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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.

How Do You Know If Your Childhood is Affecting Your Adulthood?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling.

How do you know if your childhood is negatively affecting your adulthood? You don’t want to be a victim to what happened to you as a child and blame everything on your parents, but you still feel that childhood experiences may be holding you back. If you have worked hard to avoid thinking about the difficult things that have happened to you, you may believe you have put the past behind you. After all, you made it through the past fires and they aren’t burning anymore. You’ve moved out of mom’s house. However, things still aren’t going the way you hoped they would. Here are four indicators that your childhood may be affecting your adulthood. 

  1. Your intimate relationships follow a negative pattern you can’t seem to escape.
     If you’ve dated several versions of the same guy with a different name who is all wrong for you, you know what I am talking about. You may find yourself responding to others the way mom or dad responded to each other. Typically, people end up in a romantic partnership with someone who treats them very similarly to how they were treated as a child or a partner who is on the opposite end of the continuum. For example, if you were raised by an emotionally neglectful parent, you will most likely have an emotionally absent partner or one who is emotionally dependent on you in an unhealthy way. You will gravitate towards someone who treats you how you believe you deserve to be treated. You may even push away healthy people because you don’t believe you deserve the love they have to give to you. The healthier you are, the healthier people you will attract into your life. The reverse is also true.
  2. You have intense emotional reactions that don’t match the present situations.
    If you react to a situation with an emotional level of 8 when the situation calls for a 3, you might be reacting out of trauma. Understand that your brain is constantly linking situations together in order to protect you. When you  experience something similar to when the unsafe event happened, the emotions and body sensations connected to that memory flood in faster than you know what hit you. This can happen without a specific picture or memory coming to mind. You may not even be aware of what triggered the emotional reaction or why. If you have experienced trauma, you might say, “I feel crazy.” Often, an immense amount of guilt and shame follows these emotional outbursts. You feel like you should be more in control of your emotional responses and have tried to change, but the same things still keep happening.
  3. You can’t stop thinking about your childhood or you can’t remember it at all.
    These are two extremes that can happen as a result of trauma. You may have frequent flashbacks of the difficulties that happened in childhood or frequent nightmares. These are classic symptoms of PTSD. On the other hand, you may have difficulty remembering anything before a certain point in your life such as age 10. Not remembering large periods of your childhood is a symptom of dissociation. Dissociation happens when what you experience in the present is too much for your nervous system to bear, so you have to disconnect from it. This can happen without conscious awareness. If you lose large periods of time in the present where you “zone out,” this can also be a symptom of dissociation.
  4. You don’t feel fully adult.
    You can point to many of the adult things you do such as working full time or attending college, and raising children. However, you don’t feel it internally. You regularly encounter situations in which you feel like a child: helpless, lost, and alone. You may know mentally that you can leave your job, but emotionally, you feel stuck. You may know that you can say no or set a boundary, but when you try, your voice is shaky. 

The good news is there is hope.
If you believe that your childhood is affecting your adulthood, therapy can help. Learning new ways of coping, relating to others, and processing trauma can get you to a place where the past is truly in the past. When you are no longer haunted by the experiences in your childhood, you can progress forward into a more healthy adulthood.   

Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP of By The Well Counseling is a Licensed Professional Counselor who specializes in helping clients with trauma, anxiety and OCD get to a deeper level of healing through EMDR via online counseling across Tennessee and in person intensive therapy sessions. Carrie is the host of the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast, which is a welcome place for struggling Christians to reduce shame, increase hope, and develop healthier connections with God and others.

Vulnerability, Grace, and The Power of Church Community with Randy Draughon

11. Vulnerability, Grace, and The Power of Church Community with Randy Draughon

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 11. Vulnerability, Grace, and The Power of Church Community with Randy Draughon

  • What happens when pastors are isolated
  • How pain can be a good thing
  • Vulnerability as a gift we give each other
  • How to build a Christian Community 

Verses discussed: Ephesians 1, Tim 1:15, James 5:16

Resources and Links:
Midtown Fellowship, Nashville

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 11

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 11. Today’s show is on the incredible power of Christian community and how that can impact mental health in a positive way. I wanted to make a very special dedication of this episode on Christian community to BJ Howard. In the process of putting this recording together, I’ve found out that he passed away.

This was someone that was very connected and involved in church, connected to encouraging and mentoring people that were younger than him. He was someone who was able to give me a lot of hope in my life when I needed it the most to keep going and to keep following the Lord and keep trusting his plan for my life.

Thank you so much BJ for your influence. I hope that in some small way this episode and not just this episode, but this podcast is a way to move forward and can carry the torch of the light and the love that you showed to me, to be able to show that to other people.

I got the opportunity on this episode to interview one of the local pastors in Nashville, Randy Draughon. He is the Pastor of Midtown Fellowship, and we were able to get into some great dialogue about being a Christian and living in the Christian community and what that looks like.

Let’s dive right in. 

Carrie: For those that don’t know, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Pastor Randy: I’ve been in Nashville for almost 30 years now, married have three kids. I started Midtown Fellowship around 2001. Our passion then was to go into the heart of the city and to start a church for people that had given up on church.

So we were from a very traditional style church and we shed the skin of all that and started a church and a skate park. Most of the folks that were coming to Midtown were musicians or college students. Back then the city had really not gone through any kind of transformation. This was pre-Titans.

Nobody really lived down there unless they had to, which meant that they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Downtown was the cheap place to live. 

Carrie: Wow, not anymore. 

Pastor Randy: It’s true. We’ve seen a lot of change over the years and we partnered with a ministry called Rocket Town and they built a skate park and a big music venue down in the city.

When we got to a point where we needed a bigger space, they opened their doors and they were incredibly generous to us and we needed that because everybody coming to our church was so poor. None of them had any money. We had a philosophy early on never to take an offering because we were shedding the skin of the idea that when you come to church, the church wants so much from you. We’re operating from the philosophy of we just really believe that God has so much to give to you. So God just took care of us. 

Carrie: How in the world, like, did you get paid? You didn’t take up an offering. This is incredible. 

Pastor Randy: We just prayed and people just gave. I really can’t tell you that we ever spent much time around the budget, trying to figure out how to make it happen. We just were so busy just doing the work of ministry, meeting with a lot of people.  We really had a simple philosophy and that was, we really believe that when God impacts one person, the ripple effect of that to their community and their family actually ripples out into the city.

And so we spend a lot of time trying to keep bongo, Java, and business and Fidos and all the coffee shops. You’ll appreciate this, our first offices were on 12 South because it was the cheapest place to get an office. It was just a rolling crime scene over there and obviously, it’s all changed since then.

Carrie: A lot has changed in Nashville. I’m sure over the years that you’ve been there and in terms of like ministry that has shifted somewhat, the population that you’re ministering to, is it more diverse as Nashville becomes more diverse? 

Pastor Randy: You can tell me how much you want to get into this. I’m happy to talk about what we’ve done over the years. Midtown, about the first 18 months, was a slow crawl. We had maybe 10 people coming to church and then it began to build and we started to see the Lord really doing some really cool stuff in people’s lives. When we moved to Rocket Town we literally bought a hundred used folding chairs and we called it the purchase of faith.

We believe that the Lord was going to fill these hundred seats and within a year we had close to a thousand people that were coming to services at Rocket Town, and it was insane. We couldn’t get everybody in. In fact, the stage was full of chairs and the floor, and the balcony. 

We really had a dilemma because we realized that the bigger that we were getting the least effective we were at reaching our mission, which was creating a safe place for people that had given up on church, that we were really good at attracting Christians from other churches because we’re a huge artist community. So our bands were killer. Like you can imagine coming to church and looking up in the band area because we wouldn’t put our band on the stage.

We actually moved them off to the side where you couldn’t see them because none of our artists wanted to perform on Sunday morning so it was about the Lord. It wasn’t about them and all of them were professional musicians. So the big dilemma that we had is, do we go to multiple services and see how big we can get this?

I didn’t feel led to do that. So we went to San Diego and we met with a group of people that helped start a Tim Keller’s church up in New York. They were doing something very unique out in California that we brought it back to Nashville. We customized it and then adopted it for ourselves, which was to, instead of going to multiple services, why don’t we take a big chunk of these people and send them back to their slice of Nashville and let them be the church in their community.

Carrie: A lot of churches are doing that now having kind of multi-site campuses.

Pastor Randy: The uniqueness of our model is really based on a couple of ideas. One is then this will interest you as a counselor, is that we really believe that pastors can sometimes be the most dangerous person in the church. They get isolated and isolated men that have power are very dangerous people when they’re isolated emotionally or they’re isolated relationally. There’s some expectation that a whole community of people are putting on them, but they know internally they don’t live up to. That can be a really dangerous scenario for him and If he’s dangerous, then he’s dangerous to the people he’s shepherding too. So we came up with this model of grading campuses. We’re one church, but we have multiple campuses and every campus has its own pastor, but that pastor is in a fellowship with other pastors and we take serious responsibility for one another’s emotional journey, spiritual journey, the whole heart. So we’re kind of a support group for one another. 

Carrie:  How did you, your church get to that point where you realized we really need to invest in that, not just the spiritual health of our pastors, but the emotional health and the other aspects? 

Pastor Randy: Great question about how we got there. The easy answer is I think the Lord just reviewed this so many times through all our failures that he drove us there.

I think maybe the more detailed answer is before coming to Nashville, I’ve worked for some really large churches. I was in youth ministry for 15 years and I got to witness firsthand like national ministries and the men that led them and realized that they were isolated and that the trickle-down effect of that, wasn’t always a pretty story.

When you peek behind the curtain and we began to dream about what would it be like for a pastor to actually open the curtain? And that he ministers out of that place where he’s first in line, as the one who needs grace, He’s kind of the chief repenter and his community that he’s the most vulnerable of anybody.

We realized that the only way that’s going to happen is if we began to mature emotionally and began to mature spiritually at the same time. I’ve seen spiritually mature people that can quote the Bible from the beginning to the end and have these huge prayer lives but they’re not emotionally mature and as a result, a lot of times they’re just hurtful people and they’re not very safe to be around. 

Carrie: They don’t know how to have healthy relationships and form healthy connections. 

Pastor Randy: Yeah and you know, that’s fair because a lot of times, pastors, men that are called into ministry and women are called into ministry too.

A lot of times they’re intellectuals. They love to study. They love teaching. They love books more than they love people. So a lot of times they’re disconnected from their own heart and therefore they’re disconnected from the people around them because I don’t believe you can be disconnected from yourself and actually connected with other people. I also believe it hinders your connection with the Lord. But if you’re not self-aware enough to know how you need the Lord and where you’re at, I think it’s very difficult to have a meaningful, profound relationship with him. 

Carrie: Right. I was thinking about that versus you were talking how

Paul was a big spiritual hero in a lot of ways, but he said himself, like, “I’m the chief of sinners” and such a puzzling verse because you’re like, how can you be the chief of sinners? But he just had that understanding and that awareness of like, “I need all of the grace too.”

I think that’s really cool what you’re talking about to this overlay of like where Christians meant to live in community and so that’s not healthy with pastors being isolated. Also this sense of our relationships with other people and those connections, a lot of times maybe mirroring our connections with God. Would you agree with that?

Pastor Randy: Yeah. Say that again and say it a little differently. 

Carrie: Okay. I think that a lot of times we place on God like our ability to connect with him. We place on him things that we’ve received from other relationships in our life, often parents, fathers. And so if our fathers were disconnected or neglectful, then we receive this sense from God that we feel like God’s just kind of distant.

He’s not really there. Sometimes being able to connect healthily with people can help us heal some of that, like Christians. I don’t know the God in you maybe healing that piece of being able to love someone in Christ may help them connect more with God. I don’t know if that’s making sense.

Pastor Randy: That’s so good and you’re really the expert here. I’m just dabbling in your world when I talk about counseling here. We all have trauma in our lives and some of us have pretty severe trauma and it’s trauma that’s either been produced through parents or through relatives. Some of us have trauma that we produced ourselves and that trauma often I’ve seen, it digs these trenches in our lives that it seems like whenever we enter into any situation that triggers that trauma, which could be relational, we tend to go back to that ditch. So if our father was harsh with us, the only way we ever experienced God is as a harsh God. That’s why one of my mentors always tells me if something is hysterical, it’s probably historical that if we don’t understand ourselves enough to know that we have that trauma, then we’re not aware enough to know that I need healing in that trauma so that I can rewrite the script in a fresh healed way. Maybe it’s more than a healed way. Maybe it’s a healthy way. 

Carrie: What was that journey for you of your journey of self-evaluation? 

Pastor Randy: Well, for me personally, I’ve always sought out older men that would invest themselves in me. I’ve been fortunate I’ve had some amazing men that have the gift of listening and they also have the gift of wisdom. So they let me talk myself out and then they speak wisdom into those places. And if it’s true that our thoughts are really a bad neighborhood and we should never go there by ourselves then the men in my life have gone there with me. They’ve helped me fight the shame stories and we all have shame stories. But probably the most, I would say maybe one of the most impacted things was about six years ago. Our oldest son at 25 died unexpectedly. That story of grief for me and my wife and our family was so traumatic for me that it caused me to start to question everything. In fact, to get a little vulnerable here, I couldn’t let go of the thought that it was my fault and I felt deeply responsible for that. And as I began to unpack, why is that? I began to realize there were a lot of my own issues of codependency that I have not dealt with growing up. I grew up in a home where addiction was a part of our home. And so I just jumped into a whole community of people that had shared experiences like that and began to unpack my own lenses that I’ve put on to how I process my life and how I’ve processed the Lord and how I process other people. So it’s been an amazing journey over the last six years of embracing the joy of grief and the healing power of community and the Lord. 

Carrie: I think a lot of times it’s the tragedy points that brings us closer to God and closer to other people, but it can really challenge your theology in the best way and wonder if that happened for you. 

Pastor Randy: I think that pain is so misunderstood because I think that many of us live and I don’t want to, maybe I should use an “I” statement here. I lived thinking that if something is painful that means something is wrong, that we didn’t get something right because the right life is not a painful life, but the reality of every relationship is there’s pain. And that’s a part of relational health is realizing that if you’re going to love somebody you’re going to hurt and if you’re going to let somebody love you, it’s going to hurt. That pain is a part of the relationship.

It took a real season to realize that pain doesn’t have the ability to change what is true, but pain does have the ability to change what I believe is true. For me to bring my pain to my community and for me to bring the pain narrative to my community and whether that was through counselors or whether that was through just mentors or friends or people that were fighting for me, letting them fight for me so that my narrative of truth [00:16:12] can come alongside my pain and really call it good, which may sound strange to people that are in pain, that your pain is good, but it can be because the Lord uses that to bring healing in her life. 

Carrie: Just as a connecting point to him and to other people. 

Pastor Randy: And I mean, that’s what I’m saying, I’m swimming in your waters right now. You’re the pro in this area, but I’m just sharing my own personal experiences. Not necessarily an ocean of therapeutic knowledge.

Carrie: I think it’s really great though, to hear these kinds of messages from pastors, because depending on people’s backgrounds, they may not have had a pastor that has ever been this vulnerable about difficult things in their life like you were talking about the isolation. Maybe there’s the sense that I have to present as the most spiritual person in the room and therefore, somehow that means I present with no problems or no pain. Anyway, I have the Lord. The Lord is good, nothing wrong here. 

Pastor Randy: You think about it that if the only time I can preach is when I’ve mastered what I’m preaching and I want to preach with vulnerability. I really don’t have any sermons because who can do that unless you put up a facade and you’re a counselor. What happens when people put on mask and they spend their lives to manage an image and they manage this facade so they can keep their jobs, which is their income.

They can keep people’s respect, which is, they believe my reputation is that if everybody was like me, then we would all be so much like Jesus. It takes a lot of energy and effort to do that so what would it be like for the joy of preaching from a place of, “Hey, I really need this more than any of you need it.”

