4 Signs You Had a False Recovery from Your OCD

Dear Jaimie–praise God, I’ve been fully healed from my OCD! I read the email in my inbox with a twinge of apprehension. I’d received similar emails before, and I knew how the story often ended. I prayed earnestly and gave everything to God, and it was like a miraculous lifting of my spirits. I’m healed from OCD! I wrote back a mild congratulations, one with no exclamation points or gushy joy. I wasn’t convinced. The sudden nature of her “cure” made me suspect it was a false recovery, but I didn’t tell her that. 

Eight or ten months later, I had another email from her in my inbox. She was crushed. 

I’ve had a terrible relapse, she wrote. I’m back where I was before, but maybe even worse. Now I’m awfully discouraged. I just can’t do this journey again!

I asked her—as I’ve asked others in her situation—whether it was a true relapse or whether it was a false recovery to begin with. 

A true relapse is when we’ve genuinely made progress in recovery but life circumstances and stressors cause us to temporality dip back into maladaptive, compulsive spiritual behaviors. But a false recovery is when we haven’t actually made progress, we haven’t actually dealt with the sinister underlying patterns of our OCD, but for whatever unknown reason, the OCD goes underground for a season. This can FEEL like a sudden recovery, one that many people attribute to God’s deliverance. But just as randomly as it went underground, it’ll randomly pop back up again, as nasty as ever. 

The roller coaster of false recoveries is difficult because it makes you feel out of control. You never know when the OCD is going to pop up again. Many people develop obsessions about their mental health struggle coming back again, and this becomes a more central obsessional feature than whatever else it was they were obsessing about in the first place.

If you’re wondering whether you had a false recovery from OCD or a true relapse, check out the following list of five signs that can help you decide.

False Recovery Sign 1: You Felt Better Suddenly

Overly rapid recoveries are one of the top signs I see in false recoveries. You may feel better so suddenly that you almost don’t know how it happened. This doesn’t take into account the time needed to change thought patterns or revise our understandings of self and God that got us into this mess in the first place.

Changing our thought patterns takes time.

Most “fast” things aren’t really that great, when you think about it. Fast food lacks nutritional quality. Fast fashion is unpopular because of how it relies on underpaid labor in poor working conditions. Fast money is often associated with gambling, shady deals, or scams. And fast relationships can get you involved too deeply, too soon, with the wrong person.

Why should OCD recovery be an instantaneous fix?

Getting better too suddenly can be one sign that you had a false recovery and the OCD might be coming back in full force. Getting better slowly, on the other hand, seems to be associated with better long-term, lasting outcomes.

False Recovery Sign 2: You Didn’t Develop New Coping Skills

True recovery from OCD requires more than seeking reassurance from others; it’s about actively engaging with new coping strategies and tools that allow for long-term change. Many people with OCD are quick to ask questions like, “Does this sound like OCD?” hoping to alleviate their immediate fears through external validation. While seeking guidance can be part of the journey, relying solely on reassurance without pursuing new techniques for managing OCD can lead to a cycle of dependency that stalls real progress. Effective recovery requires a proactive approach where you develop and implement skills to address your obsessions and compulsions directly.

I recommend that everyone serious about OCD recovery keep a dedicated “recovery notebook,” either in digital form or as a physical journal. In this notebook, you can record effective strategies, coping skills, and insights that you find helpful along the way.

When you eventually have a true relapse (most people have at least miniature relapses), you’ll be able to quickly flip through your notes and remind yourself of the techniques that have helped you in the past. Nobody wants to be up at 3am, panicking in the middle of a relapse and trying to remind themselves what in the world they did last time to make it better!

Having concrete coping skills is a sign that your recovery is on the right track. Like farmers who name their animals (ask me sometime about the goofy names my mom used to have for her chickens), we also have names for our coping skills. There’s the “put it on ice,” the “do the next thing,” the “be in your sound mind first,” the “logical person argument,” and so on. If these or similar coping skills never became second nature to you, you might be dealing with a false recovery of OCD.

