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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.
Find out how to find the right therapist for your personal situation

14. How to Find a Therapist Who is Right for You

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 14. How to Find a Therapist Who is Right for You

On this solo episode, Carrie shares about how to find a therapist who is right for you. 

  • Carrie shares her own experience searching for two different counselors and how she made the decisions she did in her search.
  • How to evaluating your personal situation with time, scheduling/location, and budget before beginning the search 
  • How to start the online search for a counselor and what to look for

Resources and links:
For more detailed information on finding a counselor who is right for you, check out Carrie’s ebook:
Finding a Good Fit on the First Try: The Ultimate Guide to Finding a Therapist

If you are anywhere in the state of TN and would like to see Carrie Bock, click here.

Other sites for finding a therapist:
Psychology Today
Open Path Collective (low cost option)

Support the show

More Podcast Episodes 

Transcript Of Episode 14

Hello, welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 14. 

Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about how to find a therapist who is right for you. Maybe you’re in the process of looking for a therapist or you’ve thought about looking for a therapist in the past and the process seemed really overwhelming. Hopefully this will break it down for you to make it a little bit easier. 

I have found that finding a therapist is much different than finding a medical professional. Unfortunately, a lot of times people approach it the same way, ending up in disappointment and frustration.

I want to start by telling you about a couple of different times that I tried to find a therapist to start us off.

Many years ago before I got divorced and I was still married, I was dealing with some work stress and my relationships stress. I decided that I wanted to go to counseling. I was looking for someone who was a Christian not because I was concerned about being given advice that wasn’t Christian or somehow being led astray from the faith, but I thought it’s just going to be a lot easier on me if this person has that shared experience. There will be a lot less that I feel like I have to explain to another person because to explain my faith to someone else is going to take a lot of time and so pretty important dynamic in my life. 

I also was looking for someone who was within say about 30 minutes of my house. I wasn’t particularly concerned about driving, but I didn’t want to drive too far. I was thinking that I was probably going to be a little bit more comfortable talking to a woman than a man at that point. I was also looking for someone who would be able to take my employee assistance program which if you don’t know what that is, it’s something that’s usually a part of your benefits package with your employer and that allows you to have three to five, sometimes all the way up to eight sessions for free. Because at that point in time, my budget for therapy was zero. So free was good. 

The other thing I knew was that I was going to have to go to therapy probably in the morning because the majority of my work responsibilities were taking place in the afternoons and evenings. I was seeing kids and so I needed to be able to see them after school got out. 

This led me to a few different people. The first counselor that I tried, I didn’t have a good connection with. In fact, I felt like she was rather judgmental concerning my situation and what I was dealing with and coming in for. So I only went one session to her and did not go back, but I ended up finding another counselor who met those criteria and I did really great work together. She was the main one that actually helped me through my divorce process because I saw her before really during and after for an extended period of time and got a lot of my own stuff worked through.

I’m definitely so thankful that God led me to her. Then I had a therapeutic break. Life was pretty stable and going relatively well, but I got to a point as I talked about in episode 10 with Steve, where I wanted to get back into dating, but every time I tried to, my body basically completely revolted against it, and my mind was all over the place. So that was not going to work for me. I knew that there was probably still some past residual stuff from my last relationship that I hadn’t fully worked through. 

And at this point, I was still looking for a counselor who was a Christian and I was looking for a male. I decided to go see a male because I wanted to get the opposite sex perspective on dating. I didn’t know how healing and therapeutic that would be for me to end up with a male therapist, but it was so beneficial for me. I’m glad I went in that direction.

I wanted to see someone online via telehealth therapy. There were really two reasons for that. One reason was that I had recently started providing telehealth therapy to some of my clients and I wanted to see what the experience was like on the other end. The other reason I wanted to do telehealth was because I did not want to see any of the therapist near me. Therapy circles are relatively small. I didn’t want to have to worry about seeing this person at local professional gatherings or local connections of different EMDR therapists.

I was looking for EMDR trained therapist because I am very familiar with it. I have done EMDR in the past and it was very helpful. It turned out in the most amazing way. That’s not mainly what we did. We ended up doing some somatic experiencing work together, which was also very healing and very therapeutic for me. That was an unexpected blessing of this particular therapeutic journey.

I was looking to pay cash because I did not have health insurance at the time. I had health sharing through medic share at that juncture. I knew that counseling wasn’t going to be covered anyway. I had to kind of figure out what my budget was going to be, what I was going to be able to afford to pay and decided to go every other week to help with the cost factor. I also didn’t necessarily need weekly therapy. I was looking for someone who worked on Wednesdays because Wednesdays at that point was my filing paperwork day. I didn’t see clients and had more flexibility to do personal appointments. 

