Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, is a little more confusing and hard to spot. Negative reinforcement occurs when you take away pain or take away a problem in a way that gets you stuck in a maladaptive cycle. If my son throws a tantrum, he is feeling intense emotion and expressing it in a way that isn’t what any of us want in the long run - not him or us. Don’t miss the elements that are showing up right before I respond to his tantrum: he is both feeling something internally and performing an external behavior. If I act quickly to remove the issue that caused his tantrum, then I negatively reinforce that feeling and behavior that came just before I removed it. Reinforcement means I promote it, I cast a vote for it, I did something that amplifies how much he feels that emotion the next time he is in that situation.

If his sister is playing with a toy that he suddenly decides he wants, feels like he wants it, feels upset about it, and then screams and hits to get it, I will reinforce those feelings and behaviors if I make her give it to him immediately. I took away his pain, which makes his perception of that pain feel more intense the next time he’s in that situation.

I can fix this by waiting and separating his feelings and his tantrum from the fix. That looks like, “She’s going to play with it for just a minute, and then you’ll get a turn when she’s done.” If only parenting were that simple, but what’s supposed to happen there is that he learns that the tantrum isn’t super effective and he can tolerate his feelings. We did not cast a vote for those feelings and behaviors by reacting to them immediately, so hopefully they aren’t so big the next time around. This is good for him and for the rest of the family.

What does this have to do with researching things that bother us or things we are very anxious about? Knowledge isn’t bad, of course. But seeking more knowledge is often negatively reinforcing to our anxiety.

Here’s the cycle: I feel anxious about something I’m struggling with or something I’m worried about -> I go to my favorite AI -> I ask, “Is it normal that _______ ?” -> “What’s the best way to deal with _____ ?” -> “So it’s not cancer, right?” ->

AI responds with, “It sounds like you have a great plan, and you likely have very little to worry about. However, I am not a medical professional.”

Insert whatever it is you are worried about: Insomnia, theology, panic, your child’s odd behaviors, that rash, whether you’ll succeed or not, etc., etc., etc.

Negative reinforcement is working you over in the background without you knowing it. Every time you research that things you’ve already researched, you are telling your mind to monitor for more of those worried feelings and more of those questions. The next time you feel even an ounce of worry about that topic, or any other topic that feels existential, you are going to want to reach for AI or another text to mom or whatever your typical method is. Not only are you going to do more reassurance seeking, but you are also going to feel more worried. That stinks. This isn’t just about behaviors. This is about feeling awful because you are trying frantically to feel good.

What I want to propose to you is this: You already have enough information. You need to practice and accept the information you have, and you need to give yourself a timeline for when you will look up more information again after sitting with the info you already have. I would suggest at least two weeks. Why two weeks? You’ll learn that sitting with the info you have and putting up a boundary helps you to feel less urgent about the problem, and it may make the anxiety portion of the problem begin to fade altogether. We must parent ourselves in the age of AI if we want to stay sane and functional.

The most common treatment for anxiety is relaxation via breathing exercises, but many clients with OCD or an anxiety disorder don’t find much relief from them for more than a few minutes. People with anxiety disorders have two basic features of their anxiety that are different from what the rest of us experience: Their anxiety is felt more deeply and is experienced more intensely. Their anxiety is often accompanied by catastrophic beliefs and an intense preoccupation with scenarios they are afraid of. While breathing can help most of us, it’s likely just going to frustrate these folks.

In this case, breathing exercises are kind of like bringing a knife to a gunfight. It’s still good to have breathing as a tool, but it’s not going to help you win.

Trying to Relax in a Disaster

The person struggling with severe anxiety typically has a deep-seated belief that the way they feel or what’s happening to them means something catastrophic. To put it more directly, it feels impossible to be calm, cool, and collected when the worst thing in the world is happening to you or could happen at any moment.

They’re often afraid that they are bad people, that their bodies will fail them when they are alone with their kids, that they are a danger to those they love, that life will fall apart if they aren’t perfectly on top of everything all the time, that they must be alert for certain dangers that others ignore, that their intrusive thoughts mean they are capable of something terrible, that their struggles with sleep are going to lead to an early death, or that they’ve made choices that will haunt them forever. For them, breathing feels like trying to achieve relaxation as you’re watching a tornado rip apart houses in your neighborhood. Your mind and body are just too wise, practical, and geared towards survival at all costs to relax in that scenario.

You have to start somewhere besides relaxation if you want to stand a chance of actually achieving relaxation. Relaxation is similar to happiness. You don’t just reach out and achieve happiness; it’s a byproduct of a life well-lived.

The Most Efficient Way to Change a Belief

If we want to help these folks find some relief, we have to work at the level of the belief first. It’s a simple but absolutely crucial adjustment. The most efficient way to change a belief is via experience, and the best way to have new experiences is to try on some new behaviors. We have a lot of control over what we do, but we have very little control over what we feel and the thoughts and worries that occupy our minds.

Imagine a person who believes a tornado is ripping through their neighborhood when it really isn’t. You can try to talk to them about it all you want and convince them it’s not happening (a talking approach). You can try to get them to relax via deep breathing (a feelings approach). But at the end of the day, some people are going to have to go out the front door and take a long walk around the neighborhood to realize it’s not happening (a behavioral experiment). They have to try on some new actions that help challenge the beliefs that something catastrophic is happening and that they need to monitor that catastrophe at all times.

Every single client I’ve ever treated with severe anxiety has a way that their behaviors are supporting that anxiety. There is a way, normally multiple ways, to creatively challenge that anxiety via slowly modifying behaviors. Doing that first and THEN adding breathing and talking is often the initial path to freedom.

Keep the Breathing Exercises, But Use Them Differently

The basic issue is the order in which we ask someone with anxiety to do these things and the reason we give them for doing them. Are we breathing to feel good about something before we do it? We are probably not going to achieve the goal of feeling good before doing hard things. I never have, and I don’t have an anxiety disorder.

Or are we breathing to get us through the thing we need to do to gain confidence, courage, and clarity on what’s real versus what’s mostly in our fearful imagination?

Talk and relaxation as a first line intervension works for most people, but it often doesn’t work for folks struggling with anxiety disorders or OCD. They need something different. We are asking them to do the same stuff but for a different reason and in a different order.

