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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.

52. Anxiety, Attachment Trauma, and Sex/Porn Addiction with Matt Wenger, LPC

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 52. Anxiety, Attachment Trauma, and Sex/Porn Addiction with Matt Wenger, LPC

Matt is a licensed professional counselor and the clinical director of Boulder Recovery. He initially sought a career in church ministry,  but moved into the mental health field and started working with individuals recovering from sexual addiction.

Episode Highlights:

  • The connection between anxiety, attachment trauma and sex/porn addiction
  • How does addiction develop?
  • How does addiction affect anxiety?
  • The link between childhood experience and addiction.
  • How does shame around unwanted sexual behaviors affect one’s relationship with God?
  • How long does sexual addiction recovery take?
  • Recovery program for porn/sexual addiction

Episode Summary:

Today, we’re diving into a topic that impacts individuals both inside and outside the church. It’s a sensitive yet important conversation that ties into anxiety, trauma, and how they influence these struggles.

Joining me is Matt Wenger, a licensed professional counselor and Clinical Director of Boulder Recovery in Colorado. Together, we explore the deep connection between early trauma, nervous system regulation, and the development of addictions. Matt explains how unresolved emotions and attachment wounds often lead to coping mechanisms that evolve into compulsive behaviors.

We’ll also discuss why this issue is so prevalent, especially in today’s digital world, where access to explicit content is easier than ever. Matt shares insights about how addiction often starts as a way to regulate overwhelming emotions or trauma, but over time, it spirals into a bigger problem, affecting relationships, faith, and mental health.

This episode isn’t just about understanding addiction—it’s about finding hope and healing. Whether you’re personally impacted or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers practical tools and faith-based encouragement to start the journey toward recovery.

Tune in to learn how addressing the root causes—like trauma and attachment wounds—can lead to lasting freedom and restoration.

Links and resources:

Matt Wenger, LPC

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD where we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. I’m your host, Carrie Bock. And today we are going to be talking about an important topic that affects a lot of Christians and non-Christians and that’s sex porn addiction.

We’re gonna talk about the connection between anxiety, attachment trauma and these issues. So if you’ve tuned into the show before you know that we’re not shy about talking about different issues that people face that are connected to anxiety. So here today, I have Matt Wininger, who is a licensed professional counselor and also the clinical director of Boulder recovery in Colorado. Welcome to the show.

Matt: Thank you, Carrie. Thanks for having me.

Carrie:So today we’re talking about sex porn addiction, which is an issue that many Christian men deal with. Do you see this issue as being as prevalent in the church as outside the church?

Matt:Oh yeah. It’s hard to understate the breadth of this addiction. I mean, we live in such a, um, saturated world when it comes to sex and objectification of women and, and men, and it affects it. Doesn’t, it doesn’t really seem to know like a boundary between the secular and the Christian world. Most of the men that I’ve treated both in secular context in, in Christian programs, uh, have been Christian.

I think that there’s just an increased level of, of shame around it for Christians and they, they seek out treatment, but this knows no bounds. It’s an epidemic really.

Carrie: Right. And really thanks to the internet. It’s very easy to keep the secret and keep it hidden. I mean, now, um, people have not just computers, but smartphones and tablets. And oftentimes this can go on for a while before anyone else really knows.

Matt: Yeah. I mean, it’s changed so much, you know, when you work with the older guys and we, I just, I see men exclusively for this. A lot of times they’ll talk about how it started, you know, magazines and print and things like that. And you just have to go to the corner store or, or whatever, to get a magazine or, or something like that. And, um, there was a little bit of a barrier there, you know, to have to leave your house and go and purchase something in person. But right now it’s, I mean, you can get, you can get some of this content for less than a dollar.

You can get it anytime you want. You can get some of it for free on your phone, in your pocket at any time. And there’s a myriad ways of hiding. What it is that you’re doing. And, and in some ways it’s more difficult to deal with than even some substance addiction, just because of the ease of access and that how easy it is to get it in terms of cost.

Carrie: That makes sense, because it’s also something that you can run into even when you’re not looking for it. And that happens to, to children sometimes on the internet, they’re searching for something else and this pops up and, you know, next thing you know, that’s, that’s a scary rabbit hole to go. From the outside, people really see addiction as a problem, but it actually starts out as a solution to a problem, help us understand kind of how addictions develop. 

Matt: I believe that addictions arise to regulate an unregulated nervous Sy regulated nervous system. So what I mean by that is addiction arises to cope with sensations within the body that feel overwhelming.

So an unregulated nervous system is, you know, things that are shooting me up to an 11 in my nervous system, like rapid heartbeat, uh, difficulty breathing, those kinds of things, or crashing me down into what we would call kind a dorsal response or, or, or a frozen response. So there’s that fight or flight is at the 11 and the dorsal is kind of that negative one where I’m in that frozen.

And I can get a dysregulated nervous system in a lot of ways, but what we call that is just trauma, right? Where, um, something is overwhelming my brain overwhelming my nervous system. And I, I lose the ability to process. Whenever I get a, a memory that’s associated with that or an experience in my day-to-day life that’s associated with that.

I associated with that trauma. Then it’s gonna put me back in that place in my nervous system. So people talk about this all the time. Being triggered, you know, triggered by something, um, traumatic from the past. Well, it has an effect on our nervous system, not just, you know, the way we feel emotion, it can put us into that fight or flight space, or it can put us into that place of shutdown and withdraw or frozen.

That can lead to addictions as an outside source of regulation that I can reach out for something to calm my nervous system down, or to bring it up out of that frozen space. So guys will often say like, oh, I’m was so stressed, I’m stressed. And I just overwhelmed and I need to release or come down from that 11 or stress relief. Or I need to feel something. I was stuck in a depressive state and I had to like shoot up out of that at Boulder recovery, we use the Tena model, which is called trauma-induced sexual addiction. So it linked traumatic events to the dysregulation in your nervous system. And as your nervous system is disregulated, it cries out for coping cries out for relief.

It cries out to regulate. And if I had that early trauma between zero and 20 years old and a maladaptive sexual experience, like early exposure to pornography or, um, molestation or sexual abuse or something like that, and that stuff kinda wires together, that every time I need to cope. I can go to that thing that I was exposed to, and that feels, I feel okay for a little bit.

I feel like comforted or nurtured or calm or peaceful. I, my nervous system comes down or I begin to feel when I, when I was empty or hollow. And as long as if I keep going back to that as a young person into my teenage years and into adulthood, I keep going back again and again and again, again, and now I’m dealing with addiction.

This kind of rut and my brain has been formed and wherever the ditch is dug, the water’s gonna flow. Right. And so, again and again, and again, and then all of a sudden I’m what, what you described as a solution, which what was once, um, wanted, is now needed to feel okay on a day-to-day kind of basis. And that’s the transition between something that’s just coping.

And now that is addiction something that wanted or something that was a solution to a problem of how I felt dysregulated and emotion that I did not like, or was not comfortable. Has now become a problem because of the compulsivity around it and the way in which it is damaging my life.

Carrie: Right. And all of a sudden, there’s, there’s more problems that end up happening, like relationship issues. So do you find that a lot of times brings men into treatment?

Matt: Oh yeah. A classic thing in addiction, right? Like gotta hit rock bottom before you’re gonna really do something about it, but nine times outta 10, you guys are coming to see us. They got caught, but that’s what doesn’t tell the whole story  because part of it is they are a relief.

They’re tired, they’re sick and tired, of doing this. They’re sick and tired of living that way. And when they do get caught, their whole life blows up and maybe they’re ready to give it up and maybe they’re not, but they’re tired of living that way. And just living on that rollercoaster too.

So sometimes guys come and see us because they really wanna work on themselves and they want to get better and they wanna find health. And then sometimes more often than not, it’s, it’s a, it’s a crisis, you know, it’s a response to crisis in their relationship,

Carrie: Right. In order to get help for these types of things, you really have to be willing to examine yourself and start to look at some of those painful feelings that you’ve been avoiding and that’s really hard work to do. And so oftentimes people don’t seek that out until their situation becomes too painful. That, that they’re forced to deal with that.

Matt: Yeah. And I think you’re right. And the crazy thing about emotions and trauma is that they’re going on all of the time, whether we acknowledge them or not.

And sure. And if I can like spend decades of just shoving it down and ignoring it. And I think that I’m dealing with it. That’s just false. It’s affecting my life in, in every which way emotions will be dealt with one way or the other. Either we face them and we deal with them and the pain and whatever else around them, or they’re gonna come sideways.

They’re gonna come out as passive-aggressive. They’re gonna come out as rage. They’re gonna come out as anxiety. They’re gonna come. You know, you, you can. Kind of joke around with guys about how, you know, they’ve been, they think that they’ve been dealing with anxiety by using their addiction, but really what they’re doing is just exponentially causing more anxiety in their life. And the thing that they’re trying to get a solution for is creating even more of the same, the irony in that is apparent, but oh man, addiction is going to the same thing again and again, and again, expecting different results. And so you can joke with guys, but it’s deadly serious that if you don’t get treatment, then it’s gonna escalate and it’s gonna get worse for.

Carrie: Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. You talked about this a little bit before, just in terms of regulation of the nervous system. Talk with us a little bit more about that connection that you’ve seen between. The early childhood experiences, the anxiety and the sexual addiction.

Matt: Sure. I kind of talk about it in two ways. Well, there’s attachment wounds that are kind of at the core of this, right? With that tr traumatic attachment wounds. So sometimes the trauma can happen outside the home and the primary caregivers don’t do a great job of dealing with it. Right. They try to ignore it or they try to minimize it or you, Hey, you’re fine.

We’re all fine. Everybody’s fine. And um, sometimes guys will tell me that was more damaging than the trauma that happened outside the home.

Carrie: I’ve heard that as well. Yeah, just the response or lack of response to it.

Matt: Yeah. And, and, and that’s really sad. You know, I worked with a guy who was kidnapped and when the police found him, his parents never brought it up ever again.

And he, that, for him that was more damaging than, than the actual event in the sexual abuse that happened during the kidnapping to have him describe it. There’s kind of that trauma that happens outside the home, but the real damage I think is done with the primary caregiver. So either in that kind of, uh, dismissal or denial or, um, minimization of emotion within the home, which we call like a cold box, the emotions there are cold.

You know, big caregivers have their back turned to the young person. Emotionally vacant would be another phrase there or the hot box where there’s a lot of emotion, but it’s chaos and there’s violence or abuse, uh, physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, all the sexual abuse. So in the hot box,  the kid is reaching out for connection and support and validation and love and all that stuff.

But in response, they’re getting hurt and they’re getting abused. Even if they’re being told that they’re loved, they’re not being treated that way. And in the cold box, the kids reaching out the same way again and again, and again, to get their needs met, but they’re being ignored or invalidated, or there’s this cold, emotionally vacant response as the parents are distracted by something else and they can’t or want pay attention to, to the young.

So what happens is in both of those scenarios, the kid will reach out again and again and again for connection and validation. And what they’re doing when they’re reaching out for that is they’re. Mom dad or whoever, uh, help me, help me understand my world, help me understand where I’m feeling, help me calm down, nurture me, cultivate me, comfort me.

All of those things. That’s how you develop a healthy nervous system is you co-regulate with a secure and safe person when you’re. As your brain and your nervous system develops. But if you don’t get that and they’re either abusing you or dismissing you or they well, hot box or cold box, then the kid eventually says, this person is not safe.

They’re not consistent. And so I cannot get my needs met through this person. So all guys that I’ve talked to that struggle with sex addiction have either said this out loud, or they’ve said it to themselves. I guess I have to take care of myself. 

Carrie: Wow. So I have to be the one to meet my own needs because mom or dad is not available to meet those needs for me.

Matt: Yeah. And so what do I do right. I don’t have this person to co-regulate with, I don’t have this person to help physiologically help me form my, a regulated nervous system. So I have to rely on some, and then there incomes that maladaptive sexual experience, right? Oh, that made me feel good. I didn’t really like that, but it made me feel something and that was kind of exciting or interesting or powerful in some way.

And, and what if I go back there that can really, that, that can change my physiological state, obviously they’re kids and not thinking about it in those terms, but sure. They’ll go back. And they’ll go back again and they’ll go back a couple more times and then as they continue to age, it’ll be more and more and more and more, and it’ll continue to escalate until it’s compulsion or addiction.

Carrie: So, I mean, I think that’s great. I haven’t heard that the hot box cold box explanation, but I really like that. I, I think it does happen. In one of those two extremes in terms of attachment trauma, from what I’ve seen. And, and we have a previous episode of people wanna go back and with Laura Mullis, where we talk about specifically about childhood wounding, and is that the key to unlocking your anxiety, I think is what that show is called, but it’s very interesting, the connections between that, that you’ve made for us and sex addiction because I think a lot of times people look at addiction and their focus of treatment really is on abstinence. Like we need to just get you away from whatever it is. Yeah. And then you’ll be okay, as long as you’re not doing that, as long as that’s not available to you, as long as you’re not engaging with it, just kind of white knuckle get through it. And that’s not really ever dealing with the root cause of the issue.

Matt: Right. And the absence of a compulsive behavior does not make health right.  If I’m dealing with an underlying traumatic issue where my nervous system has not formed or developed in a way that is. Healthy or, or lends itself to health, then, then not doing the compulsive behavior is not gonna bring me closer to health.

It’s gonna put more stress on the system. It’s gonna push me into other methods of coping. And that’s where we see guys that white knuckle, like you’re describing it where they’re just. Dry drunk and they’re doing everything to just not do the behavior, but what, like I said, what comes out? Sideways rage, emotional abuse, psychological abuse of their partner.

They’re manipulative, they’re controlling, they’re angry. They’re overwhelmed with all of these other things. And maybe they’re. There’s even, um, comorbidity with alcohol or, or something else to try to help them cope with it. So the, the elimination of the unwanted behavior is never the answer.

Carrie: Yeah. Talk with us about the shame piece, cuz I can imagine that you have Christian men that come there and say, “you know, I spiritually, I am free in Christ and I am a new creation and I’ve been made new and they’ve, I’m sure prayed about this struggle, maybe memorized Bible verses.” And they still feel stuck like in this cycle. And then they’re ashamed because they’re like, I can’t seem to get, get out of it. How do you guys address this?

Matt: On the one hand, Christian men struggle immensely with shame around unwanted sexual behaviors. And on the other hand, it’s not that dissimilar to, to other guys, but the things that are unique to the Christian experiences. I’m not just damaging myself and my own relationships.

I feel a brokenness and a separation in my relationship with God, which is a huge piece or the number one piece of my identity. There’s this spiritual stressor on top of the relational stressor on top of everything else, Christian men are carrying that around as a disruption within their own identity as, uh, men created by God.

For his perfect and for his glory, right? It’s an extra weight on their shoulders. Then, the odd thing is, and I guess it’s not too surprising that theologically, they won’t argue with you that you know, that I’m loved by God and that God forgives me and that God died for me. And that I am a new creation and all the things that you said, Carrie, but functionally, they don’t really act.

They don’t really believe it. So they have theological beliefs on one hand and functional beliefs on the other. So they will look around in the group of, of men that are doing group therapy together. And this, you know, God loves all of you guys. And the subtext there is God loves everybody, except for me, S is by faith for everyone, but me, but I have to prove it.

I have to earn it or the idea. That is sneaky because it’s so close to the truth that sin separates me from God. And that I have a disrupted relationship with God because of this addiction. Paul says in Romans there’s nothing height or depth or life or death or angels or demons that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So in a way, sin separates us from God, but Jesus has bridged that. Gap. And then we accept him in relationship and, as our savior and as the justifier and the one who’s made us right before God, then there isn’t anything separating us. And even addiction cannot separate us from God, even an addiction that feels, uh, shameful and dark and isolating.

So part of the treatment for Christian men is bringing into question some of their theological beliefs. And do you actually really believe. And do you function as if you do, and what would it be like if you actually functioned as if these theological beliefs were true? And what we find with Christian men is that trauma is the culprit yet again because trauma causes me to treat God and, and to project onto God, the caregiver relationships that I was wounded by.

So. As fast. Absolutely. Like if you talk to somebody who was abused by a parent and you get down to the nitty-gritty, their functional belief is that God is out to get them, that they are bad and that God wants to punish them or hurt them or withhold good things from them because they’re bad. And they deserve to be punished, which is hot box.

And if they grew up in an emotionally dismissive environment, emotionally, they. They tend to believe that God has his back to them and that they have to perform to get him to demonstrate love and care and warmth and affection for them. And they have to do the right rain dance to get God to respond.

And in both of these scenarios, religion, And superstition weasel their way in where Christian guys would be like, Hey man, I’m doing all the right things. I’m putting all the quarters in the pot machine and on, God’s not doing what I want him to do. I prayed for 10 years to, for him to take away this addiction.

And he’s not, or I’m a missionary or I’m a passion. I devoted my life to this and God is letting me down as if this rain dance and performance is gonna manipulate God into treating me the way that I wanted to. So now issues of resentment have popped up in their relationship with God. So it’s layered and nuanced, but one of the joys of working with Christian men is helping them come into a deeper understanding of the ways in which trauma has polluted, even their relationship with God, and seeing the rule on and, and see renewal around that super.

Carrie: Some of the greatest distances between our head and our heart. You probably have heard someone say that before, so we can know the right things theologically, and yet they haven’t really sunk down into our heart in an emotional level of yes. Like I am a child of God, like really able to sit with that and rest in it versus like, oh yeah, I know I’m God’s child like, well, yeah, I know. Yeah. You know, nothing can separate me from his love. it’s a different level there.

Matt: So, yeah.  And that’s a, like, again, a function of the attachment that they experienced. Right. They were told that they were loved or they assumed that they were loved. So like an abusive parent, you know, I’m sorry, I did that.

I’m sorry. I blew up. I’m sorry that blah, blah. You know, I love you, right? No, I love you, right. Oh. And then what’s the kids’ response every time. I used to work with children and, and, and they’ll agree. And they’ll be like, yeah, I, yeah, I know, you know, little littles, little kids assume that their parents love them and that they are gonna respond to them.

The next time, even if all of the evidence tells them that they won’t. So it’s this cognitive understanding of what love is with a lack of experiencing that love. And it’s the same way for the cold box kids. So they talk to guys all the time and they’re like, oh yeah, I have great childhood. Dad came into all my baseball games.

We went on vacation or whatever, but when you get down to. Nitty gritty. Like there was no eye contact. There was no physical affection, no one ever talked about emotions. Everything was, you know, tamped down. And again, they’re being told that they’re loved, but they’re not experiencing that. So why would it be any different than their relationship with God?

My obligation then as a Christian is to assume that God loves me, even when I don’t or have never really experienced that love, cuz I probably wouldn’t know it even if it fit me on. 

Carrie: Tell me about the recovery program that you’re involved with and what that looks like. 

Matt: Boulder Recovery and our kind of sister program, the secular program begin again, Institute.

Those are 14-day intensive programs where we bring guys from all over the country to stay with us for two weeks. And they all come in together and they all leave together. So it’s kind of cohort model. We do intensive trauma therapy every day of that program. And we also do psychoed around trauma and addiction and attachment wounding and expose them to different trauma modalities so that they can get to the root of their traumatic experiences.

Feel through those experiences, learn how those have developed and perpetuated their a. Then we teach ’em about neurochemistry and dopamine, the, you know, addiction cycles and things like that. And so we, so we’re teaching ’em about trauma and how to feel their feelings. We teach them about the neurochemistry and the brain, and we teach them how their addiction is damaged, their relationships, and how that has developed and how that has happened.

And then we equip them to, uh, begin a strong recovery. So those are kind of the four major beats of the program over those two weeks. And that whole time we’re doing individual trauma sessions and group, uh, trauma work. It’s really helpful for guys. It’s a strong running start into lifelong recovery.

Carrie: Have you, do you have some data surrounding people that you followed up with say at 30 days or 90 days after your program or six months?

How, what has that looked like for you guys as far as success rates? 

Matt: We have about like a 94, 90 5% satisfaction rating. It’s really high. You know, I don’t like to talk about that stuff because people that are those are guys that are just leaving the program. They really enjoyed it. And they, they really felt like they made a lot of growth, but they haven’t quite gone back to the real world yet.

And then the guys that we do hear from positively like that’s kind of a select sample size, isn’t it? Where they’re just. That you hear about, right? Yeah. But we do get a lot of positive feedback. We see a lot of success and we have a network of therapists all over the country that we refer to get referrals from.

They keep coming in and, and we hear from our refers all the time that, uh, guys are making breakthroughs and, and are changing their lives when they get back. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. So do you see it as like a way for them to really kickstart their recovery process. And then of course, they’re gonna need follow-up like therapy to continue working through some of the hose things.

Matt: You’re not gonna be able to cure. You know, compulsive behavior and addiction in two weeks, but what you can do sure is crack some things open, look at things from a new perspective, do some deep dives because you can’t really do that in weekly therapy. You do, you, you make a, you make some big gains in, in a trauma session, but then you, you know, put your seatbelt back on and you go back to work or.

Go home. And then it’s the kids and job and stress, and it’s hard to get traction sometimes in those deeper issues. And what we can do is keep guys in the work for eight hours, 14 days in a row. And, um, you can see a lot of progress in a lot of change, um, through that kind of method. And so it’s a great avenue for people that are entering into recovery.

It’s a good thing for guys who have been sober for a while and kind of need a tune-up. And it’s a great opportunity for guys who have been sober for a long time, but are still struggling with residual effects of trauma. So we see all three types of guys. What I really enjoy is working with guys that are motivated and, uh, motivated to change, motivated to grow.

And that’s not all of our clients, by the way, like sometimes guys are like, decide they want to come see us register with us. And then somewhere in flight, I assume they decide that they’re not an addict anymore and they show up and they’re like, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if this is for me, you know, but at that point we kind of, we kind of got ’em, we got their keys and their phone and everything and, and the rest of the group can say, Hey man, I think this is a serious issue for you too.

So there’s some, sometimes we get some guys that are stuck in denial and, but we can work. We can work through that. 

Carrie: So as we’re getting towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person

Matt: Yeah, I was thinking about this before, cuz I knew you were gonna ask me that and I just get so much of that in my life.  I’m blessed to have that, you know, guys will email me all the time. I have this one guy who just emails me a picture of his chip. Every couple months. So like, he’ll take a picture of an essay. They have these little coins. And he’ll just take a picture. He just send me his one-year coin and no, no text, nothing.

Yeah. It’s like no subject line. It was just like a picture of his, his coin. It’s always fun to get those, but I did get an email last week from a guy who just wanted to be an encouragement and just, Hey, I just wanna remind you that you guys changed my life. He was telling me how he is moved back in with his wife and, um, his kids.

And he’s been sober for nine months. He’s just really killing it. So it’s always encouraging to get those kind of emails and to speak with guys that are finding traction and how. Not just because they’re no longer like in the deep hole of addiction, but because they’re becoming authentic and whole people and the kind of people that you really wanna spend time with, not just people that aren’t doing a thing

Carrie:  Yeah. It’s like there was something to replace the addiction with. Like, you can’t just get rid of it. You have to replace, put something back in there, like the health and the wholeness and the peace.

Matt: Yeah. And we just, we say authenticity because, you know, back when those wounds happened, when they were kids, that’s what they lost. They lost the ability to be authentic and they had to perform or hide or cope, but whatever they were doing, they weren’t being themselves. And that, that real and valuable person that was created by God and his image deserves to be returned to and explored and not hidden under this blanket of addiction. We talk about returning to authenticity. And that’s probably the highest compliment for American men is to be told that, you know, oh, that guy, that guy’s real, that guy, that guy’s a real guy. He’s real. Yeah. Awesome. That’s what we get to see. So very exciting.

Carrie: Well, I think that what you’re doing is great.

I hope you guys keep on doing it. And I know that you’re helping a lot of people and hopefully, this podcast will, you know, open people up to this as a hopeful opportunity for maybe someone. Maybe themselves personally, or someone in their life who may be struggling. Thank you so much for coming and sharing today.

Matt: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Carrie. You know, I appreciate what you’re doing too, bringing hope to people that are suffering from compulsivity and anxiety. And yeah, there’s a lot of that in the world right now. So thank you too.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of, By The Well Counseling in Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you



hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person

Matt: Yeah, I was thinking about this before, cuz I knew you were gonna ask me that and I just get so much of that in my life.  I’m blessed to have that, you know, guys will email me all the time. I have this one guy who just emails me a picture of his chip. Every couple months. So like, he’ll take a picture of an essay. They have these little coins. And he’ll just take a picture. He just send me his one-year coin and no, no text, nothing.

Yeah. It’s like no subject line. It was just like a picture of his, his coin. It’s always fun to get those, but I did get an email last week from a guy who just wanted to be an encouragement and just, Hey, I just wanna remind you that you guys changed my life. He was telling me how he is moved back in with his wife and, um, his kids.

And he’s been sober for nine months. He’s just really killing it. So it’s always encouraging to get those kind of emails and to speak with guys that are finding traction and how. Not just because they’re no longer like in the deep hole of addiction, but because they’re becoming authentic and whole people and the kind of people that you really wanna spend time with, not just people that aren’t doing a thing

Carrie:  Yeah. It’s like there was something to replace the addiction with. Like, you can’t just get rid of it. You have to replace, put something back in there, like the health and the wholeness and the peace.

Matt: Yeah. And we just, we say authenticity because, you know, back when those wounds happened, when they were kids, that’s what they lost. They lost the ability to be authentic and they had to perform or hide or cope, but whatever they were doing, they weren’t being themselves. And that, that real and valuable person that was created by God and his image deserves to be returned to and explored and not hidden under this blanket of addiction. We talk about returning to authenticity. And that’s probably the highest compliment for American men is to be told that, you know, oh, that guy, that guy’s real, that guy, that guy’s a real guy. He’s real. Yeah. Awesome. That’s what we get to see. So very exciting.

Carrie: Well, I think that what you’re doing is great.

I hope you guys keep on doing it. And I know that you’re helping a lot of people and hopefully, this podcast will, you know, open people up to this as a hopeful opportunity for maybe someone. Maybe themselves personally, or someone in their life who may be struggling. Thank you so much for coming and sharing today.

Matt: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Carrie. You know, I appreciate what you’re doing too, bringing hope to people that are suffering from compulsivity and anxiety. And yeah, there’s a lot of that in the world right now. So thank you too.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of, By The Well Counseling in Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you

51. Surrendering Our Insomnia to God with Dr. Charles Page

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 51. Surrendering Our Insomnia to God with Dr. Charles Page

Today on the show, I’m privileged to be interviewing Dr. Charles Page, a surgeon, author and speaker.  Dr. Charles shares with us how he surrendered his sleep problems to God.

Episode Highlights:

  • Why did Dr. Charles write a book about insomnia?
  • Christian worldview about sleep
  • Dr. Charles’s tips and strategies to beat insomnia and sleep better.
  • Scripture verses related to sleep
  • How do we surrender to God?
  • Dr. Charles’s book: Surrendered Sleep

Scripture verses discussed: Psalms 121:4-5, Psalm 4:8, Ephesians 4:27, Psalm 148

Episode Summary:

Today, we’re diving into a topic that hits home for so many of us: sleep—or the lack of it. If you’ve ever battled insomnia, especially when dealing with anxiety, you’re not alone. Honestly, this topic feels super relevant to me right now because, just last night, I found myself wide awake in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling.

That’s why I’m thrilled to have Dr. Chuck Page, a surgeon and the author of Surrendered Sleep, join us for this episode. Dr. Chuck knows all about the struggles of insomnia—both personally and professionally.

As a surgeon, Dr. Chuck has been on call throughout his career, which means countless interrupted nights. Add to that his own experience with undiagnosed sleep apnea, and it’s clear he’s had his fair share of restless nights. One of the most profound takeaways from our conversation is how sleep issues are often layered—physical, mental, and spiritual challenges can all collide when we lay our heads on the pillow.

Dr. Chuck also shared something that really stuck with me: sleep was God’s idea. Think about that for a moment. The Bible may not have a “Book of Sleep,” but it’s full of wisdom about rest, peace, and trusting God with our worries. Psalm 4:8 says it perfectly: “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”

We also talked about practical strategies for those sleepless nights. Dr. Chuck highlighted the power of meditation—not the empty-your-mind kind, but the kind that fills your mind with God’s truth. Reflecting on scripture, replacing worry with gratitude, and praying intentionally can make a huge difference.