I’m preaching from a place where I feasted on the Lord this week and I’m just sharing with you what he served up for me. If you have a community that would allow you to do that it’s a beautiful place to be. 

Carrie: I love that. I think there’s something really about authenticity that’s attractive to people [00:18:25] and unfortunately, the church has gotten a bad rap for being fake. A lot of times, or Christians have gotten a bad rap for being hypocritical.

Pastor Randy: Because we are, but some of it’s a good rap. 

Carrie: Some of it’s true. I used to become frustrated when people would talk about Christians becoming hypocritical and then I realized that Jesus was most frustrated with religious people in the Bible. And so I was like, “Oh, it bothered Jesus too.” There’s a relate-ability there. So if you’re frustrated with the church or people who appear religious, then you know, Jesus understands that. 

Pastor Randy: Right and so true. I think that there’s such a gravitational pull to unhealthiness. I mean, you’re a counselor. There are a lot of people that don’t come to see you, people that their whole world of dysfunction and they live in it until they go to their grave.

There’s a huge pull to having a world that you completely control and that it’s not dangerous and you’ve minimized pain by medicating or avoidance or distraction. I think that that pull is so attractive when you realize that vulnerability and openness and willing to admit that your imperfect is so scary. 

I love what Bernay Brown talks about is that courage is the ability to let yourself be seen and it really is true. That takes a lot of courage to let your true heart live itself on the outside.

I don’t think that any of us can do that by ourselves. Maybe some can, but I think it takes a community of people that are jumping into that water with us to give us the courage to keep jumping into it. 

Carrie: I’ve been processing this verse in James that talks about how you confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you will be healed. I just find that so powerful because we’re told Jesus is our high priest. So he’s the one that has to absolve us, so to speak of our sin, who we go to for forgiveness. But yet we’re told to confess to other people for this level of healing. That I believe is emotional of just saying, “look, I’m struggling and I need your support and love and prayers.”

Pastor Randy: I’ve never been involved in AA, alcoholics anonymous. I have been involved with adult children of alcoholics ACA, and there’s a fundamental belief in those communities is that when I get vulnerable, when I speak out loud, what I have on the inside of me, there’s something that gets healed in me when I’m sharing that in a community that’s accepting me and go on me too. When I get vulnerable and also I believe it heals something in you, it’s a gift that we give to one another that knits us, not just together, but gives us strength and courage to live our hearts on the outside.

Carrie: Right. Do you believe that kind of going back to isolation? So for people who don’t have these communities, maybe where they feel like they can be safe and vulnerable and open up, whether that’s a church, small group or support group, or something of that nature. Do you feel like that isolation just kind of continues to feed the dysfunction you were talking about?

Pastor Randy: It’s strange that the things that we begin to accept in our lives and even the routines that we began to allow to exist in our lives. And I think that for a lot of people that experience things like we’ve talked about pain, but also like loneliness that they receive loneliness as a curse rather than the emotion of loneliness is actually a blessing and understanding what that blessing, that inviting emotion is actually inviting you to.

They use that loneliness as a means by which they stir in shame into their story and then stepped back from community because they don’t feel like they’re worthy of community and then when you pour resentment on top of that shame and that loneliness, it leads to a real isolated place. But if we understand that loneliness is a gift from the Lord it’s a part of our hearts that’s crying out for, longing and for community and whether I’m lonely for myself or I’m longing a friend or for Jesus. It’s inviting me to something and that’s why we need community because that takes a lot of courage and loneliness to call somebody and go, “I need you, could we go out to dinner or can we go grab coffee?” or “Would you consider meeting with me once every Wednesday morning and let us just encourage each other.” That takes a lot of courage because that person may say “no”. 

I think it’s, sometimes it feels easier just to isolate and medicate which is a tragedy. It’s really why we do what we do with our pastors because in ministry, who do you call and say, “I need you” when you’re the pastor of a church, you’re the person everybody calls for, you’re the need meeter. You’re the one that helps everybody else out and the tragedy of that is, imagine a pastor who is very healthy in his need for his community.

I’m not talking about being over needy in the sense of inappropriate but really needing the strength of the community to be spiritually healthy. 

Carrie: Don’t most pastors have connections to other pastors though? I’m just thinking about this from the therapeutic lens. If I have a really difficult day or really hard session, I could name for you three or four people that I could call and in a confidential manner and say, “this is what happened to me today” or “this was a really hard session I’m having a hard time dealing with it personally.”

Do you feel like most pastors have that? Or some do and some don’t.

Pastor Randy: My experience is that most pastors don’t have that. My experience is that most pastors would say that they have friends who are pastors, but that their relationship with them is not on the level that you just described, where I can call that guy if I have to four times a week and connect with them, or even once a week. I think I don’t have them in front of me, but you can google search stats on how pastors are doing and it’s not a pretty picture. 

Carrie: Just in terms of a lot of people dropping out of ministry or moral failings. 

Pastor Randy: Yeah and even surveys about, do men feel fulfilled in their calling? Would they continue to do with what they’re doing if they could get another job? 

It’s just ministry doesn’t have to be this miserable place of isolation. It’s miserable in the sense that you’re suffering as you’re caring for sheep, which is a hard, hard job. But you can do it in such a way that if you’re self-aware enough to take care of yourself so that you’re healthy and taking care of other people.

Carrie: That’s really huge. Being able to make sure that your needs are getting met and as Christians, yes, that’s from the Lord, but it’s also from Christian community. I don’t think we can just say, “I go to Jesus and he fills me up.” That’s great but our faith is so communal that we need that interaction and we need the accountability and the people to call out our blind spots, the things that we’re not seeing. 

Pastor Randy: Yeah, we were born into a family. I love worship music, but I always chuckle when I hear songs that “All I need is Jesus” and as a pastor, I’m like, “Okay, that’s good” but that’s not what Jesus says. Even God in the garden said to Adam, it’s not good that you’re alone. Adam had God, he’s walking in the garden with God and God said, yeah, you need community. So we’re gonna create community right here. So I need people in my life and it’s how I often see Jesus is the community that God puts around me or the community I help build around me. And that’s the thing I see a lot is that people say, “Man, where do I go and find that community?” You probably aren’t going to go out and find that community, but you can start by you building that community, by finding one other person that you practice vulnerability with and then see who God adds to your number because I don’t think that there’s a whole community of people somewhere out there that are just waiting for us to join them. I think the Lord invites us to go and build that.

Carrie: It’s hard because we live in such an individualistic society or we’re taught possibly from a young age to be very independent and to not have needs and to make sure that we take care of our own business or don’t talk about things outside of the family a lot of times. So it can be a challenge to start engaging in that process. But like you said, if it’s just one person, if you find one safe person that you can be vulnerable with and start to develop that community, I think it will be attractive to the people that need it.

Pastor Randy: How do you help your clients do that? 

Carrie: It’s tough. It really is tough. I think it depends on what their background is, faith-wise. Some of my clients, they don’t feel like they can go to people in their church and say, “Hey, I’m struggling with anxiety” or, “Hey, I have OCD.” That would be absolutely terrifying to them because unfortunately, church does not feel like a safe place, or they may have received different messages in the past like the Bible says, be anxious for nothing and you need to go pray about it some more. So there’s all kinds of different Christian communities and their responses to mental health obviously. 

It’s so therapeutic for me that we’re having this conversation because I know for me personally, even pastors that I’ve dealt with in the past, I don’t think I could have had this kind of conversation with them.

And it’s always been very passionate for me to figure out how I can support the church as a mental health worker. Sometimes it’s received, sometimes it’s kind of like, “yeah, we want you here in this space” and other times it’s not received very well. So that’s been just an interesting personal journey amongst working with pastors. [00:29:14] 

But now I’m in a very supportive place where my pastor is very open about mental health issues, and we’re able to talk about those things and how can I support the church and what does that look like. I’m in a good space with that now. Not all churches are open to counseling or those types of things, or it’s very taboo like “what’s really going on there? Is that really Christian? Is that Godly?” 

I interviewed a woman and asked her about her experience in terms of mental health in the church. She literally said that pastors have their heads in the sand, like an ostrich. I was shocked by that but I was glad that she was honest and she just said, “that’s been my experience”. And I said, “Why do you think that is? And she said, “Well, because they would have to look at themselves first.” She said because we all at some level have some anxiety or some depression, or like you talked about trauma childhood wounds that maybe haven’t been healed yet and if we don’t do that internal process, how are we going to be able to support someone else that’s on that journey?

Pastor Randy: Yeah. That’s why when I was growing up, I went to a very traditional Southern church I grew up believing that joy was the bully of all the other emotions. That if you’re in pain, “Hey, just rejoice.” This is the day the Lord has made rejoice and be glad. It said joy comes in and beats up everywhere, whether it’s sadness or grief. You’re not a “good Christian” if you’re not rejoicing all the time and just happy, happy, happy, happy. 

We get stuck with these crazy messages that mess with our heads which keeps us from navigating our hearts and so my experience, and even here at Midtown, we really celebrate the gift of counseling.

We really believe it’s a gift that the Lord has given to our community to help our people really do an internal journey because a lot of us need master navigators like you to guide us through this jungle called our heart and help us to put language to some of the things that we’re experiencing that our family never taught us how to talk about.  

The gap that I often see that makes me sad is the gap between what’s happening in a counseling office to that person’s community. Ideally, I would love just to see a community of people from the church that are journeying with that person as they go to counseling. Out of counseling, that community is supporting them and carrying them, and listening to them. So that counseling with community or helping that person really becomes a full-hearted person. He was really maturing deeply in their life, but often even with very healthy people, what happens in the counseling office stays in the counseling office and what happens in community is often the tip of the iceberg or real surface kind of stuff. 

I think that the work has to really be done on our side of this fence that the church needs to realize that AA group that’s meeting in the basement is experiencing vulnerability we need to take that out of the basement and bring it up into the sanctuary, and it’s going to start with the pastor. The only way his community can go on that journey if he’s not gone on that journey is if they go around him and if they go around them, it’s going to hurt him, the church. 

Carrie: Wow. That’s so good. I know that I’ve been in group counseling situations and walked away from it and said, “that’s what church is supposed to be like.” This sense of unconditional acceptance for where people are at.

I see you. I see your struggle. I accept you and “Hey, I’m struggling on this journey too” and a lot of times, unfortunately, that isn’t people’s experience in church, but I think that things are shifting and changing. The more that we have these conversations, I hope that this podcast and these types of conversation, I hope it like provokes the church in the best possible way to start looking at this integration of our spiritual life and our mental health and how we can grow together. That those things for many years were believed to be in opposition of each other. “Don’t seek out that secular counseling stuff, that’s not in the Bible” and now we’re realizing that everything that we know about the brain and childhood trauma and all of these things, nothing is against what’s in the Bible in terms of our knowledge of psychology.

When we look at studies about forgiveness, we’re like, “We already knew that as Christians. We already knew that that freed you up” like it’s right there. So it’s just a passion for me to really integrate those two pieces really well.

Pastor Randy: I think It’s really crazy how we as human beings and you probably know more about this than I do, but how we as human beings love to label everything black and white. We love to put things in the categories that we accept and the categories we don’t accept. So there are people that would look at counseling and go, “all counseling is bad and they would give anecdotal stories where Aunt Betsy went crazy after seeing a counselor or whatever. People can say that about the church too. That there are churches that are crazy. They’re just crazy, but that’s not the entire Christian community. So I say that finding a really healthy counselor that really has a good idea of how to guide and care for their people I think is really an essential part of our lives, especially when we’re going through seasons of our lives that we can’t navigate or to understand ourselves even better or joining a support group just to grow emotionally. I would say to people, I would really encourage you to find a group of people in your faith community that can go on that journey with you as well. That it’s a partnership.

I just hate the thought that people go to counseling and they have to leave their faith community when I think that the faith community can actually go with them and support them and care for them and actually grow with them. That’s really a dream of mine. 

Carrie: Yeah. I think I have had situations where when people healed from the shame. They were able to go back into their Christian community and talk more openly about their struggles once they were able to work through some of the trauma or the shame pieces, they were able to go back and say, “Hey, these are the things that I struggle with.” And then that opens up other people to say, “Oh, I’ve had some of those struggles too”, or “yes, I’m struggling, what are you doing about that?” 

I think just this sense of when people are in therapy if they have support, that therapy process is so much easier than if they don’t have support. If we’re really like straining and stressing to find the sense of who are you connected with [00:36:41] that’s positive and healthy. That just takes a lot longer. Sometimes it ends up being the therapist. The therapist ends up being the positive relationship in their life until they can develop a healthy, positive relationship outside of therapy, but it works so much better if they have even just some kind of support people that they feel like they can call or talk to, or be open with.

So I wanted to ask you if you have any specific encouragement, maybe for people who are struggling with anxiety or OCD,

Pastor Randy: I’m not an expert on either one of those, but I’ve experienced both of those in my life and in the lives of people I care about. I would say that if anything to take the shroud of shame off of those things and to really get aggressive at seeing yourself as someone you’re willing to invest in and not being content with just trying to manage either one of those, but in that state, jump into counseling and find somebody that can help you understand what’s going on inside of you. Help you get some tools to really build and live a healthier you. 

I’d also encourage you to find a church that would speak the gospel to you, and really speak the truth of God’s grace in your life. Find a community of people in that church that are willing to go on that faith journey with you that you can be vulnerable with and bring out of counseling into the open.

What’s happening here you might discover that people don’t run and hide from you when you share those vulnerable moments in your own life. You may actually find other people that are going, “me too.” That’s the journey together. You begin to see that what’s happening to you is not as unusual as you might think it is. That normalcy of our own struggles, I think let’s just take a deep breath and remove all the stuff from it that shouldn’t be on it anyway, which is just shame and embarrassment and the kind of things that we don’t want other people to see. 

Carrie: That’s so good. I feel like it’s somewhat of a summary of the things that we’ve already been talking about.

Pastor Randy: What I’ve experienced in all the years that we’ve done in Midtown is nobody here has a hard time understanding that their centers, that relates to that’s a message that preaches itself, but you know what? Everybody has a hard time believing is that I’m Holy, but what Jesus did for me is he made me his beloved. That in Ephesians 1, it says that he chose me before the creation of the world and he has lavished grace on me and he did it because that’s his pleasure. That the pleasure of God is to pour on me a new name and love and wisdom and understanding. Sin, I have no need to convince me of that, but my shame is so loud sometimes believing that I am beloved, that my father in heaven is for me and he’s not against me.

Those are the things that I find unbelievable and there are things that are in the way for me to find that unbelievable. Sometimes there are barriers and sometimes there’s trauma and sometimes it’s addiction and sometimes it’s relationships and marriage that are hurting me. I feel belittled by my spouse or my children don’t respect me, or maybe I don’t love my kids

and I feel ashamed about that. All the things that we dare not even whisper in the shadows. And I would say to people, men, you need to pull all those things out and put them in the light of day. And a counselor is a great way to start but a community is a great place to trust. And then maybe you can start to believe the unbelievable story of what Christ came to do for us and what he’s done for us.

Carrie: Yeah. So good. At the end of every podcast, I ask our guests on the show to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person. 

Pastor Randy: So you sent me this question, what was this like 5 days ago and I thought about it. I could give you such great platitudes right now, Carrie, and talk about hope in Africa or all that kind of stuff and I thought that would be so unfair after this conversation. So I’m going to give you the real story. Okay, so in my garage, like I’m a motorcycle guy. It’s been something I’ve done since I was 15 and I love motorcycles in my garage. I have a couple of motorcycles and one is a project bike that’s been sitting in my garage, unmoved for almost a year and a half. 

