Carrie: I am so excited because today we are kicking off an entire series of personal stories of people who struggled with OCD. These tend to be our most popular episodes because you guys just feel so seen and understood, and often you don’t hear other people of faith talking about how they have struggled with OCD.
So I’m happy to bring these episodes to you, and I thought we would kick it off by actually airing portions of a very early episode that I did with the Mitzi Van Cleve. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Kerry Bach. I’m a Christ follower. Wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.
When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith.
I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. For those of you that know the history, when I started this show five years ago, it was called Hope for Anxiety and OCD. When I was Googling around looking for guests, to be honest with you guys, there just wasn’t much out there related to Christianity and OCD.
I’m happy to say that there are people besides me that are speaking into this space now, but Mitzi was one of the few people that I found that was. Kinda sharing her story online. I reached out to Mitzi to see if she would be on the show, and I barely had a podcast at that point. She ended up being episode 13 and we had a conversation and she just wanted to make sure that things were aligned.
And what we were gonna be talking about, where we were gonna be taking it, and I was just really appreciative of her agreeing to do that interview. One because, hello. I was a nobody at that point, barely had a podcast. And also just because of her heart of willingness to be so vulnerable and so open about some of the themes that she struggled with from just a very young age and how that progressed in her life.
So if you haven’t ever heard this interview or you’ve been around for a long time, and you’ve probably forgotten it by now, I know you’re gonna be blessed by it today. When did you start to have symptoms of OCD?
Mitzi: Well, that really started even as far back as when I was a toddler. I know that sounds surprising.
The only thing I can say about that is in my childhood. Right up until I was quite old actually, I never understood a lot of what I was experiencing was actually, so like the first things that I can go back and look at is really long held obsessional fears and themes. The very first one, it was sort of unusual as OCD things are.
Sure. Was a fear of being flushed down the toilet. Hmm. And this fear was so intense that I would not use the big toilet until I was five years old and I was forced to go to kindergarten. Wow. And even Vanessa, a small child, you know, you’re three years old, four years old. I could sit there and watch a toilet being flushed.
Look at the hole in the bottom of the toilet and say, well, I can’t fit through there. Mm-hmm. But it didn’t make a difference. My brain had just decided this was a thing to be afraid of. And from there, once I got past that one, a lot of those kind of weird themes and health obsessions. But by the age of 10 is when I first developed.
Some obsessions related to self-harm, and that just started with hearing about a form of harm that could happen to a person. And you know, I don’t wanna really go into the details. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to explain specific obsessions and details because it can get a little graphic and upsetting that people who don’t have OCD don’t really understand.
Sure. Why would you think that? And so this morphed from my fear of this thing happening to me, to me actually doing it to myself, like losing control. Mm-hmm. And harming myself. And that just went on and on and on for the longest time. And there was something in me that knew these things weren’t at all logical.
Right. And they scared me so much. I wouldn’t really tell my parents. I would exhibit symptoms of anxiety. I would’ve nausea. I would get up in the night shaking and feeling like I needed to vomit and things like that, especially about the harming thing. I was afraid to verbalize that right as a kid, but that’s where it started.
And then it became more debilitating after birth of my and birth of my second child. I developed panic disorder, not knowing what that was. Wow. Okay. I mean, I’d, I’d always struggled with like social anxiety and just your basic kinds of anxiety disorders as a kid, but I didn’t know such a thing existed.
Right. I never heard about. C. D, anxiety disorders, panic disorder. Those words were foreign to me. I only heard about crazy people.
Carrie: Yeah.
Mitzi: And there’s a thing where there’s a stigma after birth of my children, the thing switched from me hurting me. To me going crazy and possibly hurting one of my children in a really awful way.
And that was just so debilitating. I can’t even begin to describe how awful it was.
Carrie: And that’s the hard thing about OCD is that the themes do shift. Yes. As you get older or go through different developmental stages in life. And it seems like once you have a handle on one theme, sometimes another theme will then pop up.