If you’re someone who wakes up in the middle of the night, plagued by racing thoughts, you’re not alone. Dr. Chuck offered encouragement for these moments, reminding us that God is bigger than any problem we face. He doesn’t sleep, so we can.

This episode is packed with insight, hope, and practical tips for anyone struggling with sleep and anxiety. Whether it’s understanding how our brains process memories at night or leaning on scripture to find peace, there’s so much to take away.

Listen in, and let’s work toward finding the rest we were created for.

Links and Resources

Dr. Charles PageBook: Surrendered Sleep

Transcript

Episode 51. I’m your host Carrie Bock, and we are covering all types of topics on the show related to anxiety. I have wanted to have someone come on and talk about sleep for quite some time. Because as we know, many people who struggle with anxiety deal with insomnia, and this topic is especially timely for me because I was up in the middle of the night, just last night, having a hard time going to sleep.

Carrie: So I am so glad that Dr. Chuck Page, a surgeon, and author of Surrendered Sleep is here to talk with us today. Thank you for coming. 

Dr. Chuck: Well, great to be here with you, Carrie and I got up about three o’clock this morning, too. So are I share your pain. 

Carrie: How did a surgeon come to write a book on insomnia?

Dr. Chuck: Well, that’s kind of a convoluted story. Let me make it short. My whole adult life I’ve suffered from sleep issues. Just the regular things that people face every day, the things that raise through our minds, our to-do list and all the woulda shoulda kudos of the day And then all the things that we are anticipating or worrying about it the next day.

So all of those things, but on another level, my whole adult life I’ve been an insomniac because I’m a surgeon. I’m on call all the time. I get called in the middle of the night, even when I’m not on call. Yeah, people call me at three o’clock in the morning to say, hey doc, what you’re doing? We just want to know that. Just want to see what you’re up to at three o’clock in the morning. So it’s been really challenging for me from that standpoint. Then on another level, I have sleep apnea, I didn’t even know it and I’m kind of one of those who do, as I say, not as I do doctors, I’ve kind of gone through this process of learning myself about sleep disorder.

So it kinda hits me in a lot of different ways. I think that’s kind of one of the take-home messages that I want your audience to really think about is that a lot of times its not just one thing. It’s multiple things that are hitting us as we lay our heads on our pillow. 

Carrie:  Yes. Physical and mental health things can be coming up at night.

Dr. Chuck: Yep. 

Carrie: Yeah. So what scriptures have you found that speak to sleep specifically? 

Dr. Chuck: Oh, my goodness. So there’s a lot. There’s a lot of scriptures that talk about it. So it’s interesting as I began to kind of deal with this, I began to realize how much the Bible has to say about sleep. It’s kind of funny. Most people don’t think about going to the scripture with their sleep issues, but you think about it, sleep was God’s idea. One of the interesting things, you being a psychologist, I know you face this, as a medical doctor, I face this. There are different worldviews out there.

Do you think about it? No one can explain sleep. I mean from a natural secular worldview thinking as it from an evolutionist, they don’t have an explanation for sleep or they have some very brilliantly stupid ideas that somehow, but from that worldview, they don’t have an explanation for why we go to sleep.

You think about it. Humans are unique because we sleep about eight hours in a 24-hour cycle, as opposed to elephants or giraffes, or dear me, nicely of about two hours. From an evolutionary standpoint, if you think about it from that worldview, you snooze, you lose. So it’s, it’s really hard to explain.

Now we know from a Christian worldview that sleep was God’s idea. So the scriptures have a lot to say about sleep. Yeah, can look at the Bible and say, okay, here are the 11th commandment. You shall sleep eight hours. I’ve read some books that people say, you know what God’s promised you and a good night’s sleep. There are not really any passages that say that. There’s no turn to the fourth book of sleep and we’re going to study this. I mean you have to kind of look at the Bible on a kind of a bigger picture to really understand what it says. The main thing is there’s a lot of attitudes that emerge for the circumstances that we’re facing.

So yeah, there’s a ton and I can just kind of go through all those, but just beginning with the first kind of a concept, sleep was God’s idea. We were created to sleep and I think one of the big ideas that the scriptures tell us and kind of fits in with the rest of our lives. One of the reasons I think that we were to sleep is because God really wants us to turn off. When you think about the creation story, starting in Genesis one. It’s a funny phrase, it says in the evening and the morning was the first day. And so it’s funny, we get it the other way around. We think, well, those day starts when the sun comes up.

When I get up in the morning, that’s when the day starts. No, from the Hebrew standpoint of the day, the day started when the sun went down and so they began their day with rest. That’s an interesting, different, very different perspective than the way we live in our modern culture. We can say, hey, we turn the lights off, and hey, goodnight God, I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning. But actually, the scriptures talk about how God never slumbers or sleeps 120 seconds song. God never slumbers or sleeps that He is just as active and working in our lives as we put our heads on our pillow. That’s one of the great things I think to bring in that, that the Christian can bring into to rest is that, hey, whatever circumstances we’re going through, God’s got this.

So just kind of keeping that big idea that God is just as active as He does. He doesn’t go to sleep when we do. So he’s still working in our lives and I think that’s one of the first things to kind of understand about who got it. 

Carrie: Okay. I always like to say God’s bigger than any problem that you’re going to face today, so we don’t feel like we can handle it, but it’s easy for God. He can handle anything. I know that we talked about this a little bit earlier, but worrying thoughts about our present life, sometimes just thoughts about the state of the world. It can keep us up at night and we’re taught in the Bible or pray about these things in order to receive peace from God. Have you found specific prayer practices or strategies helpful when you’re awake, either having trouble falling asleep or waking up in the middle of the night? 

Dr. Chuck: Yes. I think we need to make whatever routine. I mean, once again, we’re personal beings and we each have a unique relationship with God for the Christian. But I think beginning your day in scripture and prayer, and just a time of just journaling or whatever you do, do that before you go to bed and do that in the morning and kind of sandwich your laugh into sleep.

And so one of the interesting things, so often the things that race through our mind and rob us asleep, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience. But sometimes like, I’ll be thinking about a situation may be. Oh my goodness, I face things every day, all kinds of things and that theme begins to pop into my mind and I pray about it as I don’t even read scripture.

It seems like prayer and I give it to God and then five minutes later, it’s pop base boomerang back into my consciousness. It really plagues my slave. So one of the things I think that we often forget is the art of meditation. Meditation is so powerful. You guys talk about, cognitive behavioral therapy, think about the good things but it’s even from a scriptural standpoint. It’s a lot deeper than that. I mean, it’s not an Eastern meditation where we’re emptying our mind, actually, meditation is filling our mind. It’s kind of the law of replacing. So often when a competing thought or we’re worrying thought enters our mind, we can’t just take it out of our mind because it’ll boomerang back into our thinking.

We have to replace it and that’s where meditation comes in. For example, Philippians, everybody knows Philippians chapter four, it talks about, in everything, give prayer and in that verse, it talks about there’s anything good, anything noble, anything, think about these things. It’s talking about the art of meditation and I think that’s so key for us because as you show me your focus, I’ll show you your future, and as we begin to focus on the scriptures and begins to fill our minds with the good stuff. So that’s part and you can even go back to the songs.

For example, if you think about David, one of the songs is the fourth song. It was in the evening Psalm that David prayed when he was going through the toughest time of his life. This was when Absalom Salaam had usurped the throne and he was running for his laugh crossing, the Jordan river and people were and fingers at aim. It was just multiple stuff that was robbing  his sleep. As he goes through this process, and it says in Psalm 4:8, I will lay me down in peace and sleep for you, Lord. Let me dwell in safety and so this process of prayer and meditation, I think is huge.

So, hey, have you ever heard of the hippocampus part of the brain? So it was interesting. No, it’s not an exhibited Azu okay. The hippocampus is a part of the brain for the audience. What the hippocampus does is the hippocampus take short-term memory and embed it into long-term memory. And so at the end of the day, our hippocampus goes to work. So as we’re sleeping, the hippocampus is constantly taking all of those memories of the day and it begins to embed them in our long-term memory and that’s why it’s so important. But back to your question that we stop and we begin to process those events that have happened during the day. I mean, it’s just so simple because if we don’t, instead of getting better, we’re going to get better, those bad experiences, we all have this stuff.

I mean, think about all the COVID stuff that everybody’s dealing with now and just these experiences and so being able to filter them through the scriptures and be able to process them, I think is very healthy. It talks about in Ephesians four, I think 26, it talks about, not to give the devil a foothold, but to deal with your anger before you go to bed. So I’m paraphrasing that, but so often we have these emotions that just, man, you probably never have those Carrie being a counselor, but people mad at me all the time, you killed a grandma, you didn’t do this. You didn’t or something didn’t turn out the way that I expected them.

When I have a bad day, I really have a bad day. So being able to filter those things in and deal with those emotions is huge. We have to let the natural processes of the way we were designed work for us. And so we don’t have to do much. I mean, the devil doesn’t have to do much when we’re not meditating and praying the scripture. So I guess that was a long answer to your question, but that’s what I do. I try to meditate. I try to read, I try to pray, do all those things.  I think that’s what most people deal with. It’s called primary insomnia. Most people have trouble going to sleep. 

Carrie: Okay. So what do we do for those of us that wake up in the middle of the night? Because that’s my problem. I normally do not have problems going to sleep. I can just ask out, but then when it comes to, I wake up with thoughts in the middle of the night.

Dr. Chuck: Well, good for you. That’s great and I don’t either, because usually, I’m so exhausted by the time I get to bed. It’s funny. They say those who sleep like a baby probably don’t have one, and I haven’t been my wife and I have such different sleep habits. So, I tell people I’m the best, get the best guy to see on the worst day of your life. My wife is the best person to see any day of your life. But for me, when I’m woken up in the middle of the night, one thing that I’ve learned to do many times when I’m kind of tossing and turning in my bed is take a step back and listen to God sometimes.

Those are opportunities that God is trying to get our attention. I think most of us and the culture that we lay, I remember going so fast during the day that we don’t have time to really stop and listen, and God wants to speak to us. And sometimes He has to, He has to wake us up and not to get our attention. And so you don’t think about that. You go back to study in first Samuel, the story of Samuel. He has a little boy and they’re at the table with Eli and he’s going to sleep, and God’s saying Eli, he gets up and goes. Samuel gets up and goes to Eli and back and forth all the time, and God’s trying to get his attention to give him a message and he doesn’t catch it.

I wonder how many times I’ve done and it’s actually an opportunity, to meet with God and think about what Samuel would have missed out on. He would have never stopped and heard the wind. That was the beginning of a series of steps that set the same direction. And so often when I’m waking up in the middle of night, just kind of keeping them in mind, God, are you saying something to me? And sometimes He’s not. I always try to keep a journal at the bedside because sometimes it’s something a thought will come into my mind and it may be just a random thought or it may be something that’s really something that God has woken us up to tell us. And so just to write it down and in the morning, you can look at it.

Now, the verse Psalm 7 talks about how God ministers to us, how the spirit ministers to us at night. And so looking at that and thinking about the fact that hey, this may be just something that God just write it down. How many times they’ll say him let’s sleep on it. Now I want to sleep on this message, maybe something very simple, simple about either or a person can pop into our mind. Somebody that we haven’t thought about a year. So the first thing, if you get up at night, get up and pray. Just like Samuel said, speak Lord for your servant is hearing. That’s in first Samuel three. A good rule of thumb, hey, got it. This may not be you, but it may bespeak for your servant is listening.

You’d be surprised and something, and even if we don’t have an answer, I think those times of fellowship become very precious to us, in the sense where we’re not losing anything by having those times of fellowship with God at night, when no one’s there, you can go through the Psalm 1:48. I think it talks about how God keeps me up at a meditated night upon God. And so just kind of thinking about that, it’s a very different perspective of sleep than we get. So it may be a divine appointment. You’re correct. 

Carrie: It’s a good time to be quiet. The house is quiet. There’s not much going on. There aren’t really a whole lot of distractions, maybe that can, we can’t do too much. We don’t want to wake up other family members. So it is a good time to sit down, maybe in reading or praying. Sometimes I will get up and write and I’ll just type whatever’s on my mind and it’s kind of a brain dump in the middle of the night.

And I wonder if you know, I’m not, it’s some of those things that may be that I didn’t take the time or have the chance to process. Sometimes things happen, in the evening, like right before you go to bed, and sometimes that can really throw me off. Sometimes on Tuesday nights, we’ll have church director meetings via zoom and I’ll be thinking about what our pastor was talking with us about or upcoming church things that we have going on. I don’t always have a lot of time to process that before I go to sleep. I think I ended up waking up in the middle of the night. 

Dr. Chuck: I think everybody who listened to this is going, yep, I get it. But one of the things you brought up Carrie, that I think is very important is journaling. I didn’t really realize this, but this book that I wrote about sleep was I really thought I was writing it for other people, but really in a sense, I was writing it for myself as my own way of dealing with the spiritual component of sleep. And I’m realizing that too, with the rest of the books that I’m writing, I mean, really. Journaling is a way that helps us process the events in our lives that I think is so productive. And if you know, if anybody in your audience has never tried journaling, get up and write, and you’d be surprised, you’d be surprised what just a little bit of introspection and thinking will do.

Carrie: You would be surprised at what comes out. A lot of times, one time I realized, oh, well, I’m worrying about something that’s the way in the future that I don’t have any control over. I was like, well, that’s not even close to where I’m at today. That’s really an opportunity for me to let go. You have lots of worries about the future. So how can, because your book is called Surrender to Sleep. So for people that, I mean, we have a hard time sometimes letting go of control. Let’s be honest. We want to try to control things that we don’t have any control over. That obviously creates a lot of anxiety. How do we surrender that over to God and not pick it up five minutes later?

Dr. Chuck: Wow. That is one of those million-dollar questions that, I think we all struggle with Carrie. I think surrender is a process, pass or disease go or just surrender, but it’s us thinking about that, it really is a process. It’s a stepwise process. It is an attitude. I think that we have to embrace this concept of surrender, control even as a Sergeant because I’m a control freak because even, in the operating room or patient, just the smallest thing can make a huge difference. And so, and it’s really hard to realize that control is just an illusion from an earthly standpoint.

And so realizing that if we do yield to God, God’s grace begins to empower us to be able to work more according to His plans and just release the outcome into what God wants. So surrender is huge and it’s I think a lifelong process that we go through. But once again, I think we were created, I think it’s just a reminder every day. If we were, God created us to surrender, that’s what sleep is about. It’s just, it really is. We have to let go and let God do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. What a picture of grace. It’s not saying not to minimize our responses, but yet to understand that we let go, God’s going to do some great things and so that’s what I’ve learned. That’s what my book is about. It’s just really changing focus. You show me your focus, I’ll show you your future.

And so if we focus so often we think about sleep, we think about, oh man, it’s 11 o’clock or three o’clock in the morning. I can’t sleep and I’ve got all this stuff to do tomorrow. And man, the male in our mind just starts working and we begin to worry and we began to meditate. We meditate on our fears and stuff. But if we change focus and we focus on our relationship with God, it doesn’t mean that God’s going to promise a good night’s sleep, but He will give us, we have to trust His sovereignty that even if we’re wake up and we’re tired, we’re exhausted, God’s still got that. I mean, God’s still going to give us the energy that we need to do the things that He wants us to do the next day. It is just a kind of bigger picture understanding of God’s grace in His work. 

Carrie: I think you do bring up a good point there because we get stressed out after we’ve been awake for a little while in the middle of the night or after we can’t go to sleep, then we’re stressed about before now we’re stressed about not sleeping. Oh, I’m only going to get five hours, I’m only going to get four hours. I’m going to just try to go back to sleep this last hour before the alarm clock goes off and you get real trippy about it. So that definitely happens to a lot of people.

Dr. Chuck: But I’ll tell you something and that’s the thing about surrender. Sometimes it means that we sacrifice our sleep to help other people. And I have to do that a lot. I have to get myself up out of bed and go and go to the hospital or answer a phone call or whatever. And just having that attitude that, hey Lord, whatever tomorrow brings Your grace is going to be sufficient. They helped me through that and just keeping that perspective has really helped me a lot. 

Carrie: Good. Well, we’ll definitely put links in the show notes to your website and your books and where people can find out more information. If they want to get the book. So at the end of every podcast, I ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time where you’ve received hope from God or another person.

Dr. Chuck: And thinking about this, Carrie, I just want to just leave you with a personal story. So, I’ve been practicing surgery for 26 years. I’m 54 years old and I’ve seen a lot of changes in medicine. It’s kind of funny, I’m becoming one of those old dinosaurs. So anyway, as health care has really changed in the past 10 years, I can’t say that I’ve always responded in the most positive ways.

A lot of bitterness, a lot of things, just a lot of stuff because there’s the way things should be and the way things are. And I think we all live with those kinds of attention. In our laws and once again, that’s something that keeps us up at not sometimes, but what’s interesting over the past several years, just realize it is that I’m going through a different season of life, that I had to make some decisions about my lifestyle.

And the biggest breakthrough I’ve had in the past couple of years is changing my lifestyle. I had to stop taking calls at the hostel. And as a surgeon, a lot of the ways you value yourself is how much work you do in the hospital. But it was a real step of faith for me is that I had to say, okay, good. I’m just not a 30-year-old guy anymore that can stay up three days and deal with stress and pressure. So as I began to say no to a lot of things, to stop being a doormat to the hospitals, and I know that sounds crazy, but as in my job, as a rural surgeon, I mean, they call me for everything. And so in taking a step back and letting go of some things, my sleep has gotten so much better.

Because like I said, it is multidimensional, as I’m getting fewer calls from the hospital in that I’m sleeping better. And then I’m able to focus on my mental health and my diet and I’m losing weight and I’m feeling better. I come home and not in my wife says, who are you married? So thinking about this, we live in this crazy nanosecond culture that’s constantly barraging us. And so getting back to the way that we were designed and created and getting along with God and cooperating with God. It’s not anything big. It’s not like a laser beam of holy spirit power helps me in, but just me and making some decisions to say, hey, this is just unhealthy.

And at this season of life, I just need, what’s funny is that God has provided for my family. I mean, I’m busier now and I’m not going into the hospital doing outpatient surgeries. And man, I just, I handle stress better. I have. People better and problems better, it’s just, my whole life has just changed.

I feel like I have a new lease on life and I’m a better doctor now than I was two years ago because I was so overwhelmed. And so what I want to encourage your audience today is to think about those things in their lives that they really need to change because so often sleep is just a symptom of a deeper problem in a deeper issue that’s going on in our lives. We didn’t even touch about medicine, but the medical problem, medical aspect of this,  but go get, go get checked. I mean, you may have a med, you may have a sleep disorder, but just keep in mind that sometimes we focus on the little, the symptoms and not on the deep root causes.

And so for me, it’s been a big, just a change of my lifestyle, which has a real spiritual component has made a world of difference and I’m sleeping better now than I ever have. And I wrote the book in that crazy, do as I say, not as I do, but I wrote the book and I didn’t realize that it was just something so simple in my life that I needed to change. And it was an aspect of luck. We’ve been talking about it as an aspect of surrender said, okay, God, you’ve got this, I’ve gotta let go of this. I can’t do this. Like I did 20 years and so I think for me, that has been the biggest thing. And I want to encourage people to just take time and reflect and think about those things that maybe that God doesn’t want them to do.

And we just pile so much on our plate. We have no margin and I think so many of our problems are self-induced that’s what I’m learning is that I can let go. They all say in a clean conscious makes us off the pill, as you make those decisions. And this is one of our attitudes, have a wise heart and make those decisions in your daily life, you set yourself up for better sleep.

Carrie: I think that that’s excellent, really evaluating what we have on our plate. And do we need to have everything on here and ask God, okay, I feel like I’m doing too much, which of these things can I let go of, or take off my plate. And that is a step of faith for us because we’re so used to doing so much often. I think that that’s great advice for people to evaluate. So I know that you told me before we hopped on here, that you have some videos on YouTube and that people can learn more about these practices. And so we’ll put some links in there in the show notes as well. Thanks for coming on and sharing with us your wisdom in between procedures.

50. Doctor’s Offices, Prayers, and Our First Year of Marriage

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 50. Doctor’s Offices, Prayers, and Our First Year of Marriage

As promised, I’m bringing back my favorite guest in celebration of my 50th episode, it’s none other than my husband, Steve Bock! 

Steve and I are happy to share with you the ups and downs of our first year of marriage and how we remain constant in prayer.

Episode Highlights:

  • Adjustments we have made as a married couple.
  • Funny and weird things we learned about each other
  • Dealing with a health scare and coping with stressful health issues and never-ending doctor appointments
  • Walking through life together and giving God all the control
  • Our shining light in the midst of a hard time
  • Our goals for the podcast 

Episode Summary:

I promised to bring back my favourite guest—my husband, Steve—to dive into the highs and lows of our first year of marriage. From unexpected surprises to health scares, we’ve navigated it all together, leaning on faith, humour, and each other.

Adjusting to Married Life
Living under the same roof brought some funny revelations. Steve learned I’m a blanket thief (hence, separate sheets now!), while I discovered his impressive shoe collection rivals mine! And let’s not forget our cats, Lilo and Stitch, who weren’t keen on giving up their spots on the bed. Over time, they found their perfect spots on our new accent chairs after a little redecorating.

Health Challenges
This year tested us in ways we didn’t see coming. In the spring, I faced a scare during a routine doctor’s visit. Waiting for test results was nerve-wracking, but thankfully, everything turned out fine. Soon after, Steve’s routine eye exam turned into something much bigger. Persistent eye pain led to a series of tests that brought terrifying possibilities—an eye stroke, a brain tumour, or even a clogged artery.

While we’re still searching for answers, this season reminded us how vital support is. Family, friends, and our church community surrounded us with prayers, and even hearing a child was praying for Steve was deeply touching.

Faith and Encouragement
Through it all, we’ve learned how important it is to lean on each other and on God. The kindness and prayers of others carried us through the uncertainty. It’s a testament to how much strength you can draw from your community and faith.

Marriage isn’t always smooth sailing, but it’s been a journey of growth, trust, and love. Whether it’s laughing over silly things like stolen blankets or facing health scares together, I’m grateful for Steve and the life we’re building.

If you’re navigating your own challenges or just looking for a little encouragement, I hope our story reminds you that faith and community can make all the difference.

Explore Related Episode:

Transcript

I promised to bring back my favorite guest, my husband, Steve so we can talk about our relationship ups and downs and life that happened in our first year of marriage. 

Carrie: Welcome back, Steve. 

Steve: Thanks for having me. 

Carrie: You are my biggest fan and support, so I really appreciate you being here. We wanted to start off with a couple of fun questions. First, we got married and then we moved in together and we were adjusting to living life in the same household. What was the biggest surprise for you? 

Steve: Well, I initially thought that it would be the dishes because you put your dishes in a different place than I’m used to. The biggest adjustment was you are a sheet stealer, a blanket taker, so we can be in the same bed trying to sleep and somehow I find myself or was finding myself thinking, oh, my toes are cold. What happened to the nice sheet that I had on me? And so we had to resolve that we have separate sheets now, which seems weird to say, but otherwise, you just roll and roll and roll and roll and suddenly you’re all nice and toasty. 

Carrie: Yeah. Somehow I’m like a burrito on the covers.

Steve: A human burrito.

Carrie: I am definitely a cover hog. I will admit that. So I would say for me, the biggest surprise was related to combining households in that Steve actually has more shoes than I do. I know that women are usually the ones that are super fashionistas and do have a lot of shoes and different sites, styles, and colors. But Steve likes to have a variety of shoes and a variety of clothes and so he’s looking around the closet while we’re reading. So that was a big surprise for me and what’s bad about that is that I got rid of shoes.

Steve: I still have more than you, even though I got rid of shoes, but I want new shoes and I’m not a materialistic person. Probably my only thing is wanting more shoes. 

Carrie: Yeah. You’re not, not big into stuff. Overall. What would you say was the biggest adjustment that you feel like you had to make when we got married?

Steve: Well, there are these two fur balls that like space, like the couch and the bed and the couch I could get over, but the bed, yeah, that was difficult. They don’t know that they wanted to give up that spot next to you. Right? So that probably honestly, that was an adjustment for me. I’m used to sleeping just me and not having to worry about something jumping on me in the middle of the night, and the sound of meow outside the door or whatever the case is, but just having my place on the bed, fighting for that place with it.

Carrie: But you made friends with Lilo and Stitch because you started feeding them shortly after you moved in, Which was interesting. I was like, oh, okay, he’s taken over this responsibility. And so now when it’s dinner time, they don’t look at me. They look at you, they know who brings the food.

Steve: That’s right and I like routine. So it just made sense in the morning I get up, I get them. At night before bed, I get them food. It was an easy transition and they’re good. They’re, for the most part, they are well-behaved. They have their moment. 

Carrie: That’s true and one of the things that we did after we moved in together was we redecorated because I had been living in the house here with my roommate and just overall, the house needed a fresh coat of paint and the furniture was thrift store stuff. It was pretty run down or old and just needed to freshen things up. So we were able to, that was one thing that we did this year was, did some redecorating. This is funny in regards to the cats because now we have these accent chairs in the living room and it’s like Stitch has his chair that he likes to sit in and Lilo has her chair that she likes to sit in.

They don’t ever trade places, which is kind of funny to me. It’s like if we go out there in the living room, it’s like, sit, you’ll be in one chair and Lilo will be in the other chair. And I’m like, you guys are hilarious. So they’ve come to sleeping in the chairs now instead of trying to get in the bed with us because that way our foot doesn’t roll over on them or kick them or anything like that on intention.

We had a very unexpected year. Health-wise. Kind of wanted to share a little bit about that on the podcast. I got your full permission to talk about these things. And I said, you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about, but I think everything that we’ve been through together and that you’ve been through has been really inspiring and has taught me a lot. I want to just talk about that.

Steve: Absolutely. 

Carrie: But it actually started out with a Kerry health challenge in the spring. I went to a very routine exam with an OB-GYN because we were talking about getting pregnant and then she said, hey, there’s this. You need to go get a mammogram and an ultrasound on that. And I thought, oh gosh, that sounds pretty serious and pretty scary. This is the timing of everything we were about to lose our insurance for about a month. So I had to kind of hurry and get this ultrasound before we lost the insurance. And I thought I don’t know if they’re going to want to do follow-up testing or biopsy something.

I don’t know that we’re going to be able to do that. How is it all going to work out? What was that like for you while we were kind of waiting for me to get the testing and then the day of the kind of waiting for me to contact you back?

Steve: That was scary because you’re not yet not knowing and your mind can play so many tricks on. Also just hearing that, we’re wanting children, we’re just dealing with life, we’re newly married. We’re all those things. I just got a new job. The insurance just changed over. It was about two and it hadn’t even changed yet. Like you said, and now I have this thought of, oh my gosh. Forget all that. What about your health? Who wants to hear that? Sure. I don’t want you to have to go. So yeah, I was a little bit scared.

Carrie: We both certainly have known people who have been younger and people who have gone through breast cancer. So it was like, oh gosh, you know, that couldn’t be me. I don’t know. I have to get this checked out. We got to check it out. It turned out to be nothing. It was fine, but a clear bill of health there moved forward. And then shortly after you started your job, you went for what was supposed to be a relatively routine eye exam and you had been telling me, my eyes hurt, my eyes hurt. And I said that’s just not normal. You need to bring that up when you go in for your eye appointment, you want to kind of tell a little bit more about that story. 

Steve: Sure and I knew that for a long time, I had sensitive eyes. So I didn’t think as much of it, but yes, I had been having a lot of eye pain. I just kept telling you that I had these eye headaches and so I go in for the routine checkup and they noticed a few things immediately. One that I had been dragging my hand across the wall while I was walking and I didn’t even realize really that I was doing that. It was such a habit, such a normal thing.

