Tag: OCDRecovery

210. Understanding Grace and Accepting God’s Forgiveness with author Nathan Clarkson

Written by Carrie Bock on February 11, 2026. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie sits down with Nathan Clarkson, an actor, author, and podcast host, to talk about how scrupulosity, guilt, and contamination fears shaped his faith and how grace slowly rewrote that story.

Episode Highlights:

Nathan’s early experience with OCD and how it shaped his faith
How contamination OCD and scrupulosity often intertwine
Why OCD creates a distorted, harsh view of God
The difference between OCD guilt and true conviction
What it means to accept God’s forgiveness—even when it doesn’t feel true
How healing can grow in small, almost unnoticed steps when you walk with God and safe people
Nathan’s book I’m the Worst

Connect with Nathan Clarkson: www.instagram.com/nathanjclarkson/

Transcript

Welcome back, OCD Warriors. Today on the show I’m talking with Nathan Clarkson. He is a film and TV actor, besting author, indie filmmaker, and podcast philosopher on his award-winning show, The Overthinkers. Nathan is here to talk about his book that just came out towards the end of January called I’m the Worst. A powerful testimony that he shares with us regarding his lived experience with OCD. If you struggle with Scrupulosity at all, you’re really gonna enjoy this episode because we get into some juicy topics regarding grace, sin, God’s forgiveness. I know that you’re gonna be blessed by this episode.

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

Nathan, welcome to the show. We’re glad to have you here.

Nathan: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

Carrie: I understand you’re gonna tell us a little bit about your OCD story. You talk in your book about like just days spent with a lot of compulsions, showering, cleaning rituals, and like what was the process of coming to an understanding of your OCD?

Nathan: Oh yeah. Well, this has been a story since I was very young. My mom, before I even can really even remember, she has a story about me being a very, very little boy, maybe two or three. And she’s putting shoes on me, and she’s tying the little shoes and the laces are uneven, and I start crying and she can’t figure out what’s wrong, and she’s trying to comfort me. My little 2-year-old boy struggling for words, and I’m crying and then fidgeting, and she’s trying everything, and I keep on pointing to my shoes. She straightens, she evens out the little laces of my shoes. I go, oh, thank you. Thank you mom. And it was at that moment she kind of learned something different. OCD of course was had been talked about a little bit, but not quite so ubiquitously as is now. You know, we didn’t know as much and there wasn’t as many resources as there are now. Something in her mom brain said, Hey, there’s something different about my little boy. And she would notice all these little things from very, very early on, like that story in a million different ways.

I’d be lying in bed at night and she would come and kiss me goodnight and five minutes later I’d go and wake her up and say, I need you to come back. I can’t remember it. I would ask her over and over again, compulsively, I need you to come and kiss me goodnight again because I forgot if you did it. Wow. And I would ask her, you know, 15 times a night. I was really lucky to have a mom and a dad who were gracious with me and who were understanding, but they clued them to understanding something in my little brain at that time was different.

And as I grew older and older, those compulsions and rituals kind showed up in a myriad of different ways and then it was kind in my teenage years that it really, really kind of ramped up for me. And luckily there’s a few more resources at that time. And we got a counselor and talked to a psychiatrist who officially diagnosed him with OCD, and I remember that moment. It was so interesting to me kind of sitting in the therapist, the psychiatrist office, and they were telling me what OCD was and that I had it. There was of course this kind of frustration with, oh my goodness, I’m different. I have this label attached.

Carrie: How old were you at that point?

Nathan: I was, I think I was about 13, maybe 14 years old when I got formally diagnosed, and that was right around the time I was also diagnosed with ADHD and a couple of dyslexia. But the OCD was kind of the one that showed up with most life altering, particularly in those kind of early teenage years. And I remember just being so like, wow, I must be broken. There’s something wrong with me, but there’s also this kind of feeling that will go hand in hand with it, which is a weird feeling to relate. Like I can finally put a name and understand. There was both kind of a frustration that like, you know, God, why did you make me like this? And also this, oh. So that’s what it is. I’m not just crazy, I’m not just broken. There’s a thing that I can be understood and it kind of gave me a hope that, you know, I could figure out a way forward.

So that’s kind of the moments that led it up to me understanding that I had OCD, but it was very early on, kind of always knew I had it, my family was aware of it, and then we realized what it was called and what it was in that moment, like that just office.

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Carrie: When it got really bad in your adult life later on, I’m assuming you probably were on medication or had some type of treatment along the process there if you were seeing psychiatrist, but at some point or another, you said it just consumed your whole day, like what was going on for you spiritually and emotionally, just internally as you’re going through this wrestling of not being able to stop these compulsions.

Nathan: Yeah, it really ramped up come from that moment in the psychiatrist’s office. It definitely ramped up, and that kind of began the journey of trying to figure out how to live with it. And there were good things and good times and hard times, but according to the psychiatrist, diagnosed with a particularly severe case of OCD, and one of the reasons it was severe is because, as you know, there’s kind of different kinds of OCD. There’s guilt OCD, and contamination based OCD and health OCD. And I had like layers of different where it kind of worked its way into all sorts of different ways. So I would have a health OCD that was mixed with contamination OCD that was mixed with guilt OCD. It was kind of permeating all these different areas of my life.

It was a really frustrating thing to deal with. And frustrating isn’t a big enough word to encapsulate the kind of just utter despair or frustration. I need a deeper word to explain what many of us go through who have OCD, but there were times in my life where I look back, I think the closest word I can find is just utter despair that I would experience.

And I wrote a poem many years ago and I put it on YouTube. It went viral, reached a lot of people. But in the poem I described just the frustration of not being able to touch the ones I love and ask for a hug. Not being able to live freely and enjoy life. Not being able to wake up during the day and just have fun without thinking of all the different rituals that I was gonna have to perform to enjoy my day, even in a small amount. And how it was this ever present, nonstop voice that never ended.

I remember just multiple moments in my life where I kind of came to the end of being able to ignore that frustration or just continued fighting it or kind of grin and bear it, and just got to this place where it felt so overwhelming and I felt so kind of drowned underwater from it. I experienced such deep despair, and that despair kind of left me not so much doubting God, but frustration and questions of his goodness. You love me? Why would you let me deal with this? Why would you let me have this? If I’m someone I’m supposed to believe that you care about me, why would you let me every day, every minute of the day live in this kind of agony?

There have been moments which I’ve really, really had to wrestle in my relationship with God as a result of kind of the despair and frustration and agony that OCD has brought in my life. And of course there’s a redemptive and wonderful flip side to that. I’m sure we’ll get to more of that, but I absolutely have experienced those really dark, kind of walking through the night moments multiple times on this journey of OCD.

Carrie: Yeah. What I see sometimes with Christians is like contamination gets somehow mixed in with sin too, like cleanliness and sin and godliness, and I’ve gotta keep myself uncontaminated physically, but it somehow has this spiritual relevance. Did that happen for you?

Nathan: Oh, absolutely. One of my main kind of central ones I still deal with is contamination based OCD. Kind of the dirtiness, right? You have in your mind this idea of how the world should be and kind of physically how it should be in this almost idealistic perfectionism that your clothes should be, your hands should be, or whatever it might be, how the world should be. And whatever your mind has deemed dirty, it’s almost unbearable to try to figure out how to make it clean again.

And that kind of contamination based OCD mechanism absolutely finds its way into kind of the morality aspect or the spirituality aspect of OCD where you are constantly on guard for any perceived sin or slight or failure, and you all of a sudden feel a load of guilt on your back and fear that you are upsetting or disappointing God. So absolutely that’s something that I have dealt with throughout my journey with OCD, that kind of contamination based both on the physical and the spiritual.

Carrie: Yeah, and I think it’s a good example for people of how these themes get intertwined. You spoke to that a little bit earlier. It’s not just one thing. It’s like I start to unravel something and then I end up in some other type of theme. And that can be really confusing. And I find that that happens a lot with Christian spirituality. It’s like we start with contamination or a health OCD, and then we’re over into scrupulosity now, or yeah, we started with something else and now we’re stuck in some type of… How did, like, what shifted for you? What changed? Was there like a breakthrough moment? Was it a process over time?

