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Tag: Managing Obsessions

240. How Do I Know If I’m Obsessing Right Now?

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

In this episode, Carrie helps you distinguish between everyday uncertainty and OCD by exploring obsessional doubts, compulsions, rumination, faith-related OCD, and the ways ICBT can help identify when OCD is turning uncertainty into a crisis.

Episode Highlights:

  • How to recognize when an everyday uncertainty may be turning into an OCD obsession
  • Why OCD often targets the people, beliefs, and values that matter most to you
  • How urgency, internet research, rumination, and reassurance-seeking can signal OCD
  • What ICBT teaches about the difference between everyday doubts and obsessional doubts
  • How Christians can respond to uncertainty without trying to force absolute certainty

Episode Summary:

How Can You Tell If You’re Experiencing Everyday Uncertainty or OCD?

This is one of the questions I hear most. Waiting on medical results, getting to know someone new, worrying about someone you love, these are all normal parts of life. You genuinely don’t know how they’ll turn out. OCD shows up when that not-knowing suddenly needs to be solved right now. I break down how to spot that moment.

Why Does OCD Go After the Things You Care About Most?

OCD rarely bothers with things you don’t care about. It goes straight for your health, your marriage, your kids, your faith. For Christians, this can be confusing, because a normal question about prayer or sin turns into an urgent spiritual crisis. I explain why OCD works this way, and what it doesn’t mean about you.

What’s the Real Difference Between an Everyday Doubt and an Obsessional One?

I use an idea from ICBT that changed how I explain this. Everyday doubts land eventually. The test comes back. You make a decision. You land somewhere on a hard question. Obsessional doubts don’t land. Your brain just keeps asking for one more search, one more check, one more round of reassurance.

How Does a Normal Problem Turn Into an OCD Crisis?

Not sure if your boss likes your work? Not sure where a relationship is headed? Both are normal. But OCD can take that uncertainty and build a whole imaginary story around it, jumping straight to the worst case with little evidence behind it. I walk through how that jump happens.

How Do You Live With Uncertainty as a Christian Without Feeding OCD?

Tolerating uncertainty starts with knowing what’s actually yours to carry and what isn’t. There’s a difference between responding to what’s in front of you and trying to control the future through checking or replaying it in your head. Sometimes faith means leaving a question open and trusting God with the next step, not the whole outcome.

If you want to recognize the subtle moment when normal uncertainty turns into an OCD rabbit hole, listen to the full episode.

Transcript

Today on the podcast, we are answering your questions about scrupulosity.

First, I wanna say thank you to everyone who submitted a question, either via email who get our weekly newsletters. I was asking people if they had questions for this series. So we had some email replies and then, of course, our survey that we did a while ago prior to episode 200. Some of you, I just kind of took the comments from those survey responses and utilized those as questions for this episode.

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

I’m Carrie Bach, Christ follower, wife, mom, and licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. I pray you are blessed by today’s episode.

For some of these, you wanted to remain anonymous, and we’re respecting that, and for others, you said that we could use your first name in respect to the question. So if you hear a name on the podcast, it’s because that person gave us permission.

Just so you know, our first question is from Sabrina.

Sabrina asks, does anyone else struggle with critical thoughts, especially towards God or his word?

Now, this can be a common intrusive thought, right? You may have a thought, something to the effect of, how do you know the Bible is real? How do you know God’s word is really true?

Some people have other intense, intrusive thoughts that have to do with blasphemy, and of course, these thoughts can be very distressing for someone with scrupulosity because your faith is important to you and you don’t wanna have these particular thoughts about God.

So I would say understand that God knows your brain even better than you do, and the quicker that you’re able to identify these as intrusive thoughts, the easier it’s gonna be to be able to know that you don’t have to respond to them. That it’s not your true inner desire or value to disrespect God, his word, or anything else as a part of your faith system.

One of our podcast listeners, Steve, ask about scripture verses and how different groups or denominations have different interpretations. There may be one that’s stricter than your particular belief, and so how do we deal with these interpretations of scripture?

He said, it doesn’t seem like it’s a hundred percent imaginary because there are people that believe this way in the here and now, even people that don’t have OCD, so of course someone with OCD may think, okay, well now I need to live according to this stricter interpretation of scripture.

What we wanna do is we’re not just automatically looking at sense data with ICBT. I think that’s a misnomer maybe for a lot of people that listen to this podcast even and hear me talk about it. It’s not just about sense data. We also have to look at the obsessional reasoning process.

And so when we look at the obsessional reasoning process, what we’re saying is that we’re distrusting what’s actually in the sensory information in the here and now, which is opening us up to the hypothetical imaginary what ifs, and then applying some logic to those what ifs.