And also the bottom line, my vision was less than wonderful. We’ll just say it that way and so what seemed to be just a regular eye checkup? Nothing new, Hey, you’ve lost a lot of vision in your right eye, there’s a loss of blood flow, there’s this, there’s that we have so many things to check and you may have had an eye stroke. We went through a lot of scenarios. 

Carrie: Yeah. In the beginning, we were told it could be all kinds of things. We were originally told that your blood vessels were constricted in your eyes. We were told you could have had an eye stroke, which caused the vision loss. This seems strange because it wasn’t like you woke up one day and couldn’t see as well from your perspective. Now, we knew that you had other eye issues. You’ve had some issues with peripheral and colorblindness, but we didn’t know that that this was going on pretty much. They were like, whoa, you know, you could have a brain tumor, it could be causing this. You could have a clogged artery that could be causing this and we’re just starting to think here. Oh no, like what’s going on. 

There was another kind of fluke test that came back and we thought maybe there was something wrong with your kidney. So there for a short light, like two weeks to about a month period, we were gone, oh my gosh, are you going to die? Are you going to be okay? Like some of this stuff sounds pretty life-threatening and we have to get a handle on it and figure it out. 

Steve: And every time they would say something, it could be this, it could be that your heart starts racing a little bit. Part of me just wanted to know what, if you get to a point where you like, just tell me, just let’s figure this out and jump ahead, we still don’t really know fully, but, it’s always scary. Just not knowing is the worst part and I’ve heard people say about different things and that is so true. But we’ve got a great group of people around us, through friends, family, of course, church people who call us and tell us, or text us and tell us, Hey, we’re praying for you daily. Someone told me their child was praying for me, which was really sweet, just the different things. My good friend with cancer is praying. So it’s just helpful to hear those. 

Carrie: It’s definitely an encouragement when you’re going through something to have other people that care about you that are like lifting you up to God. So to make the long story short, you got a bunch of testing done. You had MRIs, ultrasound of your neck, you had follow-ups with doctors, you had visual testing. And then you got to this point where it was like you were going to have to see a specialist and a neurological ophthalmologist and got an appointment at Vanderbilt, but then we had to wait 10 weeks for the appointment.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: It was a long wait. 

Steve: It was.

Carrie: Yeah, there were a lot of times where you were having pain and it was so hard for me because I couldn’t really do anything about it. Like I make it better or take that away from you. And based on some of the other things that we had been told, I was so scared that you were going to lose more vision. I know there were times when we were going through that where I just get up in the middle of the night and I’d read verses about trusting God and I just cry to say, God, you got to help him get us to the right doctors and get us where we need to go, because it’s just so sad and so painful.

Steve: And I think, honestly, that’s the hardest part is knowing that I said it was the not knowing, but seeing your spouse have to deal with it is worse because that’s not fair. No, that’s not fair to them. I have to wake up in the middle of the night. Well, it’s not fair to you. Let me say this correctly. Not fair to you to have to wake up in the middle of the night, worrying about me. I know that’s part of, we said for better or for worse, we did that in our vows. Right. But I get it. It’s still, I kind of get to the point where I’m like, man, whatever, but it’s not fair for you. That’s the hardest part. 

Carrie: You’re also that kind of personality where you don’t want anybody blessing over you or worrying about you or you don’t want to be bothering anybody or affecting them in that way. So this week was the week that we went to the neurological ophthalmologist. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced and I’m sure nothing like you’ve ever experienced. 

Steve: No, I wouldn’t recommend that for the family funding.

Carrie: Yeah. You’re keeping your sense of humor about you. It’s in essence that they had this long hallway with multiple waiting rooms. You meet with a resident first, and then they send you off to one of the waiting rooms or, and somebody will pull you for a test. And then you’ll go to a different waiting room and be pulled for another test. You go back and you meet with the resident and the doctor. And then it was like, well, we need to do this other test. So we were literally up at Vanderbilt for four to five hours.

Steve: Yes and I will say this, Vanderbilt did a great job. They really did. Everyone there was so nice that I could, we could probably spend a whole episode just talking about all that they did and I’ll spare you. But it was probably the most difficult thing of it all was just one, I was hungry, even though we brought snack bars, you can’t prepare yourself for that kind of stress in that many hours of it. And having an ultrasound on your eye, both eyes. That’s interesting. So that was stressful, but yeah, I didn’t even know that was possible. That was a thing fairly new and it’s strange, all that goo in your eye is just, I’ll leave it at that because somebody is squirming right now. 

Carrie: Yeah. We get to the end of the appointment and he says probably, I think one of the worst things that he could say here we are bracing ourselves for, oh, gosh, you’ve got a degenerative eye condition, you’re going blind, you’ve got glaucoma, you’ve got this serious eye issue and we’re kind of bracing ourselves for something like that like you need surgery. He literally says I have no explanation for this pain that you’re experiencing and I have a couple of other hypotheses, but you’re going to have to go elsewhere to get that treatment.

You’re going to have to go to a different specialist because it’s not actually eye-related and that was rough. 

Steve: That was rough. You know, there was a moment we thought it could have been glaucoma and that was difficult to hear. But at least, in this case, you kind of want to label, or at least I did because then you can prepare for it. But not knowing is again, that’s difficult. Not why, why is this happening? Why do I not have a vision in my right eye or peripheral vision or the pain or whatever. And hearing also him say, well, it’s just weird. Your eyes are weird. That just seems like a strange word to use for that. I’m glad that I get to be a weird anomaly as he put it. That’s not what I wanted to hear. Right? 

Carrie: It’s hard for doctors when they’re looking at your symptoms and they don’t have a neat clean category to put you into. It’s like, okay, well, this kind of this piece looks like glaucoma, but this other piece over here does not look like it at all. And this piece right here, it looks like this, but this other piece, it doesn’t quite, it’s something that doesn’t quite fit with the diagnoses.

And so we’re trying a couple of different avenues. One, they gave you a different eyeglasses prescription that we’re hoping will help a little bit because maybe your eyes were strained somewhat from having an incorrect prescription from a previous provider. You’re going to be looking at some physical therapy on your neck, head to address may be a nerve that runs behind the eyes that could be upset or inflamed.

So those are kind of our next steps and we essentially got told, hey, come back and for months and we’ll see you and see if anything’s changed. Now, we’re back in January.

Steve: Which is difficult now and it’s so many people praying and they want an answer. And the best I can say is I’ll be back in four months and we have some other options. It is what it is. 

Carrie: I know that I’ve had a lot of spiritual wrestling, I think, through this process. And I talked about that a little bit earlier because you can have faith and you can pray. And certainly, people have prayed over your eyes that your vision would be restored and you wouldn’t have any more pain and sometimes it’s really hard to sit with that. God has not fully answered that prayer yet. God has not healed you yet. What is your process been like around it? 

Steve: I’ve said for me total healing, of course, that would be great. If there’s not total healing, let me just be who I’m supposed to be as a Christian, with it. I don’t want to be angry or bitter over something that nature. And it’s funny because this morning, but yesterday I’ll be honest. I was so angry. I really was because I wanted an answer. I wanted them to find something to say that, yes, you’ve lost vision in your right eye.

Carrie: And here’s why. 

Steve: Yeah and here’s why would have been great. Here’s why you had the pressure, but to sit down and ask me three or four times about the pressure with no answer is just gosh, this isn’t helping me at all, and no offense to the doctor because they’re just doing their job. 

Carrie: Right. 

Steve: But it’s just hard to hear that. So then this morning I wake up and I do a group devotion that we’ve been doing, and it talks about just relying on God’s grace and relying. Sometimes God is there with you. I forgot how I worded it and how you feel it most, in your worst times, or in your times of struggle or pain or whatever.

And I thought, well, gosh, that’s kind of now. I have to look at it and say, okay, you got this, I can’t, this is out of my control and I just have to deal with it. It’s what it is. It’s not a lack of bubble leading or that. He could heal me anytime He wants, and yet I have this and so that’s the lot that I have let’s roll with it. Let’s do with what we have. I cannot be a Christian because my eyes are hurting. That’s not an option. 

Carrie: Right. And you’re still serving in the church like that. You can be involved there. That’s another story, but we actually became the outreach directors, as I guess in December of last year, so has been great.

Steve: We get to meet so many neat and wonderful people. So that’s been a neat kind of takes my mind off things sometimes, it’s something else to focus on. So that’s good too. 

Carrie: I think it’s hard when we’re waiting on God for an answer or to move or for guidance. But I know that these really hard times also grow our character more than anything else and I’ve learned so much from just watching you and how you’ve handled your vision issues, the pain that you’ve experienced. And it’s really taught me a lot about humility. There are times where you have had to acknowledge other people. These are my limitations. These are some things that I’m not able to do, or I can’t see right now.

And that’s, that’s hard to say because you’re around a bunch of other people that can see. Okay, and maybe it’s too dark in the room or it’s too bright. And you’re having to say, yeah, I just, I can’t see that right now. 

Steve: I don’t know if it’s a pride thing, a guy thing. I don’t know what it is, but I always want to be able to do what everybody else is doing. You don’t want to say, that’s difficult, or when there’s a group of people, like the guys that say, hey, we all want to go here tonight. Oh, I can’t go because I don’t drive at night. So Carrie’s already somewhere else. I’m just going to hang out here at the house because that’s my safe space.

I don’t want to put anybody out and I don’t want to drive. So yeah, there are so many instances that I could give where it’s difficult in that sense. But it is what it is and it’s cool in a way though, because I am able to relate with a group of people that maybe others can’t.

So if there’s an older person who doesn’t see very well, I totally get that. Not because I’m old, although I’m getting older by the day here, because I get, I know what it’s like to have cataracts. I knew what it’s like to not be able to see. It’s difficult to give up the privileges of driving at night, even that was such a task. That’s very difficult. 

Carrie: It’s really been a big one. There will be times where we’ll be out and you can’t see because it’s too bright, too dark, some of your eyes are really bothering you that day. Something’s going on. Sometimes you have double vision and things are kind of blurry and you’ll just like reach out and grab onto my shoulder or onto my purse or something like that and just hold onto me. I think that that’s, that’s a picture of our Christian life. Like it’s dark like right now, things are somewhat dark and we can’t see and we have to hold on to Jesus. 

It’s not easy because, at that moment, you’re totally trusting me to take you where you need to go. I remember there was a time where we were at some fireworks for the 4th of July and we were trying to walk through this area. You said, I just can’t, I can’t anything about where we’re going right now, just make sure I don’t step at all or something. Sometimes the other thing you’ll do is you’ll watch my feet and where my feet are going, and that helps guide you in and we have this pattern of Jesus.

Jesus has already walked on the earth. Like He’s already done all the things. It’s like if we will pattern our lives, like after Jesus, it’s hard. If this not, I think for me, I’m a doer, I’m a get it done. I’m an advocate. So not having the control and really having to let go and say, okay, God, this is your department. You’re going to take care of this. I want to fix it for Steve, but I can’t and You love Steve more than I do. So I have to trust that You’re going to do it. I’m sure You’re going to, however, this is going to happen. Obviously, we pray that God’s glorified through this experience and we pray that whatever happens that we trust and know that He’s going to use it for good somehow in your life, in my life, and in the lives of other people.

Steve: It’s been, I don’t know how to say it, but as, as we have grown as a couple, it’s been such a blessing to see. I can brag on you for just a moment, you have man, you’ve scheduled my appointments for me. You advocate for me at a time when I don’t know what to ask. I don’t even get to a point where you just don’t even care anymore.

You do, but that’s how it feels sometimes. I’ve even had where my parents have said, oh my goodness Carrie, thank you, and it’s true. I feel the same way that they do. It’s such a blessing to have you there to help me there. Even just like the other night, we went out with church and, they decided to go to the family fund center or whatever that was. It was a good time but I couldn’t bowl. We tried to play some video games and that was, I guess, that was good, but you had to kind of walk me around in some cases and I didn’t get to a bowl, but I enjoyed watching you bowl and kind of forgive me, but kick butt and take names because you’re a pretty good bowler.

I feel like you hustled a little bit, but it was good. It was good to watch. Anyway, we have really learned some couples walk side by side and we walk me behind you and it’s just the way it is. That’s how much trust I have in you and faith and it’s worked out really well. Thank you.

Carrie: Yeah, it’s for me, I think it’s just really been a joy to have you in my life and it does. I know a lot of people probably would look at it as a sacrifice. I don’t, like, I just don’t feel that way because I feel like you’ve done so much for me as well. I know that if the shoe was on the other foot if something had come back and that screen and I was going through cancer.

You would be doing all those things too, you would be gone to the doctor’s appointments with me. You would be taking notes and asking questions, or I know that if things were reversed that you would be helping me out as well. It’s what you do as a married couple and some of you may have heard this or listened that marriage is not 50-50, because it just can’t be. Sometimes it really has to be like a hundred percent and a hundred percent, but there are times where your spouse may only have 25% to give because they’re sick, they’re hurting, they’re going through something. You have to help lift them up and provide that. You may have to provide that extra 75 that you need to stay strong as a couple.

It’s just part of the deal so we’re going to switch on a happier note and say that I was tracking my calendar and trying to figure out when I was ovulating, trying to get all the stars aligned because that’s what has control for people do. Right? Then I had bought some ovulation test strips, so forth, and then this stuff started happening with your eyes. I put the ovulation strips under the sink and I said, I can’t do this right now. That was the month that we got pregnant. 

Steve: That’s right. The moment you stop worrying about it and trying to control it as when God’s like, and now go. 

Carrie: Yeah. So at this recording were 13 weeks along and so when this comes out, we’ll be a little bit farther than that, but we’re super excited there. You just feel so blessed. Like this is our shining light in the midst of hard times is that God has blessed us with a child where we’re entering the old parents club. 

So we didn’t know if this was going to happen or be possible in, I think just knowing everything that I’ve been through in regards to losing my foster children and everything that you went through in a long period of singleness. Just coming to this point, we were able to say like, okay, this is really a gift. Like God is showing us a gift and everything I’ve been learning and reading about trust, I think has helped me in terms of the pregnancy. Just say, okay, if God has given us this gift, then I’m not going to worry about the baby or what’s happening because there obviously there are so many worries that you can have in pregnancy and wondering is everything gonna be okay and all of that. I’ve kind of slowed all of that down and being able to say like, okay, this is from God. We’re going to be okay. 

Steve: Yeah and it’s been kind of fun, kind of interesting. I’ve learned so much. One day I’ll come home and the baby’s the size of a raisin. Oh, isn’t that nice? It’s such a big, big baby and then the next thing you know it’s the size of a kumquat. Oh, what the heck is a kumquat? Wait a minute. I have to figure this out. How big is that? Then the next thing I know, hey, we’re the size of a lemon and by the way today, the baby has fingerprints and my fingerprints that’s amazing.

So it’s been fun and she tracks it, the things I learn and this is our baby, and dear God, I hope this baby doesn’t look like me. I hope this baby looks like Carrie. 

Carrie: But they are gonna at least start out looking like you because they’re not going to have a lot of hair.

Steve: They’re going to have more of the hair than me. I bet you. Anyway, s so many people ask me and us, do you want a boy or a girl. Maybe it’s because I’m older, I don’t know, but I’m like my answer every single time, I just want a baby. 

Carrie: Right?

Steve: I want a child. That’s what I want. Boy, girl, whatever. I just want a child and I’m excited about that. 

Carrie: Yeah. We’re just, we’re like, we’ll be happy with either one.

Steve: And I think the joy of seeing our parents’ faces. I know that my mom was so excited, so I’m sure mom will be listening to this and amen on that one. She was very excited to hear as was your mom and, and both of our dads. So it’s neat and they are excited. 

Carrie: Yeah. We had some fun with our families, for sure. We got them little onesies with their grandparent names. Obviously, because we’re having children later, we’ve had siblings that have had children. It’s not the first grandchild by any means, but still, they’re very excited for us because they know everything that we’ve been through and they knew that we were wanting to have a child.

So here we are big steps and I guess I just want to say in relation to that, I don’t know what things are going to look like for the podcast in the future. I’ve struggled because my first trimester has been pretty rough. There’s a lot of sicknesses and a lot of tiredness. I think I’m coming out of it at this point, which feels really, really good.

I’m feeling a lot more energy and less nausea. I know that there’s gonna have to be sometime off and focus on family and different things. So we’re going to do the best that we can and obviously kind of evaluate over the next year, what the podcast is going to look like, but also, what the continuation of it is going to be in January.

I’m planning to release episodes every other week, instead of every week. You have episodes to catch up on that will give you time to go back and listen to some of our older episodes. But I’m always looking for ways to expand and let other people know about the podcast. I’ve been a guest on different podcasts that can get the word out. We’re at a place where I really want to continue. I’m enjoying it. I love the interviews that I’ve been able to do. But obviously, there are definitely question marks about what is that going to look like with a baby and childcare and so forth and so on and time timing-wise to do things.

We may just have to get better about working ahead and figuring out what that looks like. I also want to make sure that being wise financially and invest resources the way that God would want me to. My goal for this next year is to have the podcast be fully fund itself. We don’t have, as we don’t have sponsors, but when we do have is a buy me a coffee opportunity where you can give money to the podcast.

I am hoping very soon. I keep dragging my feet on it, but maybe by the time this episode comes out, I really want to create a subscription service where people feel like they’re getting value every month. They’re not just donating money but they’re actually getting some relaxation audios. They’re getting question and answer time with me once a month. They’re getting maybe some workbook pages that I really want to be of value to people. Hopefully, we will be able to get enough subscribers that the podcast will be funding itself in a year. That’s the goal. What I’m shooting for God is good and He’s definitely provided the opportunity for us to be able to do this so far.

So I’m trusting Him with whatever the feature is. If I need to put it down for a season and pick it up again, or if I need to let it go, I just have to be open to whatever God wants me to do. I guess I just want to end on hope obviously because that’s how we like to nourish. I feel like the hope for me is obviously that we’re having a child. The hope is that you’re going to be able to see them and see them grow up. I’m hopeful that God is going to just protect you and protect your vision so that you won’t lose further vision and that God will relieve you of this pain. We haven’t seen it yet, but we will definitely keep you guys. 

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s I hope that you can do this for a long time because I know that you enjoy what you do and I’m biased, but I think you’re fantastic at it, but yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited. That’s been such a blessing or from the day we got married, even before that. But from the day we got married till now, and I’m excited for what the future brings and what great things you get to do with this platform as well. 

Carrie: Yeah. Thank you for sharing your story. I think it can mean being so open and vulnerable. I think it helps people because there are people going through their anxiety right now, or their OCD. They’re wondering some of the same questions like we have, like, why isn’t God healing me or why do I go to these doctors?

And I can’t get help or maybe they tried medication and it’s not working. I think it’s whenever you have a chronic condition, like anxiety or OCD, it’s a process really to get that help. I’m reading a book right now, which I really love and I won’t spoil it because I want to have the author on, but he talks about how we, our coworkers with Christ in our healing process in the journey. He’s talking specifically about anxiety, how God does His part and we do our part in that, which gives me hope that God knows obviously our limitations. God knows that we can only do so much on our part and we need that. We need Him, we need to rely on Him and we need that divine intervention.

As always, I hope this podcast really just encourages somebody today, to keep going. And if nothing else to know, like you’re not alone in your struggles. So there’s always someone who cares about you. There is even if you don’t feel like it. Yeah. Maybe if you feel isolated.

Steve: If you’re, maybe you’re like me and you don’t want to bother anyone. This is my 2 cents for what it’s worth. I’m not Carrie, don’t get me wrong here, but you’re not a bother. Somebody loves you. Somebody wants to see you better. They love you. They don’t want your problem to hold you back. Be a bother, be a smile and get better.

Carrie: Well, thank you to everyone who tuned in today.


49. Will Less Stuff Equal Less Anxiety? with Becca Ehrlich

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 49. Will Less Stuff Equal Less Anxiety? with Becca Ehrlich

Today on the show,  I am joined by a Christian minimalist, pastor and author, Becca Ehrlich.  
Becca and I had an interesting conversation about how minimizing and simplifying your life can help with anxiety.

Episode Highlights:

  • How Becca developed an interest in minimalism
  • Different aspects of minimalism 
  • How to be more intentional with time and energy
  • The intersection between Christian faith and minimalism
  • Minimalist approach to buying things
  • Small steps to take to minimize and simplify your life
  • How to tackle the tasks of evaluating possessions and minimizing stuff as a couple.

Episode Summary:

we’re diving into how too much stuff can overwhelm our lives and lead to anxiety. When things pile up and we can’t find what we need, it’s not just frustrating—it can also hold us back from living the life God has called us to.

In today’s episode, I’m chatting with Becca Ehrlich, a pastor and Christian minimalist. She shares her journey from living the American Dream in a big house filled with stuff to embracing minimalism. At first, Becca and her husband filled their 3,000 sq ft home with things, but when they downsized, they realized they had way more stuff than they could manage. Clutter took over their lives, making it hard to find anything, and it was weighing on their well-being.

Becca discovered minimalism after watching a documentary on Netflix, which helped her realize that living simply could bring more meaning to her life. She explains that minimalism is about focusing on what truly matters and letting go of what doesn’t, whether that’s material things, time commitments, or the pursuit of status.

Living with a chronic illness also made Becca realize the importance of being intentional with her time and energy, which minimalism helped her do. The goal isn’t just about getting rid of stuff, but about making space for what matters most—relationships, self-care, and passions.

We also discuss how minimalism can be lived out differently depending on your situation, and Becca shares why it’s important to have a personal “why” behind simplifying your life. Without it, you might just go back to your old habits of accumulating things. Becca’s “why” was to spend more time with family and friends, and this kept her motivated through the tough process.

Minimalism isn’t just a one-time declutter—it’s an ongoing journey of figuring out what adds value to your life and letting go of what doesn’t. Becca’s advice on involving kids in the process is also super helpful. It’s about teaching them early on that experiences matter more than things.

Check out this episode to learn how simplifying your life can help you focus on what really matters!

Links and Resources:

Becca Ehrlich
Book: Christian Minimalism: Simple Steps for Abundant Living

Transcript

Episode 49. If you’re new to the show, I’m your hot Carrie Bock and today we are talking about the connection between having too much stuff or clutter that invades our lives and how that can cause us anxiety. We can’t find things anymore because there’s too much stuff in the way or we have piles around maybe that is crushing our creativity, things that are keeping us, from doing everything that God has called us to do.

Carrie: So here today with me or a discussion of Christian minimalism is Becca Ehrlich, who is a pastor and Christian minimalist. Thank you for joining me today. 

Becca: Thanks for having me. This is going to be fun. 

Carrie: So you once had what some would quote, call the American dream like I have a spacious house and I have lots of stuff in it. What kind of suffering do you feel like coming from at some point of having too much. 

Becca: I sort of bought into pun intended. The idea is that the reason we exist is to have more, more stuff, more time commitments, more things. We use our energy and time for more recognition, all of that like more status. And so we bought a 3000 square foot house and then and it was just me and my husband, and when you have that much space, you fill it with stuff cause it just looks weird to have empty space sometimes or so we’ve been told.

Carrie: Makes sense. 

Becca: So did what normal folks would do in consumer culture and filled it with a bunch of stuff. And then we moved, we moved into a smaller place just because that’s what was available at the time where we were moving and we did not have enough room for all this stuff. So we rented a huge storage unit outside of town and we filled it, they call it high and tight.

So it was literally like wall-to-wall stuff, ceiling to floor stuff and we couldn’t even get into this stuff if we wanted to in that storage unit. Then in our new place, it was like stuff was coming out of corners and out of closets and it was just stuffed to the gills with all the stuff. It was just not helpful for my life I couldn’t find anything. It was things that would fall on top of me. We’ve all been there. Right? You open the closet, it is just all down and it was just not good for my well-being. I just didn’t like it and so when I discovered minimalism, which by the way is not just about stuff, right? Our issue was stuff, but a lot of other people could be other things. It made sense to us and we were like, I think we need to start living a little bit more minimally. 

Carrie: How did you discover this and develop this interest in minimalism? 

Becca: I watched Netflix and my life changed. 

Carrie: Wow. 

Becca: No one expects their life to change when they’re watching Netflix. But that is what happened. I have a chronic illness, so I was having bad health, and usually, when I have a bad health day, I kinda chill on the couch and watch Netflix or whatever. And I was browsing through, I watch a lot, a lot of documentaries and it recommended the minimalism documentary, the original one by the minimalists.

I’d never heard of minimalism before. I had no idea what I was like, well, it’s only an hour and 15 minutes. So if it’s terrible, it’s only an hour and 15 minutes of my life that I wasted and it was the opposite. Like I watched it and said, oh my gosh, I think this is something I need to do and my husband will get home from running errands and I was like, you gotta watch this and he was like, I don’t know. He eventually sat down with me and we watched it together and he said, you know what, I think this is something we need to do. 

Carrie: That’s good. You definitely have to get your spouse on board if you’re married and are going to do this.

Becca: Yeah, I will say though, that like both of us have very different ways. We live out minimalism, which I think is also okay. So you don’t necessarily have to be completely on the same page and agree with all the things you just have to know. Be okay with each other, living out a very simple life.

Carrie: So you said that it’s not just about the stuff. Can you tell us about some of the other aspects of minimalism? 

Becca: Yeah. So basically minimalism is a focus on the aspects of life that matter most and intentionally removing everything. So at its core, it’s living intentionally and getting rid of anything, that’s keeping you from focusing on what’s most important. So that can be anything, right? Like for a lot of people, it’s stuff, because of how consumer culture works, we’ve accumulated too much stuff, but for other people, it could be time commitments. Like maybe you said yes to all the things out of obligation or because you felt like you had to, or were expected to, or whatever.

It could be chasing wealth and status and fame. That’s also something that’s glamorized in consumer culture. So paring down your life to be more intentional and focus on the most important things like relationships and self-care, passion, and things like that. 

Carrie: It’s interesting that you say that about not chasing fame and fortune. I just had a conversation with another entrepreneur this morning that we just get together and have business chat. She told me, everybody’s trying to chase this six to seven-figure thing. She’s like, I just don’t need all that. I just, I mean, I need a few thousand dollars to pay my bills and live okay. 

She’s like, what do I need to make six figures for us? That’s not what’s important to me and so that’s kind of exactly what you’re saying. Like finding what’s really important and really valuable and this individual also has a daughter. So obviously it’s important for her to have time to spend with her and to have self-care and have enough rest. So do you feel like having the chronic illness or receiving that diagnosis affected this? 

Becca: Oh yeah. I think for folks who don’t have an infinite amount of energy and health that’s everybody really, but especially folks who are living with illness, living more simply and more minimally, it just makes the most sense because you’re just more intentional about what you’re using your time and energy for.

So it was a no-brainer for me as someone with chronic illness, because I just have to be more intentional about how I’m using my time and energy throughout the day. Because if I don’t, by the end of the day, I’m just going to be dead meat and maybe the next day I’m going to be dead meat. 

Carrie: It’s interesting because my husband, I got married last year in October and my husband calls me a minimalist, which I find kind of funny because I wouldn’t necessarily put that label on myself, but he really sees how I interact with stuff specifically for buying.

Like, I may see something and say, oh, that’s, cool or something, but I really don’t have space for that extra gadget in my kitchen. I mean, where would I put that? I just don’t know that I would really use that a whole lot, or I just don’t need that. You think about how many people have invested in multiple kitchen appliances that don’t pull them out of the cabinet or don’t use them.

I watched the documentary as you did as well and it really made me. Actually, the minimalists have a podcast I’ve listened to some of their podcasts episodes as well. And I appreciate some of their values that they repeat a lot to like using things, not people, the memories are not in the stuff like they talk about, not having to hold on to every family heirloom that you have because of your memory with your relative. 

So even though I don’t think that they say anything specifically about their faith, I do believe that some of those values can be translated over and aligned, with Christian values. And I imagine that you, you found that same thing and, and that was how you started, like writing on your blog.

Becca: Yeah at the time. So when I discovered minimalism, it was the end of 2017. So there, there really wasn’t like. I researched it afterward because I was like, oh, they talk the minimums, talk a lot about meaning and so the implication being, you’ll be able to find more meaning in your life when you’re living more simply and focusing on what’s most.