False Recovery Sign 3: You Avoided Facing Key Issues

If someone’s recovery focused solely on learning coping skills without addressing deeper, underlying issues, there’s a chance they may be bottling up unresolved inner conflicts that may emerge again at a later time. Coping skills are valuable tools, but in isolation, they don’t tackle the “heart-level” issues that often lie at the root of OCD. For many people, these unresolved heart issues add subconscious fuel to the fire of their compulsions and anxieties. Without examining and addressing these patterns, a person might feel temporary relief but not experience a deeper, lasting peace as they haven’t touched the core beliefs that drive their OCD symptoms.

When I speak of core inner conflicts that drive OCD symptoms, I’d be looking for you to have worked through matters similar to the following (not all of these will press on a nerve for every single person, but most people will have at least one or two that need significant work):

• Why you’re a perfectionist and struggle to accept imperfections
• Why you feel the need to take so much responsibility, even for things beyond your control
• Why you have a hard time saying “no” and setting boundaries with others
• Why you feel shame and guilt for nearly everything, even things outside your influence
• Why you can’t allow yourself to relax and feel the need to stay “on guard”
• Why you don’t feel safe unless you have clear answers to all your questions
• Why you view God in a negative light

True recovery is based on both coping skills and heart-level growth in areas like these. If you never went deep enough to face these foundational issues, you might have had a false recovery of OCD.

False Recovery Sign 4: Your Faith Feels Unstable

If your faith feels shaky, it could indicate that you haven’t yet reached a deeper stage of recovery. In my YouTube video on the four stages of scrupulosity recovery, I discuss how, by the fourth stage, many people experience a significant coming to terms with themselves and with God. However, before reaching this place of peace, we often go through a third stage marked by disillusionment and confusion. In this phase, many of us look back on our journey and question, “If I wasn’t really hearing from God, what was I following all this time?” This period can feel chaotic and even a bit like spiritual betrayal. It’s normal to feel disoriented, even jaded, about our spiritual life as we work through these tough questions.

In the fourth stage, however, we begin to find a more stable and nuanced faith. This stability doesn’t come from perfect answers or absolute certainty but from a growing sense of security in God’s grace, even when our emotions fluctuate or questions remain. Instead of trying to control or perfectly understand our faith, we learn to embrace both mystery and trust. The foundation of our spiritual life shifts away from compulsive reassurance and rests on a more grounded relationship with God. If you’re feeling spiritually unsettled and are struggling with questions that make you feel jaded, it may mean you’re still working toward that resolution, which is a natural and important part of genuine recovery.

Conclusion

Recovering from OCD can feel like a winding path with unexpected twists, especially when you’ve experienced what seemed like a full recovery only to have the symptoms return. Take the story of the young woman we referenced earlier, for example. She had struggled with OCD for years and thought she’d finally found relief after a profound spiritual experience that seemed to lift her compulsions overnight. For several months, she felt free, grateful, and certain that her struggle was over. But, almost as suddenly as it had vanished, the OCD returned—this time with even greater intensity. She was devastated. She fell into a pit of despair, feeling that her progress was an illusion and questioning if she’d ever truly get better.

But instead of giving up, she realized she needed to approach her recovery differently. She recognized that her initial relief had been superficial and hadn’t addressed the core issues driving her OCD. She committed herself to therapy, began exploring her underlying beliefs about responsibility and perfectionism, and started working on how she viewed herself and God. The journey wasn’t easy, but with time and determination, she started seeing real, lasting change.

If you’re facing similar setbacks, take heart. Genuine recovery often requires a deeper look and patience with the process. False recovery and relapse can be discouraging, but they don’t mean you’re back to square one. Each step, each challenge, brings you closer to a more solid foundation. And each step of the way, Jesus is beside you, the Author and Finisher of your faith, cheering you on to completion.

Best wishes on the journey,