Now we wanna get down to what’s the actual primary obsessional doubt that’s going on, and I would say the primary obsessional doubt is not, What if I’m not interpreting the scripture correctly? At first glance, that may be what you think that doubt is. However, when you look at it a little bit closely and go a layer deep and a layer deep and a layer deep, so what if I misinterpret this scripture and then I say, okay, that means I’m getting something in my relationship with God wrong.

If I’m getting something in my relationship wrong, then the next layer deep would say, well, I don’t have a good relationship with God. You could even start to doubt if you had a relationship with God.

You wanna really get down to that primary obsessional doubt. Is it I’m offending God in some way? Is it I’m going to be disconnected from him in some way? Is it, I’m going to, maybe if you don’t fear losing your salvation, but you fear something else, like being far from God or not following God’s commands for your life, and that’s what you’re really trying to look at.

And then we would say, well, what evidence do we have for that? That you don’t care about God and his commands? We probably don’t have evidence for that as a generality.

If you are a person who is seeking to walk with Christ, we’re not trying to be perfect, but we’re saying, Hey, I am engaging in these spiritual practices to know Christ and to understand him better, like I’m listening to the Holy Spirit. I’m allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me in interpreting the word of God.

To me, that’s part of the Spirit’s job as you’re reading the Bible, to reveal those things to you that you need to pay attention to and understand that people’s belief systems change over time, and sometimes that’s due to living life and personal experience.

I’ve shared about a couple of my things before, but honestly, I was raised that Catholics were not true Christians. Somewhere along the lines, I picked that up. I don’t know if that was parents or other teachers, but I have met some Catholics that are fully devoted to following Jesus, and I believe that they have a relationship with the Lord.

Ultimately, it’s not for me to judge who’s in God’s kingdom or not. That’s up to him.

But I’m just giving you an example of something that I was taught, like, Hey, this entire group of people, they don’t know what they’re talking about and they aren’t saved, versus examining that belief and saying, you know what? These people may practice differently than I do, but I also see that they love Jesus and are trying to follow him.

We had a question about Romans 14:23, but whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats. This is in terms of the food sacrifice to idols, because the eating is not from faith, for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

We have to be careful about getting stuck on any one particular scripture passage for a multitude of reasons. We wanna look first at: What is the context of that scripture passage? Who is being spoken to in it? How does that passage or verse apply to the entire chapter? How does it apply to the book? How does it apply to other verses that are similar to it? What are some parallel passages that may speak to some of the same things?

Ultimately, OCD can misapply scripture verses, and you’ll kind of going back to that obsessional reasoning process. Where you’re distrusting, the sense is you are opening up to the imagination and then there’s this logic that’s misapplied, and sometimes scripture verses actually get involved in that misapplied logic, either misunderstanding scripture verses, but not just that. Really just taking them out of context to something that they don’t apply to in the here and now.

Actually, if you look at this, this goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Did God really say this?

And you also look at the temptation of Jesus where the devil is using scripture against him saying, Hey, throw yourself down off this building because basically the angels are gonna come and rescue you. And it’s essentially a misapplying, the Psalm to Jesus in that moment.

We know that in essence is something that the enemy does is lie to us about scripture and what it really says. We have to be cautious.

Kind of going back to wanting to get at that primary obsessional doubt is that if OCD has you hung up on one particular scripture or a couple particular scriptures that you need to go back to, what are we actually doubting here and how is that contributing to the story?

How is this logic that I’m believing from the scripture potentially being misapplied to my actual here and now present situation of what’s going on as I’m making decisions, as I’m discerning God’s will, as I am seeking to live out my Christian faith?

We also want to just remember when it comes down to commandments, there are two main commandments and they’re pretty simple. Love God, love people, love your neighbor as yourself, and we can be so hung up on how to do those things that we actually miss the point entirely, that we actually end up not loving God very well, or not loving people very well because we’re so paralyzed on how to actually do it.

That’s not what God wants for you. That’s not God’s heart. He wants you to be able to freely love him and love others to the best of your ability.

In this particular scripture passage, intention is important. What is your intention when you encounter other believers?

A lot of times in modern day, this gets applied to alcohol, although I don’t think that because we don’t necessarily have meat sacrifice to idols, at least not in the US. That may happen in other parts of the world. I don’t know. I know that in Asian countries sometimes they leave food out for spirits and things of that nature.

However, in my particular context, what does it mean to try not to cause another believer to stumble? It might get applied to alcohol. It might get applied maybe to movies or TV shows that you might consume, whereas you might be okay with that, and that may not affect your spiritual life negatively, but somebody else may watch something, listen to something, and it affects them negatively.

God knows where each person is at, and if I know personally that I don’t drink, but if I did drink, I brought alcohol to someone’s house and didn’t know what their stance was on alcohol. As a believer, maybe that’s probably not the best idea. I might wanna ask or be respectful ahead of time, like, Hey, do you have any qualms about this? Are you okay with it or not?

I think that’s just a matter of respecting other people’s beliefs and preferences and practices.