Which makes sense and I was like, oh, that’s really interesting because usually meaning is something that you find through religious tradition. And for me as a Christian, I found that a lot of what they were talking about aligns very well with Jesus’s teachings and what’s in scripture. And so I was like, I want to read more in-depth about this and at the time there really wasn’t anything out there. There were a couple of articles or blog posts or maybe a YouTube video here and there, but there was nothing in Greece and that’s so that’s why I ended up writing about it. Because I was like, okay, well, I can’t be the only one that’s interested in this intersection between the Christian faith and minimalism and I wasn’t, which is great, but it’s really interesting because like when you write, you really discover things about yourself while you’re writing, it’s like, that’s why people journal and things like that.

So the blog has really helped me discover things about why I accumulated stuff in the first place and why I say yes to things when I really shouldn’t and really helped me get at the core reasons why I do things that are not serving me well And that’s helped me live more minimally.

Carrie: Talk with us a little bit about that putting the pause button on getting new things, because everyone can go through their stuff or their closet and be like, yeah, I don’t need this. I’m getting rid of it, going to give it away, whatnot put it in the garage sale. But then next thing you know, six months later, they’re back in the same place with too much stuff.

So I’m curious, like what that process was like for you, like in terms of your evaluation of buying things or having to approach things differently. 

Becca: Yeah, one of the big things for me, and this is what I always tell people is that you have to find your why, your reason for, to live more simply because if you don’t do that and it’s just so like the decluttering movement. For example, it’s super trendy right now, basically, it’s just about getting rid of stuff which in itself is not bad. But like as you said, it’s not going to last, if you don’t get at the core reason why you want to simplify in the first place, because you’re just going to accumulate back the things that you got rid of eventually. So finding your personal why. 

Like, for me, it was spending more time with friends and family. It could be other things for other people. Maybe you want to go back to school or whatever. There’s a wide range of wise. You want to do this but find your why, and that will also help keep you motivated because it’s not super glamorous to minimize. It sounds cool and you get halfway through and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m going to die.

Carrie: A lot of work and I appreciate the transparency there. That’s good.

Becca: Yeah. Like everybody gets a wall at some point because it just works and it’s going a lot of times, it’s going counter-culturally and it’s going against what, how you lived previously. So it’s not only physical work, but it’s also mental, emotional, spiritual work because you’re literally shifting your worldview and your lifestyle.

So knowing why you’re doing it in the first place is going to help you get motivated to continue that process and then live it out, continue living it out. Because that’s the thing like decluttering is a one and done process. Like you get rid of stuff and you’re like, you’re done, but like you’re not done right.

It’s a constant journey that’s why I always call it the Christian minimalism journey because you’re constantly figuring out what adds value to your life and what matters most and how you can focus on that. Because a bachelor bachelorette is going to live out the minimalist lifestyle differently than someone who’s married and has three kids like that and that’s normal. So you have to kind of shift depending on your context. 

Carrie: I think that’s great. Hard for people with children who may receive a lot of gifts from grandparents. He has an uncle and next thing, birthday parties, Christmas, next thing they know, there’s just piles of stuff everywhere and kids typically do not want to get on the minimalism board.

So it’s like, if you can ward some of that off ahead of time, it’s probably helpful in encouraging relatives to buy experiences instead of things. Different opportunities for that time to spend time together.

Becca: Definitely and the earlier you can start the better, but it’s never too late with kids. Joshua Becker actually has a great book called clutter-free with kids kind of outlines a lot of this or younger to older kids, which I think is great. So I think there are ways that younger children and teenagers do actually want a more simple lifestyle. But you just are so used to the consumer culture around them, that it may be a little bit of a shift for them, just like it is for us. Right but I think it’s definitely something that can be incorporated with kids. 

Carrie: For you, what does being a minimalist look like on a practical day-to-day level?  

Becca: Yeah, an intentional living which sounds kind of cliche, but I’m literally aware of how I’m making decisions around consumption and spending and money habits and ways. I use my time and energy and resources. Like I’m just very much aware of how I do that and how I make decisions around that. How I make those decisions has completely shifted since becoming a minimalist. It’s not that I don’t spend money and I don’t own things. I think some people hear you’re minimalist and it’s like, they picture this like room with one chair and that’s it, you know?

Carrie: Right. No pictures on the wall. 

Becca: Right? Like obviously I own stuff. I have pictures on the wall. I’m currently packing to move. So I own things, but I own less things because I’m much more intentional with what I bring into my life and that includes all things. That includes things that include people that include time commitments. Media usage, I’m just very intentional with how I use all of that. And so for me, it’s a good productive day if I’ve been intentional and I made some time for rest and renewal as well. 

Carrie: That’s good. Did you use to have a lot busier schedule and just kind of say yes to all the opportunities and pile them on?

Becca: Yeah, 100%. Like I was like, I was one of those I’ll rest when I’m dead type people and it was not good for me. I mean, I felt awful all the time. I was exhausted. I felt burnt out. I just wanted to disappear on a desert island and that’s not normal. We shouldn’t feel like that. 

Carrie: Right, so much goodness there in terms of rest and Jesus getting away to reflect, spend time with God and really, if you look at the life of Jesus, He was very intentional about how He spent His time, who He spent His time with. I always find it interesting that in one of the early chapters of Mark, where people were coming to be healed and they were trying to get to Jesus and Jesus, looked up and left and we look at that and we’re like, that doesn’t seem right.

But it was just, He couldn’t do everything in his humanity. Like He couldn’t meet with every single person, he would have been there for years and years just doing that. He could have set up a little, but, and just had people come to Him. But that wasn’t the mission. So you had to get out and be on the move and I look at that and I think, a lot of times we try to help everybody with everything and we think that that’s like a Christian thing. 

Oh, well, I’ve got to do all these good things for other people. But the reality is we need to be intentional to like our calling and what God has asked us to do globally as Christians, but also specifically. And if we miss that, because we’re looking at every single opportunity to help people, then we’re missing the boat there.

Becca: I think especially like churchgoing folks tend to be like over overextended. I don’t know why that’s a thing in Christian culture, but it totally is and that’s not even what Jesus said when God created the world. God gave us the Sabbath as a gift to re-ask and connect with God and our loved ones. And like, so we’re not even created to keep going 24/7 all the time. Like we’re not made to do that and so if we do that, we’re not, it’s not going to go well for us. 

I learned that the hard way and especially with my chronic illness, that is not even doable for me. So making sure that there’s built-in time for rest and renewal, even when it’s a busy time, obviously we go through spurts where it’s busier than others. And so making sure that you build in that time, so you’re not getting burnt out.

Carrie: Sure. So we talked a little bit about some small steps that people can take to get started and you talked about I think before getting rid of stuff, like finding your why, why do you want to live more simply or more minimalistic. Looking at that, maybe what domains need to change? Is it about the stuff? Is it about how I’m spending my time? Am I overextended financially? And then what are maybe some other small steps that you feel like people can take if they’re just really beginning this journey? 

Becca: Yeah. I always encourage people to start small. I think it can be very overwhelming. Like if the problem is stuff and you’re looking at a whole house filled with stuff, obviously, you’re never going to get started if you’re like, oh my gosh, I have a whole house full of stuff. I can get this big paralysis by looking at all the things you need to do. So for us, it was stuff for us. We started literally 10 to 15 minutes a day and it was easy and it was quick and you could see results really quickly and it helped motivate us to continue more because you can see tangible results.

And then when we had more time on our hands, like a Saturday, we like tackled that storage unit. I talked about it before it took many Saturdays, but finding ways to set aside time to do it and even if it’s just 5, 10 minutes a day, just start. Like, if it’s your social media usage, for example, I’ve had some people start there and being like, okay, I’m going to let myself scroll through social media for a half-hour tonight, and then I’m done.

And just being more intentional with that, because we’ve all been there over scrolling through, and it’s been like an hour and you’re like, where did that hour ago? Then you’ve lost an hour. You’re never getting that hour back and it’s probably not the best use of time. It might be if you found some cool stuff, but it’s still an hour out of your life. Just find ways to be intentional and start small. 

Carrie: Yes, that’s good. So we were talking about when I intro the episode that oftentimes having a lot of stuff can lead to anxiety. Have you seen in terms of other people that you’ve interacted with or yourself personally, like a reduction in anxiety from reducing the amount of stuff or living more intentionally?

Becca: Oh, definitely. Yeah. I have a lot of folks who either have anxiety disorders that are diagnosed or feel anxious regularly. And once they cleared their space, whether that be physical, mental, emotional, social, they find that they have breathing space basically and the anxiety has lessened a little bit. Obviously, if you’re diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, it takes a lot more than that, but it can at least help the process of finding ways to handle that anxiety. 

I know that for me, I feel a lot less anxious when I don’t have as much stuff or clutter in my brain or around me. They’ve done some studies around this to show that when there are less clutter people feel less anxious, less stressed. And so finding ways to make that space for yourself is really important. 

Carrie: I find that true in my office, now I have a home office. And if it’s got a lot of paperwork stacked up or things that I’ve put to the side and haven’t dealt with, I just noticed that I feel more cramped in there, less free. I find myself trying to work in other areas of the house instead of being in the office, which is where I need to be in. So I can definitely attest to that. That’s true for me. And obviously, I think what we’re talking about here as well. We’re not necessarily diving into hoarding or anything of that nature, which is something that’s more extreme.

We’re just talking about the normal day-to-day American westernized way of living, unfortunately, that we often so easily, because it’s all around us in our culture. We just kind of fall into it and we don’t even realize how it’s affecting us until we get to a certain point 

Becca: And actually the typical American house on average has 300,000 things.

Carrie: Wow. Isn’t that a lot of things?

Becca: It’s insane. 

Carrie: Wow. I did not know that. I know for me, I’ve gone through different seasons and periods of my life where I had foster children and I had this kid stuff around. And then you wouldn’t know what ages of children you’re going to get. So I had these different toys and clothes in the attic. Then I went through a divorce and then I got remarried. My husband moved in. It’s interesting. Now we’re in kind of a similar season where we’re trying to decide what’s most important and I’m trying to be sensitive to his stuff and not just say like, ah, we don’t really need that.

So I’m curious for you, maybe you could talk a little bit about relationally in terms of working with this with your husband. Like how have you two been able to come together to achieve the common goal? Did you have certain criteria for things as you were looking through them? 

Becca: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I always tell people, it’s funny, you bring that up because I always tell people do not minimize another person you’re living with stuff because it doesn’t end well, never ends well, let them deal with their own stuff.

So I always encourage people and this is something that we did is we dealt with our own stuff because obviously, we were dealing with stuff first and our own time commitments. Obviously, time commitments when we have them together. We have to have those conversations. If it’s stuff that we both use, obviously we talked through it and see if it adds value to our lives and if we want to keep it in our lives. 

But keeping communication open is really key and that’s for anyone you’re living with. Right? So like it could be any family member. It could be a roommate, especially if I’ve had friends who started the minimalist lifestyle and live with. And their roommates are not minimalist, right. Finding ways like, okay, well, my own space is going to be my own space, but then also like trying to find ways to live in this way in communal spaces where other folks may not be living the same lifestyle. So just finding ways to do that and what we’ve actually seen is that a lot of times when people start living more minimally, other people see the benefits and then they start doing it after the fact.

So even if the folks you’re living with aren’t on board right away, they may be doing it later. So just do what you’re doing and they may see for themselves that it’s worth it. 

Carrie: That’s good. We had a yard sale recently from just combining two households of two adults. And obviously, we couldn’t keep everything and we redecorated the house. I got let go of my office and just have my home office. So that was definitely a big downside and it was interesting to see my husband go through this process. Because I think he struggles a little bit more maybe than I do with getting rid of things. And he said, I really like such and such picture, but it just doesn’t fit with the decor of our house anymore.

Or I really enjoyed that and I think maybe somebody else will enjoy that as well. So there are, there’s something about being able to let things go and bless other people maybe that can use it more than you can. 

Becca: Yeah, that was a big thing for us. So we have a son who died and we moved a couple of times with all the baby stuff because we knew we were planning on adopting at some point probably. But we didn’t know when and so we were just holding on to all this. And we realized after a few years of that when it was sitting in a storage unit that I talked about like there are families that could use this stuff right now, and we’re just collecting dust over here. 

And so we don’t eat it at all and know full well that when we do adopt and we’ve started the adoption process now that we would most likely have to get it again. But we knew that was going to be a few years down the road and that we could save up to do that. So we made sure that helped us let go of it because we knew that there were families that would be using it right now and getting used out of it, as opposed to us holding onto it for years and years and years for when we’re going to use it again.

Carrie: Yes. That was something that I had to help evaluate for myself after, the foster kids left and everything. And I said, well, I have to have my space according to the life I’m living right now, not the future life I hope to have. And I don’t want my house to be full of stuff that’s just representative of the past life that I’ve lived. It has to have this balance of just being present and being in the moment. And what does this fit in with the life I’m living right now was a question that I asked myself a lot and it helped me determine which stuff needed to stay and which you could go. 

Becca: That’s fantastic that you did that naturally because most of the time we hold on to it either because it made sense in the past or because we think it might make sense in the future. And like in reality, most of those in future things don’t actually happen in the past. It doesn’t, it’s not serving us now. So being like, okay, is this serving me now? Is this adding value to my life right now? And if it’s not, if it’s asked for the future, it’s okay to get rid of it.

Carrie: Right. I might need this one-day mindset. 

Becca: Yeah. And like that just in case thing, like never ends up happening like 99% of the time. Right. 

Carrie: Right. So as we’re getting towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask every guest to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Becca: Yeah. So, I went on a three-week retreat to Costa Rica, which was not a Christian retreat. It was an alternative wellness retreat, which was a whole new experience for me. I had not really dealt with the grief around not really being able to have biological children. So my chronic illness, I have mast cell activation syndrome. It’s genetics. So it’s past, it’s 50 50 shot. that’ll get passed on if I were to have a biologic and try to have another biological child again, and it’s more severe every time it’s passed on. 

So I could in all consciousness, like give birth to a child that would be disabled. So I don’t feel comfortable doing that personally. So we had felt called my husband and I to adopt at some point. Anyway, it’s just, we’re just adopting up. But I didn’t feel, I wasn’t ready to let go of the fact that I wasn’t going to have biological children, and in Christian circles, there’s a lot of weird baggage around, women and childbirth and weird stuff around that had to work through. 

And I just kind of stuffed it down and not dealt with it. And so when this opportunity arose to go on this retreat, I said, okay and I did it. And I came out of it and I was ready to adopt, like I had worked through all that stuff, which was really cool.

You can actually watch this retreat and my experience, it was filmed. It’s called Last Resort. It was filmed. It was originally aired on PBS network, so you can watch it on demand there, but now it’s also streaming on HBO max. If anyone is interested in watching that, but that gave me so much more hope because I just wasn’t ready to take the next step to adopt.

And now, we already started the process. We’re really excited. We did all the educational classes and we just really excited to see what child God wants us to parent. 

Carrie: That’s great. We have to be able to allow God to fully close one door so that we can be ready to receive and open that next door. I’m glad that you were able to just receive from God on that and be able to fully process through those emotions. I’m sure we’re pretty. 

Becca: Yeah. And like it was interesting for me because I think there’s this mentality sometimes in Christian circles that like something needs to be Christian in order for God to work through it. And in reality, like God can work through, like God’s God. And so like, I, even though the retreat I went to wasn’t necessarily Christian and like it had indigenous cultural practices and it like, God worked through that so that I could then be ready to adopt. So I think finding ways to listen for God in places that you wouldn’t necessarily expect.

Carrie: Yeah. Yes. That’s a good point to bring up. I’m glad that you talked about that because God works in all kinds of different ways through different people and even people that don’t know him. Well, thank you for giving us the gift of your time today and I’ve really enjoyed having this conversation and I know it’s going to be a positive impact on so many of our listeners. 

Becca: Great. Well, thanks so much for having me and I hope everyone is able to live a little bit more simply.


48. The Christian Meditative Practice of Centering Prayer with Rich Lewis

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

Today on the show, I’m privileged to be interviewing Rich Lewis, a speaker, coach and author.  Rich has been practicing centering prayer since 2013 as a way to relate and pray to God. He even wrote a book about it. 

Episode Highlights:

  • What is centering prayer and how do we do it?
  • What are the purposes and benefits of centering prayer?
  • What are the challenges in practicing centering prayer? 
  • Basic steps of centering prayer
  • Rich Lewis’ Book:  Sitting with God: A Journey to Your True Self Through Centering Prayer

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I dive deep into the transformative power of centering prayer with author and speaker Rich Lewis. We explore how this meditative practice can help reduce anxiety, manage OCD symptoms, and deepen our relationship with God.

I’ve discussed prayer and mindfulness in past episodes, but today, we focus on centering prayer—a practice that has intrigued me for its potential to quiet the mind and bring us closer to God. Rich shares his journey into centering prayer, explaining how he discovered this practice and how it has helped him find peace amidst life’s noise.

Rich breaks down the practice of centering prayer, a form of silent, wordless meditation created by Trappist monks. By using a simple sacred word or image, we consent to God’s presence, letting go of distractions and becoming more aware of His actions within us. I find this practice fascinating, especially in our busy world where silence can often feel uncomfortable. For those of us struggling with anxiety or OCD, centering prayer offers a way to quiet racing thoughts and embrace stillness with God.

Rich emphasizes that, even if we face challenges like racing thoughts or the feeling that we don’t have time, the benefits of centering prayer unfold over time. He shares how this practice can actually give us back time by helping us focus on what truly matters. By surrendering control and letting go during our sits, we can face each day with more peace and clarity.

Join us as we talk about how centering prayer is not just a form of meditation but a deep, spiritual practice that opens us up to God’s presence, helping us cultivate inner peace, confidence, and clarity.

Links and Resources:

Rich Lewis
Sitting with God: A Journey to Your True Self Through Centering Prayer

More Episodes to Listen to:

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, Episode 48. This is your host, Carrie Bock. On our show, what we do is focus on reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. In one of our very early episodes, we talked about prayer. We’ve also talked on the show about mindfulness in the past. Both of those were great episodes. I encourage you to go back and listen if you haven’t heard those. 

And today we’re talking with author and speaker Rich Lewis. A meditative practice called centering prayer. So I’m really interested in learning more about this and how it might be beneficial for people with anxiety.

Carrie: So thanks for coming in and talking with us Rich. I really appreciate it.

Rich: Sure. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. 

Carrie: So how did you get connected with and interested in centering prayer? 

Rich: I stumbled into it in late 2013 in a book. So prior to late 2013, I’d had read books by Carl McColman and he talked a lot about silence and how powerful and transforming it was. But I don’t remember him talking about a practice to do in this silence. So at that point, I just sit in silence but do not really have a practice and this was probably in 2012 and 2013. Then I was simply browsing Amazon looking for a book to read and I came across Amos Smith’s book, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s mystic roots.

In his book, he talked about a practice called centering prayer that he had been doing, I think for about 15 years at that point. So that immediately intrigued me because I was looking for something to do in this silence, which may sound funny, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do in silence.

So I began investigating centering prayer and obviously, his book talked about it. Then I began reading other books on centering prayer. I started practicing centering kind of dabbling in it in late 2013 and then decided to, I’ll call it, jump into centering prayer, swimming, swimming pool on June 1st, 2014 and practice it more regularly on a daily basis.

So that’s how it happened. I’ve been attracted to silence and then I came across a practice that you can do in the silence in late 2013 and started exploring it. It resonated with me and I’ve been doing it since June of 2014. 

Carrie: I know silence can be intimidating for some people is, especially in the beginning. Maybe they feel uncomfortable with it. I’m curious for you when you started out was surges, like this internal craving in your spirit for more silence. Just a sense of like, life is so busy, so noisy, so much going on, like you needed that space. 

Rich: It just intrigued me. I guess I was looking for a new way to relate to God and a new way to pray to God. I guess I was all, I always considered myself an introvert, so I didn’t mind being alone at times. I go into crowds and have friends, but I don’t mind being alone or taking a walk alone or going in nature or going on a walker or a bike ride by myself. Since I had read silence was powerful. I thought it was the way to sit with myself and another neat way to just sit with God, rather than talk out loud to God. So it kind of intrigued me. 

Carrie: Okay. What is centering prayer exactly? How do you describe it to other people? 

Rich: Centering prayer has been around since what was created in the early 1970s by three Trappist monks. So, three Catholic priests saw a transcendental meditation going on and they wanted something for the Christian community. So they created centering prayer and the method itself actually was found by Fr. William Manager. One of the three Trappist monks kind of found the method of centering prayer in an old book called the Cloud of Unknowing.

And then the three of them, the two other priests, including himself sort of refined to practice and started teaching it to priests, clergy, and rolling it out to the public. So it’s been around, I guess, at this point for about 50 years. It’s considered meditation and a relationship with God and it’s silent wordless prayer.

I’ll describe how you do it. The guidelines are you sit comfortably with your eyes closed and then to begin your silent sit, you introduce what’s called a sacred word interiorly, and it really means you’re consenting to the presence and actions of God within. The word usually is anywhere from one to three syllables and it could be anything – love, ocean, God, Jesus, some type of short syllable word. Whenever you begin engaging your thoughts as you’re sitting there. What I mean by that is whenever you begin thinking about what you did before your sets or thinking about what you’re going to do when you get up from your sets, you realize that you’re beginning to engage your thoughts and plan and plot and that’s you’re supposed to let go of them.

So you’ve then re-introduced the sacred word. Let go of these engaged thoughts to bring you back to the present moment. Then you let go of the sacred word itself as well And you do that during the duration of the time that you’ve decided to sit, whether it’s five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes, you kind of repeat that.

It’s not a mantra. So there are mantra-based practices. Centering in this with centering prayers just used when it is needed. The last thing I’ll say about the sacred word is that it doesn’t have to be a word. Like if you’re an auditory person, it may work well. I started with a word and then I discovered I’m really more of a visual person. So I used an image and I would kind of picture the image and I wouldn’t like to paint it out and draw it out. But I would just think of that picture and think of that image to bring myself back. So if you’re a visual person, If you’re more of a physical person, you can use your breath. And then lastly, some people want to keep their eyes open, or they’re just afraid they’ll fall asleep.

So they keep their eyes open and stare at a spot four or five feet in the distance somewhere and kind of focus on that during this sit. So that’s a little bit about what is centering prayer. It is meditation, then a relationship with God where you are consenting to the presence and actions of God within and how long it’s been around and how you do it.

Carrie: Okay. So when people are selecting a sacred word or picture of that nature that they can use and kind of go back to, to redirect themselves to the practice, do they usually use the same one each time, or does it depend on the day? 

Rich: That’s a good point. So you should use the same word or visual image during the sit. Don’t change it because then you’ll spend more time in what’s my next sacred method instead of really sitting with God. So use the same method during these sets. Then if you discover, you want to switch a word, or I think I want to switch to an image, do that on your next sit. That is what we recommend and then kind of find the method that works best for you and then stick with it. So, as I said, I started with a word and then I switched to an image and I’ve been using the same image for years at this point. 

Carrie: What are some challenges that people run into when they start this practice? 

Rich: I guess the first thing they say is, they think maybe they’re failing at it because they have racing thoughts and they’re using their method numerous times. If you show up, you’re doing it right. So they may think that they’re failing because they’ve used their sacred method a hundred times or 500 times. If you show up, you’re doing it right. So that’s kind of one thing people say, and then another thing, some people will, they’ll say, I don’t have time for this.

I challenged them to do this sit anyhow. So for example, I would challenge people, make it. The first thing you do is you begin your day and then get up and, and start your day. Then I encourage people to add a second sit and I think that’s where some people will say, well, I don’t have time, I’m too busy and I’m not arguing. But I’ll say it has a way of giving you back time from my experience. Now I stop what I’m doing and do a second sit right before lunch, no matter how busy I am. Then when I look back at the day, I discovered that I was very productive and I got done what I needed to get done.

And in fact, I really needed this sit because the benefit of the sit is that you’re bringing this let-go posture that you do in centering prayer into your everyday life. You’re letting go of the tasks that you don’t need to do and focusing on the things that you need to do. So has a way of giving you back time, but you don’t know that until you actually try it. So that’s another thing that people will say, I don’t have time to do it. And I’ll say, I think actually it has a way of giving you back time if you trust the process and trust your sits. 

Carrie: I imagine that if you feel calmer after this practice or more at peace, and maybe your mind is more clear to prioritize like you were saying of what’s the most important thing that I actually need to get done today and what is really inconsequential or it can wait till tomorrow.

Rich: Right. That’s exactly what happens in the gesture or the posture of letting go and opening to the moment, opening to God, opening to life comes with you outside of your sit. You take that same gesture or posture with you, as you get on with your day. I have found it calms me down, slows me down and helps me focus on what I need to do, and lets go of what doesn’t have to happen today.

Carrie: I imagine that you have different experiences on different days with this, but what are some of the experiences or the takeaways that you’ve received from these moments of centering prayer? 

Rich: So well during them, it’s not your even special life go of whatever your experience is. So if you’re experiencing joy and peace, that’s wonderful. But you are really supposed to let go of that. Come back to your sacred method and just continuously open to the presence and actions of God within. Obviously, you may experience painful thoughts because a lot of times things can come up.

Our bodies and I guess our minds hold a lot of repressed thoughts. Some of them we don’t even know we have, and they start coming up. When we do sit, other times it forces us to come to terms with some of our things and they come up. So we are kind of let go of them and come back to the present moment with our sacred word. It’s more so outside of centering prayer is where you notice the benefits of your practice. During the practice, our job is just to show up and let go of us and all of our thoughts, all of our emotions, and be open to the presence and actions of God.

I think of it as reverse prayer. God is praying for me, what I need, and that can be many things. It could be inner peace, calm, confidence, wisdom for tasks, nudges to get out of my comfort zone and try and do new things. So all of this is happening during my sit, and I’m noticing it’s outside of my sit where I’m noticing I feel more confident or I feel more energized or I seem to have wisdom for a task that earlier I didn’t know how to do or I feel like I’m being nudged to try and do something new. That scares me a little bit, but I know it’s going to help me grow. So it’s outside of your practices where you notice kind of the fruits of the practice from God, quite frankly.

Carrie: So it’s an opportunity for the holy spirit to minister to your spirit.

Rich: Right. I mean, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re sitting with God and letting God act in you and just resting in the rest of God and trusting that God knows exactly what you need for even when you get up from your set.

Carrie: I really like that because there are times where we may feel lost spiritually and we don’t even know what to pray or what to ask God for. But just like you’re saying, God knows exactly what we need, even before we ask that’s scriptural. So if we take that opportunity to commune with God and say, okay, I’m here and I know that God is here, then things can happen that are probably even outside of our awareness.

Rich: Right and that encourages people. By all means, don’t give up your other prayer forms and I pray other ways as well. Just add a silent meditation, prayer like this, and see how it can enrich and complement your other prayer forms and enrich your prayer life. If you think about it, often we might sit with a friend or someone special or spouse and you don’t always need to be talking. You’re just together taking a walk or together sitting and we’re together watching a movie. It’s kind of the same thing you’re sitting with God and you don’t always have to have words with God. You just sit with God and it’s like sitting with a friend, a special friend’s words aren’t always needed.

Carrie: I like that and there’s the truth to that. Tell us about when people are first getting started. Is there a length that you recommend that they start with?

Rich: Sure. The temple of outreach is the main center and prayer organization that was created in 1984. They suggest two sits or get yourself up to two sits of 20 minutes. But obviously, that could be rather difficult for people and so I suggest taking baby steps. The first thing you do is you get up in the morning before you do anything. And then two, make it five minutes and then begin your day, and then slowly work your way yourself up from 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 minutes.

I then encourage people to do the same thing with the second sit and take a look at your life. Where does the sit best belong? Is it before lunch? Is it before dinner? Is it after dinner? Is it later in the evening? Only you can know when it makes the most sense for you and then take the same approach with that sit if you have to start with five minutes and work your way up to 20 minutes.

The last thing I’ll say is they suggest 20 minutes because sometimes they can take you that long, just as still you’re in the inner voice is going on in your head. But in my opinion, any silence is better than nothing. So there are times where my first sit is 20 minutes and then my one before lunch is 7 minutes or 10 minutes. I think it’s more important to take the time for silence because any silence is better than no silence in my opinion. 

