing. What is this? I have told you 25 times that is your foot, but that is how she gets attention and learn.

Carrie: Sometimes she doesn’t know what it is, but sometimes she does know what it is and you’re like, why are you asking me?

Like, you know, that’s a dog. I don’t understand. And then I’m trying to figure out, is she asking me, is that a particular type of dog or is she asking me something specifically on the dog? Like, is that a collar? Like, what is it that she’s really wanting to know? Because sometimes it’s a little bit more detailed.

Steve: And I will say it is fun and interesting to kind of learn from her view of things. Things we take for granted that we just know. We know what those are. We know why we say this or do that. But to learn things for the first time from her view and her perspective, that’s kind of neat. And she always, not always, but almost always replies with, uh huh.

She just suddenly understands now and you know she has no clue. It’s just a response. But anyways.

Carrie: In a lot of ways, it’s been a really good year with her. There’s been a lot of highs, her taking some swimming lessons this summer, which was really sweet. And she started out just being totally terrified of the pool and the concept of being in the water.

But then she really warmed up to it and enjoyed her lessons. And now occasionally she’ll try to float in the bathtub, which is cool. So that’s nice. There’s also been some lows of lots of big emotions when you’re two, like lots of screaming and tantruming and

Steve: overwhelm and Yes. I know now I know why older people are hard of hearing because maybe just possibly they had children that screamed for 10 straight minutes because they didn’t get their way.

And that’s probably why our parents have ringing of the ears and all of those things because of all the screaming. So it’s part of it.

Carrie: Yeah. Sometimes I just have to plug my ears and walk away cause she’s got some lungs on her and she can scream really loud and she never loses her voice. That is a thing that does not happen at all.

So here we are. What are some of the challenges that you feel like we’ve experienced in terms of parenting her? Potty training. What was the question

Steve: again? I’m sorry. Potty training. Potty training. And do we let her just wear a diaper, not wear a diaper, wet her clothes? Go naked. Go naked. What do we do here?

Potty training, what? How long does this take? Huh. Oh, we could do this in a weekend. Yes, you can go insane in a weekend too, but I don’t know if that’s the route I want to go.

Carrie: She is.

Steve: As much as I joke about it, and forgive my sarcasm, that’s my coping mechanism, but she is beginning to get it, I think. She constantly informs me and us that, hey, I’ve gotta go potty, I’ve gotta go the other way, I’ve gotta whatever.

Of course, at this point, it’s part of the learning process.

Carrie: The ship has already sailed by that point, so she’s saying something about it.

Steve: Right, exactly. But we’re getting there. We are getting there. It’s just a slow go. And I’m sure every parent has tips, and the thing we’ve noticed from others the most is that was the worst part about parenting.

And going into it, we’re like, Don’t tell us that. But now that we’ve been through it a little bit, and we’re not finished, but we would agree with you that’s probably the worst moment in all honesty, or at least from my perspective, I would agree.

Carrie: That we’ve been through so far. Yeah. I think part of the problem is that you have these expectations, right, or people tell you like what to expect.

Oh. Do this, just pump them up with a bunch of juice and have them go naked and have the little potty seat, do the songs, dance around if they go to the bathroom, and like, you’ll be fine, and they’ll get it, and then you realize over time as a parent, you’re like, okay, everything does not always work the way you want it to.

that people are saying it will go and for me I have to reframe that and say that doesn’t mean I’m a failure as a parent because it didn’t work out exactly as I thought it was going to go but more how can I learn my child and what’s going to be best for her how is she going to be motivated to learn and what’s her timeline what’s her process which may be different than someone else’s timelines though so that’s been.

Challenging conception. I think so much to where as parents in this bubble, it’s like being in a, this glass bubble and you feel like everyone is looking at you or are they judging me because I wasn’t able to potty train my child in a weekend. It’s a school wondering, like, what’s going on? You keep sending her in pull ups.

Is she trained yet? Is she not? They’re asking me, like, uh, how’s the potty training going? I’m like, uh.

Steve: And of course you have to wonder, surely we’re not the first parents who have potty trained their child for you to understand that, and nothing against the school, but when they keep asking, you have to wonder, like, what are these other parents doing?

Do they, does the weekend thing just work for them? Because I think it doesn’t, given the responses I’ve heard from other people, but other parents.

