Why Waiting To Feel Better Before Taking Action Can Keep You Stuck In OCD

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 389. I hope that you're doing very well today. However, if you are struggling with OCD or anxiety, 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 just 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 the importance of taking action of kind of not waiting to to kind of feel just right or to feel perfect or to feel a certain kind of way before taking action in your life and OCD is really good at kind of stopping us from from from taking that action we

we tend to believe that we need to feel right before we can do things and i think this is part of part of the kind of process in a way that keeps us stuck with ocd so it's really important to to take some action with it if you find the podcast helpful it would be great if you could follow and like on instagram my instagram handle is at robertjamescoachinguk, also the podcast is now on youtube as well so if you'd like to follow there

you can i really hope that you enjoy if you have any questions at all about anything i speak about today don't hesitate to get in touch and off we go many thanks.

Here are some quotes to get us started today the first is by pablo picasso action is the.

Foundational key to all success this is obviously quite a clear and obvious statement really we have to have action in order to have any success at all we we actually have to get out there into the the world and you know start taking action and unfortunately OCD is really really good at stopping us from doing that the second quote is by Tony Robbins the path to success is to take massive determined actions and you know again I really I really like this quote it's very simple and straightforward

you know and and how often is it the case that with OCD unfortunately we're kind of doing the opposite the opposite of that we are we're taking you know no action because we feel that the OCD is so powerful so strong that the obsessions are you know really limiting us to the point where you know we can we can end up feeling that that we're not able to to take the action that you know that we need to take to be able to do the exposure work or to to lean

into to the discomfort to practice diffusion techniques to meditate or to start exercising whatever it is that you might be working on to try to to help you with your wellness or with your your ability to kind of deal with discomfort and manage manage the OCD more effectively you know unfortunately OCD is very very sneaky and very. Very good at kind of persuading us that.

We shouldn't take action that actually you know action is only going to cause us more discomfort it's going to make the OCD worse you know so so we shouldn't do that at all and it's part of the kind of OCD trap.

You know that that I think is a big part of the OCD the OCD process it's so annoying OCD traps us it makes us feel like you know we we can't whatever we do it's not going to work you know The things that we're trying to do so often, which is more often than not, thinking about it more, trying to figure it out, trying to get reassurance in different ways. It feels like those are the things that we're doing to try to manage it.

Of course, those things are actually compulsions and they're just making the OCD worse. And so, you know, it feels like the action we are taking isn't really working. And when you're really stuck with OCD and maybe you haven't experienced the benefits that you can get from things like exposure or acceptance commitment therapy, you know, when you're just starting out with it, it can be very difficult to believe that anything is going to help you.

You know, those things really do help. They have a lot of research to back them up.

But you know when you're really in the thick of it when you're really struggling with it it can be so hard to believe that actually if I do this activity it is going to help me to feel better you know it's very tempting to just kind of sit back and say well you know I'm just gonna avoid these things because they make me feel very uncomfortable you know I don't want to step out and and deal with that so I'm just going to avoid it and you know that's going

to make life easier and unfortunately the more that we do that the smaller our lives start to become and again this is a very typical thing within OCD certainly I remember when I was really struggling in my 20s with OCD you know this was one of the things I think was kind of holding me back is that I was always wanting to feel a certain kind of way before taking action and I'd kind of persuaded weighted myself you know that that feeling that I was experiencing was a barrier to my

success that until I could get rid of that feeling or or feel better about it there was no point in taking any action because the feeling the uncomfortable feeling and the thoughts was the problem until they were gone you know I wasn't going to take any action and this is a really typical thing I think. Within OCD, it may not be, you may not be quite as stuck as I was, or you may be more stuck than I was.

Obviously everyone's situation is different, but ultimately it comes, it comes back to that kind of thing where you, where you fall on that kind of spectrum of how hard that might have been or might be, might be for you today, you know, is, is really dependent on, on your personal situation, where you are in terms of learning to kind of manage OCD and do exposure work or work with a therapist or whatever you might be doing.

And so it's so important that we recognize that this is a really big part of the process of getting over OCD, is actually taking action when you would really rather not, when you're really actually feeling that the anxiety is winning today. This is, you know, I feel so uncomfortable. I'm just going to avoid that thing or I'm not going to do this or I'm going to get the reassurance or I'm going to perform this compulsion.

You know we we'd rather kind of take that that easy way out a lot of the time with OCD because of course the compulsions are the familiar things the things that we've been doing for a long time they give us reassurance they make us feel better in the short term when we perform a compulsion you know we do actually get a payoff in the short term we feel slightly better it gives us a sense of control but we know in the long term all that's actually happening is we're reinforcing forcing

the OCD and so you know this idea of taking of taking action is very much focusing on action that is actually going to help with the OCD rather than focusing on the typical behaviors that are generally keeping us stuck you know the the compulsions and the action in my experience it kind of needs to focus on recognizing that actually we're not going to to feel better in the short term a lot of the time that.

Even if we're feeling very uncomfortable in the moment, stepping out and trying to do things a bit differently, despite the fact that you're feeling uncomfortable, is often a way that you can find a way through that discomfort and to begin to experience and then ultimately to begin to accept it.

Acceptance is obviously a very key word when it comes to anxiety and OCD.

You know really i think this is what we're we're kind of up to is we're you know we're learning how to experience difficult emotions difficult situations and you know allowing ourselves to experience those things without getting so annoyed and frustrated about them being present all the time to kind of acknowledge that anxiety and discomfort is actually a normal part of life that But, you know, if something is very anxiety inducing or difficult for you, it's bringing up other difficult emotions.