Mitzi: Oh, yes, it, it’s very true about OCD and, and that’s why it’s important to understand how the disorder operates, how to get on top of a theme before it gets on top of you and, and it gets, grows too big and right large, it gets kind of stuck in your head. I do try to tell people that there’s physical symptoms with this too, when you’re going through this.
And for me, some of the things I experienced. During that really bad season, which was a very long season mm-hmm. Of harm, OCD was an inability to eat. I struggled to get calories down. I’m five eight. I dropped 114 pounds. Wow. People thought I was anorexic. It had nothing to do with anorexia. I just was nauseous.
The anxiety was so, so bad
Carrie: I couldn’t sleep. I’m curious about what your parents thought. Did your parents just think like, oh, she’s really nervous a lot, or she’s kind of an anxious child? They had no idea of everything that was going on in your head. Right. They didn’t. And you know,
Mitzi: there were some people in my family, distant relatives who had struggled.
Which caused them to even like not wanna leave their house and things like that. My mom would talk about that and she would say, you know, you’re gonna end up like that. But she didn’t really know what was going on. There was a lot of with, I know my mom, there was like reassurances, which is a knee jerk reaction for a parent to do that, and a lot of times it manifested just as me being sickly when I was struggling with.
Certain health obsessions, I would get very, just like I described, sick to my stomach and I would lose weight and, and so they were taking me to the doctor and trying to figure out what was wrong, but it was being approached like it was a physical issue. And at that point I did open up to my mom. I began to know, okay, this obviously is something to do with like a.
I talked to my husband very little about it, just a little bit, and I opened up with my mom as I was sharing to her, I thought it might be a good idea for me to see a psychiatrist. She was really upset about
Carrie: it. Mm.
Mitzi: And And she talked about faith and then she said something that was really hard, you know about, well, that’s just for weak people.
I did pursue it still, but I didn’t get a diagnosis. The person I saw didn’t have any clue. Okay. That’s, and he was relating things to stress and then again, faith and, and it just, I got nowhere.
Carrie: Okay. So you did see a psychiatrist, but they weren’t able to help you at that point? No.
Mitzi: And of course some of the scary obsessional themes, I didn’t verbalize them.
I talked about anxiety and I talked about the panic attacks. I didn’t have that word though. Just this is what’s happening. Right. I tried to describe it. It wasn’t a good experience and it didn’t help me, sadly.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s unfortunate. When people do reach out for help and then they find somebody that isn’t familiar maybe with OCD or doesn’t quite know how to help them navigate through that process.
What was that process of getting the help that you needed? The
Mitzi: first help that I got was really for the panic disorder, and that was interesting. I believe that during the time of my praying through this and asking God for help and just feeling so desperate. That God came through. At that time, I was still struggling.
I was pregnant again. Mm-hmm. That tells you how long it was. I was still struggling tremendously, and I had become pregnant again. I was about four months pregnant. I was at my aunt and uncle’s cottage, my husband and my brothers, my family, and my aunts and uncles. They were watching TV show, which I did not need to watch.
At that time, it was called Alien. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the perfect show if you’re struggling. So I was trying to avoid watching it. So I picked up a Reader’s Digest magazine and the words on the front of the magazine where they show the stories, one of them said panic, and then it said. It might not be what you think it’s mm-hmm.
Uh, just the word panic struck a chord with me. So I, you know, I opened up this magazine and started reading the story of this woman who had panic disorder, and it was me. Wow. I mean, I was reading it about myself and, and they listed all the symptoms of panic attack and I was, I had all of them,
Carrie: right.
Mitzi: And so I finally had an answer for that.
At the time I was pregnant and I really couldn’t implement, you know, Mets and things like that, right? And so I just started working on things like breathing techniques. And after I delivered, I started doing really intensive aerobic exercise. I was jogging four and five miles a day and I gradually getting healthier, which kind of eventually kind of took.
You know, it wasn’t as mm-hmm. As bad as it as it had been, but that’s when I learned just about panic disorder. I didn’t have any idea about ocd. And so that kind of waxed and waned on and off, you know, throughout the rest of my life up until the age of 50.