For someone with severe anxiety, we typically have to ask them to start first with behavior. Let’s take a walk around the neighborhood and approach the thing we are afraid of to learn that it’s not as much of a threat as we thought. That’s going to be very anxiety-inducing, so let’s use the breathing exercises to help you get through the behavioral exercises you need to do to change the belief. As you do that, your beliefs will loosen up and become more flexible so that talk and relaxation can actually begin to work.

We aren’t waiting for calm to happen before we act. We are letting action create the calm.

We aren’t using breathing to calm down before we act. We are using breathing to help us while we act.

We aren’t waiting for the person to be convinced before they act. We are acting and then working on becoming convinced.

It’s really incredibly simple, but it’s HARD.

I think the reason this isn’t the most common approach is that most people don’t need an approach this intense to get past their everyday fears… but folks who struggle with severe anxiety need this.

I think the other reason this isn’t common is that it’s uncomfortable for me, the therapist, to ask you to take a walk that is very scary for you — whatever your “walk” is in your anxiety recovery journey. But often that walk, done repeatedly, strategically, and compassionately, brings incredible freedom.

How OCD and Trauma Get Confused For One Another

OCD and PTSD have many overlapping symptoms: intrusive thoughts and images, dissociation, avoidance, anxiety, distorted beliefs about the self and the world, guilt, depressive symptoms, concentration difficulties, and hypervigilance. But the people experiencing these symptoms have them for different reasons, and their symptoms serve different functions.

If you are a client trying to pick a therapist or online resources that will help you grow, the overlapping symptoms can be very confusing. It’s even confusing for therapists who are trying to figure out where to start after hearing your symptoms. Do we address your symptoms as trauma or do we address them as OCD? If you are familiar with the differing approaches, you’ll know that trauma therapy is typically very validating and gentle in the way it asks you to do exposure and reprocessing. OCD therapy is not typically as validating and gentle because the content of what the person is struggling with is less rational and often not rooted in reality or experience. OCD fears are scary, but they aren’t usually based on an actual event.

How do we pick a lane—trauma or OCD—if both are present? How do we combine both lanes strategically if both are relevant? Below I have all of the answers! Not really, but I think we can make some more sense out of how to approach this issue if we look at how and why evidence-based treatments work for each of these mental health conditions.

Trauma Has The Upper Hand In Advertising, Clinical Interest, and Popularity

What usually happens for most clients is that their OCD gets treated OR their trauma gets treated. Rarely do both get treated. In my experience, usually only their trauma gets treated. I’m sure there are many reasons for this, but I think one simple explanation is that trauma is simply popular and fascinating, so that’s what clinicians hone in on. There seems to be an assumption that if trauma is in someone’s story, then that trauma is the cause of everything else they are coming to counseling for. I understand why clinicians would feel that way because nobody goes through something severe and remains untouched by it in a significant way; therefore, those impacts need to be unpacked and addressed. That being said, just because that trauma inevitably has an impact on that person’s life doesn’t mean that trauma is causing their OCD symptoms specifically.

As an aside, there is such a fascination with trauma and treatments for it that I sometimes hear about clinicians using EMDR or going back over and over through clients’ pasts for traumas that aren’t really causing symptoms or distress in their present lives. There is a good impulse here to go toward the pain and not just talk about the week’s events every session, but I sometimes wonder if this is happening because it’s the only way we have been taught to help and the only thing we’ve been taught to look for. As another therapist friend recently said to me… We are trauma-informed now, but are we anxiety-disorder-informed?

Has trauma so taken over that we’ve lost our imagination for the idea that someone can have genetic and biological factors that make them more predisposed to struggling with anxiety, instead of it having to be some major event in their story that caused it? Both are relevant, and we have to figure out which one is most relevant for the person sitting in front of us.

An Example of OCD and Trauma Intertwined

Let’s say someone was abused by an authority figure and now they experience extreme religious guilt. If the person has anxiety-inducing, repetitive questions in a “what if?” pattern and they constantly research, confess, ask for reassurance, and feel like God is displeased with them despite what anyone tells them, then they probably qualify for an OCD diagnosis. When talking with the person, they have the insight that their religious guilt was made worse by the abuse they experienced by the authority figure, and now they feel like the ultimate authority figure, God, is displeased with them. This is a really clean link between OCD and trauma where trauma is making the OCD worse and harder to overcome. The person has, in their lived experience, a history of their fear somewhat coming true. OCD then takes that and runs with it, and it fuels their obsessive thoughts, anxiety reactions, and desperate need for compulsive reassurance or avoidance.

I think the prevailing wisdom is that trauma is the principal diagnosis and must be treated first. But here’s the problem: if that person has fully diagnosable OCD and not just some OCD-like symptoms, then treating the trauma alone likely will not help them overcome the OCD symptoms to the degree you hope it will. In fact, it may do very little to curb their OCD symptoms at all. Trauma is a reaction to something that happened in the past. OCD is a fear that something will happen in the future. Yes, someone can be afraid of something that might happen in the future because of something that happened in the past, but these two diagnoses must be treated differently. In this case, the trauma is almost certainly making the OCD worse, but trauma isn’t the only process that must be fully addressed.

Why Treating Only Trauma May Not Help OCD

Trauma heals, in oversimplified terms, when a person faces what happened to them head-on, comes to a place where they cognitively and emotionally understand and feel that they are no longer under that threat, reckons with and grieves its impacts, and no longer feels powerless when they encounter events and relationships that consciously or subconsciously remind them of that trauma.

OCD heals when a person realizes that the story they are struggling with is imaginary, repeatedly faces their fear via doing and thinking the opposite of what OCD tells them to do and think, and then gets to the point where they no longer care what thoughts and terrible feelings OCD throws at them because they realize that they are unfounded or that OCD’s questions are unanswerable by design.

Although these diagnoses have similar symptoms and were entangled in the person’s story, the way they heal is quite different because where they come from and how they are perpetuated are quite different.