It's not necessarily a bad thing. Often it's pointing to something that's important to you in some way or something that, you know, that you really want to achieve in your life. And, you know, maybe you're just trying to leave your house a little bit quicker because you don't want to check things as much.

Or maybe you're not wanting to to go back and repeat something for the uh the fifth time maybe you are just wanting to kind of stop ruminating about something you know but there's this nagging feeling of of yeah but this is really uncomfortable i i you know i don't want to just leave the house or i don't want to just stop ruminating because i just want to think about this just a bit more or i just want to get that certainty and check one more time you know and we don't we don't want

to kind of do the thing that we know we should which is to to allow that little bit of uncertainty and to take action to step out in our into our lives and to not get you know that that that reassurance by checking it again to to not ruminate it ruminate about it again but to accept the fact that yeah we are feeling a bit anxious in that moment and that that's okay and that we're able to step out into our lives anyway and take positive action despite the fact that we

might be feeling uncomfortable in that moment and this is so so important this concept when we're able to to recognize that that is what we have to do you know and and we practice this and we start demonstrating to ourselves that we can do it you know that we can actually you know get back into. Our lives and start living it in a positive way, despite the anxiety being present sometimes. And when we do that, we also demonstrate to ourselves that that anxiety actually comes down eventually.

It may come down fairly quickly sometimes once you start taking action or other times it may take a bit longer but anxiety doesn't just stay the same and you know when we actually refocus our attention onto other things and we come more into the present moment well generally what tends to happen is that the anxiety will will begin to settle down because you're no longer focused on it quite so much you're not so fixated and obsessed on on the

obsession itself you're actually beginning to move your attention elsewhere and when we do that i think the body begins to just kind of to take over a little bit we're not so stuck in our heads we're able to come into the body and we're able to be more in the present and when we do this we we become a bit more accepting and it as i was saying before it really is so much of of ocd is about bringing acceptance to these difficult emotional states and one of

the best ways i've found of doing that is actually taking action getting out there into our lives reflecting on what's really important to us and then taking that action you know to to kind of live our lives by by those things that are important to us and when we do this you know things do begin to change little by little and you know really what i'm talking about here is you know very much related to acceptance commitment therapy as you've

You've probably heard me talking about a lot before on the podcast. ACT has been something that's been very, very helpful for me over the years with my own struggles with OCD. You know, and there's this kind of phrase taken from ACT. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but it's something along the lines of get back into your life and bring the difficult emotions, the thoughts, anything else along for the ride.

Meaning that you don't need to get rid of these things in order for you to start taking action in your life and start living today you know and i think it's a really powerful message taken from acceptance commitment therapy it really does it really does work and also when you think about the goal of doing exposure work you know so often with with exposure what we're actually doing is we're just trying to feel the difficult emotions that we're experiencing okay with

exposure it's obviously different from acceptance commitment therapy really what we're trying to do is to learn how to habituate to the difficult emotion by by bringing it up on purpose and then sitting with that difficult emotion and learning how to feel it we start off very gently with that trying to experience the more difficult emotions in a controlled way not not trying to have something that's too powerful but learning.

How to feel those emotions in a positive way, learning how to just sit with them and to be patient with them and to acknowledge that with time, you know, the difficult emotions, the anxiety will begin to come down.

With acceptance commitment therapy, you're tending to kind of take more action. So you're acknowledging that the difficult emotions are there.

Maybe you'll try to feel them a little bit and just come into the body for a few seconds and pay attention but then it's very much about refocusing your attention back onto your values back onto your goals and you know what's most important to you and so often when we do this the anxiety does just begin to come down what OCD really wants you to be doing in my experience is just to to be taking no action to kind of sit there to think about your fears to try to figure all

out cognitively to to go over things again and again to problem solve and unfortunately all of these things just are you know they're just compulsions they're just sneaky ways that the OCD you know encourages you to to kind of do because it keeps you stuck OCD just wants you to keep doing the thing that you've you've been doing habitually for a long time because well it just wants you to to keep doing OCD because that's kind of familiar that's comfortable when we actually step out

and take action that can be you know a little bit more uncomfortable sometimes because maybe we're not so used to it you know we may be more used to just kind of thinking about our fears all the time and ruminating or checking things or whatever your compulsions might be and so you know There's this resistance sometimes that comes up when we think about taking positive action and focusing on our values.

But it's very helpful if you can to just observe that resistance. This is something that Steven Pressfield talks about in The War of Art when he speaks about creativity. He says that any time that you sit down to do something that's important to you, resistance comes up or a sense of anxiety comes up. And you're kind of, you know, you find all sorts of reasons to procrastinate and to not do the thing that you know will actually make you feel better.

And I think it's quite similar sometimes in this situation. We kind of know on some level that taking action, going out and doing something, going for a walk or, you know, just getting up and cleaning the house and focusing on movement, listening to music, whatever it might be.

We know that these things are going to bring us more into the body and kind of draw us out of the head and help us but for some reason so often we don't quite want to do that there's that resistance that comes up and so if you can try to observe that resistance pay attention to it feel it in the body if you can observe it but don't allow it to dictate your life and how you're going to kind respond to OCD moving forward.

See if you can have a different perspective on that when that urge comes up and says, no, just sit here, keep thinking about it.

Can you instead just kind of gently remind yourself that perhaps that is the OCD and perhaps if you get up and start taking action, you might start feeling a bit better about that anxiety and perhaps that anxiety anxiety will begin to come down a little bit 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.