Author: Carrie Bock

Carrie Bock is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Smyrna, TN who helps people get to a deeper level of healing without compromising their faith. She specializes in working with Christians struggling with OCD who have also experienced childhood trauma, providing intensive therapy for individuals who want to heal at a faster pace than traditional therapy.

110. Healthy Conflict with Janeen Davis, PsyD, MFT

Written by Carrie Bock on January 3, 2024. Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode.

In this week’s episode, Carrie is joined by Dr. Janine Davis, an expert in conflict psychology and biblical conflict resolution to discuss how to handle conflicts in a healthy way, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and grace in resolving relationship challenges.

Episode Highlights:

How to navigate relationship challenges with grace and understanding.
The practical wisdom of the Peace Pursuit model for resolving conflicts.
The role of self-reflection in achieving genuine peace in relationships.
Strategies for fostering open communication in difficult conversations.
Practical steps to promote forgiveness and reconciliation in conflicts.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Janeen Davis from Purpose and Peace Solutions. Dr. Davis brings extensive experience in member care counseling, especially for those in overseas missions. Her work in supporting individuals facing challenges like anxiety, depression, and conflict resolution within ministry contexts has been transformative, and I’m eager for you to hear her insights.

Dr. Davis introduces the concept of member care, a holistic approach she’s practiced for over a decade while living in Asia. She supports missionaries who often face unique stressors, such as cultural adjustments and relational conflicts. Her commitment to finding practical solutions led her to adopt the Peace Pursuit model, a systematic approach to conflict resolution that has proven highly effective in ministry settings.

A key takeaway from our conversation is the importance of self-reflection in resolving conflicts. Dr. Davis emphasizes that true peace begins with examining our own hearts and motives, shifting the focus from trying to change others to understanding our role and inviting God to work within us.

We also discuss how past wounds can influence present conflicts, making it crucial to recognize and address these triggers with grace. Dr. Davis shares practical advice on discerning when to confront conflicts and when to extend grace, reminding us that through prayer and self-examination, we can approach conflicts in a way that fosters healing and reconciliation.

Explore other episodes:

73. What are Boundaries and Why are they Important? with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

Transcript

Christian Faith and OCD episode 110. A lot of what we talk about on our show is healthy relationships, as well as reducing shame and increasing hope for people who are dealing with anxiety and OCD, we wanna say Happy New Year to everyone as this is coming out on January 3rd.

Here on the show with me today, I have Dr. Janeen Davis, who is of Purpose and Peace Solutions. She does a variety of different things, so I’ll let her tell a little bit more about herself and what she does.

Janeen: Thank you, Carrie, for the intro and yes, Purpose and Peace Solutions is hopefully aptly named because in all the different ways that I work with people these days, I think that does reflect the heart of what we’re after.

I do a lot of what I call member care counseling these days, and that’s because that’s the term that we often use overseas on the mission field. When we’re working with people overseas, we call it member care. I’m not sure why we call it that other than that. A lot of times we’re dealing with everything that life throws at us.

There are no parameters, there are no insurance companies. We’re not dealing with things in that way. We’re dealing with people living cross-culturally, who might be struggling with how to secure a visa to continue living in their country, or wrestling with their call to ongoing overseas ministry, or wrestling with anxiety, depression, OCD or acute traumatic events that they go through. And so because it just runs the gamut of situations and ages and family, individual ministry teams, all that stuff, we just call that member care. That is a lot of what I’ve been doing. Well, that’s primarily what I’ve been doing for the past more than a decade.

I’ve been doing overseas ministry myself and living in Asia since 2007, but shifting into a member care-focused role, and then supervising a team of member care providers throughout all of Asia, that’s been my life for so long, that when I got stuck in America, because I had to evacuate during COVID, It didn’t occur to me to change that framework of just really like holistic care and looking at people’s what does life look like on the ground for you, what is your local situation like, what’s your family situation like, as well as the maybe specific thing that they’re expressing the need for and asking for help for. I do a lot of that. That’s just one answer. That’s just one part of it, but kind of introducing that term, I feel like it may be necessary because it’s oftentimes just associated with overseas work and I brought that to where I am now based out of Nashville, but still providing care full time for overseas cross-cultural people working in ministry around the world.

My work schedule is crazy. I usually start at 5:30 or 6:00 am with sessions because of time zone stuff.

Carrie: How did you become interested in helping Christians on the mission field resolve conflict? Was this something that you had encountered a lot or you had seen this was a common occurrence, something that people were bringing into their time with you?

Janeen: I like the way you phrased that because you’re including so many components that were so relevant. I didn’t even say the thing about conflict resolution, but that did arise out of my work in a cross-cultural ministry context because, well, I’ll say it like this, we can see a correlation between interdependence and conflict potential. What I mean by that is the more that we depend on other people for our basic needs or basic core aspects of our life, the more there is potential for conflict and that is particularly true on the mission field, where sometimes there’s only one other family in your village who speaks English.

Our need for one another to kind of be our whole social support in the way that we want it is really high when options are limited. The more that we need another person who didn’t necessarily sign up to be our best friend or to like to play board games at night to decompress or whatever. They didn’t necessarily sign up for that and yet if we come to them with those expectations, then it just increases the opportunity for conflict. That’s just the lighthearted things.

In my experience working overseas. Of course, we see the full gamut of the human experience. People are going to struggle with things regardless of where they’re living and working. We also see conflict arise in a way that’s problematic and distracting and destructive for this kind of work because if people can’t be in the right relationship with one another, then how can they even really claim to be disciples of Christ? I mean, Jesus said, don’t know, they’ll know you’re my disciples if you have a love for one another in John 13:35. So that’s really a big deal and something that we have to work through. We can’t do ministry together if we’re not speaking, you know, there’s tension. Everybody feels that. So in my experience, conflict has been the most difficult or even untreatable issue, across the board and that’s partly because of its commonality and I just say that like as a general rule. My member care team and I would understand that when conflicts got severe to the point that leadership or management. However, you want to think about it.

We’re reaching out for help with mediation or something. They would want us to show up and help these people fix their problems like help them resolve their conflict It’s the one thing that I didn’t want anything to do with, because we don’t have a gold standard of treatment for conflict. We don’t have a specific standard approach that consistently produces positive outcomes for relational conflict.

Ultimately, seeing that pattern and seeing that problem, but also seeing how persistent this is, like in the human experience, influenced the direction of my doctoral research in looking at like where conflict comes from. We need to have a better standard understanding of the nature of conflict so we can more effectively treat the right thing.

I think part of the reason conflict is so difficult to resolve is we’re often trying to fix the wrong thing. So all of that to say that it was a huge problem because conflicts constantly arise, and it’s extremely destructive in a ministry context where we are relying heavily on one another for work, personal needs, social needs, for kids, for adults.

We have to find a way to work this out. We can’t just part ways. We can’t just be like, I’ll just go to a church down the street. I don’t have to deal with you anymore. We have to deal with each other. We had to come up with something that worked, and we weren’t able to find it until I came across some materials called Peace Pursuit that had been circulating in the global ministry world for a long time.

When I got my hands on those materials, I could see that it was a systematic, really action-oriented, measurable process of working through conflict in a way that addresses conflict in different terms than I’d ever seen. Iit would produce new positive outcomes and I started using it in my organization consistently as in 100 percent of the time for the first year I was being called in to deal with really significant conflicts that had been going on a long time and using this model 100 percent of the time we would measure the success thrilling.

My passion for this ongoing work of helping people get this tool in their hands, know how to use it effectively and just know how to find peace in their own hearts, in their own lives from relational hurt and from wounds from the past in this way has come out of seeing it as a really huge need previously without a good solution on what we would call on the mission field or in an overseas context. Now I’m working in the States and have the privilege of getting to do a lot of training for ministries and for overseas organizations or local ministries in the States that want to help their staff or church staff or just local, any kind of office setting in a Christian context, equip their personnel or their staff with a really specific process of how to resolve conflicts well and reach peace no matter what.

Carrie: What I like about it is that it starts the conflict resolution process with you and God really praying, examining what is my part in this, is as you said, a lot of times we’re trying to solve the wrong thing, like we want to come to the conflict table and try to get that other person to change. But we don’t have control over that other person and what they’re doing. Ultimately, God is the one who can speak to their heart soften them and open them up towards resolution as well. I mean, that’s the spiritual component is very important there, I think, for people to recognize and understand. There’s also this element of you have different, I’ll call it a pathway. I don’t know if that’s what you would call it, but there’s a different pathway depending on if you feel like you’re the person who’s offended. if you feel like you’ve possibly offended someone else, or say you’re a third-party mediator and you’re not actually involved in the conflict. There are different systematic steps for each, depending on who you are in the conflict, to go through. I like that a lot because it’s very practical and step-by-step oriented.

Janeen: I think it’s great because you’ve clearly looked at these peace pursuit materials. That’s what you’re describing is this Peace Pursuit model of conflict resolution, we would say, It does start you out with a couple of things that are very, very unique that I’ve not seen in other models addressing this one is first asking people, do you want to resolve a relational problem? And the reason that that question is so important is because as we start to unpack it initially people will just say, “Yes, of course. That’s why I’m here. Yes, of course I do.” But then you already pointed it out. We want to do that by having the other person change or something like that. We want to do that by receiving the apology that we know that we are due, possibly, and that is the kind of mentality that keeps us stuck in conflicts when everyone else involved isn’t cooperating with our definition of peace. We have to really start checking our hearts right from the beginning with that question and realize it’s really challenging us to reflect, “Do I want peace or do I want to win?”

Carrie: That is a very good question.

Janeen: It’s a gut-wrenching question. We haven’t even started. That’s the first question of the process because we’re not going to start down this pathway until we’ve really made peace in our own hearts with even what the goal is if I’m trying to win, if I’m trying to build a case or develop some kind of amazing communication technique that will then open this person’s eyes to the wrong that they did and I will finally get my apology and that’s how I define peace then we’re going to be spending our time in a very different way, the common way. We’re going to do conflict resolution training on all these communication techniques because that’s based on a philosophy that conflict comes from just poor communication. That kind of, but no, not really because that would mean that every time someone doesn’t use “I statement” instead of “you statements”, it would consistently result in conflict, which of course it doesn’t because it comes down to our own heart, our expectations about the relationship.

Yes, so we start with that and then we choose our role. Am I the offended? Am I the offender? Am I a potential initiator where I just saw this go down and I want to help but I don’t want to make it worse and I want to stick my nose where I shouldn’t? Should I? Should I not? What should I say? And then, of course, the coach, which is for those of us in the counseling field, we’re often in a position to be a coach or at least potentially be a coach where we’re just utilizing these resources to help another individual, or maybe multiple people if we’re working with different people in the conflict, to help them reach peace.

All of that is such a fresh way of entering into the conversation. It really just starts to prime us to shift our thinking toward a more rational perspective because we’re going to be asked to describe the situation objectively, not emotionally, not using judgment labels on the other person or moral labels on the other person, like rudely or harshly or carelessly or whatever we might say as we’re describing the situation, but really starting to process back what happened and why exactly it was offensive to us or hurtful to us in the first place, not to justify our hurt, but to really start to understand the nature of the wound so that we can better understand how to reach peace, like, what does forgiveness need to look like in this situation, possibly.

Carrie: Sometimes the wound is that they did the exact same thing that your mother used to do, or your father used to do, or your ex used to do, and really taking that time to self-examine, recognize like, “Oh, okay, I’m getting triggered by past relationship stuff.” It’s not even have to do anything with this particular person, for this particular relationship.

Janeen: Yes.

Carrie: How do we know? I’ve kind of picked some questions for people who deal with anxiety surrounding conflict, and I would include myself in this somewhat. My husband and I do an anniversary episode every year, and we just talked about how I brought something up like, “Hey, I’m unhappy about this. And he said, “Yes, me too.” So then we had the opportunity to make changes in that aspect of our relationship, which was really beautiful.

How do we know whether something is worth bringing up and addressing? Like, we all are, in the Bible, we want to extend grace to other people. And I know that I have bad days, and I know that other people have bad days.

How do I know if it’s like, okay, I just need to extend grace and just let that one roll off and move on, forgive them, or do I need to address this with this person? Do I really need to bring it up and say, “Hey, that hurt me?”

Janeen: Yes, I love the question, and I think there are a couple of different ways that we can look at this. First of all, it would be helpful if we realized that the Bible actually gives us three different options for how to respond to hurt. It’s not just “go” because sometimes we feel like the right thing to do is go directly to the person and talk to them directly about it. We also have a whole slew of passages that tell us it’s to my benefit to overlook an offense. Overlooking and just releasing those moments of offense is also an equally valid option.

A third option is to just wait, watch, and see if a momentary offense was possibly a misunderstanding, a bad day, or discern if this is a pattern. Is this something where, for the sake of the other person or the relationship, the most loving and gracious thing to do is bring it up and bring it into the light and address it? Sometimes we need time to discern that we’re not going to know that from one incident. So that’s one thing to think about. The other is this significant shift or separation between my peace in my own heart and making wise decisions about how to best care for the other person and the relationship.

I think what we see in research, as well as practical, just realistic outcomes is I will get the best outcomes in my conversations with the other person in a relationship or speaking into issues in their life if I deal with them first in my own heart, rather than trying to find my peace through that conversation because then I’m bringing my needs into it. In addition to the topic that we’re talking about, I’m putting extra pressure on that conversation if I’m trying to find my peace from that person, taking it well, not getting defensive, and understanding what I meant. If I can come into that conversation already at peace in my heart from the Lord, then I’m going to be so much better positioned to speak in a way that the other person is more likely to hear and receive partly because I don’t have an agenda anymore other than just to love them well.

I think we’re trying to decide what’s the gracious thing to do. When should I go and speak with them about this? When should I kind of be merciful and just release them of this? I think one thing we’re looking at that we would want to look at is evaluating the seriousness of the offense. This would be like the Peace Pursuit model contains all this, so it’s really easy for me to answer this because all of these are steps in what we call stage one, this time that we spend with the Lord before we even decide whether or not to have that stage two conversation with the other person, is what we would call it. So we want to evaluate, what’s the nature of the offense? What are the potential consequences if I don’t say anything?

Carrie: That’s good.

Janeen: Really considering just a Philippians definition of love, where I’m considering the needs of the other person as more important than my own, as more significant, like I’m really taking into account what’s best for them, what’s best for the relationship and me.

In making that decision, when do I bring it up? What should I bring up? What should I just let go? one thing we want to do is try to understand the nature of the offense. Could this rightly be called a sin? Is this not just about something that I didn’t like because it didn’t suit my preferences, but this is actually really impacting their relationship with the Lord? This is a moral issue. I think that’s important for us to understand because I think that should influence maybe how we think about what to address and what not to address and how to address it. Because if I’m really particular about how I want the dishes done, they know it. They already know it. We’ve already had a conversation about it and then they’re still not doing it. Well, at that point, do I think that they’re sinning against God or am I going to think of this like they’re not loving me? Well, because they’re choosing not to do what I ask, but then in my orienting definition of love is the whole world needs to do what I ask to love me well and like if people don’t do what I want, then they’re sinning because they’re not loving me well.

Even just like checking my own heart about that really is a humbling process because it often helps us to realize conflicts may be best understood as not a moral violation per se, but really as unmet or unequal expectations, and when I can reframe my offense or the thing that I want to address in terms of expectations, like what exactly did I expect them to do or not do, to say or not say, and then really work through a process of questioning my own expectations. Did we talk about it before? Have we ever talked about it? Or am I indignant because they should just know. I shouldn’t have to say it then that’s my issue really because I’m expecting them to read my mind. That’s not how communication works. That’s not how people know things. So then even right away in this process, if I’m thinking about it in expectations, like they should know that they’re not supposed to do that, they should know that whatever, if we’re thinking about dishes or something much more significant and impactful, we can also look at, okay, are my expectations legitimate?

We did talk about it, but is there any basis for my expectation that they do it my way? Reasonable is another one where it’s like, would another person in their context in their circumstance, is it reasonable for them to be on time? Even if they get a flat tire, like they should have just left early enough, even if they get a flat tire, they won’t be late.

Well, that’s not reasonable for people to live like that.

Loving is the last criteria that we use to really question our expectations. Is this about my needs alone or am I even taking into consideration their needs and what’s best for them as I have expectations about this situation? Some of these kinds of questions, these self-reflective questions, as well as evaluating like what’s the nature of it? Is it miscommunication? Is it a cultural difference? Is it different in perspective? Is sin involved? These are really just reframing, we could call it reframing techniques, that help us to think about it in a way that is automatically going to just start cooling down the flame, that’s fueling that hurt, that’s just continuously fueling that offense.

As we think about the nature of the hurt or the offense differently, we can better understand what we want to say to them and why we want to say it, and that can really help us make the decision. If I want to say it so that they will know how bad they hurt my feelings, so that they’ll feel bad, that’s actually not great to elicit shame, essentially. That’s not a great reason to go, but if we’re able to forgive before the Lord, and just be humble before Him, and to receive our peace from the Prince of Peace, and really receive healing for these hurts, the real hurts, from Him and realize that I do have expectations and preferences. I’m not really able to make demands on that. So if I’m going to go for that reason, or if I’m going to go for a real moral violation issue that I want to speak into their life about, like an anger issue or something like that, I’m going now out of love for them, out of care for them. My motives are now different because I’m not going because I don’t like it.