If you know somebody that is fasting chocolate for Lynch, you’re not gonna bring chocolate over to them. I mean, these are kind of some common sense type of examples of just how we respect other people and where they’re at spiritually and not desiring them to stumble.

I think there are so many times that we overcomplicate things. Simple a lot of times is better.

Someone gave us something about giving up on God. That’s a note that I have from my assistant. I’m not sure exactly what that means. I don’t know if they mean they feel like giving up on their faith because they have scrupulosity and they’re really struggling with it.

I find that that doesn’t seem to be helpful or congruent with most people who struggle with Scrupulosity. Sometimes they feel like, well, if I just give up and just don’t believe anymore, then that’s going to resolve this, when really that’s not the case.

And unfortunately, they may have even been told by some therapists, well, you’re taking your faith way too seriously and you may need to just take a step back and not have those particular high values. Of course, that’s, uh, not what I would consider to be an ethical stance. However, because it’s your values that you’re bringing to therapy.

However, I will say that if you just say, okay, well, I’m not going to believe or I’m not going to follow God, then what I’m gonna do is that that’ll resolve things that OCD is just gonna attach itself to something else. Like if you were able to do that. So it’s not actually going to fix the issue.

Plus, it’s not very easy for us to just automatically change our value system. If we’ve had it for a while, eh, that’s not really true. We can change our value system.

So if I didn’t answer your question on giving up on God, I might need a little bit more detail there.

One of our listeners, Leslie, said, I bet lots of other Christians with OCD feel like Pharisees. We get so hung up sometimes on a little rule instead of focusing on loving God and others like ourselves.

And I would agree with that. I think that that’s completely true and really what we were just talking about. So thank you for confirming that, Leslie.

We had a comment, which I really appreciated, from someone who heard our podcast on hearing from God.

Back on episode 208, we had a podcast called, Is It OCD Voice, or God’s Voice, Hearing From God for Healing with Heather O’Brien, and we got some feedback on that episode.

Someone had said, seemed like some of the things that we talked about seemed like good, spiritual things to be aware of, but other things like dreams, a word from another believer praying for open and closed doors or signs seem to be things that they have encouraged their loved one with scrupulosity to stay away from. Some kinds of things that may be heard in church about God leading people with a particular feeling. That can be prevalent is not very helpful for those with scrupulosity.

So what I wanna say to that, and first of all, apologies for any confusion that may have been occurred by that episode, and I’d love to hear other people’s feedback on that because it’s been a very popular episode that many people have listened to.

So definitely would love further feedback if others have it regarding whether some of those things were helpful or harmful in the scrupulosity discussion.

These are things that I plan to kind of explore further in writings and teachings in the future, because I really want people to be able to discern God’s voice and to be able to discern leadings from the Holy Spirit versus is this OCD trying to just train, wreck, everything that’s going on.

And what I would say is that God speaks to people through a variety of different ways. We can see that in scripture where God did speak to people through dreams in scripture.

At times, I don’t think that God necessarily speaks to me through dreams. I haven’t had that as an experience. God will wake me up with a specific thought sometimes on my mind. Of course, sometimes that’s just Carrie stressed out, so I have to discern those things. I have to take them to God in prayer.

I think that confirmation sometimes can be helpful for us, that there may be things that we’re praying about that someone else says, Hey, and they’ll just affirm something that we’ve already been praying about or thinking about. That can happen quite frequently and be very helpful just in terms of is this God or is this not?

And we also see, I believe in scripture, where Paul was prevented from going to Macedonia. That’s in Acts 16. God has the ability to speak to us in a wide variety of ways, and so I really don’t want to limit God.

I also have to say that what we really wanna look at is, is there a lens of fear here? Is there a lens of, I’ve missed something? Is there a lens of this is not resolving? There is no peace as I’m praying through this and processing it.

Because with OCD, it’s a loop. It goes around in a circle, so it’s something that you’re wrestling with over and over and over without any kind of peace or resolution to it.

Oftentimes, God is speaking to us in a way that is not urgent, like you have to do this exact thing right now. It’s something that he has been teaching us and showing us over time. It’s something that repeatedly comes up for us.

It’s not cloaked in an enormous amount of fear because God is loving and kind to us and gracious.

And I know for me, there are times where I totally miss it. I’m just gonna be honest with you guys. I’m like, oh, like that’s what God has been trying to show me. That’s what he’s been trying to tell me, and I just didn’t get it. And God is gracious to speak it to you again.

So just know that. If you are following him and seeking him and praying, sitting in silence, reading the word of God, you are not going to have to worry about missing what it is that he has for you, missing what he’s trying to speak to you.

If there is an intense amount of, it’s all my fault. If I make the wrong decision, God’s gonna be mad at me. I’m incredibly afraid there’s gonna be eternal consequences, even for something that’s not an eternal consequence situation.

