Holding Your Head Up High: Navigating OCD With Confidence

The OCD and Anxiety Podcast by Robert James Coaching. Music.

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

Hello and welcome to episode 385. I hope that you're doing marvelously well today however if you are struggling with OCD or anxiety as you may know you can get a free session with me to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com there you can book in for that free session or if you prefer you can send me a message and let me know about what you're struggling with.

In today's podcast I'm going to be talking about a fairly difficult idea in a way but it's this concept of navigating OCD with confidence despite the fact that you know know that can be incredibly hard to do at times because OCD tends to to kind of rob us of that confidence at times so today I'm going to be talking about that and I think it's a really important topic to to discuss if you find the podcast helpful it'd be great if you could follow and like on Instagram my Instagram handle is at

robertjamescoachinguk also you can follow along now on YouTube there's also a Facebook group you can sign up for so there we go guys I really hope that you enjoy this one if you have any questions at all do please let me know and off we go.

Here's a couple of quotes to get us started today. And the first is by Max L. Foreman. Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level. And I love this quote. I think it's really apt, actually, and correct. You know, we should try our best to hold our heads up, to, you know, to be confident in ourselves.

But you know to to a certain degree sometimes you don't want to be overly confident so so much that you're kind of looking down at people you know and if you're struggling with OCD and anxiety well most probably you're not in too much danger of doing that you know because actually it's the opposite a lot of the time it's very difficult to hold up your head when you're struggling with all of these obsessions and maybe with the shame and guilt of what you're what you're experiencing with with

the thoughts that you might be having so it can be incredibly hard to have sustained confidence when you're when you're kind of feeling this way here's a another quote by Helen Keller never bend your head always hold it high look the world straight in the eye and Helen Keller and you know an amazing person with what she achieved in her life and you know and I really I really feel that there's a lot of uh a. Lot of wisdom and importance to uh to be gained from people like this who've overcome

a lot of adversity in their life and still manage to have this kind of positive outlook and you know so much of getting over OCD I think involves trying to find from somewhere this inner result this inner strength that we all have you know to be able to kind of take on challenges in a new and different way to see OCD from a different perspective and to try to kind of chip away at the old behaviors that kind of kept you kept you trapped.

And, you know, this takes real resolve, resilience, inner strength. All sorts of different things that we need to find from within us to be able to kind of take on the challenge of OCD. Of course, a lot of the time it involves doing things like exposure work, leaning into the discomfort.

Some of the time it involves, you know, doing things like acceptance commitment therapy, actively coming back to the present moment, refocusing your attention onto your values, onto what's important to you, and allowing the uncomfortable feelings to be there in the background.

All of these things they take a certain level of confidence you know even if it's sometimes it's a kind of form of confidence that you're kind of putting on to a certain extent or you're trying to convince yourself that you're feeling confident even when you're not uh feeling 100 percent you know that you actually are and you know i feel i feel like a lot of the time this is what we have have to do with OCD, rather than wait to feel a certain way before taking action,

we actually have to acknowledge that perhaps in this moment, we're not feeling the way in which we would really like to be feeling. Perhaps we are really feeling very anxious and we are really, really struggling with the intrusive thoughts and we're really feeling that we're not going to have success. We're not feeling confident. And unfortunately, you know, it's very hard to get going when you feel that way. But we have to find a way to get going despite all of this.

You know, and this is kind of really a kind of tenant of acceptance commitment therapy. That, you know, we need to get back into our lives and bring along these difficult emotions and thoughts. Bring them along for the journey. We don't need to wait to get rid of all those things.

In order for us to start living our lives in the way that we truly want to be doing OCD wants us to be waiting it doesn't want us to be out there living our lives and when we truly are living our lives in a way that is really meaningful to us you know we're actually following what our heart desires we are you know getting getting busy with the real things in life that actually make a difference to us whatever that is because at different stages

of life those are going to be different things for you in my 20s surfing was the most important thing for me you know and when I was surfing I felt a lot better I didn't have as much OCD and anxiety and it really helped me to feel much much more present when you're when you're surfing a wave you can't really be so focused on on anxiety and OCD you have to pay attention to what you're doing otherwise you could end up in a fairly uncomfortable situation and

you know so surfing really helped me in my 20s even though I was going through the worst time with the OCD that was something that I found you know really helped me to to find some confidence within myself and to kind of hold my head up high you know I really enjoyed surfing. I really enjoyed that kind of that lifestyle and it was something I was, I was quite passionate about. You know, and it's really reflecting on your stage of life, what's happening in your life.

Maybe you have family and that's really important to you. Maybe you're really invested in your career and that's very important to you. But it's kind of figuring out what are the important things for you right now and how can you kind of build your life, you know, to make it even more balanced around. OK, maybe there's one or two things that are really important and you really want to focus on those things.