You need to agree to never do this again. When we go like that, it’s like our needs are in their hands. I think that is part of why conflict resolution is often so unsuccessful because we have seen something that we want that’s important to us, and we’ve put our well-being into the hands of the other person. So now we need them to agree and they might not agree. That’s just the reality is they may not agree. They might not do it the way we want. They may not apologize. Even if they were so wrong, they may never come to that point of repentance. If we’re stuck saying that, I can only find my peace if they give me what I need then that’s actually no way to live, Just the big picture. That’s such an external locus of control. And a lot of times that’s how we approach conflict resolution, as though if we do not reach this external satisfying outcome, then we’re not at peace, rather than I’m going to spend time with the Lord and just remember where my peace comes from and it is unshakable. From that point of view, now I can go to this person in love, and care for them, and the relationship, and the situation, and we can work it out, but I’m going to be okay either way because my well-being, my life, is in the hands of a loving, loving father, and not in this person’s hands. It’s like a whole worldview shift if we really keep going down this path.

Carrie: That’s awesome because when you talk about things like anger issues or someone maybe comes across a certain way and they may not even realize that that’s hindering, like you’re talking about on the mission field, that that’s hindering their ministry or how people are viewing Christ, then going to that person, they’re most likely If they’re utilizing that type of language or tone of voice with you. They’re most likely utilizing it with other people as well, so it’s not just going to help your relationship with them to hear that truth spoken in love. It’s going to help their relationship with other people and they’ll start seeing that like, “Oh yeah, I saw, I did that thing again in relationships.” and they can kind of catch themselves before as it’s happening in the moment.

Janeen: It’s so true. It’s so freeing and you were talking about anxiety relating to deal with conflict, which is so, so prominent because so many of us are afraid to address it at all because we don’t know what exactly to say to get the outcome we think we need. So we’re afraid if we say anything, it might just make it worse.

We don’t want to deal with it. A lot of times when I’m doing trainings, I’ll ask everyone, all right, who here is a conflict avoider? And almost everybody in the room would identify as a conflict avoider. And why is that? It’s because we don’t know. The conversation about conflict feels very, very risky. We don’t know if we’re going to be able to communicate in such a way as to elicit the response that we think we need. That’s why this approach I have found to be so incredibly effective and successful is because if I realize that the hurt and the conflict that I’m experiencing, I’m going to take that to the Lord, and I’m going to find peace there, and even only after that, will I even decide whether or not I should talk to the person. When I do go have that conversation. It’s just that it’s a conversation. It’s no longer a confrontation. I’m not going to them to meet my needs anymore. My needs are met. I’m at peace. I remembered who and who I am. So now I’m coming to them out of love, which means I know it can be successful. It decreases the perceived risk. Which is what we think of when we’re thinking about anxiety, right? I’m afraid of an unwanted outcome. There’s something about this that feels risky, and I’m afraid of what might happen.

If I know that my so-called conflict conversation with this person is really just going to be a conversation given in love to them, and I’m already good, Then the risk, the threat, goes down. I don’t have to be afraid because I’m not going in hot, and I’m not going to try to work, I’m going to try to express the right kind of emotion strongly enough that finally they see, or finally they agree, or whatever.

I can just go in gently, and I’m going to have a different measure for success that’s guaranteed. Or that can be guaranteed, because now it all depends on me. Because I can go into that and say, this conversation will be a success if I say what God really put on my heart to say, no more, no less and throughout the conversation, I embody the fruit of the Spirit.

I just stay right before the Lord from start to finish. If I’m being obedient and expressing to them what I feel convicted to do, to say, and if I’m saying it in the way God commands me to say it, with kindness and gentleness and self-control.

Carrie: Yes.

Janeen: Not demanding, not aggressive. That’s all, those are things that depend on me. Those are choices that I can just choose or not choose. If I make the choice of what to say, and I make the choice of how to say it, and stay in that place, then really that’s the determinant of a successful conversation with them because it’s not going to base success on their response and that’s where the anxiety just starts to go down and down and down because now success is based on choices that I can make. So I can feel more confident of the outcome from the beginning.

Carrie: Yes,, I know I’m going to be okay regardless of how they respond because I’ve already gotten peace and I’ve already prayed through this process.

Janeen: Exactly.

Carrie: The Peace Pursuit has an app that people can download and go through that process together?

Janeen: Yes, it’s been something that we’ve been really excited about in this last year as it’s been in development. Yes, it’s at the Apple Store, the Google Play Store, a mobile app for phones or tablets that allows people to work through this process without any prior knowledge. Even that first question, “do you want to resolve a relational problem?” It really walks you through that and unpacks that right from the very beginning. You choose your role that I am the offended or an offender? Usually everyone is going to choose offended and that’s okay, but the app has all of the content that we would use in trainings and all of that, that allows an individual person to just start with the first part of the app and just start working their way through and making choices. It’s interactive and it just really leads you through this time to spend time with the Lord and then even prepare for that conversation and know how to evaluate it and know Kind of how to organize it even in very practical ways like, “Okay, what should I say first, second and third? How should I structure this conversation If that’s where I get to?” It has so much content in there, broken down into very small steps so that you don’t need any prior knowledge, and we’ve been really, really excited about how people are responding to it in just the first maybe month and a half now that it’s been available. So yes, absolutely. That’s been a huge step forward for peace pursuit.

Carrie: That’s awesome. Towards the end of the podcast. I like every guest to share a story of hope, since this is hope for anxiety and OCD. What’s the time where you received hope from God or another person?

Janeen: I’ve been thinking about something this week that’s just continued to be on my mind and come up in a couple different counseling conversations, actually. That’s what came to my mind first was this passage that I heard spoken about on Sunday, which is Colossians 1:16 and it just says, “For everything was created by him. In heaven, on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rules or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him.” The reason that I find so much hope in that is because it’s this maybe paradoxical or ironic somehow thought, but I find it so comforting, which is that it’s not about me. I don’t have to define my life, or my value, or my worth, or my purpose in life, or my accomplishments, as though it was all about me.

I am, in a way, so encouraged, and find so much hope in my life, knowing that I’m almost like a background character in someone else’s wonderful story. I get to be a worshiper, I get to be a part of this story, but it’s not about me. So I can enjoy the peace and the victory that comes from someone else’s accomplishments and the hope that someone else has provided for me, which is in the Lord and a future that’s already secure. I think those words have just been really powerful for me. I’ve been thinking about it this week. That all things were created by Him, through Him, for Him. I think maybe, I guess it just takes the pressure off. And seeing people that I’ve been working with in these areas, specifically in anxiety or discouragement in their lives, whether it’s overseas or here in the States. I find so much, maybe surprising, hope and relief in remembering that this is all for him. That kind of, in a way, all we have to do is just like, know who he is and what he’s done and cheer for that and just cheer. That’s it, that’s enough. And it just kind of takes, yeah, it just takes the pressure off. So I think that’s something that I really found hope in this week.

Carrie: Yes, it’s so very different from how our society functions where it’s all about me and it’s all about promoting myself and what am I doing and those types of things. I think that that’s great. I appreciate you sharing that with us and I hope people will check this out. You and I had met at the AACC conference and I talked with someone else that was at your booth who had said they use this in their lay counseling ministry at their church and have been able to work with like mothers and daughters or different family members that weren’t able to talk to each other before and now they’re actually able to utilize this and communicate with each other. So I think that’s great. That’s awesome.

Janeen: Yes, it’s wonderful to be able to give people hope in things like really deep or long-lasting relational conflict because I think sometimes that’s one of those topics where people feel like it’s lost, and it’s lost forever, and there is no hope, like specifically broken relationships. I really do think is one of those areas where people truly believe there is no hope. Some things are broken beyond repair, and so to find hope that, at the very least, we can reach peace in our hearts about this loss, rather than let it always be a hurt, an unresolved hurt, I think, oh, it’s so encouraging. And then to bring people together in that and see restoration happen, it’s really been a wonderful thing to be a part of, for sure.

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Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee, opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By The Well Counseling.

Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

109. What Christmas Teaches us about Managing Anxiety and OCD with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on December 13, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Podcast Episode.

In our Christmas special, Carrie talks about the Christmas story and how it can help with anxiety and OCD. By connecting Jesus’ experiences with our own struggles, Carrie offers insights and understanding for a more hopeful holiday season.

Episode Highlights:

Timeless lessons from Christmas to help you deal with anxiety and OCD.
How you can relate Jesus’ challenging times to your own struggles, especially those related to anxiety.
The role of Jesus as a counselor and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, especially during uncertain times.
The value of connection over absolute certainty in managing anxiety and OCD.
Tips on managing anxiety during the holidays (excerpt from Episode 55)

Episode Summary:

Hello and welcome to Episode 109 of Christian Faith and OCD! Today, we’re diving into a unique perspective: what can Christmas teach us about managing anxiety and OCD?

One of my favorite modern Christmas songs by Chris Risen says, “This is such a strange way to save the world,” and it truly was. Jesus, who could have saved us from afar, chose to enter our world—full of hurt, pain, and anxiety—to be with us, as Emmanuel, “God with us.”

Jesus, fully God and fully man, experienced everything from hunger to betrayal and even intense anxiety, like when He sweat drops of blood before the cross. This tells us that God understands our struggles intimately. When we feel isolated by our OCD or anxiety, we can remember that Jesus chose to live in this world and experience its difficulties, so He truly gets what we’re going through.

Jesus also showed us the ultimate example of humility. He could have come as a mighty king but chose to be born in a manger, living among common people. In a world that’s so focused on appearances and perfection, Jesus’s humility reminds us that it’s okay to be open about our struggles, whether it’s anxiety, OCD, or anything else. We don’t need to hide our flaws but instead can share our testimonies even in the midst of our trials, trusting that God is working through it all.

That’s what Christmas teaches us about anxiety and OCD: Jesus came to be with us, to model humility, and to guide us as our eternal counselor. Merry Christmas, and I look forward to journeying with you in the new year!

Check out related episode:

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 109. What does Christmas teach us about managing anxiety and OCD? Before I hop into our topic today, I want to share with you some really exciting things that are coming up on the podcast—things that we’re working on for January, covering a variety of topics, including mental health topics and our physical health. We have several people lined up to interview in January that will carry us through a good chunk of the year, and I’m excited to share these interviews with you.

I’m also excited because next year, I’m going to be launching a smaller course on mindfulness. This is going to be an excellent course for anyone who’s struggling with any type of mental health issue, whether that’s anxiety, depression, OCD, difficulty focusing, or difficulty sleeping. These are the types of things that people are telling me they’re having problems with all the time. They want to know, how can I get better? How do I deal with these anxious thoughts? Well, the long and the short answer is mindfulness. It is going to help you with all of these different areas. Mindfulness is really about training your mind to focus on what’s actually happening right now, what’s going on in this present moment.

Mindfulness lets me become aware of what’s going on and also embrace a level of acceptance—acceptance over the things that I can’t change, acceptance over my feelings, whether I like them or not, acceptance over this thought process that keeps running through my head. I don’t have to continue to feed it, I just have to say, “Yes, I’m aware that that’s there, and it’s unhealthy, and it’s anxiety-driven, or it’s OCD-driven, and I’m gonna let it pass by and not continue to give in to that rumination cycle.” So that’s what our mindfulness course is going to be about.

I have some things that I’ve worked on over the years—different recordings, different things that I’ve written out. I’m excited to be able to share those with you. It’s going to be a lower-cost offering for folks, just as kind of a good entryway.

It’s going to help people who are just starting out their therapy journey to help them increase awareness. Lots of good things coming up in the new year. Every year for December, we kind of take a step back, only produce maybe one episode, sometimes two, really just so that myself and those that work behind the scenes on the podcast can get a break towards the end of the year, regroup, and gather up.

This will be a little bit of a shorter episode. We’ve done some things in the past as far as how to handle anxiety and OCD around the holidays. So really, I asked my assistant to compile some of that advice, and that comes from Episode 55. And so we’re going to include some snippets from Episode 55 at the end of this episode, if some of those things would help you in terms of going to holiday parties and all of that.

What does Christmas teach us about managing anxiety and OCD? Well, one of my favorite modern Christmas songs is a song by Chris Risen. It says, “This is such a strange way to save the world.” And truly, it absolutely was. If you’ve been a Christian a while, you know, we have a tendency to just gloss over the Christmas story.

We’ve heard it so many times. And I wanted to talk today about how can we apply the Christmas story really to managing anxiety and OCD. And I know this may seem like strange or weird. Like, what is Carrie even talking about right now? One, Jesus chose to come and enter our world in Matthew 1:22-23. “Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophets. See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel,” which is translated as “God with us.” God could have saved us from afar. He didn’t have to come out of heaven to save us. God can do anything he wants to, but he chose to enter our world full of hurt, pain, misunderstandings, and betrayal.

He experienced all of these things so that you could be in a relationship with him. And Jesus needed to eat, and sleep. He had a full range of emotional experiences. He cried, including anxiety. Luke tells us that prior to going to the cross, Jesus’ sweat was like drops of blood, which only happens when you are in a very intense state of distress.

Jesus was rejected, he was betrayed by a close friend. Can you imagine Judas was hanging with the rest of the twelve for these years of Jesus ministry, and then this guy sells him out at the end? I mean, that’s awful. Sometimes we feel like we have this idea God doesn’t get it, he doesn’t really understand.

What I’m going through but through Christ he does on the earth Jesus was fully God and fully man our ultimate example of how to live how to be in relationship with others and I would say be in a relationship with God and ourselves as well just trying to figure out what it looks like to take care of our Human body and the needs that it has.

Jesus is still Emmanuel. He’s still God with us today, even in the worst of times, even in the midst of your most anxious moment when you feel like you are on the verge of a panic attack through negative thought spirals. Jesus is still with you. He never, ever leaves and because we have a savior who is familiar with suffering, Scripture even calls him a man of sorrows in Isaiah. We have someone who understands and the devil is going to try to tell you lies that Jesus doesn’t understand your struggle. He doesn’t really know what it’s like to have OCD. That simply isn’t true. God created our minds. Jesus understood what it was like to experience those lies from the devil, even if just trying to elevate himself or break his fast.

If you go back to the temptation of Jesus, Jesus knows what it’s like to struggle mentally.

Point number two, Jesus was the ultimate example of humility for us. Jesus came into the world as a baby. He could have come down as a fully adult man, riding on a white horse, or even born into a king’s palace. Instead, He was born in a manger as a commoner. People looked down on him because he was from Nazareth, so he wasn’t even from the right part of town, so to speak. We live in this very self-centered, social media-driven world where people elevate themselves however they can. We’re constantly trying to look better than we actually are.

We elevate the positive and hide the negative, but Jesus didn’t try to hide where he came from or whose parents were. During his years of ministry, he traveled around, he stayed with various people. He didn’t have a home to go back to. He wasn’t seeking to be in the most coveted neighborhood or around the most important people.

He ate with tax collectors and sinners. One thing that’s really changed for me in the past year is that I care about inviting people into my home more than making sure my house is spotless. I grew up in a home where we weren’t super neat, except for when someone was coming over and then we just pretended like we lived that way all the time, I guess.

It seemed very incongruent to me because I would ask my parents, why are we cleaning up so much before people are coming over? And they would always try to hide it and say, no, no, we’re not doing it because people are coming over. We’re doing it because the house needs to be clean. And just having a toddler at home and everything that you try to do, they undo.

I’ve realized that inviting people into my home, having that community and that connection is more important to me as a value than making sure my house is spotless. I don’t even apologize for it anymore because this is my value, and I don’t need to apologize for my value. That’s a sidebar, but maybe it helps somebody this year, but the point was Jesus was about connecting with all different kinds of people, about inviting them to places and sitting down and having that community and that connection.

In a world where everyone’s trying to elevate themselves and hide their flaws, sometimes it’s okay in a safe space to say, “Hey, I struggle with anxiety or I struggle with OCD.” And you may not even understand what that means or what that looks like, but I want you to know that I’m working through it day by day with God’s help.

I’m seeking out these self-help resources, or I’m going to therapy, and it hasn’t completely gone away. It’s still here. It’s something I’m wrestling with, and God is still loving, and God is still good towards me. That’s an incredibly powerful testimony. We don’t want to share our testimony a lot of times until our trial’s completely over.

We’re like, “Yes, I’ll talk about that after Jesus delivers me from it. No, no, no, no. We need to be able to tell our testimony in the middle with faith and say, “Hey, I don’t know how all of this is going to work out right now, but I am staying connected to God and I love him. I’m reading the word. I’m seeking him out in the waiting and I’m trusting him with the plan.”

That’s what we need to be able to share with others.

Three, Jesus was sent as a counselor. I love this. It’s my favorite thing. He left the Holy Spirit as our counselor inside of us. If you are in Christ, you have the ultimate counselor in Jesus. Isaiah 9:6, “For a child will be born for us, a son will be given, the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” That doesn’t mean that you never need a human counselor. Obviously, I am a human counselor and we’re very pro-counseling on this show, but even after like years and years of training, all different kinds of clients, different scenarios, there are times in the moment where I’m like, “Okay, I’m just not really sure where to go here right now.”

