OCD Recovery Stories: What It Actually Looks Like to Heal, Relapse, and Keep Going (Pt. 2)

Last week we answered the question “Will OCD ever go away?” This week I want to show you what recovery actually looks like in a real human life.

Because theory is helpful.

Science is important.

But stories—stories are what let you breathe again.

Stories prove that progress isn’t linear. They show you the messy middle no one talks about.

And they remind you that recovery is something human beings do every day—not some magical transformation only a few people get lucky enough to experience.

Today, I want to share one of the most powerful stories I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing.

This is Kristin Duncombe.

A smart, kind, deeply self-aware woman who spent years feeling like her brain was running her life.

A woman who thought she was “just anxious,” “just tired,” “just overthinking,” until she learned that her fear had a name.

A woman who has walked through recovery, relapse, and rebuilding with honesty, courage, and a quiet determination that still inspires me.

Kristin’s story isn’t dramatic.

It isn’t curated.

It isn’t perfect.

It’s real.

And that’s why it matters.

This is her journey—not of “fixing” OCD, but of learning how to live again.

The Beginning: When OCD Becomes “The Explanation”

Kristin didn’t always know she had OCD.

She just thought she was a person who had to do everything right. Everything perfect. Everything “just so.”

She thought her mind was just fast.

She thought her anxiety was just “trying to help.”

She thought checking, re-reading, replaying, and scanning were just quirks.

Then one day, a therapist gave it a name.

Not as a label—but as an explanation.

The moment she heard the words, “This is OCD,” she describes it as the first time the ground stopped shaking under her.

Not cured.

Not fixed.

Just finally… understood.

The First Wave of Recovery: Learning Fear Isn’t Truth

Kristin’s early recovery didn’t look inspirational.

It looked like:

• sitting in her car outside therapy, trying to convince herself to go in

• crying because she didn’t want to give up the compulsions that felt like safety

• feeling like a failure every time she did ERP “wrong”

• trying to survive the discomfort that nobody else could see

She told me something that stuck with me: “I didn’t know recovery would feel like grief.”

Not grief over OCD itself. Grief over letting go of certainty. Grief over letting go of the rituals that felt like armor.

Grief over realizing that the thing she used to cope was actually the thing keeping her stuck.

But she kept going.

Not perfectly.

Not confidently.

Just… going.

And that was enough.

The First “Real” Breakthrough

Kristin said the first time she felt actual recovery wasn’t during therapy.

It wasn’t after some huge exposure.

It was one ordinary morning when she was brushing her teeth and noticed that her brain felt… quiet.

Not silent.

Not empty.

Just not screaming.

It was the first time in years she felt like she was inside her own body, and not inside her own fear.

That moment wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t a movie scene.

But it was everything.

Because for the first time, she realized: OCD wasn’t who she was. It was something she lived with and something she could live beyond.

The Relapse: When Old Fears Find New Shapes

A lot of stories end on breakthroughs.

Kristins didn’t—and that’s okay—recovery isn’t linear.

A few months later, her OCD resurfaced, but with different content.

She said it felt like a shape-shifter: “It came back wearing a new mask and convinced me it was real again.”

That is the part no one warns you about. The part that makes people think they’re “back at zero.”

But she wasn’t!

In fact, her relapse taught her more about recovery than her progress did.

Here’s the turning point:

She didn’t hide.

She didn’t disappear into compulsions for weeks.

She didn’t panic that she’d lost everything.

Instead, she said to herself:

“I’ve been here before. I know what this is. I know what to do.”

Relapse didn’t erase her progress.

It only revealed it.

The Second Wave of Recovery: Choosing Life Over Certainty

After relapse, Kristin’s growth wasn’t about exposures.

It was about decisions.

She chose:

• to show up to therapy even when her brain screamed

• to answer the phone instead of isolating

• to let thoughts exist without chasing them

• to stop trying to be “the perfect patient”

• to let her life be bigger than her fear

She describes this stage as the moment she stopped trying to “beat OCD” and started trying to live well with uncertainty.

Not fight it.

Not fix it.

Just live.

It was the most powerful shift of her entire recovery.

The Point Where She Finally Felt Free

Kristin told me there wasn’t one defining moment where she suddenly felt “better.”

It happened through a thousand small choices:

• closing her laptop even when she wanted to Google

• going on a hike even though she felt triggered

• letting herself rest without justifying it

• laughing again

• feeling present instead of preoccupied

• talking to her friends instead of her compulsions

Recovery wasn’t one mountain she climbed.

It was the way she learned to walk on the days the mountain felt steep.

She learned how to live with a brain that asks, “what if?” without answering back.

She reclaimed her time, joy, identity, and breath. That is recovery.

The Most Important Thing Kristin Wants You to Know

I asked Kristin what she would tell someone who is where she used to be.

