Learning to change how you deal with intrusive thoughts, fear, anxiety, and OCD is often what leads to the change you want to see.
9 Minute Read
It's rarely the first question that keeps you stuck.
It's the second one.
The first question sounds like:
"Did I hit someone?"
"Did I sin?"
"Did I tell the truth?"
"Am I becoming someone I'm afraid of?"
But eventually another question quietly replaces it.
"How do I know when I've thought about this enough?"
The second question is the one that often sends someone into a downward spiral.
How do I know I've checked enough?
Prayed enough?
Confessed enough?
Considered every possibility?
Gathered enough evidence?
At what point is it actually wise to move forward?
Because when you're living with anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or OCD, moving forward can feel less like wisdom––and more like taking an unacceptable risk.
Tolerating uncertainty is not passive resignation. Sometimes it looks remarkably active: gathering reasonable information, seeking wise counsel, making a decision—and then refusing to spend the next three weeks putting the decision back on trial.
One of the exhausting things about anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and OCD is that it quietly changes the goal.
At first, you're simply trying to make a good decision.
But somewhere along the way…"good" becomes "perfect."
Not just…"I want to be wise."
But..."I need to know with complete and total confidence that this is the right decision."
That sounds responsible.
But it quietly asks something from life that life cannot give.
Jake Was Stuck
Jake did not wake up one morning and decide to organize his life around fear.
It was slow.
At first it was one intrusive thought.
Then another.
Then another.
One season he found himself terrified that he might accidentally hurt someone.
He quietly stopped carrying kitchen knives unless he absolutely had to.
If his wife was cooking, he found reasons to stay out of the kitchen.
Not because he wanted to.
Because it felt safer.
Eventually the fear changed.
Now germs became the concern.
He began avoiding certain parts of the house.
He found himself washing more often.
Certain places at work became difficult.
Again, not because he wanted life to become smaller.
But because avoiding those situations felt like the responsible thing to do.
Then came disturbing thoughts that seemed completely opposite of the person he wanted to be.
Those frightened him the most.
Whenever they appeared, he developed little ways of trying to make them disappear.
Sometimes he silently repeated a phrase.
Sometimes he replayed another thought that felt "better."
Sometimes he prayed repeatedly until the anxiety eased.
Sometimes he simply argued with the thoughts for hours.
It felt necessary. Required.
However, looking back, Jake realized something.
Every fear looked different.
But every fear was asking the same thing.
"Arrange your life around me."
“You’ll be okay if you do this.”
“This will give you the peace you are after.”
Without realizing it, Jake's world became organized around avoiding whatever his mind was currently demanding.
A Slow Death
One of the quiet dangers, whether it’s anxiety, intrusive thoughts or OCD isn't simply that they create fear.
It's that they slowly begin organizing your life.
You start making decisions based primarily on avoiding distress.
Certain places vanish from your routine.
Certain conversations never occur.
Responsibilities get postponed.
Invitations are declined.
You stop volunteering.
Forgo traveling.
Refuse to try new things.
Stop enjoying ordinary moments.
Not because you stopped loving those things.
But because avoiding discomfort begins to feel wiser than engaging life.
That is where many people quietly become stuck.
God Calls Us Back to Life
Throughout Scripture, God consistently calls His people toward faithfulness, responsibility, love, worship, service, generosity, hospitality, and courage.
Fear has a way of pulling us inward.
The Christian life continually calls us outward.
Jake’s Turnaround
Jake didn't suddenly wake up without anxiety, crushing fear, or intrusive thoughts.
The thoughts were still there.
The urge to avoid was still there.
Some mornings he still wanted to stay home.
Some days he still wanted to replay his ‘what ifs.’
Some evenings he still wanted one more reassurance.
But instead of asking, "How do I make this feeling go away?" he slowly began asking,
"What has God placed in front of me today?"
Some days...
that meant holding the knife in the kitchen and helping make dinner.
Some days...
it meant sitting beside his children instead of avoiding them because the thoughts felt frightening.
Some days...
it meant going to church even though his mind felt noisy.
Some days...
it simply meant refusing to spend another hour replaying yesterday.
Those weren't dramatic victories.
Most people watching his life would never have noticed them.
But they were real.
Each one was another small decision to let faith—not fear—shape the direction of his life.
Jake had made a decision: fear was not going to be the thing he organized his life around.
In other words, Jake started living again.
Jake learned to live by better questions.
Not, "Am I certain?"
But, "Am I walking in faith or fear?"
Jake didn’t have to stop asking questions, but he did need to begin asking different questions.
Questions that took Jake beyond his own wisdom.
Questions that required him to acknowledge his own limitations.
Questions like:
Is this consistent with Scripture?
Have I honestly sought wise counsel?
Am I allowing fear to make this decision for me?
Am I trying to predict what only God knows?