It’s in those times where I’ve seen the Holy Spirit either guide me or guide the person that I’m working with, like, “Hey, maybe we need to go down this path. What do you think about that?” Or they’ll say, “Hey, I feel like this situation in my past is connected to what’s going on right now.”

I’m like, “Okay, great. God’s showing you that. Let’s go down that path.” The Holy Spirit has just guided the trauma processing many times when I’ve been working with people and talked to people and told them things in the midst of that. It’s incredible. Oftentimes we don’t know what we need. We don’t know how to meet the needs of others, such as even our spouse or our children.

I know for me, having a child has definitely increased my prayer life because I read the books and I listen to the podcasts, and I pray, and I read the Bible, but I’m like, “Okay, God, I do not know what to do with this child right now. Like, she is just outside the box, and I don’t know how to handle this.”

We don’t have all the answers, but the Holy Spirit does in anxiety and OCD. They want you to have an answer. They want you to have certainty right now, and sometimes that’s not actually what we need. It’s what we want. We want that certainty, but what we actually need is connection over direction. So if my daughter is hurting because she fell, or she’s hurting because she’s got new teeth coming in, it happens a lot. I’m not going into some kind of educational spiel about, “Let me tell you about teething and how your teeth are coming in right now. Let me explain the whole process to you,” because that’s not gonna benefit her. She needs a hug and she needs me to tell her, “Hey, I’m sorry that you’re hurting and it’s gonna be okay.”

We’re promised peace through prayer that surpasses all understanding and not certainty. God doesn’t say, “Pray to me and you’ll receive absolute certainty and never have any doubts.” That’s not what we’re promised in scripture. But our faith requires a certain level of faith. It requires a belief into the unknown.

You don’t have to understand everything about how the world was created to believe that God created it. You don’t have to fully understand grace to receive it. Thank God, because I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense to me on a human level. God wants to have a personal relationship with you. And if you’re just happening upon this podcast, maybe you would say, “Yes. There’s a God, or I pray, or I’m a spiritual person”, but maybe you don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as written in the Bible, just please contact us and send us a message through the website; we’d love to talk with you more about that. That’s what Christmas teaches us about, anxiety and OCD.

Jesus came to enter our world; Jesus was the ultimate example of humility for us, and Jesus was sent as a counselor and left the Holy Spirit as our counselor and our guide.

I’m going to pause from this piece, and you’re going to hear some information from our episode 55 if any of you are struggling on how to manage the holidays with anxiety or OCD.

Before we get into celebrating these important holidays towards the end of the year, I wanted to talk with you about surviving the holidays when you have anxiety because there are specific challenges that people with anxiety face in regards to parties, gatherings, gift giving, and that it can really increase your stress this time of year.

First thing I wanted to talk with you about is when you have anxiety, sometimes these large gatherings, even if they are family gatherings, there may be extended family that you don’t see very often, or you may be gathering with say like your husband’s coworkers and you don’t know them because you don’t work with them every day.

Sometimes those types of environments can be a little bit more anxiety-provoking. Knowing your limits and knowing when it’s time to go is important. If you’re with a friend, or spouse, or you rode with somebody, definitely knowing how to communicate to that other person that you would like to leave is important.

Sometimes you may have a code word or phrase that you want to use with your spouse, like, “Hey, don’t we need to get by such and such store before it closes? Oh, we really got to get home and let the dog out.” I’m sure that you can come up with something where you and your spouse will be on the same page and kind of be in line with each other, like, “Yeah, we’re ready to go.”

I find when I go to large gatherings, sometimes just taking a moment to sit down, maybe away from where the big crowd of people is, that really seems to help me in particular. So that may be something that helps you. Just standing requires a little bit more energy. I know that that sounds silly in itself, but you may just need to kind of take a miniature time out from all the activity.

You could go to the bathroom. You could step outside if there’s an indoor-outdoor element to this gathering. My overall point is that it’s good to have a plan going into some of these social interactions to help make them less overwhelming for you. You may not want to plan too much before the gathering so that you have time to rest and relax a little bit versus rushing from this thing to that thing to that thing if you’re traveling for the holidays.

It’s helpful to have a half a day to a day before your trip and then definitely a day when you get back before you have to jump into your work or school routine. Try to give yourself a buffer on the edges of your trips to be able to get things in order. You know, there’s always these last-minute things that we end up having to do before a trip or after a trip. We have laundry and different things that we have to do. Give yourself a little bit of a buffer of time if you can. If you’re going to reduce your stress around Christmas, you want to prioritize the gatherings and parties that are most important for you to attend.

Let’s talk for a moment about challenging family relationships. I’m not going to assume that you get along well with everyone in your family. And so some of those relationships may cause you stress. It’s important to know just internally within yourself how much of certain people you can handle. What I mean by that is that if you know you can only handle a day or two at a time around a certain person, don’t plan to spend five days with them. That’s just a recipe for disaster. Understanding that you’re an adult and you have a choice. You do not have to go and do all the things that you normally go and do.

Letting go of the have-tos is important. So many times we convince ourselves that we just have to do things that we don’t have to do. Don’t be afraid to say no if you know that what someone is asking you to do is going to be too much for you. We all have different limitations at different times in our lives.

Sometimes we’re going through things and we can only do so much and it’s okay. It’s really okay to acknowledge that to ourselves. It’s okay to communicate that to other people as well. No is a complete sentence. You don’t have to give a lengthy explanation. You can just say no or no thank you. So when you’re prioritizing your gatherings and parties, it’s very easy to get overloaded on these.

You just need to put everything on the calendar evaluate it and say, “Okay. Are we really able to give our time and energy to these things? Maybe we really want to invest more time and energy into our kid’s function, and maybe just make an appearance at the work party.” You know how that is, just kind of, “Yes, we’re going to show up a little bit later, say hi to a few people, be a part of maybe a gift exchange, and then head out.” That’s okay. It’s okay that you don’t have to be 110 percent for all of these events. Decide what is most important to you that you’re putting on your calendar. Let go of expectations that it’s going to be a perfect Christmas. The last thing I want to encourage you with, which is also very important, is to have a budget and stick to it.

Oftentimes, people overextend themselves at Christmas and go into all kinds of debt. It’s just not healthy. It causes us a lot of financial stress and, in turn, emotional stress. We have to be diligent about setting aside some for savings every single month so that when we get towards the end of the year, we have some money to spend on Christmas presents for the family and so forth.

If you sit down and budget, how much you’re going to pay for Christmas gifts, who it’s actually important to buy a Christmas gift for. I think sometimes we have this perception that we have to go overboard and buy a gift for every single person that we interact with, and obviously that’s not the case.

That’s the important thing to remember. It shouldn’t be out of obligation, you know, some families to help with finances will maybe draw names and each person gets a different person in the immediate family or the extended family. And then. That way we’re reducing the amount of money that we’re spending around Christmas and we’re also able to get good gifts for each other.

I think sometimes when it comes to holiday spending, we way overthink things or we make them more complicated than they actually have to be. So have a budget, and stick to it, that’s going to reduce a lot of your stress. I know it’s a little late to be saying save money, you know, throughout the year.

Now you know, going into next year, save a little bit of money every month for Christmas. It will help you out tremendously. You can put that towards presents, towards travel, if you’re having to travel with family. It’ll be great. And finally, let’s take the opportunity this Christmas, to not forget what it’s all about, we can get so caught up in making the food, attending the gathering, and spending time with people that we miss the point that Christmas is an opportunity for us to celebrate Christ’s birth is an opportunity for us to reflect on the fact that he chose to come into the world in the humblest way possible as a baby.

Don’t get lost in the commercialization that you forget the simple and that you forget what’s most important. If you have children, talk with them regularly about why you’re celebrating these holidays. Read the Christmas story, focus on those things more than opening presents. Find opportunities to give to others who have less than you.

I think this is such an important part of the Christmas season. You may be in a really difficult situation this Christmas, and may not feel like you have a whole lot to give. But I’m sure that even in those situations, there’s something small that you can do for someone else just to let them know that you care and that you love them.

Christmas is about love, joy, and giving to others. Let’s not lose celebrating our Savior’s birth. Let’s not lose our focus in the midst of all the activity.

Thank you everyone so much for listening today and just standing firm with this podcast. Some of you have been around for a long time. Some of you are new.

I just wanted to let you know that recently we hit our three-year mark of doing the podcast in November. It’s been an incredible journey. So much has happened in my personal life, as many of you know, through this process, butI’ve been just totally blown away by how God has used us to impact people positively, to give them a sense of hope and encouragement.

We just received news that we have had 50,000 downloads. In that three-year span overall, which is really exciting, and we just love that some of you have shared the podcast with others as well. If you want to find out more information about what’s going on. With the show, and what’s going on with the mindfulness course coming up in 2024, please definitely get on our email list. We’ve got some great free stuff on the website for you to download. It’s www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com/free. Thank you so much for listening today.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

108. OCD Personal Story with Michael Kheir

Written by Carrie Bock on November 30, 2023. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Michael Kheir, the author of “Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach.” Michael shares his personal experience with OCD, shedding light on the challenges he faced. He delves into how faith and a deep understanding of God’s grace were pivotal in his journey towards healing and recovery.

Episode Summary:

The importance of reducing stigma around mental health, particularly OCD and anxiety.

How OCD can lead to obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, even over seemingly insignificant matters.

The impact of strict religious upbringing on OCD and the concept of legalism.

The power of understanding and embracing God’s grace in dealing with mental health challenges.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 108! I’m Carrie Bock, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Michael, the author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach. Michael was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, which has been incredibly insightful for our discussion.

In this episode, we dive deep into Michael’s personal battle with OCD. He shares how his journey began in childhood and has evolved through adulthood. Michael has extensively researched OCD from both Christian and secular perspectives, and his book reflects this thorough exploration. He recounts a poignant story from his college days, where a seemingly small incident triggered a flood of obsessive thoughts and compulsions.

Michael also opens up about the stories he revealed for the first time in his book—stories he hadn’t shared with his family before. His openness underscores a crucial point: mental health struggles do not define our worth or intelligence. Instead, they are a part of our journey, and understanding this can help reduce stigma.

Michael’s reflections on his experiences highlight the importance of embracing God’s grace rather than being trapped by rituals and compulsions. This conversation is a powerful reminder that faith and understanding can guide us through the complexities of OCD.

Join us as we explore these themes and more. If you find this episode helpful, please subscribe and leave a review to support our mission of breaking the stigma surrounding mental health.

More to listen to:

26. A Personal OCD Story of Experiencing God’s Presence and Grace with Peyton Garland

Transcript

I have the privilege of interviewing some interesting people on this show and hearing their stories. One of the things that we are focused on is reducing shame, so I interview a lot of people—Christians who have personal stories with OCD or anxiety.

Today, here I have Michael, author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach, and Mike was kind enough to send me a copy of his book so I could read it. People don’t always do that—sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. That’s the secret to being a podcast interviewer. I feel like it goes much better when I understand the book and have read it.

_______

Carrie: Welcome to the show, Mike.

Michael: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: This is your personal story, really, of OCD and the things that you found that helped you. And I saw, as you were writing it, that you had referenced a lot of other books that you read on OCD—books that were Christian, books that were secular. But it sounds like you’ve done your research over the years.

Michael: Yes. I think I started reading about the subject a lot when I was about 24 or 25 years old. The first one that I read was Grace of Bounty by John Bunyan. I think my mom actually found it somewhere and gave it to me, and I remember I started crying when I was reading it because it was immediately relatable to me, and I thought it was so cool that somebody that was used that mightily by God had a very similar struggle. I kind of felt like God probably used that struggle to use him in big ways. That was really encouraging to me, and then from there, it was 2007, so we had iPhones, and the internet was very accessible, so I just started googling and researching a lot and found some stuff, but not enough that made me feel like everything that needed to be said on the subject had been said. That’s sort of what motivated me to move forward and start writing.

Carrie: In the book, you tell many relatable stories of how OCD affected you, starting in childhood and then going through adolescence, and adulthood. Would you mind sharing one or two of those?

Michael: Sure. I’m going to bring one up because we might come back to it.

There was one that happened in college, a bunch of kids from our church. I went on a spring break trip, and we were all sort of sharing living spaces. The guys had like an apartment, the girls had an apartment, and I remember I was in our apartment and there’s like a living area and I was talking to some of my roommates and then a guy and his girlfriend walked in and at some point, I remember thinking, my shirt untucked I need to tuck it in and I think I like unzipped my pants just a little bit, tucked it in and then zipped it back up. No one would think anything about it because we were in a living area. It was a very laid-back environment. I don’t even think I was close to any of the girls, but that one girl was there. I just remember obsessing on that and thinking, if she saw me do that, that would be horrifyingly inappropriate as a Christian man to do something like that, and I just obsessed on that idea not immediately, but probably a week after we got back from the trip. I just started obsessing on that, thinking I was in the wrong.

Every time I would try to read the Bible or pray, I would think, I believe it’s Matthew 5:23 that says, if anyone has an offense against you, leave your gift at the altar or your sacrifice at the altar, go make it right, and then come back. Every time I would sit down to pray or read my Bible, I would think, it’s like all OCD.

There’s a 1 percent chance or a one in a million chance that this girl’s offended because she might’ve seen it and she might’ve interpreted it wrong. This went on for, I think, a couple of weeks and I eventually was like, the only way I can get rid of this fear, the one in a million chance I offended her is to apologize, which, in part of my mind, I knew was completely insane, inappropriate, and like, she would be like, what on earth are you talking about? So, I knew that in part of my brain, but I just couldn’t get rid of the fear that I was in sin. I think I emailed her boyfriend and said, if she saw this, I’m really sorry.

My heart is pounding as I’m doing it because I know how crazy it’s going to come across, but I did it and the moment I did it, it was a very powerful moment in my life. I realized what I had just done was not at all, like, relieving in the sense of, okay, I’ve done the will of God. It was more like that was not right.

Something about that was off and that helped me, that was kind of a pivotal moment in my journey of realizing that giving in to every compulsion to remove the one-in-a-million chance of something happening was not the right approach. That’s the big one that sticks with me a lot.

Carrie: Were there any stories that your parents or others close to you didn’t know about until you started writing these things down?

I guess I was thinking that there was a story about you being concerned about suffocating your stuffed animals and they had to be tucked in just a certain way and you’d lay there in bed at night and like losing sleep. Like, did your parents know any of that was going on in your mind?

Michael: I would say that one they may have known, but there were so many that they did not know.

I can’t think of the ones offhand, but I would say most of them, they did not know until I was an adult. I remember sitting in a parking lot, talking to my brother in my 20s, and I was explaining some of the thoughts I was having, and they were all OCD thoughts, and they were overwhelming me, and I remember he goes, you have thoughts like that?

He knew I had OCD, but I don’t think he had any idea of what the toll it took, and how it looked in the brain, and that’s sort of what I really tried to convey when I told my story, is like, when I’m sitting in that moment, these are the thoughts going through my head, and even my mom, as she’s read it after it’s been published in the last couple weeks, has said, man, I’m learning a lot, and I think she knew most of it, but she probably didn’t know how to deal with it and ended up either suppressing it or just kind of putting it in its own little compartment in her head because it was Something she didn’t know how to deal with to help her child.

Carrie: That’s so great one of the reasons I love this show is because we’re able to break the stigma and talk about some of these things when you’re in your own mind having those obsessions There’s this element of feeling so alone and disconnected and nobody else understands what it’s like to live in this mental gymnasium.

Michael: Absolutely. I think part of the stigma is that mental health issues make you less than or less intelligent and I almost look at it like LeBron James, the best basketball player in the world right now, if he had an injury, we wouldn’t say, that guy is such a terrible basketball player. We’d be like, he has an injury and he has to recover from it or he has to compensate for it.

I see mental health the same way. It’s like, I have OCD. That doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent or I can’t function in society. I went to college. I got a master’s degree. I have a decent career. It’s just viewed. Incorrectly by a lot of people in society and in the church, of course, to which we will probably get to, I hope.

Carrie: I’ve met many people with OCD that I would consider incredibly smart, thoughtful, intelligent, and that ability to solve problems in their head that works well in other scenarios, like whether it’s people that work in software or computers or engineering that they can’t use that same type of logic and problem-solving and solving these obsessions and compulsions, which is frustrating because they’re good problem solvers, typically in other areas of their life.

Michael: Absolutely.

Carrie: One of the things that stood out to me in your book was the weighing the 99.99 percent versus the 0.01 percent.

Michael: Right. I want to touch on another story. I believe it’s chapter two where I go through my life story and it’s about another basketball player. Keep coming back to basketball. I was taking pictures of Michael Jordan, not as a professional photographer, but from the stands.

Me and my friend had gone to watch him. This was after he had Unretired the second time. I think it was 2002. He was playing for the Washington Wizards. So, we got these high-up nosebleed seats as the game wore on, and a lot of people left. I think it was a weeknight. So, the crowd just thinned out, and we kind of snuck down to some really good seats.