Carrie: I think your story is very similar to other people’s in terms of, a lot of times there’s a big gap between when people start to have symptoms and when they even find out, this is actually OCD that I’m experiencing, because they feel ashamed of the symptoms.
They feel ashamed of the thoughts, or they feel like, okay, this sounds really crazy and nobody’s gonna understand it or believe it, or they’re gonna lock me up somewhere if I. Tell someone that I’m having these thoughts, especially related to harm.
Mitzi: Yes. What you say about they’re gonna lock me up somewhere was a genuine fear of mine because I couldn’t understand why I was having the thoughts to start with.
And then for me to share that with somebody, you know, I was, I could think was, well, they’re gonna be like, okay, you really are dangerous. Mm. And then sometimes I would think, well maybe then will be how.
Like your brain is telling you this is something that you should be afraid of. This thought I say, it’s almost like you have a phobic response to the thoughts that you’re having. It’s a thought in your head. It’s there, you know? Right. And, and all that you’re doing to try to get rid of it makes it worse.
And of course it did with me. ’cause I didn’t know it was OCD and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was at the age of 50. Okay. Okay, so, so at the age of 50, what happened? I had already been struggling. I was going back through a flare of anxiety and panic attacks because there’d been a lot of stress in our life.
Big life changes. My husband went on disability moves just. Lots of changes. Lots of uncertainty. I didn’t notice it for a while, but it was kind of too late. By the time I did start to say, oh no, you know, I’m going back through this again. I was having panic attacks. I was starting to have obsessions about my health again.
Mm-hmm. Related to stuff that normally I would just brush off. But that’s how OCD is. It’s always looking for a target. Something to be upset about. And so during that time, I was praying, again, reading my Bible, doing all the things I normally do as a Christian to try to receive information from God about what can I do about this?
You know, how can I help myself? But also just to gain comfort. And I got a lot of comfort from the Psalms, even back when I was in my twenties. Mm-hmm. Because I saw in there things that described how I was feeling. My son also gave me some sermons on tape and he said, these are really good, mom. You know, I want you.
We always share things like this. You ought to listen. So I put one of those sermons in. It was actually on a CD and I was doing dishes. I was trying to stay very busy and distracted. And so this particular pastor was talking about our struggles with sin. As Christians, and I understood it wasn’t new to me that as Christians, we will still be fighting sin our whole life.
It’s not something that we’re cured of. It’s something we’re aware of, right? We’re made aware of when we become a Christian and we have a desire to please our saviors, so we work continually towards pleasing him through obedience. But he says this one statement, which I don’t even know why he said it. In the middle of the sermon, he says, so if you call yourself a Christian, but you’re still all the time struggling and sinning, you really might wanna think, are you really a Christian?
In the past, I would’ve been like, yeah, of course.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Mitzi: This time. My brain just latched onto that. It was like, wait a minute, what if he’s right? What if all this time, all these years, I’ve thought I was a Christian? I’m not. And what if the reason I struggle with this thing, whatever it is, is because of that.
And it just was like a damn broke open. And the intrusive thoughts related to that just poured out just one after another. And it, I just began this war with it, right? Just, it was a mental 24 7. Every minute I was awake, I couldn’t sleep. And that was the new OCD thing, but I didn’t know it was OCD. ’cause you hadn’t ever had that before.
It was a new theme. Yeah. Until I was engaging with my compulsions. So by then, at this point in my life, of course we had the internet and I was doing what’s called researching. Lots of Googling, lots of researching around the topic of, am I still saying? Doubting your salvation. And I was reading all these articles about how we can know we’re really Christians and I would read.
It didn’t make it go away, and suddenly one day I stumbled across a Christian forum that said, doubting your salvation that it said OCD. I was like, what does that have to do with what I’m going through? But outta curiosity, I opened it and I got into this forum and it was like I started reading the posts from the people in this group.