Am I trying to bring consequences or judgment on myself, rather than trusting God’s forgiveness?
Notice that for Jake.
It wasn’t that the anxiety was totally gone.
Jake started making decisions differently.
Small ones.
Then medium ones.
He still had doubts.
He still felt uncertainty.
Sometimes he wondered if he was making a mistake.
But he no longer believed uncertainty automatically meant "Stop."
He began understanding something.
Faithfulness often means moving with incomplete information.
Where Change Begins
For someone who is struggling, this can be one of the most difficult shifts to make.
The goal is often, “Make this go away,” or, “I just want to get back to normal.”
But you cannot always control when anxiety subsides or when an intrusive thought occurs.
And the more you make your goal aimed at making the thoughts go away, the more attention you often give them.
And for many, the worse the spiral becomes.
Moving forward usually involves learning to go through rather than around.
That requires a greater goal: “Am I honoring God and trusting what He says?”
Instead of organizing life around getting rid of fear, you begin engaging the responsibilities God has given you even while fear is still there.
Interestingly, for many that decide to focus on their responsibilities, and not getting the thoughts to go away, they ironically begin to find the freedom they were searching for.
Jake eventually realized that every decision was shaping him.
Not because every decision determined his future.
But because every decision answered one question:
Who gets to direct my life today?
Fear...or faith?
Recovery wasn't one giant decision.
It was hundreds of small decisions:
To trust
To engage
To love
To serve
To live with the uncertainty, while fulfilling his responsibilities.
To stop giving attention to the fears, while getting busy with life while trusting God.
Hope for Today
Recovery isn’t getting your old life back.
Recovery is gradually taking back the decisions that fear has been making for you.
You may say, “Well that is too hard to do, you don’t understand.”
The question I would ask: “Is saying no to fear and trusting God harder than continuing to live a life organized around fear?”
One day I was observing someone that was deeply ensnared in their fear.
They kept saying that moving forward without first dealing with the fear felt “huge.”
Others didn’t understand.”
It was more difficult than they realized.
It was simply too hard.
Then, someone spoke up and said, “Of course it’s hard. But sometimes it’s out of the hard that you get change.”
Your Brain Can Learn a Different Pattern
I'm not a neuroscientist, but I have found something from neuroscience research to be deeply encouraging.
One of the remarkable things researchers have learned over the past several decades is that the brain is not static. It continues to learn from repeated experience.
The choices we make, the habits we practice, and the responses we repeat can gradually strengthen some patterns while actually weakening others.
That ability to adapt is often referred to as neuroplasticity (Stephenson et al., European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 2024)
This has interesting implications for people who struggle with anxiety, OCD, and intrusive thoughts.
One of the most researched treatments for OCD is called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), a form of cognitive behavioral therapy provided by trained mental health professionals.
While I am not providing ERP treatment here, I think one of its underlying principles is worth considering because it helps explain something important.
Researchers increasingly describe ERP in terms of inhibitory learning rather than simply "getting rid of anxiety."
Instead of trying to erase fear, individuals gradually learn that they can experience uncertainty, resist the usual compulsive response, and continue moving forward.
Over time, those repeated experiences help establish a different pattern of responding (International OCD Foundation, The Inhibitory Learning Approach to Exposure and Response Prevention, Jonathan Abramowitz, Ph.D.).
That distinction is important.
The goal is not simply,
"Make yourself anxious until you stop feeling anxious."
It is closer to this: Learn, through repeated moments, that fear can be present without having to dictate what you do next.
The argument we make, is that this reflects what Scripture already tells us about how to engage fears.
You can practice a different response.
Every time fear says, "Avoid this,” and you wisely choose to engage the responsibility, relationship, or thing God has placed before you.
Every time anxiety says, "Perform the ritual so you'll finally feel okay," and you resist making that ritual the condition for moving forward.
Every time your mind says, "You have to solve this before you can live your life," and you instead return to the next wise and God-honoring responsibility––you are practicing a different response.
Not necessarily making the fear go away.
Not proving that nothing bad could ever occur.
But learning that fear can speak without being given the final decision.
From a Christian perspective, many don't see this as merely changing patterns in the brain.
They see something even richer.
God created us as embodied souls.
What we repeatedly practice matters.
Scripture has long taught that we are shaped by the paths we repeatedly walk, the habits we cultivate, and the direction in which we set our minds.
As we continue choosing wisdom over fear and faithfulness over endless investigation, it should not surprise us that, over time, both our thinking and our living begin to change.
That doesn't mean every anxious thought goes away.
It doesn't mean you'll never have another difficult day.
But it does mean this: Fear doesn't get the final vote.
You can learn a different response.
And one small decision at a time, you can begin getting back to life.
If you’d like to keep reading, you can find more here → Articles or read “There is Hope for Today”
And if talking it through would help you, you’re always welcome to reach out and schedule a one-on-one meeting to walk through this together.