I think we were 10 rows back, right behind the side where Michael Jordan was scoring. So, he goes up for a dunk. I get a really good picture of it. I’m super excited. I go home. I develop the negatives. They’re really good and then I realize, what have I done? And I go through this long list of condemning thoughts.

Number one, I’m cheering for a team with a mascot, the Wizards, and again, these are all in my mind. I know these are all one in a trillion chance of being wrong, but it doesn’t matter that it’s one in a trillion, it’s still a chance, and I’m obsessing on the chance. So by cheering for a team with a mascot called the Wizards, there is a one-in-a-trillion chance I’m supporting witchcraft.

I snuck down to the cheaper seats during the game, so now I’ve cheated Ticketmaster. Whoever deserves that money, I’ve now cheated them. It goes back to a very similar situation with that spring break trip that I had had several years earlier. I’m trying to read the Bible, I’m trying to pray, and I’m immediately thinking, I’m a thief, I stole from Ticketmaster or the Washington Wizards organization. I am just a terrible Christian, essentially, for promoting such an evil mascot. Again, I just want to reiterate that these ideas sound crazy, and I knew they were crazy in the intellectual part of my brain or mind, but I could not separate the fear from it. The one in a million chance that it was wrong is kind of what drives OCD and drives the compulsions and the obsessions.

Similar to what I did with the spring break trip, I decided I needed to repent of this before I could continue in my relationship with God for a couple of reasons. One, if I am promoting this witchcraft, then I’m possibly deceived. I’m sitting here reading the Bible, but I may or may not be interpreting it correctly in my mind.

I may be thinking, that God is promising something in this verse, but it doesn’t apply to me because I’m deceived. I’m under this cloud of deception because I’m promoting witchcraft. So I decided to make a list of things to do to repent. I’m going to call Ticketmaster, find out the prices of the cheaper seats we went down to, and pay the difference between what we paid and what we did down there and where we had sat.

I was going to stop cheering for the Wizards. Could I promote a team that’s involved in witchcraft? I was going to, the hardest part was to destroy the negatives. This was back when we had film and negatives, and destroy the photos, and then I’d have fully repented. And then when I go and read my Bible and pray now, I know that I’m not under some influence of deception or in sin against God.

After I had gone through that whole process for probably four weeks, I read something in Galatians that caught my eye. That said, “Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you,” which means who has deceived you, that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified.

This is the only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? And I was completely caught off guard by that because I immediately realized all the things I had just listed out that I was going to do to be made right with God again were works.

I was going to pay more money, I was going to destroy negatives, I was going to stop cheering for a team. Those were the actual threats to being deceived, and I realized in that moment, it probably wasn’t a moment. It probably took a few days, but I realized that doing all of that work was not a risk-free situation. Meaning I was not going to do all of those things to become undeceived, which would then take the chance of being deceived down from one in a billion or one in a trillion down to zero. I was actually doing these things and the chances of being deceived were going up. They weren’t going all the way down to zero from one in a trillion.

Over time, I’ve realized there are so many things where we think we’re doing a compulsion to remove the one in a billion chance of something bad happening and we’re increasing the risk of the bad thing happening. I know this initially sounds like complete hell to somebody with OCD because you’re thinking, great, now you’ve just given me more scenarios to worry about, and more scenarios that I’m just going to become compulsive about. What I realized is that as Christians, our walk with God is all by grace and when I can acknowledge I’m not exactly sure what to do, I should maybe go destroy all these negatives and stop cheering for the Wizards, or maybe I should just walk by faith and not worry about that because that’s what the Bible says. Once I can sit in a place of having to trust God because I don’t know exactly what to do, then I’m in a place where I’m walking correctly with God, and that is so freeing. Because it’s saying, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, and now I can be at rest and not think that I have all these hoops to jump through to be made right with God again.

Carrie: I would normalize that as a human experience of not always knowing what to do.

Michael: Absolutely.

Carrie: Some things are very clear, defined in scripture, don’t do this, yes, do this, but there are many other things that may be personal decisions about, “Do I move this year? Do I move next year? Do I not move? Does God want me to stay here?” Those types of things that we really have to wrestle through that maybe don’t have just one right answer right now, or we’re unsure of, and that’s okay. It’s hard to sit with that discomfort or the unknown piece, though.

Michael: And I think this goes back to a general issue that a lot of people with OCD have is an obsession with what is God’s will. This hit me a lot, sometimes even now. I remember in college, there were just limitless choices about everything. Should I go eat at this dining hall or that dining hall? Well, what if I go to dining hall A, and I was supposed to go to dining hall B, and I was going to bump into someone that I led to Christ, who became the next Billy Graham? By not doing God’s will, 500 million people are going to go to hell in the next generation because I didn’t go to Dining Hall B, which sounds very arrogant and presumptuous, but again, it’s all based on a fear of I might be causing all this harm, not necessarily I’m so capable I can impact things in that way.

I think another part of the freedom that I’ve come to that I talk about in chapter eight and in chapter nine, God’s grace is what frees us from that. We’re only at the bottom of all of those fears. “God is harsh, God is judgmental, and God is not for me. If I mess up just a little bit, he’s going to whack me over the head as hard as he can.” But once we realize that he’s kind and loving and gentle with us, then the fear of should I go to dining hall A or dining hall B becomes almost irrelevant. It’s like God loves me if I have a child now. If my child made a tiny error like that, she went to my bedroom instead of her bedroom to look for something.

I’m not going to be angry if she went to the wrong bedroom she’s my kid I love her and there’s just so much grace and understanding in that relationship and I think that’s what ultimately leads to long-term freedom.

Carrie: Tell us about how having a child helped you have a greater understanding of God’s grace and I resonate with that as well with my daughter. There’s just something that you feel as a parent of just that sense of, I love you and I’m for you on your best days when you’re so well-behaved and on your worst days, when all you can do is scream at me, I’m still here for you and I still love you.

Michael: I feel like it’s almost supernatural and it’s part of being created in God’s image. He loves us so much, and God the Father loves his son so much, and you just see it all through society. Even the worst of the worst people love their kids, it’s just totally ingrained in us, and I think that’s totally because we were created in his image and the same was true for me when she was born. It was just this overwhelming sense of, I love this person unconditionally. It was more than emotion. It’s more than just the will. It’s just, almost supernatural, I would say. She’s now six and a half years old. As that relationship has grown, I’m starting to see so many areas where I’m like, that’s totally how God sees me.

She’s just had a rotten day. I love her just as I did yesterday when she had a great day. She’s just so pleasing to me, and she brings joy whenever I get to see her, and whenever she walks in the room, whenever I pick her up from school, and I think we get that intellectually in church. We know God is gracious, God is good, God loves us and it’s in our head. Very successfully, it gets to our head. Getting to our heart is much harder and I think having a child made it get to the heart a lot, a lot faster than it would have.

Carrie: My daughter teaches me stuff all the time. I was telling one of my clients and we were talking about sin and grace and God’s love for us and I was saying my daughter started walking roughly around 12 months and I think she was 18 months at the time. I was like, she’s been walking for a little while, but she falls down a lot and I’m not talking about a slight stumble. I’m talking about how your face is about to hit the floor and your hands just barely caught you from face-planting.

It made me realize that in our walk with Christ, we see that when we fall God is saying, “Can’t you get it together?” Whereas it’s more like, “Okay, get up, you fell, get up, let’s move forward. Let’s keep going.” It doesn’t mean that you have to get out of the race or stop running. Just kind of dust it off and move on.

Michael: Absolutely. That is such a good picture and so much closer to reality. I feel I think as we become adults, we think there’s so much in our control and our capabilities are so high, and we’re probably a lot closer, at least our spiritual capability, like that. We just fall and fall and fall, and God’s trying to show us that it’s His grace that keeps picking us up and moving us forward.

Carrie: When you were able to examine your own OCD, did you kind of define it as legalism, or this is kind of like the legalist part of my brain? Did that have anything to do with strict church upbringing or not?

Michael: I would say yes, and I don’t want to knock on my parents or my grandfather who was a spiritual giant in a way. He grew up in Egypt and came to Christ at 17 and started a church at 22 and just had an amazing, amazing ministry in Egypt and then also when he came to the U.S. My mom obviously was heavily influenced by him and he was a huge impact on my life. I would say that there was definitely the culture difference. Number one, because they were from Egypt and formalities are a big thing there and also just our parents trying to protect us because they were so culturally different when they got to the U.S., they basically had the mindset of anything we don’t fully understand we’re going to protect them from. Even watching certain kids’ shows, like on TGI Friday, I don’t know if you remember TGIF Full House, and like there were some of those shows that were a little bit too much, we couldn’t watch those, and rock and roll was bad, tattoos were bad, long hair on men was bad, just a lot of things that they decided, let’s just cut these things off, so definitely, I would say my upbringing led to or fueled some of that legalism and OCD getting mixed.

Carrie: A lot of times I find there’s a rigidity sometimes that people are raised in, and it doesn’t always have to do spiritually sometimes it has to do with kind of things that you’re saying, just like the household rules.

You have to load the dishwasher this way, or if you did something different, it’s wrong. Don’t hang out with anybody that’s doing that thing over there. I’m curious though, a lot of your stuff was scrupulosity-related. How did you come to decipher, okay, this is God speaking to me, or I know this is something God wants and, or this is OCD because this is a question I probably get asked all the time. How do I know if I’m coming under the conviction of the Holy Spirit or if it’s OCD telling me, you need to repent, you need to confess, you need to do this, that?

Michael: One thing that really led me to not give up trying to figure out that issue was how many times in the Bible God tells us basically to test ideas. I wanted to just mention a few of them 2 Corinthians 10:5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. He’s basically saying you’re having thoughts and you can acknowledge them as being of God or not of God.

One of the biggest ones I liked was, for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart and I thought, well, sounds like the word of God is the answer to this question. Where can we get a level of discernment like this? and Division of Soul and Spirit? I read some theology, and it seems like that issue in and of itself is very complicated, but it’s almost like a promise from God, like, He’s saying you can actually understand this, and parse these thoughts from each other, using my word.

Another one is 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things, hold fast to what is good. 1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world and that’s talking more about, obviously, actual people saying things that they maybe shouldn’t, and testing what they’re saying versus the word of God, but it also applies to our minds. That led me to think, where is it in the Bible? He says that in the Word of God, or you’ll be able to use the Word of God to decipher all this and I really came down to three passages that I thought did it for me. Galatians 5:22 and 23 say that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such things there is no law.

I thought to myself, If I’m listening to thoughts, and they’re eventually leading to actions, go evangelize to that person over there, they’re gonna go straight to hell. Well, is that thought from a God that’s producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in me?

I kind of start breaking it down and I say, well, is that a gentle thought? Not really. It’s more of like a demanding, do this right now, do this right now. Which is then catalyzing really in a compulsion to go evangelize right this minute. So now I’m throwing self-control out the window. Was it brought to me in kindness? Not really. I think back to a time when I felt God called me to move. I did five years at Virginia Tech, and in my fourth year, I was in this nice, like, air-conditioned, upper-class dorm room and I just remember thinking one day, I should probably move to this all-freshman. It was this gross, non air-conditioned, freshman dorm. It kind of hit me for a couple of days, and I was feeling the same things, like, kind of guilt, is this really God? Confusion and I remember just looking up one day, I was praying, and I was facing it, it was probably a couple hundred yards away, and I could see it out of a window, and God’s peace just really came over me.

I was like, “I actually want to move there, that actually sounds like a good idea.” I was motivated, and it really sounded like the Spirit of God. I would describe experiencing the Spirit of God. There was joy. I was wanting to do it. I had peace about it. It was a very kind thought in the sense of like if you don’t do this, everyone in that building is going to go to hell.

That was not at all part of that thought. So it was gentle therefore, I was making the decision with self-control and it’s funny, right after that happened, I went back to my dorm room and a couple of hours later, my roommate came back. He’s like, “Hey, do you remember Steve? It was actually my roommate in freshman year. He wants to move into that freshman dorm across the way, and he’s looking for a roommate.” That’s funny because I just decided to move there about two hours ago, so we became roommates again, and it was pretty cool. Just starting to see how the fruits of our actions are pretty obviously indicative of us listening to God or not listening to God. So that was the first passage, and I go into way more detail in the book. Shameless plug for my book there.

Carrie: Why did you choose to write this book and share your story?

Michael: I alluded to it a little bit in the beginning. I think there were so many issues that if I had had this exact book back when I was growing up, it would have been so helpful. There’s a lot out there more now than there was when I was really in the worst parts of this, but a lot of it was just, I felt God was teaching me things, and I was reading and reading about this, and a lot of it was from the medical standpoint and the psychiatric standpoint. And there was a big gap between that and the church.

I felt like the church was, at least the churches I was involved in, leaned towards, “You are having anxiety and OCD. Well, it could be multiple things. You need to pray more. If you prayed more, you’d have the peace of God more. There’s a hidden sin in your life, and that’s why you’re struggling.”

You need to dig, which is the worst thing in the world to say to someone with OCD because now they’re fishing for something that doesn’t even exist, and they’re obsessing even more than they were, trying to find a sin that likely does not exist. They likely just have a chemical imbalance in their brain. There was that aspect of it, completely ignoring the medical aspect of it, and then there were all these brilliant medical doctors who were psychiatrists and then also the PhDs that were psychologists coming up with the truth of the medical side of it with no connection to the fact that there is a God and a Satan and there is spiritual warfare sometimes. I just felt like both sides were completely ignoring the other side and nothing was bringing more truth together.

Carrie: There’s nothing to bridge that gap between that theology and really good therapy and medical help.

Michael: Exactly.

Carrie: Usually towards the end, I ask people a couple of different questions, like, tell us a story of hope or something to your younger self, but I’m curious for you, If you will talk with us about what OCD is like now, does it still show up? It’s just you notice it and you’re more able to recognize it as OCD? I think a lot of people that I talk to, they’re just so focused on, “I want this to go away and I don’t want to deal with this long term.” I want to kind of give them some hope that just because they’re in the midst of the struggle right now, it doesn’t mean it’s always going to look that bad.”

Michael: I don’t want to embellish. I definitely still have OCD, but I would say I’ve gone from having crippling OCD back from ages 14 to 18 was really bad, and then in my early 20s right after college was really bad.

I’ve gone from that to much, much better. It’s much more manageable, and like you said, I can acknowledge what it is when I see it, as opposed to, it really took me so many years to even realize that the thoughts were completely irrational. I don’t know how many years I struggled with all of these thoughts until I realized, there’s a way to look at this and realize that some of my thoughts are totally normal and some of my thoughts make absolutely no sense at all.

I feel like once we get to that point, we’re definitely on the right track. I feel like that was a huge breakthrough. The second breakthrough for me was when, for some reason, the grace of God and the concept of grace just hit home. I listened to Dr. Tony Evans quite a bit, and he had I think it was a 10 or 11-part series on the magnificent grace of God. A few years ago, I was driving like crazy for many hours a week, and I just listened to those sermons over and over again and the crux of what he says is that the grace of God is unmerited favor, so it’s something we don’t deserve, which is great to an OCD person, because we think, “It’s my responsibility to fix the situation. That’s why we end up in these compulsive cycles, but grace eliminates that.

It’s for grace to exist, there has to be no payment for it. That’s a very freeing thing and he talks about it as an environment that is so foreign to us that it takes a long time to get used to and that was true for me. Like, I listened to them and I’m like, “The grace of God is real. It’s profound.”

This is the key to victory, but that doesn’t stop the engine still going in your brain right away. It took a long time. I listened to those sermons. I probably listened to each one at least five times, right? So that’s, what, 45 minutes each, 40 hours of just listening to “God is full of grace.” It’s hard to believe that in your heart and experience it.

He even talks about how if you move from America straight into a foreign country, everything is unnatural to you. Even going out to a meal is different. Making a phone call is probably not as easy as it is now just on your phone, you probably have to dial in some country code. Just everything. The clothing is different.

The culture’s different and he said, “That’s what grace is like.” When we realize, that it’s true, and we want to step into it, it takes a lot of getting used to. One, because it’s almost too good to be true, because the world never treats us with grace, right? Even just normal jobs, you perform and you get a raise.

If you’re off a little bit, well, we’re gonna ding you and we’re gonna notice that and relationships are the same way. Just to experience it with God takes a lot of telling yourself over and over again, essentially. You can definitely find victory and I think realizing how much God loves you, how much favor he has towards you, completely independent of your actions, is the number one thing.

It’s therapeutic to remind yourself, even just saying it right this minute. It’s just one more layer of reminding myself and experiencing that is a truth that I can speak to myself and to other people. I think that has been the most powerful thing. Essentially having a correct view of God just makes it so much easier to deal with.

Carrie: Oftentimes we project onto God, whether it’s been family members or past church leaders that may have had a little bit more of a strict view of God or harsher upbringing of God, or how we even see ourselves. I think sometimes if we don’t like ourselves and we struggle with shame and we can project that onto God, well God must not feel this way about me or that way about me. Really coming back to the true character of God and I appreciate you sharing that for so many people who are struggling today that victory doesn’t necessarily mean the elimination of all symptoms. It means that I know how to deal with these things now when they come up. I have somebody that I work with who will tell me, “This obsession came and I was like, here you are.I know who you are you’re back again,” and now is able to joke about it versus it being completely debilitating because she’s able to recognize that this is OCD. This is one of my themes that comes back around. I don’t have to totally freak out about this obsession like it wants me to. I’m just gonna like, I’m gonna move on with my life and keep doing the things that I love and want to do and are important to me.

Michael: That was very true in my life. I had a pretty harsh father, and he had a lot of great qualities, but he was definitely harsh with me specifically and I was never popular in school. I was bullied a lot. There were a lot of ways that seeing God incorrectly could show up in my developmental years for sure through those two major things. Also, having OCD probably exacerbated all of those problems, I would say, that’s why I think getting to see God correctly. We just have to constantly remind ourselves that that’s true. He is gentle and kind and loving and for us and not against us and full of favor towards us because we don’t feel that with OCD.

Carrie: I appreciate you sharing your story with us and also through your book, we’re going to put a link to that in the show notes and I’ve recommended it to some of my clients because I just feel like it’s very relatable and there’s some helpful information in there on just really examining your thought process. So thank you for coming on the show today.

Michael: Thanks so much.

___________________

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

107. Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) with Diana Rice, LMHC, CIMHP, CTP, QS

Written by Carrie Bock on November 8, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode.

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Diana Rice, a licensed mental health counselor and certified integrative mental health professional. They delve into the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their relevance to anxiety and OCD.

Episode Highlights:

The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on mental health, with a focus on anxiety and OCD.
Diana Rice’s personal journey and her path to becoming a counselor.
The significance of the ACE study and its ten-question questionnaire for assessing childhood experiences.
The distinction between externalizers and internalizers in response to trauma.
Strategies for healing, including neuroplasticity and holistic well-being approaches.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 107. I’m Carrie, and today we’re diving into the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on anxiety and OCD with Diana Rice, a licensed mental health counselor from Through the Valley Therapy in South Florida. Diana, whose journey from a peer counselor in middle school to a seasoned mental health professional is inspiring, shares her deep insights into how early childhood experiences shape mental health.

In this episode, Diana explores how her upbringing as an immigrant child and her ACE score of six have profoundly influenced her therapeutic approach. She reflects on how these formative experiences led her to seek an integrative approach to therapy, highlighting the importance of understanding one’s past for effective mental health treatment.

We also discuss the ACE study’s significant findings, revealing the correlation between high ACE scores and increased risks for chronic health issues and mental health disorders. Diana explains how ACEs can contribute to conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and addiction, emphasizing the need to address these early experiences for effective therapy. Diana’s insights into addressing underlying trauma, rather than just symptoms, provide crucial perspectives for managing anxiety and OCD effectively.

106. Maximizing Your First Counseling Session with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on October 25, 2023. Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode.

On today’s episode, Carrie delves into the importance of maximizing your first counseling session. She offers insights and tips on how to navigate your initial counseling session effectively while emphasizing the importance of building a genuine therapeutic connection.

Episode Highlights:

The importance of managing expectations and not overwhelming your first counseling session with too much information.
How to build a good connection with your therapist right from the start.
The significance of assessing the counselor’s approach and the therapeutic environment to ensure a good fit.
Strategies for communicating your needs, goals, and boundaries effectively with your counselor.

Episode Summary:

Hi there, I’m Carrie Bock, a licensed counselor from Tennessee, and in this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I want to help you get the most out of your first counseling session.

I often see clients who come in feeling the need to share everything at once—like dumping a jumbled play script on the floor. They try to fit their entire story into a single 50-minute session, which is just not realistic. Even with my own 40 years of life, I couldn’t cover every detail in that short time.

The first session is about starting to build a connection. It’s not about telling your whole life story but giving a broad overview of your life: your daily routine, work, family, or even how your pets provide comfort. You don’t need to share everything in one go. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, jot down the key points you want to cover. Intake paperwork can help frame your story too, so use it to your advantage.

Ultimately, therapy is a journey of building a supportive relationship where you can work towards your goals. Reflect on what you hope to achieve and what you’re willing to do to reach those goals. If your first counselor isn’t the right match, keep searching until you find someone who truly supports your healing journey.

Thank you for joining me on this episode. May you find comfort and guidance in your path to healing.

Explore further:

33. What is it Like to be a Counselor? Steve Interviews Carrie

Transcript

Christian Faith and OCD, episode 106. I wanted to do a show on maximizing your first counseling session, and I’ll tell you a little story about where the idea for this episode came from. Sometimes, I have people who come in, and they feel the need to tell me absolutely everything or for me to understand the totality of the story. There’s like this pressure or urgency. And I gave this analogy to Steve. I said it’s almost like somebody comes in with a play. The play has about ten characters, but all the pages are shuffled, so they’re out of order. Somebody dumps it on the floor, and I’m trying to make sense of what’s happening in this story.

If you’re going to your first counseling session, I want you to relieve yourself of some of that pressure to get all of the information out in one 50-minute session. It’s just impossible. I mean, think about it: I’m 40 years old. I could probably write a long book on my entire life story, and to believe that I could somehow share all the pertinent pieces with someone in a 50-minute session is unrealistic.

The first session is for your counselor to get to know you, for you to get to know your counselor. Having a general big picture of what’s going on in your life, how you spend your time, if you’re working, going to school, what your family life is like. Maybe you don’t have a family and come home to snuggle with the dogs.

That’s still relevant because maybe that’s a robust support system for you to have that comfort of your animals. So, trying to get a big picture, overarching view of where are the strengths in this person’s life? What do the support systems look like? What do the relationships look like?

Sometimes, people can get bogged down in a particular story. And they were jumping around to different timelines of that story. It may be helpful if you have a lot that you need to get out; maybe jot down what you feel are the most important things. Now, depending on how your counselor does their paperwork process, I often have opportunities where people can go into more depth in my intake paperwork. Some people use that to do that, and they feel more comfortable with it. Other times, people don’t want to put much information down, and they glance over that. But sometimes, that paperwork can at least provide the frame of reference. Who are the players in this play, and what’s the general overarching theme of the space versus having to figure it out by a bunch of different stories where somebody is all over the place just verbally vomiting? I wanted to make everyone aware that you don’t have to talk about things you don’t want to talk about in the first session.

That’s important to capitalize on because counselors are naturally nosy, and we want to know certain things, so we may ask questions that are more personal or vulnerable than you want to go in your first meeting with your therapist. It’s entirely okay for you to say, “I’m not quite ready to talk about that,” or, “I know I need to go there, but I don’t feel comfortable yet. Can we address that in a future session?” Often, people go into these counseling situations not knowing what to expect but not thinking through their needs and wants. For the session, I think this doesn’t just apply to the first session but can also apply to other sessions.

Sometimes, I’ll ask people, “What do you think is the best use of our time today?” Or, “What would you like to get into or process today?” Because you have a sense of that inside. Maybe you need to bounce some ideas off someone and get feedback like, “Okay, is what I’m thinking off base? Or is it a normal experience that I’m going through?”

Sometimes, you need to vent, for lack of a better word. You need to get all of your thoughts and feelings out and run them by somebody so the person can kind of help you can summarize and give it back to you in a way where you will gain new insight on it. And so there’s certainly, definitely value on that. There may be other times where you say, “What I need today, this kind of tuning in is I need to learn some skills to manage this situation in my life or be able to manage this relationship.” And then, by diving in and asking more questions, we can get more information.

I’m always hesitant to give people advice right off the bat. Let me caveat that because it depends on the situation, but we don’t always have enough information in the first session to give you certain levels of guidance on something, and maybe that’s a really good topic. Let’s ask these questions and explore that a bit more; ultimately, you are the decision-maker in your life.

I’m not the person who will be dealing with the consequences of whatever choice is made. So, I know that can be difficult for some people because they want the counselor to go in and tell them precisely what to do. And all that does is make you dependent on somebody to get answers. You can do this with pastors, parents, and other people.

If you say, “Okay, I have this problem. What do I do? Go to that person. They give me advice. I follow it. Next time I have a problem, I go back to that.” You want to come to a place where you can think critically and make decisions independently. And sometimes, when dealing with anxiety and OCD, you don’t have the confidence or comfort to make those decisions alone.

If there’s one thing I would want you to know, it’s that your first counseling session is about building a safe and healthy relationship with your counselor so that you feel you can do the work together that you need to do. I recently took my daughter to a new pediatrician because hers left the practice.

Steve and I were able to process because he also went to the appointment that we didn’t feel 100 percent comfortable after that first visit that this will be our child’s long-term pediatrician. However, we decided to give her another try. It’s like, did we have this interaction, and it was an off-interaction?

Maybe she had a bad day. Maybe I was extra sensitive today. Whatever the situation, or was this just somebody, I got a negative feeling. I didn’t feel safe or comfortable with them, and I don’t think I will be able to handle my daughter’s whatever health concerns she has come up with.

Maybe this is not the person I want to help us walk through any of those, and that’s a hard call, I think, sometimes to make after the first session. So, say you go to the first session, and there are some things you feel good about and maybe some things you don’t feel good about. You might want to refrain from judgment until perhaps the second session.

Think about this as any other relationship that you run into. So, for example, maybe you and a co-worker get off on the wrong foot, or you and a roommate get off on the wrong foot, but then perhaps the next time you meet up and talk, things are a little different, or you see where they were going with it, or their perspective is different.

Ultimately, you want to feel a sense of safety and comfort to open up and talk about hard things. I know people who have been in counseling for several sessions and still don’t feel that sense of safety and positive connection with their counselor after a month or two. At that point, it’s okay to say this may not be a good fit.

As a therapist, I must accept that I’m not what everybody wants. I try to be as compassionate as possible. Still, I can sometimes be very direct and aggressive because I want to help people move toward their goals and improve. I’m not the right therapist for someone who wants to come in every week and complain about the same things but not be willing to do anything to change those things.

That’s not a valuable use of my time or theirs. Questions to ask yourself after the first session. Is this counselor someone that I feel safe and comfortable opening up to? Can this counselor help me with the issue I’m bringing into counseling? Hopefully, you can answer this by looking at their website or having a short conversation with them via email or phone before your first session.

Ideally, you’d want to make sure that’s an area that your counselor works with. Sometimes, though, people will have experiences of a counselor saying, “Yes, I can work with you on OCD, or Yes, I can help you with anxiety reduction.” But you may not feel comfortable with the way they’re doing that.

I started using more parts of language and inner child work a few years ago. And had a client tell me, “You know, this just isn’t working for me.” And it was good. It was helpful feedback that let us discuss what she was looking for in therapy and who might be the best person to give that to her, even if it wasn’t me.

There are some times when we can change directions in therapy. Maybe I’m trained in something different, or I see how another therapeutic technique might be beneficial, and sometimes it’s me, and sometimes it’s not, and that’s okay. Another question you might want to ask is, did I feel comfortable with the environment that I saw my therapist in?

Thinking about my therapeutic experiences, I know some environments I felt much more comfortable in than others, based on where the building was located, how the waiting room was set up, and what the counselor’s office was like. Some of those things may seem minor. But if it’s someplace you will go to repeatedly, you want to ensure you feel comfortable with some of those elements.

Otherwise, that may be a barrier to getting what you need, and you don’t want that to happen. I would encourage you to think about the timing of your first session. Would it be better for you to do that on a day off or a day that you can leave work early, especially if you don’t know how you’re going to react or respond, you don’t know what emotions are going to be stirred up for you, and that is something that can be hard to deal with especially if therapy is new for you. I remember one time I was practicing with some other therapists on different techniques, and we were doing an awareness exercise that wasn’t supposed to be particularly troublesome or triggering, but in the process of that Awareness exercise and the feedback that I received from the other therapist. I got super triggered, which shook me up for a good chunk of the day afterward. It was completely unexpected, something that came out of nowhere. Think about your timing in terms of going to therapy. Because something may trigger you or upset you, or you may become aware. That you didn’t see coming.

You want to be able to work with your therapist on coming up with a goal for yourself. And even though it may not be fully clarified in the first session, it may take a little while to tune in and realize this. You want to ask yourself, “What do you want or hope to get out of that time?”

Often, people will make generic comments like, “I want to feel better,” “I just wish not to be anxious,” or “I want to be less depressed.” And in those situations, we’re focusing so much on reducing the symptom. We’re not focused on what’s behind that, what’s beyond the symptom for you, so when you feel less depressed, can you connect better with your spouse? Does that mean you can leave the house more and attend your kid’s sporting events? Does it mean that you’ll feel more confident to present at work? What does it mean? If you can dig a little bit deeper and answer some of those things for yourself, that might help you know what’s getting in the way of you feeling better.

Even if all you can see is the symptom right now in front of you because it’s so big or so bold, trying to imagine what life is like beyond this symptom can give you and instill in you a sense of hope that even though you may, for example, struggle with anxiety later in your life, it’s not something probably that’s going to be magically cured or gone away. What would it be like if you had a different relationship with it where it didn’t hinder you from being the person you want to be or doing the things you want to do? That may be hard to imagine at the beginning of therapy, but if you can, it will help push your brain toward that more hopeful track; I can have a better experience than I’m having right now.

Another consideration would be, what are you willing to do to get what you want? So, if you’re saying that you want less anxiety, are you ready to practice relaxation strategies outside of your counseling process? Are you willing to take the time to journal about some of your triggers?

Are you willing to expose yourself to challenging situations appropriately so that you can let your mind and body know that you can do these hard things that it doesn’t believe you can do? And if you are willing to do those hard things, what kind of support might you need from your therapist or others in your life to do the hard things that will help you get to a better place with your mental health?

There may be something that your therapist says or does that isn’t necessarily wrong or unethical in some way. It’s just off-putting. So, for example, I had a therapist, I think, that was a little bit more of a behavioral bent. I saw her only for one session. The reason was that she had this timer. That went off 15 minutes before the session ended and then again 5 minutes before the session ended. It felt superfluous and unnecessary to me, and I felt a little bit like I was being treated like a child. I’m pretty sure she sees other clients who don’t have a problem with it, or they may feel like, in their situation, it’s helpful to them to keep them on track. Maybe the therapist feels that way for herself.

It helps her keep track of her session ending and wrap-up time. I think more than a personal preference of just not liking it was that I didn’t feel like I had any say or choice in the whole-timer situation. It might have been slightly different if she said, “Is it okay if we try this,” kind of like inviting me into the process?

Is it okay if we try this timer and see if you find it helpful, or do I find the valuable timer for me? Would it be okay if we tried it out? It was just kind of something that was thrown in there.

In closing, the last thing I want to say is that if you don’t find a good therapeutic fit on the first try, that’s okay. Don’t give up; get up and try again. We do the same thing with doctors we might not feel comfortable with or dentists we might not feel satisfied with. We go out and find a different provider. At that point, the worst thing we could do is say, “Oh, well, maybe therapy’s just not for me.” That’s like saying, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t get my teeth cleaned because I didn’t feel comfortable with that dentist.”

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By The Well Counseling.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

105. Joy Comes in the Morning: 3rd Year of Marriage

Written by Carrie Bock on October 11, 2023. Posted in Podcast Episode.

In this special episode, Carrie and her husband, Steve, reflect on their three-year marriage journey and the joy of overcoming difficulties. They share insights on the importance of open communication and their experiences as parents to their daughter Faith. They also offer practical tips for maintaining a solid relationship while looking ahead with optimism and gratitude for each day.

Episode Highlights:

The significance of finding joy and hope in difficult situations as inspired by Psalm 30:5.
The importance of open communication in a marriage, even when addressing challenging topics.
How to navigate and adapt to life’s unexpected changes and challenges, such as health issues.
The value of adjusting and accepting new norms in life and relationships.
Their experiences in parenthood, including insights into their daughter, Faith, and the joys and challenges of raising her.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 105 of Christian Faith and OCD!

In this episode, we dive into our year of challenges and growth, centered around the theme “Joy in the Morning,” inspired by Psalm 30:5. We explore how we’ve navigated trials and found hope and joy through our faith and resilience.

Highlights of This Episode:

Reflecting on Our Journey: Steve and I look back at our dating days, the trials of our first year of marriage, and our growth as a couple. We share how our experiences, including Steve’s diagnosis of spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), have shaped our relationship.
Adapting to New Normals: Steve discusses how he’s adjusted to life with SCA, including his memorable Crazy Hair Day at Vacation Bible School (VBS). Despite the challenges, Steve’s involvement in ministry and our lives has been a source of inspiration and joy.
Mission Trip to Guatemala: Steve shares his incredible experience on a mission trip to Guatemala. Despite the obstacles, he found purpose and connection, highlighting how disabilities don’t have to limit our ability to serve others.
Communication and Growth: We delve into how effective communication has been crucial in our relationship, especially when addressing and resolving issues that arise. Steve and I discuss the importance of understanding and patience in our journey together.
Parenting and Faith: With our daughter, Faith, turning 18 months old, we reflect on the joys and challenges of parenting. We explore how our faith has guided us through these experiences and strengthened our bond.

Listen to this episode to gain insight into how faith, communication, and resilience have guided us through our journey. We hope our story inspires you to find joy in your own challenges and embrace the morning light after the night’s trials.

Keep listening with this related episode!

81. On Becoming Parents: Year Two of Marriage with Steve and Carrie Bock

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 105. I am joined here once again by my lovely husband, Steve.

