Unlock Emotional Freedom: The 60-Second OCD Shift

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 496 i hope that you're doing very well today and if you are struggling with ocd or anxiety and you would like to get some support 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. In today's episode, I'm talking about a one minute shift for OCD that can really help you to start building a better relationship with anxiety by allowing yourself to feel it in your body.

It's a really powerful process and something that really helps me a lot. If you find this podcast helpful, it would be great if you could leave us a review. It only takes a minute or two and it really does help. And if you have any questions at all about anything I speak about today, do please let me know. Off we go.

One of the most important things for me in learning to manage OCD and anxiety has actually been learning how to feel anxiety in the body. For many, many years, I was always trying to fix the anxiety. I was trying to figure out the obsessions. I was to have more certainty about them. I would go around in circles in my head, ruminating about things for potentially hours at a time. And of course, all this was actually doing was perpetuating the cycle of OCD.

The more that we think about something, the more that we try to figure it out. You know, we're actually fueling the OCD. We're making ourselves more stuck because thinking about it in this way is actually a compulsion.

When you can learn how to allow the uncertainty to be there And instead to move your attention to the body in these situations and allow yourself to feel the discomfort of being triggered by a thought, not trying to figure it out straight away, not trying to have that certainty, but allowing those uncomfortable emotions to be there in your body. Now, of course, on one level, that does not sound very nice at all. Maybe you're doing everything you can to not allow yourself to feel those difficult

emotions. You're resisting them. You're performing compulsions because actually that gives you a kind of sense of control over those difficult emotions. And really, this is a big part, I think, of where OCD comes from, when we're pushing away those difficult emotions all the time, you know, by performing compulsions.

Well, in the short term, it helps us to feel better. But actually, in the medium and long term, it tends to make things a lot worse because we're not teaching ourselves that actually we can feel those difficult emotions.

We don't always have to push them away. and if we can feel those difficult emotions you know then then it's likely that we're not going to feel so trapped anymore moving forward because i think when you always feel that you you need to get rid of an emotion in the body you know that you're not willing to to feel it then of course it's going to feel like a really uncomfortable place to be when you're in your body you're going to feel kind of trapped. Almost imprisoned by your emotions.

And real freedom from that comes when you allow yourself, when you realize on a kind of deep bodily level that it's okay for you to feel these things. It may not be pleasant. It may not be comfortable. You may not like it, it's definitely not enjoyable at all to experience those things.

But it's so much better actually to allow yourself to feel the discomfort of your emotions than the alternative, which is doing OCD, getting caught up in the thoughts all the time, getting caught up in the rituals and the various different compulsions that we do, because that's the end result of not allowing yourself to feel those difficult emotions.

You know so how do we go about that well for me it's about you know practicing something on a regular basis and that is a simple 60 second check-in and this is something that you can practice maybe four or five times a day or a little bit more and the idea is that for 60 seconds you're just going to to check in with your body if you're feeling anxiety in that moment great but it doesn't always have to be when you're feeling anxiety. The idea is just to check in with what you're feeling.

So maybe you can take a deep breath in and just breathe out slowly and then just check in with your core, with your chest, with your shoulders. With your throat, with your neck. And the idea here is just to be aware for one minute of what's going on in your body. So often we're distracting ourselves from it. We're trying to pay attention to something else or we're getting caught up in a rumination because we're feeling uncomfortable.

But actually, if you can just pay attention to that discomfort, notice it. Try to be specific with yourself. You know, what is the emotion that you're feeling? So often we just say, oh, it's just anxiety. But you know, maybe there's some shame there or some frustration. Maybe there's resentment or anger. Try to be very clear with yourself about what it is. And maybe, you know, if it is fear or anxiety, well, what specifically are you fearful about?

You know, what does the feeling actually feel like? Is it a sharp feeling? Is there pressure? Is there dullness? Does it have a color to it? Does it have of a shape. You can even begin to use your imagination with this a little bit more. And like I say, if you just sit there and pay attention to it for a minute. You know, try to notice if it changes at all during that time. And really what you're doing here is you're trying to build curiosity.

You know, so often we're just distracting ourselves, trying to push away those difficult emotions. If you can develop that curiosity about them instead and try to practice allowing them to be there. You start to develop a different relationship with them. You stop resisting them so much. And, you know, that really helps us then to accept, Really, so often it's the resistance to these difficult emotions that actually causes the problem.

So this is something that's really helpful. Another thing that you can do linked to this is to start to build a kind of meditation practice. It could be five minutes a day where you do a slightly longer extended check-in with yourself. You don't have to do that. just doing 60 seconds here and there throughout your day to start off can be a really powerful shift and something that really helped me with my own OCD and anxiety.

So many thanks guys I really hope that you found that helpful.

Please do subscribe to this channel it really does help other people who might need to find it too. Remember I also offer a free discovery call to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com. Many thanks and I will see you next time. 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. Music.