We can’t know if trauma causes OCD or not. I personally do not think that it does. It might cause some OCD-like symptoms, such as perfectionism, paranoia about others’ intentions, repetition of certain behaviors, reassurance seeking, guilt, etc. Those symptoms will likely be less repetitive in the person’s life if they stem from trauma rather than OCD. I treat too many young kids with very supportive families and no significant trauma history who have severe OCD for me to believe that it’s not primarily genetic. And I’ve seen too many times when good trauma treatments alone don’t remove OCD symptoms. I do believe that when somebody has a genetic predisposition to OCD and they have experienced severe trauma, that trauma can manifest in their OCD and make it much more difficult to treat and overcome.

Treatment for Trauma and OCD has Different Aims, Therefore Treatment for Each Requires Different Approaches

Trauma reprocessing and integration is about facing something that DID happen.

Exposure and Response Prevention for OCD is about thinking and responding differently to something that COULD happen.

One cannot fully address the other.

What it Looks Like When You Just Treat the Trauma

Since I treat OCD as a primary specialty, I’m often seeing clients who were treated for trauma, but their OCD symptoms weren’t treated appropriately or fully.

Let’s imagine we only treated this person’s trauma using EMDR, Written Exposure Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy, or whatever evidence-based model you prefer. The focus would be looking at past traumatic memories and updating them with real-time experiences of safety and new meaning. This work could certainly help dampen OCD symptoms when this person is able to mentally connect their present fears with their past sense of powerlessness and shame, but OCD has a life of its own. That person is still going to have an intense anxiety reaction when the “what if?” questions about God (or whatever their OCD theme is) resurface for them, and that trauma processing—no matter how thorough and high-quality it was—is going to be no match for the overwhelming need to seek compulsive reassurance and avoid triggers.

What it Looks Like When You Just Treat the OCD

A less common problem in my experience occurs when a purely behavioral, present-focused approach is taken. Whether working with a therapist who utilizes ERP, CBT, and ACT—choose your three-letter approach—or working through a workbook you found online, the focus is almost exclusively on working on how the OCD and anxiety are presenting in the here and now. I’m biased toward starting here because the person needs understanding and some relief before we can do anything else, but there are some downsides to not taking a deep dive into past trauma. This is especially true if the trauma logically connects to the OCD theme and content or if the trauma occurred right as the OCD symptoms began or shortly before.

A couple of issues may occur if you don’t address your story and trauma. For one, you simply may not be able to do the exposure work necessary to overcome your OCD because it’s eliciting a trauma reaction that you haven’t worked through. Another thing that may happen is that you do get better temporarily as a result of OCD treatment, but you keep relapsing into content that it seems like you once mastered. It’s possible that it’s not just that you haven’t done enough ERP, but that you are getting tripped up by conscious or subconscious trauma reminders that you have not yet overcome to the degree necessary for ERP to work.

What It Could Look Like When You Treat OCD and Trauma Together Strategically

There is a lot that can be said about the nuances of trauma and OCD therapy from the pens of the experts, but let’s take some simple examples from two evidence-based therapies that prescribe writing to overcome PTSD and OCD: Written Exposure Therapy for PTSD and writing-based imaginal exposures for OCD. These are highly studied treatments that I use in my practice, and they provide some of the most concrete examples of what we are doing differently to treat each of these conditions.

Here are some key samples from Written Exposure Therapy for PTSD that demonstrate the perspective the protocol wants you to write from:

“Just focus on writing about the trauma with as much detail as possible and include the thoughts and feelings you experienced during and immediately afterward. Remember, the trauma is not actually happening again. You are simply recounting it as you look back upon it now.”

Later sessions move the focus more towards meaning and impacts:

“Today, I would also like you to write about how the traumatic event has changed your life. You might write about if the trauma has changed the way you view your life, the meaning of life, and how you relate to other people. Throughout the session I want you to really let go and write about your deepest thoughts and feelings.”

Now compare that to what I would ask someone to do for OCD after several sessions of warming up and getting ready for this level of work:

“I would like for you to write as if your fear is true and happening now or is definitely going to happen in the future. Include as much sensory detail as possible, and I essentially want you to write as if all of your most catastrophic fears are coming true and there’s nothing you can do to escape them. End with uncertainty on purpose, and be sure to not reassure yourself or argue with your fear like you typically do. Keep writing until your highest anxiety comes down by half, and then you can stop.”

One is looking backward at reality, and the other is looking forward at imagined possibilities. One is written from a distanced perspective looking for insight and organization of fragmented trauma memories, and the other is written from an immersive perspective looking for inhibition of typical resistance behaviors and fear responses. Both are exposure therapies, but written exposure for PTSD uses exposure to reduce avoidance of memories and consolidate them into an organized narrative so your brain and body don’t feel like those memories are jumping out at you like a ghost at random times. Written exposure for OCD is showing you that you can face the thoughts and your anxiety actually goes down, not up, when you stop resisting—and it often produces the felt experience that these thoughts are mostly irrational.

So let’s briefly imagine going back to our client who was abused by an authority figure and now struggles with religious scrupulosity. If we progressed him strategically through an evidence-based trauma treatment, he could potentially see and clearly articulate the roots of his fear in his past experiences with this authority figure, organize that narrative and expose himself to the details of it via writing so that its conscious and subconscious reminders are not so triggering, understand the details of how it has impacted his life, and grieve the injustice of abuse as the reason why he always feels guilty instead of reflexively blaming himself for not being good enough every time he feels that way. That work will probably motivate some healthy behavior change in his life and relationships. Now he has a foundation to do Exposure and Response Prevention treatment for OCD, and his mind and body will be less likely to completely revolt when he engages in behavioral and imaginal exposures. He must still do this work because the compulsive behaviors and fears will most likely not disappear on their own if he has OCD, and he probably has other not-so-rational obsessions and compulsions that are maintaining his OCD that are not linked to the trauma. But now, because we’ve addressed both issues that have different origins and perpetuating factors strategically and not just hoped that addressing one took care of the other, he has a chance to be more present and regulated to enjoy his life.

Mental health outcomes are rarely this clean and tidy, but we might have more power to influence really positive outcomes if we take time to think thoroughly about what clients are struggling with and strategically apply treatments that incredibly creative people have developed for specific diagnoses.

Sources

• https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/professional/write-your-fears-away

• Sloan, D. M., & Marx, B. P. (2025). Written exposure therapy for PTSD: A brief treatment approach for mental health professionals (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.

