Compulsively Checking Your Feelings

Published by Mark DeJesus OCD, The OCD Healing Journey
Compulsively Checking Your Feelings

Do you find yourself compulsively checking your feelings, to make sure you REALLY feel a certain way? For many obsessive-compulsives, they are often checking how they feel on a regular basis to make sure they feel a certain way. But they end up endlessly checking their feelings in an endless loop of their emotions very feeling a certain way. They get lost in their emotions and lose perspectives. I address a question that was submitted about this very issue, which shows how religious OCD and scrupulosity inflames distortions in how we deal with emotions and our faith walk.

Video Broadcast:

Watch on Rumble:

Compulsively Checking Your Feelings: A Word for Those Who Battle OCD

One of the most exhausting patterns I see among those who struggle with OCD is something I call compulsively checking your feelings. It sounds like this: Do I really love God? Am I really saved? Do I really love this person? Do I really want His forgiveness? Do I really want to forgive others?

Really? Really? Really?

If you live with OCD, you already know what that word does to you. It sends you into a spiral. And the spiral never lands anywhere. It just keeps going.

I want to pull back the curtain on what’s actually happening when you find yourself caught in this loop, because understanding it is one of the first steps toward breaking free.

Seven Things Are Happening at Once

One of the most important things to understand about OCD is that it never attacks you with just one distortion. Every person who battles OCD is cycling through seven different distortions simultaneously — and that is exactly why it feels so overwhelming.

Those seven things are: the battle with doubt and uncertainty, a distorted meaning and interpretation of thoughts, overestimating threats, inflated responsibility, difficulty with emotions, a deep need for control, and perfectionism. Every question you spin on, every email you send trying to figure it out, every therapy session where you go deeper and deeper into the weeds — all seven are running at the same time.

Understanding this doesn’t solve OCD instantly, but it does reveal why chasing the question never brings relief. The problem is not the problem you think it is.

Perfectionism: Just Right, But Never Enough

When it comes to checking your feelings, perfectionism is one of the biggest drivers. The mindset at work is what I call “just right, but never enough.”

You’re not just asking whether you want God’s forgiveness. You’re demanding that the feeling of wanting it be just right — a certain level, a certain intensity, a certain consistency. And because perfectionism operates in a hamster wheel, it’s never enough. So you go looking for the feeling, you find a small flicker of it, and then immediately question whether it was real. Then you go looking again. Then you check. Then you examine. Then you weep. Then you check again.

This is not your salvation being in question. This is perfectionism doing what it always does — keeping you on the wheel.

A Poor Relationship with Emotions

OCD creates a deeply distorted relationship with your own emotions. People who struggle with OCD are often very inaccurate at even identifying what they’re feeling, and the ways they interpret their emotions tend to drive them further off track rather than toward clarity.

There is a pattern I see consistently: the OCD sufferer bounces between two extremes. On one side, they suppress — they push emotions down, refuse to acknowledge them, live in a chronic “get over it” posture. On the other side, when the emotions overwhelm them, they drown. They never find the middle ground of lovingly acknowledging what they’re feeling and learning to interpret it in ways that lead toward freedom.

This is why the spinning never produces peace. The emotions being examined are not leading you somewhere productive. They’re a trap keeping you from taking an actual step forward.

Your Compulsions May Surprise You

Here is something that often catches people off guard: your response to the obsession is a compulsion too — even if it looks spiritual.

The weeping. The desperate praying. The begging. The re-reading of Scripture to make sure the verses line up. The going forward at the altar call for the hundredth time. These feel like sincere spiritual responses, and they may genuinely come from a place of longing. But when they are compulsive — when they’re driven by the anxiety of I have to do this to prove it’s real — they are feeding the cycle, not resolving it.

Here’s how the cycle works: you have the obsession, you respond with a compulsion, and the compulsion tells your brain, “See? This must be real and important. I needed to respond to it.” That confirmation keeps the loop alive. When you stop the compulsion, you feel like you’re abandoning God or turning your back on something eternal. But you’re not. You’re starving the bully.

The Bully and the Tag Game

I want to be clear about something. God is not sitting in heaven watching you spin and going, “Oh, you missed it again. Better make sure you’re saved.” He is not playing tag with you, always just out of reach, always making you wonder if you’ve gotten there yet.

That frantic, guilty, confused energy — that fear, guilt, and confusion cycling in a loop — is not from God. He is not the one tormenting you with a question that never resolves. OCD is a bully, and bullies are relentless. If one approach doesn’t work, it’ll come around another way. If the salvation question doesn’t get you, it’ll try a different door. The bully is just fear doing what fear does.

“I Know It’s a Journey, But I Need to Know Right Now”

This is one of the most telling statements I hear from OCD sufferers: I know it’s a journey, but I need to know right now.

Do you see the contradiction? A journey you need to complete right now is not a journey at all. And when you tell yourself, “I already know that God loves me” — in that moment, your brain files it away on a shelf marked handled, when in reality you haven’t begun learning it yet.

The issue for most people battling this isn’t intellectual understanding of salvation. It’s learning to receive love — slowly, practically, step by step. And you can’t do that while you’re constantly disqualifying yourself by demanding that a feeling confirm your standing before God.

You Are at War with Yourself

At the heart of compulsively checking your feelings is one of the most important battlegrounds in the OCD struggle: the war against yourself.

The way you speak to yourself in these moments — the accusations, the relentless scrutiny, the demand that you prove yourself yet again — if someone else were treating you that way in a relationship, we would call it toxic and abusive. But you do it to yourself without a second thought.

Learning compassion for yourself is not a side issue. It is central. Because God’s grace is not designed to torment you into a perfect feeling. His grace leads you forward. It empowers you to take the next step. But OCD keeps you frozen, spinning in place, unable to receive the very word of God because you’ve already decided it can’t apply to you until the feeling arrives.

Walking by Decision

So what does the path forward actually look like?

It is not about finding the feeling. It is about leading your heart.

There are two common postures people take with emotions. Some say, “Follow your heart — let it lead.” Others say, “The heart is deceitful, don’t listen to it at all.” Both extremes create problems. What I have found to be true and life-giving is something in the middle: lead your heart.

Leading your heart means you make a decision about the direction you are going, and then you take a step in that direction — even without the feeling you think you need. Following Christ is a decision. And decision produces action. Action produces movement. Movement, over time, produces change.

The most frightening thing for someone trapped in OCD is to say, “I’ve been spinning in this long enough. Today I take a step forward.” Because the moment you do, all the fears rush in. You’re going to miss God. You haven’t done it right. You’re not really saved. The troll will keep coming. But here is the truth: as you take the step, you starve the compulsion. The checking fades. The weeping fades. The need to go forward at every altar call fades. Not because you’ve finally achieved the perfect feeling, but because you’ve stopped feeding the loop.

This is exposure work. You face the fear, you resist the compulsion, and you let the anxiety settle on its own. It will. It always does — when you stop feeding it.

A Final Word

If you find yourself compulsively checking your feelings — examining whether you really love God, really want forgiveness, really belong to Him — I want you to hear this: the problem is not what you think it is. The question you are asking is not the question that needs answering.

What needs to happen is a renovation in how you are approaching these things. That renovation begins with compassion toward yourself, a willingness to stop the compulsive responses, and the courageous decision to take one step forward today — without the guarantee of the feeling you’ve been waiting for.

Grace is not waiting for you to feel it perfectly. Grace is already at work, empowering you to walk. Take the step.

Recommended Resources: 

To support future broadcasts: 

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS