Managing OCD During Life's Challenges: Strategies and Coping Tips

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 413. I hope that you're doing very well today wherever you are and if you are struggling with OCD or anxiety and you would like to get some support with that, well you can by heading over to my website robertjamescoaching.com. There you can book in for a free session with me 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 what to do with OCD when the inevitable ups and downs of life strike. How do we keep ourself in the best possible position to be able to deal with OCD despite the fact that we might be going through difficult and emotional times in our life. This is a really important part of the process of managing OCD in the long term. If you do enjoy this podcast as you may have heard me said before it would be amazing if you could subscribe.

It really does help the podcast to grow so if you wouldn't mind subscribing I would really appreciate that and yeah I really hope that you enjoy. If you you have any questions at all about anything I speak about today do please let me know and off we go.

As always here's a quote to get us started today and it's by somebody called Michael Lee Chinn, Life is not linear. You have ups and downs. It's how you deal with the troughs that defines you. And this is a fantastic quote because it really kind of sums up what we have to do with OCD.

When you're really on top of your game, when you're feeling really good, when you're riding high, OCD tends to take, for a lot of people, not everybody, but for a lot of people, it tends to to take a bit more of a back seat you know you may have experienced this with OCD where you.

Maybe just be doing a bit better you might have a day where out of nowhere you're just feeling a little bit lighter that the obsessions are easier to deal with and you're able to manage it a bit more but the problem is as we know with life life isn't smooth progress is not linear difficulties and challenges tend to tend to appear sometimes negative things or challenging things can happen to us and we have to find a way to to navigate

that and you know when you're struggling with OCD on top of those kinds of things that can happen well you know unfortunately when we go through an emotional event challenge that really causes us to to have a lot more.

Anxiety to perhaps doubt ourselves more to to struggle with other difficult emotions other than than anxiety then of course the OCD becomes more difficult to to to manage and we can convince ourselves in in those moments that we don't have what it takes that even if we've been working on the OCD and perhaps we've made lots and lots of progress unfortunately in in these kinds of moments if you're not careful you know you can kind of catastrophize you know

when we are going through an emotional time for whatever reason and it may not actually be something that something's happened sometimes you know nothing has actually changed outwardly in our lives you know everything is pretty much the same as normal you know but but for some reason we are much more emotional we are struggling more with anxiety. We're feeling more vulnerable. And again, this is a normal part of life. This is a normal part of being a person.

We all have these kind of, you know, waves of different emotional states. And, you know, we kind of want that. We wouldn't want to be, you know, on the same level all the time. If we were just on that same emotional plane all the the time and just very just the same all the time obviously that would get quite boring and so the the change in in emotion is necessary it's a part of life.

But of course, with OCD, what can happen is when we do go through a more emotional moment, be that just because that's a normal rhythm of things, or be that because actually there's something very difficult going on in your life, it's very, very important in these moments of challenge that we manage ourselves, that we recognize that in these moments, it's much, much harder to deal with the OCD.

That's the first thing that we have to kind of do in a way is we do have to recognize that almost hold up our hands and say you know right now in this moment these things are going on or nothing's going on but I'm feeling much more vulnerable I'm feeling much more emotional I'm noticing that my mind wants to catastrophize about things and I think that word catastrophize it really sums up what I'm talking about here.

When we are in these more emotional moments, these more vulnerable moments, the temptation to catastrophize can be huge.

We can easily persuade ourselves that all of these difficult emotions are evidence that despite the progress that we believed we were making with OCD, that in fact, no, that wasn't progress at all, that we've gone back to square one we've we've really been uh been kind of tricking ourselves into believing that we've made progress that we haven't made progress at all that everything's bad and you know OCD is going to come back and it's going to ruin everything again and you know

the reality is when you're in these emotional states it's much much easier to start believing this stuff to to actually take it at face value and to think that it actually has some relevance and truth to it. Whereas a lot of the time it doesn't. It's literally just a normal pattern of emotions that for some reason you're going through a more emotional and challenging moment. And that just makes the thoughts and the obsessions seem a lot more threatening, a lot more difficult to deal with.