In each of these examples, I was looking for some things that were similar and some things that were different, but I had to go through these processes of what I was looking for before I got lost in the search process.

You know how it is when you go to Google something, and next thing you know you’ve clicked on 20 different links. You don’t know how you got there. You have a huge list of people to choose from, and it can become super overwhelming and hard to narrow that list down. 

The first advice that I would give you if you’re a Christian, if you believe in God and prayer like I do is to pray that God will lead you to the right person. God knows exactly what you need. If you need a therapist and you need somebody that can walk you through the speed bump of life that you have hit then I believe that God is going to be faithful and open up that door and lead you to the right person at the right time. 

Before you start searching and get lost in the internet jungle or the phone calling jungle, you want to think about several different considerations. One is who do you think that you would be most comfortable talking to about these personal issues? Would you be more comfortable talking with someone who is a Christian? Would you be more comfortable talking with a female or a male? Does it matter if they’re older or younger? Some of these may seem superficial to you but they’re legitimate.

As I explained in my stories, there was a reason I went to see a female at one point and there was a reason I went to see a male at another point. That’s nothing against female therapists out there. That just wasn’t what I needed at that time. I don’t think there’s any shame in saying, “Oh, I think I would be more comfortable with someone older” if that’s the case. That doesn’t mean you’re negatively judging younger therapists. 

The second thing that I encourage you to think about is what do you want to get out of therapy? This is really important, so crucial. Most people don’t think about it and the reason they don’t think about it is because they’re in a crisis. All they know is they’re feeling awful and they want to feel better. 

Sometimes I’ll have people fill out in their paperwork comments like, “I just want to be happy.” What in the world does that mean because happy to me may look completely different than happy to you. So you need to get really clear about what it is that you’re hoping to accomplish. Is it something where you would say, “okay, I’m looking to learn some new tools to manage my anxiety in a healthier way” or “I’m looking to gain more insight into myself because I’m recognizing that I keep getting in situations or patterns that aren’t a good fit for me?” “I want to be able to communicate in healthier ways with my husband.” All really good goals.

Now in light of that, you may be looking for a counselor with specific training in a certain area whether that’s some kind of training with OCD or training that has to do with processing past trauma. Maybe you need someone who has experience working with addiction because that’s something you’re struggling with right now. Whatever it is you want to make sure that your counselor is going to be able to treat you for what you’re bringing in. Counselors typically don’t work with all issues they tend to after they graduate, get more specialized training. We all have to get a certain number of continuing education hours and so we tend to funnel those hours towards things that are interesting to us.

I like to tell younger therapists that your specialty finds you. You don’t find your specialty. For me, I believe that was God leading me in the direction that I ended up going because I had an interest in trauma early on when I was working with children and that caused me to get trained in several different types of trauma therapy to be able to help them.

Now that I’m working with mostly adults and a few teenagers, I’m really working on childhood trauma but it’s just manifesting in adulthood. I ended up getting some additional training in OCD that I’ve found interesting because I had clients who were presenting initially with anxiety and then after some time we found out that their symptoms were really related to OCD. So it seemed like a gradual shift for me to get more training in that area. 

If you see a counselor who looks like more of a generalist, and they’re saying that they treat a lot of different areas. You may just want to ask them if there’s a theme of what their continuing education has been in, or if there are certain diagnoses or types of clients that they feel like they work the best with.  

You want to consider the location of your counselor. This may or may not be important to you. I think many times people pick a counselor who is close to their house, which is not a bad place to start looking. It may make more sense for you to look for someone closer to your work or in between your home and work that you could see on the way to work or on the way home from work.

I would also encourage you to consider telehealth counseling because if you are willing to see someone online via video, then that opens up your network to any provider who’s licensed in the state that you’re in. This can specifically help If you have a hard time finding someone in your area who is on your insurance panel. So the people closest to you may be full who take your insurance, and then you can expand that search out and possibly find someone maybe in your surrounding area that’s accepting new clients via telehealth. Telehealth is also really helpful for people who live in small towns. Maybe you’re concerned about confidentiality or you have personal relationships with the counselors in your town. There may be some ethical boundaries that might be crossed if you were to go see them. So definitely consider telehealth as an option for you. 