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Carrie: Hi Steve.

Steve: Hey. How are you?

Carrie: Welcome. We’ve been doing this as a tradition almost every year. It started before we got married. We did an episode about our dating experiences, and then, in the first year of marriage, I was pregnant. I remember crying a lot in that episode because we didn’t know what was happening to your eyes other than we knew you had lost vision. It was super scary. Thinking about all the uncertainties there, then you had just been diagnosed with neurological conditions, spinocerebellar ataxia.

We sat down and thought about what we wanted to discuss for our third year of marriage now that we’ve been married for almost three years. This scripture had come to mind: Psalm 30 verse 5 says, Weeping may stay overnight, but there is joy in the morning. And so, we thought about titling this episode Joy in the Morning. Do you want to tell our audience a little bit about why we chose that?

Steve: Yes, because I think going through trials, as everyone does, our trials that we have dealt with, there have been tears, and there have been difficult moments, but the joy that comes out of that, being able to look back and say, oh my goodness, I’ve made it through this. And it gives others hope that they may be going through the same thing. That’s the beauty of going through something difficult: when you make it to the other side, to a better place at least, you can share that with someone and help them. We have been through a lot; it has been difficult, but we’ve done it with a smile. As best as we can anyway, so, that’s kind of, it’s a good verse.

Carrie: Yes. Some of the highlights of this year of you adjusting to the SCA diagnosis and realizing that you can still be involved in ministry with which you’d like to be involved. And I wish we had a picture of your crazy hair day at VBS.

Steve: That was so much fun. They’d asked me to, at church, well, they didn’t ask me, but I signed up for VBS, which was a challenge at the time because I’d yet to serve in any way by myself amidst all the chaos of all those wonderful kids who were having fun. And here I am, with my walker, trying to hurry through and make it work but having a blast. They had different themes for each day, whether it be sports, and one of those days was crazy hair day, so I said, why not? So, each night, I participated, but that was probably the best one for me because, as a bald man, I could wear a wig with blue hair. I think it was. Was it blue?

Carrie: No, it was all white.

Steve: All right, there we go.

Carrie: But you had a blue headband.

Steve: That’s what it was. I knew something must have been blue, but A, there’s my memory for you, and B, there’s my eyesight for you. But yes, it was all white hair. I remember that now. And it was crazy. It was out there. And I got so many comments on that. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

Carrie: Right. Yes, and then this summer, you took a mission trip to Guatemala, which was the first time that you had been really since COVID and us getting married, having a baby, all these different things happened.

Steve: That was one of those experiences I did not know if I would get to continue with. But the team I went with was so gracious and so giving, so compassionate that they knew where my heart was. They knew they wanted me to go on that team with them and invited me, which was humbling. I never had to ask for help, whether I thought I needed it or not, and more times than not, I did need help.

They were right there, by my side, to grab a bag and help me up and down the stairs, which is funny because I took a walker with me. A smaller walker that would be easier to pack and carry and all that stuff takes up less space. I never got to use that thing, except in the airport once, because flat ground didn’t exist where we were.

There was no way of using that: there were so many stairs and different things. Anyway, the team was so good though to help me. I made sure I got from point A to point B and got to teach with people, and the people in Guatemala were so gracious with their time and compassionate, too, so it was a blessing.

Carrie: Great. And I think you got some positive feedback from people there that your story was just inspirational and that you had sacrificed to go to another country because you could have easily said, I’ve done mission trips for years; my time is over, and I have this disability. It’s time for me to kick back and rest.

Steve: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I’ll never forget this. Pastor Mark, who led the group, commented when we discussed whether I should go or not that we have people with club feet and different things that come to see us. Why not have someone else come to see them with a problem, whatever, a disability? I hadn’t thought about it that way. I just thought, how will I be able to do this? That’s all I was focused on. That changed the way that I thought about it. When I got there, the people were just so, I don’t know, I think it was a different way of looking at things for them too. Someone who has a disability came to speak with them. It was a cool thing in the end. It was very humbling, though.

Carrie: This year has been about adjusting and accepting our new normal. I guess you could call it our new life situation, and it comes with many changes and challenges in relationships and daily life. What’s been your experience of that?

Steve: I had to adjust and change to, you can sit on a couch or sit in the bed and cry and give in, or you can tweak how you do things. You can change or adjust to the new normal. And that’s what I’ve done, and I still do what I like. I don’t get to go outside as often, and I don’t get to go hiking. However, there are ways that I can do things.

I’m very happy with the life that I’m living, getting to do those things. I still get to meet with my friends occasionally and can’t just get in the car and drive there. But I still get to go, so there are no complaints. It’s still a blessing to play with our child and do all the fun things that I think are important.

Carrie: Faith just turned 18 months old, and she’s a little firecracker sometimes. But it’s been a journey, lots of learning, lots of adjustment, lots of growing as parents. And I think all these things that we’re talking about related to your marriage are, like, these are things that can either bring you closer together or create conflict and drive you farther apart.

Steve: Definitely. I think that for us, you always have to look forward. You have to pick your battles. I constantly tell myself that, not so much with you, but with Faith. Just with our daughter, trying to figure out, okay, she’s upset. Why is she upset? Or, she is, like most children, she gets her mind set on something.

I want to carry that blanket around. And drag it while we walk outside. I want to drag it through the dirt and never want to let it go. She reminds me of Linus with those blankets, but sometimes, you must decide how important it is for me to take this blanket away from her. Or to take whatever this toy or whatever it is.

Is it a deal breaker if she hangs on to it? Am I training her incorrectly if I let her hang on to that? Or, there’s a lot of decision-making there, but sometimes I’ve learned it’s okay to let her hang on for just a minute longer. And then, whenever she forgets about it, take it away and hide it; she’ll never think of it, and you won’t have to deal with the fuss. I don’t know if that always works, but picking your battles is very important.

Carrie: I think that’s true in a relational sense. And what you were talking about before, essentially honoring your limitations, is helpful for all our listeners, just listening to your body. There are some days that you can do more than others and some days you’re very fatigued and have to take it easy, and all you may get done is one load of laundry, and that’s it.

That’s a hard thing to accept. And just in terms of the mental health realm, it’s like, okay, some days I may be prepared to socially interact in a certain way with others, and some days I just may not be able to do that and respecting and honoring, like, my body and where I’m at today.

Steve: You have to decide sometimes if you’re going through fatigue, are you not feeling well, and you need rest, or are you just depressed and pushing away people? Because that’s a big difference. There are days, I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like doing the people thing, but it’s just me being whatever, me being me, or wanting to avoid people. And then there are other days I want to be around people, but my body is too tired, and I need to rest. Those are decisions that you have to think about, I think, for me, in the sense of, is it me, or is my body just really needing the rest? And so more times than not, for me, it’s my body really needs the rest, and so I have to force myself to lay down. I’m not a very good stop-and-rest person. I’m getting better at it, but not by choice, because I have to.

Carrie: Usually, other people tell you to sit down rather than you decide to sit down.

Steve: And anyone who knows me knows I was always a person that just wanted to go. Not that I couldn’t stop, but I didn’t like to sit down. I like to fix things. If something is on my mind, I want to finish it. I’m not a procrastinator, but when you have something like I have, you have to sit down. It’s not procrastinating; it’s resting until you can.

Carrie: I wanted to bring something up, and we can always cut this out if you don’t want us to talk about this, but without going into a lot of details, we had an, like, a communication issue come up in our marriage this year where we were both unhappy with like one aspect of our life. Do you know what I’m talking about? And neither one of us said anything because we’re both conflict-avoiders. And then finally, I got up the courage, and I said, “Hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of unhappy in this one area, and then it was surprising for you to say, yeah, me too.” We were able to, like, do something about it. And so, I just wanted to share with our listeners that sometimes it’s hard to bring up those difficult topics in your marriage and talk about hard things that make you feel uncomfortable or your concern that’s going to make your spouse feel uncomfortable or that they might be mad at you.

Steve: That was one of those things when you said it. When you said something to me, I thought, yes, I agree and it wasn’t a bad thing.

Carrie: Right.

Steve: It wasn’t like she was acting this way, and I’m annoyed. No, it wasn’t that. It was literally a communication issue. It’s like mentally sitting at that four-way stop, and neither one of us is going. But we’re both annoyed with the other because we think it’s their turn or we think it’s something not right here, go when you said something “Oh, good, good, yes” and we dealt with it, and everything went well.

Sometimes I think I tend to be the go-with-the-flow type of personality, and something will bother me. I’m like, it’s not that big of a deal. Just suck it up. And really, you don’t want to gripe every time something comes up. And I’ve been that guy, too. I’ll be honest, but you also don’t want to just, no big deal, and keep pushing it away, and pushing it away, and then one day, you’re going to blow up. It’s not pretty, so sometimes it’s better to talk, and the struggle is, how do you bring it up? How do you say it? That always comes up because when I say things, I tend to be a very sarcastic person. I’ve really had to work on that, and nowhere near success in that department. I’ve worked on my sarcasm because I like to be funny and sarcastic, but it doesn’t work when communicating in a profound moment. It’s always taken as a negative, even though I may not mean it that way. For instance, if you say, Steve, I really need to go to the store or the library, and my response is, oh, goody, I can’t wait. I may think nothing of that. I meant simply as humor but when you say that enough, it bleeds out as this jerk doesn’t even want to go, and he doesn’t have the guts to say, I don’t really want to go carry. Is that okay? Instead, it’s, Oh, goody. The sarcasm doesn’t help me and I’ve had to work on that honest moment.

Carrie: Well, I think coming to a place of when you say this, I hear this. In your marriage relationship, men and women communicate things differently, and there are times when you’ll say something, and I’m like, I heard this, and then you’ll say, no, that’s not at all what I said.

Steve: Yes, and I am so caught off guard in those moments but again, it may be how I’m saying it, orr the pattern of how I’ve said it before. I think that really you could set a tone.

Carrie: Yes, it also taps into what I’m learning, like your past relational baggage because it’s like, okay, I hear him talking like my dad or my ex or something like that, and then I’m absorbing it through that lens. I don’t even realize that I’m doing it at that point until maybe later, and I have moments of self-reflection. I think that piece comes up in marriage a lot.

Steve: I think that’s why I’ve always heard the first two years of marriage are the most difficult. I think it could go beyond that. I don’t know, but I think the reason is that you’re getting through communication and likes, dislikes, and all of that stuff. You’re learning about your other half. I hope we can be one of those cute older couples that everybody wants to go to. Oh my gosh, you’re going to make me throw up, or they say they’re so cute. The old couple that’s kissing and holding hands. Anyway, so you hope when you’re older, you don’t even have to say anything. You know what the other person would think.

Carrie: In this process of growing together, I always tell clients that you’re either growing with someone or growing apart from them because you might be growing at different levels. I’ve seen that happen in friendships; I’ve noticed that it occurs to various people in romantic relationships. So always, like, keeping those lines of communication open, being self-aware and knowing what you’re contributing to the relationship, what might be detrimental to your relationship, and how to work on those things. And I think if we can look at it as we were talking about our communication, It’s not always bad, like sometimes we need some enrichment in certain areas. There’s not a problem yet, or there’s not a crisis. If you can catch it before something becomes a problem, or becomes a crisis, or before we feel like we don’t talk about that at all, if you can address it on the front end, it’s a lot easier than waiting for things to, like you said, build up and build up, and then somebody blows up, or somebody withdraws or walks away.

Steve: Absolutely. I think, too, that sometimes we get angry in our head, and that builds up, and to the point where, and you say this about faith all the time, she doesn’t even know why she’s angry. Something triggered you, and then your state, not you, but in general, and I’ve had this to me, and I stop, and I think, why in the world am I even angry? I don’t even know why. And it may simply be I don’t feel well, and I have to stop and say, okay, I cannot take that out on anyone. That is not fair. I just need to shush, not say anything, let it go. Try to remember those techniques of how to calm down or how to relax. And then there were other times when I did have something that bothered me, but I didn’t want to say anything. And I held it in, and then, kaboom, it’s not pretty, all over something really silly.

Carrie: I think timing is vital in terms of bringing up topics. In your marriage, it’s hard to know. You can’t necessarily bring something up when there’s all that heat of the emotion on both sides. You have to take a break, like pause. Okay, let’s talk about this. Let’s go to our separate spaces, reflect on it, pray about it, and then come back together and talk about what in the world just happened with that last interaction. I don’t even know, but we went from a happy couple to all of a sudden. We’re at each other’s throats or something.

Steve: That would be those moments when I have to say, okay, Steve, calm down. Why are you upset or okay? Maybe your reasoning for being upset is justifiable, but there are two of us in this marriage, so what can I do? What can I say to try to calm this down? There’s no hero, no winner, no individual here. How do we do this together? How do we work? That’s hard because we always want to win; we always want to be right. As humans, you always want to be in the right, and we never stop and think; it seems most of us don’t; maybe I’m wrong here. Perhaps I need to change the approach. Maybe I’m not wrong, but my path is wrong, or how I’m saying it. And that’s where it’s difficult because the focus is on you to change. And that’s hard. We always want the other person to change.

Carrie: Right, and I think working with our daughter and trying to help her when she has these completely age-appropriate meltdowns because she’s been teething or refused her nap that day or her stomach hurts, and we don’t even know about it. You know, all these things come up, and at the moment, it seems like it’s, you know, I want the banana over the strawberries; really, it has nothing to do with that. It’s all these other factors and knowing that we can have the opportunity to bring the calm into the situation and like get down on her level and talk to her and like, okay, you know, I can see you’re really upset right now.

Steve: Well, and that isn’t easy in general. And it’s easy for a couple, I think, with children. They have problems because they have a child or children, in our case, a child, who may have been screaming for 20 minutes at the top of their lungs. You’re just at wit’s end to please make it go away, just stop, not the child, the screaming, and then the communication between the two of you can be rather snappy. It’s not personal, just give me the sippy cup, take the child here, do this, and it’s nothing personal, it’s just, oh my gosh, have you checked your diaper lately? There’s always something. And what are those moments you look at later and go, I’m sorry, I may have been a little snappy. It’s hard to focus on how to calm her down, and you’re going off on your spouse—just a tricky thing.

Carrie: I think, too, there’s that element where sometimes we’ll be trying to have a conversation in the car, and then all of a sudden in the backseat is because she can’t talk fully.

Steve: She wants to join in.

Carrie: Yes,

Steve: Those are the moments I kind of smile myself and then begin to insert her name every fourth word, maybe asking you when we go to the store, are we going to buy this, that, or the other, and then I insert her name, which makes no sense in real-time, but when talking with her, she hears her name and is happy to be a part of the conversation, I’m hoping.

Carrie: Despite all the difficult things that have happened this year, in terms of our themes of joy coming in the morning, we will talk about where you see things going.

Steve: Yes, I think there are so many opportunities that have come up already, be it with church or missions or whatever; there’s just so much to look forward to. And I know that there will be, as the song said, mama said, there’d be days like this. There are going to be those days. But I look forward to good things as well, and I think that some elegant stuff is coming up the pike, so I’m excited about that; I’m excited that some of my doctor visits, my annual checkups are already behind me, got my eyes taken care of, and no significant change there, and that’s a blessing. Some of my neurological visits and all that are coming up have already passed. They’ve already passed for a while. So those are good things. I look forward to those. Most people don’t like the doctor’s visits, but I like them because I get the news, and I’m done with it for a while. Get it behind me. I’m looking forward to what’s coming up the pike for sure.

Carrie: When you have this generative disease, stability is a blessing; staying the same and not deteriorating further is always a positive. So, we appreciate that whenever we hear that. Just in general, your health numbers are doing well.

Steve: Those are doing really well. On top of that, knowing that I am doing as well as I am is a blessing in the sense that we didn’t know when we first got this diagnosis, we didn’t know. It almost gave me the feeling like golly, I could die tomorrow. But now I’ve heard some individuals have the same thing. Maybe we don’t necessarily know which type, yes, thank you. Which type that I have? But we know that I have it. And the lifespan, again, I thought, golly, I could die tomorrow. Who couldn’t die tomorrow? I hear about people who have been living to be 80 years old. And I hear about, because of what they’ve discovered through studies for Parkinson’s disease, they’ve been able to say, hey, that’ll work for SCA as well. And now I’m not on this medication, but for certain types of SCA, they can take this medication, which slows it down a little bit, they think. I don’t have all the details on that, but I know that it’s exciting that they found something. Those types of things are exciting to me. That’s definitely something to consider a joy, and I can get up and spend time with my family, enjoy the days I have now, and make the very best of each day. That’s exciting.

Carrie: We got involved in an SCA support group and have just learned so much through the other individuals, things that have worked for them, been helpful, not helpful, and then been able even to take some of that information like to your eye appointment and say, hey, This was recommended to us, or we found out this doesn’t work as well with SCA. That’s been a blessing, I think, for me and just this whole podcast journey and our relationship. I want to impact more people positively for the kingdom, just continuing to spread messages of hope. That people can get the help that they need out there. I know that you have stepped in and been a big support in promoting the podcast, even sometimes talking to people or supporting me in going to the AACC conference when that happened.

