500 Episodes In: The 7 Lessons That Changed Everything

Music. Hello and welcome to the OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears.

Hello and welcome to episode 500 of the OCD and Anxiety podcast by Robert James Coaching. I honestly can't believe that we've made it this far and I just want to start by saying thank you. Whether you've listened to one episode or all 500, your support means the world to me. I started this podcast to share what I'd actually been learning myself through my own recovery and coaching journey and it's been such a privilege to connect with so many of you around the world.

So here we are 500 episodes in and I'm just getting started. If this podcast has helped you in any way I'd absolutely love it if you could subscribe and stick around for the next 500.

There's so much more to share and please remember if you are struggling with OCD and anxiety and you would like some support with that well i offer a free discovery call to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com there's a link in the show notes today's episode is a little bit different i'll be reflecting on some of the most important lessons that i've learned from doing 500 episodes on ocd and anxiety about recovery

self-compassion attention identity and the surprising things that actually begin to move the needle when dealing with OCD. So I really hope that you enjoy. If you have any questions at all, do please let me know. And off we go.

Over the years of doing this podcast, I've learned so much about OCD and anxiety from my own personal experiences of dealing with OCD, from interviewing many different guests, but also from reflecting about it and speaking about it so much on a regular basis. And of course, coaching many people who struggle with OCD. Today's episode is all about giving you practical tips and tools to be able to help you to manage OCD and even to start healing it much more effectively in the long term.

Number one, the stories that hold us back. One of the biggest things that I've realized about my OCD over the years is that for so long, I had this kind of narrative that I was broken.

You know, that I had to kind of fix myself, that there was something inherently wrong with me and that's why I was experiencing all of these obsessions and feeling the need to do these compulsions all the time but actually that was a limiting belief that was a story that I was telling myself and it was really stopping me from kind of taking the right kind of action that would actually help me with the OCD I think so many people have these kind of limiting beliefs

that are going on that are holding them back that that stops us from taking action and so it can be really helpful to reflect on your situation what are some of the typical stories or narratives that you tell yourself that actually aren't true that perhaps you you need to feel certain before you take action or perhaps that you you can't do this thing because it reminds you of an obsession or the difficult emotions that come up around that

thing you know these are just stories that we tell ourselves and when we're able to actually you know know what those are write them down somewhere and bring a bit more awareness to them it allows us to to kind of start the process of being able to let them go and to start writing ourselves a new more positive and more helpful story number two managing OCD is the first step.

Healing is real too and you know what i've found with with this is i think when we're first beginning to deal with ocd when you know maybe you get a diagnosis or you finally realize that you're struggling with ocd well the first thing that you need to do is to learn about it to research it maybe you need to listen to podcasts and read books and and find out about what ocd actually is how it functions and then you need to start getting tools that help you to manage it and this is where things

like acceptance commitment therapy exposure can be very helpful because these things can teach us to to manage the ocd to deal with it you know to get on with our lives despite the fact that we might be getting intrusive thoughts or very difficult emotions.

Coming up or the urges to perform compulsions you know and this is really important that we learn to do this because it enables us to start living our lives again despite the fact that ocd might be there in the background at times but you know another another thing to think about is actually healing that OCD you know I actually personally think this has a lot more to do with allowing yourself to feel the difficult emotions that we experience underneath the OCD and

this is a kind of a much more difficult and long task it's a bit of a journey you know learning to heal OCD and where that's coming from but it's all to do with learning how to allow those.

Difficult emotions to come up to the surface and to allow ourselves to feel them and you know this is something that i i work i work on with with people too i work with myself with it because it's an ongoing process for me but it's something that is you know very gratifying when you're able to actually start allowing yourself to feel difficult emotions this is when you start getting freedom true freedom from them and you're not just managing it actually now because you're feeling

those difficult emotions well you start to become alleviated from all of that and life starts to become a little bit easier you're not being held back all the time by these you know very difficult emotions you're not resisting them so much and when we stop resisting well we can start living more fully we can be more authentic we can live our life in that more authentic way number three tolerance leads to acceptance so what do i mean about this well i think sometimes that

word acceptance it gets thrown around a lot hey you just need to accept your anxiety and then you're going to be okay and it's quite frustrating sometimes when we hear that because of course you know if we just could accept it then we would have already done that and we wouldn't be dealing with this anymore but you know often it isn't that simple and this is part of kind of learning how to manage OCD I think.