Sunday afternoon, one of my old friends called me and he said, “Hey, what are you doing this afternoon? Let’s get in your garage and play with that motorcycle.” I said, “okay, come on over.” And he’s one of those guys that we never get together and just talk small, talk like football, sports. He’s very open. He’s very vulnerable. He runs a prison ministry, he’s a musician and he plays to guys on death row. He’s just a very interesting guy. We played with that motorcycle for three hours and after it was done, that motorcycle started and I drove that thing up and down my street to the irritation of my neighbors because it has no muffler on it. 

When he left, I realized there are things in our lives that sit dormant and we just avoid them. And I’m with that motorcycle for a year and a half, it’s in my garage and it wasn’t started, and sometimes it just takes a friend that calls and says, “Hey, I’m coming over and we’re going to open your garage.”

I just want to talk about that thing you have in your garage that should be running and it’s not, and it didn’t take a Herculean effort to get it started. It just took a Herculean friend who was willing to come over and when he left it just birthed hope in me that that’s what community is, is someone who’s willing to pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I’m coming over.”

And I would speak to the people in your audience who says, I don’t have a friend like that. And I would say, go be a friend like that. Go and be that friend and you’ll be surprised at how quick those kinds of people will gather around you and then come over to your garage.

Carrie: That’s really good and it only took three hours. 

Pastor Randy: I know now they’re all my friends and they crack up that I still like riding motorcycles. Their kids love my motorcycles though. They’re very excited about that. 

Carrie: They wave to you as you’re going down the street. 

Pastor Randy: They want to get on the motorcycle with me.

Carrie: Very cool. Thank you so much for sharing this wisdom about vulnerability and community and connection with God and others. It’s been really great conversation and I think it’s really going to benefit people. 

Pastor Randy: It’s a real joy to be with you, Carrie. Thank you so much. 

I really think there are some great takeaways from this interview of just being there for other people, being the kinds of friends, and loving people that we want other people to be towards us. There’s a saying that if you’re able to be a friend, you’re able to make a friend.

I encourage you to find ways to make deeper connections. If you haven’t stopped by yet, I hope that you will visit our website, which is hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

Let me know what you would like to see on the website. I’m trying to compile some resources on there for you that I hope will be helpful.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

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

Is Anxiety a Sin?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety. No Comments on Is Anxiety a Sin?

I work with a lot of people who experience anxiety, and some have sought help from well meaning, but misguided church leaders who told them they haven’t prayed enough, read their Bible enough, or trusted God enough. In some cases, my clients have been told that their anxiety is a sin. After all, the Bible does say, “Do not be anxious about anything.” (Phil 4:6). 

Anxiety may be defined differently by different people. Anxiety could be described as a thought process of worry or as the physical symptoms of sweating, heart racing, and shortness of breath. According to Dictionary.com, anxiety is, “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease.”  Anxiety is a feeling. Are feelings sin?

The short answer is no. Many biblical “heroes” were anxious or afraid:  Gideon when he tore down his father’s altars, Elijah when he fled from Jezebel, and Moses going before Pharaoh. Jesus himself knew about anxiety before he went to the cross. He was in such anguish that he sweat drops of blood (hematohidrosis if you’d like to google). In my years of working with anxious people, I’ve never met anyone who has experienced that level of physical anxiety.

Even if you’re not sweating blood, you may have some intense physical experiences when you’re anxious. Your brain and nervous system are hardwired to keep you safe and alive. That’s very helpful when faced with true danger, but the problem is that sometimes the danger signal in the brain can be prone to misfire. This is especially true in the case of those who have experienced trauma. If you have experienced trauma or are dealing with a lot of anxiety, there are trained professionals who would love to help you. In my experience, EMDR is a great treatment option for people experiencing anxiety because of the physical release that can be obtained.  

So, the feeling of anxiety is not a sin, but how you handle it may or may not be. Avoidance of doing what God calls you to do because you are afraid is sin. I’ve been anxious about many things that God has called me to do such as speaking in front of people, traveling across the world on a mission trip, and starting my business. Starting the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast was very anxiety provoking because at the end of the day, I’m still a little shy about sharing details regarding my life. I’ve been able to feel that fear and continue in action because I have confidence that God has called me to this work. 

There have been other times though that my anxiety has gotten in the way of my faith. There have been times where I tried to convince God there was already someone else out there who is either already doing it better or would be much more qualified for the task. There have been several occasions where I have kept quiet for fear of misunderstanding, judgement, or rejection. I have taken the “God language” out of things God has clearly done in my life that He wants me to share with others. That’s not OK.  

You may struggle with some of the same things too. I want you to know that if you’ve avoided doing something God has called you to, God’s grace is big enough to cover all of it. You can accept that grace while also challenging yourself towards growth into who God desires for you to be. Take action on what you believe God has spoken to you about doing.           

While doing a little searching for this post, I found 81 references in the Bible for, “Do not be afraid.” Why is that in the Bible so many times? Because God knew we were going to be afraid. He knew we were going to wrestle with this emotion and need some reassurance that everything is going to be OK, that He is big enough to handle it, and that He will not leave us in the process. “Do not be afraid” is there to comfort us, not to condemn us when we are afraid.

I’m sure there is much more that can be written about the intersection of anxiety and faith in Christ. Until then, if you have specific questions, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section. 

Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?

Is ERP the Only Option for OCD?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, OCD. No Comments on Is ERP the Only Option for OCD?

Individuals who are diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are often told that they need to receive Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) in order to treat their OCD. While ERP has been widely researched and works for some individuals, ERP is not the only treatment option for OCD. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be effective for treating OCD, especially with individuals who have a history of childhood trauma.     

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Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast – One Therapist's Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

8. One Therapist’s Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 8. One Therapist’s Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

  • What is Scrupulosity OCD?
  • How Rachel discovered she had been struggling with it
  • How to determine if this is a normal level of spiritual concern or could be OCD
  • Exposure and Response Prevention
  • Learning how to sit with discomfort and ambiguity  
  • Getting to know the character of God and filtering information through that lens

 Verses discussed: Phil 4:6, 2 Cor 10:5 

Resources and links:
Rachel Hammons
More information on ERP and OCD

By The Well Counseling

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 8

Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 8

Hello, if you are new to the show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. 

Today on the show. I am interviewing Rachel Hammons. I did not know Rachel until I started doing some research for this podcast.

I wanted to talk with people who were struggling with anxiety or OCD and were Christian and also listen to podcasts. So I did probably almost 10 interviews with people and Rachel happened to be one of those people. I was able to glean so much valuable information that helped me in knowing what to put in the show. I ended up following up with Rachel a while later and just saying, “Hey, would you be willing to share your story on the podcast?” She graciously said yes. 

Rachel Hammons is a counselor in the Nashville Metro area. She specializes in working with people who are struggling with OCD. She also struggles with OCD herself.  [00:01:36] She is going to talk with us a little bit more about scrupulosity OCD, how it’s affected her life and how she came to find out that she had it, which is a very interesting story.

Without further ado, here is my interview with Rachel Hammons. 

Carrie: So Rachel, tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you’re doing.

Rachel: I’m in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m licensed in the state of Tennessee. I’ve been working with a lot of individuals with OCD over the past year or so. As I’ve started to do more private practice work, I started off thinking I was going to go more like the trauma route. As I started to learn more about what OCD was I also started to actually see that in myself. I really found a passion for it. So doing my practice work with OCD. 

Carrie: So you really didn’t recognize OCD traits within yourself until you were in school, studying OCD?

Rachel: Well, yes and no. I know we’re going to get a little bit into some of my story but I definitely recognized that there were what I would have called more type-A tendencies.

Even though I never really wanted to be a type-A person I always saw myself kind of “I want to go with the flow. Everything’s fine but then I had these really strong needs for structure, black and white thinking things that I would misunderstand, and a really big obsession with making sure that I was doing the absolute best and the absolute right thing.

I just always attributed that to, “I was very type A” or in the more nonchalant way like, “Oh, I’m so OCD.” Even though that phrase is not super helpful, but then after I do more of my professional life and after I graduated even in grad school, we covered OCD but it was more just their obsessions and compulsions, and usually related to like cleaning or going back and checking to make sure you didn’t hit someone with your car.

As I started to do more research and finding my niche with counseling, I’m learning more about what OCD was, especially the subtypes of OCD. This whole subtype called scrupulosity that had to do with moral and religious OCD. As I started to learn more about the symptoms and signs of that, I was like, “Oh my gosh. That’s me.”

Carrie: A lot of people don’t know that that exists. I’m glad that we’re talking about it today. A lot of times people do associate OCD with people that have an organized closet or that clean a bunch or are obsessed with germs. There are these different subtypes. We’re talking about scrupulosity, OCD. How would you kind of define that a little bit? 

Rachel: First of all when it comes to OCD, there are several different subtypes that you can experience. There tends to be overlap between lots of them and any one person. I mean, typically you had kind of one or two that’s like those are your struggles, but it can vary over your lifespan. Each of them has kind of unique facets. 

OCD in general is going to be comprised of obsessions and then usually followed by compulsion. So if you take that same model and you apply it to what we call scrupulosity, it’s going to be obsessions and then usually followed by compulsions all-around religious and moral issues.

What I think is interesting is you don’t have to be of a religious faith to have scrupulosity. Personally, I am and I would identify myself as a Christian, but there are lots of people who will still experience the obsessions. Again, usually followed by compulsion, but not always around these moral issues.

So in a nutshell, that’s what it is. There are a lot of specific symptoms and things that I’m sure we’re going to get into. 

Carrie: How has this affected you personally? 

Rachel: I’m actually really excited to share just a little bit about my story because as a counselor I don’t use a lot of self-disclosure, so I’m not sharing my story with all my clients. It’s a piece that I’ve learned about me within the past couple of years, a lot of people don’t know the whole story. So I kind of looked back in preparation for this, just at several different things that I noticed, like from my past, as well as some of the things that I’m still struggling with.

I’ll kind of start with looking back. As I said, there was a lot of black and white thinking. There was a lot of doubt and OCD is sometimes termed like the doubting disease. So I was definitely doubting like, “Is this right? Is this the best thing? Is this true?” I definitely liked some aspects about that, about myself because I like being able to really seek truth, but then OCD twists that, especially with scrupulosity and having it be so much of a mental obsession. It twists what is good and what is truth and what’s most important to you and turns that into this obsession. I know we’re going to get into a little bit later, what does support look like from other people. 

Specifically, right now with the church and the environment I grew up in when you see a very studious, responsible kid that’s reading their scripture, that’s asking questions a lot of times, the initial thought is, “Oh wow. This kid is really on fire for God.” 

There was a huge mental health component to that where I was like wrecked with anxiety over making sure I got the right answer. Some of the things that I look back on and some of them I kind of laugh about. The first one I’ll just tell you is I think the most obvious obsession and compulsion that I ever experienced. When we were younger, my mom had specific TV shows that we were allowed to watch and that we weren’t allowed to watch. There was never any really comparison like this one’s really bad or this one’s really good. It was just like, “these are the ones you can’t watch.” So one of those that I wasn’t allowed to watch was SpongeBob, but for some reason, in my head, SpongeBob became like the epitome of evil. My mind was just like SpongeBob is bad. 

So initially you can start to see that black and white thinking, but where that would come up for me is at the time a lot of people had those SpongeBob flush toys in their car or the dice that you would hang from your rearview mirror. I remember specifically walking past cars as we’d get out to go to the grocery store and seeing those [00:08:43] and I had to say “I hate you” a certain number of times to SpongeBob to get rid of the evil. I thought it wasn’t necessarily super distressing unless there was a lot of SpongeBob or like SpongeBob was on at the doctor’s office. I felt so guilty and this evil was next to me. I had to keep saying, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Sometimes out loud, sometimes in my head. 

Carrie: Sometimes I think people don’t realize that the compulsions can be internal. Their child may be struggling with something and they say, “I don’t think they’re really struggling with that” but they don’t realize what’s going on necessarily in that child’s head at those times.

Rachel: That’s I think is one of the reasons that OCD in general, but particularly scrupulosity tends to go really under noticed or underdiagnosed because what you see is this kid that’s working really hard to follow God or to follow even their schoolwork or obey their parents, but what you don’t see is the internal distress that kid is going through. Especially in my case, if you don’t know that that internal distress isn’t necessarily normal or doesn’t have to be that way, you just assume that that’s like what you’re supposed to be doing or that you’re more on fire for God than other people are. Not like in a judgment way, like I’m holier than now, but just in a way of like I’m really, really trying hard to know who God is and what he expects of me.

Carrie: It was just the water you swam in basically. You didn’t necessarily know anything different. 

Rachel: Right. One of the ones that developed as I got a little bit older and one that I think is still fairly difficult for me is, I don’t know if you remember the verse it’s like the classic worry verse where it says, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, present your request to the Lord.” [00:10:48] I think this is an example of where OCD twists what is really good, and makes it very confusing. As I read that, I always read it as a command like my biggest fear just as a heads up was sinning. So my obsessions revolved around making sure that I didn’t cross whatever this random black and white line was, and making sure that I didn’t sin.

Other people with their scrupulosity can have things like “this is going to send me to hell, that’s my biggest fear,” “I have blasphemy.” Mine was specifically “did I sin or not?” 

When I would read that verse, it was comforting in the sense that I knew God didn’t want me to worry, but I read it as don’t worry and this is the command. If you’re worrying, you’re sinning. The thing that I always struggled with was I couldn’t control my worry. I knew especially as I got older I can’t control my emotions. I can control what I do with my emotions, but my thoughts and my emotions are going to come into my head and yet still in the church, they talk about like, “if you’re worrying, give that over to God and then your worries go away.”

Carrie: “Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ”, which I imagine is super challenging.

Rachel: Right. So I was trying to find and I am still trying to find this balance of God comforting me by saying, “Hey, you don’t have to worry because I’m here or is God saying “don’t worry.” I think that’s one of the ones where OCD is still like, “I don’t know. It might be a command.” And so if it’s a command, you better make sure you’re not worrying at the same time. I’m also like, “That doesn’t make any sense because I can’t control my worry. I’m doing my best.” So there’s still this struggle or I guess this fight of “am I sinning or not.” 

Even though you know in your head what you feel is probably accurate, OCD still brings in that doubt and that tiny bit of doubt or that tiny bit of uncertainty is where the individual OCD tends to struggle the most because OCD says, “it’s better to be safe than to take that risk” and that risk is really big. So in my head, I’m like if I take that risk of don’t worry being kind or gentle or like you are okay instead of a command, then what if I start to just let myself worry and then I’m sinning. So it’s better just to not worry, which doesn’t exactly work. 

Carrie: Right. I think another thing that’s important to point out is the compulsions provide some temporary relief, which makes it super hard not to engage in them. So it’s like, there’s this temporary relief but then the kind of feeding that cycle just ends up increasing the whole picture and making it worse. It’s hard because you want that momentary peace, I guess.

Rachel: Exactly. Which is what you see. I think the contamination aspect of OCD is where you see it most clearly. If I’m afraid that I’m contaminated by germs then my compulsion is to wash my hands. Washing my hands initially makes me feel like I’m clean from the germs, but then the OCD brings in doubt. That probably contaminated me so I have to wash my hands then and that probably contaminated me. So I have to wash my hands then. You see this cycle start to develop and actually changes in your brain start to develop where your fire alarm sense of anxiety is heightened.

If you look at the physiology of what’s going on in the brain in individuals with OCD and anxiety, that amygdala, that emotion center of the brain is actually hyperactive and it’s more active, more sensitive to things going wrong in our environment. 

The way that I like to describe it is like it’s a broken fire alarm. [00:15:05] If my fire alarm is really great if there’s an actual fire, but if I’m cooking some steak and some steam gets up to the fire alarm and it goes off, that’s really annoying. So OCD is basically turning that fire alarm into something that is much more sensitive than it needs to be. Then as you follow that pathway of these obsessions and compulsions that pathway gets stronger and stronger and that fire alarm continues to be heightened and heightened.