• https://iocdf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Double-Trouble-Addressing-OCD-in-the-Context-of-Co-Occurring-Posttraumatic-Stress.pdf

• https://spaces-cdn.owlstown.com/blobs/ymrzxam2v700p83qi1oeexcj8ujn

- Jon Tyson

One of the most helpful concepts I come back to over the past several years is this idea that life has a first half and second half. As I once heard Jungian psychotherapist James Hollis put it: The first half of life asks what the world requires of me, and the second half of life asks what my soul requires of me.

These “halves” aren’t really halves in the sense that this transition happens when you’re between 35 and 45, halfway through your life. The first half of life is where you use the world’s rules and regulations to survive, make friends, (attempt to) find love, make some money, get a diploma, (attempt to) have some kids, figure out what you believe and stand for, learn how to take care of your health, and provide a life where the bills get paid.

WHAT IS THE FIRST HALF OF LIFE?

My favorite writer, Ronald Rolheiser, explains how essential it is to have some success in this part of your life:

“A healthy self-image isn’t just handed to us on a platter. Part of the task of our youth is to do the kinds of things that not only build up the world, but also help us build up ourselves. One of the lessons in the parable of the talents is that there are penalties too for not being successful.”

The first half of life is about adaptation and comparison. You adapt to your family of origin because you have no agency to change it or leave it. You adapt to trends when puberty hits because of the awful sense of self-consciousness that comes over you and the meanness of middle schoolers who can’t yet handle their new competitive drives with skill and grace. You adapt to your relationship or singleness and to the expectations that come with your particular social group. We get tattoos or we’re clean cut, one kid or four or none, homeschool or public school our kids, banker or entrepreneur, megachurch or small church or no church, conservative or liberal, rubber duckies on our jeep dashboard or a new Hyundai or a re-built Land Cruiser.

Like all of life, it can be a hard season. But it often has an inertia and feels like it’s pulling us through with its expectations and milestones. It hurts when you aren’t checking the boxes that you and your particular culture want you to check, but at least you know what the boxes are. You need to go get a job, find someone to marry, have some kids, have good morals, and save some money.

But this seems to be where the typical life script runs out and the midlife malaise hits. As Dr. Hollis describes it, our psychological road map is exhausted and we don’t feel like there’s anything better on the horizon.

WHAT IS THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE?

As if going on that first half journey of establishing a life and some belief in your abilities isn’t hard and harsh enough, there’s a transition you have to make just as you’re starting to feel confident. The second half of your life comes after you’ve built something and tasted some success via adaptation to the world and realized that it couldn’t satisfy you - if you’re willing to slow down enough to feel it and admit it. Back to Ronald Rolheiser quoting Karl Rahner: “In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we learn that ultimately in this world there is no finished symphony.”

Entry into this phase comes through grief and disappointment, and not everyone makes the transition because they keep grasping at distraction, addiction, and something out there that will re-light that flame they felt when they were hitting all of those first half of life milestones. But it’s a match that won’t re-light like it used to. New stuff, a new wife, a degree, an Instagram following, whatever your thing is, will never hit like the first one. And that’s a feature, not a bug. That’s an invitation to depth that many ignore by trying to look and feel young again via running back the first half of life playbook rather than going through the pain of entering the second half that leads to finding joy and letting go of self-consciousness that has been plaguing you and fueling you.

I recently had a very successful person in the middle of this transition to the second half of life ask, “Will I ever feel anything again?” The answer is yes, if you’ll let go of first half of life as the only model.

HOW DO WE TRANSITION FROM FIRST HALF OF LIFE TO SECOND HALF WITHOUT DESTROYING OUR LIVES FIRST?

Here’s the question for those of us who have more or less checked several of those first half of life boxes that our circumstances have allowed:

Will you now begin to enjoy it and find meaning in it, or will you continue to try to recapture that first half of life energy and external validation?

Three main tasks stand out to me via reading Rolheiser, Hollis, and Ecclesiastes:

1. Sort through the traffic of our past and let go of the protections and reflexes that are keeping us from living our life now.

“Sorting and sifting over time leads to discernment. That is what is necessary to find our voice in the midst of the many claims upon us, the collisions of obligations, and the impulsive service to our complexes. And then, as Jung reminded, come the moral qualities. Can I mobilize the courage to face my life, to meet all the challenges that show up, knowing that I am most undermined by the adaptive reflexes within that were once so necessary? Those “protections” are now constrictions in which I am imprisoned by my own past. And then can I live those choices out over time, in the face of consequences, perhaps the loss of understanding and support of loved ones or estrangement from my tribe?”

Hollis, James. Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey

2. Stop proving ourselves, learn to bless others, let go of bitterness that plagues us, and become more truly selfless.

“(In the first half of life) We’re making a statement: “I count, I’m worthwhile, I’m talented, I’m good, I’m loveable, notice me, love me.” There’s nothing wrong with that, up to a certain age, it’s how we grow, and the taste of some success is often useful precisely in moving us along towards a purer motivation. But there comes a point when life is no longer about proving ourselves, or anything else. The task now is to become selfless, beyond proving anything, least of all our own worth. A healthy dose of failure is often quite useful in teaching us this. Success always feels good, but at a certain age it no longer works its magic. That doesn’t make it wrong to continue to be successful, it only makes it wrong to need to succeed in order to feel good about ourselves.”

Rolheiser, Ronald. Failure and the Second Half of Life. https://ronrolheiser.com/failure-and-the-second-half-of-life/

3. Learn how to actually experience this present moment as a gift and stop striving after “gain” that will always slip right through your fingers.

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20)

“The sixteenth-century Reformer Martin Luther comments, ‘This statement is the interpreter of the entire book.’ Its goal is ‘to forbid vain anxieties, so that we may happily enjoy the things that are present and not care at all about the things that are in the future, lest we permit the present moment, our moment, to slip away.’ The only time you can ever enjoy is now, and in every now God gives you much to enjoy. You might preoccupy yourself with fearful thoughts of the future, bitter thoughts of the past, or bleak thoughts of the present, but if you receive the present as a gift from God, then God fills your heart with joy. The joy God gives now occupies your heart, leaving no room for regret or anxiety to crowd in.”

Jamieson, Bobby. Everything is Never Enough.