At first, what we need to learn to do is to recognize that these difficult emotions, the anxiety, the shame, the discomfort of it all, these are actually things that we can learn to tolerate. We don't have to fully accept them at first. Of course, that may be our goal in the long term. But I think the first step towards acceptance is actually tolerating, allowing these things to be here, you know, not fighting with them quite so much, not pushing them away quite so much.

And, you know, I think tolerating sometimes is a better word for describing what you initially have to do when you're first learning to deal with OCD is you have to learn how to allow these things to be there. And by doing so, when you stop fighting and resisting them so much. You know, of course, they do become a little bit easier to deal with.

Number four, self-compassion is your secret weapon for dealing with OCD. So why is self-compassion so important? Well, you know, the voice of OCD, it's really the inner critic. It's this part of us that really wants perfection all the time. It wants us to feel good all the time. It wants us to always be getting stuff right, never making mistakes, you know, and it really kind of drives the OCD forward. Now, not all perfectionism is bad. If you think of yourself as a perfectionist,

well, that's okay. But often there's a form of kind of maladaptive perfectionism. And this is where we demand way too much from ourselves. We don't allow for any mistakes. We demand perfection in all sorts of different areas of life. And that's when it can kind of really take over. And the voice of the inner critic... Is very much related to this. The inner critical voice speaks with imperatives.

It tells us that we have to be better, that we must do things like this, that we should never make any mistakes. It tends to be very harsh, very judgmental, putting you down, telling you that you shouldn't experience intrusive thoughts.

You should be able to manage this, that other people don't deal with this so why are you dealing with it and we tend to beat ourselves up and really put ourselves down and in the process of course the OCD gets worse and worse our inner child which is another part of the psyche where it tends to feel really bad when it hears all of this abuse from the inner critic and you know self-compassion in a way is all about getting in touch with

another part of us You know, and that's what I call the inner parent. The inner parent is really a symbol for your inner wisdom, you know, and it has this ability to kind of, you know, to nurture us when we need that nurturing. You know, self-compassion, of course, involves nurturing. We need to tell ourselves things like, it's okay that I made a mistake or. You know, it's allowed that I'm not feeling the way I want to feel right now.

Or you know i did perform that compulsion but hopefully i won't do it again later and you know i'm allowed to do this imperfectly so that's one part of of kind of self-compassion but another less talked about part is actually you know kind of structure and discipline and you don't really think about that when you think of self-compassion so what do i mean about that what i simply mean with structure you know thinking about what your values and your

goals are and of course this is kind of coming into acceptance commitment therapy but it's like we need to know you know what we're going to refocus on when we find ourselves getting caught up in obsessive thoughts and if you know what those things are it's much easier for you to kind of to get on and to kind of let go of the obsessions you know so providing that structure where you know you've got things maybe planned into your day the stuff that you're going to do it actually

helps you because it gives you positive things to focus your attention onto and therefore to kind of let go of all the all of the rumination and looking for certainty that OCD typically causes in us and another part is that kind of discipline which is doing things doing difficult things that we know is actually going to lead to us feeling better. Now of course this relates to exposure you know nobody wants to do an exposure activity but we know that actually in the.

Long term when you do that it leads to you feeling better and that's why actually discipline can be a form of self-compassion exercise is another kind of discipline that leads to self-compassion because it makes you feel better. And typically what I've found is that when we're more compassionate with ourselves, when we're more willing to allow for imperfection, you know, we become less rigid.