Now let’s talk about budget, the dreaded B-word. You need to think about what your budget is for counseling before you ever go. So sit down, look at your finances, talk to your spouse, if you have one. Crunch some numbers and figure out what could I afford to pay either weekly or every other week to be able to see someone. Your budget for therapy is really going to help you determine whether or not you want to find someone who accepts your insurance or whether or not you need someone who does sliding scale or whether or not you can afford to pay for therapy out of pocket.

So let’s talk about each one of those. If you are using your insurance for therapy, please, please, this is so important. You need to understand your benefits before you are thinking about utilizing them on a regular basis. We’re not talking about when you go to the ER because you’re in a dire emergency and you hand someone a card and you get a bill later. You’re going to have a patient responsibility. When you show up for counseling, it’s important for you to determine what that is. That also helps you figure out the whole budget thing as well. You need to know who the carrier is for your mental health benefits. This is not always the same as your physical health benefits.

I know that’s very confusing and sounds bizarre for some of you listening to this, but I promise you if you flip your insurance card over and there is a different number for behavioral health than there is for physical health, you probably have a different company that is covering those mental health benefits. Most people don’t know this. So they will seek a provider that takes the coverage where their medical benefits are and sometimes that gets discovered by the counselor ahead of time. Sometimes it doesn’t get discovered until billing comes back and you’ve been denied. Then next thing you know, you owe that counselor for the rest of the balance of those appointments. So don’t let that happen to you if you’re looking at using insurance, be a good consumer and understand all of your benefits before seeking services. When you call the insurance company or go online, you’re going to want to ask about your mental health benefits specifically for outpatient therapy. You’re going to want to know if you have a copay or if you are meeting a deductible. Oftentimes if you’re meeting a deductible that’s shared with your medical health deductible. So it’s coming out of that same fund. This is important because if you get knee surgery in February and you know that you’ve met your deductible or almost met your out of pocket max, you’re probably going to be pretty golden to go to therapy and not have to pay If you have your out-of-pocket max met. On the other hand, if you have a super high deductible and you hardly ever use your insurance, it may not necessarily be cheaper for you to use your insurance in that case. You’d want to really cost compare and look at that. 

The last thing I want to point out for consideration before you start looking for a therapist is time and scheduling. You need to look at your time that you have and what you have scheduled with work childcare, responsibilities, etc etc. You need to think through when would I actually be able and available to go to therapy? Now we have time for what we make time for. I have clients who see me before work. Clients who get out of work early towards the end of the day to see me. I have clients who meet with me on their lunch break. So I know that you can make it happen if you want to make it happen. This may mean making some kind of special arrangements with your employer to work something out one day a week or one day every other week. You can do this. If you absolutely are on a very rigid schedule and you can’t do that with your employer, then what you need to do probably is look for a counselor who does evening or weekend appointments. So you’ll want to make sure that you clarify that as you’re calling and as you’re looking at websites, you will want to try to see if you can figure out the hours that that therapist works, or when you call them, ask if they work evening or weekend hours. If you think about what you need ahead of time, you’re going to be able to advocate for yourself and weed out people that aren’t able to accommodate your schedule.

So you’ve looked at the various considerations and now you’re ready for your search.

Is there a pastor or a church leader that you can ask for a counseling referral from? Do you have friends that you know that I’ve been pretty open about going to therapy? If you’re looking for your kids, does maybe the guidance counselor at your school know some referrals? Or you could just pull up your insurance list if you’re looking at using insurance and just seeing who the available providers are.  

Now as far as with getting recommendations from maybe friends or family, what they’re looking for in a therapist may not be what you are looking for in a therapist, but sometimes it’s a good place to start and you can at least check that person out and see if they might be a good fit for you.

Since we are living in the age of the internet, there is so much information that you can find out about therapists online without ever having to pick up the phone and call anybody. I know that that’s really hard for some people who are anxious to make those phone calls. So the beauty is often you can reach out via email or through someone’s website. Also sometimes it’s difficult to reach therapists on the phone if they handle their own phone calls and are not a part of a bigger office, then oftentimes you’ll end up getting their voicemail because they’re in session and aren’t able to answer the phone. 

When you’re doing your online research, you may want to keep some type of list or a spreadsheet with who you reached out for and reasons that you may want to contact them or not contact them. For example, maybe you find out that Susie Smith doesn’t work with OCD, so they might be ruled out for you If you’re looking for a counselor who works with OCD. You may find that John Smith doesn’t do couples therapy and that’s what you’re looking for is couples counseling. He was referred to you by a friend of yours who’s seeing him for individual therapy, but then you realize he doesn’t actually have what you’re looking for. Maybe you rule out another counselor because they don’t take your insurance and you can’t afford their self-pay rate. 