If you apply that to scrupulosity individuals with OCD, their brains are going to get more and more sensitive to this potential, like times that I might be sinning or fears that I did something that angered God. If you aren’t able to resist those compulsion’s or practice ERP in a way that is helpful, not overwhelming, but helpful, those portions and that connection between the two is just going to get stronger and stronger. 

ERP basically just says we’re going to restructure that so that the pathway isn’t as strong, but that ultimately means you’re not doing the compulsion, which is what calms you in the first place.

Carrie: Right. ERP stands for exposure and response prevention. So how does that work? 

Rachel: ERP in general, like you said is exposure and response prevention. Basically, there’s two aspects to it. There’s the exposure piece. The part of exposing myself systematically in a way that’s not overwhelming to my system, but systematically exposing myself to what I’m afraid of in my case, potentially sinning.

The response-prevention is basically asking you to stop doing the compulsion. So you expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of. You also take away the safety net of the compulsions and you do those simultaneously again in a systematic way so that eventually you learn one anxiety isn’t dangerous.

Anxiety is going to go up and it’s eventually going to come back down or at least I’m going to be able to tolerate the distress of the anxiety and that whatever my OCD said was actually so fearful is probably not as fearful as OCD made it up to be in my head. That being said, I think there’s one really important piece when it comes to scrupulosity, for example, contamination OCD. If I’m really afraid of mud getting on me and I think mud is contaminated in any environment, touching mud is going to be something that brings up anxiety. 

When you talk about scrupulosity, you’re not only dealing with these obsessions and compulsions, but you’re dealing with something that’s so central to what this person believes is right and wrong. You’re dealing with this core value. If I asked somebody to do something that’s against their core value, which is not what ERP promotes, but if you misunderstand it and I asked them to do what I might think is a sin, I’m essentially creating this moral injury. That’s not treating the OCD, but instead eliciting this potential sense of shame and going down this I just have to do what’s wrong. 

ERP instead promotes sitting with that uncertainty piece. So the obsessions where I’m really concerned, “is this a sin?” “Is it not?” “I’m not sure where’s the line”. We’re kind of coming up to that line and playing around with it a little bit, to sit with that uncertainty to recognize there’s probably not a line at all, but again, in a way that’s not violating this person’s sense of right and wrong. I feel like that was a little confusing.

Carrie: It is. For example, if you’re having a fear and uncertainty about sinning, does that look like going a couple miles over the speed limit? Does it look like sitting with the sense of, “what is this right or wrong” or just sitting with that anxiety for a little bit and not trying to avoid it? 

Rachel: Yes and no. Everyone experiences their scrupulosity or their OCD a little bit differently. For some people, if they also have the core fear of not sinning, that OCD tends to fixate on certain aspects of not sinning. So there may be certain aspects in your life that you’re totally okay with uncertainty, but then OCD is going to take certain ones and be like, “this is the one you’re going to focus on.” 

I think where you can start to differentiate, is this OCD, or is this a legit thing I need to kind of explore. 

Stepping back just a little bit, one thing I like to talk about with my clients is this difference between information seeking and reassurance seeking, meaning when I’m looking at if I sin or not, am I going through that scenario in a way that’s not anxiety-provoking like I’m just thinking, “Okay, is this a sin? I’m not sure. I think I need to do some more research. I think I want to reread that passage in the Bible. I think I just want to understand” and that’s not an anxiety-driven cycle. That’s just like, “I want to understand and I want to grow closer to God in the way that I’m acting” and that’s good.

When it becomes reassurance-seeking, it’s usually this anxiety-fueled like, “I’ve got to see if I did it wrong. I’m not sure I might’ve. Let me read the passage. Let me read the passage again. Let me double-check.” Holding those two is one way you can assess if it’s OCD or just an issue that needs to do a little bit more research on, [00:21:07] or is it a little bit of both.

Carrie: So often they have a tendency to seek reassurance from the people that are closest to them. That could look like a parent or a spouse or with some of these types of things that may be even a pastor or a church leader. I think that’s why I’m so excited that we’re doing this to open up that conversation.

[00:21:27] There maybe somebody listening to this who’s been providing a lot of reassurance and not realizing that that person may have OCD. 

Rachel: Right. So like you said if that looks like you going to a pastor to check like, “Hey, is this a sin? Did I mess up?” or going to your parents, “Hey, was this wrong? Is this okay?” Those are good questions, but OCD is going to bring in not only are you asking that question the one time, but it’s going to bring up this doubt and this doubt it tends to also be followed along with, for me personally, like “where is that exact line between this is right and this is wrong? By asking that question over and over again, maybe I’ll get a certain total response. Maybe I’ll get a certain phrase and response and that lets me know everything is okay. Whereas when I’m information seeking, I’m not looking for a specific response, I’m just wanting to learn more.

Carrie: I think it’s good to normalize. There is a normal level of doubt within group identity. “Am I saved?” I hope we all ask that of ourselves once or twice in our lives. Is there evidence in my life? Is this situation right or wrong? Are they moral things? Does God love me or not? Those types of things are normal doubts, but then what you’re talking about is something that’s repetitive and it’s very anxiety-provoking and ongoing.

Rachel: Right. In some ways I wish that there was like a list of this is what scrupulosity is and this is exactly how you treat it. Like you were saying earlier some people are obsessing over like, “Did I go a couple of miles over the speed limit?” Scrupulosity shows up and OCD shows up very differently for different people. The way that you treat it while ERP tends to be fairly foundational for every person, that’s going to look a little bit different. For me, when I challenged myself with recognizing the signs that come up, it’s usually like am I analyzing for doubt? Is there a lot of doubt going on? How long have I been thinking about whether or not I’m sinning? Because usually If you sin, you’re able to look back and probably within five minutes, you’re able to assess like, “Yeah, that wasn’t good” or “that wasn’t right.” 

I find going back and forth and back and forth. I’m starting to obsess. [00:24:06] I’m like, “Am I thinking about this really, really black and white? Am I looking for the line between what was right and what was wrong” How anxious am I? Am I anxious to find the answer right now?” 

One thing I talk about with my clients a lot is when our anxiety goes up, our judgment or our ability to make rational decisions naturally comes back down. So if I’m feeling really, really anxious, it’s going to be really hard to think about rationally and systematically what I need to do about that anxiety. So if I’m really, really anxious about finding the answer to whether or not I sin it’s going to be really hard to even systematically look at. So instead, I need to maybe take a break and let that anxiety naturally come down. If I’m still worried about it after the fact, maybe I can come back and revisit it, but if it kind of went away, that was probably an indication that it was OCD. 

Carrie: I think that’s a good first step obviously with making any behavior change. We have to recognize what we’re dealing with. [00:25:14] 

I’m sure you’ve seen this in your practice and I’ve seen it in my practice as well. It’s very common for people to believe that they have generalized anxiety disorder or they may have been to other counselors who have diagnosed them with an anxiety disorder. As we start to dig and ask more questions like, “Hey, do you seek out reassurance from other people in your life?” Or “Do you tend to get stuck on these certain things?” Some of the people recognize, like, “Oh wait, this is not anxiety. This is OCD.” At some level that can be overwhelming, but at some level, it can be freeing. 

Rachel: When I read through some of the signs and symptoms of what scrupulosity, what OCD was, there was so much relief in that. Just knowing that you’re not crazy. You’re not totally out there. You’re not dealing with something in isolation. It’s normal in the sense that it’s OCD normal and there’s treatment for it. I don’t have to consistently live with this overwhelming anxiety over whether I’m doing the absolute best thing or the absolute right thing. [00:26:37] That’s going to involve some anxiety in the process. 

Going back to what you said, I think what’s really tricky sometimes in the counseling world is assessing, is this anxiety or is it OCD? And while the two have a lot of similarities, obviously each case is different, but with anxiety, you can provide coping skills. Something that’s going to help bring my anxiety back down. “I’m really anxious.” “I’m going to practice deep breathing.” “I’m going to practice grounding skills.” If I do that with OCD, I’m actually not exposing myself to the fear. That’s probably not realistic. 

I’m never actually sitting with the uncertainty because I’m just trying to reduce the anxiety cost from the uncertainty. So you kind of get caught again in a loop of, you can almost ride the line between either you’re doing your compulsion to bring the anxiety down, or you’re doing your new coping skill to bring the anxiety down. Then you never actually face and fight and deal with the anxiety that isn’t even necessarily over something realistic. Meaning my anxiety over is this right? Is this wrong? Where’s the line? Am I sitting right now? If I don’t sit with that uncertainty of, I don’t know, I’m not sure I might’ve sinned. Instead, if I try to beat that with coping skills and try to calm that anxiety down, that anxiety is just going to get stirred up the next day, because that’s what OCD does. It brings in that doubt. It brings in that “what if.”

While there are a lot of similarities and while coping skills are even helpful with OCD at times, to know that difference is really important and really crucial because your treatment is going to be a little bit different.

Carrie: Absolutely. With the ERP, there’s an exposure hierarchy, and you’re not going to expose somebody to their worst fear in the beginning. You’re kind of building up to some of those things because I think some people may be listening to this and going like, “Oh gosh, that feels too big to sit with that anxiety.”

Obviously, if there are counselors who are trained in this, who know how to walk you step-by-step through that process to get there. It’s also working sometimes in tandem with other people or providing guidance to the clients of how their parents, spouses, or whoever might be able to respond to them in a helpful way.

[00:29:13] Sometimes that means holding off on the reassurance seeking that’s part of the response prevention. 

Rachel: Right. I think that a lot of times we think If I just calm this person down if I reassure them if I tell them everything’s okay. Naturally, that’s what we want to do, to comfort somebody, but in reality, there’s a level of uncomfortableness that is so crucial to sitting with to be able to recognize that my OCD was way over exaggerating this fear. There are times where my fear is really legitimate and I’m still obsessing over it in a way that’s taking over my life. So again, sitting with a certain level of uncomfortableness is huge in learning how to treat and sit with OCD. 

I guess I’ll use a contamination example cause I think it’s a little simpler. If my biggest fear is sitting in the room with the dog, like maybe I had a bad experience, I’m not going to ask my client to go sit in the room with the dog and play with it for an hour. Instead, I might have them sit, look at a picture of a dog and practice that over and over again. I might have them listen to a dog barking and practice that over and over again because exposures don’t have to be this huge and overwhelming. Not to say that the anxiety itself is dangerous because even if you do get overwhelmed by an exposure, that’s okay. 

The anxiety isn’t dangerous. It’s just flooding your system like that. It’s probably not going to be super helpful. So finding systematic ways to work up to getting the life that you want to get is really what you’re going for. If you have a scale of zero to seven, seven is like the fullest anxiety I can have. Zero is fine. You want to find with exposure that starts around a level three or four. So something hard but manageable. 

If I was to give you one more example, like in my own life, one of the things that I dealt with a lot as a kid, and it kind of died down for a while and it’s recently come back over the past probably year. I have this phrase or this compulsive phrase that I have to say and it’s, “God, please help me to do the right thing” and that falls in line with a lot of my “I don’t want to sin, I need to do the best right thing, the absolute right thing.” 

So whenever I feel a little bit anxious even if I think I might’ve sinned or even if I just am feeling anxious because I have to get up early the next morning, I’ll say, “God, please help me to do the right thing.” 

For some reason, that phrase helps bring that anxiety down, even though it becomes really compulsive. The phrase itself starts to make me anxious because I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I keep saying it over and over again” and I don’t need to. 

If I was to look at my own hierarchy, I know that if I was not to say that phrase it would make me anxious, but it wouldn’t make me overwhelmed. It would work because it comes up honestly, a lot but eventually I know that anxiety will ultimately kind of dissipate, but right now my brain is still kind of stuck in that loop of “this is just naturally, this is automatic.” So if that gives you just any example of where you might start on your hierarchy, that’s probably where I’d start on the line.

Carrie: Great. Good to know. So how can support systems, spouses, churches help someone who’s struggling with OCD?

Rachel: First of all, I think I’d recommend counseling, but secondly, being able to recognize that the kid who is really perfectionistic on the surface, really diligent, really seeking hard to make sure they understand the right thing. Just checking in like, “Hey, what’s it like for you as you’re trying to understand more about scripture?” Even just asking like, “Is there ever an anxiety that you experienced?” So knowing that the kids who are much more like perfectionistic have a hard time with, I guess, hard time accepting uncertainty, noticing gray areas. All of those could potentially be signs. They may not be an issue for that kid and that’s fine too. Then you start to dig a little bit deeper under the surface and you recognize, “Oh, that kid is actually really struggling with anxiety.” It might just be good to kind of like, “Hey, have you ever thought about what it would be like if you didn’t have anxiety?” “Is that a possibility like a world that you want to live in?”  

I think the easiest people to inform or that I think would be really great to know a little bit more about OCD would be the people in the church, the leaders in the church because if they can recognize what is going on I think we’re going to be able to identify scrupulosity a lot easier.

I think that you see a lot of it again. I said earlier, underdiagnosed going on in the church and then parents too, especially if your kids are seeking reassurance all the time, that can be a really big indication. Even in schools, like noticing, “Hey, this kid is really struggling when they make a mistake on their test.”

So any place that those people are in all the time if you can recognize those signs and then just kind of give a quick check-in and then knowing the resources, knowing somebody who is in the counseling world who does treat OCD, who does know ERP is going to be like your best bet.

Carrie: Right. So really just supporting that person and that, “Hey, it’s okay to get counseling.” Sometimes we need help that’s professional to help us work through some of these things. 

Rachel: Right. There are also several books that you can look into that’s more of like a self-help book, it’s by Dawn Huebner. It’s something like when your brain gets stuck. That’s more of a kid’s guide to working through OCD and so if the signs are really minimal or even if your kid is on the younger side, and you’re just starting to see some of these signs, like exploring what that looks like, it could be a really great resource. At least a good first step to see if that’s all the support that they need. 

Carrie: At the end of every podcast, I usually ask guests to share a story of hope, which is the time that they received hope from God or another person. 

Rachel: I think that there’s a lot of little moments of hope for me. Looking back on my story like I mentioned earlier, the biggest piece of hope for me was learning the fact that I had OCD. That was eye-opening and huge. I also know that one of the biggest pieces of hope too that I had is if you’re a Christian or if you’re a religious faith reflecting on who you think God is, or even doing some research on not necessarily this specific event, this specific sin, this specific fear, but who is God?

I can learn more about the character of God, and I know that times that I’ve learned more about the character of God the way that Jesus treated people, that’s going to look vastly different than the way that my thoughts tend to speak to me. So when I reflect on who God is, or at least even if that’s a question cause sometimes I’m like, “I don’t know who God is” like, I don’t know how He responds. 

Just reflect on something that you know about God. I know that God is love. So if God is love, He loves me and He wants the best for me. So at least I know that I have that support. I have that hope that God just any parents are loving their kids, God wants the best for His kids. God wants the best for me. So at least in that, I know that I have someone on my side that’s walking through OCD or walking through my struggles with me. I think that’s kind of what I tend to reflect on especially when I’m really stuck in the obsessions and I really don’t see an end to this particular one, reflecting back on what you know, grounding yourself in what you know to be true. 

Carrie: Right. I think that may be hard for some people to sit with and wrestle with because there’s a sense of, “I do love God. I am trying to serve him with my life and be a good Christian all of those things and yet I’m wrestling with this on a day-to-day basis.”

I’m just kind of curious what you would say to someone with that thought process. 

Rachel: One of the biggest struggles for me is making sure that I was doing the right thing. Even in that compulsive phrase that I talked about, like, “God help me to do the right thing.” I’m consistently trying to understand this situation, this particular anxiety. What I tell a lot of clients, honestly, at the beginning of some of our sessions is OCD is really confusing, scrupulosity is really confusing, especially scrupulosity because it’s so foundational to our thoughts and I want to do the right thing so badly.