There were some long days there, and you had more duties and responsibilities at home or with Faith. I appreciate everything that you’ve done to help support this podcast. It’s been a wild ride, and it’s hard to believe that it’s been about three years. Just all the things that God has done indoors that he’s opened and to be able to launch the course recently, and I hope this next year to work on a book I’m thinking it’s going to be for Christians with anxiety some focus on OCD. They want to do some writing about anxiety, So I’m not exactly sure what direction or bent I’m going to go with that. I want to provide some practical tools to help and support people experiencing that. Still, I’m just excited to see what the Lord is going to do, and we are hopeful to be able to move in 2024 possibly. Praise the Lord. So, we are looking for better accessible housing than we have right now. Not that our accommodation is terrible as far as you’re getting around. It’s just not going to serve us in the future. And we know that. And so, we are trying to get something that’s more one level or flatter yard or something. That’s going to be more,

Steve: Flat is the keyword there, at least as far as the yard goes and fewer steps. Also, I’d like to say that I’m proud of you for how much effort and time and all of that you’ve put into the podcast and your work and what you do, and knowing you as I do, of course, I’m going to brag on you, but you put a lot of heart into what you do. And I think it shows, I definitely think it shows.

It’s exciting that I remember when you hadn’t even started the podcast. And now you’re on number 105 or something crazy like that? That’s wonderful, and there are days, I’ll be honest, I listen and think I will need a dictionary. I don’t know what that means because I’m not in that world. And then I’ll listen and say, “Oh, well, that’s really interesting. I never knew that.” I tell people if I’m talking to someone at the doctor’s office or wherever, and they say I have a problem with anxiety. I have perfect help for you here. I always try to remind them that if they look through the episodes, one may stand out to them. It’s not focused on one little thing, and even when it’s not something you’re necessarily interested in, as you listen, you find, wow, that’s got a lot for me to take away. I had no clue that that also pertained to me or that I would get that much out of it. So, it’s not boring. I’ll give it that. It’s very informative, and I enjoy that—so good job.

Carrie: Well, thank you. I want all of our listeners to know that I made some great connections at the AACC conference. So that means more interesting guests to come next year. And kind of now that we’ve had over a hundred episodes, we’re able to just branch down different rabbit holes.

There are still more things to talk about. It’s kind of surprising that there are always new topics and ways that we can apply what we’re learning to help with anxiety and OCD. Everyone, definitely stay tuned. We have some free resources on our website. I’d love to tell you about it, too. You can go to Hopeforanxietyandocd.com. We have our download from our hundredth episode on A Hundred Ways to Help You Manage Anxiety. We have an OCD resource: five things every Christian with OCD needs to know. We’ve got a few different things going on there and would love to have you check those resources out. Thank you, everyone, so much for listening today.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Written by Carrie Bock on September 28, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Carrie interviews Greg Atkinson, an entrepreneur, speaker and author, about the power of kindness.

Greg shares his personal journey and how forgiveness and kindness have played a pivotal role in his life. The conversation highlights the ripple effect of kindness and its power to make the world a better place.

Episode Highlights.

How Greg Atkinson’s life experiences, including anxiety, inspired his commitment to kindness.
The importance of forgiveness in fostering a kinder world.

The significance of vulnerability and openness in sharing personal stories and breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health.

Practical ways to incorporate kindness into your own life and make a positive impact on those around you.

Greg’s Book: The Secret Power of Kindness

Episode Summary:

Welcome to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast! I’m Carrie Bock, your host, and today’s episode features Greg Atkinson—an insightful speaker, author, and educator on mental health issues.

Greg recently authored The Secret Power of Kindness, a book that opens with a deeply personal account of his journey through trauma, mental health struggles, and ultimately, forgiveness. Greg shares how his experiences with sexual, verbal, and physical abuse shaped his life, leading to diagnoses of anxiety and bipolar disorder.

The central theme of Greg’s book is forgiveness—a process that has taken years of therapy and personal growth. He emphasizes that holding onto anger and bitterness can prevent us from living a kind and compassionate life.

Greg also discusses the impact of mental health in his life, from the physical symptoms of anxiety to the mental battles of catastrophic thinking. He highlights the importance of understanding mental illness, especially within faith communities, where there can be harmful misconceptions about anxiety and depression being purely spiritual issues.

Through his story, Greg aims to educate and encourage others to approach mental health with kindness, both towards themselves and others. His insights challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness and promote a more compassionate understanding within the church and beyond.

Join me in this episode as we explore Greg Atkinson’s journey of healing, forgiveness, and the power of kindness.

Tune in for another inspiring episode:

63. Trauma, Forgiveness, and Emotional Eating Recovery with Coach Jon McLernon

103. Bouncing Back with Resilience with Donna Cox Gibbs, LCMHCS

Written by Carrie Bock on September 13, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 103. Bouncing Back with Resilience with Donna Cox Gibbs, LCMHCS

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Donna Cox Gibbs, a licensed clinical mental health counselor and author. They explore the true essence of resilience – not just bouncing back, but moving forward through life’s challenges.

Episode Highlights:

Misconceptions about resilience and its true nature.
The significance of self-awareness in recognizing physical, emotional, and relational responses.
How faith and spiritual well-being contribute to building resilience.
Balancing emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects for whole-person resilience.
Practical tools for navigating life’s challenges and developing resilience over time.
Donna’s Book: Bounce: A 60-Day Devotional to Jumpstart Your Resilience

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 103 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host. I had the privilege of speaking with Donna Gibbs, a licensed clinical mental health counselor and supervisor from North Carolina. We delved into the concept of resilience—a topic that resonates deeply with all of us.

Donna simplifies resilience as the ability to keep moving forward through life’s challenges without getting stuck. Rather than bouncing back to where we were before, resilience is about bouncing forward, adapting, and growing through the trials we face. She shares a powerful personal story about a three-month hospitalization that tested her resilience and how the support and wisdom of a trusted physician and friend helped her navigate that challenging season.

Throughout our conversation, Donna emphasizes that resilience isn’t just a trait some people are born with—it’s something that can be learned and developed over time. She discusses the importance of a whole-person approach to resilience, integrating mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. This holistic perspective is central to her work and is the foundation of her devotional book, Bounce: A 60-Day Devotional to Jumpstart Your Resilience.

As we reflect on resilience, I’m reminded of how God uses our trials to build character and perseverance. Whether you’re facing a life-changing diagnosis, a significant loss, or any other form of adversity, remember that resilience is about moving forward with faith, trusting that God will bring good from our struggles.

Explore Related Episodes:

112. Finding Motivation to Finish with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

102. Anxiety and Coparenting with Tammy Daughtry, LMFT

Written by Carrie Bock on August 30, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 102. Anxiety and Coparenting with Tammy Daughtry, LMFT

In this episode, Carrie sits down with Tammy Daughtry, author of “Co-Parenting Works: Helping Your Children Thrive After Divorce,” to discuss the challenging topic of co-parenting and its impact on anxiety. Tammy shares her personal journey as an adult child of divorce and her mission to provide hope-filled resources for co-parents through Co-Parenting International.

Episode Highlights:

The impact of managing emotions on co-parenting dynamics and children’s well-being.
Techniques for seamless transitions during handoffs using body language and tone.—The importance of prioritizing child safety and well-being over personal disagreements.
Creating secure spaces for kids by acknowledging parenting style differences and encouraging open communication.
The significance of self-care for parents during alone time, promoting personal well-being and smoother transitions upon children’s return.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD. In this episode, we’re diving into the complexities of co-parenting, a topic that resonates with many of our listeners who may be facing anxiety and stress due to the challenges it brings. Today, I’m joined by Tammy Daughtry, the author of Co-Parenting Works: Helping Your Children Thrive After Divorce.

Although I went through a divorce several years ago, I didn’t experience co-parenting, as I didn’t have children in that marriage. But I know this is a significant issue for many, and I wanted to bring Tammy on to provide insights and hope to those navigating this journey.

Tammy shares her personal story, rooted in her experience as a child of divorce and later as a co-parent herself. After an eight-year marriage, Tammy found herself at a crossroads, leading to divorce and the beginning of her co-parenting journey. Her quest for hope-filled resources led her to create Co-Parenting International, a platform aimed at providing support and guidance to parents in high-conflict situations.

In our conversation, Tammy emphasizes the importance of the “handoff”—the transition of children between parents. She highlights how body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice during these exchanges can deeply impact a child’s emotional well-being.

Tammy also addresses the often-overlooked aspect of alone time for single parents. She offers practical advice on making healthy choices during these periods, emphasizing the importance of self-care and community engagement to cope with the emotional void that can arise when children are with the other parent.

This episode is packed with wisdom and practical tips for anyone navigating the complexities of co-parenting. Whether you’re dealing with the daily challenges or preparing for the long-term impact on your children, Tammy’s insights provide a roadmap for fostering resilience and hope.

Explore related episodes:

86. How to Catch Your Teens Anxiety Before it Gets Out of Control with Gina Nelson, LCSW, CDW

101. A Secret Life (OCD) with Jim Juliana

Written by Carrie Bock on August 16, 2023. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 101. A Secret Life (OCD) with Jim Juliana

Join Carrie as she sits down with Jim Juliana, an author, former high school teacher and an athletic coach, who opens up about his journey of enduring and overcoming OCD. He candidly reveals the obstacles, triumphs, and the profound impact of combining faith and therapy in his recovery.

Episode Highlights:

The intensity of Jim’s OCD episodes and how they affected his daily life.
The impact of OCD on Jim’s academic and professional pursuits.
The familial nature of OCD and its genetic implication
Jim’s struggle to reconcile treatment approaches with religious beliefs.
Jim’s book, “A Secret Life: Enduring and Triumphing Over OCD

Carrie also offers her insights on Jim’s treatment, providing additional context and highlighting the importance of individualized therapy plans for OCD.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 101 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host. In today’s episode, I’m thrilled to introduce Jim Juliana, author of “A Secret Life.” Jim shares his deeply personal journey with OCD, detailing his experiences and treatment.

Jim first noticed something was wrong during elementary school in the 1950s. He recalls an incident where he fixated on an inappropriate image, leading him to fear eternal damnation. Despite being a top student and devout altar boy, he struggled with feelings of guilt and scrupulosity, intensified by his religious upbringing.

As a teenager in the 1960s, Jim faced increasing OCD symptoms, including tics and obsessive thoughts. He recalls an event where he ran away before returning to high school, seeking refuge in a tree house. This marked the beginning of his journey toward professional help, although he did not receive an official OCD diagnosis until 1980.

Jim emphasizes the importance of recognizing OCD in children, noting how it can affect well-behaved students who may internalize their struggles. He shares insights from his own experiences and from conversations with educators and parents about the prevalence of OCD in younger populations.

Join us as Jim delves into his past, the challenges he faced, and how he ultimately found healing. Tune in to hear his full story and gain valuable insights into living with and overcoming OCD.

More Episodes to Listen to:

74. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and NOCD with Stacy Quick, LPC

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 101. I am your host, Carrie Bock. On today’s episode, we have a personal story of someone who’s dealt with OCD and has gone through treatment and has written a book about it. So I’m very excited to have Jim Juliana on the show talking about his book, “A Secret Life.”

Welcome to the show.

Jim: Thank you, Carrie, for having me.

Carrie: When did you really first start to show signs of OCD and like, what were those? Even if you didn’t have a diagnosis or you didn’t know that that’s what it was.

Jim: I first knew something was wrong when I was in elementary school, we’re going back now to the mid 1950s, I’m showing my age, and I can remember and relate in the book, an incident where we had a plumber or electrician at the house working.

For my mom and I was snooping around the truck outside and there was a picture in the truck of a partially naked woman and of course I fixated on it. And then after the gentleman left, I started having very serious feelings that I had done something wrong. I was the oldest of eight children. I don’t think we had eight at this time, but went to Catholic school through 12th grade.

Was very religious. I was an altar boy. I was at the top of my class academically, and I thought I was a pretty good person. And then this event occurred and it took my mother and me. The rest of the afternoon for me to realize or come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to go to hell for having looked at this picture.

Wow. And I remember it very, very vividly. My mother was my best friend all through my teenage years, and I worshipped her and loved her very much, and it was, uh, mutual. And she sat me down, I remember, in the kitchen and tried to explain to me what had transpired, and it wasn’t a mortal sin, and I wasn’t going to hell, and eventually I felt better about it later in the afternoon, and we’re talking several hours where she consoled me and talked to me, and so that was the very first incident where I knew there was something unusual going on.

Back then, the word scrupulosity came into play because of my religious background and upbringing. The other event that took place, which was really probably the most important event in my adolescent years, I had completed the first semester of Catholic high school. In an all boys Jesuit high school, it was Christmas vacation and I was scheduled to go back to school the next day to start the second semester in January.

Now we’re talking 1964 and as I had mentioned, I was a straight A student did very, very well. I like school, enjoyed school, but I had been having a lot of problems. My first semester at PrEP, Georgetown PrEP, was headaches, and I had developed some facial and bodily tics. And it was all trying to get rid of thoughts or ideas that I thought were sexually wrong or inappropriate.

And my grades had reflected this interruption, so to speak. And I was just afraid to go back to school, so the night before I was supposed to return, I ran away. And basically what I did was I went into the park. We lived near Rock Creek park and my friends had a tree for tree house. So I spent the night there freezing my butt off and got back to the house about eight or eight 30 in the morning.

And of course my folks were beside themselves. And that was the first time that I ever received any professional medical help for what was going on. I had just turned 15 years old then.

Carrie: Did they know that you were struggling with this thought process? Was there a lot of confessing that was going on to them?

Jim: No.

Carrie: Or assurance seeking? Okay.

Jim: It was my secret only at that point. And I was very timid. Even though I was a good athlete and a good student, I was behind the eight ball a little bit socially. I was very quiet and introverted. Even with my parents, they would have to pull things out of me, so to speak. You can imagine having a house full of children, all ages, all in school.

We had a nice middle class family and I was pretty happy most of the time, but this was an offshoot of what had happened in grade school and it just kept getting worse and worse and more invasive in everything that I did to the point where. I knew I needed help. I didn’t quite know how to ask for help.

So this was my way of speaking up and getting my parents involved.

I think it’s important to note for parents and others that sometimes like the kid that’s well behaved, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have the internal struggles going on. Because a lot of times we see situations where. A child can be very well behaved and they’re good in school, but then they’re holding on to this anxiety inside and unless it manifests in some way externally, a lot of times people don’t know.

Yeah, and I think I’ve mentioned to you, we have 4 children and 3 of our girls are school teachers. It’s amazing today just how many youngsters suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. It would shock a lot of parents and… Through discussions with my girls and in the last few years I taught, it was just startling how many children are affected adversely in school and in their activities and at how young it happens.

My wife and I spoke to a lady who was a secretary work for our financial planner and Betsy started talking one day to her and she had twins, seven years old, and one of the twins was having nightmares. and all kinds of problems, and had been diagnosed with OCD. And this was just a couple years ago.

Carrie: Yeah, fortunately, like, they’re catching it a lot earlier, so that there can be earlier intervention.

Yes. Whereas, you know, many years ago, they did not catch these types of things earlier. When you got help at 15, did you get a diagnosis of OCD then, or no?

Jim: I’m laughing at remembering. We went to a doctor, psychiatrist that was a good friend of the family, Dr. Fitzgerald. He had a couple of sons attending prep with me.

He was a good friend of the family. And my parents and I never received or heard the word OCD until 1980, if you can believe that. I was married, had four children and into my career as a teacher and coach. Before OCD was ever mentioned.

Did you label yourself with something random, like I’m weird or quirky, or I feel crazy inside because I think a lot of times people with OCD do feel internally crazy until they get a diagnosis.

Yeah, you’re right about that. A lot of people I’ve met, they don’t want to talk about it. They’re embarrassed. Yeah. I think would be the word I would use, or they feel they’re lesser human beings.

Carrie: How did you explain this to yourself?

Jim: To this day, I think of what happened to me freshman year in high school, for lack of better words, is I had a nervous breakdown of some sort.

I had an emotional… breakdown. I had a mental disorder of some nature that I had no idea what was going on. In fact, just within the last couple of years, when I was meeting with my present Dr. Jim Gallagher, who inspired me to write my book, he talked about the fact that I was a 15 year old, going through puberty, going through all kinds of Emotional, physical changes at that time.

And a lot of that was part of what produced the headaches. The headaches were real. A lot of my teachers thought that I was faking it. I remember that. It was much, much more complicated than anyone thought back in 1964. And it encompassed everything I did, every day, every minute, something was going on and I knew it.

I knew I was different. In fact, later on in my adolescence, when I dropped out of college, I was drafted. It was during Vietnam and our pediatrician was able to write a letter and explain what was going on with me. And I really wasn’t trying to dodge the draft. In fact, I was thinking about going into the service.

They wouldn’t take me because I was, I think the phrase they used was mentally unstable or mentally incompetent. I was four F and didn’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.

Carrie: Wow. Well, you said it took until 1980 for you to get a diagnosis and hear the words O c D. While you were going through this in high school and beyond, was it always mainly themes of scrupulosity, like worried about offending God or going to hell or other things?