There are many different places that you can look online for a therapist, probably the most popular one is psychologytoday.com. Psychology Today has a magazine. They’re a secular entity but there are many Christian therapists on there if you’re looking for a Christian. Just because it’s a popular place to post a profile and it’s relatively inexpensive on our end to be able to do so. You can narrow down the searches on Psychology Today, which I really like. You can narrow them down by location, insurance, male, female, the issue that you’re coming in for and that really helps you narrow down your search. 

You can also look for counselors through a specific professional organization. For example, the AACC has a counselor search on their website. If you’re looking specifically for EMDR therapy, you can go to the EMDR international association website. I’ll post these websites in the show notes for you guys, just so you can kind of see. If there’s a specific type of therapy that you’re looking for, you can look for a therapist who has training or certification in that specific therapy. 

Hopefully, your search has led you to maybe about three different names. If you can narrow it down to just a few people and then reach out to those few people and see who contacts you back. Unfortunately, sometimes counselors are really bad about getting back to people. I don’t know why this is because I think of everyone who contacts me as an individual who is brave enough to reach out for help. And so even if I don’t provide what they’re looking for, at least I try to steer them in the right direction or be kind enough to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” That would be a good thing. But if you don’t have people call you back just know that that’s not on you and it’s not an uncommon experience fully. One of those three people will call you back and you can either ask them additional questions that you may have, or you can go ahead and schedule with them and try it out.

Even with all the work to find a therapist, you may end up in that first session feeling like this is not going to work for me for one reason or another. I want to let you know that’s okay. Sometimes, as they say, it’s quote just a “not a good fit.” So if it’s not a good fit or it’s not gonna work for you for some reason, don’t give up, go back to your list. Go back to the search process, get back up on the horse, and try again. I can say from my own experience that I’m really glad that I kept trying until I found somebody that I could trust and a place where I could get exactly what I needed. 

I’d like to end with a story of hope as I normally do when I have guests on the podcast. This story is actually about finding medical help. I had an issue that I had been struggling with for several years. I had convinced myself that this issue was psychological and that somehow it was my fault and I needed to just fix it psychologically. It turns out that wasn’t the case. I actually had a physical medical condition. So when I finally got brave enough to talk with a doctor about it, they referred me to another person. And after a little while, I was working with that person and we really weren’t getting anywhere, unfortunately, and I said, “Hey, what we’re doing is not working here” and they said, “well, I’m just going to send you back to the doctor that referred you over here.” And I said, “that doesn’t even make any sense to me like they didn’t know what to do with me so they referred me to you. How are you going to refer me back to them?” And when I went back to that doctor, I actually saw a different provider in the office. I had to advocate for myself guys, because sometimes you have to do this in medical situations and I had to say, “I’m not at all getting what I’m needing here from you guys. This is why I came in and I’ve been on this wild goose chase that’s now lasted a couple months and nobody’s helping me.” I was almost like to the point of tears. And he said, “Okay, let’s do this test or let me look at this.”

And he said, “I think I may know what’s going on with you, but, you know, I don’t really have that much experience treating it.”  He was just so wonderful in the sense that even though he wasn’t able to help me. He was able to let me know there is something physically going on with your body that you need taken care of.

I just didn’t give up guys. I just think that’s so important. Just don’t give up. If you aren’t getting the help that you need, keep searching, keep going forward, keep looking.  

I did some online research and I found this doctor in the next county over and I made an appointment with him and he was able to help me to the point where I’m not having that issue anymore. I was just so thankful and so blessed but it was a journey that took me months. It took me time, energy, money, three different medical professionals, test after test, but I got to where I needed to be and I’m so thankful to the Lord for that. First of all, that he gave me the courage to keep going and the hope and the strength to not give up, and that he steered me in the right direction for the people that could help me so that I didn’t have to continue in that suffering anymore. The only regret that I have about going on that journey is that I didn’t start it sooner. I really wish that I had.  

So if there’s something that you’re facing and you can’t do it alone and you need to get help, if the first person doesn’t help you, try the next person, and if they can’t help you, try the next person. Don’t give up guys.

Would you like to share your story of hope? You can do that by going to hopeforanxietyandocd.com and clicking on the contact link. 

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 was completed by Benjamin Bynam. 

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

Five Signs It May Be Time to Get a New Therapist

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling.