[00:39:12] So it can get really easy to think about and to get lost in all of the things that I don’t yet have, or that I don’t yet know, or I don’t yet know how to fight. So one, I like to paint a picture of how ERP works, counseling works. 

There’s hope. There’s a lot of hope with OCD at the same time remembering the things that you do know. Like I mentioned a little bit earlier, reflecting on, even if it’s not like God’s character still what are some of the things that are your strongholds? What are you anchored in? Maybe I can anchor into the fact that I know I’m saved. Maybe I can anchor into the fact again that I know God is. At least I can take that of the very phrase from the Bible and know exactly what this says, God is love. I can ground myself in that. I can ground myself in even knowing the people around me that I have as my support systems. I can ground myself in knowing that at least I have the letter from God, the scripture in my head. 

So going back to at least what you know while you don’t know everything, you know, some things, and it’s gotten you this far. So can we start there and know that there’s hope to build on from there. 

Carrie: I think that’s relevant to so many people, not just people who are experiencing OCD, but anxiety, or even just a traumatic experience or a hard season in your life. I know that there have been times where I’ve gone through difficult things and exactly what you said, “Okay. What do I know?” I don’t understand this situation in my life at all. I don’t know why God allowed it here, but I do believe that God loves me. I do believe he has a plan somehow in the midst of all this mess like that, He’s gonna take this and make something good out of it and that really helped me get through that until that was resolved.

Rachel: Yeah. There’s one moment, I guess, that I like to reflect on and this, I guess has a little bit less to do with OCD, but more of just one of the most profound moments that I felt like I had with the Lord. I remember it was when I was in high school, maybe early college. I was preparing for leading a Bible study that night and The Lord had really laid this passage on my heart. I don’t remember what the passage was, but I remember just wanting to know really badly what it meant. I was really confused because there’s a lot of different religions that interpret that passage differently and so I was like, “I’m going to learn what this passage means that I’m going to figure it out and we’re going to talk about it in Bible study.”

So I was like spending probably a couple of hours reading this passage, reading research on the passage, trying to understand. Even then, I guess you can see some of the OCD of like, I have to miss out and I have to figure out the right and wrong answer between it. And I got so, so frustrated because I couldn’t figure out the answer and I wanted to have it for the Bible study. I went outside and I was about to start doing even more research to understand it. I just kind of felt like the Lord say, “Hey, wait, wait, wait, can we pause here?” I remember looking up at the trees cause I was on a back deck that was a screened-in porch and I just felt like the Lord was saying, “Hey, Rachel, look at the trees around you” and I was like, “Okay, so I’m looking and I’m seeing them blow in the wind” and the Lord was like, “Do you see them blowing in the wind back and forth like that?” I was like, “yes.” I was kind of blown away that I was having this conversation with God. The Lord was like, “Do you know, like how I did that? I was like, “No, I don’t know how you made the trees move” and he’s like, “Do you know all of the intricacies of exactly what type of wind and what exactly, what type of molecules and atoms and particles that went into me being able to move those trees back and forth?” And I was like, “no” and he was like, “but you know that I was the one behind it” and I was like, “Oh, yeah.” 

So for some reason, hearing that the Lord even though I didn’t understand how the trees were moving, I knew that the Lord was behind it. I know that God is good. I know that He knows the answer, even though I don’t. I kind of took that and I felt like the Lord brought me back to that passage that I didn’t understand.

God was like, “Today may not be the day that you’re going to understand that, but you know that I know the answer and you know that you’re trying to know the answer and that’s okay. Because you know that I know the answer and you are following me. You can just keep following me and eventually, we’re going to get somewhere then we may never know the answer to this specific one, but you at least know that I know, and if you can trust me, you can follow me to the end.”

So that’s I guess kind of my message of hope too for OCD, in general, is if you’re religious or not, like, who are you following? Where are you walking? Where do you want to be in your future? 

If you’re religious and you know that God is good and that you’re following Him, at least, you know, that you’re following somebody who knows what they’re doing. That helped me a lot. 

Carrie: Awesome. Thank you so much for being brave and bold and sharing your story and what you’ve been through. I hope that really helps and encourages someone else today. 

Rachel: Thank you for the opportunity. Just to be able to share some of my story is really exciting for me.

_____________________________________________________________.

I am so thankful for Rachel being willing to be so vulnerable with us and talk about her symptoms and how OCD has affected her. This is actually the second person on the show that has talked about exposure and response prevention. I’m a little bit frustrated with myself only because I’ve been wanting to talk about EMDR and how it can be helpful for OCD.

I know that I’m going to have some episodes in the future on EMDR and how EMDR can be helpful for OCD. Even though it is not a therapeutic approach that most people think of when they think of OCD treatment, I plan on doing a solo episode in the future regarding why I have chosen to utilize EMDR prior to using any type of exposure-response prevention methods with clients.

If you find that interesting, stay tuned in for later. I just want to throw that out there that exposure and response prevention is oftentimes the recommended therapy for OCD, but it’s not the only thing that works. So I’ll dive more into that in a future podcast. Just wanted to throw that out there.

[00:46:19] Until next time let’s continue this conversation on Facebook or Instagram, or you can always reach me at hopeforanxietyandocd.com

Hope for Anxiety and. OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

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

10. Carrie’s Story of Anxiety in Dating with Now Husband Steve

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 10. Carrie’s Story of Anxiety in Dating with Now Husband Steve

Steve and I recorded this show about a month before our wedding. We talk about my anxiety during the dating process and his involvement in helping me work through it.

Episode Highlights:

  • Anxiety about putting myself out there to date and how that brought me back to therapy 
  • Challenges of Christian dating after a divorce 
  • Accepting the anxiety and difficulty trusting as part of the process of getting closer
  • Advice to singles in the church

Summary:

In this episode, I’m excited to share my story with my husband, Steve Bock, as we discuss my struggles with anxiety during our dating journey. We both faced challenges getting back into the dating world after previous marriages, with experiences of anxious feelings, especially around first dates and sharing our pasts.

We talk about overcoming fears, dealing with the stigma of dating after divorce in the Christian community, and our early dates, which included some funny mishaps like getting lost on a trail. Our journey has been about supporting each other through anxious moments and finding joy in the unexpected, which we hope can encourage others facing similar struggles.

We hope that our story resonates with others who may be facing similar challenges in their dating lives, reinforcing the idea that love can flourish even in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty. Join us as we explore this journey of faith, love, and growth together!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD.

I am very excited to share this episode with you. Episode 10, because I have my now amazing husband, Steve Bock on the show, and we are going to be talking about how anxious I was during our dating process.

I hope that this story encourages other people maybe who are scared to get out into the dating world, or if you have a partner or a husband, wife who is struggling with anxiety, this episode may help you a little as well as far as how to support them. So without further ado, we’ll dive into the show. So Steve, welcome to the podcast.

Steve: I’m excited to be here. 

Carrie: Steve is normally a kind of behind-the-scenes guy and has done a little bit of public speaking, but tends to serve in the background. So I’m very excited that he is stepping out of his comfort zone a little bit and has agreed to be on the podcast. 

Steve: Yeah, it’s good to be here. Nervous though. 

Carrie: That’s okay cause we’re talking about anxiety, so it’s all good. Your anxiety is welcome.

We are about a month away from getting married. 

Steve: Yey! It is good. 

Anxious About Dating

Carrie: We’re going to talk a little bit about our story and how we came to be a couple. My story actually started a little bit in the beginning of 2019 where I realized that I wanted to get back into dating, but every time I had tried in the past I would get these awful stomach aches.

I was very anxious about putting myself out there in any way, shape, or form. I had done online dating. I had done meetup groups where I had dated here and there with guys and I realized that I wanted to be married and that if I was going to do that, I was going to have to figure out how to work through this high level of anxiety that I had after my divorce about dating again. And so I ended up going to therapy over it and I told my therapist, I want to date but every time I go to do it, it’s just this awful anxiety comes over me. I can’t sleep. I have stomach aches and I just can’t do it. I can’t follow through.

It was really funny because I saw this man online. One of the reasons I went to go see a man was because I wanted a more of a male perspective on dating. I actually was cleaning out my file cabinet and I filled in the paperwork sometime in the fall of 2019 where I had sent this paperwork to him saying, “You know, I want a date, but I just can’t.”

And here’s why when I read that it was so therapeutic for me because I realized like, “Wow. I don’t feel this way anymore.” I was so excited to go to therapy and tell my therapist about finding that paperwork and saying, “Hey, I think I’m actually ready to date.” I think it’s time for me to put myself out there and I made the decision that I was going to try dating apps again. I got on a dating app and I had went on a few dates with a couple of different guys, but I just was a little bored and didn’t feel like I was making a good connection with the guys that I was meeting. This little heart kept popping up on Facebook every day when I would go in and it would say, “Try Facebook dating.”

I was like, “I don’t know about that. I’m not sure” but I thought, well, “shoot.” I’m not having any luck on this other app that I’m using so I might as well give it a try. 

So what was your pre-us meeting story? 

Steve: My pre-Carrie story is somewhat similar as far as the dating goes. I had a lot of people from church trying to set me up and those are always difficult because it doesn’t work out. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but oftentimes it just didn’t, just something was missing. So that didn’t work and then I tried the online dating apps just like you and I thought here I am spending this money and getting nowhere.

So for me, I struggle my anxiety kicks in on that first date which I guess I’m not the only one that goes through that. I don’t think but just the same, it was very difficult. 

There came a point where Facebook actually emailed me and said, “Hey, we’re gonna start an online dating service that will be free through Facebook and we’re interested in you. You have a nice Facebook page or whatever. It’s clean-cut, and there’s nothing terrible on it. So we wanted to know if you’re interested” and I thought, Wow! I’ve never actually gotten a thing from Facebook like that. I was a little bit special.

So I said, “Whoa, what have I got to lose? Why not?” And then after I said, yes, I thought, Oh gosh, what have I gotten myself into? I didn’t even look at what type of dating is this. What are they going to do? What are they going to ask of me and it wasn’t that bad. They asked me a series of questions and had me fill out the basics. Who am I? Where am I? All the normal stuff that you do on a dating app. So that made me feel good and then they said it might be a while. Well, I’d practically given up on the idea of it after waiting for like three months or something. maybe longer than that, but finally that little heart popped up and I started getting messages and, and then not long after there you were.

And so that’s where it all began. 

How Steve and Carrie Found Each Other

Carrie: Yeah and we found out amazingly that we had a lot in common. We grew up about an hour away from each other in Florida. Even though we’re in Tennessee now. We had both been on mission trips and now we’re talking about mission trips and food and restaurants and other things we enjoyed together. So that was a lot of fun. We had a couple of phone calls and you talked a lot. 

Steve: Yes. Do you want to talk about that? Well, ironically, you’re asking me if I talk a lot and to talk about it. I am one of those people that if I don’t know you or I’m in a big crowd, I probably won’t say much. It’s difficult when it’s like, “Hey Steve, this is a girl and you have to talk to her” and my mind goes, “Nope, don’t want to say a thing,” but then as you get comfortable, as I get comfortable, I had so much to talk about because I hadn’t shared anything with anybody in so long. So all I wanted to do was talk. I thought, “Wow! This woman, she’s a good listener.”

Well, little did I know you get paid to do that? I guess I knew, but anyways, you were easy to talk to. You are easy to talk to and a great listener. 

Carrie: The really scary thing came for me of having to tell Steve that I was divorced because we hadn’t gotten to that part yet in our chats online or over the phone.

Steve: That didn’t bother me because I had the same issue and so the reaction you had was I kind of “felt bad for you cause you’d gotten yourself kind of worked up about it” like worried, and then I’m like, “Nah, it’s not a deal-breaker at all.” You know, I was married too. So that gave us something in common. So it kind of worked in our favor.

Tips for Dating After Divorce

Carrie: There is some stigma in the Christian church when you’re dating and you’re divorced. It’s scary because I did have men say to me, “Hey, I need to pray about this for a few days.” That happened to me at least twice and you’re going to say, “okay, go pray about it.” My conscience is clear with God.

I don’t know. He’s going to have to communicate that to you one way or the other, or I need to know everything that happened and I need to know why it ended. So I guess if I would add just a word of advice thrown out there for people who are dating, if you haven’t been divorced, and you’re potentially dating people who are divorced, give it time for that story to unfold because often that story is pretty personal and pretty intimate like reasons why people’s marriages ending. Sometimes depending on how long it’s been since that point a lot of times those things aren’t relevant anymore at this level. Would you agree with that?

Steve: Without going into details, our stories were so similar, at least with me. I felt like people would come to a conclusion of, there’s gotta be a reason he’s divorced. What did he do? Maybe that’s not what they were thinking but that’s the feeling that I had from them. People, you can’t just jump out there and judge them like that because you don’t know and like you say, give them some time. 

Carrie: Right. I think one of the things that you told me that I felt was very healing was that it takes two people to get married but it only takes one person to get divorced and in both of our situations, it wasn’t our choice. That wasn’t something that we wanted to do and we would have held on and done what we could to make it work, but there was no repair at that point.

Steve And Carrie’s Funny Date Story

Carrie: So then we branched out and met up for a first date at?

Steve: Plaza Mariachi, which if you’ve never been to a place like that. That is a wonderful place for a first date because it’s open. It’s easy to find and there’s so much going on. It offers you a pretty good place to sit and talk, although it did get a bit loud.

Carrie: Yeah. So Plaza Mariachi, for those of you who aren’t in the Nashville area, they basically took an old grocery store and they converted it into kind of an open mall concept. They’ve got a food court and they’ve got, you can get ice cream or tacos or coffee. They also have little shops kind of on the side but one thing that’s really fun that they have is performances. So, Steve, I was like, “okay, will you tell me a little bit more about your salvation story?” So he’s telling me, and he’s going through the process and of course, that’s kind of serious and then all of a sudden I just screamed, “fire!” Because all of a sudden, there’s this guy out in the middle of the food court, throwing around fire and breathing fire and all of this stuff. 

Steve: Which I can’t see by the way. 

Carrie: Because you’re back was to it. 

Steve: Which seems when you’re given a little bit of your testimony, it doesn’t seem so wonderful when somebody else “fire” like, “Wow. I thought my story was good” but maybe I need to pray and start over here. 

Carrie: So our second date, we got lost on a trail. 

Steve: Yes. Mainly because they were doing some work on the trail and they didn’t mark the reroute. So we just kind of literally walked way past it. 

Carrie: We missed the detour or something on the way back [01:00:37] and it’s getting closer to getting dark. This was in the late fall and it was getting dark earlier and so finally we decided to pull up the map and realize we are way down South and we need to get back up the other way to our car. So fortunately that date went well because otherwise, that would have been a long walk back to the car.

Steve: That would have been very difficult. I have to walk back that far with a person you don’t want to be with, that wouldn’t be good, but that was a good test for us because that was kind of a moment where it could have went either way. We’re together and got a few laughs and it was worth it. It was good. 

Carrie: I think the coffee shop type date is good when you’re first getting to know somebody because you can leave in a short amount of time or something, but it’s nice to be able to do things with people, to look at stuff, and see how they interact around other people and also how they interact with you. And we had to problem solve on a date too. So that was actually good. 

Steve: Definitely. I thought it was an easy deal. Just walk this way and make a turn and come back and you’re done. 

Carrie: Yeah, there was a snafu on date three. 

Steve: Yes, which wasn’t all my fault. 

Carrie: No, it was not. You want to share what happened?

Steve: Yeah. I think you had suggested the place and I thought,” Oh yeah, I think I’ve been there.” That’s a great place, I think. That sounds good. The deal is to make it short and simple. There are two restaurants on the same road, not what four miles apart, I think same name. Both of them are Mexican restaurants.

They are almost identical. So I call her and I’m like, “well, I’m here just waiting” and she said, “I’m here at the table.” Wait like, “Oh no.”