ADDRESSING YOUR OBJECTIONS

More to come on how we go through each of these transitions, but I want to address two objections in my own mind and experience.

To the high achiever, no, this does not mean giving up on accomplishment. It means moving it down your list of overall life tasks in service of actually enjoying what you’ve accomplished and not having a major crisis later in life when you are no longer the best at everything you do. You can still be great at what you do, but your greatness might actually be capped by trying to re-light that old worn out match over and over. Savor what you’ve done and built and create a tree full of branches of mature others rather than trying to build a tower of yourself.

To the person who feels like they are approaching the second half of life mentality without having fully checked the “boxes” of the first half of life: You need to have exercised as much agency as possible in the first half of life, but you can’t control finding love or having kids or overcoming the limits of disabilities. But it seems that we must all push ourselves to produce as much as we can within our given constraints in order to develop self confidence that allows us to love others without terrible self-consciousness and insecurities getting in the way. But the goodness of the second half of life is not reserved for those of us who check all of the boxes that our particular culture expects. As a matter of fact, your struggles may help you enter into it more fully than I will ever be able to, and you should be our guide.

WHAT NOW? WHAT FIRST?

I’m an awful illustrator who loves visuals, but here we go. Locate yourself on this arch.

If you haven’t built a life that you’re decently proud of, find a mentor to help you do so. Then get to work on the parts that you have some influence over. But if 10 people with common sense would tell you that you’ve done pretty well for yourself and you have a pretty good life, it might be time to find a second half of life mentor who will help you with perspectives and a lifestyle that allows you to actually enjoy what you’ve built and stop putting out so much effort for diminishing returns. We don’t all need the same prescription.

Either way, put your phone down. Put your phone down and do what you can to build your life a little more. Then put your phone down and enjoy the “lot” God has granted you. Don’t let your moment slip away.

I’ve put together a slide deck to help you identify the basics of OCD with a specific focus on how to address moral and religious scrupulosity. [Click here to read through the presentation.]

Disclaimer: This presentation is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified mental health professional or other healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

I use a psychological approach for treating anxiety where the term “reality” is used frequently. It’s I-CBT (Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and O. Alan Noble describes it well here. The basic thrust is that reality is what you can taste, touch, see, hear, smell, and discern via common sense. This is juxtaposed with the frightening, imaginary future “realities” we create in our heads: projections that often cause stress, unnecessary risk mitigation, and the crowding out of love by fear and preoccupation with the future.

While that psychological approach is an incredibly helpful perspective, it misses the full picture of biblical reality, which I think is summarized succinctly in Isaiah 30:15: “In repentance and rest you will be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.” True strength, both the reality of it and the feeling of it, comes through repentance, rest, and quietness before God. It comes via weakness.

I think about how this works in very simple terms: Do you feel stronger, more secure, and more capable as you plan, predict, prepare, and get things done? Up to a certain point, the answer is yes. But that answer pretty quickly becomes “no” if you press too far. Why? You’ve reached the limits of what you can control, and now you’re trying to control a kingdom that isn’t yours to manage. Christian philosopher Dallas Willard described a kingdom as “the range of one’s effective will.” Your range is small, while God’s kingdom range is infinite. Only in repentance, rest, and quietness can you see and experience that you are upheld, both now and forever, by His strength and not your own. Otherwise, you are fooled into the false reality that your effort is what sustains you. The invitation in the contemplative tradition is to be and feel truly strong via repentance, rest, and quietness.

You have full agency over a very small number of things:

• Biological: What you put in your mouth and do with your body.

• Psychological: What content you put in your mind on purpose, though not the content that enters randomly or as a result of your history.

• Social: Who you spend time with and how you do it.

• Spiritual: Certain disciplines such as prayer, reading, worship, silence, and giving to the poor.

Add a little agency over financial planning, business development, or prepping your kids for success, or whatever your current role is in life. Even in those domains, there isn’t realistically a lot you can address each day that isn’t just worry and needless contemplation of something you can’t actually change.

The list of what you have agency over is simultaneously very small and much more important than you think. The people you admire most are those who focus intensely on their daily agency until they build a beautiful, meaningful life. They practice letting go of things they know they can’t address yet. They don’t just ignore them; they surrender them to God in prayer - Philippians 4:6. This person is content and present to the beauty and the issues right in front of them. Realizing your agency is limited leads to the actual productivity of engaging with the world instead of the faux productivity of worry.

If you are naturally a worrier, thinking this way requires more than just reading. It helps to take out pen and paper and practice every day for the next two weeks. Wake up early tomorrow and write down everything you are worried about. Arthur Brooks calls anxiety “unfocused fear.” This practice focuses your fear so you can deal with it or let it go rather than having it beat you down subconsciously all day.

Here’s an example as it relates to someone worrying about an upcoming job interview, adapted from Dr. Reid Wilson’s book, Stopping the Noise in Your Head.

Take a look at these and ask yourself which ones you can actually work on or do something about in the next day or week. All of the rest have to be crossed off your list because there isn’t anything you can do for those besides worry or call someone to help you feel better about them.

You might disagree with a few, which is ok, but here are the ones he thinks you should cross off your list because there’s no planning or preparation that can really help you.

Set an extra alarm, bring water, put your resume in your car, practice answering questions, figure out what is appropriate to wear, pee before the interview, and practice with a friend. If you do these things instead of asking ChatGPT to reassure you about the things that are crossed out, you’ll probably get the job, or at least be really good at interviewing for the next one.

Consciously work through this by literally holding your palms to the sky and releasing those items to God each morning, and then act on the items that you do have agency over. When you’re done, read a book.

Here are the things I want you to watch for as you do this:

1. You are significantly more productive and you get more meaningful work done each day.

2. You get the opportunity to see that God is providing for your needs and your worry was not actually doing much.

3. Your overall level of anxiety decreases because your subconscious beliefs that worry is necessary and helpful begin to break down.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” — Matthew 6:34

Most of this came from my whiteboard while working with many clients with OCD today. They’re learning how to ignore the false alarms, and you can too!

1. Do I have STRONG sensory evidence that my concern is true?

Sensory Evidence: Can I taste, touch, see, hear, smell, or feel physical evidence? (Note: A "feeling" of dread or a "doubt" does not count as sensory evidence.)