You’ve waited a long time to get help, finally gotten the nerve to go to therapy, but just aren’t sure about your therapist. Is this really helping? How do you know when it’s time to keep working with your current therapist or walk away? Here are five signs it may be time to get a new therapist:

1. You don’t feel heard.

Sometimes, you may feel like your therapist just isn’t getting it. They try to summarize or reframe what you’re saying, but get it wrong. You may just have a gut feeling that there is no way they can empathize with the story you are telling. Now don’t get me wrong, it would be impossible for me to have gone through everything my clients have gone through. However, it’s important for me to be able to empathize with feelings of sadness, anger, shame, or disappointment they have had in a particular experience. In my own experience of receiving therapy, I’ve been to therapists who were cold or kept steering the conversation to what they wanted to talk about instead of what I was coming in for. It didn’t feel good, and I didn’t go back.   

2. Your therapist doesn’t have experience treating the issue you’re bringing in.

If he or she knows in the beginning, the ethical therapist won’t take you on as a client. Unfortunately, many therapists say they treat OCD without specific training or experience working with it. They may treat the OCD thoughts like they treat anxious thoughts, by challenging them or providing reassurance for them. This is problematic. While arguing with the thoughts or attempting to reassure them provides short term relief, it only ends up strengthening the OCD. 

In addition, therapeutic issues evolve over time. Destructive behaviors over time may rise to a greater level of concern than when therapy started. What isn’t a problem today may become a problem in three months. I’ve had clients in the past be referred to inpatient or intensive outpatient for substance use issues. Sometimes, clients do not reveal all their issues up front due to shame or lack of awareness that the issue is even a problem. 

3. You aren’t able to attend consistently.

Your therapist’s schedule may be so full that he or she cannot see you as regularly as you would like. Maybe your schedule has changed and no longer aligns with your therapist’s availability. You may be fighting to stay for a while because you dread starting over with someone else. However, in order to avoid losing momentum in therapy, you typically need to be seen at least every other week. 

Another reason people are not able to attend consistently is financial. If you were paying cash, but then had a change in financial situation, you may have to find a therapist who takes your insurance or is willing to work for a lower fee.

4. You aren’t reaching the goals you and your therapist have set together.

Counseling goals initially tend to be broad such as a client saying, “I want to feel less anxious” or “I want to be happy again like I used to.” To turn these more general goals into action steps, additional questions need to be asked such as: What would you be doing if you were less anxious that you are not doing now? What skills might you need in order to be less anxious? What does happiness look like for you? What is one small step you can take towards happiness today?  

If you have completed several sessions of therapy and don’t sense that anything is getting better in terms of your education/awareness regarding your issues, perspective on the issues you brought in, or how you are coping, it may be time to examine why. If you come into your therapy sessions rattling off everything that happened to you that week, you might want to examine if this is the best use of the time with your therapist. Think through what you would like to get out of your sessions or what topics are most important to you. Come with questions from time to time. 

I challenge my clients not to see therapy as part of their routine. While they may see me every Tuesday at noon, I don’t ever want that to be just something they do on Tuesdays. I want them to progress beyond where they are today, so they don’t have to continue seeing me each week. If you’re not sure if you’re making progress, ask someone in your life such as a spouse or a best friend if they have noticed any differences in you. Ask your therapist as well. Frequently, my clients have high expectations of themselves and feel like they aren’t making progress when they are.    

5. You want more out of the experience than you are getting.

I have a question on my intake asking if people have been to therapy before. The next question has them rate that experience as positive, neutral, or negative. The neutral responses are the most interesting. Clients will say, “My therapist just nodded and validated my feelings. I needed more.” I’m a big proponent that clients should advocate for themselves in therapy if they don’t feel they are getting what they need. If you aren’t happy, let your therapist know what you would like to be different and see if they can accommodate your requests.  

Other clients have reported a desire to “go deeper,” but their therapist didn’t ever dig deeper. There may be many different reasons for this. Good therapy is supportive; however, it’s also challenging. Your therapist’s job is to push you towards things you wouldn’t do on your own. If you could have figured out how to manage your problems or issues by yourself, you probably would have done it. Unfortunately, some therapists have not done enough of their own work to go into the deeper waters with you because they have never been there themselves. I’ve probably had hundreds of continuing education hours after graduate school at this point, but the most transformative thing I have done to become a better therapist is to go to therapy myself. Working on my own issues prevents them from coming up in the therapeutic relationship. I am able to show up more present and compassionate for others because I chose to show up present and compassionate for myself first. 

What now?