And it was amazing. It was just like the Reader’s Digest thing. I was reading my story,
Carrie: right? They were
Mitzi: telling exactly what I had been going through. I was stunned. And as I read more and more in this forum, and then I started going further out about OCD, what it is, how it manifests, what causes it. I had it.
Mm-hmm. And I’d had it since I was a kid and I never knew. Wow. And that opened up the door for me to finally have a way to manage this beast called OCD. And from there I began learning and learning more about ERP, about medications, about therapies like a CT, just. All the ways that this thing that I called it, this ugly it for all these years, it had a name.
I get truthful sometimes talking about it because God just did answer my prayer, right. He just didn’t answer in the way I was wanting. The way I was wanting was just take this thing away, whatever it’s, mm-hmm. He was pointing me to, this is what it is and this is what you can do. Right. You know, and it was just astonishing to me that I could live my whole life basically until I was 50 years old and never have been able to get help.
And there was so many long seasons of just. Debilitating crippling suffering. It was hard for me to believe, but just the relief Right.
Carrie: Was
Mitzi: so overwhelming.
Carrie: Yeah. I mean, we talked about that in an earlier episode with someone about how diagnosis itself can be a relief when you get a proper diagnosis. Yes.
And then you can say, okay, now that we know what we’re dealing with, what can we do about it? What’s our next step forward? Exactly even
Mitzi: after you get a diagnosis. ’cause OCD is OCD, it’s gonna to make you doubt that. But as you begin to bravely risk, working with like things like exposure, response, prevention, therapy, for me it was brave.
When I was told I probably needed to try some medications.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. But
Mitzi: that was hard for me. Sure. Some of that was pride. Some of it was just because I didn’t have never taken anything like that before. What will it do to me? All the fears, and that was a big struggle. But it’s so worth it because the alternative is staying stuck.
Right. I mean, and doing the same thing over and over. And not getting better and feeling worse. And it was hard. It’s not like, oh, you began ERP and the next day it’s like, I’m all better. Right?
Carrie: Right. It’s a process. So
Mitzi: it’s a process. And the longer you’ve been struggling with the theme, I think it’s a longer process.
You know, your brain’s got this practice cycle of intrusive thought, anxiety response, compulsion. Intru, more anxiety, more compulsions, and so it’s a habit that needs to be, and that takes time. Right. Did you get into therapy at that point? I started going to a therapist, and I think this is the hardest thing about OCD and people with a diagnosis is being able to find a competent therapist is hard.
A lot of people really do need a competent therapist because it takes a lot of grit and determination and courage to do ERP, and I just think having a competent psychologist. To do these things and understands the disorder is something. Unfortunately, there just aren’t that many, and a lot of it has to do with your network, with your insurance too, which was one of my biggest hurdles.
I could not afford the counselors and the therapists that I needed to see.
Carrie: It is hard because really therapists would have to pursue training after their degree. To specialize in OCD, and a lot of people don’t do that unless they have some type of personal connection. Or in my situation, I was working with a lot of people who just thought they had anxiety, and then I was starting to see more OCD as I was starting to hear more about what they were actually worried about and struggling with.
So that’s kind of how I got branched off into it. But I think a lot of therapists have not received further training on it. I wanna get in with you on the spiritual aspects really of struggling. Sure. With OCD, and I know a lot of people who are struggling out there probably are praying prayers just like you pray.
But God, yes, this is awful. I feel terrible. I’m all tore up inside. Will you please just like touch my body and touch my mind and take this all away? How did you work through some of that wrestling with God
Mitzi: when I didn’t OCD? I did a lot of that, and it was a wrestling time. I thought during that time, maybe this was due to past sin, maybe there was something I needed to confess, and so I would pour over everything I could think of and current things and confess.
There was also a feeling because God wasn’t taking it away, just miraculously, right. Maybe he’d abandoned me. Mm. And that’s why I. There’s particular Psalms, Psalm 13 I think, says, how long, Lord, will you forgive me forever? How long will you keep hiding in your face? Please answer me. And just the desperation there of the feeling when we’re going through painful, painful suffering and trials of.