Carrie: And maybe it does when you just hit him at that right time and maybe we started too early. I don’t know.

Steve: I don’t know. But I know that we’ve tried to be patient and diligent and we just gotta keep with it.

But it’s hard. It is definitely hard. I know last night, Oddly enough, and I don’t think I told you this, she didn’t want to wear her diaper to bed. I said, Oh, you know, honey, that is daddy’s comfort zone right there. No, we’re not going to bed without a potty. No, no, can’t do that. But I appreciated the idea that tells me that she is slowly getting it.

She’s getting used to at least the idea of it. Maybe not fully understanding the science behind it, but the idea of it.

Carrie: Long term goals, child. Long term goals to go to bed in underwear for sure.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: One thing that’s certainly a challenge, you have different challenges earlier on in your relationship. Like when you’re first getting to know someone, and then you live together, there’s other challenges that come up that you have to kind of figure out and navigate through.

And then when you have a child, there’s this shared responsibility of the child trying to be on the same page and do the same things for them. Then also trying to figure out how do we have time for ourselves as a couple? What does that look like? Date night was super easy when we were first married and didn’t have a kid.

It’s like, oh, no problems. We’ll just go out, whatever. We want to kind of within reason and finances, but we didn’t have to worry about getting a babysitter or making sure our kid was in bed by a certain time. We didn’t have to have those challenges. And that’s hard.

Steve: Yeah, that is hard, especially when, not just for date night, but people will invite us places or church will have an event or whatever and, oh yeah, it starts at six or let’s meet at six, whatever.

Yeah, that’s not gonna work because we want to start the process of putting her to bed at like 630. That’s not a routine you want to break. There are a lot of routines that I’m willing to break for one night or whatever, but going to sleep is not one of them. That is a hard no, most of the time. And, uh, we miss a lot of things.

Carrie: There’s a challenge too, I think, with making friends with children who also have toddlers because a lot of times somebody in the family will be sick, you’ll be trying to get together with people and then it’s like, oh, well, so and so in our family is sick. And that can be a challenge, I think, to make connections.

We have a really great friend group and really great supports. A lot of people that don’t have children that are married. But. We don’t really have a whole lot of, that’s something that I’m kind of continually processing in my own mind. How can I get my mom tribe? They haven’t really showed up on the scene yet, so if you want, if you’re in the area and you want to join, I’m available.

That’s hard too.

Steve: We had children later in life. so most of the people, at least my age, I’m even older than you, they’re on grandchildren now. And I heard somebody recently that was actually a year younger than me talking about their seven year old grandchild. And I thought, oh my gosh, that’s, no, I don’t even have a seven year old.

I have two and a half year olds. We’re later, so it’s hard to find people in our same mix, which fortunately for us, it’s making friends with people doesn’t mean they have to be our age.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: That’s a blessing, but it’s difficult.

Carrie: It’s hard to make friends, though, as an adult. I hear this a lot from clients, not just you and I have certainly talked about it, but other people too.

It’s hard to find reciprocal relationships where you can kind of go back and forth and invite people and they invite you and those types of things. It’s a challenge.

Steve: It is.

Carrie: Well, when we were talking about date night, one of the things that we were challenged by that we’ve been going through this year is grace marriage.

So grace marriage emphasizes a few different things. For those of you who don’t know what grace marriage is, it’s a marriage enrichment program that meets four times a year at church. They have little videos that you watch and then you. break up into a small group, you may have some small group discussion about the specific topic, but then you have one on one time with your spouse, a lot of break offs kind of with your spouse where you can talk about specific topics in your relationship, which has been really interesting.

It’s different. We’ve never done anything like that before. What’s your overall impression been?

Steve: Well, I think that grace marriage is a wonderful, wonderful tool for any couple. A lot of people might think that that’s something that you go through once you have difficulty, but every relationship has its difficulties.

And if you’re the relationship that says, we have none, I suggest you get the information and go quickly because everybody has a problem. It just, every relationship has an issue. And so it’s good to build your foundation on as a couple. And grow from, and we’ve had times where we watched our little video segment, whatever.

And then we went off to the side and discussed some questions about what we just saw or heard. And there have been situations where, or questions that I didn’t realize that answer was going to be what Kerry said. I had no idea. I was like, Oh, I didn’t know that’s how you felt. Wow. Okay, that changes some things.

And for good, usually. It makes you more aware. You go into things thinking you know everything, but usually you don’t.