If you found yourself in one or more of the above categories and have been attending for several sessions, try talking to your therapist first. They are there because they want to help you. Talking about your experience with your therapist and the process is important. Give your therapist the opportunity to be on the same page you are on. If it doesn’t work out for some reason, move forward, knowing there is another provider out there for you.   

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.

Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

13. Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 13. Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

Author Mitzi VanCleve shares her own personal story of experiencing anxiety, panic attacks, and OCD and ultimately, how God has used these things for good in her own life.

  • Obsessions Mitzi experienced even as a young child
  • Experiences of mental health stigma from Christians 
  • Learning about panic attacks from a magazine article
  • Mitzi’s experience with scrupulosity OCD
  • Acting as if
  • How she used used imaginal exposure to help treat her OCD
  • How she made the decision to take mental health medication as a Christian 
  • Wrestling with God about having OCD
  • How church leaders can support individuals experiencing OCD

Verses discussed: Psalm 13, 2 Cor 1:4-5, 2 Cor 12

Resources and links:
Strivings Within- The OCD Christian
In Your Dreams 
OCD Online
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) 
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

By The Well Counseling

More Podcast Episodes

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 13. Today, I’m sharing an interview with author Mitzi VanCleve. She shares her own personal journey of diagnosis, treatment and interactions with the church in regards to dealing with panic attacks, anxiety and OCD. I’ve found her story to be incredibly hopeful in terms of how we can grow closer to God through struggles in our lives. So let’s dive in. 

Transcript Of Episode 13

Carrie: When did you start to have symptoms of OCD? 

Mitzi: Well, that really started even as far back as when I was a toddler. I know that sounds surprising. The only thing I can say about that is in my childhood right up until I was quite old, I never understood a lot of what I was experiencing was actually OCD. The first thing that I can go back and look at is really long-held obsessional fears and themes. The very first one was it was sort of unusual as OCD things are. It was a fear of being flushed down the toilet and the sphere was so intense that I would not use the big toilet until I was five years old and I was forced to go to kindergarten.

Even as a small child, three years old, four years old, I could sit there and watch a toilet being flushed, look at the hole in the bath and the toilet and say, “well, I can’t fit through there,” but it didn’t make any difference. My brain had just decided this was the thing to be afraid of and from there, once I got past that one, there was health obsessions. I remember, a really long period of time where I heard about the idea of swallowing your tongue and that just drove me nuts. I worried about it, wondered how that can happen. I ask my parents about it. I would forget about it while I was playing then when I go to bed at night it would come back and that’s when I would really struggle like the times when I didn’t have anything to do. So there was a lot of weird themes and health obsessions. 

By the age of 10 is when I first developed some obsessions related to self-harm. That just started with hearing about a form of not self-harm, but just a form of harm that could happen to a person. I don’t want to really go into the details. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to explain specifically obsessions in details because it can get a little graphic and upsetting that people who don’t have OCD don’t really understand.

Why would you think that? And so this morphed from my fear of this thing happening to me to actually doing it to myself, like losing control and harming myself. That just went on and on and on for the longest time. There was something in me that knew these things weren’t at all logical and so they scared me so much.

I wouldn’t really tell my parents. I would exhibit symptoms of anxiety. I would have nausea. I would get up in the night shaking and feeling like I needed to vomit and things like that. I was afraid to, especially about the harming thing, I was afraid to verbalize that as a kid, but that’s where it started.

It became more debilitating after the birth of my children. After the birth of my second child, I developed panic disorder. Not knowing what that was I always struggled with social anxiety and just your basic kinds of anxiety disorders as a kid, but I didn’t know such a thing existed.

I never heard about OCD, anxiety disorders, panic disorder. Those words were foreign to me. I only heard about crazy people. There’s a thing where there’s a stigma and even as a child, the stigma was there. That idea that I might be crazy was terrifying to me and so when the panic attacks started, that felt like I was going crazy.

My first one was not nocturnal. I was falling asleep and I woke up with a panic attack and that happened to me a lot. It still does sometimes. I just know what it is now. That combined with that old harming obsession, the panic attack, the feeling of I’m losing my mind. I’m losing control. The derealization, that deep personal personalization that you feel at that moment makes you feel like you aren’t going to be able to control yourself. That combined with the harming themes. After the birth of my children, the harming thing switched from me, hurting me, going crazy, and possibly hurting one of my children in a really awful way and that was just so debilitating. I can’t even begin to describe how awful it was.