AND

Common Sense Opinions: Would 75%+ of people or multiple experts agree that I need to address this?

You need some of both to decide to act. If you don’t have both, the worry does not need to be addressed. Go do something fun instead.

2. Is there anything I really need to do about this that I haven’t already done?

If the answer is "not right now, but maybe later if it doesn’t get better" (for example, a physical ailment), write down your parameters for how you will address it if it persists or worsens. Once the plan is written, your "work" is done for now. Stick with your plan. Go do something fun instead.

3. Even though I’ve answered 1 & 2, my brain feels on fire... what now?

OCD is creating impulses in you to check, seek reassurance, avoid, or try to be certain. To recover, you must look for ways to do the opposite of what the OCD is telling you to do.

Example of OCD worry from my household:

We are making a pitcher of formula for the baby, and someone washes utensils in the nearby sink that touched raw chicken. It’s possible that chicken water splashed into the formula. Is there evidence that the whole pitcher of formula needs to be thrown out?

Sensory Evidence: Although the results could be serious, there is no strong sensory evidence that proves we should pour it out. No one actually witnessed a drop of chicken juice go into the formula.

Common Sense: Most people would agree that the odds of contamination are low enough to consume the formula anyway.

The best choice is to do the opposite of what the OCD is telling you to do: Give the baby the formula and don’t look up answers online about whether that’s a good idea or not. Ask only one trustworthy person if you must. Don’t call your aunt. Don’t phone another friend. Take the risk and give it… quickly before you change your mind.

Why does this work?

When you compulsively seek certainty, your fears and "possibilities" start to feel more valid and factual.

When you expose yourself to those fears and possibilities regardless of how you feel, you become better able to hold your fears as unlikely possibilities and false signals.

Doing the opposite of what OCD tells you to do makes you believe those false signals are actually false and provides emotional relief. Information alone cannot achieve that for you.

Example of Non-OCD worry from my household:

We are about to use the stroller for the first time in months, and my wife asks me to check it for mouse poop (these examples make us seem gross). Is this an OCD fear that needs to be tolerated and ignored or does it need to be addressed?

Sensory Evidence: There has been mouse poop in the stroller before, and we saw a mouse in the garage about 6 weeks ago.

Common Sense: Given the above information, most people would agree that it’s not a bad idea to check before your kids get in the stroller and get mouse poop on them.

Checking is quick, my doubt resolves quickly, and I don’t feel stuck in a doubt loop afterwards.

Lie #1: “If I have a strong feeling about something, then that feeling is from God.”

This belief is common among many Baptist, non-denominational, and charismatic folks I work with who (like me) have been to a lot of church events (or a huge conference called Passion) with an emphasis on emotion, conviction, “feeling a peace,” etc. These feelings, which are nice byproducts of a life of discipleship that depend a lot on individual personality, end up being confused with faith, belief, or trust in God itself. An aspect of faith is confused for faith. I-CBT calls this “reverse reasoning.” We try to prove something using a feeling rather than starting with what is written (consensus in scripture) and what is a common-sense understanding from trustworthy sources or wise counsel.

The bottom line is that you can feel all types of ways about all types of things. That feeling, no matter how ominous, doesn’t make it any more true, and it doesn’t mean it’s from God. For example, you probably have a loved one who’s not with you right now. If you try hard enough, you can feel like they are not okay. That feeling doesn’t make it any more true. And you don’t want to live on that roller coaster of reverse reasoning (if I feel it, then it means something). In fact, you can’t and don’t do it in other important areas of your life because it’s unsustainable. You do it with this topic because this topic is very important to you, and there’s probably a story behind why you started getting stuck on this topic in the first place.

On that topic of “feeling a peace” ... I often “feel a peace” about actions that are very selfish. A feeling of peace can be from God, but it must be checked with good counsel, common sense, and scripture.

Also, I don’t disrespect or disqualify these traditions in any sense. I love them and think they have so much to offer. If I could change two talking points I grew up hearing, I would eliminate preachers saying things like, “Do you know that you know that you know that you know?” That leads to people searching desperately for a feeling of knowing (as if knowing is a feeling), and the person with OCD has a really hard time holding on to that feeling, even if they are the most committed person in your congregation. And I would simply ask preachers and teachers to clarify that feelings are important, but they are not how we know that we have faith, and they are not how we make all of our decisions related to our faith.

Lie #2: “I must have perfect understanding of something before I can feel better about it.”

I went through a period where I thought that the logic of good biblical theology was the answer to the emotional reasoning I talked about in part one. The organization and clarity of Reformed theology (see the beauty of the Heidelberg Catechism) can certainly help a lot of cases—maybe even most scrupulosity cases! Theology matters. There’s a common saying in the OCD treatment world that content doesn’t matter, but it really does matter to a point in religious scrupulosity.

Now I’ve been treating OCD long enough to see folks with upper-level degrees in theology who still struggle despite putting away much of their emotion-first reasoning about God. Typically, this struggle takes the form of a very complicated and high-stakes question that people have been dealing with for centuries: How can a good God send people to hell? Does God predestine mass numbers of people (maybe even the majority of people) to suffer in hell forever? If so, what’s the point in life? Conversely, if people aren’t predestined, then why am I enjoying anything instead of frantically preaching on every street corner and remote island? Find an answer to any of those questions that temporarily satisfies you, and another one will probably pop up that disturbs you if you’re willing to think about it hard enough. Is that because God is evil or illogical? No, it’s because we can’t perfectly comprehend exactly how all of that works.