Jim: Yes, my wife and I were high school sweethearts and started dating. Oh, I first met her when I was 14. So right around, so she knows all about this and lived with this more than anybody else now that my parents are gone. And it was always a scrupulosity problem. It always, because of my deep religious Christian faith, my Catholicism, my love of God, but it always was, had sexual overtones.

And it was never talked about that. I had something going wrong with the chemicals in my brain. There were pathways that I had developed forcing me to go sideways in different areas. Even when the O C D was used in 80, I was seeing a doctor here in Denver and he actually was trying drugs, prescription drugs to use some of the effects of the OCD.

They hadn’t been accepted yet by the FDA, so my doctor had to get him from Canada. That’s the point where I was in the 70s and 80s where I’m trying every different prescription drug for anxiety, for depression, for whatever they thought it might work. And I probably went through half a dozen to a dozen different types of drugs.

And drugs have never really been a great assistance to my problem. Never. In fact, Dr. Gallagher says it’s normally about only 30% of people that have OCD find any kind of relief from prescription. Antidepressants, those kind of things.

Do you remember what some of the things you were on? Were you on like, because this was before the standard treatment now is SSRIs.

Were you on like a tricyclic antidepressants? Or do you remember? I was

on Prozac at one time. I know my brother. I can’t remember the drug that he used because he’s OCD as well. And I mentioned it to my doctor and we tried and it did have some side effects, but it helped a little bit, but it was never more than just mellowing me out.

Carrie: Okay.

Jim: Kind of controlling my temper and frustration and anger and anxiety in my case anyway.

Carrie: But it never helped like lessen the intrusions for you?

Jim: No, never.

Carrie: That’s hard to deal with. So I imagine that it was probably hard trying to navigate a sense of like healthy sexuality. It’s normal for teenagers to think about sex or be curious about sex or have questions about them.

But those things weren’t talked about. People weren’t having open conversations. Was that hard for you to navigate? Try to figure out like, I don’t know what’s normal versus like what’s OCD related.

Jim: Yeah, what was normal for me was what I had been taught in 12 years of Catholic school, nuns for eight years, Sisters of Charity, which I loved them, they were great teachers, but they were strict, and it was all by the book, the Catholic Church, the doctrines of the church, so I, being the person I was, That was kind of how I acted and reacted.

And if I thought it was a mortal sin to look at a girl walking away from me who had nice legs and a nice butt and swayed. And if that was a mortal sin, then that was a mortal sin. I had to go and confess that, go to church for that. I think like a lot of kids in the fifties and sixties, there wasn’t a lot of, uh, sex education or discourse on sex.

It’s what I learned in school, and it seemed like, as I look back now, just about everything was bad, was wrong. That was my approach, gotta be careful, and I never dated much. I never kissed a girl until my wife to be kissed me when I was probably 16. I was way behind the curve. A lot of it had to do with the OCD and worrying about sin and having to go back to church, confess my sins, talk to the priest, that kind of thing.

Carrie: Did that cause you to engage in confession maybe more than the average Catholic? I don’t know exactly how that works, but did you find yourself going back a lot and confessing impulsively?

Jim: Yes, absolutely. It’s like hitting your head on the brick wall, like, okay, this is going to help. And then you walk out of the confession. Confession works where you can go anytime you want. Okay. It’s up to the individual and it’s a sacrament, just like receiving the Eucharist or marriage. So it’s supposed to receive help from God and grace from God by going to confession, supposed to be helpful. And I turned it upside down on its head and it became drudgery and something that I avoided more than took advantage of.

Carrie: Okay. Did you have a lot of compulsive praying during this time? Like you’d have a certain thought and say a certain prayer or feel like you were repeating certain prayers over and over?

Jim: Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ve thought about that. Yes, most definitely. I used to, in grade school, during Easter, during Lent, Advent, Christmas time, I tried to go to church every day before school. And then in high school, we had mass, daily mass. Optional. And I went a lot. In fact, half of the kids that went to prep were boarding students. So about 200 day, we were called day hops and then 200 boarding students from all over the United States. And we would go back in early August for football camp to start practice.

And I was one of the captains my senior year. And the tradition had always been go to church, go to mass every morning before we start practicing the day. And a lot of kids were rebelling against that. And I remember along with the other co captain, we had a team meeting and I was the one that said, Hey, we’re going to go to church every morning.

We’re going to keep this tradition. And a lot of guys were upset with me. As I recall, that was an example of how. Impulsive I was about the religious. I even carried it into my responsibility as captain of the football team, making the rest of the guys go to church every morning, just because I thought that’s what I wanted to do.

It wasn’t anything I was hurting him, but I’m sure there’s some guys to this day that are still resentful why Juliana made us go to church on, uh, every single day during camp.

Carrie: I think that’s a good point though, where sometimes when people struggle with OCD, they can rope other people into their compulsive behaviors. And this especially happens for spouses, children, others that are closest to you. I’m curious, what was the impact on your wife and children? Because you had told me when we met a little bit before that they actually wrote parts of your book, right? Or you included parts from them in the book.

Jim: Each of the four children, they’re all adults now in their 40s. And then my wife, Betsy, wrote probably half a chapter. And what I wanted people to see is how my OCD affected them. I knew as a father with them growing up and trying to be a good dad, but I knew a lot of times they had no idea what was going on and what my actions, why I was doing what I was doing. I wanted them to have an opportunity to relate people who read the book, what it was like for them , especially for my son, he spent a lot of time with me in the fall. He was always the manager of the football team, and he was around me a lot during football practices and that kind of thing. Both my youngest daughter and Jimmy, our son, I taught both of them at the Catholic school they attended for, I taught them two years, which they talk about a lot of it was fun and it was a good experience, but there were some tough times for them. And then of course, Betsy’s perspective is probably the most intuitive and the most real because she knew me as the boy next door. Literally, her family moved next door to my grandparents at the beach.

She told her father the first summer that we knew each other that she was going to marry me. Now, how she knew that, I still don’t know. She said, Dad, I’m going to marry that guy. But she had an awful lot of insights and I give her a lot of credit because I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her. She got me through a lot of tough times, especially in college.

When things got really bad, the thoughts got really bad, I called them episodes or sessions in the book, I think, where I would have a thought and it would kind of take control of my brain. When I went to see Gallagher in 2015. Those sessions amounted to 60, 70 times a day. I was interrupted in my mind related to something having to do with OCD and oftentimes sexual nature, 65 to 70 times.

Carrie: That’s a lot.

Jim: It’s terrible. In graduate school, I got my master’s because of my OCD. I couldn’t read my textbooks because I was interrupted so often. And I loved to read. There were times before that where, and I said, I think I mentioned I developed tics, shaking my head and trying to get rid of these thoughts and the children and Betsy offered, I think, excellent perspective to the book.

The other point that people should realize is OCD is familial. It’s genetic. Everybody, all my children have some form of OCD. My dad had it. My uncle had it. In fact, in 15 or 20 years ago, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland was doing a study trying to isolate the familial gene that causes OCD.

And about eight people in our family, my family, participated in the study to isolate that gene. Now that I’m better, and we can joke about it, but back then it wasn’t, like my dad was super OCD and perfectionist, and, but he would never admit that he had OCD or suffered from any kind of, It’s actually, I think, technically referred to as a phobia, OCD.

And yesterday, for the first time in several years, I went to see my doctor, just to kind of, he calls it a tune up. We talked for an hour and just got caught up, and he mentioned that I’m losing my train of thought, he, I can’t remember what the point I was trying to make, but anyway.

Carrie: What was that process of treatment like for you? So when you went in 2015, you feel like that was when you got some really good therapeutic help.

Jim: Yeah, it’s capital E, capital R, capital P, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. And I could spend 20 minutes describing it exactly. I’m not a doctor. I don’t want to do that, but it’s very controversial. My doctor, Dr. Gallagher, is the expert in the western part of the United States. People come from all over. In fact, the waiting list in 2015 to see him was a couple of years when he found out my age and what I had been through, I was getting close to 70 then, and it had to do with sex and religion. He knew he could treat me and help me.

So he saw me right away and within weeks and then months of seeing him, I experienced a change. Basically what he does is, for example, he went to my daughter Stephanie’s house. Stephanie has a mild case of O C D and it’s the cleanliness O C D. Okay? You wash your hands and organizational, everything has to be perfect, that kind of thing.

And some of those attributes are good, especially if you are a teacher. She teaches the little one second, third grade. So he went over to her house and he’s walking around our house and he would see a picture and he’d make the picture crooked and he’d move the furniture and play games with her head. We have fun talking about that.

And my uncle Charles, he had all his clothes organized. He showed me one time later in life. Perfectly white shirts, colored shirts, striped shirts, Hawaiian shirts. It’s amazing the way people will react to the OCD, and I was in the process of writing the book in the 2018, I guess, and there were two sisters that happened to live in Colorado, and they were in their 20s.

And they had suffered their entire life from clemennitis OCD to the point where they hardly ever left their home.

Carrie: Yeah, it can get really severe with the avoidance.

Jim: Yeah, and at one point, I mean, they were taking showers five and six times. Anyway. They moved out of their home and were living together, and during the course of my writing the book, they committed suicide. And Dr. Gallagher had never treated them, but he had been in a seminar where they were present, and he talked about some of the things that he might have done to treat them, but that was a really sad story. There are a lot of people that attempt suicide or commit suicide because of OCD.

Carrie: Tell us about, do you remember some of the exposures that you had to do that were really hard, like, I don’t know if I can do that, and not, like, give into a compulsion, because essentially that’s what they’re asking you to do, is kind of expose yourself to certain things and then, or have an intrusion and not give into the compulsive, whether it’s the tick or the prayer or the thing that you usually do, to kind of resolve that angst.

Jim: I had a doctor, a psychiatrist, MD, treated me for over 20 years, and he was the one that recommended Gallagher. We had talked about Gallagher before, but he knew of my strict Catholic faith and my religious background and everything, and he never thought I was ready for the exposure and response therapy because of what it asks you to do sometime.

Betsy and I saw Gallagher first time. He said, I’m never going to ask you to do anything that’s illegal or hurtful or harmful or against the law or anything like that. What I ask you to do may go against what you’ve been taught in your religious background. And I was to the point Betsy didn’t think I was going to do.

He said, if you do what I tell you to do, I can cure you. That’s how confident he was. And I was all in. I was surprised Betsy thought I was going to get up and walk out. Which a lot of people do. He told me that. And to answer your question directly, what did he have me do? He had me stop going to church.

Stop praying. I had never purchased any kind of a pornographic book or a Playboy or any of that kind of stuff. Second visit, we went on a field trip. He took me to a Barnes and Noble and told me to, and bought me three or four Playboy magazines, told me to look at the pictures, read the articles, that kind of thing. Gave me a couple websites on the internet, pornographic websites. The idea is to totally overwhelm you with what you don’t want to do. Like I said, within weeks and then months, Betsy could tell immediately that just by doing what he told me to do. And then initially I was seeing him a couple times a week. And then it was once a week, and then it was once a month, but it was pretty intensive.

Carrie: So you went weekly at first, or did you go more than?

Jim: I went weekly at first, yes. In fact, I think the first month I went twice a week. And then I went once a week for maybe another month or two, and then we got to the point where I went once a month and for an hour.

Oh, I know what else he did. He made tapes that I had to listen to. Anti prayer tapes. You don’t need to go to church. There is no hell. And a lot of people look at it as being very controversial, but I do too. I mean, pornography and those kinds of things are sickening to me, but it works.

Carrie: So that cut down after engaging in those activities, that cut down on the intrusive thoughts that you were having?

Jim: Absolutely. So what it did was, the pathways in my brain were destroyed by my having done those activities.

Carrie: Hey, Carrie, interrupting this interview just for a moment. Wanted to say that it sounds like what our guest went through was flooding. There’s a difference between in behavioral exposure therapy.

There’s a difference between flooding and gradual exposure. Flooding is kind of what it sounds like where you’re immersed in something very quickly. Gradual exposure is where you bite things off into smaller steps and you have a hierarchy and you move through that exposure hierarchy starting with things that are lower on the exposure level and then moving upward.

It’s quite possible that flooding was chosen in this situation for treatment due to the severity of the level of the issues, but I’m not familiar with many therapists today who are still using flooding techniques. There may certainly be some. I also want to point out that the International OCD Foundation, which is not a faith based organization, has principles of effective and religiously sensitive exposures for ERP.

We will copy that website and put it in the show notes for you so you can read those. They talk about not asking a client to do something that they knowingly would violate their safety or supported beliefs and being able to do the activities that other people from their faith community can do as a part of normal practice and identifying working with the faith community and the therapist.

We talk a lot on the show about various types of treatment, and so just to know that I just want people who are listening to this for the first time or maybe this is their first exposure to exposure and response prevention. I don’t want anyone to get scared or overwhelmed or think that this is going to be the absolute way Treatment plan for them.

Your own therapist has to assess what’s going to be best for you and your situation. So just keep that in mind.

Jim: Like I said, I went from 65 to 70 sessions a day to the peak of where I was feeling my best, maybe one.

Carrie: Okay. Wow. That’s a huge difference.

Jim: I was to the point where suicide was always in the back of my mind. The only thing that kept me from committing suicide was my family and crazy as it sounds, my religion. Because of course it’s suicide is mortal sin is a grievous act. I would assume most Christian churches. And yeah, it was startling revelation. I was a totally different person.

Carrie: How did you reconcile this concept of almost like, I have to sin in order to get better for my OCD. Like, I have to stop doing things that God wants me to do and start doing things that are against my faith system in order to, like, I think that’s a piece that a lot of people would really, like, wrestle with. liike, how can I be asked to do these things in order to get better?

Jim: That’s why the first doctor didn’t recommend Gallagher all those years, because he knew how religious I was. And to answer your question, and the way Gallagher explains it, he’s not Catholic, but he’s Christian. He was raised Christian. I think he’s married to a Catholic woman.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion that no loving God wants any human being to live the way I was living. To suffer at that level. Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. If you’re a good teacher, it makes you tired because you put a lot of effort into it. My girls were always telling me how tired they are, and I said, I can relate.

So if you put on top of that, all this other, these thoughts and gyrations that I was going through to not sin, and I would come home at night, totally exhausted. That makes sense. Would sometimes lash out and get negative and be angry. Especially to my children when they were smaller, and to Betsy, because that wasn’t me, that’s not the kind of person I was, but this overwhelming guilt and anxiety and depression was just like a pall that surrounded my whole life.

So when Gallagher and I talked, and it was like, This is not what God wants. God’s a loving God, a forgiving God. If you make a mistake and you’re sorry, it’s over, done with. You don’t have to carry it for the next 25 years. So that’s the way I looked at the pornography and stuff. It was not sinning. It was allowing me to live the life that Christ really wants everyone to live, a happy life.

I have a God given talent to work with kids. And I always knew that, always considered myself, this is not a profession, it’s my vocation. I was meant to be a school teacher and I could motivate kids and help kids. And why would God allow me to lose that attribute because of OCD? That’s not what he wanted.

He wants me to be a good teacher, good father, good person, so in a perverted way, it’s not perverted, it’s not the right word, but in a strange way, doing what would be normally wrong was really making me a much better person, much better individual, able to live the life that I’m supposed to live. That’s why I’m talking to you today.

I feel this is my responsibility. I’m not teaching anymore. Dr. Gallagher told me yesterday, by the way, he said, I gotta tell you, there are three people that have read your book, and they’ve all been my patients, and they’ve all been kids. He said, and I’ve cured them all. That’s positive. And I couldn’t have done that had I not listened to him and done what he told me to do.

Carrie: Why did you decide to write the book? I know he encouraged you to write about your experience, but obviously, like, some of these things are personal, you know, that you’re opening up about. Why did you decide to kind of put yourself out there like that?

Jim: Because I thought it was my responsibility, my worst enemy, to have to live with OCD the way I did, and others do, like those two sisters that the only way out for them was suicide.

That’s not the way life’s supposed to be. The children were a little hesitant when I asked them to write something for the book, and I said, Hey, you could be helping some other people. You could be doing some good. Sure. And Betsy’s always been supportive. That’s her M. O. She’s a good, caring, empathetic individual.

It was kind of a team effort, and when I hear stories like Gallagher told me yesterday, makes it all worthwhile.

Carrie: So can people find your book on Amazon and other places?

Jim: Amazon is the best place, Jim Juiliana, author, is my Facebook, and it has a lot of pictures of the children and a lot of reviews from people who have read the book.

If they think they have it, they need to find out, determine if it is OCD. Especially with children, because so much going on with little children. I remember middle school children getting up out of their desk and falling down for whatever reason. They’re just all over the place, and you never know what they’re thinking and doing, and I hate the thought of teenagers and young children having to suffer OCD and not have any help from parents professionally.

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story.

Jim: It’s been great. And I appreciate your putting the word out. Pay it forward.

Carrie: I’m really glad that we had Jim Juliana on the show to share with us about his experience with exposure and response prevention. It was tough for him, but it worked. We are very much about increasing hope on the show and wanting people to know that wherever you are on your OCD or anxiety journey, you can get better.

Never give up. And as always, thank you for listening. May God be with you on your next step towards treatment and greater mental health. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or by the wealth counseling.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Author: Carrie Bock

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