Nathan: I think there’s, I’m trying to find a word for it. It’s cyclical, but also moving upward. So I found myself in my story through times of deep despair, acceptance, and healing and growth. Back again to that despair. But every time I’ll find a little more healing, a little more growth and a little less despair, kind of this really baby step process over many years.

But as far as kind of the other side of that despair that I talked about earlier, there’s a few things that really, really helped me on my journey towards kind of living more freely in it. One was, I think for whatever reason, my personality is one that I always wanted to be able to be independent and never rely on anyone.

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Nathan: I think the more in my life that I’ve learned to rely on people. I think many of us with OCD know how embarrassing it is sometimes to explain it to people because you get those funny looks, right? You look crazy. You look really, what you talking about? So a lot of times we keep it in and we don’t tell people around us, and we might just avoid situations and people rather than having to face the embarrassment.

But I have noticed that when I kind of get over that embarrassment or that kind of fear or trepidation of telling — and not to everyone, I don’t think we need to entrust everything to everyone — but when you find someone who’s trustworthy, who’s proven, and who even has shown a desire to walk with you in your frustration or your difficulty of OCD. I have a couple friends who have verbally said, I wanna be a partner with you in this and help you in this. And those words meant so much to me.

And that allowed me to kind of open myself and be vulnerable and tell them, this is really difficult for me and this is hard for me. But when I did, having people walk with me through it and being careful with me and being gentle with me — and that’s something I’m able to offer to others as well — I think it’s been such a helpful thing to have people who actually care enough to walk with you.

And it takes a little bit of bravery of opening yourself up to trustworthy people, obviously, and kind of getting over that embarrassment and say, this is how my mind works. So that’s one thing that has been a huge conduit to healing and living better — surrounding myself with people who are walking with me in it, who both push in ways where I can grow. “Nathan, I think you can grow in this area. I think you can do this. You can be strong in this area. I know it’s overwhelming.” But also who can say, “Hey, that’s really tough. Would it be helpful if I did this or didn’t do that? Or can I wash my hands? Or is there something that I can do right now to make this moment better?”

And that’s been such a blessing for me. A reminder — and they’ve kind of been God’s hands and feet in my life — where I have people walking with me through it. And you know that’s what we offer. Everyone needs, OCD or not, is people who are willing to walk with us through our struggles.

Carrie: Through the messiness that we have going on.

Nathan: Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. OCD sometimes convinces us that we’re the only kind of messy people or only ones with obsessions or funny minds. Everyone has a mess they’re walking through. And if we can get over embarrassment and go, “Hey, we’re all messy here. Let’s love each other and walk with each other.” I think that’s one of the ways that it’s been a huge, huge conduit to my health and being able to function in the world in a healthy way.

And of course it’s not perfect. There’s good days, there’s bad days, but having people around me who respect and understand — or try to understand — has been a huge conduit to that. And even my wife… when I went about finding someone who wanted to partner with me, there’s no way when she said, “Of course I’ll marry you,” she could know the full extent of what it meant to live with an OCD person. But her willingness day to day to love in that — that is such a blessing on the journey of that and has enabled me to live a healthier and fuller life.

Carrie: I think that’s really hopeful for a lot of our single people who listen, who just wonder, am I ever gonna find love, have these problems with OCD and will anybody really understand? And so it’s good to know there are people willing to partner with you, like you said, to help you. And everyone has stuff. And so just when you come together as a married couple, it’s like you have to help each other unpack some of this stuff in a different way because you’re not able to do it on your own. It’s actually really beautiful and it’s obviously a picture of the gospel and God’s love for us.

I wanna talk with you about grace, because that seems to have made a big difference in your life in terms of your relationship with God. What was that process of understanding grace for you?

Nathan: Yeah, it’s a great question. I said earlier that I’m someone who kind of wants to be independent and figure it out on my own, but I think early on my OCD was something that was terrible in so many ways. But one of the good things was it forced me to come to terms with kind of some of my messy parts and the broken places of my mind and heart and soul. It forced me to realize I wasn’t perfect and I couldn’t do it on my own at an early age.

Realizing my need for grace, my need for love, my need for God’s willingness to be with me was a really meaningful thing. That’s something that’s carried on into my adult world and life as well. The more I can accept that I need God’s grace, the more that I allow it into my life, the more I get to reap the benefits of it.

I almost feel, in a weird way, lucky that I had to learn to work out that muscle from a young age — that I needed God’s grace and I needed help — because it enables me to more intuitively accept it and look for it in my day-to-day life now as an adult.

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Carrie: Yeah. What would you say to somebody that’s really struggling? They just don’t feel like God is forgiving towards them. They feel like God is waiting for them to mess up. God doesn’t necessarily have good things for me. My life is a mess with all this OCD. Like what would you say to somebody that maybe has that viewpoint of God?

Nathan: Well, the first is I have struggled with that, and you’re not alone in those thoughts and those fears. I have had all of those voices in my head. But the thing I’d tell you is, and this is what we tell about any OCD kind of thought, your mind might be telling you one thing, but we know that that’s not necessarily the truth.

And what I would tell you, even in the midst of those cloud and rainstorm of thoughts that can feel so overwhelming, is that there is a truth and that truth can be known. And the truth is found in God. He has told us through scripture that we’re loved, that we are valuable, that there’s nothing we can do to separate us from his love, that in all of our imperfections we’re accepted and invited.

We can find that truth in his words over and over again in scripture. It reminds us of what is true, and that will often come up against and contradict what our mind tells us is true. But at the end of the day, it’s so difficult and I totally understand how hard it is when those thoughts are just pounding our mind. But we need to choose. There is a choice to be made to believe what is true.

And what is true is that God cares about you, loves you. Nothing can separate you from your value or his love for you and his desire for goodness for you.

Carrie: Yeah. I think it’s hard, like what you’re saying, that sometimes things feel really true in OCD that we know scripturally are not true. And so there is that decision point to say, I’m going to feed my mind with the scriptures that I know are true about God’s love for me, true about God’s forgiveness for me. I’m gonna meditate on those things instead of focusing on what feels like this OCD version of God. That’s what I call it. It’s like OCD little g god is really loud and demanding and telling me all these things about the Lord that aren’t true, but I’m gonna choose to listen to the voice of the Spirit and the voice of God.

You talk in your book about admitting like I’m the worst, and this not as a way to beat yourself up like condemning yourself, but just as this opportunity or entrance point for grace. Tell us a little bit more about that piece.

Nathan: I think so many of us long to believe we are loved and valued, and the way we do that is we try to convince ourselves how good we are. And one of the ways we do that is point out everyone else’s badness and faults and failures, right? And that makes us feel better. We convince ourselves we’re good and we’re okay and we’re whole.

And the reality is if you’re a human, you’re broken and you have messy parts and you have fractures. We can run away from those, and that’s something I have many times in my life, and try so hard to convince myself and the world around me of this image that I wanted to hold up of Superman, that I’m good.

And it was to my detriment that I ignored the darkness and the fractured inside. The book title is meant to catch attention, I’m the Worst, but it’s something that Paul says in scripture, “I’m the worst of sinners,” and this is a man who was redeemed, who went on to be the foundation on which a faith is built.

But this man was willing to admit his dark places. And I think so many of us run from those dark places and avoid admitting and coming face to face with our broken parts because we fear that it’s gonna be a wall that we’re gonna crash into. It’s gonna break us, it’s gonna overwhelm us.

What I found is when we’re honest enough to face our darkness and to face the reality of our broken pieces, our mess, and we’re brave enough to do that, it’s not a wall, it’s a bridge. And that bridge leads us to redemption and love and grace.

And it’s a really beautiful thing that I’ve experienced in my life, and I want so badly for others to experience it in their life too. It’s a scary thing and it can be difficult. It can even be painful, like going to the doctor. But when we face our broken places, that’s where we end up finding God’s love and forgiveness. That actually starts the journey towards wholeness for us.