My wife is a pharmacist, and she’ll often tell me about lots of different drugs that work really well for certain disease processes, but we still don’t really know why they work—what the mechanism of action is. Does that mean we stop using the drug? Absolutely not. It works, so we use it with a clear understanding of what diagnosis to use it for, how much of the drug to give, and how long to give it. And we let it work without having to fully understand it. If we waited to fully understand it completely before we gave it, a lot of people would suffer needlessly. Similarly, if you try to fully understand the mechanism of action behind God’s ways before you fully surrender your life to him in obedience, you will suffer needlessly.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” — Isaiah 55:8-9

I’m not saying that everything about God is a mystery. That is absolutely untrue, and the answer to the pain of not knowing things you wish you knew is not to assume that nothing can be known—essentially becoming an agnostic. Agnosticism won’t save you from painful existential questions for long. We are going to have to stand strong on some things that we can know about God and how He works in order to move forward, but we are also going to have to be open to some things that we can’t know or understand. Just as feelings aren’t faith itself, knowledge isn’t faith itself. New Testament scholar Dr. Craig Keener describes faith like this in his commentary on Romans 1:17: “Biblical saving faith was not passive assent but actively staking one’s life on the claims of God. It was a certainty sufficient to affect one’s lifestyle.” We see faith clearly demonstrated in Hebrews 10 and 11 as the author describes Old Testament heroes who had a clear leading from God and then acted in faith without having all of their questions answered ahead of time.

The Heidelberg Catechism calls this a wholehearted trust in Q & A 21:

“What is true faith? True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel, that God has freely granted, not only to others but to me also, forgiveness of sins, eternal righteousness, and salvation. These are gifts of sheer grace, granted solely by Christ’s merit.”

Faith is, most accurately, knowledge and trust that causes you to stake your life on the claims of God.

For anyone getting hung up on the “sure knowledge” piece of that statement, go back to my medicine analogy. You can have a “sure knowledge” that the medicine is effective and appropriate even if you don’t know every detail of how and why it works. We can and must do the same with God.

Do you believe enough to give your life to Him and His way and increasingly stake your life on Him, whether you are brought low or abounding (Phil. 4:12)? Then you have faith.

Do you have unanswered questions about Him that bother you? Most of us do. That’s okay.

Continue to walk with Him, ask for the good gift of peace (Matt 7:7-11, Phil 4: 6-9), work with a therapist and pastor who understands OCD, and you’ll begin to trust His goodness and character without needing to perfectly understand it. You’ll live into the emotional relief you are looking for.

Lie #3: The way to feel better is to no longer have doubts/blasphemous thoughts.

Trying to delete thoughts from your mind is not possible or necessary. It might happen over time, but you can’t make it happen. The more you try to make it happen, the more they appear with force. Whatever you do, don’t think about your big toe on your right foot right now. What happened? You are thinking more about your big toe on your right foot than you have in years. As Dr. Sally Winston says, “Effort works really well outside the skin, but it works very poorly inside the skin.”

You know you’re in recovery from OCD when you are less bothered and impacted by the thoughts and feelings—not when they go away. The goal is to spend less time and energy on them for a long time, and then hopefully they will fade as a distant memory. I’ve seen this happen for a lot of people, and this can happen for you too.

Do You Relate to This? Here Are Some Practical Recommendations

If this is you, or if you are reading this for someone you love, here is what I would recommend:

1. Find someone who specializes in OCD treatment. Don’t just find someone with OCD listed as something they treat, but find someone who indicates that they have training and some original thoughts related to treating and understanding OCD. They need to be trained in Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) or Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) or both. Get on their waitlist even if you have to wait a little while to see them. It’s a big bonus if they are a Christian, but they don’t necessarily have to be.
   

2. Meet with your pastor about your questions before you meet with your OCD therapist—or at least have this meeting early in treatment. If you don’t have a pastor, please find one. You need community and someone to demonstrate the love of God to you more than you need good information. Show them this article or other articles on religious scrupulosity and tell them that you think you have OCD. This meeting and the opinion you receive from your pastor won’t fix your OCD, but it will be part of the “good enough” answer about your questions that you come back to in treatment. Any good OCD therapist, even if they aren’t a Christian, would be glad to see that you have worked through your questions with someone who is wise and well-educated on the topic you are struggling with.
   

3. Stick with treatment. If you’re working with an OCD specialist, you’ll go through waves of excitement and relief, followed by doubt and frustration, followed by realistic acceptance and peace. If you will be persistent in treatment and persistent in pursuing Christlikeness through this treatment, you will find relief—even if you don’t find perfect answers.
   

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” — James 1:2-4

In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson tells this story about a brief conversation he had with a woman on one of his pastoral visits: “As I entered a home to make a pastoral visit, the person I came to see was sitting at a window embroidering a piece of cloth held taut on an oval hoop. She said, ‘Pastor, while waiting for you to come I realized what’s wrong with me—I don’t have a frame. My feelings, my thoughts, my activities—everything is loose and sloppy. There is no border to my life. I never know where I am. I need a frame for my life like this one I have for my embroidery.’”

I have come back to this profound little statement over and over because it has resonated with me so deeply. I’ve seen that what so many of us long for is a more defined frame for our lives – both our internal lives and our external lives. We desire to be a little less sloppy and a lot more purpose-driven, but we don’t know where to start on that journey. There is no such thing as perfection and there is no cure for being human, but there is work that can be done to better understand yourself and become more fully alive as a follower of Jesus.

If you are looking for a resource you can work through that will help you begin the process of going back into your story in order to go forward as a person and as a Christian, I have developed this journaling guide for you. What I have written below is intended to help you better understand your story and consider how God is working in your life. 

Below, you’ll see headings describing six domains that I have found are critical to cover in a Christian counseling process. You will also see my attempt to concisely guide you on how to think about and write about each of these as you try to identify them in your own life.

Identify the Lie(s) You Struggle With on a Regular Basis.

What are you believing that is keeping you stuck? 

Typically, there are two extremes: We're either trying to over-control aspects of our world that we can't truly control, or we are not stepping in and taking enough responsibility and leadership in what God has given us.

For example, on one side: "I’m functionally believing that God is not with me in this problem, and it’s up to me to fix it on my own." On the opposite side, many of our stuck points come from the belief: "There is no point in trying anymore because nothing ever seems to change."

The lies are normally more like half-truths than discrete lies, but they are lies nonetheless. Example: “God is with me in this problem, but it’s still my responsibility to figure it out and fix it on my own.”

What lies are you struggling with on a regular basis as it relates to your life, relationships, finances, future, spirituality, work, past, etc.?

Name What’s True in Response to Those Lies Logically and Scripturally

When these stuck points come up in your life, how are you responding to them with truth?

An example of naming what’s logically true: “My efforts to find peace through perfectionism and achievement haven’t produced the contentment and close relationships I long for in my life.”