Carrie: Okay. So what are some of the other benefits that you’ve seen in your life as you’ve been on this journey of centering prayer? 

Rich: When I think about myself before centering prayer, then after centering prayer, even though, obviously right now into the present moment, it definitely has changed me. I enjoyed life then, but I think I’m more excited about life simply because I think I’m more present in the present moment and enjoying the present moment, whatever that is. So a practice such as centering prayer helps you kind of let go and be present, whether it’s for the task you’re doing or enjoying or listening to the person in front of you, who’s talking or taking a walk and enjoying the scenery.

It’s helped me have a bigger excitement for life and to be more present for life and more present for people. It definitely gives me wisdom for tasks. I’ll have things just pop into my head during the day that I couldn’t figure out earlier. Some of them are, as one example what my daughter works at Wawa and it was a Saturday and I’m driving home after picking her up and a solution popped into my head on SA I wasn’t even thinking about it. The solution to a problem at work popped into my head. So I tried it quickly when I get home. I didn’t plan on working on Saturday, but I quickly tried it and it worked. So I’ve seemed to notice sometimes solutions to things start popping into my head that I was struggling with. I attribute it to my centering prayer practice and kind of clearing the clutter.

So that kind of stuff. I think I’m a much more confident person and I’m definitely more willing to get out of my comfort zone and try and do new things, which is really what I’ve been doing since I’ve been practicing, centering prayer. I’ve created my website and I get out and teach people. I work with people one-on-one and I’ve written a book and I get out and talk to small groups or even one-on-one about the book. These are the things that I probably don’t think I would have done previously. I think they would’ve made me nervous just the idea of doing all those things would have made me very nervous. I never would even never have tried them, but centering prayer has given me a boost of confidence or God has given me a boost of confidence just to trust me and together we continue to move forward. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. I think that’s great and that’s so much has changed for you. We willl certainly put the links into the show notes regarding this, but I know that you wrote a book on centering prayer. Tell us a little bit about that. If people are interested, in reading more and getting their practice.

Rich: The book’s called Sitting with God: A Journey To Your True Self Through Centering Prayer and it’s hard to believe that next month it’ll be out one year. What caused me to write the book was, I had mentioned earlier that Amos Smith, I discovered centering prayer in his book that I read in late 2013. Then I began kind of an email dialogue with Amos via his website and then we became friends along the way.

I began initially working with him off of his site. He’s the one that actually challenged me to write a book. He saw that I had a big interest in centering prayer and he thought his book was more academic and that I might be able to approach it a little bit more laid back than his book did. He actually challenged me to write a book. So at the time, I thought he was crazy because I had never really written anything long, longer than six, seven pages in college. He challenged me to think about what is centering prayer and what does it mean to you and just write single sentences.

So I did that and then I came back to him with about, I remember 15 or so sentences and then in his mind he said, there’s your chapters, go write your book. I didn’t think it was as simple as that. So I picked one of them and then I took a couple of weeks to write that chapter, sent it to him and I just wanted to get his reaction. To my surprise, he thought it was fresh, neat and had something interesting to say. So at that point, it dawned to me that, well, maybe I really can do this. So I kind of checked in with my wife and I said, how do you feel about me taking time to write a book? And she said, do it. So I decided to write the book.

I didn’t want to take time away from my family so this is pre-COVID-19. The book actually got written mostly on Saturdays. Believe it or not. Saturday mornings in Starbucks, I would get up at about 5:30 in the morning, put on a baseball cap, grab my laptop, go to the local Starbucks, get a cup of coffee, open the laptop and that’s really where the book got written over. Probably two and a half years or so, because then the next step after that was really kind of editing the book and then approaching publishers to see who would want to publish it.

So that’s really how the book happened. It happened because Amos challenged me to, and I’m really glad he did because those Saturday mornings were neat spiritual exercises for me. Other than the one chapter I did, which talks about Jesus and what did the scholars say we know what is true about Him, where I had to do some research, listen to some of the scholars, and read some of them taking notes down. I then decided from my notes and what am I going to put in that chapter.  In the other chapters, I knew basically what I wanted to write about, and I just needed to let the words naturally flow from my heart, to my fingertips, and onto the laptop, so to speak. So it was a neat spiritual exercise and that’s how the book got done. 

Carrie: Okay. So towards the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests this question. What is a story of hope? Like a time where you received hope from God or another person? 

Rich: So this is going back to about 1997. I’ve been married for five years at that point and my wife and I, joked around about this, that we’re on the five-year plan. We wanted to be married without kids for five years, but then after five years, we wanted to have a family and we weren’t able to, it wasn’t working the natural way. So we decided we needed to explore other ways to have children.

We did a lot of praying to God and the pastor of our church actually knew somebody within the church that was also adopting and they were adopting from Russia. So we were put in contact actually with that agency. Normally, it takes a lot longer, but in our case, it only took us about six months from contacting the agency, doing all the stuff you needed to do, and then flying over, to pick up your child.

It actually took six months and in six months of beginning contacting them, we adopted our first son, Benjamin Lewis. We actually saw him on his first birthday. So we adopted him the day after his birthday because I remember celebrating his first birthday in the adoption where he was living and then we actually legally adopted him. I believe it was the next day that was something where it was a lot of hope and praying about we wanted to have a family and God was telling us that I want you to adopt a child. Obviously, we adopted Ben, and then we went back to Russia in 2002 and adopted Gabriela.

So Ben is now going on 25 and Gabriela, we adopted her in 2002, she’s now 20. Then they say this happens, you’re just relaxed or whatever. We were able to have children and Joshua came along and that we have a natural Joshua or biological son, but all three of them are our children and they all love each other and we don’t consider them biological versus adopted. They’re just our three kids. Josh was 13. So we have a 13-year old, a 20-year-old, and a 24-year-old. That’s what God wanted us to do. God wanted the first two. He wanted us to help two children that needed a home and we did, and then he wanted us to obviously have Joshua. So we did. 

Carrie: So you are triply blessed with children.

Rich: It was a neat experience. I think when all said done, I think I was in Russia five times, never expected that I would be visiting Russia five times for with this adoption process. But now, it was a wonderful experience and we’re blessed with three great,  still call them kids, even though the two of them are not quite kids anymore. Three great kids. 

Carrie: Awesome. Thank you for sharing that story. That’s a good one. Well, I appreciate you educating me and our listeners on centering prayer. This definitely sounds like something I want to add to my practice even if it’s just in a small way and maybe it’ll grow and build from there. I hope that some of our listeners try this out as well. So thanks for coming and sharing with us. 

Rich: Thanks for having me, and hopefully this was helpful for your community. So thank

47. Why Did God Allow Me to go Through That? with Jennifer Harshman

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

Today, I am privileged to be interviewing Jennifer Harshman, an author and owner of a publishing agency.  Jennifer shares with us her personal story of overcoming trauma, how she wrestled with God and how those awful experiences formed her character. 

Episode Summary:

  • Jennifer’s childhood
  • Hating God for not putting a stop to it
  • Moving away and cutting ties with family members
  • Staying connected with God in the midst of trauma.
  • How Jennifer dealt with her traumatic experience.
  • How God used her story in a positive light. 
  • Jennifer’s Book: Better Days Journal: For anxiety and depression, ADHD and autism

Episode Summary:

Many of my clients struggle with deep-rooted anxiety and OCD, often stemming from past trauma. One of the most challenging questions they wrestle with is, Why does God allow suffering? In this episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I sit down with Jennifer Harshman, a publishing expert with a powerful testimony of resilience and faith.

Jennifer endured severe abuse throughout her childhood, leading her to question God’s presence and purpose in her pain. Despite facing unimaginable hardships, she clung to faith—even in moments of deep anger and despair. Over time, she discovered how God was working behind the scenes, transforming her suffering into a source of healing for others.

Jennifer’s story reminds us that while we may not always understand why we experience certain hardships, there is hope. God doesn’t waste our pain. Even when we can’t see it in the moment, He is shaping us, strengthening us, and using our stories to touch the lives of others.

If you’ve ever felt abandoned by God in your suffering or struggled to find meaning in your trauma, this episode is for you. It’s a powerful reminder that healing is possible and that God can turn even the most painful parts of our lives into something beautiful.

🎧 Listen now and let Jennifer’s story inspire you to keep trusting, keep healing, and keep believing that your story isn’t over yet.

Harshman Services
Better Days Journal: For anxiety and depression, ADHD and autism

Explore Related Episode:

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD Episode 47. So as many of you know, I often work with clients who have experienced a wide variety of traumatic experiences. Often, these traumatic experiences are the layers that are underneath their anxiety and OCD. I thought it would be great to do a show on why does God allow certain things to happen in our life.

And so today we have a personal story of overcoming trauma and working through those spiritual wrestlings of why God allowed her to go through certain things and how He allowed that and used it for good in her life. So today I’m speaking with Jennifer Harshman who owns a small writing and publishing service agency. She helps a wide variety of authors through the publishing process, which I’m sure is quite a process from what I’ve heard from authors. 

Carrie: Jennifer, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show and tell your story. 

Jennifer: Thank you for having me, Carrie. 

Carrie: So tell us a little bit about why you wanted to come on and share your story on the podcast.

Jennifer: I feel a lot of people who struggle and grapple with the question about how can a good and holy God allow such terrible things to happen in the world. I have been through what I would say is more than my fair share of that terrible stuff and so I think that I have a good handle on how to make some good use out of those things and how the whole experience can be transformative and how it can be a good thing, looking back.

Carrie: Okay. Tell us what was your childhood like.

Jennifer: They can’t put the content into movies because it’s that bad. I was severely abused in every way that you can imagine. From the time I was born to the time I escaped my home just after I had turned 18, if you can think of it, that happened and probably more. So I don’t know how much you want to get into that, because I know that hearing about some things can be very triggering to people.

Carrie: Right. Sure. So I imagine that it’s so double whammy when you’re in that type of environment, because not only are you having awful things happen to you. You’re also not having anyone provide any kind of emotional support or encouragement or needs being met, kind of those trauma wounds and also the attachment wounds.

Jennifer: Well, there was one place where I felt like I could be successful and that I had at least some measure of protection and safety. So that’s where I excelled. 

Carrie: Did anyone suspect what was going on at home? 

Jennifer: Everyone knew because I was one of those people who broke the rule of “don’t tell anyone”, and a lot of narcissistic family systems and in a lot of abuse cases, there’s this intense fear of calling people. Usually, the abuser is the one who instills that fear in us because they say, “if you tell this, bad things will happen”. I didn’t care. It was so bad. I wanted it to stop no matter what. So everyone knew, but my family members were well connected enough that every time it went to court, it was instantly thrown out.

Carrie: Wow. So major things were covered up and excused. Wow. Was that hard for you to get out of? How did you get out and just be on your own at 18? 

Jennifer: I had some skills and I got a job and worked multiple jobs and I just scratched and clawed and finally found people that I could relate to and depend on and I started to build my own family. 

Carrie: Yes. I’ve had many clients who have had to do that because unfortunately, the situations were so severe. They had to cut all ties with their family. That doesn’t happen in all cases, but in some of the more severe abuse cases where people aren’t willing to acknowledge their behavior, then sometimes that’s the only option that people have in order to stay safe.

And to heat all from everything that’s happened in that process, how did you learn about God or become a Christian? 

Jennifer: Well, I hadn’t been raised in the church, but going through all of those things that I went through. I was praying and I was crying out to God constantly. Give me a way out of this, make these people stop, make the police actually do something and it seemed like He just didn’t and just didn’t. It got to the point where I attempted suicide multiple times because I just wanted it to stop and I wanted to hate God. I was so angry with Him for not putting a stop to it. When we’re young and even when we’re older, maybe we are one person with one perspective and we’re from a certain point of view. We can’t see everything that God can see.

And so here I was in my little bubble, seeing only the things that I could see, and I had no idea how any of that could be something good. It seemed awful. How could this possibly be for my good? And I saw scripture verse, “All things work together for good, for those who are, who love God and are called according to His purpose.” And I was like, well, I love God. I think I’m called according to His purpose. Why isn’t He doing something? How can this be good? 

Well, now years and years later, that’s very different and I can see all of the good that can come from things like this, and all I can see is a lot of the good that has come from it. We can’t see everything. There are ripples that we will never know about. I’ve been on a lot of podcast interviews. I don’t know who all listens. I don’t know how it may affect them or help them and I may never know that and that’s okay. 

Carrie: Sure. Absolutely. So there was this sense where you talked about, like, I wanted to hate God. What kept you from hating God? Obviously, you got to a very, very dark place, but there was a part of you that was so connected to Him.

Jennifer: Yes and I don’t know that it was necessarily something in me. I think that’s one of those instances where we say, but for the grace of God, like He kept that connection like I wanted to. I think it’s kind of like a kid, you get mad at mom. You might say, I hate you, but you still have that feeling of connection and that even under all of that mess, your mom still loved you. I think that’s what it was. It was just that constant and then my spiritual health gradually improved from that low point.

Carrie: What was that process like of getting help for dealing with these traumatic experiences? Like did you go to therapy? Did you read self-help books? 

Jennifer: Yes, I did all of that and I also went to college to get a degree in psychology to help me figure out all the mess in my family system. And how can people do those kinds of things and figure out how to heal myself with the help of therapists with the help of books. It was a long road. I don’t want anyone to think that “Oh gosh, okay, you can go through all this horrible stuff, and in a month, snap your fingers and everything’s okay.” It tends to take a long time and I still have what I call baggage. I still have some issues that I’m working on with my current family, my husband and my kids, and people that I have chosen to be kind of like adopted sisters and adopted brothers to me.

Carrie: I think that’s a good point to make because sometimes people say, okay, well, I walked away from that experience. It’s not going on anymore. And so, therefore, it shouldn’t affect me, but those psychological scars most often impact relationships as where those things tend to show up. So it takes time to work through those things.

We all have some level of baggage that we’re working through in our relationship life. If we have people that are close to us, if we’ve walled people off, it’s probably not as affecting us as much, which can happen too. But I think that that’s huge to make that point that you do have to work through those residual effects of trauma.

What was the process like reconciling, okay? I know these horrible experiences happened to me and maybe even asking God, why did you allow such evil to pervade my life for a long time and not rescue me from it? Because you could have, you could have just jumped in or sent somebody that really believed and wanted to do something about it.

I could have been in a just court system, whatever the case was, God could have intervened and He chose not to, like it that’s a hard thing for us to sit with. 

Jennifer: It is. I think for my case, anyway. The big thing was scripture kept coming to mind and other people would point out some things. Now, sometimes people try to be helpful and they give you these pat answers and it’s not helpful. But I had some people who were helpful in things that they said. That scripture that I mentioned kept coming back to mind and I kept saying, okay, I believe that scripture is true. I just have to figure out how it’s true. So I took it as my job to figure out how those things could be good for me or good for the kingdom as a whole. Once I had made that decision that I was going to look for ways that this could be a good thing.

I started to see those things. I was able to spot a family in a fast food restaurant and know that the father was sexually molesting the daughter. I was able to put a stop to it by calling the local police. I worked in a daycare where I was able to spot some abuse taking place and put a stop to that.

So instances like that, where when you have lived it. You know what when you see it. You know what to look for and being able to take action and help someone else. Now, if I had never lived through that, would I have been able to help any of those people? Probably not. So once I took on that attitude and said, it’s my job to find out how these things are good for me or could be good for the kingdom, then it just changed everything.

Carrie: Wow. Were you able to, as you process some of the trauma, go back and find some of the good pieces of your childhood, even if they were small? Like those positive interactions with teachers and things like that? 

Jennifer: Yes. That was another thing too, at the time. I didn’t really notice because of all the big, bad. But looking back in hindsight in 2020, I was able to spot that there were even stranger who would say something in the grocery store or on the street while I was waiting for the bus, just little things that at the time I would kind of like raise an eyebrow, scratch my head, like what? But it was a seed planted or it was the encouragement that I needed to get through that day or that week and there were so many of them. 

That’s what makes it obvious to me that God was there and He was intervening. But He chose not to stop what I wanted him to stop because it formed my character. It turned me into the kind of person who could make a big difference in this world and now I’m grateful for it.

Carrie: Wow. So you had told me when we talked earlier off the microphone, that you wouldn’t change anything that happened to you. I thought that was a huge statement for you to make.

Jennifer: Yes. If I had changed it, a lot of people will think those types of things like, oh gosh, if I could just go back and change time, like erase that part of my history, I would. I would not because of those reasons. Because I don’t even know what kind of person I would be. Maybe I would have been spoiled. Maybe I would’ve been entitled and selfish and oh goodness, I don’t want to be that kind of person. So I think everything that I went through shaped me into who I am into developing the skills that I’ve developed into serving the people that I serve.

If I were to go back and change any of it, then all of my current life and all of the people that I’ve been able to that might be changed and I would not want to do that. 

Carrie: I think that’s a huge statement and definitely it takes a lot of recognition on your part to see, and to identify all the different things, ways that God has used your story in a positive light.

So you talked a little bit earlier about going to therapy, seeking help. What were some other things that you did that helped you along that journey? 

Jennifer: One of the things that I did was I journaled quite a bit. I wrote things out, wrote out my thoughts, and I would be able to look back on that and process and try to put things into perspective. I also was very frank with God. So in my prayer life, I did not pull any punches. I was not afraid that He would be mad at me. I figured He is a big God, He can handle my anger. So I just let Him know how I was feeling and what I was processing through and I’m thankful that He still loves me in spite of my bad attitude, which I have had at times. Those types of things can be very helpful to people. Trying to put your thoughts into perspective. 

Carrie: I know that we’ve all had bad attitudes towards God at one time or another. It can be very frustrating just being on the earth and having a limited viewpoint. God has that vast viewpoint like you’ve talked about earlier and trying to bridge that gap in a way where we can humanly understand things. Sometimes we just, aren’t going to get it. Tell us about this better days journal that you created with your daughter. 

Jennifer: So my daughter just turned 18. She and I together, everyone in my family has had their issues. She has struggled with anxiety and depression. She’s autistic and she has ADHD. And so together, I had started creating some journals, planners, organizers, those types of things, where people can write and organize their day. I got the idea to have her help me pick some images to put into one because I knew that having something would help her. She had been struggling with her anxiety quite a bit.

I walk her through some exercises verbally, but I thought when she’s alone, if she had something where she could write her own things and just process through that on her own, without needing to come to mom, then that would be very helpful to her throughout her life. So I handed her a stack of images for the different sheets that could go into one of these.

And I said, why don’t you pick what you would want, in a journal or planner and she was so excited. She’s like me? Well, what would it be about? I said, well, what do you struggle with? So she listed off the things and I said, let’s do this and so it is now on Amazon. It’s Better Days Journal and the subtitle is for anxiety and depression, ADHD, and autism. So anyone who struggles with any of those types of things who might need to take a thought that’s negative and turn it into something positive. There’s a page that has little clouds where they can write the negative thought and then turn it into a positive thought. There are places where you can put down whatever it is you’re worried about, and then put it into perspective and ask yourself. Then when you get that perspective, it can help you to feel calmer and it can help you to feel like you have a step that you can take to move forward. And boy, that feels so empowering. 

Carrie: It does. So it was a little bit of a therapy journal combined with a planner and organizer.  That’s good. For the closing question, I used to do this question about, tell us the story of hope and then I started having people on to talk about personal stories. So it didn’t really make sense or have alignment because I thought, well, your whole story is hopeful. So I came up with a different question, which is still along with our hope theme. If you could go back in time, what encouragement or hope would you provide to your younger self?

Jennifer: That is a very powerful question. I would tell myself it’s going to be okay and you’re doing all the right things. Just keep that way. If I could just that one little snippet, that’s what I would say. I would and maybe even say, look for the help that is there. You’re not seeing it right now but look for it because it’s there.

Carrie: Sure. Somehow you got a glimpse that there could be a better life for you, and that seems to have propelled you forward. So that’s awesome. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on our show. I know that people are gonna really be blessed by this episode and be able to resonate with some of the things that you’ve talked about.

People that have been through traumatic experiences. Sometimes it’s really hard to reconcile that with faith and, and why questions, but I think that you provided some guidance for people on how to look for how God’s using this for good. So thank you so much for doing that. 

Jennifer: Thank you. 

Carrie: I want to tell you all about an exciting opportunity and something that I’m launching this month that is that we now have a subscription service for the show. The subscription is available for people who may be listening to the show on a regular basis, really believe in this ministry, and want to support what we’re doing. It’s also for people who would like access to exclusive content related to the show. What I’m going to start doing is having a monthly live question and answer format for our subscribers that will be videotaped and put in the subscription service. 

I am also including my thought hush program, which has mindfulness and meditative activities, a workbook that you can follow along with. This is all really just good self-help material to help you along your journey, whether you’re going to counseling or not going counseling. It’s something that will help your process as you’re working through your anxiety or OCD.

Thank you so much for listening to the show today, and we will be talking to you next week.

46. Combating Emotional Eating with Scripture with Cat Sharp

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode. No Comments on 46. Combating Emotional Eating with Scripture with Cat Sharp

After losing 100 pounds, Cat Sharp, a certified life coach has committed her life to helping more Christian women do the same. 

Today on the show, Cat shares with us how she overcame emotional eating and found God’s peace. 

Episode Highlights:

  • Using food to cope with anxiety and depression
  • How God revealed to her that she had a sugar addiction.
  • Feeling convicted about her eating habits and making the decision to remove sugar from her household.
  • Meditating and using affirmations based on Scriptures
  • Learning new ways to manage emotions instead of turning to food.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 46! I’m your host, Carrie Bock. If you’re new here, this podcast is all about decreasing shame, increasing hope, and deepening our connection with God.

Today, I have a special guest, Cat Sharp, who shares her powerful testimony of overcoming emotional eating through scripture, prayer, and community support. Now, she’s helping other women break free from the same struggles. Her story is raw, honest, and deeply inspiring—I know you’ll be encouraged by this conversation.

Cat opens up about how food became an idol in her life, especially during a dark season of depression and anxiety. After walking away from God and enduring an abusive relationship, she found herself trapped in a cycle of binge eating to numb her pain. It wasn’t until she returned to church and joined a recovery ministry—thinking she was there to help others—that God revealed how deeply food had a hold on her.

Through prayer, fasting, and accountability, Cat learned to replace her cravings for sugar with a deeper craving for Christ. She created a “911 note” filled with scripture, worship lyrics, and affirmations rooted in biblical truth to turn to in moments of temptation. One of her go-to verses was 1 Corinthians 10:13—reminding her that temptation is common to everyone, but God always provides a way out.

Her journey wasn’t easy—there were tears, moments of anger, and even questioning why God was asking her to give up something others didn’t have to. But through this process, she discovered true freedom. She’s now using her story to help other women who feel trapped in emotional eating find healing through faith.

If you’ve ever struggled with food, emotional eating, or feeling like something has a hold on you, this episode is for you. Cat’s testimony is a beautiful reminder that we don’t have to be slaves to our old habits—we have a choice, and with God’s strength, we can break free.

Tune in now to hear Cat’s full story and be encouraged in your own journey toward healing!

Links and Resources:
Cat Sharp

Verses and Scriptures discussed: 1 Corinthians 10:13, Romans 6:16, The law of Moses in the Old Testament

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 46. I’m your host Carrie Bock. If you’re new to the show, we’re all about decreasing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God.  And today on the show,  I have Cat Sharp with me. She’s going to talk about her journey of overcoming emotional eating through using scripture and prayer support from others. Now she’s in a position where she’s helping other women who want to achieve the same goals. She’s a very powerful testimony, and I believe you’re really going to enjoy this episode. 

Carrie: Cat, welcome to the show. I’m excited about our conversation today. 

Cat: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited too.

Carrie: So you had told me that prior to your weight loss journey, food had become an idol in your life. Tell us that story about God revealing that to you. 

Cat: It was such an interesting experience. I had been part of an abusive relationship, had walked away from the Lord for years and was in a deep season of depression and anxiety. I had created a habit of binge eating when I was unhappy, which was a lot. I didn’t realize I had done that until after the divorce, after I had returned to church, after I was starting to seek the Lord as actually my father, instead of just the genie on the shelf that, put them in that role.

When we think that we want to do things our own way, I started to seek Him. I started to feel this conviction about my eating habits. Around this time, our church started a recovery ministry and I am a singer part of our praise team. I joined the ministry thinking I was supporting music, not realizing that the Lord was getting ready to flip my life upside down.

So as I was participating in this ministry, being the helper, I thought I was. I’m hearing stories from our participants about they were bargaining, that they would only use whatever their addiction was on the weekends or when they were with friends or when they would only use this much, but never any more than that, I started to hear myself in their stories and I was saying those same things about food.

I would hear them talk about how they would do really well until they had a bad day. And then they would seek the object of their addiction. I thought, that’s me, I do that. One particularly terrible day,I had started to feel convicted about seeking sugar often and my reliance on that. I had cleaned sugar out of my house completely.

There was no sugar in my house and I’d had a very bad day at work. I remember coming home and opening the cabinet doors and throwing things out of the cabinet. Imagine for a moment, the cartoon where somebody is cleaning out the closet and they’re just throwing things over their shoulder, behind them really quickly. That’s what I was doing and every cabinet in the house. I remember crawling on my stomach in the lower cabinet reaching in as far as I could to get there had to be something in here. I thought there’s gotta be something back here and I reached the very, very back of the cabinet where the corners meet and I pulled out a Ziploc bag with just a little bit of powdered sugar in it. I put it in a bowl. I added a little bit of milk. I started up and I ate it with the spoon and I sat on the floor and I cried. What have I become? How did I get here? And so that was that, “Come to Jesus Moment” that instead of seeking the Lord on this day, that was really, really bad. I had turned to sugar and didn’t even taste it. 

Carrie: Wow. I’m sure that was a process that developed over time for you. I’m sure maybe even going back to childhood of relying on that for comfort. 

Cat: Absolutely. My mother owned a bakery when I was very young and through my work, through this process over the last few years, I realized that subconsciously I had learned from the experiences in the bakery of my mother, delivering these amazing, beautiful cakes to people for their parties and weddings and celebrations. Food brought joy. I’m from the South and we love each other with food. If you want to show love to someone, you give them food. And so I had kind of trained myself that if I wanted to feel loved or share love with someone, food is how we do that. And then going through a time where I needed love so desperately. I just kept bingeing, trying to feel that satisfaction and never really felt it. Of course, nothing fills that hole when you need the Lord. But at the time I wasn’t in a place that could be that. 

Carrie: Absolutely that makes so much sense and I’m in the south too. I would definitely resonate with that. We call it comfort food, or we’re talking about emotional eating and it’s just like, there are changes that happen in our brain too in terms of different receptors and things like that for sugar.

We do feel better temporarily in the moment and it makes sense that we can get in a way addicted to food. Not everybody necessarily looks at it like that, but I think when you’re talking about feeling that intense level of craving or need for something sugary, then that makes sense.

Sometimes getting started on making a major life change is the hardest part. I’m really curious about that decision that you made to get sugar out of your household and how that got started. 

Cat: I started just like you do every other new habit, right? Made the plans and I did the things, but what I learned very quickly is that my human willpower is very, very limited. After a few days, I got to the point where I didn’t think I could handle the temptation anymore. I was cranky and hateful and short-tempered with my family. I had a headache, my body terrible because I was going through the physical effects of withdrawal. I remember standing at the kitchen table crying and apologizing to my family.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me because my habit was to go to sugar at this point and I was not. So I had to learn a new way of managing those emotions after a couple of weeks of really, really trying to hold on with my own willpower. I hit my knees and there were days so many tears and anger and lashing out at God.

Why do I have to give up sugar? My husband doesn’t have to, my kids aren’t having to, my best friend doesn’t have to. I was angry with him for asking me to give this up. I was that and lamenting that first Christmas was very difficult realizing how many traditions I had that were around candy and cookies and food. That was so difficult. But once I made the decision to give it to Him and I had never actually faxed it before, so I didn’t have that experience. And so I remember studying about fasting and treating this like a fast and whenever I wanted sugar, that was my signal that I needed Jesus and I would go to prayer. I would go to my Bible. I had several, I call them on my 911 note in my phone when I desperately needed some help that I was tempted to jump off the wagon face first into a pan of brownies. I had my 911 note that I would read aloud. 