Carrie: Yeah. This is really great because I think you’re talking about wanting to present to the world that I am a good Christian, for example. And I think a lot of people would probably say that whether they have OCD or not. I want to be this person. I’ve shown up at church and I’m serving and I’m doing all the right things and I’m praying and reading my Bible.

But at the end of the day, we all are in need of a savior desperately every single day. We’re living in this tension of wanting to be Christlike while also recognizing that we have a day-to-day sin battle that we’re in.

When I’m radically vulnerable with God and other people, then I’m coming to this place where I can see his grace enter in. But if I just put on this persona of, “Hey, this is who I want you to see me as,” then people don’t really get to know us. We don’t have that deep and true intimacy with God either because we’re hiding in our relationship from God, even though he already knows us. There’s a rupture there.

Nathan: Yeah, I love that. I think acknowledging the difficult parts of our journey and ourselves and inviting both God and other people — who are the hands and feet of God — into that to walk with us is actually the conduit to freedom that we all ultimately long for.

Carrie: Was there a particular scripture or Bible story that you resonated with?

Nathan: I really connected with the story of Gideon as a kid… and also David, and Peter, and Paul. Over and over again, God uses people who don’t fit the image. People who don’t feel like heroes. God loves showing his strength in the midst of our weakness.

Carrie: Yeah. And when Jesus is involved, the story’s not over. We want to encourage people that feel like they’ve screwed things up — God’s not done with you yet. Forgiveness is one of the things you also talk about in your book, and it’s harder sometimes to receive forgiveness than offer it. Tell us more.

Nathan: Particularly for those of us with OCD, believing that God forgives us and accepting it can be difficult because OCD is a series of voices telling us untrue things. They’re relentless. But scripture tells us what is actually true about us — that we’re forgiven when we repent, that we’re his, and we can’t be separated from his goodness and his love.

The more we practice listening to God’s voice of truth, the easier it gets to recognize it.

Carrie: How has accepting God’s forgiveness changed you?

Nathan: It allows me to live life unencumbered by guilt and shame. It also allows me to offer forgiveness to others. There’s a freedom when we let go of our mistakes because God has. That freedom has been really meaningful in my story.

Carrie: What does recovery look like for you today?

Nathan: Recovery looks like getting a little stronger every day. Accepting a little more help every day. Not expecting everything to change instantly, but choosing by faith to walk step by step and get a little stronger every day with people around me and with God.

Carrie: I think that’s why it’s important to document progress… to look back and see how far you’ve come. Things are going to get better.

So tell us the name of your book again.

Nathan: The book is called I’m the Worst: How Freedom is Found in Admitting Your Faults. It’s available wherever books are sold. I’d love for you to grab a copy.

Carrie: Thank you for coming on and sharing your story. Remember, if you want to share your personal story about OCD, you can contact me at carriebock.com/podcast. I think it’s very important to get these stories out into the world and let people know there’s hope and opportunities for healing to have a different relationship with your OCD than you do now.

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

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

171. 3 Risks of Feeling Better

Written by Carrie Bock on April 30, 2025. Posted in Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie dives into the unexpected risks of feeling better when dealing with OCD. While it may seem like a positive step forward, there are some potential challenges that can arise as recovery progresses.

Episode Highlights:

The risk of thinking OCD will magically disappear without continued engagement in treatment.
How feeling better might make it difficult to connect with your true self and your values apart from OCD rituals.
The risk of avoiding triggers which might lead to a limited life, rather than true recovery.
How recovery can disrupt codependent relationships.
The importance of identity work in overcoming OCD and connecting deeply with who you are in Christ.
The potential for therapy to improve during less stressful times.

Episode Summary:

We usually talk about the struggles of OCD recovery—but what about the challenges that come when you actually start to feel better?

In this episode, I’m diving into three often-overlooked risks that can arise after you’ve made progress. When things start to feel lighter, it’s easy to assume the journey is over—but that assumption can set you up for setbacks if you’re not careful.

You’ll hear about:
• The hidden trap of thinking OCD has “gone away” just because you’re in a calm season
• How true healing forces you to rediscover who you are—outside of OCD
• The unexpected tension recovery can create in relationships, especially when others have grown comfortable in roles of support, caretaking, or even codependency

These are the quiet moments in recovery that don’t get talked about enough—and they matter.

Plus, I’ll be sharing something exciting: a new opportunity to take your healing deeper with a therapeutic vacation in Nashville—where you can get intensive support and space to rest.

Tune in to learn, reflect, and stay grounded in your recovery journey.

Transcript

Hello, OCD Warriors. On today’s episode, we’re talking about the three risks of feeling better. I know normally we think, hey, feeling better is a great thing. That’s what everybody wants, but it also can be a little risky.

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.

One of the reasons I’m doing this episode right now is that, hey, it’s getting warmer outside. Isn’t that awesome? And people are starting to think about vacations, they’re gonna be taking, I’m just imagining that I’m gonna be on a tropical island somewhere. I don’t have any vacations like that planned yet, but girl can dream, right?

We’re coming out of this cold and flu season. Praise the Lord, because it has been a bad one for so many people. There’s more sunshine, less darkness, and we’re getting towards this time period where people drop off in therapy. Last summer I did an episode on why summer is the best time to get counseling.

So it’s episode 1 27. If you wanna go back and listen to that one. The first risk of feeling better is that it’s risky to think that OCD is magically going to go away. It’s not, it does wax and wane with stress, but it’s a chronic condition. So sometimes someone will switch medications or they’ll be going through a less stressful period or time in their life, like their summer, and it might cause them to go, ah, I feel better.

I don’t really need to like super engage in my recovery process. Or maybe I don’t really need to go to therapy. Let me tell you, the best time to learn the skills is when you aren’t constantly getting triggered by OCD. It’s better to learn these things in small doses. Like Christians Learning ICBT. The info builds one module at a time so that you can learn things in bite-sized doses, get what you need, and then be able to apply it to your recovery.

This is also true if you’re feeling better because you’re avoiding everything and you’re avoiding all your triggers, and that’s why you’re feeling better. Well, you might be feeling better and avoiding all your triggers, but you’re probably living a very limited life and not really the full life. You want to be living.

That’s not really recovery. That’s just continuing to feed the OCD, and it’s going to be demanding and continue to ask more and more from you over time. The second risk of getting better is that it requires you to get in touch with your true self. Who you really are, what things you actually like, what things you actually value apart from OCD rituals.

Do you know that information or do you feel like you would be completely lost without all of these OCD handwashing rituals and dressing rituals and showering rituals, and eating rituals and cleaning rituals. If your life is completely filled up with all of that stuff and that is what you have created your identity around, or you’ve created your identity surrounding being dependent on other people, then it’s going to be really hard to know yourself and.

That is a process that’s needed in order to get better identity work is something I’ve realized is super involved in OCD treatment. It’s just a part of it. Even if you’re looking at it from an acceptance and commitment therapy stand of moving towards your values, you have to know what your values are and what’s important to you and what you want in order to be able to move towards those values.

Sometimes it’s really scary to dig down and get to know yourself. Maybe you’re afraid of what you’ll find. Maybe you’re very self-critical or view yourself as bad. Ultimately, I want people that I work with to connect with who they are in Christ. If they’re saying they’re a Christian, I want them to be able to connect with being a child of God, with being wholly and completely loved unconditionally with being a hundred percent forgiven.

And so OCD is gonna rub up against those things. If you’re struggling internally with who you are, if you view yourself as a bad Christian or somebody that you just can’t wrap your mind around how God could ever love you or forgive you, well yeah. Yeah. I know God’s forgiveness and love is for people, but that’s doesn’t apply to me somehow.

If you feel like OCD is consuming a lot of time or a lot of your life, I would really encourage you to think through what would it be like if OCD didn’t cause you to have to take a two hour shower? What would you do with that extra time? What if OCD didn’t rule what restaurants you could eat at and which restaurants you couldn’t eat at?