Where’s God in all of this? And it took a while for me to understand growth through affliction. So when I learned that I had OCD and I learned I have panic disorder, I was able to shift over into, well, maybe this is how God’s answering my prayer, right? And so that helped me to understand that these are very real disorders.
To learn about how they develop, why they develop, how their genetic. It’s not a sin to treat a disorder and affliction right, and to seek professional help for it. Though CD always goes after what’s most precious to you. And for the Christian, their walk with Christ is the most precious thing of their entire existence.
So it’s gonna go there. And I wanted people to understand they weren’t alone, but I also knew there were a lot of people like me who got all the way to 50 or 25 or 30, 40, whatever, and didn’t even know that’s what it was. And I thought by sharing my story, they could discover that that’s the way I did and get directed towards the help they needed.
And the other aspect of it is just growth in it through that. Before I go there, I did wanna add to what you said about ways that the church can support people with these issues. I think the number one thing they do is listen and then validate the experience as a real affliction,
Carrie: right?
Mitzi: And not merely a spiritual issue.
That can be by more prayer, more bible study, more faith. To literally be willing to support people and say, Hey, this is a real medical or mental health issue for which you can get help. We wanna encourage you that if they say you should see the specialist to go ahead and do that, and we wanna encourage you that if they suggest medication might be helpful to you, by all means, please, please do that.
Because it’s so harmful to say things like, well, it’s a lack of faith, and taking medication means that you aren’t trusting in God and all the things that you can hear. It puts up such a roadblock.
Carrie: Right. It just makes the problem worse. Yeah.
Mitzi: It hurts people. Mm-hmm. And it’s important for churches to be able to be compassionate and pray for the person with a mental health issue.
And the same exact way you pray for anybody who has any other type of health issue.
Carrie: Yeah. I think that that’s so important and so helpful because we have this ability to rally around people who have just had a baby in the church. We’re really good at that. We can bring you a casserole and we’re really good at rallying around somebody that’s going through cancer or has lost a loved one.
But then when it comes to something that’s. Invisible, like an anxiety disorder or OCD, it’s like almost like people don’t know what to do with that.
Mitzi: One of the biggest ways I’ve changed in how I talk about my anxiety disorders and in my OCD in particular is I used to kind of go along and say, well, I have OCD, but God still used me in spite of it.
And that’s kind of how I worded it right now. I say I have OCD and God is able to use me because of it, and that’s because of the ways he’s grown me through this experience of affliction. That’s not uncommon. God, Paul talked about it, right? Talked about a thorn in the flesh. He said, God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you.
My strength is perfected in your weakness. Paul ends up saying, I’m gonna glory in this affliction because of this, because when I’m weak, I’m depending on God’s strength and not my own.
Carrie: Your story and just what you’re doing and just being vocal and open about being a very strong Christian who has also had a struggle and an affliction, I think is so hopeful to other people, hopefully who will hear this podcast.
I just want people to be able to sit with people in pain and say, we’re here for you.
Mitzi: Yes. And it’s important to understand. That is painful. I would still get up every day, go through the motions like a robot. Sometimes I would fix my hair, I would. Put on my makeup. It was difficult to go out when I was really, really sick, but I still did it.
I would sit in church and be tortured because of my OCD, but I would sit there. Yeah, it’s very, very painful. It for me, definitely has been the thing that caused most pain in my life and the most long lasting. Because it can just hang on
Carrie: and hang on. If people want to dive in and read your whole story, will you tell us the name of the book and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes as well?
Mitzi: The name of the book is Strivings within the OCD Christian, and you can find it on Amazon.
Carrie: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.
Mitzi: Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity. Anytime I can share, not because of what it does for me, but what I hope it might do for someone else who’s looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for someone who can relate to what they’re going through.
Carrie: Whether you’re struggling in a really hard season or wanna come on and share your story. Or have any suggestions for things that you’d like for us to talk about on the podcast, you can find me@kerrybach.com. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of by the Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guest are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.