And OCD is very much associated with rigidity when we are, you know, very determined that things are going to have to be a certain way. And if they're not, then we're not going to be happy. We're not going to be able to move forward with our lives. Well, that's when we remain stuck. When we bring self-compassion into the mix, well, we loosen things up a little bit and we kind of give ourselves permission, you know, for things to not be perfect. And actually, that can really, really help.

Number five, exposure alone isn't enough. You know, exposure activities are fantastic. You know, learning how to put yourself in uncomfortable situations if you do that in a responsible way. You know, you don't push yourself too quickly. you don't jump into the deep end too quickly, you kind of build a ladder maybe of different exposures and you start off slowly, it can be really beneficial in helping you to learn to deal with OCD.

But in my opinion, it's not enough alone because maybe you learn to habituate to one particular fear, but then it's likely that the OCD is just going to jump onto a different theme or something else this is where i think things like acceptance commitment therapy can be really really helpful because mindfulness which is a big part of act you know it really teaches us to to breathe to be generally more in the present to have more awareness of our thoughts of our

bodily sensations and therefore you know to begin to be able to kind of spot ocd as it shape shifts. OCD is very good. It's very sneaky, kind of changing into, you know, different forms. And, you know, I think something like acceptance commitment therapy, it can really teach you how to be more aware, how to be aware of intrusive thoughts, aware of our triggers. It helps us to be aware of the cycle of OCD and how that works.

And when you start recognizing all of these things it doesn't matter if your OCD changes theme you start recognizing the more familiar patterns of OCD and how to let go of it no matter you know if it's kind of one form or another and so I think a really powerful thing to kind of add on to exposure is something like acceptance commitment therapy because I think it helps you to apply exposure in a kind of more powerful way Although ERP and exposure are very powerful, they often need scaffolding.

They need extra support. You know, if you're practicing things like acceptance commitment therapy or learning how to feel difficult emotions in a mindful way. Well, whilst you're doing the exposure, you've now got some tools that will help you to deal with the anxiety that's coming up. And, you know, also maybe after you've done an exposure activity, well, maybe you want to go and do something else altogether now. You want to refocus your attention onto the present moment and valued activities.

And yet again, this is something that acceptance commitment therapy can really help you with.

Number six, anxiety is energy and we need to let it move. You know, when we're really struggling with anxiety, it feels like it's stuck somewhere in the body. It's not moving. It's making us feel awful. We're getting all of these physical symptoms of anxiety. We're hating it. And, you know, something that I've really learned about anxiety over the years is that actually anxiety isn't stationary in the body. It's kind of sometimes it might get a bit trapped somewhere.

But when you pay attention to it, it's a bit like electricity. It's kind of got energy. It's moving a little bit. And when we really learn how to pay attention to it, we focus our attention on it much more intently. We're willing to feel it. This is when that kind of anxious energy can start moving. We begin to process it. It kind of starts to move around the body and even sometimes we just can't completely let go of it altogether.

I think it's important to understand that the body wants to release this anxious energy, but it's our minds, our thoughts, our actions that stops that from happening. When we actually allow ourselves to feel these difficult emotions, that's when actually they're able to kind of move on and that energy kind of moves out of the body.

And number seven, you are not alone. After 500 episodes and years of coaching people with OCD and anxiety, one truth remains and that is there are millions of people around the world who really do struggle with these things and I think it's really important to understand that when I was really struggling you know I didn't open up to people I felt so alone and it was such a you know such an awful experience to kind of go through without the support of other people and

I really do think it's important that you find a. Way to to speak to trusted people in your life that you can open up to whether that's a parent or a close friend somebody that you really trust or of course ideally you would be speaking to a therapist about about your OCD a coach somebody who can really help you to learn you know how to kind of deal with it more effectively try not to keep it to yourself because you know obviously sharing with other people can really

help you to learn how to manage that OCD more effectively and you know it can stop you from from feeling so alone so many thanks guys i really hope that you enjoyed that remember i do offer a free discovery call to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com there's a link in the show notes many thanks and please do subscribe it really does help other people who might need to find this content to find it and now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer any information. Music.