Where would you go? Who would you spend that time with? This really helps you dig in and also find some motivation for treatment, but I think so many times. People are scared of change or scared of that identity work that they get stuck in those OCD rituals or there’s a lack of belief that they’re going to be able to do this even with support.

A third risk of feeling better is if you feel like recovery might disconnect you from those closest to you, such as family members, spouses, parents. If you’re in a codependent relationship with someone where they’re enabling you, they’re going along with your OCD rituals. Now, they may be expressing frustration and resentment, but they’re still doing it, or they may be inconsistent.

Sometimes they give in, sometimes they don’t. You’ve developed this dance with this other individual and they’ve adopted this caretaker role where maybe you’re used to, depending on them for reassurance, you’re depending on them for how to do things. This is the dynamic that you have and you want to be able to.

Have an adult to adult relationship, even with an adult parent, and definitely with your spouse as well. You might not want to upset this dance because the other person is kind of used to now taking care of you or making sure that you are okay. There can be this interrelationship where you feel like, okay, if they aren’t okay, then I’m not okay, and they may feel similarly.

That’s what codependency is. I can’t be okay unless this other person is okay. If you disrupt that relationship dynamic by getting better, even though that other person may say, yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do. They may try to pull you back into an unhealthy pattern of being dependent on them, if that’s what they’re used to, and they may actually be threatened by some of your independence or being able to do more things on your own because they’re lost in terms of that caretaking role.

Well, what do I do now? They don’t need me to take care of them, or they don’t need me to do all these things, and they might subconsciously sabotage your recovery, tell you, oh, I don’t think that you can do this. This is gonna be too hard for you. Just let me take care of it. They’re used to kind of jumping in.

Doing things for you. They’re the rescuer. They’re the hero in the dynamic. Well, after a little while, even heroes get tired, rescuers become persecutor and become victims. There’s a whole triangle on that. It’s called the Copman Drama Triangle. If you wanna look that up, it’s very insightful. Talks about codependency and this pattern that happens, right?

Somebody feels good, they run in and help you and rescue you, but then they get frustrated, become resentful, attack you, and then they just feel like, well. I’m this victim to your OCD, and I guess this is just never gonna get better, and I’m just gonna have to continue to suffer alongside you, and it’s a negative cycle to be in.

But if that’s in your dynamic, either with a spouse or with a parent, would really encourage you to get some help as part of your recovery process. It’s important to have the support of family members and for them to know how to support you. Way possible because they might be trying to prevent you from experiencing any discomfort or any suffering.

Of course, we don’t want our children to suffer. As a parent, I can understand that, but at the same time, like sometimes we have to suffer or we have to at least be uncomfortable. In order to grow and in order to learn new skills and in order to have the ability to do things on our own. My daughter is learning how to dress herself and certainly still needs a lot of help, but we are trying to coach her and support her through that process.

If every day I come in there and just pull the shirt over her head, she’s never gonna learn to do it on her own. There’s a little bit of struggle with that. Sometimes her head gets stuck and she can’t get the shirt on, or sometimes it’s hard to pull her clothes all the way on or whatever. But her wrestling through that with the support is important and you can do many hard things.

With God, all things are possible. So just remember that. So let’s just review the three risk of feeling better. One, it’s risky when you feel better and you think OCD maybe just magically is disappearing and going away when you haven’t had treatment. Now, if you’ve had treatment than that’s a different story.

It’s risky if you don’t know who you are apart from your OCD rituals and it’s risky if feeling better, might disrupt the codependent relationships that you’re in. This is a short episode, but hopefully we packed in some value for you. Since summer is a great time to get the therapeutic help that you need, how about booking a Nashville therapeutic vacation for yourself where you can come and do an intensive for two or three days and then have a little bit of fun?

In Tennessee, we’ve got some great parks and great things to see, concerts, all kinds of things happening this summer. I’d love to have you. There’s more information on my website@careybach.com. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian faith and OCD is a production of Buy the Well Counseling.

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

160. You Can’t Touch It!: Contamination OCD

Written by Carrie Bock on February 17, 2025. Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

Welcome to the Themes and Treatments for OCD series!

In this segment, Carrie breaks down contamination OCD and shows why it’s not simply about fearing germs.

Learn how ICBT can offer you a way out of the compulsive behaviors and bring true relief from contamination obsessions.

Episode Highlights:

The complexities of contamination OCD and how it goes beyond a simple fear of germs.
How contamination OCD can manifest through fears about illness, bodily fluids, or even specific diseases.
The importance of understanding your personal story behind OCD to help break the cycle.
The power of ICBT (Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) in addressing compulsions and obsessional doubts.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to the first segment of Themes and Treatments for OCD series!

Today, we’re diving into contamination OCD, one of the most common yet often misunderstood themes. You’ve probably seen it in movies—people constantly sanitizing or avoiding germs—but it’s much more complex than just a fear of getting sick.

Contamination OCD can show up in many forms, such as fears about germs, diseases, bodily fluids, food spoilage, or even allergies. It can also involve the intense worry that you’ll pass contamination onto someone else. The compulsions—like excessive hand washing, cleaning, or avoiding specific places or foods—can become ritualistic and deeply ingrained over time.

What makes contamination OCD tricky is the emotional reasoning behind these compulsions. Sometimes it feels like there’s a “right” way to clean or protect yourself, and if it’s not done exactly right, you just don’t feel safe. That’s where ICBT (Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) comes in. Unlike traditional approaches, ICBT helps uncover the reasons behind your obsessions and compulsions, digging into the personal stories that fuel your fears, not just the behaviors.

Changing old habits isn’t easy, especially when it feels like these routines are keeping you safe. But with time and practice, it gets easier. Whether traditional ERP has worked for you or not, ICBT could be a great alternative. Learn more about it at icbt.online or check out past podcast episodes for more insights. If you’re looking for a Christian perspective, join the waitlist at carriebock.com/training. You’re not alone—there’s always hope!

Tune in to the full episode for more on managing contamination OCD with ICBT and overcoming it!

Explore Related Episode:

138. The Connection Between Trauma and OCD

Accordion Heading

This is the first segment in our Themes and Treatments for OCD series. When I was coming up with podcast ideas for this year, I thought we really should break down the different themes and maybe do a podcast episode on each theme. So today we are talking about contamination OCD. This is probably the most well known OCD theme.

It’s the one that gets portrayed in all the movies and TV shows. It’s the monk type person. You know, I can’t touch something or I need a sanitizing wipe. I need my hand sanitizer with me all the time, and now I’ve gotta wash my hands. Even though it’s portrayed a lot, I feel like most people don’t fully understand it.

They just see it kind of as a, oh, you have a fear of germs, you’re a germaphobe, and you don’t wanna get sick, so you don’t wanna touch anything. It’s more complicated than that, and there’s a wide variety even within the contamination OCD theme. So, you can have obsessions about germs, getting sick, and that may be you, or it may be someone else.

Maybe you’re afraid that your child is going to get sick, or your spouse is going to get sick, that you are going to somehow pass that on to someone else. Sometimes that can be more distressing than actually being sick yourself. You can have fears surrounding catching certain diseases, like HIV, or hepatitis.

Maybe you’re concerned about being contaminated by certain bodily fluids such as urine, feces, blood, or semen. This may lead to concerns about becoming pregnant or you causing someone else to be pregnant. There may be concerns surrounding food, specifically food spoiling, going bad, concerns that certain foods you’ll all of a sudden become allergic to or won’t be able to eat, and these concerns specifically don’t have anything to do with concerns about weight or body image.

Common compulsions for the contamination theme include hand washing, Excessive hygiene where you’re just in the shower for two hours, cleaning, avoiding, that could be avoiding using public restrooms, avoiding. Eating certain foods, avoiding going to certain restaurants you believe are contaminated, may involve using gloves or lots of sanitizer, and the challenge is that with contamination OCD that the routines tend to be very ritualistic.

So I have a certain way that I get ready in the morning or I have a certain way that I need to take the trash out or a certain way that I need to respond after I pump gas. The other challenge with hand washing and other compulsions is that there can be a little bit of just so mixed in, like I can’t really stop because it has to feel a certain way.