Oftentimes I had a friend that I could call just about any time. She was my accountability partner, interestingly enough, who hated sugar and was teeny tiny. It was almost like God was pulling judgment out of me to get skinny women. It was such an interesting experience and He put exactly who I needed in my life at that time.

Carrie: So tell us about this 911 note. Did that have scriptures on it or was it an affirmation about who you wanted to be on the other side of this journey? Was it like who you are in Christ? What kind of stuff was in there?

Cat: It had a little bit of all of that. I had song lyrics because as a singer, I love music. I had song lyrics in there. I had scriptures in there. I had statements that I had personalized from scripture in there. I plastered my house with truth and what I learned very quickly was affirmations unless they were based in scripture, that did not work for me because if I was trying to claim something that I could not say on the absolute worst day was true. I said my brain called BS and was trying to think the other way.

Carrie: And they would not receive that at all. It’s like, no.

Cat: Exactly. So I had what you could call affirmations based in scripture and I stated them in a way that was either personal towards me or personal towards the journey. I don’t believe that scripture is about me as a person at all. I believe scripture is about my Savior and my Heavenly Father. I don’t love the idea of personalizing scripture for all the time, but in those moments, that’s what I needed. And so like, some of my favorites were of course, 1 Corinthians 10:13, where this temptation I’m feeling is normal. It’s no more or no less than anybody else experiences.

And God’s already given me a way out. I just have to take the door and that was a very paraphrased version, but that was the truth that I needed to hear. This is not any worse than anybody else’s temptation. There are people who are tempted by illegal drugs. I’ve seen that experience and seeing it was almost like a mirror at one point. But seeing that personally and knowing as I read that scripture, this is no worse than anything anybody else is facing helped me not feel alone, helped me not feel helpless. 

Another favorite was Romans 6:16. I think I wrote it down because I wanted to share it. Yes, it was stated this way. I am only a slave to that, which I present myself because the sugar had no hold on me. My old habits had no hold on me. I was not a slave. I had a choice and I needed to be reminded that I had a choice in that moment when I didn’t necessarily feel like I did. But because it was based in scripture, I knew it was true. 

Carrie: That’s so good. Yeah. Like I don’t have to be a slave to sin or those former things like anymore. That’s a powerful promise. I think understanding our position in Christ as His child is so powerful. Like if we can wrap our minds around it. I think that’s huge and it changes a lot of personal decisions for us because hopefully like we’re following the Lord. We want to please Him and we want to honor Him, but also being in this state of I’m fully loved.

And I’m not always going to get it right. Like some days I’m going to mess up and I need the grace. It can make a lot of changes if you have. I think some of those go-to scriptures for whatever it is that you’re facing. I think we probably all need a 911 note in our phone for whatever issues are most pressing in your life right now. Like I’m meditating on a lot of scriptures about trust right now. Like where the Lord has me and I’m like, okay, like I trust you, I trust you. And here’s some things I can say to myself and when we repeat those truths to ourselves, sometimes it can help align our feelings. Would you agree with that? As we always feel like doing the right thing, pouring in of that truth can help motivate us. 

Cat: Absolutely and this is something in the last six months or so that there are many times that as disciples of Jesus, we’re called to do things we don’t feel like doing and oftentimes we like to say things like I’m not motivated to XYZ. Jesus didn’t feel like going to the cross for me, but He did it. So whenever I start to feel like that, I don’t feel like it, that has been the truth that has popped up is that if I’m called to do a job, I’ll just tell you. I didn’t feel like getting on a podcast chat today. I’ve had a long week, but I have a message that I want people to hear that they’re not hopeless and I have a message that I want people to hear. 

Jesus has done something that makes everything. He calls us to make everything possible and I felt so hopeless in that time of my life that I thought there was no way God could ever use me. There was a season in my life I truly thought that my job was to be miserable and I would have joy when I got to heaven. That was what I thought. There’s hope and I know there are women who feel that.

Carrie: Sure, you are utilizing prayer and scripture and did you find that group that you were going to and helping lead the praise like the recovery group? Did you find that helpful as part of your journey as well? Just like hearing other people’s stories and sharing a little share. 

Cat: Absolutely. One of the things that we started doing was challenging each other to reframe our statements. We as humans, we like to claim things. I am, whatever. I am an emotional eater.

I am an addict. I am whatever. Like you said, our identity in Christ is such a powerful concept. And that group, we built enough trust with one another, that we started challenging each other to reframe the way we spoke, because what comes out of your mouth is an overflow of what’s in your heart. And as I continue to tell myself, I am an emotional eater or I am a couch potato, I am whatever I’m going to say that way. And so we were challenging each other to recognize what was coming out of our mouth and reframe it to match God’s word and that was the reframe. That was the phrase that we said a lot. It’s a very helpful group and a very helpful experience. 

Carrie: Did you have an accountability partner along your journey? Did you have anybody that was helping you? Like in terms of what you do today is you are a coach for women. Did you have a life coach or a nutrition coach or anybody that was helping you along the eating journey? 

Cat: Not a coach. I had my group with our recovery ministry. I had my accountability partner and I was a member of a group that was supportive as far as healthy choices on the daily and exercise and things like that. Nobody was necessarily prescribing what to eat, which I think was probably a good thing because I was moving towards not just freedom from sugar, but also freedom from the diet mentality, which had done a lot of damage. Food freedom is a concept that we don’t quite understand really because of the diet culture that we’re in.

Carrie: Yeah. I wanted to talk about that a little bit more because you had talked with me about how diets can be like the law of Moses in the Old Testament. And some diets are very restrictive and I see a lot of my clients, Jojo in terms of what they’re doing and they go from either restricting to completely bingeing and they never find that like a medium of healthy eating. So can you talk with us about that a little bit. 

Cat: I’ve started and stopped a thousand diets in my lifetime. During each one, there would be that cycle of I’m doing great. Then there would be the feeling of deprivation and then the dip, whether it would be, I was angry that I couldn’t have what I wanted or  sticking to plan, or I would just jump off plan and say, forget it. This is stupid. And what ended up happening was my worth. My value became tied up in whether or not I was following the rules. If following rules made me holy, I wouldn’t have needed Jesus. And so I have to remind myself that my value is not determined on whether or not I stayed under a calorie level, or if I hit a certain level of macros.

And I fully believe that there are times that we do need to follow particular types of plans. I don’t think plans are bad. I think it’s the heart that we have when we go to them. There was one plan for salvation and Jesus Christ. So I don’t think plans are a bad thing in God’s eyes, but we have to make sure that we’re watching our hearts about the plan because if my worth comes from whether or not I follow the diet, that is not what God had in mind for me. That’s me presenting myself as a slave to something and living by a law that I’ve imposed upon myself. 

Carrie: And I think what you’re really showing is that any kind of life transformation, like this, has to come from the inside out because whenever we try to make those changes externally first, and it ends up being this white knuckle like type concept, and we can only hold it together and do it for so long.

But if you’re really like having to do the soul searching of why am I seeking out certain kinds of foods when I don’t feel well. Like when I have a really hard day at work, like what’s causing me to run into that direction instead of Jesus, then that’s going to make a much bigger difference. 

This took you three and a half years to go through this journey and process, right?

Cat: Yes.

Carrie: How did you persevere on that journey? Were there times where you were like, “Nope, I’ve lost a plate. I’m okay. I’m good. This is good enough”. Like, “I don’t want to have to do this anymore”, or “I want to go back and have some sugar in my life”. Like, what was that like on those hard days?

Cat: It’s so interesting during these three and a half years. It started with the sugar, that conviction about the sugar and the way that I was turning towards it too. Whenever I was in an emotional state and what ended up happening was I was studying who I am in Christ because I thought that would be helpful, but I didn’t believe any of it.

So then I needed to dig deeper. I started praying to the Lord, I want to know You helped me know Your character and that led to believing. And that was months and months and months, and I would just seek the names of God in the Old Testament and how He revealed Himself to His people. Over time, as I got to know God in a more intimate way, I started believing the things he was saying about me and the things He was saying about what it meant to be a child of God and what it meant to be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ the holy spirit. 

I started believing those things and one thing that hit me when I was studying in the Old Testament was the story in 1 Samuel, I believe it’s Chapter 30 where David and his men come back to their town. The town has been burned to the ground and all of their wives and children have been taken by another army. Everybody is distraught. They’re talking about killing David because it was his fault. They’re away from home and all this stuff. I don’t remember the verses five or six verses in it say, David encouraged himself in the Lord. I thought that’s a bad day. Like David’s whole family was gone, his house was burned to the ground and the whole town. Everything was gone and David encouraged himself in the Lord. 

And I thought if David can turn to Jesus in that, I have no excuse to turn to brownies. I learned from the Old Testament stories and from the Psalms good examples of how we can react and respond when we have those bad days, because God knows that we have sad moments and we have painful moments. We have angry moments and the Psalms are full of experiences that you can read where David or the Psalmist were right. I’m upset. I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m lonely. I feel abandoned. I feel attacked, but You are good and I will praise You and it always turns back to praise. So that’s what I learned during that time, it’s okay to be sad, but I have to remember where to put my attention and that’s to the Lord. 

Carrie: Did this process just transform your prayer life in terms of getting really down and really honest with Jesus in terms of what you were feeling and thinking and experiencing? 

Cat: It did. I think the very first time I ever prayed was, “Lord, Your will be done” and I truly meant it during that season. I remember it very clearly. My niece was, I believe, eight years old and had gotten lost in the woods and it was cold. They live in Alaska actually and I got a call. She’s been missing about an hour now. We’ve got cops out, dogs out, we’re running to look for and it was going to get dark soon and I hit the concrete floor in our garage on my knees. I started praying for her to be found and at the time my sister was not following the board. We were raised in a good Christian home. She was living in a way that was very opposite of what we’d been raised in just like I had been during a season. And I remember feeling, what if this is what draws my sister back to God’s will, and I started crying and I said, Lord, Your will be done,

Your will be done, Your glory, be brought through this experience. That’s what I prayed and I remember feeling almost guilty for praying for 10 minutes. She was delivered to the house and a car. She had stumbled out of the woods on some street. Somewhere, a lady in a blue car stopped and said, honey, are you okay?

And she said, I live over there and she takes her home. They don’t know who the woman was. My sister is following the Lord right now and I’ll just never forget that experience of truly saying that whatever it is that needs to happen here, Lord, we want Your will to be done. And that was the scariest prayer, I think I’ve ever prayed, but yes, it did revolutionize my prayer life.

Carrie: Getting to that place of full surrender is so hard. Sometimes it’s so hard, whatever we’re facing, whether it’s emotional, eating, or anxiety or something. I think of even people that are struggling with anxiety coming to that, understanding that maybe this is what God is using in their life. Like Paul’s thorn in the flesh to minister to other people and maybe it’s what God’s using to transform their character.

So I like that your prayers weren’t just like, okay, take away this desire for sugar. I don’t want to have that anymore because I think that can be an easy place for us to fall into. Okay. Take this hardship out of my life, take this desire for sin out of my life, take this anxiety out of my life. Whatever it is that we’re like, just get rid of that God. Okay. Can we just eliminate that out? Like eliminate the hardship and instead, you really saw it. Okay. God teach me about Your character through this experience. Teach me when I understand Your character and who You are, then I can understand who I am in relationship as Your daughter and that guides your other processes.

I think in terms of life change.

Cat: It absolutely did. He used this experience to show me where I don’t like to use the term control freak, but I absolutely was. Everything had to go my way and it had to be organized and if things didn’t go according to plan, I lost my mind. So that came out during that time and I was convicted of that. My husband and I got married and I had been a single mom for a long time to a man who wasn’t very nice to me. The thought of letting him take control of our finances or be the head of our household, not gonna happen, I was the boss. Through this three and-a-half-year process, the Lord started to convict me of the way He had set up a Godly marriage and I was not allowing it to happen in my household. I remember crying to my husband and supposed to step back and let you be the leader of the household and whine and cry. But the Lord has completely flipped my life upside down, completely flipped my life upside because I committed this one thing to Him.

He used it to show me His character and His love for me and all the things that were possible here and the way that He can use even my broken parts to encourage other people. I don’t love telling the story of me climbing on the stomach in the cabinet. That’s kind of embarrassing. I don’t love telling it, but I do know that there’s somebody who’s going to be encouraged by that and know that I’ve had one of those kinds of days. 

Carrie: Like someone’s will say, I’ve had one of those kinds of days. Like, I’ve been there. So tell us a little bit about your coaching practice and what you do there. 

Cat: I love helping women like me. I love helping women who have dieted their whole lives and are still overweight. Women who may not yet be ready to admit that they might have a little bit of an issue with emotional eating. Women who want to honor the Lord, but don’t know how. 

No, there’s something more than just the diet. I’m not a personal trainer. I am not a nutritionist. And so I don’t give advice on those specific things, but I do love my Bible. I just start asking questions and we get in prayer together and we get in the scriptures together. It’s a wonderful experience just to see peace and food freedom for women who have been slave to the diet mentality and their value in the number on the scale, because that’s so prevalent.

Carrie: Yeah, unfortunately. There’s so many people, even people who aren’t overweight and have put value in what the scale says or what their body looks like and so much embodied dissatisfaction out there. But that’s a whole, whole nother topic. If you could, as our time is winding down to a close, like if you could go back in time, what encouragement or hope would you provide to your younger self?

Cat: I think that I would take her by the hand and tell her that there is no need to be ashamed, that all of the things that she’s embarrassed about and ashamed of. Jesus knew all of that when He died for her and she doesn’t have to stay there. 

Carrie: That’s so good. One of our purposes of the show is to reduce shame. So I think that falls right in line. With what we’re trying to do, to help people understand that when we have these stories and we’re able to speak about them out loud and address them and get help and find supportive communities within the church, that can be incredibly transformative as it was in your experience as well.

So thanks so much for sharing your story and your wisdom of how you got to where you are today. I really appreciate it.

Cat: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an honor to share.

Carrie: This episode reminds me that we all have a powerful story inside of us. And sometimes we just need that courage to be able to step out and share it with others who need to hear it. So maybe that encourages you today to be a little bit more vulnerable at times, and encourages others who are in a place where maybe you’re a former self has been. 

I wanted to let you all know that we’ve been getting inquiries through the Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast Website about seeing me for counseling, which is really nice of you guys to want to see me.

However, there’s two issues that we have to address. First is that due to licensing requirements, you really have to be in the state of Tennessee in order to see me. We did not have a national counselor licensure although we are still holding out hope and would like to have it one day. Hopefully with telehealth becoming more prevalent and popular that will expand.

However, that’s not where we’re at. The other issue that we’re having is that, that’s just not a good place for those inquiries to come. And so if you really are in Tennessee and you want to see me for counseling, please go to the By The Well Counseling website. There is a link there through our podcast website. Both websites will take you to each other. So just make sure that you are on the right one for the right thing. If you are looking to give us show suggestions, tell us what the show means to you. Tell us about potential guests. Then definitely contact us through the Hope for Anxiety and OCD website. 

And if you’re looking for virtual telehealth counseling in Tennessee, you can contact me at the By The Well Counseling website. I hope that provides some clarity for everyone. If we don’t get back to you right away, it’s because unfortunately, sometimes you end up in a spam folder and we have to find you and rescue your message out of there.

But I know that between my assistant, Ella and I, we do seek to respond to all inquiries. So if you haven’t heard back from us, please send us another message. Thank you so much, everyone for taking the time to listen today.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

45. Improving Nutrition to Help Anxiety with Dr. Katie Thomson Aitken, ND

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 45. Improving Nutrition to Help Anxiety with Dr. Katie Thomson Aitken, ND

We are privileged to have our first ever Canadian guest on the podcast, Dr. Katie Thomson Aitken.  Dr. Katie is a licensed naturopathic doctor who enjoys helping people with all kinds of health goals achieve positive changes in their health and in their life.  She also has a passion for mental health, the management of stress and anxiety, and helping individuals connect with their higher purpose.

Episode Highlights:

  • What are the benefits of seeing a naturopathic doctor?
  • Is naturopathy an alternative medicine?
  • Can naturopathy be used alongside other medical and therapeutic techniques? 
  • The 5 Pillars of Mental Wellness
  • The role of neurotransmitters in anxiety
  • Nutrition-related concerns of patients with anxiety and steps to take to help improve nutrition. 
  • Dr. Katie’s book: Create Calm.

Episode Summary:

Welcome back to Christian faith and OCD! Today, I’m excited to chat with Dr. Katie Thompson Aiken, a naturopathic doctor, about the powerful connection between physical health and anxiety.

Dr. Katie explains how naturopathic medicine works with traditional treatments—not against them—by looking at the whole person. Instead of just focusing on anxiety symptoms, she considers factors like hormonal imbalances, nutrition, digestion, and even social connections to create a truly personalized care plan.

One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation is how much nutrition affects anxiety. Some people are so focused on eating “clean” that they actually miss key nutrients, while others struggle with irregular eating due to stress. Dr. Katie shares simple, doable strategies—like adding more protein and produce to meals—to help support your brain and body. No extreme diets, no guilt—just practical ways to feel better.

We also talk about something I’ve noticed with my own clients: how hunger cues can get mixed up with anxiety symptoms. If you’ve ever gone too long without eating and suddenly felt overwhelmed or lightheaded, this conversation is for you! Dr. Katie offers helpful tips for eating regularly and making sure your body has the fuel it needs to keep anxiety in check.

Episode Summary:

Today, I’m excited to talk with Dr. Katie Thompson Aiken, a naturopathic doctor. I’ll be learning alongside you as we explore naturopathy and how it can support mental health, particularly anxiety.

Dr. Katie explains how naturopathic medicine treats the whole person, not just a symptom like anxiety. By assessing factors like digestion, hormones, lifestyle, and relationships, she creates a comprehensive care plan. She emphasizes that anxiety is complex—it affects physical, mental, and spiritual health, and all these areas need to be addressed.

We also discuss the concept of treatment-resistant anxiety, where some people don’t respond to conventional treatments. Naturopathy offers alternative solutions like lifestyle changes, supplements, and acupuncture, and can even work alongside traditional treatments for a balanced approach.

Dr. Katie talks about the importance of regular meals to fuel the body and mind. Anxiety can cause people to under-eat or overthink their diet, sometimes leading to issues like orthorexia. It’s crucial to eat regularly and make sure we’re nourishing ourselves with the right balance of foods, especially produce and protein, to help manage anxiety.

We wrap up with practical advice on how small changes in diet can have a big impact on mental wellness. For example, adding fruits or protein to meals can support brain function and stabilize blood sugar, which in turn can ease anxiety.

Tune in to the full episode and find out what small changes you can make to improve your overall wellness!

Resources and Links

 Dr. Katie Thomson Aitken, ND
Book: Create Calm

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 45. If you’ve been following the show, we talk about all kinds of things related to not just the mental health aspects of anxiety but also our physical health. When our physical health is working good, it combines well and helps our mental health and both of those things need to be functioning properly in order for us to get to a better state of overall health.

Carrie: So today on the show we are talking with Dr. Katie Thompson Aiken, who is a naturopathic doctor. This is going to be an interesting episode for me as well since I don’t know that much about naturopathy and that pathway. I’m probably going to ask some questions that some of you might have as well, and we’ll both be learning along together. So thank you so much for being here. 

Dr. Katie: Thank you so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure to talk about anxiety and the mind-body connection.

Carrie: And a random fact, I think you are the first Canadian that I’ve had on the podcast. And I know that we have listeners from all over the world, so it’s good to have people outside of America on every once in a while. I think this adds to our diversity. 

Dr. Katie: That’s wonderful. It’s my absolute pleasure to be here. 

Carrie: Let’s talk a little bit about how seeing a naturopathic doctor benefits people in a little bit different way than seeing a doctor that follows traditional Western medicine. 

Dr. Katie: That’s a great question. I think we will start talking about naturopathic medicine. A lot of people think of it as an alternative medicine, but I like to use the word complimentary. So what I do works alongside some of the traditional care choices that someone might have when they’re looking for support with their health concerns, whether that’s anxiety or for something. In a traditional model.

If you’re experiencing anxiety, you might be offered medication. You might be offered therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, or group therapy and sometimes that’s it. But we know that there are a lot of things, lifestyle wise, that can be supportive of anxiety. There’s also a lot of conditions in the body: hormonal imbalances and nutritional deficiencies that can contribute to anxiety. When you see a naturopathic doctor, one of the big differences is that naturopathic medicine treats the whole person rather than looking at just one piece of someone’s health, say the anxiety.

When I see a patient and when my colleagues that are naturopathic doctors treat someone, we are asking questions about all systems of the body and what’s going on with your hormonal health. How is your digestion? Do you have cardiovascular risk factors like high blood pressure? And piecing those all together to come up with a comprehensive care plan. We’re also asking about lifestyle. How are you living? How are you eating and moving and sleeping? How is your connection with their friends and family? Because all of those pieces then support or can get in the way of optimal health and including optimal mental. 

Carrie: Dr. Akin. I think that you make a great point there that anxiety is a complex issue. It’s not just a physical health issue. It’s not just a mental health issue. It’s not just a social or spiritual health issue. This is an issue that affects many different domains of our lives and so it’s important that we’re able to look at all of those different domains and evaluate them. So I like that, that’s something that you bring to the table for people that you work with. 

Dr. Katie: Thank you. Yes. I think it’s very important that we acknowledge that no one we’re talking about any house condition. There are physical, mental, and spiritual causes and solutions for health concerns. And my approach is to look at each of those, look at the resources that people have available through that, and really work to find solutions that support people through their physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. I know sometimes maybe a rut that certain doctors can fall into is having a one size fits all approach.

Carrie: And sometimes the one size fits you and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to fit. And so I imagine you probably have patients come to you who have been to other doctors before, or have tried other courses of medication maybe, and haven’t achieved the results that they were hoping for. 

Dr. Katie: Absolutely. I see a lot of patients that have resistance or like what’s considered treatment resistant depression or treatment resistant anxiety. We know that the standard medications for anxiety work for about 80% of people, which is great, but that leaves a whole 20% of people who do not respond to first-line medication. Some folks go through a lot of trial and error and they don’t find something that works for them and it’s the same with natural therapies. Right? 

We have things that work very well for a lot of people, but not everything works for everyone. I have patients that certainly have tried many things before coming to see me are quite frustrated and it’s always very rewarding. We can try new tools like lifestyle supplements, acupuncture, and be able to get a different result for those patients, as well as patients who are, for whatever reason, just not interested in pursuing other avenues of care.

Perhaps they had a family member that had a bad experience with medication and they’re a little more hesitant to try it. So being able to open up more options for whatever someone’s reason is for choosing naturopathic care. I will say I also have patients that do naturopathic care alongside conventional medicine. I have a lot of patients that take medications and we work on supporting their lifestyle so that their medication doses are effective so that they can stay at the lowest effective dose that they’re reclaiming their health and their life in terms of how they want to be living and their choices.

Carrie: That’s an awesome option to like, so it doesn’t have to be completely one or the other. You can really combine both together. I like that.

Dr. Katie: I think it’s really important to know that you have lots of choices and it doesn’t have to be one or the other, we can work together so that you feel supported in your mental wellness.

Carrie: Talk with us about what you consider to be the pillars of mental wellness. 

Dr. Katie: In my practice, I mentioned that we’re talking about how things come up looking for other screens, then also assessing lifestyle factors. I call those the pillars of performance. We go through five of those: nutrition, exercise, sleep, prayer or mindfulness and connection. Those are the pieces that we talk about in terms of what are your current habits right now. Then they’re also the pillars moving through my tranquil minds program, where we really work on building up healthy habits in each of those categories. 

Carrie: Okay. So we want to dive in and talk a little bit more about nutrition today. We do have some other guests that are going to be talking about sleep. We have had an episode on mindfulness, which was really great. I encourage people to go back and listen to that. We’ve had an early episode of prayer. Tell me about some nutrition concerns that you’ve seen in your patients with anxiety.

Dr. Katie: Often when I start working with patients who have anxiety, we end up in one of two situations, nutritionally. One is people who are eating very, what they would call clean. They’re very concerned about what they’re eating. They want to eat in a way that’s going to optimize their mental wellness and they actually are often overthinking.

Then on the other side, we have people who are overwhelmed in general, or maybe not educated around nutrition. People who have symptoms of anxiety that manifest through the digestive system. Maybe they have IBS nausea, low appetite associated with their anxiety. Often these folks are not eating regularly and don’t really know even where to start.

When it comes to managing their nutrition. We always start with understanding. Where someone’s starting from. If it’s safe for them to record their food for a week, we often will do that. We’ll do a diet recording. That’s not the right first step for everyone. Some people find that upsetting and we don’t want to trigger any disordered eating habits. So always be cautious around starting recording, but once we know what someone’s feeding, then I like to look at first of all, for regular. Is someone eating often enough and I think this gets overlooked a lot when it comes to mental wellness, we think of, are you eating the right things? Are you eating quote-unquote healthy foods? We miss the main piece, which is that if you’re not nourishing yourself, then your brain isn’t getting everything that it needs in order to feel well. So people that are on a weight loss protocol or a restricted diet, they may be experiencing anxiety simply because they’re under fueled, like their body doesn’t have what it needs to feel well, and I see that more often than I do.

Carrie: I think that that’s huge and I want to circle back around to a couple of things that you said. One was, the people that are very focused on eating clean or eating a certain way, but it’s to an extreme level. There is actually something called orthorexia where it’s kind of a subset of anorexia where people will only eat very specific, limited foods that they believe to be clean or healthy for them. 

Sometimes those people can actually be nutritionally deficient because they’re not getting enough, maybe fat, for example, or enough protein in their diet. I’m sure that that’s something that you’ve probably encountered at some point or another. 

Dr. Katie: Certainly yes. I think that’s something we have to be very careful of orthorexia . Definitely in the field of naturopathic medicine there is a lot of nutritional advice that gets presented through natural healthcare and nutritionists. I think it’s something to be mindful of that each person is different and the most important thing is being fueled first. So sometimes the work is actually including more food in the diet. In fact, that’s always where I start, regardless of someone’s level of nutrition, we always start with, what can we add before we ever look at what could we maybe reduce. 

Carrie: That’s a good point. So like, if people are saying, well, I don’t really eat enough vegetables instead of focusing on cutting something out first saying, okay, well, can you add one more vegetable maybe per day, then you’re already eating. That sounds better than, oh gosh, I’ve got to stop eating junk food. Right. 

Dr. Katie: A hundred percent and that’s actually stage two of my nutritional approach, which is adding in produce and protein when it comes to managing blood sugar and helping with anxiety. It’s making sure that you have all the pieces that your brain needs to make all the neurotransmitters that can encourage people to look at what they’re eating and say, do I have a piece of fruit or vegetable in this new snack? Does this meal or snack have any sources of protein in it? For a lot of my patients, that’s a good starting point of starting to add it in by saying, oh, typically my breakfast is a piece of toast. Okay, well maybe we can add a piece of fruit to that. Or maybe you can have a toast and a fruit smoothie. That’s got some protein powder in it. Maybe you want to start with adding a piece of bacon to that toast and getting some meat in the morning. We’re not demonizing food. We’re just looking for options to increase both the protein and the produce pieces in the nutrition.

Carrie: I liked that a lot. I think that that’s a great starting point for people to help improve their nutritional intake. One of the things that you talked about was people not eating enough or not eating on a regular basis, which can also happen with anxiety. And one thing I’ve found or noticed with some of my clients is they’re not tuned in really to their body because tuning into their body means I’m noticing the anxiety symptoms. Sometimes that means that they’re tuning out the hunger signals as well. Like I’m not really paying attention to that. I’ve got to work or I’ve got to stay focused on something else and just plow forward. And next thing you know, it’s two o’clock and they haven’t eaten all day. That means they haven’t had any fuel for that day. 

Dr. Katie: Absolutely. I see that as well. I also sometimes see a confusion of hunger cues and anxiety cues. Not feeling well in the stomach, having some nausea and going I must be anxious rather than reflecting and saying, well, when was the last time I ate?