Carrie: Right, I think there definitely have been some surprising moments, even when they ask you, like, what do you appreciate about your spouse? And then you share that with each other, you make a list, like, here are some things that I see in you, some positive qualities in these different domains in your life.

And I was like, oh, wow. That was really nice that Steve said that about me.

Steve: And isn’t that the thing though, that it’s good to hear the good things. We always like, ugh, you never, you this, that, whatever. We complain about one another. That’s just how couples are. I mean, we don’t go around complaining about one another all day, I hope.

But it’s not as often that you hear the good things of what someone thinks about you. I think that’s a, I don’t know if misnomer is the right wording for that, but it’s assumed that the other person already understands what you feel.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: But even if they know what you feel, they need to hear it every now and then.

Yeah. That’s something I’ve definitely had to grow on and learn from.

Carrie: Yeah, it’s something that we’ve been to two of these so far, and it’s something that they essentially kind of started out with on both of them was talking about appreciation for your spouse. Because it is, it’s easy for us in our minds to get focused on the negative, not just in your relationship with your spouse, but other areas of your life.

Like, oh. Let me think about all the things I don’t like about this job instead of, oh, here are the really good things about this job, or here are the positive things that are happening in my work situation. And so if we have to really retrain our brains in that sense to focus more on things that are good and true and lovely.

Like the scripture tells us to do, I think that that’s crucial for our sense of contentment and joy in our life, really focusing on those positive things, but Gottman, who’s a marriage researcher, talks about, I think it’s like a seven to one ratio talking to your spouse, like, Seven compliments for every one criticism is a good ratio to have.

Steve: I gotta get back on the ball. I’m behind.

Carrie: No, you’re good. You’re good. That was one piece of grace marriage that we really got out of, but then another piece had to do with what we were talking about earlier, this sense of dating your spouse and how we put a lot of emphasis in early on in our relationship as we’re getting to know that person, to Go out and do fun things or spend time together, but then life gets busy in our marriage, jobs get busy, your parenting gets busy, then there’s church responsibilities that we have, we have a small group that we lead once a week, so that takes up some time to plan that, certainly, and all the other things that we have going on, and then to really make our relationship a priority, and that’s something that we’re kind of failing forward in, I would say, Sometimes we’re really good at the date stuff, and sometimes for us it looks like a date day while our daughter is in school.

If I can carve out some time on a Wednesday during the week, or if we can get somebody to watch her or go to drop in child care, things like that, we have like an evening out.

Steve: And wasn’t it in the past, and I may have mentioned this before, but the, that my doctor said, Doctor appointments are not a date, that doesn’t count, because we’re always together on those, almost always, and it’s often just the two of us, but what we have done, is you go to the doctor appointment, and then afterwards, we might go out for coffee, or for lunch, or something.

And I’ve enjoyed that. In a sense, it’s also a reward for getting past the doctor appointment, which if you have to go to the doctor often, as I have had, it’s a real treat to get to do something special, even if it is just going for coffee. So it’s nice.

Carrie: And I cannot remember the name of the restaurant, but there’s this really good taco place across from Vanderbilt.

Would we go to see you? You’re a neurologist. And so it’s like, yes, because usually you have to wait a while. You’re waiting a while around there and then you get to see the doctor and then it’s like, okay, let’s go get tacos afterwards. Yes,

Steve: absolutely. And I’m normally not as much, I like street tacos and I like authentic tacos.

Some people call those things tacos. They are not tacos. But that’s just my rant. But this place was wonderful. It had a good atmosphere and really good food. So I’ll leave it at that. But that was definitely, that’s a place I want to go back to.

Carrie: Yeah, for sure. One of the things that we’ve done over this past year through church, well, we’ve got a couple of things going on.

I’ve talked about this before, but we are part of a church plant that we are trying to plant a church from kind of the main church over where we’re going to and then put one in Smyrna. So, that’s kind of, we have different activities and outreaches for that. We don’t really have a name yet. We don’t have a pastor.

It’s a very bizarre type situation. We do have several small groups that are going and outreach events that are happening. But we are also reading through the Bible, which has been interesting part of the process this year. I know that you’ve probably read through the Bible before. What do you feel like has been different about this year as you’re reading it through?

Steve: Well, we’re doing it chronologically,

Carrie: Which is a big difference.