I have to feel clean. So what’s interesting about even something like hand washing, if you were to look at a traditional behavioral exposure and response prevention approach, they would say Do something and then don’t wash your hands or you’re only allowed to wash your hands if they visibly look dirty You’re about to eat.

You’ve just used the bathroom like in those settings you could wash your hands one time the cool thing that I love about inference based cognitive behavioral therapy or hereby referred to as ICBT So we actually care about the story and the reasons of how did you come to believe that washing your hands is the solution?

What obsessional doubt are we trying to resolve by doing this? It’s very different for different people. So you may say, well, I’m washing my hands this way because I used to work in a hospital and I saw someone who contracted MRSA, and I know how bad that can be. Or you may say, I wash my hands so much because I’m a single mother and there’s no one else to take care of my children if I go down and get sick.

You might say, I wash my hands so much because how can I be really sure that they’re clean? I don’t see dirt on them, right? But there may be germs because germs are invisible and how would I know when they’re all off my hands? By really uncovering the reasonings behind your obsessional doubt, which ICB tells us that there are reasons that OCD uses to support these doubts.

Sometimes they make more sense to you than others. There are facts mixed in inside the inferential confusion process. It is a fact that we should wash our hands in certain situations to prevent illnesses from spreading. We also all lived through COVID, which was a very scary time, where we were told repeatedly to wash our hands, make sure you’re washing them for 20 seconds.

There was a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty, and for some people, that has carried over. That fear has never gone away. The long term goal in ICBT would be to look at the arguments that OCD is making, the story that it’s drawing you into, and convincing you that these compulsions are absolutely necessary in your life in order for you to maintain a sense of safety.

Once we know more about that story and understand it a little bit better, then we can start to find cracks in OCDs. reasoning process. Not to argue back with it. I think that’s a big misnomer about ICBT is people say you’re arguing with the OCD. No, we’re finding cracks in the OCD reasoning process. We’re identifying inferential confusion so that we can retrain the brain to notice these obsessions as irrelevant To our present sense data, the goal is to be able to trust your senses that your hands are clean or trust your internal sense that you’re not a dirty, awful person.

I want my clients to be able to have a certain sense of confidence that they would be able to handle situations if they did get sick or if their loved ones did get sick. And they may have gone through some things in the past where somebody was sick or they were sick and they felt like they couldn’t handle it or they didn’t handle it very well.

There may have been some medical trauma in the family history. These are the types of things that a very traditional behavioral approach, I feel like, doesn’t take into consideration. Being trauma informed is very important when it comes to OCD. So I would encourage you, if you’re dealing with contamination, look at what is contributing to that story in your mind.

How do you or other people or objects become contaminated? How does that contamination spread from one person to another person? When you do that, you may be able to recognize that some of this defies common sense data. That’s another aspect that ICB talks about, is trusting in the senses, and one of those is not just your five senses, that you can see that something is clean, you can smell something is clean, you can know that you’ve taken the steps to clean something, but really trusting common sense data.

and internal sense data as well. What does it mean about you as a person if you are contaminated or get sick? This might help you identify what you would call the feared possible self or the vulnerable self. It’s not really you, but it’s who OCD says that you are. I’m excited one of my colleagues is going to come on and talk about this concept in more detail in a future episode, how this interplays with Christian faith, which is really exciting.

I know it can be super challenging and scary. to do something differently than OCD has told you that it always has to be done. For example, if you have a certain ritualistic compulsive routine after you use the bathroom and now you are trying to make changes to that, or eliminate aspects of that, just know that that’s going to be very challenging, especially in the beginning, but the more that you are able to gain a little bit of ground, the easier and easier that it’ll be.

The most important thing that I would want anyone to know is that there is hope regardless of the OCD theme that you are dealing with. Maybe you’ve been highly advised to do exposure and response prevention if you have contamination OCD. If that has worked well for you, awesome. We’re all for it. Love that.

If you felt like ERP just wasn’t for you, or you’re interested, I would encourage you to look into ICBT. There’s a good amount of information at icbt. online. You can also search the podcast for previous episodes on ICBT that we’ve done. And if you happen to be interested in learning all of this from a Christian perspective, you can join the waitlist by going to carriebock.com/training. I’ll add this part in after I talked about being concerned about HIV. You may have concerns about being in touch with bleach, other chemicals, some type of chemical or radioactive waste.

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

Written by Carrie Bock on December 11, 2024. Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

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

Episode Highlight:

Why it’s hard to motivate yourself, even when you want to make changes

How OCD therapy can be challenging and exhausting, but you can keep going

How focusing on priorities, rather than making excuses, can help you make time for recovery

Why saying “no” to OCD opens up time for self-care and better habits

How to get specific about what you want in your life and why it’s important for motivation

How rewarding yourself and tracking progress can help you stay motivated on your recovery journey

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

Explore Related Episode:

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

Transcript

Have you ever felt like, why am I not doing the thing that I say I want to do? Why can I not motivate myself, get my butt in gear to do the things that are important to me? That is what we’re talking about today. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.

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

I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. You may know that Christians Learning ICBT is starting January 13th. And while this training is geared towards lay people, not necessarily professionals, we did have one professional join us this fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They set aside an hour and a half a week to really engage with the video and then do the homework and have seen progress. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

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

108. OCD Personal Story with Michael Kheir

Written by Carrie Bock on November 30, 2023. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Michael Kheir, the author of “Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach.” Michael shares his personal experience with OCD, shedding light on the challenges he faced. He delves into how faith and a deep understanding of God’s grace were pivotal in his journey towards healing and recovery.

Episode Summary:

The importance of reducing stigma around mental health, particularly OCD and anxiety.

How OCD can lead to obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, even over seemingly insignificant matters.

The impact of strict religious upbringing on OCD and the concept of legalism.

The power of understanding and embracing God’s grace in dealing with mental health challenges.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 108! I’m Carrie Bock, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Michael, the author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach. Michael was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, which has been incredibly insightful for our discussion.

In this episode, we dive deep into Michael’s personal battle with OCD. He shares how his journey began in childhood and has evolved through adulthood. Michael has extensively researched OCD from both Christian and secular perspectives, and his book reflects this thorough exploration. He recounts a poignant story from his college days, where a seemingly small incident triggered a flood of obsessive thoughts and compulsions.

Michael also opens up about the stories he revealed for the first time in his book—stories he hadn’t shared with his family before. His openness underscores a crucial point: mental health struggles do not define our worth or intelligence. Instead, they are a part of our journey, and understanding this can help reduce stigma.

Michael’s reflections on his experiences highlight the importance of embracing God’s grace rather than being trapped by rituals and compulsions. This conversation is a powerful reminder that faith and understanding can guide us through the complexities of OCD.

Join us as we explore these themes and more. If you find this episode helpful, please subscribe and leave a review to support our mission of breaking the stigma surrounding mental health.

More to listen to:

26. A Personal OCD Story of Experiencing God’s Presence and Grace with Peyton Garland

Transcript

I have the privilege of interviewing some interesting people on this show and hearing their stories. One of the things that we are focused on is reducing shame, so I interview a lot of people—Christians who have personal stories with OCD or anxiety.

Today, here I have Michael, author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach, and Mike was kind enough to send me a copy of his book so I could read it. People don’t always do that—sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. That’s the secret to being a podcast interviewer. I feel like it goes much better when I understand the book and have read it.

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Carrie: Welcome to the show, Mike.

Michael: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: This is your personal story, really, of OCD and the things that you found that helped you. And I saw, as you were writing it, that you had referenced a lot of other books that you read on OCD—books that were Christian, books that were secular. But it sounds like you’ve done your research over the years.

Michael: Yes. I think I started reading about the subject a lot when I was about 24 or 25 years old. The first one that I read was Grace of Bounty by John Bunyan. I think my mom actually found it somewhere and gave it to me, and I remember I started crying when I was reading it because it was immediately relatable to me, and I thought it was so cool that somebody that was used that mightily by God had a very similar struggle. I kind of felt like God probably used that struggle to use him in big ways. That was really encouraging to me, and then from there, it was 2007, so we had iPhones, and the internet was very accessible, so I just started googling and researching a lot and found some stuff, but not enough that made me feel like everything that needed to be said on the subject had been said. That’s sort of what motivated me to move forward and start writing.