Those are just some really good clues for you that that’s OCD. That’s just a different conversation.

And if you’ve been living with OCD for so long, you’re so used to that voice. You’re used to the condemning voice, you’re used to the fear. You’re used to maybe feeling like that voice was directing you or protecting you in some way or keeping you safe.

We want to do is to open you up to the voice of the Holy Spirit, which is calmer, quieter, peaceful, gentle, loving.

And it may be a situation where you are walking out in faith and don’t feel like God is talking to you all the time.

I think we hear people in church say, God is always speaking and we’re just not listening, and I don’t believe that.

Here’s why. I don’t believe that I can sit with people that I really love, that know me really well, and we can have a connection and we don’t have to say anything. We don’t have to constantly be talking to each other. Just enjoy spending time in each other’s presence.

Now, if a loved one has something to say to me and I’m there, and I’m present, and I’m available, then they’re gonna be able to speak to me about it.

And I believe the Lord is the same way. We have to get quiet sometimes so that we can listen and open ourselves up.

I think in a busy society, that’s the hardest part. Just actually taking the time to slow down long enough to listen and to be available and to be reading God’s word because those are the words of God, so that we can know them and receive them and plant them, get them rooted down deep into our soul and spirit so that they come out at the times that they need to, and God can bring those remembrances to mind for us.

How do I teach my children about the Lord when it causes so much fear for me?

I dunno. What about children’s songs? I’ve been thinking about this myself for my daughter. How can I start to teach her some of these truths?

And we’ve started listening to kids Christian worship music on the way to school, and she likes it because it’s kids singing and it’s fun and upbeat while it’s still teaching her spiritual truths.

We talk about what is she learning with the other kids in Sunday school? She used to go to a Christian program, but now she’s in a secular program, so we’re not getting that from there.

But we have kids’ Bibles and devotional books and things of that nature. Sometimes that’s a little bit easier to access the children’s materials if you have scrupulosity than the full-blown adult materials.

And of course, we want to try to simplify things for children anyway.

I think just taking it one step at a time and leaning on other people and other supports in your life.

This came from someone in the one of our survey respondents, but I, I appreciate that question. I think it’s important.

Another one from the survey, how can you feel good about yourself and still feel Christian?

Yeah, this is one that gets very confusing for a lot of people. They think it’s prideful to feel good about myself.

However, being prideful is like if I brag on my accomplishments and I say, oh, they’re my achievements and I’ve done this, and look at what I’ve done and it’s all about me, like that would be a place of pride.

So I could tell you a prideful story about this podcast would be totally laughable. I’m laughing just thinking about it because what I’m about to tell you so not true is ridiculous.

Here’s my prideful podcast story.

I have over 200 episodes and I have worked so hard on this podcast and I have done a lot of training on OCD and I’ve read all the ICBT books and I have really done the hard work to learn how to share this information with you, and I’ve had to learn about podcasting and how to grow a podcast and it’s all been about Carrie and her effort, and that is why we are here today.

Not a true story at all.

Y’all do not even know how many times I have cried and prayed about this thing and just y’all just.

The more true story would be God broke my heart and caused me to want to share this message of hope for the world. That’s the only reason that I’m here.

Whether it has a certain number of downloads or followers or subscribers, whatever, doesn’t really matter to me. Because it’s about whatever God wants to do for it, and I just really need to be here and be obedient and do the best that I can with what God has stewarded me with.

But really, there would be no Christian Faith in OCD. Uh, prior to that, it was Hope for Anxiety and OCD. There never would’ve been any of that had it not been for God.

Had he not put that on my heart, had he not led me to the right people that could help me and support me along this journey, had I not had, I wanna say fan club.

And what I mean by fan club, I mean is like my husband, very supportive of this podcast. My mother, when she was alive, she was like my number one cheerleader of the podcast.

Listen, she was like passing out podcast cards like crazy. Every time she met somebody, she’s like, my daughter is a podcast. She’s like an ambassador for the show. Really, truly.

So I’ve been blessed to have a lot of support along the way when I had like no episodes. I mean, friends got on here and let me interview them. Very blessed. Very thankful.

You look at those two stories are very different.

I feel good about the second story because I feel like all I did was show up and do my best to do what God asked me to do.

It’s not really because of anything that I have done, but only what God has been able to do in and through me, and people are like. Will contact me and be like, oh, thank you for doing this. This is so great. And I’ve just been so encouraged and I’m like, okay, praise God. Like, that’s awesome.

That’s the only reason we’re I’m able to be here. And just so I’m thankful for that. It’s, it’s not about me.

So I think it’s how you interpret your circumstances in terms of yourself, like feeling good about yourself and what you’re doing in the world, but it’s more than that.

Feeling good about yourself to me is recognizing my value and worth because of Christ, not because of me as a person.