That’s when we discovered we were both at a restaurant with the same name on the same street but it was not the same restaurant. So I had to find her. I went to the wrong one, by the way, not her.

Carrie: So that was fun and then we went to go see the Opera Land Hotel where they decorate everything for Christmas, really nice. We just walked around there and we took our first picture together and that was sweet. So time went on in our relationship and we were talking on a regular basis and we were seeing each other a couple of times a week.

Getting To Know Each Other Better

Carrie: One thing that you did relatively early on in our relationship was made a decision to take a night off work per week because you were working in the evenings and I think that was a big sign to me that you were interested in kind of moving the relationship forward.

Steve: For me, any relationship that I had with friends, that was the problem is that I work way too much in my mind. I thought if I’m going to make this work because I do like this girl, and if I’m going to make this work, I don’t think working all the time is going to help our relationship. You can’t just see one another here and there and expect it to work and only do the phones. So I knew I had to take a night off to make that work. I think that benefited us a lot. 

Carrie: Yeah, it really did. I think it kept me going forward because I don’t know if I can do a one-day-a-week relationship or just have a weekend relationship with somebody. I want to get to know them more and have it go deeper.

Seeing A Therapist To Cope With Dating Anxiety

Carrie: So things progressed along and I was working with my therapist off and on but I started to have these awful nightmares.

They would be things like, I went to go catch a flight and I get to the ticket counter and I’ve missed my flight and the lady is saying, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, there’s nothing that we can do for you. You didn’t get here in time” or I didn’t make it to a concert that I had tickets to.

As I was talking through these nightmares with my therapist, I realized that they all had this kind of common theme and it was okay, I’m gonna like royally screw this relationship up and it’s going to be my fault. Something’s going to go bad and it’s going to be on me.

I just decided to tell Steve about these nightmares that I was having and be really honest about it. I’m nervous like I’m getting closer to you and that feels really vulnerable and really scary because I don’t want to get hurt again.

Understanding Your Partner’s Fear and Anxiety

Steve: Absolutely and when you told me, I got it. I can’t say that it was my dream but I completely wanted to understand you. That would be horrible to have to go through that and have that dream and that fear and that anxiety. So for me, I thought the best thing to do was to just be patient and wait.

Carrie: Yeah. I know that my therapist helped me realize that it was tied back to some past stuff and then I was in a different place in my life. I was an adult and I really could protect myself if I needed to. Something about what we processed and me coming to that conclusion of “Oh, okay. I’m actually safe.” Not only am I safe but I can also protect myself. That allowed me to stop having those nightmares really after the one processing session which was amazing. I know there were a lot of different points in our relationship where I felt like I was seeking reassurance from you of “Hey, is everything okay?” “Are we good?” Did that frustrate you or annoy you at times? 

Steve: In a way, it was a big compliment because it meant that you were getting to a point where you wanted to trust me and wanted to get to know me. We wanted to grow more as a couple. So it kind of in a weird way. It sort of made me happy because I knew if we can get through this then we can make it. We can grow as a couple. So I was kind of excited but I knew when somebody’s going through something, you can’t get aggravated with them because that’s their something and if you’re going to be a couple, you have to go through things together. I knew that. So I knew I had to just be patient and hear you out. I know that you would do the exact same thing for me. I wouldn’t want you to get all irritated with me and say, “Hey, you jerk.” That’s part of relationships. I think though that’s a key thing.

Respecting Each Other’s Feelings

Carrie: Right. One of the things that really helped me through that process was when I would come to you with something like I’m having a nightmare or I’m scared about this, or I just need to know that our relationship is okay because we got in a fight or something like that, that you are just so open to say, “it’s okay.” However you’re feeling is, how you’re feeling and now we have to figure out what to do and how to move forward because I think so many times, people try to say, “just don’t feel anxious.” like, yeah, I need to worry about that. I mean, everything’s fine instead of just really like allowing it to be there and sitting with it and saying, you know, I know that there were several times that you told me, of course, you’re having a hard time trusting. Of course, you’re having a hard time opening up. This is still somewhat new. 

Steve: I mean if it were anything else maybe this is a bad example, but if you were riding a bicycle and you had just fallen off that bicycle but you wanted to ride that bike, you would get back on it. I think relationships are similar, you have to get back at it and keep trying, or you’re never gonna get through it if you don’t keep trying. That’s my opinion but you did a lot of things for me as well though where I would have a bad day and whatever, and you were very, very patient with me when I would get aggravated, whatever it is. There were days where I thought, why in the world would she want to be with me? But you still, you man, and not to get all sappy, but you made life a lot better. Let me rephrase that, you make life a lot better.

Joy and Contentment in The Lord: From Being Happy To Ridiculously Happy

Carrie: One of the things that I realized was we had taken a few pictures amongst the first couple of months of dating and one day I was just kind of scrolling through those pictures in my phone and I had this realization and this epiphany of I was happy before I met Steve. So it’s not like you made me happy. I believe very much that there was joy and a contentment in the Lord even though I was longing to have a mate which I believe was a God-given desire that I had. But when I looked at those pictures, I was like, “Man, I went from happy to like ridiculous level happy.” And I don’t know do you feel kind of like, maybe talk a little bit about that process for you as far as like where you were before we met versus now? 

Steve: Sure. Prior to us meeting, I was at a moment where I thought I know that God has someone there for me, but boy I don’t know what I’m doing wrong or what I should be doing. There was just this, it’s almost like when you’re driving on the road and you’re going the wrong way, but you keep going and hope that maybe I’ll see a sign soon. Eventually, you came along, but I had to be patient to get to that.

I think there was a waiting period for me to not rush anything, to not force anything to happen because I really wasn’t happy. I was alone. I didn’t like that. I’m not that type of person. I like doing for others and a single person who likes to do for others, that’s not always a great setup. I mean, you can go and volunteer and do all the things you want, but it isn’t necessarily going to be something that makes you happy if you’re longing for someone. So for me, once I met you, I thought, “Wow! I really like her.” There could be something here. It was actually when we took our flight to Florida, then I knew because long story short, what I call my adopted mom she had cancer and I was told you need to go see her because you may not have another chance. I was really, really upset about that and you went with me, you’re like, “well, I’ll just go with you,” and, “Oh my goodness. Really?” This might be the one. I knew then for sure. 

I don’t know if that answers your question but that was definitely a turning point prior to that. I wasn’t so sure before we dated, I definitely felt lost. 

Carrie: Just to clarify, adopted mom is your best friend’s mom. 

Steve Telling His Family About Seeing and Dating A Therapist

Steve: My best friend’s mom basically feeds me because I eat a lot.  She did things for me that I needed in my life as well. So I’m just one of those special people that needed two moms. That’s all. She did not legally adopt me and she was not my birth mom or anything like that.

Carrie: To understand the context of our flight to Florida was literally that week COVID-19 had been declared a global pandemic and like nobody was flying. There were maybe like 20 people on one of our flights and then on the way back, they kept canceling the flight and they consolidated a bunch of flights. So there were more people on that one, but that was scary because we didn’t know at that point in time. Everybody was being told to stay at home. Don’t travel. Don’t go places and life at the same time was still going on and you knew if I don’t go see second mom, I may not get to see her even if she passes. So we prayed about it. I always just said, “God, please protect us and just please shelter us and cover us” and he did and we did not get sick. Praise the Lord. We did wear masks before wearing masks was required.

Steve: I’m going to back up a second on you. You asked me about things before I met you. One of the things was when you introduce someone to your family or tell your family, “Hey, I’m dating someone.” That for me, there comes a point where you say, “Oh, I just don’t know.”

I don’t want to, I don’t know. You want to be sure. All right, this has got a really good chance. Now I will tell my family. Right now, I don’t know if other people do that, but that was me. When I called my parents up and this is such a silly story.

Carrie: I know you got to tell this.

Steve: I would be in trouble if I didn’t tell this. So I thought it would be a good point, I was talking to both my parents as I often do and telling them, “well, guys, I got something I need to tell you.” And so they’re like, “Oh wait, this guy never gets serious. This must be really important.” I said, “I’m seeing a therapist.” And my dad said, “Oh my gosh, is everything okay?” and I said, “Well, yeah, it’s our I guess second, third date” something like that. Now what he said, “Isn’t that a little unethical for you to be seeing a therapist?” And I said,” well, yeah, but no, no, not that kind of seeing our therapist.” I said, “it’s our second date third date, whatever it was.” I wasn’t seeing you as my therapist.

And that took a little while for my dad to kind of get the idea that I was kind of giving him a hard time that I was actually dating a girl who happens to be a therapist, not dating my therapist. Yeah. That’s kind of our fun story.

Carrie: That was pretty funny. I laughed so hard and then I said, “Oh, please tell me, you clarified that with your dad” like you were never my client just for clarification. I was like, your dad does know we met on Facebook, right? Was it weird for you finding out that I was a therapist? Because sometimes that’s weird when you meet people. 

Steve: A little bit. Only because I was afraid that the first date was going to be less personal and more, well, “how does that make you feel, Steve?” and “How do you feel when.” I wanted to be with someone who is real, not someone who is on the other side as a therapist. I was hoping, and you did that, you can let go of that therapist mode to be able to date and be you, but that, honestly, it’s not like that lasted very long. That was just a moment of “Well, therapists are real too.” It worked out great though. 

Carrie: Yeah. We’re human beings. People don’t realize that a lot of times they’re just like, “Oh gosh, you’re going to analyze me or something” and a lot of times I’ll just joke and I’ll say “I’m off the clock”.

One of the other reasons I wanted to have you on the show was really to encourage single people who maybe aren’t even dating right now. Maybe they’re like me and they were hurting and burned and they’re still healing from that. Or maybe they’re in a situation where they just don’t feel like there is anybody to date and you are single for a long time as a Christian. And that’s a hard space to be in because the church and as it should be is so pro-marriage and you feel awkward or like the odd one out, a lot of times.

Steve: Absolutely. I felt like the reject a lot of times, like what is wrong with me? You know, for me, after going through the divorce, I thought, well, let me give this two years before I date at all. A year to get over that situation as best I can, a year to find me and then I thought then I’ll date and everything will be great, whatever, but it didn’t quite work like that. I can’t tell you how many times people would say, “Man, you have really high standards. You’re going to be single for a long time”, but it was important to me to have a checklist.

The first one on there, she’s got to be Christian. That is important. Not go to church. That’s not enough. I mean, Christian, like a relationship. So I went a very long time as a single man and it’s difficult. Part of that is you get this feeling of am I good enough? And there were moments where I didn’t even try.

I just didn’t. I thought, well, I can’t force it. If it happens, it happens. If you’re not doing anything and you’re not even trying, the likeliness of just stumbling upon whoever it is you’re supposed to be dating. That’s not. You have to search, you don’t find if you don’t search typically.

But I was scared, I thought, am I good enough? And all of that. Anyways, I try dating through church and different avenues and they just didn’t fit for me. That’s not saying if there’s a church out there that has a singles ministry, that it’s a bad idea. No, it’s just the ones that I went through didn’t work for me. It took me a lot of tries and a long, long time.

Carrie: I actually met someone in the singles ministry at church, and he had come a couple Sundays, literally to meet a woman I think, and I start talking to him and realize he’s not even saved. Like he doesn’t even have a relationship and so now I’m like witnessing this guy, like do you know, like it’s not just about going to church or it’s not just like, yeah, I believe in God. You’ve got to have a relationship with Jesus and he just did not understand.

I think he really thought that he had a saving relationship with Christ and I remember being very discouraged by that because I was like, okay, God, I’m in the church and I’m trying to meet a godly man. I ended up meeting someone who’s not a Christian. So, I would agree with you that I remember there were definitely times where I cried out to God and I just said, “Lord, I don’t see it.”

I don’t see single men out there that are living for you and if that’s the case, then I’ve got to stay single until I find somebody. Finding that you not only went to church, but you were serving in the church already, that you were being mentored and going through continued discipleship with other men in the church. That was really exciting for me. I was like, “How is this man not been snatched up yet?”

Steve: And it was funny to me too, that in serving, I hate to say it this way, but that’ll really make me desirable. It doesn’t work like that but I did think that at a moment and I thought, “yeah, I do missions.” Surely, that’s not why I did missions, but at the same time, I thought this will be great. It doesn’t work like that. It’s what it is. 

Carrie: Yeah. I know that everybody says this. I don’t want to be cliche, but I really feel like so much is about timing and I think about even God’s grace in the timing that we met and we’re able to meet each other’s families before COVID really hit and get to know each other and go out and do things before everything shut down.

That was really God’s grace at that point. When you’re in the middle of something, it’s really, really hard to have perspective on it. So like when you’re in the middle of your single loneliness, sexless life, let’s just be honest and you’re sitting there going, “Oh gosh, like, am I ever going to meet somebody?”

It’s really, really hard. And so I guess if you’re in that place, I just want to encourage you and say like I’ve been there. I’ve been crying in the car or crying in my bed about how I’m never gonna meet anybody. But now when I look back on it, I’m like, “Oh, gosh, God is so gracious and so good to me.” And it’s almost like he had this gift and he was like, “You can’t have it now. It’s not for now, but I have it for you already. I’m going to give it to you when it’s time, when you’re ready to receive that gift and you’re ready to have it. I’m going to give it to you.” I think it’s really shifted my perspective on other things in my life that I’m praying and I’m seeking God for, and I’m asking him for, and it’s allowed me to just really trust in His timing more and more.

Steve: Absolutely and like you say, I think you’re absolutely right, it’s about timing. If I would’ve seen you 15 years ago, would it have been the same? No. Everything had to match up. You had to go through what you went through and I had to go through what I went through.

I’ve matured so much as a Christian since then. So, it’s a good thing that we had to wait, but when you’re going through it, it does not feel like a good thing. No one says, “Oh, I’m so glad to be single and sprinkle…I can’t even talk single and miserable and I’m so glad I have to wait. Yeah, this is wonderful.

I’m lonely. I don’t even like myself. Isn’t this great. You know what I mean? But when you look back, you see how you’re molded and you’re preowned and the right one is there for you. 

Carrie: Yeah, let’s just do some, maybe some general advice for single Christians. I would say really be passionate and dedicated to something specifically God. Obviously putting God first and serving the church. I think too many single Christians I’ve seen are going to this church over here on Sunday mornings and they sometimes hit that church over there on Wednesday nights and they’re not really necessarily dedicated to a church or they attend, but they aren’t pouring into it. They aren’t serving.

I think, any opportunity to be really dedicated and committed and serve others because as a single person, sometimes we can really get self-absorbed and just kind of into what we’ve got going on and just going through the motions and survival. And so being able to be committed to something or committed to the church prepares you for when you’re committed to another person because if you’re willing to carve out, say that time to serve the children’s ministry. Then you’re going to be willing to carve out that time to date someone. You’re going to be willing to carve out that time when you do get married. 

Steve: That will be something that if you’re looking for someone when they see that you’re working in serving in the church and you’re happy and doing it, they’re going to see that as a great gift. That is a wonderful thing. It’s a great attribute versus “Oh, well, look at the desperate one there.” That’s who I want. Nobody wants to be desperate. Serve more because what you need is what you need to do and that’s what they’ll look at.

Carrie: I think for me too, when I knew I was ready to date again, it was because I felt like for the first time, in a long time, I felt like I had something to give. I wasn’t just looking for what I was going to receive as part of the relationship and that was really huge for me.

Steve: I didn’t want to be, for me, that person who is just afraid to be alone because you see people that date and the only reason that maybe they’re dating, maybe this is judgmental on my part, but you get the idea that the only reason they’re dating because they don’t want to be alone. That’s just a recipe for disaster. I think being patient there’s a lot to that. 

Carrie: Any other advice or anything else you want to add?

Steve: We didn’t say this and we should have. Pray a lot. Pray a lot about it and don’t just say, “God help me to find a wonderful, beautiful woman.” Don’t be selfish about it.