Carrie: In the book, you tell many relatable stories of how OCD affected you, starting in childhood and then going through adolescence, and adulthood. Would you mind sharing one or two of those?

Michael: Sure. I’m going to bring one up because we might come back to it.

There was one that happened in college, a bunch of kids from our church. I went on a spring break trip, and we were all sort of sharing living spaces. The guys had like an apartment, the girls had an apartment, and I remember I was in our apartment and there’s like a living area and I was talking to some of my roommates and then a guy and his girlfriend walked in and at some point, I remember thinking, my shirt untucked I need to tuck it in and I think I like unzipped my pants just a little bit, tucked it in and then zipped it back up. No one would think anything about it because we were in a living area. It was a very laid-back environment. I don’t even think I was close to any of the girls, but that one girl was there. I just remember obsessing on that and thinking, if she saw me do that, that would be horrifyingly inappropriate as a Christian man to do something like that, and I just obsessed on that idea not immediately, but probably a week after we got back from the trip. I just started obsessing on that, thinking I was in the wrong.

Every time I would try to read the Bible or pray, I would think, I believe it’s Matthew 5:23 that says, if anyone has an offense against you, leave your gift at the altar or your sacrifice at the altar, go make it right, and then come back. Every time I would sit down to pray or read my Bible, I would think, it’s like all OCD.

There’s a 1 percent chance or a one in a million chance that this girl’s offended because she might’ve seen it and she might’ve interpreted it wrong. This went on for, I think, a couple of weeks and I eventually was like, the only way I can get rid of this fear, the one in a million chance I offended her is to apologize, which, in part of my mind, I knew was completely insane, inappropriate, and like, she would be like, what on earth are you talking about? So, I knew that in part of my brain, but I just couldn’t get rid of the fear that I was in sin. I think I emailed her boyfriend and said, if she saw this, I’m really sorry.

My heart is pounding as I’m doing it because I know how crazy it’s going to come across, but I did it and the moment I did it, it was a very powerful moment in my life. I realized what I had just done was not at all, like, relieving in the sense of, okay, I’ve done the will of God. It was more like that was not right.

Something about that was off and that helped me, that was kind of a pivotal moment in my journey of realizing that giving in to every compulsion to remove the one-in-a-million chance of something happening was not the right approach. That’s the big one that sticks with me a lot.

Carrie: Were there any stories that your parents or others close to you didn’t know about until you started writing these things down?

I guess I was thinking that there was a story about you being concerned about suffocating your stuffed animals and they had to be tucked in just a certain way and you’d lay there in bed at night and like losing sleep. Like, did your parents know any of that was going on in your mind?

Michael: I would say that one they may have known, but there were so many that they did not know.

I can’t think of the ones offhand, but I would say most of them, they did not know until I was an adult. I remember sitting in a parking lot, talking to my brother in my 20s, and I was explaining some of the thoughts I was having, and they were all OCD thoughts, and they were overwhelming me, and I remember he goes, you have thoughts like that?

He knew I had OCD, but I don’t think he had any idea of what the toll it took, and how it looked in the brain, and that’s sort of what I really tried to convey when I told my story, is like, when I’m sitting in that moment, these are the thoughts going through my head, and even my mom, as she’s read it after it’s been published in the last couple weeks, has said, man, I’m learning a lot, and I think she knew most of it, but she probably didn’t know how to deal with it and ended up either suppressing it or just kind of putting it in its own little compartment in her head because it was Something she didn’t know how to deal with to help her child.

Carrie: That’s so great one of the reasons I love this show is because we’re able to break the stigma and talk about some of these things when you’re in your own mind having those obsessions There’s this element of feeling so alone and disconnected and nobody else understands what it’s like to live in this mental gymnasium.

Michael: Absolutely. I think part of the stigma is that mental health issues make you less than or less intelligent and I almost look at it like LeBron James, the best basketball player in the world right now, if he had an injury, we wouldn’t say, that guy is such a terrible basketball player. We’d be like, he has an injury and he has to recover from it or he has to compensate for it.

I see mental health the same way. It’s like, I have OCD. That doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent or I can’t function in society. I went to college. I got a master’s degree. I have a decent career. It’s just viewed. Incorrectly by a lot of people in society and in the church, of course, to which we will probably get to, I hope.

Carrie: I’ve met many people with OCD that I would consider incredibly smart, thoughtful, intelligent, and that ability to solve problems in their head that works well in other scenarios, like whether it’s people that work in software or computers or engineering that they can’t use that same type of logic and problem-solving and solving these obsessions and compulsions, which is frustrating because they’re good problem solvers, typically in other areas of their life.

Michael: Absolutely.

Carrie: One of the things that stood out to me in your book was the weighing the 99.99 percent versus the 0.01 percent.

Michael: Right. I want to touch on another story. I believe it’s chapter two where I go through my life story and it’s about another basketball player. Keep coming back to basketball. I was taking pictures of Michael Jordan, not as a professional photographer, but from the stands.

Me and my friend had gone to watch him. This was after he had Unretired the second time. I think it was 2002. He was playing for the Washington Wizards. So, we got these high-up nosebleed seats as the game wore on, and a lot of people left. I think it was a weeknight. So, the crowd just thinned out, and we kind of snuck down to some really good seats.

I think we were 10 rows back, right behind the side where Michael Jordan was scoring. So, he goes up for a dunk. I get a really good picture of it. I’m super excited. I go home. I develop the negatives. They’re really good and then I realize, what have I done? And I go through this long list of condemning thoughts.

Number one, I’m cheering for a team with a mascot, the Wizards, and again, these are all in my mind. I know these are all one in a trillion chance of being wrong, but it doesn’t matter that it’s one in a trillion, it’s still a chance, and I’m obsessing on the chance. So by cheering for a team with a mascot called the Wizards, there is a one-in-a-trillion chance I’m supporting witchcraft.

I snuck down to the cheaper seats during the game, so now I’ve cheated Ticketmaster. Whoever deserves that money, I’ve now cheated them. It goes back to a very similar situation with that spring break trip that I had had several years earlier. I’m trying to read the Bible, I’m trying to pray, and I’m immediately thinking, I’m a thief, I stole from Ticketmaster or the Washington Wizards organization. I am just a terrible Christian, essentially, for promoting such an evil mascot. Again, I just want to reiterate that these ideas sound crazy, and I knew they were crazy in the intellectual part of my brain or mind, but I could not separate the fear from it. The one in a million chance that it was wrong is kind of what drives OCD and drives the compulsions and the obsessions.

Similar to what I did with the spring break trip, I decided I needed to repent of this before I could continue in my relationship with God for a couple of reasons. One, if I am promoting this witchcraft, then I’m possibly deceived. I’m sitting here reading the Bible, but I may or may not be interpreting it correctly in my mind.

I may be thinking, that God is promising something in this verse, but it doesn’t apply to me because I’m deceived. I’m under this cloud of deception because I’m promoting witchcraft. So I decided to make a list of things to do to repent. I’m going to call Ticketmaster, find out the prices of the cheaper seats we went down to, and pay the difference between what we paid and what we did down there and where we had sat.

I was going to stop cheering for the Wizards. Could I promote a team that’s involved in witchcraft? I was going to, the hardest part was to destroy the negatives. This was back when we had film and negatives, and destroy the photos, and then I’d have fully repented. And then when I go and read my Bible and pray now, I know that I’m not under some influence of deception or in sin against God.

After I had gone through that whole process for probably four weeks, I read something in Galatians that caught my eye. That said, “Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you,” which means who has deceived you, that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified.

This is the only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? And I was completely caught off guard by that because I immediately realized all the things I had just listed out that I was going to do to be made right with God again were works.