The only reason that I have value is because I’m created in the image of God, because he loved me first, because I was still a sinner. Christ died for me. Like that’s the reason that I have value and worth is because I have been forgiven and because God loved me and sent his son to die for me.

That’s feeling how I can feel good about myself and still be a Christian.

There you have it.

This one came from the survey and it’s about prayer.

We have had episodes in the past about prayer, but they were talking about it should be simple, but I find it so hard. And are there different ways that you can pray? Does it need to be certain way? How do you know if you’re just praying or you’re thinking something in your head?

I would say there are many different ways to pray.

You know, we’ve had an episode in the past on breath prayers. That was back on episode 75 with Jennifer Tucker.

And essentially what a breather is, is it’s where you take, uh, pieces of scripture and when you inhale, you say part of that scripture in your head.

So it could be like Psalm 46. The Lord is my refuge and strength. You would inhale and then exhale and ever present help in times of trouble.

There’s a Psalm 23. You could inhale the Lord is my shepherd, and then as you exhale, I shall not want, or I have what I need. Kind of depending on what translation you are looking at there.

That’s just one example of how to pray.

When we did prayer and fasting at our church earlier this year, our pastor put together a booklet of different ways to pray.

One of them is praying through the Lord’s Prayer, and not just praying through exactly as it’s written in scripture, but using that as a starting point.

So praising God, recognizing his name and his holiness. Recognizing him as your father, praying about God’s kingdom, advancing God’s will, being done, presenting your requests and your needs before God, submitting your will over to him, et cetera.

So that’s one way to pray.

There are, there’s praying scripture. You can pick specific scriptures and pray through them, putting your name in there. Many different ways to pray.

I know that some traditions have specific like liturgical prayers that they pray, maybe specific times or specific seasons.

There’s many different ways to pray, or you don’t have to have a very rigid, specific structure.

Sometimes your prayer can just be, I need help right now, or I feel overwhelmed, or, God, I need you.

That is a prayer in itself. God, I need you today, or I need you right now.

I think that we don’t need to overthink it or over structure it, or it’s just talking to God and finding a way to connect with him.

Another thing this individual said, which I feel like is a really good point to talk about, is, is that I don’t feel like I can feel my feelings. Because I’ve prayed about it. If it’s surrendered over to God, I’m supposed to be at peace when I’m done praying.

And the reality is that’s the ideal, but it’s not always what we experience.

Sometimes we pray about something and our feelings have not fully caught up, and that’s okay. Sometimes we still may feel distressed about something because we’re still in uncertainty. The situation hasn’t been resolved at this point, and we have to sit with that and trust.

Trust can be really hard. It can be hard to trust God, especially if you’ve been hurt by a lot of people in your past, or even spiritual leaders.

Maybe you feel like God didn’t handle it the way that you wanted him to with the situation in the past. So you feel like, well, God, you allowed this negative thing into my life. So it’s hard to trust you with this piece right here.

We can pray that our feelings align with our faith, and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

And so we still have to find ways to process our feelings, whether that’s sadness, grief, anger, frustration, guilt, shame, like all of those things, we have to learn how to cope with them in a healthy way.

Praying doesn’t mean that I don’t need any coping skills or that prayer should be like my only way of coping with my emotions.

I think it’s a great way, don’t get me wrong, being able to pour your heart out to the Lord and bring things to him and wrestle through issues that you might be facing. That’s really great for your mind, your body, and your emotions.

But sometimes you may still be in distress, and you know what? You may need to go for a walk or you may need to take some deep breaths, or you may need to call a friend, or you may need to enlist some other healthy, godly coping skills as well.

We had some questions about receiving support for OCD from a spouse or from other people that you might be in ministry with working with.

Now, back on episode 142, we did have, How Do I Tell Someone I Have OCD? That episode may be particularly helpful for some of you if that’s something you’re wrestling with.

Now, I do want to have like a marriage and family, more relationship type expert on to talk with us about involving spouses in treatment processes and what that would look like.

So that will be coming in the future when I find the right person to connect with and we’re able to record that. I think that that would be a very helpful episode for the audience, ’cause I know that that’s something that comes up a lot.

We have other things that I’m still trying to curate guests for.

We are gonna do an interview at some point on OCD and autism overlap, hopefully one more with family situations and marriages this summer peripherally. If it all comes together, we’re going to have another personal stories, theories of people who have struggled with OCD.

I’d love to have an episode on Christian neuroplasticity, being a parent with OCD. I think there are so many great topic suggestions, and some of these I would really feel more comfortable addressing with guests that know more about it, certain aspects than I do, especially since I don’t work with children with OCD.

That hasn’t been my experience and haven’t really done a whole lot of family therapy or couples counseling in that realm.

We had someone reach out recently who had experienced trauma. They had been in remission from OCD symptoms and then experienced a trauma, which seemed to open up and exacerbate. I don’t know if it was a new theme or a prior theme that had come back up from their past.