I’ve worked with many people where we’ve been able to separate those cues out and try eating. I give my patients a guideline of four to six hours. So when you’re looking at your day, especially if you’re not used to eating regularly and say, are there times where I’m going more than six hours without eating and then, or more than four hours.

And when you have anxiety, feelings of anxiety, thoughts come up and it’s been that long since you ate, just questioning, am I really worried about this, or should I have a snack? And sometimes having something to eat really alleviates some of that anxiety feeling because your brain is more fueled, you’re in a calmer place. It also takes away some of those physical symptoms that are actually hunger. 

Carrie: I think that there have been times where I’ve felt nauseous or light-headed, and I knew I needed to eat something right now. Like it’s been a while or I’ve been busy or I’ve been out doing things and you can definitely have some symptoms from that. That totally makes complete sense to me. Sometimes you just need a snack. 

Dr. Katie: Sometimes you just need a snack. I know for myself. I had an experience like this. I was picking up my daughter from daycare and had a busy day. We were walking home. So I was getting lots of exercise that day and as I was approaching home, I just noticed all of these worried thoughts were coming up for me. I was like, oh, I think my husband was traveling that day. I started wondering, is he going to get home safe? How’s this going to go? And I just was like, When was the last time you ate? Why are you worrying about this? Like there’s no reason for me to think that my husband wouldn’t come home safely that night and sure enough, it had been about six hours, so I got an after-school snack. And with my daughter, I didn’t have an anxious evening. I just had an anxious thought. So from my personal experience and from working with my patients, it’s definitely something that can be helpful for a lot of people. 

Carrie: Yeah. Can you elaborate on that point that you made about neurotransmitters and protein because neuro-transmitters are like the things that are targeted essentially in medications for anxiety, like, SSRI, those types of things are affecting serotonin. So talk with us a little bit about that protein connection. 

Dr. Katie: Protein is the building blocks of your neuro-transmitters without getting overly technical about amino acid breakdowns, and which ones become, which neuro-transmitters I always invite my patients to just consider. Do you want your body to have just enough protein to make it your neuro-transmitters or do you want to have abundant protein so that it’s easy for your body to find the building blocks? It needs to make these neurotransmitters. 

I don’t do a lot of precision medicine or genetic testing in my practice. That’s just not how I focus. I focus more on basic principles, like eating protein because I find that’s more accessible for most people who are really struggling, but we’re looking at some of those more precision pieces we get into this idea that, what if you have a genetic polymorphism or a change in your own genome that makes it harder for you to make a certain neurotransmitter or piece of mechanics in your body.

That’s important for your nervous system. One of the ways nutritionally that we look to support that is just making sure that there’s an abundance of everything that you need in order to make those systems run. But really there is no need in most people, I would say to do that precision piece as a starting point, most people are not having tons of protein throughout their day.

And so just looking at that, especially if you’re feeling anxious and your stomach’s upset, it doesn’t feel good when you eat certain foods, looking at how to get in just regular sources of protein, eggs, chicken, fish, like just food can really make a difference in making sure that you have the pieces that you need.

The other reason that I really love focusing on protein for my patients with anxiety is it’s very stabilizing to blood sugar. One of the things we’re learning about anxiety and blood sugar is that folks who have anxiety seem to be sensitive to hypoglycemia. So when they eat something that’s high in sugar, their body is very good at removing it from the bloodstream. And actually their blood sugar can go too low and cause that like, shakiness and nausea. 

You were describing earlier as like, oh, I’m hungry and I need to eat. Including protein when you eat for a lot of people with anxiety causes that to be more modulated. So less of those crashes and spikes and more of that, even blood sugar, which facilitates an even mood sugar is the fuel that our brain is using to make decisions and feed our nervous system throughout the day. So when we can eat in a way that keeps it stable, we can keep our thinking more stable. 

Carrie: That’s good. I know that it’s very easy to eat a lot of carbs and sugar, especially in the American diet and the processed foods that we have in different things. And so focusing on those stabilizing factors of protein, that sounds really helpful, and I’ve never heard anyone break it down quite like that. So I appreciate that explanation with neuro-transmitters and anxiety. We talked a little bit about eating more protein, focusing on adding things that we need to add, like produce. Are there any other small steps that you encourage people to take to help improve their nutrition?

Dr. Katie: There’s two more steps that I look at the third and know we can refer back to your earlier episode on mindfulness, but is to eat mindfully. When we pay attention to what we’re eating, we’re more likely to get those hunger cues that we were talking about earlier. Understand our fullness. We’re less likely to have emotional eating when we’re paying attention to our food and we’re less distracted and it also involves our brains. And eating and really, that’s a great tool that a lot of us forget about when we’re paying attention to our food and we’re taking time to taste and savor it.

Our brain tells our digestive system, hey, food’s coming. And that creates an opportunity for our digestion to be optimal, which we want. So we can then absorb all of those wonderful nutrients that we’ve taken all the effort to include in our diet. If you’ve taken time to chop up a salad or open a bagged salad, instead of opening something that was a little bit easier grabbing some of those like chips or fries, or even doing both, including some salad and some French fries with your food rather than one or the other. 

You want your body to be eating those and you want to enjoy them, especially when you are eating foods that you’re eating for pleasure, not just for nutritional value. You want to save for that. And those moments of joy beyond their helpfulness nutritionally, it’s soul food. It’s good for our spirits to say, this is delicious and I’m enjoying it with my friends and family. This tastes really good. Having those moments of pleasure when eating and paying attention, I think is really important. You feel like that helps our digestive system. A hundred percent when we’re tasting our food, the digestion, we always forget.

We think it starts like in our stomach, but the digestion starts in our mouth and it’s not just the chewing. We have this wonderful sensory organ of our tongue and our nose, and that’s sending information to our brain saying, hey, this is what’s coming. When we taste foods like vegetables that have bitter notes that cause our digestive system to increase its gastric juices, to say,  here’s some stomach acid, here’s some enzymes. You’re going to need this to absorb this food properly in order to break it down. 

When we really pay attention to that sensory experience, we maximize digestion. I feel like you’ve just given us all permission to enjoy our food because so many times people feel like, well, if I’m going to eat healthy, it’s like, here I am with the bran flakes, like choking it down, like, I don’t even want to be eating this, but I think that you can find good foods and eat healthily and enjoy your food.

I hope so. I think that that is really where the joy comes in. When you look at how I can increase my vegetables, how can I enjoy things like that. It’s a lot easier to do when you actually enjoy eating the vegetables. I love to cook and I’ve been on this journey of discovering my favorite way to eat all of the different vegetables. So for example, my favorite way to eat cauliflower is roasted with Kumon and lots of olive oil and salt. Yes. It has salt and it has known fat on it, but that doesn’t make it a bad food. In fact, it makes it delicious and then I eat more of it. 

Carrie: Yes. I like cauliflower roasted like that in the oven. I don’t usually eat it any other way, which is kind of interesting. I don’t necessarily like it raw and anyway, that’s a whole nother issue. But I think finding the ways that you enjoy the vegetables is important. If you’re going to be eating more of them, if you just think, oh, I’ve got to eat it this way and I can’t. I have to make myself enjoy it. That’s just going to be torture. Find some good recipes, experiment, enjoy the process and get more vegetables in your day. Tell us about your book. Create Calm. 

Dr. Katie: My book Create Calm was really brought out of my wish to share the tranquil minds method that I work with my one-on-one patients on with more people. Like I said, I practice in Ontario, Canada. So I really can only help people who are in Ontario, Canada. I was feeling really limited by that. I took my clinical methodology where we go through the five pillars of performance that we talked about earlier and put them in this book in order to educate how to go about increasing the pillars.

There’s a whole section on nutrition, which goes into depth about how to do the things we talked about today. Like including protein and produce and focusing on eating regularly and mindful eating. But there’s also sections on the rest of the pillars that we didn’t get to today: how to maximize your sleep hormones, how melatonin comes in, how you can make your own melatonin, how to think about bringing in mindfulness and how to evaluate your exercise. So that again, like we talked about enjoying your vegetables, you’re actually finding joy in movement rather than that obligatory. Well, I better go for a run because otherwise I’ll have more anxiety. 

Carrie: Good and the tranquil minds program, you actually have an online program as well.

Is that right? 

Dr. Katie: I do. So the tranquil mind was born out of my clinical work and some folks learn better from a book, but some people learn better from an online course. The training program is available through online modules where you can listen to me talk and you get access to a workbook that walks you through over six weeks kind of like a bootcamp style of revamping these health habits, where each week we’re working on a different piece of each pillar. 

So we start with eating regularly and looking at your boundaries. Then we move into protein and produce and exercise. Then we really grow from there till we reach the last week, which is our connections module. We talk about getting to know yourself, your relationship with yourself, looking at your community relationships and how to develop closer friendships. And then also your spiritual health, finding that connection to God or to however you connect with something bigger beyond our day-to-day self.

Carrie: Okay. Towards the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time where you’ve received hope from God or another person. 

Dr. Katie: I love this question. I love this segment on your other episodes, because I think it’s so important to just reflect back and be grateful for the times where you have experienced that. I know when I look back at my life, there were a few times that I was trying to pick from, but I wanted to talk about my clinical work and seeing my patients. Sometimes I meet people and I feel like I’m looking at them almost through a cloud. If you’re trying to see what’s really going on, I always experienced so much hope and gratitude. When I feel like I can see a peak behind who this person is behind their anxiety and when I get to hear things like I don’t have anxiety anymore, or I really love myself now, I feel like I finally understand self love, that gives me more hope than anything else in my life. I’m just so grateful for the opportunities to witness that. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s really beautiful. Seeing the true person that’s underneath those like layers of symptoms is great. So thank you so much for being on the show today. I think that this has been informative. I know that I’ve learned some things about nutrition and anxiety, and I hope that other people have as well.

Dr. Katie: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been my absolute pleasure. 

If you love the show in general or found this episode particularly helpful, please share with a friend.

44. How Can Improving Gut Health Help Your Mood? with Maggie Roney, MS, NCC, LPC

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 44. How Can Improving Gut Health Help Your Mood? with Maggie Roney, MS, NCC, LPC

Today, we are privileged to have Maggie  Roney on the show. Maggie is a Licensed Counselor and Functional Medicine Practitioner.  She helps those who wish to get to the true root cause of their illnesses. Maggie shares with us her knowledge on functional medicine and how we can improve our gut health. 

Episode Highlights:

  • How does functional medicine work? What are its benefits? 
  • Is functional medicine better than conventional medicine?
  • Types of toxins we put in our body that we are not aware of.
  • The link between anxiety, stress and gut health
  • Small steps to take to achieve better gut health

Episode Summary:

Many people with anxiety also face digestive problems, yet doctors often can’t find a clear cause. These issues may actually be linked to stress and anxiety.

In today’s episode, we dive into the connection between anxiety and gut health with Maggie Roney, a licensed professional counselor and certified functional medicine provider. Maggie shares her personal journey from counseling trauma survivors to discovering the impact of functional medicine on mental health and physical health.

Maggie noticed that many of her clients still had persistent digestive issues, even after addressing their emotional stress. After her own struggles with medications and undiagnosed health issues, Maggie became passionate about combining trauma-informed counseling with functional medicine to help people heal.

Anxiety can show up in the body as muscle tension, digestive problems, autoimmune conditions, and more. Maggie emphasizes the importance of treating both emotional and physical health together for better overall wellness.

If you’re dealing with anxiety, digestive issues, or unresolved trauma, this episode is for you. Maggie discusses how functional medicine can support your healing journey alongside trauma-informed counseling.

Tune in to learn how a holistic approach can improve both your mental and physical well-being. Healing is possible when you address both mind and body.

Resources and Links

Maggie Roney,  MS, NCC, LPC

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD. One thing that we often see with anxiety is that individuals who struggle, who commonly have issues with their digestive system. They may have gone to doctor after doctor or gastroenterologist has tests run only to find out that they can’t necessarily find anything specific and it may be tied back to stress and anxiety.

Today on the show I have with me, Maggie Roney, who’s a licensed professional counselor and certified functional medicine provider. So we’re going to be talking about the connection between anxiety and gut health, too. 

Carrie: Maggie, how did you become interested in additional training? So you started out as a licensed professional counselor and then chose to become certified in functional medicine. How did you get to that?

Maggie:  I specialize also with trauma and EMDR consultants. I would see many clients that even as we, for the trauma, we worked on lifestyle choices and even lowering the stress they would still be on medications after medications. But the medications and our wants to make a, just a side thing hereof. I am not against medication. It has its place and it’s time to use it but I don’t have to go through so many and they’re not working. Then I thought there has to be a different way.

There has to be something that can be added or something that can be done. People would want to come off of their medications due to side effects that they did not particularly care for. It worked at first, but now it’s not working. So that was one reason. Another is my own health journey. I was 35 and they said, you’re completely healthy. But yet I’m on five medications that do not make any sense to me. None of them were things like pencil lines and as I learned more and I went on my own health journey, I thought I can really integrate these two and help someone out and that’s whenever I sought out and printed, the certification.

Carrie: Okay. I know a lot of people who have experienced trauma. We talked about how trauma is stored in the body. This is just one way it can manifest in terms of digestive issues, but it can also manifest in terms of muscle tension, sexual dysfunction issues and a whole host of other things. A lot of times people don’t necessarily connect that back to the traumatic experience.

You and I had talked off-air about auto-immune issues that people have. Oftentimes that’s very common with trauma, like fibromyalgia.

Maggie: Yes and it’s not even okay. It’s a traumatic event that caused that. Lifestyle choices and stressors that keep on working through and someone may get a virus and that’s what kicks the body into an auto-immune condition.

Carrie: Gotcha. It’s interesting to me how much overlap there is in our emotional health, mental health and our physical health. Unfortunately, a lot of times, those seeking help are very polarized. Perhaps the counselor may not be talking with the primary care physician and vice versa to really figure out and get to the bottom of what’s going on.

Have you seen that with your practice as well? That those areas tend to be silenced and people aren’t communicating as much. 

Maggie: I have. I do believe that more often than not counselors do try to reach out. It’s kind of split under the rug — “Okay, good. You’re taking care of your mental health. That’s fine. But you leave everything to me.” Sometimes you have to find positions that are receptive to different ideas. Even as a therapist, you can say, “I have this insight, can you help me understand this part of it?” That can be difficult, but I do see where there is just not enough communication.

Carrie: I think it can be hard for clients too if they’re honest with their medical practitioner to say, “I have anxiety.” They’re afraid a lot of times that their symptoms will be dismissed. That’s automatically your anxiety versus fully looking into the different aspects of it. Right? How can functional medicine benefit people in a different way than traditional Western models of medicine?

Maggie: Unfortunately with Western medicine and many advancements that we have made, it is not a one size fits all. If you have anxiety, here’s your protocol. Here’s what you do. Here’s your perspective. We see you in a month to three months with functional medicine.

We look at you as an individual. What is it that you are needing or could be doing differently? You could have the most summary of chronic stress, the cause may not be considered something big like divorce or death or something of that nature. It could be a high stress job. It could be insomnia and then we look out for the underlying reasons. Do you have a mammal or a vitamin deficiency? Do you have a genetic capability or a genetic condition that causes it? Or you may need a little bit more supplementation in one area versus another. Is it that you have food sensitivities exacerbating symptoms that you are experiencing? It is really getting down to the root causes for that individual which unfortunately is a lot of just toxins practice. 

Carrie: If you’re able to eliminate those things, then you’re able to feel a lot better physically is what you’re saying. 

Maggie: Yes. 

Carrie: Talk with us about toxins, like what kind of toxins do you see that the people are dealing with or consuming? Maybe it’s something that we aren’t fully aware of.

Maggie: No, of course the die die, obviously for ADHD, The anxiety process is a lot of this. We have things that we can’t even connect and those have difficulties with the body to break down and utilize some nutrients and it can create and test on permeability, which we can get into just a little bit. Other toxins can be our personal care products. For some reason here in the United States, they allow so many more ingredients that are banned in Europe and they have severe fines and can shut down your business. The Roundup weed killer, it is FDA approved, even though yet the FDA says, okay, it causes difficulties, but the FDA approves it to be utilized for weed killer. We then ingest that and that has a tremendous effect on our bodies.

Another thing as great as technology is, we all love it especially over this last year. It’s safe but all of the Bluetooth and the WIFI and all of that, has EMS electromagnetic fields that can be very damaging to our health. It causes ourselves to oxidize or cross the free radicals which are very damaging to us and our bodies can’t keep up and work on getting those out. It can be heavy metal toxicity. Not just lad, but mercury and that billings that you had 20 and 30 years ago that can still be in the body needing to detox. If our body doesn’t do a job detoxing, what it does is it stores it in the body but then that doesn’t function that makes us healthier. 

Carrie: Why is gut health so important to our mental health? 

Maggie: It used to be known that serotonin and dopamine are just made in the brain. However, scientists have discovered that in our gut, we actually have a third nervous system called the Enteric Nervous System. When we eat food, when the digestive process begins, and even whenever you smell the food, it releases enzymes to tell the stomach to get ready. It tells the stomach to make acid to break down the proteins that are coming and get everything that needs to go to the small intestine, the large intestine, and we will utilize what is needed in our gut.

We make 95% of our serotonin then it comes up with a nerve called the Vagus Nerve that goes from 60 to 70% of a person’s dopamine which is for motivation. If our gut is trashed, but if you are in your thirties to forties, we came from the age of using antibiotics for sore throat, stuffy nose, and headache.

Our guts are trashed because we have bacteria that live in our gut that help break down the food, help take the nutrients, utilize those nutrients and get them to where they need to go to be used. Those nutrients are needed to make the serotonin and to make the dopamine. That’s pretty much why the gut is so important. 

Carrie: That’s so interesting to me because I don’t hear psychiatrists talking about this with their patients when they’re prescribing medication for SSRI or others for depression. They’re not saying, “Hey, what is it that you’re actually eating from a holistic view? Are you eating a lot of processed food? Or eating a lot of fast food?”  And we get into this negative cycle where we don’t feel good. Then we don’t really feel like doing the good things for ourselves to take care of ourselves and then we’re putting that stuff in our body. And then we’re back to not feeling good again because of what we ate or how we treated ourselves.

It’s a hard cycle I think sometimes for people to get out of. I mean, would you agree with what you’ve seen?

Maggie: Absolutely. You talked about psychiatrists not talking with their patients and some of them just don’t know, and it’s not because they’re not good psychiatrists. But in medical schools, they take one semester on nutrition. They take two years on pharmacology and again, are highly respected, but unless they go out and they seek further education on that, then they won’t know and I’m sure they don’t have time, the way it is. But I wish that they would, and I wish that as needed as antidepressants are or anti-anxiety or anxiety medication, something that we certainly never learned in school or I did — the longer you take the SSRI, your body just stops making serotonin because it figures why we don’t need it.

It kind of stops and then, when people decide, “Hey, I’m going to get off my medication”, their body isn’t used to making serotonin and that takes a little while.

Carrie: Sure but they can. It can rejuvenate and relearn to do that. 

Maggie: Yes. 

Carrie: Okay. Good. That’s really interesting because those medications are often prescribed for OCD as well and in certain higher doses. I think that this topic is very important. What kind of toll does stress have? Cause you talked about stress a little bit earlier and anxiety takes on the body specifically related to gut health. How does that stress affect our gut? 

Maggie: Whenever something major happens, your adrenal system goes into overdrive.

That’s when your sympathetic nervous system says, it’s fight or flight. We’ve got to go, go, go, go, go, go and do, do, do, do do. Unfortunately, the brain can’t tell us or it doesn’t decide. They’re just doing normal everyday life. They’re just really busy and they don’t sleep long. So no, it just goes simply off of the nerves that are kind of firing in the brain, we need to enact this.

So that can be one thing, just a very high-stress life and you ask people today, “Are you stressed?” No. “Okay. Well, how much do you work?” 70 hours a week. That’s anywhere from 50 to 70. I’m finding it to be a pretty normal number. Then I have kids’ activities and can’t sleep, and then I’m taking care of my mom.

So all of those are stressful factors. Even though for us, we have kind of gotten it ingrained in our brains. We go more, we do more, we get more done and we’re better. We’re more successful, although we’re feeling awful. So it can be something very simmering as a toxic situation at work, a very unhealthy marriage just kind of day in, day out and large event rate for death or trauma of abuse. 

Carrie: We’re definitely living in a day and age where more and more people are experiencing chronic stress and I think you’re right. They’ve just kind of normalized it like, well, isn’t this what everybody does, you climb the corporate ladder and you have a family and you have a social life.

I mean, I don’t have time to exercise three times a week or prepare meals. And it’s in a lot of our priorities in what we’re choosing to spend our time on. 

Maggie: Right. 

Carrie: So is that something that you do as part of the functional medicine approach is help people figure out how to make the dietary changes and the lifestyle changes that they need in order to feel better and take better care of themselves.

Maggie: Yes and it’s not just, I see this on your paper so you need to do this, this and this. We talk about what is the motivating factor for them to keep this behavior in and then also explain down to the science of this is what it’s truly doing to your body and this is how it’s affecting your nervous system. If you are in constant sympathetic nervous system mode, you’re not digesting your food, you’re not replenishing, you’re not sleeping and truly sleeping to where your body restores itself. You’re not getting to the place where your body can utilize the food you even eat. It won’t even recognize it. Therefore, you’re not making serotonin, you’re not making Gabba. You’re not making dopamine.

Carrie: Being in that fight or flight state really arrests the digestive system because that has to come from the other part of our nervous system, kind of like being more relaxed. 

Maggie: Yes.

Carrie: Yeah. I think so many people don’t know that or they don’t realize that what are some small steps you would say that people can take to achieve better gut health?

Maggie: I would think the first thing is to really look at your schedule and kind of prioritize what is important for you and what do you want to accomplish. Whether it’s in the day or the week and beginning to really have the activities that are self-care, whether it’s exercise, spending time with others and being social.

It is very important to have those deep relationships with others. Another thing would be to look at what you are eating. This doesn’t mean you have to eat salads all the time and never enjoy anything. Trust me. I love some pizza and if you put peanut M and M’s in front of me, it’s going to be really hard and starting to fail, even though I know I’m going to feel awful the next day.

And sorry that I love a good margarita at the same time. I may have to watch when I eat those things, but watch for the amount of sugar that you are eating. Sugar is terrible for our bodies. It causes such an inflammatory response, even though it may not when you are in your teens and twenties, but it will add up and kind of begin to look at different areas that you would like to detoxify.

Whether that’s in cleaning, there are chemicals in there that are neurotoxic. There are chemicals in there that affect our Endocrine System, which makes our hormones. There are things that affect our adrenals which then affect everything in our body. So really look at all of your products that you have. 

Another thing would be, when your doctor says your laboratory work looks great and you are in good health. Actually ask some questions and look at it. Well, it’s within range, but is that the best range for me? Those are some basic areas.

Carrie: Do you have people that come to you that their labs look great? But they kind of don’t feel good or they don’t feel like themselves, or they feel like they could be at a better place of health.

Maggie: Yes, everything is completely within range. The standard range of here’s what the lowest person is normal. Here’s the highest person that is normal. They’re all within range, but it’s not at its optimal for that person. Looking at the relationships with these different results, we can tell that you have benefited from digestive enzymes for whenever the stomach breaks down proteins or it kind of indicates you’re low and the basics for being nine. Those types of things, which are B6 is probably one of the most prevalent BS that is needed to create neurotransmitters and to create energy in the cell site.

Carrie: Okay. Awesome. It sounds like there’s a lot of different options that people have, whether that’s diet changes, supplement reducing stress in order to get to a better place. And trusting that inner intuition of your own body when you feel most optimal. When you don’t start really paying attention to those cues like, when I eat these certain things, I notice I feel this way the next day. Or if I eat those things, I have more energy or I feel a little bit better. It can make a huge difference by making small changes, just in tune with where we’re at with our own bodies. 

Maggie: Right and that is difficult because I think that we are taught or at least it seems that way to just ignore your own body and just keep going. Well, they said everything was normal, so I don’t know, maybe I’m making this stuff in my head. Then excuse that it is normal and don’t even pay attention to it until then we have other things. I’ve talked to several clients and they will say I was fine until this year and then all of a sudden I have type two diabetes and hyperthyroid and it didn’t happen all of a sudden. We kind of delve into what happened, the root cause and work on reversing those issues. 

Carrie: This has been, I think, very informative. So towards the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Maggie: The first thing that came to my mind would kind of in a way, be my testimony. I believed as a child and then through my twenties, just some things happened and I thought, nope, nope, no, God, no, God. Well with my son, when he was in the third grade, he became suicidal and he was just kind of out of nowhere and it didn’t seem right.

Something wasn’t adding up and I got him to a different place and different school. We ended up switching schools, he wasn’t bullied or anything. We couldn’t figure it out and then we decided on medication. Things got a little bit better, the following year he became suicidal again, and then a break in the next year, the third year, and then suicidal again.

Well, we eventually found out and I know this is extremely controversial, but this is my story and my experience. We found out it was a vaccine injury. Every time he received this vaccine, it was 11 to 13 days later, he would become suicidal. It didn’t click until that third time I thought something was different. He had been on medication for years and years. 

Through that experience, whenever your child is suicidal, I just said, “Okay. I don’t know what is up there but just help.” I didn’t bargain or anything. When the first time I saw him happy and running into school and the sunlight was shining down on him, I took a picture of it and I sent it to his teacher and I said, “This is hope for me” and this secures my faith.

It was the most peaceful feeling I had knowing things were going to be okay now. Yes. We still had a rough few years and we had to detoxify him of the heavy metals. Now he is off all of his medications and doing great.

Carrie: Does he still struggle with anxiety? Certain things happen, changes and all of that? 

Maggie: Yes, but that’s why he has tools that he’s learned from other counselors. But that honestly was the greatest moment of hope I’ve ever had in my life. 

Carrie: That’s good. I think it was very perceptive for you to be able to put those things, those dots together, and be able to advocate for him to get what he needed at that time. Trying to look at it from a holistic point of view, I think that’s really important. 

Well, thank you so much, Maggie for coming on and talking with us about functional medicine and gut health. I think it’s been very interesting and informative and hopefully it will help some people kind of think through their life and how they can make further positive lifestyle changes.

Maggie: Thank you so much for having me. 

43. Overcoming Anxiety about Career and Calling with Kelsey Kemp

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 43. Overcoming Anxiety about Career and Calling with Kelsey Kemp


I had the privilege of interviewing Kelsey Kemp, a Christian career coach, speaker and podcaster. We had an interesting conversation about career and calling that will help you gain a new perspective on making career decisions that honor God. 

Episode Highlights:

  • What to do when you get anxious about making career decisions?
  • How to make a wise career decision?
  • How to know God’s will for your career?
  • Scripture verses about choosing a career and using your God-given talent. 
  • Steps to take if your work isn’t aligned with your purpose and calling.
  • How to evaluate whether it’s time to stay or leave your job?

Summary:

In today’s episode, I sit down with career coach Kelsey Kemp to talk about overcoming career anxiety, discovering your true calling, and finding peace in your work.

As Christians, many of us struggle with figuring out exactly what God has planned for our careers. I’ve been there myself, juggling different jobs before finally finding my calling. Kelsey shares how her journey in tech consulting led her to realize that fulfilling her true calling wasn’t about meeting others’ expectations—it was about listening to God and stepping into action.

Kelsey reminds us that God’s will isn’t always clear-cut from the start. He leads us through action, and trusting Him along the way helps uncover our purpose. Instead of fearing the wrong choice, we can trust that God will direct our steps as we move in faith. Kelsey emphasizes that clarity comes through action. Don’t fear making mistakes; as you take steps in faith, God will guide you to the right path.

I’m excited for you to hear this conversation with Kelsey. If you’re struggling with career anxiety or wondering if you’re on the right path, know that you’re not alone. Tune in for some powerful insights and encouragement to step into your calling with confidence.

Links and Resources:

Verses and Scriptures discussed: Mark 12:30, Matthew 7:7, Proverbs 16:9,
Matthew 25:14–30, Romans 8:28, Matthew 6:33, Matthew 25
Kelsey Kemp

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 43. If you’re new to the show, I am your host Carrie Bock. And on this podcast, we’re all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthy connections with God and others. Today, I’m gonna be talking with Kelsey Kemp, a certified career coach. 