But can you also bring more balance to the other areas of life that are important to to family to friendships to hobbies and activities that are meaningful and purposeful for you I think when we have more of this balance going on and you know we're more occupied by things that are interesting to us in our day-to-day life it's much less likely that we're going to get so caught up in things of course OCD isn't just going to disappear when we start doing this OCD will

will most probably still be there in the background sometimes but anxiety tends to take a little bit of a back seat when we're focusing our attention more on to other things and it's important to point out here though you know the it's almost the the quality of how we're redirecting our attention that determines whether we are kind of distracting ourselves in a helpful and positive way or whether we're doing it in a kind of slightly nervous anxious compulsive way.

And if we're able to bring this level of kind of mindfulness to focusing on what is important to us, if we're able to, whenever we get distracted by our thoughts, remind ourselves that it's okay, you know, that we don't need to kind of get so caught up in that, that we can accept that, and that we just bring our attention back to the present without getting so caught up in judgment. Judgment is one of those things that just makes OCD a lot, lot worse.

In fact judgment a lot of the time is the thing that's pushing OCD on and so you know if we get caught up in that well that's not very helpful the idea is just to keep bringing your attention back back to the present and as we do this we start to develop more confidence in ourselves we start seeing that actually despite the fact that you know we're feeling anxious that OCD is.

Still there in the background we do have this ability to refocus our attention we don't have to keep you know going around in circles with those thoughts you know that we do have this choice and you will probably know that i speak about choice a lot on this podcast and it's such an important word when we feel empowered and that we and that we feel that we have a choice well it's much easier for us to move forward in our lives because we recognize that when we

get caught up in rumination in thinking in in uh in anxiety you know that that we do have this ability to move our attention back to something else something more interesting something more related to our values and when we feel that and we actually act on that on a regular basis what it builds this kind of resolve this purpose this inner strength you know and in a way you know when you when you do that over time it really does help you to to build up the sense of well you know

I'm perhaps a stronger person than I thought I was telling myself for for all these years that you know the OCD was getting the better of me that I was weak in regards to the OCD that it was always going to of have the upper hand and actually you know you start to prove to yourself that that isn't quite true that you know you do have much more ability to kind of choose where your. Attention is going to go and therefore you know whether your OCD is going to.

Continue to to kind of wind you up in in the short term and median term or whether. Actually you know you're going to start taking different action that's going to lead you in a different direction in your life you know and And building confidence is all about. Taking small steps each day that kind of start proving to you that, you know, you can start living your life in this way that is much more about your values, is much more about your inner purpose than it is about your fears.

Fears when we are really caught up in OCD it's almost like we put our heads down we are we're looking downwards we're focused on our fears we're focused on the negativity that OCD creates and you know I've been there myself with this I know it's incredibly difficult when you're going through it it can be so hard to actually hold up your head and say no I'm not going to focus on this I'm going to focus on what's important to me I'm not going to allow my attention to to

drift downwards onto these obsessions onto these fears instead I'm going to keep on trying to lift up my head no matter how hard that might be and I might not be completely successful at that I might have to keep on repeatedly you know reminding myself to lift up my head and to take in the bigger picture Because when we lift up our heads, well, it gives us an opportunity to really take in all of the things that are actually out there in our lives that perhaps we haven't really been paying as

much attention to as we would like. You know, when we lift up our heads, we're really looking at our higher values, our higher purpose. We're giving ourselves an opportunity to live the life in a way in which we want to do it. And as I pointed out, we need to bring self-compassion to any kind of new approach that we're trying to do.

So if you are trying to do this, if you are trying to bring kind of more confidence to the experience of navigating OCD, then remember as well, it's really important that you are compassionate with yourself as you're trying to do this. You don't need to be perfect at it just because I'm talking about it here in this podcast. If you try it, you may be successful at it. Sometimes. It may be really difficult though. It may only be successful some of the time. That doesn't matter.

The idea is just to kind of try if you can and just plug away. And you know, if you are straight away successful at doing that, then that's fantastic. But if you're not, that's also okay. You know, there's this part of OCD that tends to come up where it kind of demands perfection from us.

It wants us to kind of do something and then straight away be able able to do it and then you know we kind of feel that if we're not able to do it straight away well that's just a sign that you know this thing doesn't work for us and you know we might as well just give up on it and again I think that's just another kind of typical way that OCD likes to kind of keep us in the trap in the trap so you know if you are struggling you know with with with building new habits or trying to

learn new skills in relation to managing your OCD just remind yourself that actually that's completely normal that's a really normal part of the process if you keep plugging away and just trying every day to just push yourself a little bit you know to try to hold up your head a little bit and focus on what is important to you getting on with uh small tasks and goals each day that get you moving towards things that are actually important you know then then over

time that's going to get easier and hopefully that's also going to help with the OCD. So there we go, guys. I really hope that you enjoyed that one. If you have any questions at all, do please let me know and I will see you next time.

Just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session, all you need to do to get that is to head over to my website www.robertjamescoaching.com and there you can leave me a message and we can arrange the free session, and now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer any information that you view on my website Instagram page Facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for

actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor psychologist or any other medical or mental health professional. Music.