I was going to pay more money, I was going to destroy negatives, I was going to stop cheering for a team. Those were the actual threats to being deceived, and I realized in that moment, it probably wasn’t a moment. It probably took a few days, but I realized that doing all of that work was not a risk-free situation. Meaning I was not going to do all of those things to become undeceived, which would then take the chance of being deceived down from one in a billion or one in a trillion down to zero. I was actually doing these things and the chances of being deceived were going up. They weren’t going all the way down to zero from one in a trillion.

Over time, I’ve realized there are so many things where we think we’re doing a compulsion to remove the one in a billion chance of something bad happening and we’re increasing the risk of the bad thing happening. I know this initially sounds like complete hell to somebody with OCD because you’re thinking, great, now you’ve just given me more scenarios to worry about, and more scenarios that I’m just going to become compulsive about. What I realized is that as Christians, our walk with God is all by grace and when I can acknowledge I’m not exactly sure what to do, I should maybe go destroy all these negatives and stop cheering for the Wizards, or maybe I should just walk by faith and not worry about that because that’s what the Bible says. Once I can sit in a place of having to trust God because I don’t know exactly what to do, then I’m in a place where I’m walking correctly with God, and that is so freeing. Because it’s saying, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, and now I can be at rest and not think that I have all these hoops to jump through to be made right with God again.

Carrie: I would normalize that as a human experience of not always knowing what to do.

Michael: Absolutely.

Carrie: Some things are very clear, defined in scripture, don’t do this, yes, do this, but there are many other things that may be personal decisions about, “Do I move this year? Do I move next year? Do I not move? Does God want me to stay here?” Those types of things that we really have to wrestle through that maybe don’t have just one right answer right now, or we’re unsure of, and that’s okay. It’s hard to sit with that discomfort or the unknown piece, though.

Michael: And I think this goes back to a general issue that a lot of people with OCD have is an obsession with what is God’s will. This hit me a lot, sometimes even now. I remember in college, there were just limitless choices about everything. Should I go eat at this dining hall or that dining hall? Well, what if I go to dining hall A, and I was supposed to go to dining hall B, and I was going to bump into someone that I led to Christ, who became the next Billy Graham? By not doing God’s will, 500 million people are going to go to hell in the next generation because I didn’t go to Dining Hall B, which sounds very arrogant and presumptuous, but again, it’s all based on a fear of I might be causing all this harm, not necessarily I’m so capable I can impact things in that way.

I think another part of the freedom that I’ve come to that I talk about in chapter eight and in chapter nine, God’s grace is what frees us from that. We’re only at the bottom of all of those fears. “God is harsh, God is judgmental, and God is not for me. If I mess up just a little bit, he’s going to whack me over the head as hard as he can.” But once we realize that he’s kind and loving and gentle with us, then the fear of should I go to dining hall A or dining hall B becomes almost irrelevant. It’s like God loves me if I have a child now. If my child made a tiny error like that, she went to my bedroom instead of her bedroom to look for something.

I’m not going to be angry if she went to the wrong bedroom she’s my kid I love her and there’s just so much grace and understanding in that relationship and I think that’s what ultimately leads to long-term freedom.

Carrie: Tell us about how having a child helped you have a greater understanding of God’s grace and I resonate with that as well with my daughter. There’s just something that you feel as a parent of just that sense of, I love you and I’m for you on your best days when you’re so well-behaved and on your worst days, when all you can do is scream at me, I’m still here for you and I still love you.

Michael: I feel like it’s almost supernatural and it’s part of being created in God’s image. He loves us so much, and God the Father loves his son so much, and you just see it all through society. Even the worst of the worst people love their kids, it’s just totally ingrained in us, and I think that’s totally because we were created in his image and the same was true for me when she was born. It was just this overwhelming sense of, I love this person unconditionally. It was more than emotion. It’s more than just the will. It’s just, almost supernatural, I would say. She’s now six and a half years old. As that relationship has grown, I’m starting to see so many areas where I’m like, that’s totally how God sees me.

She’s just had a rotten day. I love her just as I did yesterday when she had a great day. She’s just so pleasing to me, and she brings joy whenever I get to see her, and whenever she walks in the room, whenever I pick her up from school, and I think we get that intellectually in church. We know God is gracious, God is good, God loves us and it’s in our head. Very successfully, it gets to our head. Getting to our heart is much harder and I think having a child made it get to the heart a lot, a lot faster than it would have.

Carrie: My daughter teaches me stuff all the time. I was telling one of my clients and we were talking about sin and grace and God’s love for us and I was saying my daughter started walking roughly around 12 months and I think she was 18 months at the time. I was like, she’s been walking for a little while, but she falls down a lot and I’m not talking about a slight stumble. I’m talking about how your face is about to hit the floor and your hands just barely caught you from face-planting.

It made me realize that in our walk with Christ, we see that when we fall God is saying, “Can’t you get it together?” Whereas it’s more like, “Okay, get up, you fell, get up, let’s move forward. Let’s keep going.” It doesn’t mean that you have to get out of the race or stop running. Just kind of dust it off and move on.

Michael: Absolutely. That is such a good picture and so much closer to reality. I feel I think as we become adults, we think there’s so much in our control and our capabilities are so high, and we’re probably a lot closer, at least our spiritual capability, like that. We just fall and fall and fall, and God’s trying to show us that it’s His grace that keeps picking us up and moving us forward.

Carrie: When you were able to examine your own OCD, did you kind of define it as legalism, or this is kind of like the legalist part of my brain? Did that have anything to do with strict church upbringing or not?

Michael: I would say yes, and I don’t want to knock on my parents or my grandfather who was a spiritual giant in a way. He grew up in Egypt and came to Christ at 17 and started a church at 22 and just had an amazing, amazing ministry in Egypt and then also when he came to the U.S. My mom obviously was heavily influenced by him and he was a huge impact on my life. I would say that there was definitely the culture difference. Number one, because they were from Egypt and formalities are a big thing there and also just our parents trying to protect us because they were so culturally different when they got to the U.S., they basically had the mindset of anything we don’t fully understand we’re going to protect them from. Even watching certain kids’ shows, like on TGI Friday, I don’t know if you remember TGIF Full House, and like there were some of those shows that were a little bit too much, we couldn’t watch those, and rock and roll was bad, tattoos were bad, long hair on men was bad, just a lot of things that they decided, let’s just cut these things off, so definitely, I would say my upbringing led to or fueled some of that legalism and OCD getting mixed.

Carrie: A lot of times I find there’s a rigidity sometimes that people are raised in, and it doesn’t always have to do spiritually sometimes it has to do with kind of things that you’re saying, just like the household rules.

You have to load the dishwasher this way, or if you did something different, it’s wrong. Don’t hang out with anybody that’s doing that thing over there. I’m curious though, a lot of your stuff was scrupulosity-related. How did you come to decipher, okay, this is God speaking to me, or I know this is something God wants and, or this is OCD because this is a question I probably get asked all the time. How do I know if I’m coming under the conviction of the Holy Spirit or if it’s OCD telling me, you need to repent, you need to confess, you need to do this, that?

Michael: One thing that really led me to not give up trying to figure out that issue was how many times in the Bible God tells us basically to test ideas. I wanted to just mention a few of them 2 Corinthians 10:5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. He’s basically saying you’re having thoughts and you can acknowledge them as being of God or not of God.

One of the biggest ones I liked was, for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart and I thought, well, sounds like the word of God is the answer to this question. Where can we get a level of discernment like this? and Division of Soul and Spirit? I read some theology, and it seems like that issue in and of itself is very complicated, but it’s almost like a promise from God, like, He’s saying you can actually understand this, and parse these thoughts from each other, using my word.

Another one is 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things, hold fast to what is good. 1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world and that’s talking more about, obviously, actual people saying things that they maybe shouldn’t, and testing what they’re saying versus the word of God, but it also applies to our minds. That led me to think, where is it in the Bible? He says that in the Word of God, or you’ll be able to use the Word of God to decipher all this and I really came down to three passages that I thought did it for me. Galatians 5:22 and 23 say that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such things there is no law.