And so, know that intersection of trauma and OCD, it’s something that I feel very passionate about in dealing with some of those, whether it’s childhood traumas or adult traumas, things that seem to be really stuck.

I’ve just found in my experience, that can exacerbate OCD symptoms or cause this high level of hypervigilance in the body.

We also know that about 25% of people with an OCD diagnosis also qualify for A-P-T-S-D diagnosis, and many other people that don’t necessarily qualify for a full-blown PTSD diagnosis have been impacted by some type of difficult life experience that has ingrained and affected how they view themselves or how they view God or the world around them in terms of safety.

So if you feel like the trauma piece is really loud, I would say don’t be afraid to talk to a trauma therapist that knows about OCD.

Even if they would say, I really focus more on trauma than I focus on OCD, how much of that are they able to understand or are they able to work with an OCD specialist to help you kind of get pair and get the treatment that you need?

You know, that may look different for different people.

It may mean that you go to a trauma therapist for a little while and then you go to an OCD specialist for a little while. It may be that you go to the OCD specialist and then go to the trauma therapist.

Just kind of depending on how your symptoms are, what feels the loudest right now? What feels the most urgent that you need to attend to?

And usually professionals can help you tease out those pieces if they aren’t able to deal with both.

In an ideal world, you would have somebody have a therapist that had an understanding of trauma and an understanding of OCD to be able to craft a good, solid treatment plan for you moving forward.

We had a question about obsessional concerns regarding Mark of the bees type situations.

I’m not an expert on end-times theology by any means, but my understanding is that that’s not something we can just do accidentally, but that this is something that during the time of tribulation that people are going to voluntarily get in order to be able to buy and sell goods, and that’s gonna be a decision that has to be made.

I don’t know that believers are gonna be able to get that. I don’t know how all of that works, but I do know that it is not something that we have to be concerned about in the here and now according to how I am reading scripture.

Other people may look at that differently or examine times of tribulations. Some people believe we’re in it right now. Other people believe it hasn’t started yet. We haven’t gone through it, and that is of course up for debate and interpretation.

What we do know is if you’re so wrapped up in that, any type of these type of theological issues, if you’re super wrapped up or stuck on it and it’s getting in the way of you living your life, it would make sense. That’s OCD, distracting you from the things that are most important to you, that you really value, whether that’s getting up, going to work, connecting with your family and friends and ministry partners, and that’s what we want to be able to do to help you function in those realms so that you can keep moving forward in your walk with Christ.

Thank you so much for listening today, and I hope that this Q&A episode was helpful for you.

If it was, maybe we’ll do one every once in a while. We’ll kind of keep it around.

I am hopeful that maybe we’ll be able to do a relationship series at some point or another. And I would love to kind of have some different guests and talk about OCD in the context of various relationships.

As always, we love suggestions and questions, even if it takes us a little while to be able to get people on the podcast who can speak to some of those issues.

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

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

161. What if I Go Crazy? Health Obsessions

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

Welcome back to the Themes of OCD series! Today, Carrie is diving into health-related OCD, covering both physical and mental health obsessions. She explores how OCD latches onto body sensations and turns them into sources of anxiety.

Episode Highlights:

  • How OCD amplifies normal body sensations into obsessive fears.
  • The role of reassurance-seeking, especially through Google and online forums.
  • Why searching for health-related information can fuel the OCD cycle.
  • Practical strategies to break free from compulsions and find peace.
  • The importance of mindfulness and reframing intrusive thoughts.

Episode Summary:

Welcome back to Christian Faith and OCD! Today, we’re diving into health-related OCD—both physical and mental health obsessions.

Did you know some people develop an intense fear of schizophrenia or postpartum psychosis? Others fixate on illnesses like cancer, autoimmune diseases, or even long COVID. 

You might find yourself hyper-focused on every body sensation—wondering if that headache means a brain tumor, or if a moment of sadness signals clinical depression. Maybe you’ve even fallen down the Google rabbit hole, searching for early signs of serious illnesses or scouring forums for reassurance. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

OCD often tricks us into thinking that seeking reassurance (especially online) is helpful, but in reality, it reinforces the cycle of fear and compulsions. That’s why one of the most powerful steps you can take is to gradually step away from Google searches and constant symptom-checking.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through practical strategies to break free from the health anxiety spiral—learning how to observe sensations without assigning catastrophic meaning to them. We’ll also explore how mindfulness can help you sit with uncertainty, rather than feeling the need to “figure it all out” immediately.

If you’re struggling with OCD and health fears, know that healing is possible. Let’s talk about how to move forward in faith, rather than fear.

Explore Related Episode:

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

Transcript

Welcome back to our Themes of OCD series. Today we are covering all things health related, physical health, but also mental health obsessions.