Pray that you’ll be the right person for them because he’s got a future for you, but you need to be ready.

Carrie: And you’ve got to be willing to work on yourself and examine yourself and look at how can I prepare myself? How can I surrender to God’s transformation process in my life?

If you’re not a person who’s willing to receive feedback from other people, that’s going to be a stumbling block in a relationship. If you’re a person that has a hard time being honest about what you think and feel that’s going to be a stumbling block, but the good news is that you really can work on those things in your friendships and your relationships with coworkers, in your relationships with family and other people in the church and community and that’s so valuable. Those things are really going to prepare you. I definitely would agree with what you said about praying and really allowing God to bring forth that prayer process, the qualities that you really want to have in a spouse. 

I know one of the things that I prayed for was somebody who would be in love with Jesus, not just go to church who would be serving the church, who would be involved in ministry opportunities and who would pray with me and who would be willing to encourage my spiritual journey as well. 

There were many different characteristics that I was able to pray through and then go back and look at our relationship and look at you and say, “okay, these are the things that I’ve already been praying for and now I’m seeing the answer to those prayers.”

Steve: Yeah. That was important with the prayer was not just me praying. I don’t know for you if this happened, but for me as a guy, I had to open up to someone and say, “Hey bro, do you mind praying for me that I won’t be single and miserable?” I’ll be the man that God wants me to be for whoever or wherever she is. And so I did. There were several people praying, but there were two specifics. One was a former pastor’s wife and another was a very close accountability partner, buddy whatever you want to call them of mine.

And they’re both just two of the most, I don’t know if I could say the most Christian people I know, but definitely there in the word every day they are connected. They are great prayer warriors and both of them prayed like crazy and so, boy did their faces light up when I said, “Hey, guess what? I found someone.”

Get someone to pray with you because it’s not just about you praying. God wants us to include others. It’s not a solo thing. So get someone to pray with you because they can tell you things that maybe you’re ignoring or you’re not seeing. They can go deeper with you. It’s worth it. 

Carrie: We’re both blessed to also have praying parents who watched us go through divorce and obviously were heartbroken because no parent wants that for their kids and they really were praying along with us. 

Steve: Yes. I think my mom is more protective of you than she is of me, which is really saying a lot, but that’s a good thing. She always wants to know, “are you treating her good?” How is she doing? That’s good though. That’s what I want. It’s a good thing. It’s a good feeling.

Carrie: I didn’t tell you were going to be asked this, but at the end of every episode on hope for anxiety and OCD, what we ask is for the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time that you received hope from God or another person.

Steve: Wow. That is a tough question. Probably when my brother died because that was someone who I was extremely close to. I had really more than one person, but there were a few that came up beside me and just kind of said, “Hey, we know you’re not going to open up about what’s going on, maybe, but we’re praying for you.” Specific prayers, very specific. That gave me hope because I had never been through life without my brother. Losing a family member that is so difficult but having people there that said, “Steve, we know that you lost someone and we can’t fix that but what we can do is we’ll be your family.” “Where you had that phone call with your brother, every whatever day we’ll call you. We’ll do this or we’ll do that.”

So that’s part of how my mission family that I have actually grew because that group of people who I did missions with, they would call me and they would just show up and say, “Hey, you want to go out to dinner?” “You want to go out to lunch.” Do the things that my brother and I might do. So that gave me hope. It made me realize if someone’s going through someone or something, you need to do that for them. Stand up and do something. Be there for people. 

Carrie: Just being there is so important. Thank you so much for sharing all of your singleness. It’s always good laughing with you. 

Steve: Yes, always good laughing with you too. 

__________________________________________________________________

I am so thankful that Steve was willing to come on the podcast. He’s a bit more of a private behind-the-scenes guy. So this was really a gift to me to get to interview him and share our story and talk a little bit about what dating was like for us. I hope it provided some encouragement to some other people who are out there maybe who are struggling with anxiety in this area. 

Since this is our 10th episode and we launched with 10 episodes, I really want to hear from you as far as what parts of the show do you really like. What parts do you not like? What things can we improve on and make them better for you?

This is not just about me talking into a microphone, finding some friends to interview, and throwing it out there. It’s really my desire that this information be encouraging, helpful, and hopeful. So whether you think that we’re meeting those goals, or we’re not, please let us know on carriebock.com/podcast

Thanks so much for listening.

Christian, Feelings Aren’t a Battle to be Fought

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Blog.

When I was a child, I remember feeling things very deeply, but not knowing how to express or manage those feelings. Experiencing emotion was like being knocked down by a tall wave. I was introspective, picked up on the subtleties of others’ emotions, and took everything personally. Even into college, one negative comment by someone could affect my entire day. I now have a greater understanding of my emotions, what it means to be highly sensitive, and how to handle things in a healthier way. However, for many years, having strong emotions felt like a curse. Feelings were uncomfortable, painful, and needed to be avoided at all costs.      

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Should I Take Medication for my Anxiety or OCD?

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD. No Comments on Should I Take Medication for my Anxiety or OCD?

Maybe this is a question you’ve asked yourself. Perhaps you have concerns about side effects, becoming dependent on medication, or wonder if this option is for you. My response to this question is always the same: It’s a personal decision. Each person has to decide what is best for their body depending on their own symptoms. Some of my clients are able to tolerate medication with little side effects while others try several different medications and react negatively to all of them. Some want to try counseling first before starting medication. I respect and honor each individual’s decision.  

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6 Factors to Consider Before Searching for a Counselor

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Blog, Counseling, OCD.

Note of clarification: In this article, I am using the terms counselor and therapist interchangeably to refer to a provider who is trained and licensed by the state to practice. I am not referring to someone who may engage in counseling or counseling techniques who has not been formally trained to practice professionally. 

If you want to find a doctor, there are several ways you could approach this. You could ask a friend, check the insurance website, the doctor’s website, or read reviews. Finding a therapist comes with unique challenges. I have listed the important factors to consider when finding a therapist below. Understanding this information helps you know what information to cover in the initial phone call or email when reaching out to a therapist.      

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Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast – Not sure about Therapy?

9. Not Sure About Therapy? Try it on! with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 9. Not Sure About Therapy? Try it on! with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

  • Different therapist personalities and styles 
  • Demystifying therapy
  • Finding the therapist who is the right fit 
  • Different kinds of therapies that therapist utilize such as CBT, DBT, IFS, Psychodynamic or Play Therapy 
  • Erica’s experience with mental health in the African American church 
  • Seeing a counselor of a different race 

Resources and links:
Erica Kesse, Your Goal Concierge
Try on Therapy
Mental Health Marketing Conference 

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 9

Hope for Anxiety and OCD. Episode 9

Today, we are talking to Erica Kessee who is a good friend of mine and fellow entrepreneur. She is going to share with us something that she created called Thrive on Therapy. I’ll let her tell you more about that.

One thing that I want you to pick up, hopefully from this conversation is an understanding that there are many different types of counselors and many different personalities of counselors. 

There are many different counseling approaches that those counselors utilize and this can really help you if you’re processing, searching for a counselor, or what you might need from a counselor. And of course, I couldn’t have Erica on the show and not ask her about her experience with racial issues and mental health in the black church, but I was not prepared for what she was going to say.

So let’s go ahead and dive into this episode with Erica. 

Carrie: Miss Erica, you and I used to share an office space together, right? 

Erica: It was a blessing because another colleague told me about you and that you had an office. I was so excited because I was able to be in a space and start my practice in my own office and it was ready for me to hang my shingle. 

Carrie: Yeah and we have to let people understand that this office space was very small and you somehow found a way to make it super cute and homey and you had someone help you decorate. It was adorable, very adorable.

Erica: I was very proud of my space, loved my little space, my little couch. When you will listen to a decorator, they work wonders. So it’s just like, “you paid me.” So cozy and sweet.

Carrie: One of my favorite Erica stories that I have to tell is that we have a lot of things in common. We have really a passion for people getting really good help and treatment and reducing stigma. We have no problem talking about difficult issues, but our temperaments are a little bit different in terms that I’m kind of quiet and somber and calm and Erica is exciting, exuberant, and full of energy and life. That was very interesting. There would be times where I just go down to your end of the hall and just kind of gently turn up the sound machine. Do you remember that? 

Erica: Yes. When I was working in community mental health and in other places when there’s other people around, it’s always been noted that I am having a great time in my session and I am laughing, enjoying the time that I spent with the people who are in the room with me and it is outside of the room and so it made the sound machine to be brought up a little higher.

Carrie: I think that’s an interesting thing cause we’re going to get into this a little bit later about different therapists having different personalities and different fits. There’s just kind of a little intro of one example of that, but tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today professionally. 

Erica: I am Erica Kessee, a CEO and founder of Your Goal Concierge. I also have a service within Your Goal Concierge called Thrive on Therapy. Your Goal Concierge Mission is to provide services, support, enhancement, and encouragement to those who are in helping professions. Counselors, coaches, nurses, frontline people who had to go out of the house even in the middle of quarantine. Those are people that I serve and people who are trying to create businesses, try on therapy as a service specifically because I have a master’s in clinical mental health counseling and civic leadership. 

I wanted to make sure that individuals, both the public had the right fit for their therapy and that therapists had opportunities for networking opportunities to show their craft and opportunities to offer services to others and show what they’re good at and to make sure that individuals are with them. Every counselor coach knows this person is like the perfect client for me because they have a lot of the same story that you have.

You understand how to work with them and get them to the next level. It is an immersive learning experience for individuals. So individuals who have the temporary license, which that’s what I have, or a master’s in clinical mental health counseling can provide this immersive learning experience to people so they can at least get a taste of therapy because there’s a lot of stigma associated with getting mental health services. 

Carrie: Right. I remember you came by my office one day and you were so excited and you were like, “Carrie, you try on clothes?” And I was like, “at the store” and I was like, “yeah”. She was like, “what if you could try on therapy?” And I was like, “What in the world are you talking about? This is a little out there, Erica. I don’t know about all this.”

Tell us about how that originated because you did actually create this for the mental health marketing conference originally, right?

Erika: Yes. Exactly. So for the mental health marketing conference, I started going to the conference while I was at Lipscomb. I went to get my master’s in clinical, both masters from Lipscomb University. There was an opportunity as a student to go to the mental health marketing hub. I got there and I looked around and I saw all the marketers and I thought, where are the clinicians? They don’t have a seat at this table when they’re supposed to be marketing for mental health services. Only the clinicians know how to market to the people they’re trying to bring in the doors. And so I spoke to the founder, which was an Austin parent about incorporating more clinicians. I did speak the next year and it was that third year that we spoke about having clinicians at the table. Then the third year was, hey, we’re going to actually pilot trial therapy and let these marketers experience therapy because they had never experienced therapy. They have no idea how they are going to be marketing something they’ve never experienced. 

Everybody else gets something free. If somebody is in the market, they get a product for free. So they can say, I buy into this product. Like a sample, that’s what trial data is. It’s a sample of therapy and the sample is actually not watered down or anything, but we call it an immersive learning experience because we don’t want to say it’s therapy. It’s just a crucial relationship. So you don’t want to say that you’re entering into that relationship until you’re truly entering into a relationship with a person that’s going to be taking you to the level you need to go to according to your treatment plan. So we offered it and at that time we asked Carrie, even though I went over there to her office, I was actually trying to get her to come to be a trial therapist.

I’m always a connector. I’m always thinking about opportunities to reel people in and Carrie was one of the child therapists that year. I can’t remember the numbers. I do have an annual report. If anybody is interested in it, you can reach out to me for it. I have the numbers in there. With every person that we did have, every person that I met was there also exhibiting. I did have a conversion of a person that stayed with me from that conference that very first time. 

Every single year we’ve done trial therapy there and they asked us to come back every year, try on therapy in there because there are marketers, people who’ve never experienced it. There it’s just valuable and this makes sense to me. 

Carrie: Now you’ve expanded to other places and it’s not just for the conference and it’s not just for marketers, what other locations have you been to where you’ve utilized this? 

Erica: Because of the specificity of the middle half marketing conference so we went to the Sexual Assault Center here in Nashville, Tennessee. They were talking about a particular thing that could trigger individuals. There was a therapist there who could be available for anyone that was triggered but then we also provided sessions at the end of the conference.

I closed two people from that. When I say closed, they converted into clients. I went to the sexual assault center twice. After the second time doing the mental health marketing conference, I met a lady with HCA health corporations in America, and they had a hiring event at top golf, which is a place where people can do golf and shoot there.

Carrie: They’re trying to hit a target right, the golf ball into a target. I’ve never done it before, but it doesn’t look like much.

Erica: It’s a cool place. So we went there and we provided group therapy. We had therapists there, they wanted a group, they wanted to hit as many people as possible and so we did three 30 minute group sessions on self-care. The topic of self-care was amazing. I had a wonderful time. They’re going to invite us back next year. As soon as someone tries it, even like it’s so fun in trial therapy, usually, you convert them to a client. When a corporation tries this trial therapy then they usually want me to come back every year to continue to do it for the individuals that they’re serving.

Carrie: it’s been a great success for you. I think it’s opened a lot of people’s minds to what therapy is. Maybe people have ideas that it’s something mystical or they’re really uncomfortable about it like it’s this big mystery like, “what in the world do you do in there?”

Erica: That’s part of our marketing. What happens behind those closed doors. A part of the marketing is also learning the product of therapy. The product of therapy is sitting with that therapist. The therapist is the product. You need to have a relationship with that person and get the right fit with that person. So I recommend you not just meet someone and say, “Okay, I’m going to go through therapy with that person.”

I feel like you should shop around, there’s a sample here and a sample there of how they flow, how it feels in the session, what things they say, and the methods that they will like to show you. Mainly, I would have to say how it feels, because if you’re doing some transference or anything else, which is when you feel some feelings about this person and you’ve never met them, but they bring up things in you that are not so good, then you don’t need it. Then you don’t need that therapist. You need to get somebody else.

Carrie: You mean if they remind you of your mother who you got a strained relationship with it may not be the best fit.

Erica: Not a good fit. 

Carrie: Talk about that a little bit, because I think a lot of times people approach finding a therapist like they would a doctor like, “Okay, well maybe who’s in my insurance network or who’s the person that’s within the 10-mile radius of me and looking for a therapist really needs to be a very different process than that.

Erica: Oh my goodness Carrie I just had a bright idea and maybe we should collaborate on that. Oh, I’m sorry. This is how I am, but yes it shouldn’t be a different process and you’re right. 

Let’s talk through that process now. It can’t be that way. That’s why when your insurance gives you a list, they give you a list. The list is pretty big.

You need to go through and call through. First of all, if they don’t call, if they don’t call you back or they call you back, like three months later, then you know, it’s not a good fit. There’s some issue that’s there that you don’t mean to keep pursuing but also the whole insurance rate also, the radius is maybe a problem as well. It’s like you have to decide that this is life or death. 

A lot of times people don’t see our mental health, our brains, and our emotional health as a life and death situation, but it is because most of the time when people come to us, it’s a conflict that’s happened. That’s just during a crisis. So sometimes holding onto this crisis for years and then finally it just boils over and they’re finally reaching out. You can’t decide that it’s going to have to be with the person within a radius or the first person that you get to answer the phone. 

Carrie: I think the process of finding a therapist is really important and I can only share from my own personal experience of finding a therapist. There was one period of my life where I really wanted to see a female therapist. I thought that person is going to be someone who I would feel more comfortable with. I don’t feel comfortable with talking with a male right now, but then after I went through some other things. I was really looking to get back into the dating world after my divorce and I just said, “I want to talk to a male about this because I feel like I need that perspective.”