Carrie: The hard thing about OCD thing is that the themes do shift. As you get older or go through different developmental stages in life. It seems like once you have a handle on one theme, sometimes another theme will then pop up.

Mitzi:  Oh, yes, it’s very true about OCD. That’s why it’s important to understand how the disorder operates, how to get on top of a theme before it gets on top of you.

And then it grows too big and large. It gets kind of stuck in your head. I do try to tell people that there’s physical symptoms with this too when you’re going through this. For me, some of the things I experienced during that really bad season, which was a very long season of unharmosity was an inability to eat.

I struggled to get calories down. I’m five foot eight. I dropped to 114 pounds. People thought I was anorexic. It had nothing to do with anorexia. I just was nauseous. The anxiety was so bad. I couldn’t sleep. And of course, if you have an anxiety disorder and you’re not eating and you’re not sleeping, that makes things even worse because that level of physical stress on your body is going to make a disorder worse. So that was what it was like and how it was like for me before I knew it was wrong. 

Carrie: I’m curious about what your parents thought. Did your parents just think like, “Oh, she’s really nervous a lot, or she’s kind of an anxious child” or they had no idea everything that was going on in your head?

They didn’t. There were some people in my family, distant relatives who had struggles which caused them to even not want to leave their house and things like that. My mom would talk about that and she would say, “You know, you’re going to end up like that” but she didn’t really know what was going on.

 I know my mom, there were like reassurances, which is a usual reaction for a parent to do that. A lot of times it manifested just as me being sickly. When I was struggling with certain health obsessions, I would get very, just like I described

sick to my stomach and I would lose weight. And so they were taking me to the doctor and try to figure out what was wrong but it was being approached like it was a physical issue. A lot of this just due to the fact that I didn’t verbalize a lot of the OCD themes, but even if I had, I’m not sure there would have been enough knowledge back then for my parents to know what was going on because that was in the 60’s when I was growing up. I think the information and knowledge and understanding about what OCD is and how it operates has come a long way since then.

Carrie: Right and hopefully also our physicians and pediatricians are also able to recognize a little bit better when they’re seeing some symptoms that potentially could be anxiety in a child, which often presents more as physical ailments.

Mitzi: I will share that when I got really, really bad with the harming OCD and the panic attacks, they were just relentless. I lost count. I have no idea how many I would have in a day or in the evening. At that point, I did open up to my mom. I began to know, “okay, this obviously is something to do with a mental health issue.” And so all I can think of was I probably need to see a psychiatrist and so I needed to share that with him, somebody. I had talked to my husband very little about it, just a little bit and I opened up with my mom. Growing up as a Christian and in a lot of Christians, there was that stigma [00:10:30] especially back then that Christians don’t have mental health issues. And so as I was sharing with her, I thought it might be a good idea for me to see a psychiatrist. She was really upset about it and she talked about faith and then she said something that was really hard, “that’s just for weak people.”

It was hard because it put the brakes on my pursuing that at the time, and I did pursue it still, but I didn’t get a diagnosis. The person I saw didn’t have any clue and he was relating things to stress and it, again, faith and, and it just I got nowhere. 

Carrie: Okay. So you did see a psychiatrist, but they weren’t able to help you with that?

Mitzi: No, he just and of course, some of the scary obsessional themes, I didn’t verbalize them. I talked about anxiety and I talked about the panic attacks. I didn’t hit that word though. Just this is what’s happening and tried to describe it. So it wasn’t a good experience and it didn’t help me, sadly.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s unfortunate when people do reach out for help and then they find somebody that isn’t familiar maybe with OCD, or doesn’t quite know how to help them navigate through that process. 

So what was that process of getting the help that you needed? 

Mitzie: The first help that I got was really for the panic disorder and that was interesting.

I, I believe that during the time of my praying through this and asking God for help and just feeling so desperate that God came through. At that time I was still struggling. I was pregnant again, that tells you how long I was still struggling tremendously and I had become pregnant again.

I was about four months pregnant. I was at my aunt and uncle’s cottage, my husband and my brothers, my family, and my aunts and uncles they were watching a TV show which I did not need to watch at that time. It was called “Alien” which you’ve heard of. It’s the perfect show if you’re struggling. I was trying to avoid watching it.

So I picked up a reader’s digest magazine and the words on the front of the magazine where they show the stories, one of them said panic disorder. It said it might not be what you think it is. Just the word panic struck a chord with me. I opened up this magazine and started reading the story of this woman who had panic disorder and it was me. I was reading about myself and they listed all the symptoms of a panic attack and I had all of them. I finally had an answer for that. And so at the time, I was pregnant and I really couldn’t implement meds and things like that. I just started working on things like breathing techniques.

