Taking Action with OCD: Even When You're Not Ready

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 486 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 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. OCD has this way of tricking us into believing that we need to be ready before we take action but actually this is something that tends to hold us back.

In today's episode I'm going to be talking about why it's so important to take action even when you're not feeling completely ready.

If you find this podcast helpful do please consider leaving us a review whether that's on Spotify or Apple Podcasts it really does help things and if you would like to subscribe that would also be amazing so many thanks and if you have any questions at all do please let me know off we go don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do uh john wooden and i love this quote because so often you know we're we're focused on ocd on our limiting beliefs the

things that we tell ourselves about about ocd about our ability to change about our ability to deal with discomfort and anxiety and we tell ourselves these very negative stories we convince ourselves that that we can't change you know the OCD has created this situation where you know whenever a certain thought or situation comes up that we have to do these compulsions you know we can't not do that because you know it's it creates this awful anxiety and we feel that we have to give in to it.

That we're kind of powerless in this situation and that simply isn't true at all but in order for us to kind of prove that to ourselves we have to be willing to start taking action when we're not really feeling kind of ready and as was pointed out in that quote there might be all sorts of things that you can't do right now but that doesn't mean that you won't be able to do them in the future and actually the only way that you're going to be able to prove that to yourself is to start

kind of taking action today to really focus on you know what are some of some of the things that you can start doing that are going to enact change in your life and you know as I talk about a lot on this podcast it's not necessarily about throwing yourself into the deep end and doing you know the most difficult exposures first it's about thinking about what can I do today what are some small steps that I can take that will get me moving in the right direction?

I think so often we put ourselves under enormous pressure, you know, where we're like, well, I have to do this and I have to do that because only once I've done those things would I feel that I've really kind of put OCD in its place. I've overcome my fears. I've pushed past my boundaries.

But again, that's a limiting belief you don't have to take on the biggest things maybe in the end maybe a few years down the line or a few months down the line those are things that you want to do but in order for you to kind of build up to that you have to start taking smaller steps today. And, you know, I think so often with OCD, we're waiting to feel a certain kind of way until we take that action.

Certainly that was true for me. I kind of felt that in order for me to kind of move forward with OCD, well, first of all, I had to feel the right way. I had to reduce the anxiety or I had to feel the right level of confidence in myself. You know, I had to know the exact way I was going to do the thing.

I needed to do all of these steps first and then i could kind of take on that that problem but again this this holds you back if you have that kind of perspective you know you're going to be waiting and waiting and waiting before you you do the things that you know you need to do in order to kind of enact that change you know so if there's something that you you really want to do if there's an exposure activity that you would really

like to do or you know there's something that you've been putting off for a long time, something that you've been avoiding. Rather than looking at that whole problem and feeling a bit overwhelmed by it, which again, I think is a big problem in OCD, we tend to look at the whole big problem. We look at the monster, the entire monster, and we think, well, how am I going to fight that? How am I going to overcome that huge obstacle?

Whereas really, we want to look at one small part of it. We want to look at its foot, And we want to tackle that first. And if you can think about it that way, what can I get started with today? What's a small step that I could take today that will prove to myself that actually I can begin to lean into that discomfort with that particular obsession? I can get started with it.

And when you do get started, even if you're not feeling 100% confident yet, even if you're, you know, you're not feeling great, you know, that's really proving to yourself that you can do this. And again, in order for exposure to work, there really does need to be some discomfort.

You know if you're not pushing yourself out of your your comfort zone at all then whatever you're doing probably it's not going to have that much of a kind of impact in your nervous system in order to kind of create new neuro pathways we need to do things with that have a kind of strong emotional resonance to them you know and so if you're doing something that does create discomfort even just a little bit of discomfort well that's

something that you're going to remember it's something that's going to stay there in your nervous system you've pushed yourself forward a little bit you've leaned into your discomfort and the more that you can find little ways to do that each day particularly when you're not feeling ready when you are feeling a bit kind of uh uncomfortable you know it can it can really help and this is something that i've had to do in many different areas in my life you know so often i've

not been ready to take the action but you know i really recognized. You know, when I started to work on my OCD, that that kind of perspective was holding me back and stopping me making the progress that I desperately wanted to make. Because of course, you know, we have to make these decisions with OCD.

You know, am I going to stay stuck in OCD, in my safe place, in my safe zone, where I'm not taking on challenges, I'm not allowing risk I'm not allowing discomfort or anxiety you know because you can do that but then of course you know we stay stuck in OCD and that's what I did for a long time you know but when I did decide to start pushing myself even just a little bit with with small simple steps you know when I. That's when I actually started to see that I was beginning to make that progress.

And over time, it builds up. It isn't just something, you know, that kind of stays the same. You know, as you begin to push yourself, increases more and more, you start to get more confidence in yourself. Exponentially, you start realizing that, you know, you can do many more things than you thought. You start to get more and more confidence in your ability to change. And this is when OCD takes a backseat in your life.

It's no longer such a big thing because you've proved to yourself that you can feel difficult emotions. You can allow anxiety to be there in the background. You don't have to feel just right before you take action.

And that's a really liberating thing to experience. experience so many thanks please do 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 and i will see you next time. Music.