I need that opposite sex perspective of some things that I’m dealing with or some questions that I have and that was just so helpful. So even sometimes that male or female distinction, sometimes people feel more comfortable with a younger therapist. Sometimes people feel more comfortable with an older therapist and don’t feel bad because maybe it sounds kind of superficial like, “Oh, I’m ruling that person out because they’re too old or they’re too young, but it’s who you’re going to be able to connect with personally. Other people are going to be able to connect with that other therapist personally. So it’s okay. 

Erica: It is. I’m so happy you’re affirming and confirming that it is okay to have your preferences. Just like right now because I’ll have to say black awareness and racial awareness that’s happening, I’ve gotten more people contact me who are black or people of color because they need counseling, but also because they are reaching out to someone that looks like them. And so it’s important to decide to pick who you want. Even somebody that looks like you may not be a good fit either. You need the right temperament.

I know I need an action-oriented counselor. I don’t want one to just sit there with me because I will take over the session just like right now. Carrie knows what she’s up to. So like, I need someone that’s going to say, “This is your homework. This is what you need to do.” Give me some parameters. I need some CBT DBT. Well, let me explain those things, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. So I need these things for myself. I know that.

Carrie: Sure. Those types of interventions are helpful for you. 

Erica: So that’s something to think about too when you’re trying on therapy is the structure. What is the structure that works best for you? Especially in a trial therapy session, you can always ask a therapist about internal family systems or psychoanalytic therapy or EMDR or like I specialize in plant expressive arts therapy. So talk through what that looks like. 

So it’s, it’s good to kind of build your many, a listing of things that maybe sounds like something you want to try. You can talk through that. For example, when you’re talking about male and female thing. One of the people who came and did the mental health marketing conference was an exhibitor there, so she wasn’t a marketer. She worked in one of the nonprofits. She wanted to test out or try out a male. So she was able to check out one of the males there. I try to have it at the conference, like blubber city, diversity, and males. They’re scarce.

They really are. I had actually a black male. She was able to meet with him and she was the one that converted to see me because she got a taste of him. It didn’t fit and be with me and we did great work. So she did get that out of her system. She understands a male, isn’t a good fit for her.

So then she decided to try something else, which was great. 

Carrie: I think it’s important to you that once you talk with a therapist, whether that’s over the phone or once you meet with them in person, they may be diving into certain topics because of their training and their worldview and how they were trained as a therapist.

Specific different types of therapy, just like Erica was talking about earlier that that person may be kind of guiding you down a path that you might not want to go to. So they may be an insight-based therapist. And you may say, I need an action step or vice versa. Maybe you’re not ready for an action step and you’re just going to therapy because you’re trying to learn about yourself. Maybe I’m very upfront that I’m very interested in people’s past and trauma and difficult experiences that they’ve had because that’s the lens that I work from, but not everybody is like that. Some people will say, I don’t want to hear about your childhood.

I just want to know what’s going on right now. And so it’s important to know those distinctions in terms of finding a fit. If you find someone that’s going in one direction, it’s okay for you to say, you know, I think I’d really like to go a different direction, or I thought we were going to talk about this instead, or this is important to me right now.

You have that power as the client. 

Erica: Yes, Carrie. I’m very expressive. So yes, it is definitely about the relationship that you have with the person that you’re working with. You have to take ownership of your session. I’ll have to say this in a medical field too a lot of people are not taking ownership of all of their doctor’s appointments as well.

But with counselors, you’d say, “Hey, I want to work on this because they’re supposed to be building your treatment plan according to what you need and what you think your goal is. That’s one reason why my organization is called Your Coal Concierge. I’m your goal concierge. I’m going to help you with your goal.

It’s just important to have that relationship and speak up for yourself. There’s no power differential between you and your therapist. They are an expert in what they’re expert in. So they do understand that because they got the master’s degree, but you’re the expert on you and they’re there to help you work through and deal with and support you and where you’re going.

Carrie: I love this conversation but I also want to move on because I know there’s some other things I want to ask you about. 

What is your spiritual background and how would you describe your spiritual identity today? 

Erica: Okay. I have to talk about the past a little bit in order to get to today and I won’t be long-winded.

I grew up in Missionary Baptist Church then went to Full Gospel. That’s where I learned about my relationship with God. I didn’t learn much about it before, but once asked about the relationship with God it’s like my eyes were open to the possibilities of this beautiful connection.

That’s father. That’s just for me and for other people too. The relationship that I have is just for me and God. I could ask for whatever I want and it just blows my mind. I also believe that God lives inside of me and I’m still grateful too because I’m also I’m Christian too. So I believe in Jesus.

I need a savior as well, but you can tell that it’s like, people go through things and they may have got a family that taught them to do things a certain way and they just go along with it, I decided to do my way. According to me, thinking through and deciding that this best works best for me to, to be Christian and believe in Jesus.

And then I am also very spiritual because I really take a whole to that part of God living inside of me. So if God lives inside of me, then I got a source to everything. 

Carrie: I’m curious what your experience has been in black Christian community surrounding mental health treatment. 

Erica: I had a group that I was trying to promote that never really happened because people are not ready to have this conversation.

People are not. It’s not just black churches too. I went to some Church of Christ to do some things and try to do some things. I’ve noticed that it really doesn’t want to deal with things. It’s like an ostrich with his head in the sink. It does not want to deal with the real things that’s happening.

Carrie: Let’s pretend this is not going on. Let’s pretend people are not struggling with these big issues like anxiety and OCD. 

Erica: They don’t want to talk about them. I would think that you could find evidence in the Bible where there was somebody who was displaying the symptoms of anxiety and how they persevered or OCD and how they persevered.

One of my things that I always talk about is single motherhood. They don’t want to deal with that either. 

Carrie: It’s very prevalent. 

Erica: Yes, I did my master’s thesis on that. They didn’t want to deal with it. I never got support within the church to help do a group for single mothers.

Anyway, black church entered the price, white churches. The reason why I’m saying this is because those are the ones that I know of. I don’t know. Churches, and that’s my experience with them and it’s my personal experience. I just know that that’s one reason why I have another endeavor called trials spirituality, which if you go to Your Goal Concierge. That is my website, yourgoalconcierge.com. There’s a link that says trial spirituality. In there, it talks about small groups that people have at their homes. Actually, churches used to do this, but they have small groups at their homes about specific issues, scriptures that go along with for example, anxiety, that’s fine. So in the Bible to study who has anxiety and how they persevered through it and that group talks about it. So that’s definitely something that I am very passionate about. Let’s talk about the real things.

Carrie: We’ll put all of the information on the websites, in the show notes too, so people can click on the links.

Why do you think this is? Why do you think that people have their heads buried in the sand? Because we look at the lifetime prevalence of things like anxiety and depression and it’s high. This is not just affecting unbelievers. This is affecting believers as well. So what do you think is going on with church leadership that it’s having the ostrich mentality?

Erica: I think it’s too hard. It’s too hard of a topic and they don’t want their own stuff to come out like there’s needs to be some kind of transparency that happened in their own life. They probably have had it. Everybody has some anxiety. Everybody has a little bit of it. So that means you have to address your own stuff, This is like with counseling. That’s one reason why I decided to do my master’s in clinical mental health counseling because I needed to evaluate myself before I can even sit in the room with somebody else and I’m not sure they’re willing to evaluate themselves, but then they don’t address. There’s a lock.

Carrie: Right. Talk with me a little bit about your experience regarding racism, black issues related to counseling because I know you and I have had some conversations surrounding this. There may be some white therapists that don’t want to look at their own experiences or their own potential biases that may have a hard time seeing someone of another race or cultural group and vice versa too.

Erica: So being a black woman, it really is a conversation going on right now and I was just telling a friend of mine who is a white woman about it. It’s an everyday thing. They were talking about the protest that was happening and I said, “there’s no reason for me to get out in the streets and protest.” It’s a protest that I get up every day and not to come to the weight of the world that I feel as a black woman. Knowing that the people around me who are close to me could easily be killed at any point, just because of my skin. People don’t even think this way. Zora Neale Hurston kind of summed it up. She’s one of my role models is that my race, my race is only a part of who I am like brown coloring on top. Like it’s so much of me that doesn’t have anything to do with my race, but it’s just one of the parts, just like I am, you know, I love to giggle.

This is same day. It’s just one of the big. So everybody puts so much merit on it and seeing the differences in us when there’s so many similarities that my experience with racism is every day. Like I hear it. I feel it. I see it all the time and I can tell you many stories.  

Because of who I am. I love to have, I love creating, I have an idea and launching things, but I’ve had many circumstances where people did not want to see the merit in what I was saying and what I was doing until somebody white was interested in it. I was capitalized on in some type of way by someone who was white on a regular basis.

That’s a normal thing. There’s always circumstances where someone wants to capitalize on what I have, which I mean, as a black person, I’m never going to have as much as they know. I’m working on trying to create my own dynasty, but like, there is just historical wealth that people who are white have that I will never be able to match.

Right. Because I’m working towards that, I started from the bottom, everything that there’s always someone who tries to align with me to try to capitalize on me, even my supervisor that I had. 

Carrie: So like for example, people wanting you to do work for free or expecting that from you and so forth.

Erica: Yes work for free. That’s normal. I’m the kind of person where I get in and I jump full speed ahead into organizations and to opportunities and so I just give away so much information and I’m not paid the way that I see my counterpart being paid or the information is taken. I’m not appreciated for what I was, what I gave.

At all. Yeah. So that occurs. That’s the part that hurts me sometimes. I’ve spent some time with God on that and what God has for me, it’s for me, and whatever I gave away was what needed to be given away. 

Carrie: And do you think that people could benefit sometimes from going to a therapist of a different race?

Erica: Of course. I know I’ve been to several people who were not my race and I got something out of each one of them like beautiful stories. Whenever I was in a room with someone, I had a white male one time through my EAP program when I worked at Vanderbilt and I only met with him one time because he was like to the point-blank. He affirmed me and I was on my way. I didn’t need to go back. I was good. I just needed someone to affirm me and affirm things that I did know, because when he talked about the exhaustion that you have in between two programs, getting my bachelor’s and getting my master’s and that loll in between there, I was not trying to give myself a rest.

I was ready to go to the next thing. And he was telling me, no, this is the time to rest. It’s all right. Your life is not going to crumble. Those kinds of things. So it was great. They were a white male, but also, you know, I’ve had, I had, uh, I had a black, older woman who I needed because she was helpful and there was transference that I felt with her that I wanted and I needed because I needed a mother in my life.

I needed it and I got it from her. It was a beautiful relationship. It was very psychoanalytic. So that was the part that I was missing like she didn’t give me much of that, but I found that somewhere else. So I think that every relationship that we have in our lives and not just counselors is something that you need in your life.

You call into your life to happen for you. So just look around and you’ll find the right people for you. 

Carrie: I think we have so much to learn from each other. People that are similar to us and people that are different than us, people that look different than us. People that think different than us and people that have different backgrounds. And if we just keep our mind open to what we have to receive from that person like you were saying I think it’s a great thing. 

Unfortunately, a lot of times we get so close-fisted to our position or stance on something that we are not willing to look at what’s the other side and why does this person feel so strongly about this? Why does this person who’s out in the street protesting? Why do they feel so strongly about that? Why is this person at home who feels very passionate about these issues, but they’re not protesting and so forth? Kind of like you talked a little bit. How about, is there anything, I guess that you would want to say just as an encouragement to Christian Black women?

I know that it’s, you’re a double minority in a sense, because, you know, there’s somewhat male privilege in our society, whether we want to admit that or not men are often paid more for the same positions than women. You’re also a racial minority and a lot of times what I’ve seen in my practice is that African-American women just kind of put up with a lot of things that they don’t necessarily need to put up with.

And sometimes they need somebody to speak into that space and say, “Hey, you can set a boundary there or you don’t have to do that, or you’re doing too much, you know, let go get some help.” I don’t know, maybe I’m stealing your thunder. 

Erica: I remember, I love it that you had a board in the lobby of the suite that I worked at.

I worked out of the suite and it was, she took care of the lobby and everything, and there was a chalkboard and coffee table.

One thing I put on there was I have done enough. That’s something that I was speaking to myself, but black women and all the people that seem to be my clients, individuals that are type A people who are running and running and running to get things accomplished that they feel that they need to get accomplished in life, but they don’t give themselves rest and stuff.

Well, and so they have to decide something. They have to decide that they’ve done enough. I’ve done enough. You know, the thing is, people are going around saying, you know, I am enough, but for these people and those are my clients, the ones that made that message. I have done enough. I want to give them rest. Let’s be strategic about the next step you take.

Let’s not just go right into something else. Let’s decide that this is the next thing for me. And so I find that with black women It’s a crushing feeling of all the things that I have to do. I have to lecture with my male friend or my partner, my children. Oh, we’re doing virtual school right now with my boss.

My mind, I also feel the burden of the whole black community. Recently, we just had another blackmail murder. It just weighs down on us and it makes us want to run to do something to fix it, but I’ve done enough. I’ve done enough.

And one thing, another affirmation I would love to give is that I just recently started and it felt so good was I am at peace with the progress in my life. That made me just do a deep breath because I am. If I could just be at peace at the progress. Because you have done, I mean, just take like you get suspect amnesia and you think that you didn’t do a lot, but if you sit and think about all of these you haven’t.

You can sit and think about what you’re grateful for it makes you sit down and be strategic about the next thing that you’re going to do.

Carrie: Because progress is more important than perfection. Love that. 

All right. So at the end of every podcast, because this is called hope for anxiety and OCD, I like to ask all the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time that you received hope from God or another person in your life.

Erica: Okay. I received hope when I had a very traumatic scenario happened. I had a fear of losing a child or my child dying. That was my fear and then it happened and it broke me down and it helped me see all the people around me who were capitalizing on me taking on the responsibility of so much.

I went through a depression and I reached out to a therapist and my hope came from my daughter, looking at me. She was the one that walked me to the car in the middle of my ectopic pregnancy and put me in the car, put the seatbelt around me and said, my daughter who is seven, she put me in the car put the seat belt around me and said, “Mama it’s going to be okay.”

And I knew that came from an inner part of her like that wasn’t a seven-year-old clock. That was God telling me that this is for a reason. All of this is for a reason. You’re going to be okay and in the middle of it, I’ve received that hope. Even though I was in pain there was a piece that I had because ultimately the version of who I am now is so much greater than I ever been. I would never be at a point that I can say, I’m at peace.” I’m not with my progress or even give myself the self-care and the self-love if I had not shared all those people around me and taking all of my energy and taking all of my love and not putting in anything. So that’s my story of hope.

Carrie: Thank you for sharing that. It is really those hard times that we go through that are transformative for us the most. And we can look back and go, “Oh, wow. That was a really hard situation but if I hadn’t gone through that, I wouldn’t have reaped to this benefit over here and I can be thankful for that.”

And you never know who you’re going to meet, who may be walking through similar circumstances that you can encourage as well. And side note, Erica’s daughter is really cool too. She’s fun. She’s a fun human being. 

Thank you so much for being on the show and for talking about trying therapy and how we can find a good therapeutic fit.

Thank you for talking to me about hard sayings, about racial issues, and letting me ask you those questions as well. I think that’s awesome. 

Erica: Thank you so much. It was such an honor. Thank you so much for reaching out to me to be on here. We’ll love to come back and you want me to talk about something else or whatever.

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Everyone. I had no idea that Erica was going to speak so strongly about her experience related to mental health in the black church and remember this is just one person’s experience that we’re interviewing. It’s on my wishlist bulletin board for guests, I would love to talk with a black pastor who feels like that they really get and support mental health.

So if that’s you and you are listening or you know of a pastor, or this is your pastor and you say, “Carrie, you absolutely need to talk with them.” Please, please get them in touch with me. You can always reach us on hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you feel like our content is valuable, I really hope that you will tell a friend and say, “Hey, I found this podcast and I think you might be interested. Why don’t you give it a listen?” I’m sure you know somebody that needs a little hope. 

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam. 

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