One of the reasons that I wanted to talk about overcoming anxiety, related to career and calling is because oftentimes this is an area as Christians where we can really get hung up on what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives occasionally. I know for myself, even though I’ve only had one career per say, I’ve got a master’s degree and became a therapist right away. 

However, along that journey, I’ve had many different jobs. And I feel like I’ve learned different things from each of those jobs. And at some point before I got into my private practice and had my own business. Became self-employed. I came to this crossroads really of, I read this book called “The real adventures of working girl”. About a woman who had had a bunch of different jobs. And I sat down, had this prayer time with the Lord and was like, okay, what is the role for me? Where do I thrive? What do I do the best? And it allowed me to, instead of just going and looking for a job that was out there really mapping out what my ideal job, where my strengths really go and what fits with me.

And so, I’m so excited, Kelsey, to have you on the show to talk about some of these things, because I think it’s gonna be really valuable to people maybe who are anxious about, am I, am I in the right job or my in the right career? And you know, am I too old? Is it too late for me to change? There’s so many questions that, and anxiety can really keep people stuck in a place where they don’t need to be. So thanks for coming on and talking about this with us?

Kelsey: Oh my goodness. Well, now I actually just went to dominate this interview and ask you questions. You said about your exploration of different jobs. And at first I was like, she’s a unicorn that stayed in the same career the whole time. But even you acknowledging that you had multiple different facets to enrolls how you play that out. I thought that is actually, so how callings go a lot of the time, even if you only figure that out in hindsight. But there was something drawing it all together, but there’s a lot of ways that you could go about it. But man, do I also relate in what you’re saying about “how this is like a cesspool for anxiety”.

Carrie: Right.

Kelsey: With career decisions and wearing off, am I gonna  miss it wrong? Am I just going to totally derail God’s plan for me, side note? He’s way more powerful than. But anyway, yes thank you I can’t wait to dive in. Obviously I’m already, like jumping out of the bed, getting ready to go. 

Carrie: How did you get into this business of helping Christians finding their calling? 

Kelsey: Goodness. So I listen to business podcasts all the time, and I recently heard somebody say “business is actually just radical empathy”. And it’s also reminding me of, I’m reading through all the gospels again right now of work as a way that we carry out the second greatest commandment, you know. The first being loved the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I think I got the order, right. And you always mess it up. And then the second being, love your neighbor as yourself. So my story very much started with being the person that needed this help.

Right out of college I went into tech consulting. So I was working for a really huge multinational firm. I was in their digital and emerging tech group as a business analyst. Helping it really large firms develop new, basically overhaul their integrated Tech systems. And a lot of people, when I would say that, would say, that sounds so cool. And I, my ego, what’s a, yes, that’s why I chose this one. That’s why I wanted you to say, or that’s what I wanted you to think about me, but it was so incredibly dissatisfying. And after two years, I really realized. I had spent so much of my academic journey and my young professional journey, doing things that others deemed as most valuable or sought after. And it led me to just white knuckle my way into saying “I can do it look, look at what I could do”. And over time that just wears on you. I mean, two years, I guess it didn’t even take that much time. It wore on me so much to realize that what you’re called to do is so much different than just doing what you can.

So, I was very much suffering in my health, my mental health, and in the bottom of that pit, just so desperate. God, would you please show me what is your will for my life? Isn’t that kind of the common prayer?

Carrie: Right.

Kelsey: Please show your will for my life. Please show me, please show me, please show me. And after her whole life, I just realized when I would dwell on Matthew seven, seven of the famous, like asking it will be given to you. Seeking, you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you. That sounds like a pretty active process actually. 

Carrie: Yes.

Kelsey: And I realized I was waiting for God to actually, just write the direct 10 step instruction list on the wall for me. And I felt convicted of my spiritual brattiness actually. God, I need you to essentially, I realize, assure me from all discomfort and the guilty. I want you to confirm that I’m going to have, It’s such a significant life of my dreams, and I want you to get me on the direct path to being there without any searching. And so when I realized, okay, I really gotta start making this an active process, doing my research, learning about fields that I don’t even know exist because I realized I had a pretty childlike view of what career options were available to me. All the while God just revealed to me this moment of remembering what my mom always said of necessity is the mother of invention.

Again, that’s a theme of love your neighbor as yourself. What did I most want? I wanted somebody to help me discern what I was truly called to do occupationally. And so I thought I’m 24 and I have no idea how to solve that problem. But man, that would be so amazing. If one day I figured out the solution and then gave it to other people.

So I thought, why don’t I just start now? So I signed up to become a certified career coach. And it started my practice actually earlier in life than I thought I could. Did I get some laughs along the way? Absolutely like it was not lost on me though. I was 24 and it’s been three years since then. Still I get some laughs, but I’ve worked with people even in their sixties executives. God has been very, very gracious with me. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s really awesome. It’s just a great testimony of how God uses our struggles and turns it into something beautiful for. Then you to be able to pass the torch on and, like, help the next person who was going through what you were going through just a few years ago.

Kelsey: Exactly. He wastes nothing. 

Carrie: Right. So you talked about this a little bit, like where people really are like, okay, God, you know, show me. You know, show me your calling. And I think there can be this anxious component among some Christians of like, okay, what if I miss it? What if, like God’s calling us some kind of bullseye and I shoot the arrow and I just, I totally end up on the wrong target. And I ended up in this job that God just doesn’t have for me. Or maybe you feel like you’re in that job right now. Oh gosh. I just feel like I’m totally wasting my time or missing out on, what it is God has and we look at calling is some kind of, like big, you know mysterious thing that we’re gonna miss it. And we’re gonna mess it up. What would you say to somebody that’s dealing with some of that right now? 

Kelsey: I think one, I will quote Tim Keller most likely in abundance during this interview, because he just informs so much of the theology of work that has really helped me come to this point. But one thing he said was no, that God’s will, is more of something that he does then he gives. And so we want all the clear instructions, but what he actually models for us in the Bible is it says in Proverbs 16, Verse 1 and 9 are quite similar, but 9, it says “A man’s plans belong to his heart, but God is the one that establishes the guards, his steps”. And what does that take? It actually takes lifting your foot and, and then God will direct it in the right place. 

But what we see in the parable of the talents that has been, so that is probably one of the most foundational scriptures to my career coaching practice of seeing the, you know, the parable of the three servants, the master who’s going well on a long journey gives each of them a he, He divides his wealth among them. It says according to their abilities and he did not give them any instructions at all. But you see that when the master comes back at an unpredictable time, you see that the rules were actually clear all along. He always knew he was going to judge each of them. Based on what they did in absence of instructions.

Carrie: Wow!

Kelsey: So he, and it was so clear and to the servant who out of fear saying “Master, I didn’t, you’re a shrewd man. I didn’t want to make you angry if I lost any of it”. So he buried his talent in the ground and I like how talent it’s meaning the piece of gold, but actually just in English. It’s interesting to think, Okay, what about my innate resources? Of my abilities too. 

Carrie: Sure.

Kelsey: I will bury it in the ground for fear of losing anything. And he said “you wicked and lazy servant” and it reminds me of the Matthew effect too. Those who have little understanding, even what little they have is taken away. But those who have understanding even more will be given to them. So what did the faithful servants get? They doubled their masters’ wealth. We don’t know if it was by taking it to a certain brand of bank. We don’t know if they invested in a certain new crop that was all up to them, but their result was that they doubled their master’s wealth in absence of instructions. And the master said, “well done, good and faithful servant. Now come and share in your master’s happiness”. And that is what work is like to me, that faithfulness, of course, we’re here to serve and not be served, but our father in heaven is so gracious that he does give us joy, fulfillment, purpose, happiness. We’re not chasing happiness, but he says, “here that comes from me. I’ll give you all more than you can imagine, when you’re faithful”. And so to answer your question, just kind of more tangibly, as I think about, kind of that bag of gold in the parable of the talents. 

I imagine us coming into this life and we have all these clues and these breadcrumbs, our internal resources of who God made us to be with our innate talents when we’re reborn in him and the spirit, our spiritual gifts. Our core values that are unique to each of us, our personality, all these things. Those are all context clues that you’re meant to multiply those natural, also the opportunities physically that are given to you and the spheres of influence and the abilities and all these things multiply those for the glory of God.

I pay attention to the breadcrumbs and the context clues and make a wise decision based on what career path given my research and exploration and talking to many people. Do I think, would best glorify God and serve others? And I can trust that God’s going to also bring me joy through that. They don’t have to worry. And that is when I think you can know you’re following a calling because God teaches you so much through action. Clarity comes through action, not just from thinking and not especially for whom honestly, having a kind of sparse. I will be very honest prayer life of only saying, God, show me your well, God, show me your well with your arms crossed in a dark room, refusing to do any research or trusting or taking action.

Carrie: Sometimes we have to take that risk and we have to try things and see how it works out. And that can be scary at times, just thinking of, you know, different things that I’ve done, even going to get a master’s in counseling. I hadn’t ever sat down and talked to a counselor about what their job was like. Looking back on that, that probably would have been a good idea to do, for seeing what kind of careers are available to me afterwards. 

But I knew like when I got into that room and I had my first session with someone, it was like, there was this wave that came over me like, this is it. This is what I’m supposed to do. You just, I just innately knew that. And I didn’t know exactly how that was going to manifest out. It’s manifested in ways that I couldn’t have imagined, but if I hadn’t have, taken that step to move across the country to go to graduate school, to try out counseling, then I wouldn’t have known. And I know some people that got into that practicum and they had a completely different experience and they were like, you know, I think I wanna do more church type ministry, but maybe counseling. Isn’t the professional nature of it. It’s not really for me. 

I have a friend that uses her counseling degree working in a museum. She’s not doing any formal counseling, but she loves what she does. And she works with people and got hired because she could do people because she has a counseling degree. So it was just incredible how God been steer and guide us. I can’t remember the quote, but it’s basically something to the effect of God can steer you if you’re moving, but it’s kind of hard for God to steer you. If you’re just not moving. If you’re standing still.

Kelsey: And that’s called a Whirlpool, actually, if you’re just spinning around in circles, actually, that’s why a lot of my most anxious thoughts felt like it felt like I was spinning when I wasn’t just making a decision about my career. I, again, Tim Keller. He has this whole sermon. I really recommend anyone looks it up on YouTube. It’s called, “Your plans versus God’s plans”. And he excellently breaks down the mystery of God’s sovereignty and our free will. And he says, anytime that somebody comes to him and says “much would I do in my career”? Whatever. He says, “make a decision” and they say, “how spiritual have you? You’re supposed to be a pastor”. And making decisions. Practicing wisdom is how you become more and more the kind of person who discerns God’s will. And I will definitely be sending this episode to people because of what you said of how you were already in the room, when you had that feeling of confirmation of calling.

Wash over you. And it was a feeling of confirmation, not of go, do this. 

When you were in high school. I don’t know. Or like, in you’re on the volleyball court and this just like, Hey, Carrie you can be a counselor. That’s not how it, how it went. We would love it. But honestly, in the end, I don’t think we would want that to happen because God is sovereign. And He knows that we have to through experience, train our hearts to be faithful to Him. And especially in ambiguity. 

Carrie: Yes. Yes, that’s true. And you can pray about things and sometimes you don’t have the clearest sense. It’s not something that’s for or against in the Bible. You know, if it’s very clear, aligned with scripture, okay, this is very clear. You know, I need to do that. And or if it’s very not aligned with the values of scripture, then we know, okay, that’s not what I should be doing. 

But many, many, many I’d say most decisions in our life we make, we can’t go directly to the Bible to find the answer to that. We have to base it on biblical principles and values of loving God, loving people. What we sense in our spirit, because I do believe that. The holy spirit speaks to us. And sometimes we just sense that internally of like, this is a no, and I don’t even have to know why it’s a no, it’s just a no for me. So we can, we can trust those things that, that God gives us. But sometimes we just have to say, okay God, I, I’m not sure, but this is the decision or the direction that I believe that you’re sending me in. And I’m gonna, I’m going to go in that direction. And do it. I think that you’re, you know, you’re spot on with what you’re saying.

Kelsey: If it’s okay. I would like to speak a little bit more to the question of, can we miss our callings? Cause I think that there’s one more aspect to this conversation of yes, you and I just supported a lot of points to say, generally speaking, God will faithfully lead you in that direction. And also we should just know that our free will is not a joke. We’re not all the way like puppets on strings. There actually are plenty of options. Just like I think our culture is finally releasing our grip on the view of their being the one that you will marry.

There’s a lot of personal choice involved with that as well. Though we know that we can trust God, he’s guiding us. It’s complicated. But what I wanted to say as an additional point of perspective is, and this is hard to admit. It’s quite honest and honest look at life, but we can miss our calling in general. Yes, because one, if we look at our primary calling that we see in the Bible to follow Jesus. To believe in him to have a salvific relationship, to go and make disciples of all the nations. That’s the great commission. 

Carrie: Right.

Kelsey: You see those callings are very direct instructions that are blatantly listed out. Do people opt out of those constantly?

Yes. Is it unequivocally God’s will that we would all follow them? Yes. So why would we believe that we cannot also opt out of faithfulness? In all other decisions in life and not re consequences. Is that harrowing? Yes. I mean, have we all seen that person who has squandered their talents for a lifetime bearing under them under many, many excuses that I’m sure are valid, but you know, you could, as an option, trust God.

Precede regardless, but yes, I think that we’ve all seen that example play out. And so this is something that is harrowing, but important to acknowledge that you can opt out of faithfulness at any point. And why, if you are not communing with your creator and seeing work as an and your calling as an opportunity to commune with him, And so if you’re not even obeying your first command to be in a relationship with him, why would you believe that he would just release you to go have all your idols in the world?

Which of course you can, but then he will always be knocking at your door saying, “come back to me, come back to me”. So I’m not sure if that was a little long and winding of an answer, but I have spoken at a few places and especially students come up to me and they’re like, “you know what? I was just so encouraged for your talk”, to know, like I can’t miss my calling and I thought, wait, did I say that? No.

I think that, like, if you’re opting into faithfulness, you could trust absolutely that you are a part of God’s promises. He’s guiding your steps. He’s even guiding your words, as it says in Proverbs 16:1. “And he is working all things together for your good, for those.” What does it say when people just say he’s working all those things to your good in Romans 8:28, but they don’t mention the last part of that first “for those that are called according to his purpose who love him and are called according to his purpose”.

Carrie: Right. 

Kelsey: So I think that there is like, a pulling up to the bar. And then I think that you could be super secure.

Carrie: Right. I think about Matthew 6:33, that “seek first his kingdom and all these things shall be added to you”. It’s like if you have your priorities and your perspectives in order, and you are seeking God, who’s going to lead and guide you and whatever that next piece is, the next step, you don’t get the whole roadmap. Sorry. That’s not how spirituality Christianity works. I’ve never gotten the whole roadmap and I’m not expecting you to either, but you will get the next piece of the puzzle. The next step along the way, 

Kelsey: But who would we become if we actually had the full roadmap, actually in all of the, those end of times, Parables, especially in Matthew chapter 25, the bridegroom didn’t announce when he would be coming back and the virgins with the lambs. It was to test who was faithful and the master didn’t announce when he was coming back from the journey. It was, so her true character could be revealed. And if we just got all the assurance in the world, here’s your life story one. I don’t think we would actually want that. That’d be kind of like, I don’t know. I want a little mystery of my life, but then also this is an opportunity to grow with him in the midst of uncertainty. 

Carrie: What would you say, just shifting gears a little bit to someone who is in a work environment and they don’t believe that that aligns with their faith or calling, like for example, maybe the company is expecting them to work too many hours and that doesn’t align with their God-given need for rest or God given need to spend time with their family and put them as the priority that they want to. Maybe the company is just. All about profits and they don’t really care about the people that they’re serving or the people that are working for them. What would you say to someone who’s, who’s in that environment and just not feeling good about it? 

Kelsey: I would say the same thing to them that I would say to others who are even, maybe they would say their content at work, but they’re starting to get this inkling that maybe there’s some greater  thing that I could live into for God in my career, some greater measure of service and use of my vision, my aspirations, my talents. So whether it’s a really bad situation or a, maybe there’s something more, my advice is pretty much the same. Be proactive. Do not wait. I’m such a firm believer of, you don’t have to marry the first option that comes in your line of vision, you post you find, I think this could be my next step. Doesn’t mean that it’s time to jump ship tomorrow, but good grief. We all hear that saying like start with the end in mind. 

So essentially you could reverse engineer what you need to do in the meantime. Let’s understand what that end is in terms of starting. The discernment journey of what are you called to on an overarching level, given who God created you to be very specifically what he put on your heart to go do or serve, like to help who doing what, why? And then the last step after that more bigger vision discernment is the very practical of great what jobs, what role title.

Companies would allow me to best carry that out or what business idea would allow me to carry that out. That’s great too. And so then you can only then really kind of reverse engineer. All right. Wait. So now that I have that, well, at least I know I could start acting on it at any time. I think it’s appropriate. And so then it’s kind of a more detailed conversation of when do I jump into that next thing, but at least you have started the discernment journey when here’s the key. When like, before you are seeing red and deeply stressed out, there’s just a, you know, you’re a mental health professional. When somebody is in a fight or flight, you actually are not able to perceive.

The reality of the array of options available to you when you act, physically get tunnel vision. And so how therefore would you be able to perceive some cool thing that maybe otherwise you wouldn’t think is possible or go out and do more research and have more tenacity in that, or make a decision out of faith and not fearfulness. All those things start early. I really recommend it. At least being very thoughtful about exploring, especially through informational interviews. You know, even if you’re slightly interested or you heard about somebody’s job title and you’re like, I wonder what that is. Or you have a family friend and you think they’re just doing the coolest thing, even if you don’t.

Aren’t a hundred percent sure. That’s the key, don’t make a decision before you actually do research. I find people really forced themselves to make career decisions before they know what the day-to-day reality is like in that job, what tasks they would spend the majority of their time doing, what the career outlook, what the growth trajectory is. And if they’re okay with all of those things, I find that people do not want to have a coffee chat with someone, unless they’ve already decided, I for sure want to be an HR professional because I’m a people person. And little did they know there’s a ton of paperwork involved in that. And also there are so many different specialties in HR it’s mind-boggling. So, if you do those informational interviews, you would know that, but I find that people try to decide beforehand so they could treat their networking conversations as a. I’m just going to say a few things to sound impressive until I could get to the punchline where I asked you to pass on my resume when actually it should have just purely been a research conversation. 

Carrie: That’s good to note, I think. Are there any specific guidelines that you use when helping people evaluate whether it’s time to stay or time to go and their job?

Kelsey: There’s a couple, and I actually have a frequency about this on my website that goes through in depth, some more on each of these criteria and it’s interactive and it’s not meant to make you make a rush decision. That’s the point just to, help you predict, okay. What are the number of months that I should really be expecting and why? If it is a yes, I should leave. Why and what else did I do instead? So that’s some of the things that can help, but to run through a few of them right now, one, do you actually want your boss’s job or your boss’s boss’s job? Do you actually, not only, maybe on one end, if there are growth opportunities within your current field or your current company, do you want them, or it may be, I’ve talked to a lot of people that do like their job, but they get frustrated because, they are current company does not offer advancement opportunities and that’s essential to career satisfaction.

So that’s one thing advancement. Do you have the opportunity and do you want it, and what about your team and your boss? Is it, I think there’s not too much to be sat on that it talks about. Can you trust your management? I think that’s something I take quite seriously because I’ve seen people booted out. I’ve seen bad reports given that are not merited. If you actually cannot trust your management, then, that I have a dear friend right now. Who’s going through that? Not merited whatsoever that is truly something to get out of quickly.

What about, are you interested in the subject matter of your work whatsoever? Maybe you’ve been sticking around because you enjoy your coworkers and there’s a few perks and you have a really cool summer party and a Christmas party, and you liked those things or your interviewer’s servicemen is just the best.

And you want to stick around for that or the health insurance. It’s just, premium, but what about the actual tasks that you’re doing? Do they agree and utilize your innate abilities? If not, or if not all the way. I think that’s something that we could always maximize when you truly find your point of creative genius, which I believe exists in everybody. And you find what task reveals that cause maybe you haven’t stumbled upon the thing that reveals it again test experiments. 

Then, oh, man, you don’t even know what sense of flow like buzzing focus and satisfaction that kind of like, and God got to the end of the six days kicked back and said, “that was very good”. That kind of feeling you were missing out. So maybe it’s not like, I hate this or it’s so terrible, but maybe you could just maximize again, like multiplication divine multiplication is a huge theme, especially in the gospel. 

Carrie: I think something, you have to take this step back and say, is it my actual job duties that I’m not liking? Or is it the job duties? Is it the structure of how this company has structured the job duties? Maybe I really enjoy my job, but the boss is super micromanage or their coworkers are always whining and griping and complaining, and it’s just like a negative environment to be in. And so sometimes it’s hard to tease those things out cause you just look at it as one whole picture.

But I think like, what you’re saying is it’s like, do I need a different company where I could do the same thing, but maybe have more freedom, autonomy, better benefits, whatever it is, or do I need to be doing something, a different type of tasks, because I’m just not passionate about this, the way that I was in the past and those kind of things can shift and change for sure. And you have to kind of tune in and pay attention to that.

Kelsey: Absolutely. And the last thing I’ll say on this, as you are allowed to see a measure, when we say responsibility, our culture often means hunkering down and like counting the 10 beans that you were given and making sure nothing happens to them. That really sounds like the unfaithful servant. I actually, I think responsibilities should be more defined by.

I assessed everything that God gave me in everything that He, I really believe is a, such a God-given desire that He put on my heart. And I did my darndest with it. I just went for it. A lot of wisdom is not deciding between good or bad it’s deciding between best or better. And I think that I just want to say you are allowed to change jobs. That doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad Christian. That was a big deal for me because my main idea of the theology around work that I grew up around was, and I’m not blaming any pastor because you know, they’re not a career coach. They’re not obsessed with studying the Bible through the lens of career ethics as I am. That’s okay. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. 

But what I did pick up was to be a good Christian at work is to just take whatever God gave you, which by the way, releases all agency from yourself in whatever job is right in front of you, you just have to take it. That’s kind of the read between the lines that I got and you just have to be excellent at it, which again, the read between the lines is just stick in it and make sure that you perform better than everybody else. So one day somebody like Jim at the water cooler. Really? Why are you so much better of a CPA than everybody else? Will you share the gospel with me? And that’s just not how it works. Honestly, due to convict grace, like, oh my gosh. non-Christians and Christians and non-Christians can be so much better at a job than Christians can. That’s fine. So, anyway, I think faithfulness, it’s just a choosing for better or choosing the better, not just managing only what you have, expanding your impact for the kingdom. You don’t have to stay where you’re at. 

Carrie: That’s so good. That’s so good. Because I, I’ve talked with clients who have felt guilt over leaving their job. I don’t want to leave my manager in a bad place or just very conscientious of what other people are experiencing or thinking, or they’re not wanting to disappoint someone.

Maybe I, this coworker helped me get this job. I feel like I shouldn’t leave or there’s so many emotions that can get tied up in those things. Even when we know clearly, like in our mind and in our spirit know, it’s time, like it’s time to move on.

Kelsey: And if the spirit is telling you that, and you know that you will be able to glorify God more and serve others better in another place, then pull you. Trust the Lord to fill that seat with somebody better, which is very humbling. Okay. 

Carrie: Wow!

Kelsey: He has the whole puzzle mapped out, please. your only concern is to follow him and play your piece. He will figure out the rest. I also speak with clients that are really, they see so many problems in the world. I think that I, you know, I, this was a big part of my quarter life crisis. There are so many things I care about. So many things I’m grieved by. The most loving thing you could do is to pick the one you. I don’t want to say just pick one, because that freaks always freaked me out. But what about in a more playful way, pick the one that you’re drawn towards most. And trust God to be God in you to be a human who could probably just do one thing super duper well. He will fill out the rest. 

Carrie: That’s good. This has just been a really great, great conversation. I’ve enjoyed it so much. 

Kelsey: Likewise. 

Carrie: At the end of the podcast, I like to ask every guest to share a story of hope, which is a time where you’ve received hope from God or another person. 

Kelsey: I cannot wait for the story though.

I’m about to share it. So I actually wish I received this from someone in person, but admittedly, I heard it on a podcast, but it was just too good not to tell all my friends about, even still to this day. I, gosh, this instilled so much awe in me like God is so big. And I’m so small, of when this pastor in country and the Middle East undisclosed. He is ruthlessly going out and risking his life, sharing the gospel all the time. And even though he really is, I think doing, I wanted to say like taking everything in his hands as much as he can. I would rather say he’s stewarding his job as much as possible. 

He’s initiating conversations about God everywhere he goes, but still in humility, he said, “don’t, don’t get it wrong. God is the only one that could save someone”. I, and it reminds me of the loaves and the fishes of, your job is only, I love how Dallas Jenkins, the creator of the chosen. He says this, he says, “Your job is only to bring the five loaves and the two fishes for Jesus to bless”. Even if you’re like Jesus, like there’s 5,000 people here.

There’s no way this is, this feels really dumb. Bring it to him and it is not your job to feed the 5,000, it is only your job to bring the loaves and the fish. Jesus it’s the one that will multiply it for 5,000. So similarly, this guy he’s saying, “God is the one who saves”. Let me give you an example. I went out into an incredibly rural village, has almost no contact with the outside world.

I went into this one man’s tent and I was telling him about the gospel and this man said, “I’ve heard of these things”. And the pastor’s like how the business is so remote. And it’s a predominantly Muslim country. And he, he said a man dressed in white has been coming to my tent every single night for months. And he’s been telling me to write things down and the pastor said, “Show me what he’s told you to write down”. Wow! Word for word it was the entire book of John from the gospels. 

Carrie: Wow! In his language?

Kelsey: In his language. 

Carrie: That’s incredible.

Kelsey: So that’s what God means when he says I am the one who calls you. But like he said to Moses, I made you have a mouth. Okay. All I need you to do, but I don’t even need you. It was an Acts 17 as if He is served by human hands, he’s not, he could do this all himself, but he knows for our hearts that we need to participate with him because as a gift, it’s a gift to him or to us actually. But anyway, he says to Moses, I gave you your mouth. I’ll also give you the words to say to Pharaoh. I’m really just asking you to walk into his court. And He is the one who calls us, but all of our callings are for him and for his glory and they will be done through his strength, achieving the results that he always wanted for himself. He just wants our faithful hearts to say, even though this seems ridiculous, I guess I’ll build the art.

Even those, this seems ridiculous. I’ll lift up the loaves and the fishes, even though I feel so scared, I’ll go into Pharaoh’s temple. I think that’s how our careers are supposed to feel. Not fearful because He commands us to fear not. And He commands us to not worry. And that’s not him. The disciples said at one point in the gospel, they were like, how is that possible? You’re asking us to be perfect. And Jesus said, “yes with man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible”. So he’s not asking you something that you can’t do in him. You need not worry literally, but we can live quite gloriously on the edge for him. And that is what I really hope to help people do through my practice.

Carrie: And so, that’s awesome. I love it. Well, Kelsey, we’re gonna put your, the links to your website in the show notes so that people can find you. And my assistant is gonna go through and pull all the scripture references, the scriptures that you mentioned today. And so we’ll put those in there. If people wanna do some study on those passages. I think that that would be awesome. 

Kelsey: All the best thing you can do. Let God preach to your heart. Not me.

Carrie: Thanks for being on the show today. 

Kelsey: Thank you so much. This was just the most jubilant conversation.

Carrie: One addendum that we forgot to talk about is that Kelsey has a podcast as well, called “Answer the Call”. So if you like what you heard today, and you want to hear more, go check out Kelsey’s podcast as well. She has a link through her website that we’re going to put in the show notes.

If you have been a regular listener to our show, I would love it. If you could rate and review us on iTunes or other platforms that you listen on that allow reviews that really helps people find our show and validate that we’re talking about good things. So I appreciate you so much for listening and taking the time to do that.