Steve: By going through the Old Testament, it can be very difficult to get through all the sections that are like begat and so and so’s name and this many years and this much measurement and those things. But then when you can have the order that it was put in, it becomes more relevant.

Because when you’re reading the Bible as we have it now, it doesn’t make as much sense to me. Now it makes more sense on some of those areas.

Carrie: They intersperse the prophets with chronicles or, you know, kings and chronicles, the parts that overlap, put those together and they kind of, this one did something interesting with the Psalms.

It kind of interspersed them throughout the different pieces of the Old Testament. where they felt like they were relevant. When I was reading through a different chronological Bible, they grouped the Psalms together almost by topics. Here are the Psalms about this for worship and here are the Psalms about this.

I think the thing that has stood out to me about it is a couple of things. One, There are just some weird parts of the Bible. There’s no other way to say it. There’s just, like, there was one time Like the talking donkey? Well, there’s the talking donkey, but I mean, there was a time where God told something like Jeremiah to throw his underwear in the river.

Yeah. And then Ezekiel hit some of the stuff that he did was just very strange. And

Steve: statues with all the faces, yeah, yes,

Carrie: yes, a lot of symbolism. And if you look at the whole theme of the scriptures, reading through chronologically, it’s like God has certain commands, God’s holy, and he’s like, Hey, I need you to follow these laws.

But because God’s all knowing, he already knew people were going to mess it up. It’s like, here’s your commands, of course they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. God said, okay, you’re getting shipped out of here, like, I’m going to have some people come in and conquer you, you’re going to be exiled, but I’m going to bring you back.

And so there’s this interesting parental balance. And I feel like we go through it as parents, right? It’s like, okay, strict versus gracious and loving. It’s like, you got to be strict at times and say, no, you’re not getting away with that. Get your little butt in time out. You know, you’re not acting right.

Like you don’t get to just haul off and hit me because I didn’t give you what you wanted. You have to get in time out. And then. There’s also these pieces of like, Hey, I love you. Come sit over here and let me talk with you or tell me about your day or what happened today. And I see that with God too. God saying, Hey, you’re in the wrong.

There were so many things going on. They’re like, you’re not treating the poor correctly. You’re not taking my ceremony seriously like that. He was speaking through the prophets, but then he said, okay, but I’m going to bring you back. And I love you. And I’m not letting you go. And I’m not ever giving up on you.

So, even when we mess, God has good plans for us. God wants to bring us back into relationship with him. That door is always open and anybody that’s hearing this, it feels like they’ve gone too far from God or they’re like, I just can’t get it together. God knows that and understands. He might be disciplining you through this process, but it’s before you’re good because he wants to bring you back into relationship with him in a healthy way.

Steve: And I’ve heard people say this, I’m just too far gone. There’s no such thing. You’re still living and breathing. You are not too far gone. I can think of an individual in my mind who was on their deathbed, taking, I don’t even know if they had seven breaths left in them, and they wanted Jesus right then and there.

They’re like, yeah, I knew him as a child. Let’s go back to that. And I thought, golly, they went their whole life practically from their twenties onto their deathbed. Just running, running from him, and then on their last few breaths, they realized in the reality of everything and their shame and their pride and whatever was holding them back before, he still loves me.

He hasn’t given up on me, even in your last seven breaths or whatever it is. So it’s never too late. He just wants to love us. Like you said, it’s the same way with parenting. A good parent, you always love your child, even in the midst of the kicking and the screaming and the chaos. And just like with God, you just want to spend good quality time with your child.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: When God wants out of us, spend some quality time with me. My goodness. Slow down for a minute. Stop being so selfish.

Carrie: And sometimes when we’re having a bad day, we just need love. Absolutely. Recently, with Faith, I’ve been telling her if she starts to get kind of whiny or fussy, I’m like, do you want me to hug the cranky out of you?

And sometimes I say that to her first thing in the morning because she wakes up a little cranky. So today I said, do you need me to hug the cranky out of you? And she’ll say, yes. And I’m like, okay, well, come here.

Steve: Yeah, I think she wakes up like I do, a little cranky, a little out of it, and she comes around.

And for the record, she’s 99 percent of the time, she’s sweet and fun loving. She’s at her best when other people are around though.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: So I used to joke and say, let’s just put a bunch of mannequins in the house or always have people over or something because that’s when she’s her best.