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

I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. You may not know that some people have obsessions about developing schizophrenia. or some type of psychosis. And for whatever reason, this seems to be common in the prenatal postpartum period.

There are a lot of women nowadays that are afraid of developing postpartum psychosis. They’ve heard things on the news or read stories on the internet. Let’s talk about the variety of health obsessions that you may be struggling with. You might have a concern about having some type of long term illness such as cancer, such as an autoimmune illness, an autoimmune disorder.

You may have concerns about long COVID. What we find is that these obsessions usually capitalize a lot on body sensations. You will have some type of body sensation and then OCD comes in and tries to make some immediate meaning out of that body sensation. I’m having a headache. I’ve had a headache yesterday.

What does that mean? Could I have a brain tumor? And that’s a tough one, right? Because you can have a headache for about a hundred different reasons. You might have heart palpitations and think that you’re having a heart attack. What this looks like on the mental health side is that you may have a down day or maybe going through an experience that genuinely makes you sad.

OCD rushes in and says, Are you depressed? Do you think you might have to go to the mental hospital? Are you developing bipolar disorder right now? You were just up yesterday and now you’re down. The OCD has a tendency to take these normal, everyday experiences such as having a headache, feeling heart palpitations, Having a down or sad day and then exploiting it and expanding it into making meaning about something that there’s no actual sense data evidence for.

OCD may cause you to think that you’re actually hearing sounds, or maybe I think I see something out of the corner of my eye, and then I’m making some type of meaning. Did I just hallucinate right now? With the compulsions for this theme, there’s a lot of internal checking that people do. People will check on their feelings internally.

They may check on their body sensations internally. A lot of reassurance seeking from friends, family, but especially reassurance seeking from the internet. There are so many forums out there like Reddit that people will look up their symptoms on, googling everything to do with the first signs of schizophrenia, or how do you know you’re going crazy, or postpartum psychosis, what is it like to live with schizophrenia, how bad does it get?

I mean, you can just imagine the amount of information that we have now at our fingertips. That people did not have 50 years ago. If you struggle with this, there’s two things that I’m going to encourage you to do. The big one is get off Google, if you can. Get off searching for things related to your health or your mental health.

Clients will argue with me sometimes that it helps them a little bit. But then other times they read things that cause them to be more distressed. It doesn’t matter if you read something and it causes you relief or you read something and it causes you distress. Either way, you’re perpetuating that obsessive compulsive cycle.

Because every time you do the compulsion, you reinforce the fact that you need to pay attention to that obsession. This is really key to understand when it comes to reassurance seeking. Because I think people think that when they get that temporary relief, that’s a positive. It’s actually not. It’s a negative.

We’re just strengthening the whole process all over again. So we want to do our best to remove yourself from Google and Reddit and those types of websites. Now, if you can’t right away, that’s okay. Can you set a timer for two minutes and tell yourself, I’m going to wait two minutes before I get on Google?

Or can you set a timer for five minutes and say, I’m going to not get on here until it’s five minutes has gone up. Now, sometimes you may find that the urge passes in that five minutes. It may not, but if it does, let’s take the victories where we can get them when it comes to OCD. Okay. The other thing I really stress to my clients is not all sensations are symptoms.

Let’s repeat that again. Not all sensations are symptoms. Bodies are incredibly noisy. They don’t always act according to plan. They do strange things. And here’s the other thing you have to understand, that your body and your brain are in constant communication through your nervous system. This is happening super fast.

My grandmother had this book I remember a long time ago that said, Your body believes everything you tell it, and the premise behind the book was basically like, you shouldn’t say things like, my arm is killing me, or I feel like I got hit by a truck. Your brain hears and your body responds accordingly.

So here’s a test. I want you to bring up a memory, could be recent, it could be a little bit farther back, but a time where you knew that you genuinely felt happy or joyful. Could have been a graduation, a wedding, a birth of a child. See if you can picture that really vividly in your mind. And get really in tune with how you felt emotionally there.

And as you start to do that, even for a moment, you’re gonna notice that your body has a response. Hopefully bringing up positive sensations for you. Or you may feel areas of your body just go more limp or relax a little bit. It depends on your comfort with relaxation and whether or not your body cooperates with that process. However, the key thing to notice is that the reverse is also true. So if we get really fixated on a symptom and we start to notice it really deeply and really fully, That this can cause that symptom to increase all the more or to be louder. So if we’re focused on that headache, saying, Oh, I have this headache.

It’s awful. And now we add some anxiety on top of that. Well, what if there’s a deeper issue? What if I’m going to have a brain aneurysm? What if I’m going to have to go to the hospital for this later? What if it’s going to be the worst migraine of my life? Some of you have dealt with some of those. And that you can get really, really worked up in what we call the secondary suffering piece.