I thought to myself, If I’m listening to thoughts, and they’re eventually leading to actions, go evangelize to that person over there, they’re gonna go straight to hell. Well, is that thought from a God that’s producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in me?

I kind of start breaking it down and I say, well, is that a gentle thought? Not really. It’s more of like a demanding, do this right now, do this right now. Which is then catalyzing really in a compulsion to go evangelize right this minute. So now I’m throwing self-control out the window. Was it brought to me in kindness? Not really. I think back to a time when I felt God called me to move. I did five years at Virginia Tech, and in my fourth year, I was in this nice, like, air-conditioned, upper-class dorm room and I just remember thinking one day, I should probably move to this all-freshman. It was this gross, non air-conditioned, freshman dorm. It kind of hit me for a couple of days, and I was feeling the same things, like, kind of guilt, is this really God? Confusion and I remember just looking up one day, I was praying, and I was facing it, it was probably a couple hundred yards away, and I could see it out of a window, and God’s peace just really came over me.

I was like, “I actually want to move there, that actually sounds like a good idea.” I was motivated, and it really sounded like the Spirit of God. I would describe experiencing the Spirit of God. There was joy. I was wanting to do it. I had peace about it. It was a very kind thought in the sense of like if you don’t do this, everyone in that building is going to go to hell.

That was not at all part of that thought. So it was gentle therefore, I was making the decision with self-control and it’s funny, right after that happened, I went back to my dorm room and a couple of hours later, my roommate came back. He’s like, “Hey, do you remember Steve? It was actually my roommate in freshman year. He wants to move into that freshman dorm across the way, and he’s looking for a roommate.” That’s funny because I just decided to move there about two hours ago, so we became roommates again, and it was pretty cool. Just starting to see how the fruits of our actions are pretty obviously indicative of us listening to God or not listening to God. So that was the first passage, and I go into way more detail in the book. Shameless plug for my book there.

Carrie: Why did you choose to write this book and share your story?

Michael: I alluded to it a little bit in the beginning. I think there were so many issues that if I had had this exact book back when I was growing up, it would have been so helpful. There’s a lot out there more now than there was when I was really in the worst parts of this, but a lot of it was just, I felt God was teaching me things, and I was reading and reading about this, and a lot of it was from the medical standpoint and the psychiatric standpoint. And there was a big gap between that and the church.

I felt like the church was, at least the churches I was involved in, leaned towards, “You are having anxiety and OCD. Well, it could be multiple things. You need to pray more. If you prayed more, you’d have the peace of God more. There’s a hidden sin in your life, and that’s why you’re struggling.”

You need to dig, which is the worst thing in the world to say to someone with OCD because now they’re fishing for something that doesn’t even exist, and they’re obsessing even more than they were, trying to find a sin that likely does not exist. They likely just have a chemical imbalance in their brain. There was that aspect of it, completely ignoring the medical aspect of it, and then there were all these brilliant medical doctors who were psychiatrists and then also the PhDs that were psychologists coming up with the truth of the medical side of it with no connection to the fact that there is a God and a Satan and there is spiritual warfare sometimes. I just felt like both sides were completely ignoring the other side and nothing was bringing more truth together.

Carrie: There’s nothing to bridge that gap between that theology and really good therapy and medical help.

Michael: Exactly.

Carrie: Usually towards the end, I ask people a couple of different questions, like, tell us a story of hope or something to your younger self, but I’m curious for you, If you will talk with us about what OCD is like now, does it still show up? It’s just you notice it and you’re more able to recognize it as OCD? I think a lot of people that I talk to, they’re just so focused on, “I want this to go away and I don’t want to deal with this long term.” I want to kind of give them some hope that just because they’re in the midst of the struggle right now, it doesn’t mean it’s always going to look that bad.”

Michael: I don’t want to embellish. I definitely still have OCD, but I would say I’ve gone from having crippling OCD back from ages 14 to 18 was really bad, and then in my early 20s right after college was really bad.

I’ve gone from that to much, much better. It’s much more manageable, and like you said, I can acknowledge what it is when I see it, as opposed to, it really took me so many years to even realize that the thoughts were completely irrational. I don’t know how many years I struggled with all of these thoughts until I realized, there’s a way to look at this and realize that some of my thoughts are totally normal and some of my thoughts make absolutely no sense at all.

I feel like once we get to that point, we’re definitely on the right track. I feel like that was a huge breakthrough. The second breakthrough for me was when, for some reason, the grace of God and the concept of grace just hit home. I listened to Dr. Tony Evans quite a bit, and he had I think it was a 10 or 11-part series on the magnificent grace of God. A few years ago, I was driving like crazy for many hours a week, and I just listened to those sermons over and over again and the crux of what he says is that the grace of God is unmerited favor, so it’s something we don’t deserve, which is great to an OCD person, because we think, “It’s my responsibility to fix the situation. That’s why we end up in these compulsive cycles, but grace eliminates that.

It’s for grace to exist, there has to be no payment for it. That’s a very freeing thing and he talks about it as an environment that is so foreign to us that it takes a long time to get used to and that was true for me. Like, I listened to them and I’m like, “The grace of God is real. It’s profound.”

This is the key to victory, but that doesn’t stop the engine still going in your brain right away. It took a long time. I listened to those sermons. I probably listened to each one at least five times, right? So that’s, what, 45 minutes each, 40 hours of just listening to “God is full of grace.” It’s hard to believe that in your heart and experience it.

He even talks about how if you move from America straight into a foreign country, everything is unnatural to you. Even going out to a meal is different. Making a phone call is probably not as easy as it is now just on your phone, you probably have to dial in some country code. Just everything. The clothing is different.

The culture’s different and he said, “That’s what grace is like.” When we realize, that it’s true, and we want to step into it, it takes a lot of getting used to. One, because it’s almost too good to be true, because the world never treats us with grace, right? Even just normal jobs, you perform and you get a raise.

If you’re off a little bit, well, we’re gonna ding you and we’re gonna notice that and relationships are the same way. Just to experience it with God takes a lot of telling yourself over and over again, essentially. You can definitely find victory and I think realizing how much God loves you, how much favor he has towards you, completely independent of your actions, is the number one thing.

It’s therapeutic to remind yourself, even just saying it right this minute. It’s just one more layer of reminding myself and experiencing that is a truth that I can speak to myself and to other people. I think that has been the most powerful thing. Essentially having a correct view of God just makes it so much easier to deal with.

Carrie: Oftentimes we project onto God, whether it’s been family members or past church leaders that may have had a little bit more of a strict view of God or harsher upbringing of God, or how we even see ourselves. I think sometimes if we don’t like ourselves and we struggle with shame and we can project that onto God, well God must not feel this way about me or that way about me. Really coming back to the true character of God and I appreciate you sharing that for so many people who are struggling today that victory doesn’t necessarily mean the elimination of all symptoms. It means that I know how to deal with these things now when they come up. I have somebody that I work with who will tell me, “This obsession came and I was like, here you are.I know who you are you’re back again,” and now is able to joke about it versus it being completely debilitating because she’s able to recognize that this is OCD. This is one of my themes that comes back around. I don’t have to totally freak out about this obsession like it wants me to. I’m just gonna like, I’m gonna move on with my life and keep doing the things that I love and want to do and are important to me.

Michael: That was very true in my life. I had a pretty harsh father, and he had a lot of great qualities, but he was definitely harsh with me specifically and I was never popular in school. I was bullied a lot. There were a lot of ways that seeing God incorrectly could show up in my developmental years for sure through those two major things. Also, having OCD probably exacerbated all of those problems, I would say, that’s why I think getting to see God correctly. We just have to constantly remind ourselves that that’s true. He is gentle and kind and loving and for us and not against us and full of favor towards us because we don’t feel that with OCD.

Carrie: I appreciate you sharing your story with us and also through your book, we’re going to put a link to that in the show notes and I’ve recommended it to some of my clients because I just feel like it’s very relatable and there’s some helpful information in there on just really examining your thought process. So thank you for coming on the show today.

Michael: Thanks so much.

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Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Tag: OCDRecovery

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