She said, “You won’t always feel this scared. You won’t always be this tired. And you won’t always be fighting this hard. Healing doesn’t feel like healing at first. It feels like chaos. But it turns into your freedom.”

OCD recovery is not the absence of fear.

It’s the presence of courage.

Repeated every day, in small ways, until it becomes who you are.

You don’t outgrow OCD.

You outgrow the belief that you can’t survive it.

If you’re ready to take the first steps toward recovery, you can request a free consultation for my intensives program using the link below. Healing is possible. Support is available. And there are real, evidence-based tools that can help you retrain your brain and reclaim your life. Until next time, stay blessed by the best.

• Transcript

  Introduction: Several OCD Patients Ask “Will This Ever Go Away?”

  Several OCD patients are like, “Will this ever go away?”
  Any adult that is struck with some type of OCD thinks, Oh my God, this is driving me crazy and ruining my life, and I also can’t imagine a life without it.

  What’s up, Bossing Up Overcoming OCD listeners? I’m your host, Erin Davis, and today I’m sitting down with guest Kristen Louise Duncombe. In today’s episode, we’re talking about her book as well as her personal experience with OCD. This is a must-listen episode. If you or someone you know is struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder, please send this their way.

  And if you’re looking to discover the five biggest mistakes that fuel relationship anxiety, I’ve got a resource for you: The Overthinker’s Guide to Love. Link is in the show notes, or find it at livebeyonddoubt.com/overthinkersguidetolove. It’s a free five-day email course that gives you bonus tips to help you get out of the spiral.

  Now, back to the conversation.

  Meet Kristin Louise Duncombe: Therapist, Author, OCD Survivor

  Erin: Kristen, can you share with the listeners your background and your experience with OCD?

  Kristen: Absolutely. I’ll start with where I am now. I’m a therapist by training, also a life coach and an author. I’ve really got the career of my dreams. It’s not what I thought I’d do when I was younger. I wanted to be a talk show host—if I could’ve figured out how, I would have become one. But becoming a writer and therapist let me take the parts of myself that made me want that and apply them to my work.

  I work with a lot of people with obsessions, OCD, and related issues. I didn’t set out to focus on that, but it comes easily because I have my own history—going back to early childhood—of obsessional behaviors and OCD.

  Kristin’s Childhood: Tics, Hypochondria, and Emetophobia

  When I was a kid, I had tics. I was constantly making weird facial gestures—my mouth, rolling my eyes. You can imagine being seven years old in class doing that. Kids were mean to me, but I couldn’t stop. It was beyond me.

  That came with early-onset anxiety—specifically hypochondria. I became convinced I had leukemia. I’d heard about it and saw a made-for-TV movie about football player Brian Piccolo, who died of leukemia. I became convinced I had it, obsessively thought about it, and then convinced myself that doing all the tics would somehow stave it off. Totally OCD.

  And then I developed emetophobia—a fear of vomiting.

  Erin: Oh, that one’s so challenging. For listeners, emetophobia is the fear of vomiting.

  Kristen: I was terrified. It’s a violent, terrible experience.

  I didn’t get any treatment. I was born in ’69, so this was the 1970s. Then my family moved to West Africa—my dad was in the Foreign Service. Even if my parents had considered therapy, there weren’t therapists in the Ivory Coast. OCD therapy really hadn’t progressed yet.

  Without support, I did grow out of some of the behaviors. Later, I developed others. As an adult I’ve never been controlled by OCD the way I was as a child, but I feel the presence of funny little behaviors—obsessions and compulsions that come and go.

  The Behavioral Approach and “Hidden Meaning” Technique

  In my work with clients, and on myself, I take a behavioral approach. I learned a lot from David Burns—he wrote Feeling Good, When Panic Attacks, The Feeling Good Handbook, and he has a great podcast.

  One way he addresses anxiety is looking for the hidden meaning. I don’t want to get psychoanalytic with OCD—because I think it’s more brain-driven—but sometimes noticing the meaning behind a behavior helps.

  Sometimes I’ll do something like put my glasses on my head, and then redo it because “I did it wrong.” Then I’ll catch myself and ask, “Okay, what’s going on? Why are you doing this?”

  “Will This Ever Go Away?” — The Question Every OCD Patient Asks

  Erin: So many OCD patients ask, “Will this ever go away?” Have you experienced that question?

  Kristen: Yes—it's completely understandable. Parents wonder it, adolescents wonder it, adults wonder it. “Is this ever going to go away? This is driving me crazy and ruining my life, and I can’t imagine a life without it because it helps me.”

  One helpful approach is paradoxical:
  Stop trying to make it go away.
  Start with acceptance: “This may not go away—and I can live with it, because I know what it is.”

  When you accept something—even invite it in—it makes the involuntary (the obsession) more voluntary.

  Sometimes I encourage people to schedule time to force themselves to obsess, to get ahead of it.