Or there is something that is very challenging going on in your life and that just means that you're more vulnerable too and so you know whatever difficult thoughts you know might pop up in that moment again it's going to be much more tempting and easier for us to start getting involved with them to start trying to push them away and fight with them do all the stuff that we know we shouldn't do but we kind of feel like we have to do it in order to make ourselves feel Of course,

we don't have to do it, but that's the trick of the OCD. And, you know, in these moments, it's very easy to fall back into the OCD trap. What is the OCD trap? Well, we know what that is. If you listen to this podcast on a regular basis, you know that that OCD trap is all about us looking for that certainty again, demanding that, you know, that we have to know what's going on.

We have to figure out why we're having these difficult emotions we need to get to the bottom of them you know and we start kind of getting caught up in the thoughts again and start trying to figure figure them out again have more certainty about them you know in an inadvertently of course all that is doing is getting us more and more stuck every time that we try to figure these things out or that we perform more compulsions of course

all that is actually doing is just going a a little bit deeper down into the OCD rabbit hole and the deeper down we go into that well the harder it is then to get ourselves back out again and that's the frustrating thing about the OCD trap really with OCD what we've got to learn to do is as soon as possible is to recognize it.

And to nip it in the bud the sooner that we're able to to let go of the compulsions to stop demanding the the certainty and to just allow a little bit of that emotional discomfort to just be present then you know we we begin to kind of move past that that initial challenge and you know we find ourselves able to actually deal with the OCD again but you know as soon as we get back into to pushing away and fighting with it, the opposite happens.

And so, you know, it's really just about recognizing this process and, you know, recognizing in yourself that you are going to have these more challenging moments. There are going to be times where difficult things happen or, you know, there isn't going to be difficult things happening, but for whatever reason, you are just feeling more prone to listening to your thoughts.

And if in those moments you indulge those thoughts and you start kind of falling back into old patterns and old habits, unfortunately, you know, it's very likely that you're going to get yourself stuck again.

And I think a really important thing here to talk about is habits. And really the best way to, I think, help yourself to avoid this kind of pitfall when you're having these difficult moments to kind of not get too lost in in that OCD rabbit hole is really to recognize that your habits.

Will will stop you from from kind of going down so deeply into the rabbit hole the more that you have supporting positive habits the more likely it is that you're going to almost like a trampoline you're going to go down but you're going to spring back up you're going to find a way to get yourself back to where you want to be and a bit quicker and you know it's really our habits we fall as low as as our habits will allow us to.

And so when you have things in place like exercise, for example, or you've been practicing on a regular basis, leaning into your own discomfort, you've been meditating, you've been learning how to feel difficult emotions, you've been perhaps doing wellness strategies that help you to generally feel better. Maybe you've even been exploring cold showers, for example. All of these things can be helpful in their way.

But when you have habits like this, it really supports you when you have these difficult moments to come back out of it again and to find a way through it. And that's really what it's all about. You know, the more that you can work on building habits that support you, I think it really does help in these difficult moments to just find a way through it.

And you know if we don't get caught up in the ruminations if we don't get caught up in the compulsions well often you know the emotional moment begins to pass the challenge that life presents begins to resolve itself in some way and we're able to start finding our way a bit better again so really kind of trying to to think about what those habits are for you what are some things that you do do already that help can you make sure that you keep up with those things and are there new

things that you could add in that generally really help you to to feel a bit better.

That will help you to manage OCD when these more difficult moments which are inevitable at times you know come in so there we go guys I really hope that you enjoyed that one if you have any questions at all about anything I've spoken about today do please let me know and also please do subscribe it really does help the podcast if you wouldn't mind subscribing that would be amazing many thanks and 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 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. Music.