In addition to logically naming what’s true, we must bring in what is true beyond our tiny ability to control outcomes. A great example is to bring to mind and spend time pondering Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

What’s true logically and scripturally in response to the lies you are struggling with? Where have you left God’s provision and ability to change hearts and minds out of the equation? Where has God provided for you throughout this struggle but you’ve missed reflecting on it due to fear and anxiety about the next thing?

Behaviorally Align Yourself with What’s True Via Repentance and a Rule of Life

A therapist talking about repentance? Even to me, that seems kind of out of place compared to the venues where I’m used to hearing that word. I love this clarification on the word from Eugene Peterson: 

“Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts.”

I think it’s helpful here to actually write down what we are letting go of. Example: “I’m letting go of thinking that I can control my own destiny and provide my own joy via wealth and accomplishment.” Or: “I’m letting go of being afraid to be vulnerable in my marriage.”

If repentance involves more than just feeling guilty, then how do we decide to make this turn in an actionable way? We can do this via a rule of life. A rule of life is simply a structure for how you are going to live intentionally into what’s true. In its simplest form, you write down your daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms for prayer, relationships, leisure, and work. I recommend writing down the minimum rather than your highest aspirations. For example, your commitments could be: Prayer: Pray and journal through Philippians 4:6–9 every day. Relationships: At least biweekly meetings with a group of people who take Christlikeness seriously. Leisure: Intentionally set aside time and resources to celebrate milestones and accomplishments, and commit to a certain amount of time completely away from work each year. Work: Set ambitious goals, but keep those within the boundaries of the previous three commitments. 

This list could certainly expand. What about generosity, justice, service, study, and other spiritual disciplines? The point is this: even taking the time to intentionally define and commit to the four categories that we listed above would put you on a trajectory to live in a way that is governed by something bigger than your daily desires and anxieties. You don’t simply accidentally drift into a life well lived. Neither do you perfectly design and control your life to make yourself happy. Peace, we learn Biblically, comes only through a life of trusting obedience (John 13:17, Phil 4:9). 

What sins and lies do you need to turn away from via repentance? What is your rule of life as it relates to prayer, relationships, leisure, and work?

Grieve the Wounds That Have Amplified Those Lies That Are in Your Mind and Body Via Lament and Forgiveness.

We Christians often ignore our pasts and our emotions out of some misinformed sense of spiritual duty. This is not the example we have in David, Jesus, or Paul. They hold the tension of emotional honesty without deconstruction of their faith. My friend Andrew Magers puts the necessity of lament like this in his book On Grief and Gratitude: “Because God is the creator of life, we honor him by lamenting when the goodness of God is denied in loss.” We honor God by longing and working for the restoration of all things, but that can only be done by naming and grieving what’s broken.

We also forget that Jesus talked frequently about the absolute necessity of forgiveness—we don't grieve just to blame the person(s) who wronged us. We grieve in order to communicate with God that we need his help moving on without bitterness towards Him and others. I don’t have space for a more full treatment of this step, but the basics are that there are two layers of forgiveness: the decision to forgive and then the working out of the emotions. To forgive, you must name pain. To name pain, you must face it and feel it. The decision to forgive is a choice that you can make, but it takes the emotions longer to catch up. Catholic writer Ronald Rolheiser puts the necessity of processing our wounds and working out forgiveness like this: “Whatever we don’t transform, we will transmit.”

What pain from your story are you transmitting to yourself and those you love because you haven’t named it and begun the process of grieving it? Who do you need to forgive who has intentionally or unintentionally harmed you?

Recognize and Own Your Unique Calling, Gifting, and Limitations

“God made you to reflect, in some unique way, a particular facet of his glory and his love out into the world. And when you are in Christ and in-dwelt by the spirit, you do that more and more. You become more uniquely yourself. Evil, despite what the media tells you, makes you boring. It shuts you in, makes you a clone of all sorts of other people who are doing much the same tedious sort of stuff. When you are seized by Christ and in-dwelt by the spirit, he will make you more truly yourself.” - N.T. Wright

If you’ll comb through your story, you’ll start to see a few important things clearly. You’ll see where people have routinely complimented and blessed some of your abilities. Is it possible that some wounds and insecurities have stopped you from being able to accept and step into some of the ways you’ve been blessed and praised? You’ll also see some giftings that cause you to come alive when you use them—some way that you relate to people and to the world that meets a need in the world and inside of you simultaneously. You must search diligently and curiously for this gift. It might not be found in a college catalog or job description. Finally, you’ll see ways that you’ve tried to fit yourself into roles that have torn you down. Not all stress is bad stress, but some roles, jobs, relationships, and situations just don’t fit us or serve the rule of life that we are trying to live into. We can be a hero in one part of our lives in a way that causes us to totally fail in another important arena of our lives. The people that you love being around are often very aware of their limitations and know how to say no to what they are not called to and how to give their full yes to some place of need and pain in the world that they are called to. 

What qualities and abilities have others blessed and praised in you that you haven’t reflected on or haven’t been able to accept? Is there anything you’ve ever done where you came alive and met someone else’s need simultaneously? What are some limitations, things you need to say no to or begin moving away from, that you need to name and admit?

Putting it All Together: Pray at The Edges of God’s Grace and Your Effort

The Bible is full of instances where our effort and God’s grace are not mutually exclusive; instead, we are commanded to take hold of both at once.

“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” Colossians 1:28–29 ESV

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12–13 ESV

This effort may be best demonstrated by the Serenity Prayer that has been made famous through Alcoholics Anonymous:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

What is God asking you to step into to try to change, and what is He asking you to let go of for Him to change?

The reality of counseling, journaling, or any kind of deepening of self-understanding is that we aren’t capable of doing much more than naming and taking small steps into issues that we need God to heal. Yes, we can learn to communicate with more skill, feel rather than repress, react in ways that scientifically reduce anxiety rather than making it worse, etc. I’m a huge proponent of evidence-based psychological science, but even the most skilled application of any science or healing method only works if God, the author of life and source of all good, does a work in each human heart. Pray earnestly that God would do the work of making you more like Jesus as you engage in any process of self-understanding and self-improvement, and you’ll find that frame and border for your thoughts, feelings, and activities that you’ve been longing for.