  And here’s another answer I give:
  Absolutely, it will go away—and it will probably come back.
  Everything in life comes and goes. Good times, bad times, depression, hard days. If you treat it as a normal part of life instead of something catastrophic, that’s acceptance.

  OCD in Remission: Understanding Lapses vs. Relapses

  Erin: I love that perspective. For OCD, I believe it can go into remission. Does that mean forever? No.

  With adolescents especially—there’s so much development. OCD will try to hook onto new things. A 12-year-old may obsess about their menstrual cycle, later about sexuality, later about “How do I know they’re the one?”

  But all the techniques work across all themes. I try to give hope:
  The good news is—you know what to do.
  OCD is sneaky, but the tools stay the same.

  Kristen: Exactly. And when I find myself doing a little compulsion, I don’t spend three hours on it. I think, “Okay, what’s bothering you?”

  Erin: Do you notice it’s usually tied to stress?

  Kristen: Yes. That’s why I encourage people to befriend their OCD—use it as information. What’s the function of this behavior? Why do I need to repeat this?

  You don’t have to know the perfect answer. Don’t get perfectionistic about analyzing your own OCD (because… hello, more OCD). Sometimes there are several possible meanings. Just stay aware.

  Kristin’s Trauma Story: Sexual Abuse and a State Department Cover-Up

  Erin: And then there are folks with taboo OCD—POCD, harm OCD, suicidal OCD. They have a hard time being with themselves.

  Kristen: Yes. And I’ll share something personal—I’ve never had those OCD themes. And I say this transparently because it relates to my history.

  When my family moved to West Africa, my path crossed with a serial pedophile who was a high-ranking State Department official. He sexually abused me for two years. When it came out, the State Department protected him and threw the victims and families under the bus.

  I write about all of this in my most recent book. I believe my early OCD made me vulnerable—I was the “weird kid,” so when this man paid attention to me, I was vulnerable.

  After the abuse and the cover-up, I developed other anxiety-driven behaviors—bulimia, binge drinking, chain smoking. You can't do a control study on yourself, but I always attributed those to the trauma.

  The Connection Between OCD, Bulimia, and Addictive Behaviors

  People don’t think of bulimia, binge drinking, or smoking as OCD—but if you’ve had OCD and then you’ve had addictive behaviors, they feel adjacent and parallel.

  Erin: Yes—they keep you in the comfort zone. The function is to stay comfortable.

  Kristen: Exactly. You get a surge of discomfort; with bulimia you respond with food, then purge. With smoking, nicotine quells the anxiety. It’s a cycle.

  Treating Emetophobia: What Actually Works

  Erin: And you had emetophobia, which then seems like the opposite of bulimia—that’s wild. Emetophobia is one of the hardest OCD cycles to overcome. What worked?

  Kristen: Honestly? Nothing helped me as a kid. I found coping mechanisms. I would sneak Rolaids constantly—I thought they would prevent leukemia and therefore vomiting. I was eight years old. I had my magical thinking.

  There wasn’t help available.

  Erin: And now you're the therapist you wish you had. So how do you help clients with emetophobia?

  Kristen: A few things. Not in a set protocol—I agree with Irvin Yalom: you create a different therapy for every person.

  But overall:

  1. Figure out the function.

  One client now calls it her “fear of life.” She used to say she was terrified of dying, but everything she described—fear, discomfort, being grossed out—are life experiences, not death. That reframe landed.

  2. Contract with the client.

  “Do you really want to work on this?” If yes, we agree they’ll take steps—baby steps—to get uncomfortable.

  3. Exposure therapy (reasonable forms).

  I’ve only once done the flour-and-egg fake vomit mixture. But it’s obviously not real, so it’s limited.

  I’ve never used medications that induce vomiting, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

  I have done:

  • water-in-the-mouth and spitting into the toilet

  • gagging or vomiting noises

  • normal everyday exposures (like eating food they’re convinced will cause food poisoning)

  Those tend to be most effective because they’re tied to daily life.

  Kristin’s Book Object: A Memoir

  Erin: What’s the title of your book and where can we find it?

  Kristen: Object: A Memoir. It’s about being turned into an object by a middle-aged pedophile, and the recovery process of becoming the subject of my own life again. You can order it through any bookstore.

  Erin: I’ll include that in the show notes.

  Carrying On Despite OCD: You Can Have Problems and Still Live

  Erin: Any final words of wisdom?

  Kristen: So many. But as someone who’s mid-aged, wise enough, happy enough despite everything I’ve been through:

  You can have a problem like OCD and still carry on.
  You can be afraid of germs on the doorknob and still touch it. One thing doesn’t have to control the other. That’s a shift you have to make.

  And also—seek help, and trust the help of others.

  Erin: Thank you so much, Kristen. This was very enlightening.

  Kristen: Thank you—it was great to meet you. I look forward to staying in touch.