As you get really worked up in your mind about that sensation, that sensation becomes worse because now we’ve dumped stress on top of it. Being mindful is super, super healthy, I think for all of OCD, but especially if you’re dealing with health concerns. Being able to be like a third party noticer of what’s happening without feeling like you have to get sucked into an obsessional story surrounding this body sensation.

So what does that look like? It means practicing. Just noticing the flat facts of the situation. I have a headache. It doesn’t feel good. I don’t need to make any meaning out of it right now. Now, obviously, if I have the worst headache, that I’ve ever had in my life, and it also comes with other symptoms. So usually, that’s why we say not all sensations are symptoms.

Typically, if you’re having some type of medical emergency, you’re going to have other symptoms like a stiff neck, fever, you might have tingling or numbness in parts of your body. There could be all kinds of different things that could happen as our body’s way of letting us know that we need further attention and evaluation. And that’s where we can enlist your medical professionals that you see, not in a way of reassurance seeking, but in a way to help you, okay, this is something I struggle with, I struggle with having these headaches on a regular basis, for example. How do I know if I have a headache that needs further attention or evaluation?

Maybe your doctor says if you’re having this many, maybe they say if it’s at this level of pain, maybe they say if it comes with some of these other symptoms. And that’s a really great litmus test for yourself to know is this a health OCD concern or is this a medical emergency because we don’t want to flip all the way to the other side and say, well, I’m just ignoring all that because it’s just probably my OCD.

We want to find this middle ground, which I know is really challenging because it’s easier to be in all that black and white thinking. And you think about when you do go to your doctor’s office with a symptom, what are they going to know? They’re going to want to know things like how bad it is. What’s your pain level on the 0 to 10 scale?

They’re going to want to know, when did this start? Was there some kind of origin to it? How long has it been going on? These are all types of things that you can notice for yourself and maybe jot down a note or two, not in a compulsive way, not in a I’m searching for these symptoms, but just like, Oh, that came up again.

Let me jot it down day and time, maybe. You can look at concerns about your mental health in a similar light, hopefully, if you’re dealing with some of these obsessions that you’re able to talk with a therapist about them, where we can look at normalizing emotional experiences that you might be having.

You may have been through a major grief and loss incident and you’re afraid of becoming super depressed or non functional. Maybe you’ve had a specific trauma and you just feel like you’re walking through a fog or you don’t really feel fully connected to yourself. Those are things that can be worked on in therapy to get you to a better place.

In the cases with health concerns, either physical health or mental health, you might have concerns about being disconnected from your loved ones or not being able to care for them, such as in the space of being a new mom. This is that feared self piece that we talk about in ICBT, and we want to look at what, quote, evidence OCD is using to reinforce the need for these types of compulsions. All OCD themes can be highly distressing, and I want you to know that the high level of anxiety that comes with OCD is not indicative of whether or not your obsessions are going to come true. OCD draws you in with a story and gets all of these internal fears churned up inside of you is a way to say, Hey, pay attention to this.

It’s important. I’m not going to let you let it go. You’ve got to somehow find resolution and no amount of research after research, no amount of articles is ever going to lead you to resolving that obsessional doubt. And that’s how we know. that this is OCD. We all have periods of everyday doubt with our health where maybe they say, Hey, I’m not really sure, but something’s come up abnormal on a scan or in your blood work.

We need to do a little bit more testing or a little bit more digging. They may look at doing a biopsy or a follow up scan. And during the time that you’re waiting on those things, you’re naturally going to have anxiety. But those everyday doubts get resolved when we find out the test results or find out the treatment process and plan.

What OCD does is it comes in and may even doubt results that you have received from the doctor. Maybe somebody has told you you don’t have cancer. And you’re doubting, well, did the right specimen get to the right person at the lab? Did they miss something? Was somehow the report done wrong? What if I still do have cancer?

You’re not trusting the sense data at that point. If this is a theme that you’re struggling with, that you are kept up at night wondering if you are going to die, or If you’re going to have to go to the mental hospital, I really encourage you to reach out for help and support. I am in Tennessee and you can reach me online at carriebock.com or find a therapist in your area that can help you. Know that wherever your health journey has taken you, I certainly have a husband who is experiencing a medical disability right now. So I say firsthand that God loves you, that he has a great plan for your life, and is completely in control. You can trust him with your future.

To receive weekly encouragement, find out about our monthly Meet the Podcast host Zoom meetings, and receive information on exclusive sales, become an email insider today. All you have to do is go to kiribach. com and scroll towards the bottom of the page. You’ll find a spot to put in your email and receive a free download in your inbox from us.

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore Related Episode:

124. What to do When Compulsions Become Habits and Routines

Transcript

Episode 150. Have you ever wondered why you feel stuck? You feel like you can’t get ahead in your OCD recovery and you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, what is the problem? So I’m going to give you five reasons why today.

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

With practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have an amazing Thanksgiving, and I’ll be back the first week in December to talk about three ways to be mindful this Christmas season. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

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