Carrie: That’s when she’s her best self.

Steve: I don’t think I want to potty train that way though.

Carrie: Uh, no, that’d be a little awkward. So give everybody your update on your SCA. So you have Spina Cerebellar Ataxia. And how has it been going this last year? Because that was kind of took up some of our first few episodes.

Steve: Well, my unbalanced is a little bit more balanced.

Don’t know if that makes sense, but I have a disease that part of it is, is that I’m unbalanced and nothing has really gotten worse for the most part. I’m still going through some of it. I still have the aches and the pains and the different little things. I’ll spare y’all the wah, but you take it day by day and you just deal with it.

Everybody has something, right? So, I haven’t really gotten anything major that’s new, which is great news. When I go to the neurologist next, I’m kind of interested to see if they see any changes, but my regular doctor, everything’s normal, good, with me in general, so that’s a good thing.

Carrie: As far as we know, your vision hasn’t changed over the last two years hasn’t changed.

Steve: There’s some minor things that I get, but it’s part of it. So yeah, having it not change any further, that’s a real blessing. If I lost complete sight today, I’d be okay with it. I mean, I could live with that. My prayer was answered in that I just wanted to see my daughter. That was it. And I’ve gotten to see so much of her, especially when she’s dancing around and being silly.

She’s got some dance moves, I’ll tell you. But anyways, it’s good to see that.

Carrie: Even in spite of all the challenges that we face and that you have, we’re living a blessed life right now and just are thankful for each day that you’re here and able to spend time with Faith and able to see her and able to be involved and do the things that you do.

So love and life in our new house and yes,

Steve: we’ve had a lot of changes this year haven’t we?

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: Goodnessvgracious.

Carrie: We have.

Steve: But all good. All good. I remember a couple years ago finding out my diagnosis and having faith and some of those things that went on. That was a tough year. Those changes were difficult.

These changes were things that do help us.

Carrie: Yeah. Things that we’ve been wanting. So now I have a bonus area upstairs where I can work and record the podcast, but for the most part, you don’t come up here. You did come up today, but for the most part, you don’t come upstairs.

Steve: This might be my fifth time upstairs, maybe.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: Fifth, I think fifth, but I do not come upstairs very often. That is not something I enjoy doing. That’s part of the reason we moved out of the other house was because of the stairs.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: But it’s nice for you. You can get away from me and not have to deal with me for a little while. Not that I’m that problematic, but it’s nice.

You can come up here and be by yourself and no issues.

Carrie: Well, thanks everyone for listening to our show today and telling you about our fourth year of marriage update. We are happy to be here and hopefully you got just what you needed out of this episode. That’s our prayer, but it’s a nice little, I think, almost journal entry for us once a year that we do.

Kind of update people on our relationship and on our year. Hopefully you can learn something from our stories. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person.

And leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith in OCD is a production of by the well Counseling 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.

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

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

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

Episode Highlight:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith in OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

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

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

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

To join, follow these instructions:

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

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Join the fun and good luck! 

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD!

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

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

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

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

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

For more support and information, visit carriebock.com. 

More episodes to Listen to:

139. Is There a Test for OCD?

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

142. How Do I Tell Someone I Have OCD?

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Episodes to Listen to:

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.


141. Is OCD Keeping You From Reading the Bible?

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore Related Episode:

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

140. Help! I Don’t Feel Close to God

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Episodes to Listen To:

2. Unanswered Prayers for Healing with Pastor Troy Powell

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

139. Is There a Test for OCD?

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

What to expect from the Y-BOCS assessment

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

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

You can learn more about my services here.

Related Resources:

YBOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale)

More Episodes to Listen To:

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

138. The Connection Between Trauma and OCD

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

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

Episode Highlights

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

Episode Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore Related Episode:

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

Transcript

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

We should be talking about this. We should be taking it into consideration in terms of treatment. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.

When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith.

I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. We are going to have our first podcast hangout via zoom. on September the 9th at 7 15 p. m central standard time. This is just an opportunity for me to meet you, the listeners, to hear what’s on your heart, maybe answer a few questions that you have in the time that we have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

137. This One Thing Will Make OCD Worse Every Time

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

Why Stress Amplifies OCD

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

5 Tips to Mitigate Stress and Manage OCD

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

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

Tune in for more:

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

Transcripts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Faith in OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.