OCD & the Longing to Feel Normal

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 503 i hope that you're doing very well today before we dive into today's episode if you're feeling stuck with ocd or anxiety and you're ready to start making real progress i want to invite you to book a free discovery call with me it's a chance to talk through at what you're going through to see what's keeping you stuck and to explore whether coaching could help you to move forward. Just head over to robertjamescoaching.com to book your free call.

Now on to today's episode. That longing to be like everyone else, to not obsess, to not overthink every moment, every thought, every breath. If you've been living with OCD, you've probably felt it. A deep painful sense that you've been robbed of something that other people get to kind of take for granted.

In today's episode we're talking about that longing, what's behind it, why it runs so deep and how OCD traps us in a cycle where we feel broken, different or like we're always lagging behind in some way. I really hope that you find the episode helpful.

If you have any questions at all, do please let me know. And off we go. It was 10 years ago now that I moved to Barcelona. And a big part of the reason for that change was actually trying to deal with OCD and anxiety in a better way, to kind of move to a new place, to have a new start.

And I think I believe that by doing this, by having more sunshine, by living in a beautiful city like Barcelona, that it was really going to help me to finally put OCD in its place so that I could be normal like everybody else. I could start enjoying myself and start living my life more, you know, without OCD being there in the background all the time, kind of making things much more difficult.

And, you know, although maybe the first few months were very exciting, I was I was so happy to to kind of be here to, you know, to be enjoying that sunshine and living more in the moment. And everything was new. And, you know, it was a really great time. After a few months, you know, this kind of quiet disappointment began to kind of arrive at my door where I realized that the OCD hadn't gone anywhere.

It was still there it was still kind of you know the same cycles were running the same themes were there in the background only I'd now changed the scenery and there was this real frustration and disappointment that kind of came in at you know at that moment when I realized that you know there was still a lot of work to do in order to start managing OCD and I think a big part of the problem of OCD is that we get so fixated on this idea that we are broken in some way, that we're not normal.

And we have to completely fix that before we're able to start living our lives. And certainly that was the case for me. But actually, this was really holding me back. Unfortunately, OCD tends to kind of propagate this longing.

It uses it against us when we're really kind of getting caught up in these ideas of you know this is how life should be you know that problem from the past well i can have certainty about it if i think about it enough and then i can be normal then i can be happy or thinking about the future trying to think about all the things that could go wrong and and mitigating all of those things well doing that is going to make me happy but of course all we're actually doing

is getting caught up in rumination trying to have certainty we're trying to avoid things we're trying to to not have self-doubt and all of these things they keep us in that OCD trap it was a few years after arriving here that I finally and began to kind of realize that things really were beginning to change with my OCD but this time in a much deeper way and it was a lot more to do with accepting the fact that I was struggling not trying to demand that I feel a certain way all the time.

You know, acknowledging that I was going to at times feel very uncomfortable. At times I was going to struggle with obsessions and that actually as long as I chose to kind of focus on what was important to me rather than getting rid of those things all the time, that actually I could still be happy. For so long, I think with OCD, I was telling myself until this is gone, it's going to ruin everything for me. I'm not going to be able to enjoy my life.

I'm not going to be able to have a kind of satisfying, happy relationship.

My work is going to you know it's going to suffer because of this everything in my life is going to suffer because of this and of course when we kind of get really caught up in that story well it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy fortunately for me i think i started to kind of see this more clearly i started to slow down a little bit it was around about this time that i i took a year off drinking alcohol altogether and of course that really helped me to to reflect a bit more on

my situation to see some of the kind of common mistakes that i was making a lot of the time i was really pushing away difficult emotions i wasn't allowing them to be there and actually.

When you begin to slow down and you start practicing allowing difficult emotions to be there in the background or even you know trying to be curious about them trying to focus on them more this is when you start to kind of allow that anxiety and allow those other uncomfortable emotions that are associated with OCD to just be you know if we're always trying to push them down or push them away you know we're not allowing ourselves to learn that those things although they're uncomfortable they

are actually things that you know you can be present to and you can experience and you can feel and when you do well often they begin to kind of move to kind of move along in my experience recovery from ocd isn't isn't kind of clean it's often messy it's a gradual process it's it's certainly not a linear process you can really make a load of progress with your ocd you can be really knocking out of the park maybe you're doing exposure activities and you're really living by

your values but then there might be setbacks and difficult moments you know and this is part of the process and when we acknowledge that and we accept that and we keep trying to move despite the fact that there might be these difficult moments well this is when you start building more and more confidence in yourself and proving to yourself that over time you really can change.

Managing OCD is tough but progress really is possible with the right support, Here's what one of my clients had to say about our work together. I'm very grateful to Rob for his terrific service. With his support, I have been able to make great progress in managing my OCD. Through the techniques, strategies and knowledge Rob introduces, I feel more balanced and equipped than ever.

It's reassuring for me that I'm working with somebody who uses their personal experience of struggle and hardship at combined with their hard work in pursuit of recovery passing down the gold on what works and what doesn't a reliable down-to-earth lovely fellow that will help you foster a healthier attitude towards yourself and your experience with anxiety and OCD thanks a heap for what you do Rob looking forward to continuing

our work together Rory if you're ready to take a step forward I offer a free 30-minute discovery call.

You'll get a chance to share what you're going through and I'll let you know how I might be able to help. No pressure, just clarity. So you can head over to robertjamescoaching.com to book your spot today. I think another important thing here is to kind of question this idea of normal. What does that even mean anyway? Everybody is complicated, of course. If you struggle with OCD, then your situation might be even more complicated.

But this idea of normal, I don't think it's necessarily very helpful. I think everybody is different. Everybody has their own specific things that they struggle with. I think most people, when you really kind of speak to them and really kind of have a deep conversation with somebody.

You may find that, although of course they may not struggle with OCD, they may have all sorts of difficult things in their life they may have may have struggled with very hard difficult experiences you know and to kind of bring this idea of you know there's normal people And then there's people with OCD or with this disorder. You know, when we bring that kind of mindset to the table, again, it becomes a bit of a limiting belief.

So rather than focusing so much on this idea of normal, I think it's much more important if we can to kind of slow down a little bit and to think about, well, what's actually really important? You know, are you connecting with the person that you really want to be? Have you decided kind of, you know, what you want to do over the next few years?

What's really important to you what kind of person you want to be how you want to show up in the world you know because if we can focus on those things despite the fact that OCD is there in the background sometimes well you know very often we begin to feel normal anyway when we're constantly searching for that feeling of normality I think it can evade us and it can feel you know it can feel much more difficult.

One of the most powerful things you can learn to deal with OCD is moving forward in your life despite the fact that there's perhaps imperfection there, there's uncertainty there. When we can do that, that's a really empowering thing. It's something that I really had to start doing, you know, those years ago now when I was in Barcelona and I was really struggling with this stuff, I think I realized that I do have much more power in my hands than I've been giving myself credit for.

And when I really take action despite the fact that I'm not feeling at normal right now, well that's when things can really begin to change. If you're longing to feel how you did before OCD, well you're not alone. That longing makes sense but it doesn't need to guide your action.

Recovery starts when we let go of chasing normal and begin showing up for life as it is right now. Many thanks guys. I really hope that you found that helpful. Please remember that 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. And now just a. Music.