After I delivered, I started doing really intensive aerobic exercise. I was jogging four and five miles a day, and I gradually getting healthier which eventually took me into a period where the disorder waned. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but that’s when I learned just about panic disorder. I didn’t have any idea about OCD and so that kind of wax and wane on and off throughout the rest of my life up until the age of 50.

Carrie: So I think your story is very similar to other people’s in terms of a lot of times there’s a big gap between when people start to have symptoms and when they even find out this is actually OCD they’re experiencing because they feel ashamed of the symptoms. They feel ashamed of the thoughts, or they feel like, “okay, this sounds really crazy and nobody’s going to understand it or believe it, or they’re going to lock me up somewhere if I tell someone that I’m having these thoughts especially related to harm.”

Mitzi: Yes. What you say about they’re gonna lock me up somewhere was a genuine fear of mine because I couldn’t understand why I was having the thoughts to start with. For me to share that with somebody, they’re going to be like, “You really are dangerous.” Sometimes I would think maybe that would be good because then my kids will be safe. That’s how awful it is. You feel like your brain is telling you this is something that you should be afraid of this thought. I say it’s almost like you have a phobic response to the thoughts that you’re having and you’re having to live with them in your head.

If it’s a spider or something, you can just run away from it. Once it’s a thought in your head, it’s there. All that you’re doing to try to get rid of it makes it worse. Of course it did with me because I didn’t know it was OCD and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was at the age of fifty.

Carrie: So at the age of 50, what happened?

Mitzi: I had already been struggling. I was going back through a flare of anxiety and panic attacks because there’d been a lot of stress in our life. I’m not going to go into all the details, there were a lot of changes, big life changes. One on disability moves, just lots of changes, lots of uncertainty.

And so I didn’t notice it for a while, but it was kind of too late by the time I did start to say, Oh no, you know, I’m going back through this again. I was having panic attacks. I was starting to have obsessions about my health again, related to stuff that normally I would just brush off. 

That’s how OCD is It’s always looking for a target, something to be upset about. During that time, I was praying again, reading my Bible, doing all the things I normally do as a Christian to try to receive information from God about what I can do about this. How can I help myself, but also just gain comfort. And I got a lot of comfort from the songs, even back when I was in my twenties, because I saw in there things that described how I was feeling. 

My son also gave me some sermons on tape and he said, “These are really good, Mom.” We always share things like this. So I put one of those sermons in. It was actually on it on a CD. I was doing dishes, I was trying to stay very busy and distracted. This particular pastor was talking about our struggles with sin. As Christians and I understood. It wasn’t new to me that as Christians, we will still be fighting sin our whole life. It’s not something that we’re cured of. It’s something we’re aware of. We’re made aware of when we become a Christian and we have a desire to please our Savior. So we work continually towards pleasing him through obedience. He finally says this one statement, which I don’t even know why he said it in the middle of the sermon. He says, “If you call yourself a Christian but you’re still all the time struggling and sinning as strongly with sin, you really might want to think, are you really a Christian? In the past I would have been like, “yeah, of course.” This time my brain just latched onto that. It was like, wait a minute. What if he’s right? What if all this time, all these years, I thought I was a Christian I’m not. And what if the reason I struggle with this thing, whatever it is is because of that. It just was like a dam broke open and the intrusive thoughts related to that, just pour it out just one after another.

I just began this war with it. It was a mental 24/7, every minute I was awake, I couldn’t sleep and that was the new OCD thing, but I didn’t know it was OCD.

Carrie: No one’s ever had that before. It was a new theme. 

Mitzi: Yeah. Until I was engaging with my compulsion. So by then, at this point in my life, of course, we had the internet and I was doing what’s called research, lots of Googling, researching around the topic of,  “Am I still saved?,” doubting your salvation. I was reading all these articles about how we can know we are Christians and I would read them. It didn’t help. It didn’t make it go away.Suddenly one day I stumbled across a Christian forum that said doubting salvation and then it said, OCD. I was like, ”what?” That’s what I’m going through. Out of curiosity, I opened it and I started reading the posts from the people in this group

and it was amazing. It was just like the Reader’s Digest thing. I was reading my story. They were telling exactly what I had been going through. I was stunned and as I read more and more in this forum, and then I started going further out about OCD, what it is, how it manifests, what causes it. I had it and I had it since I was a kid and I never knew, and that opened up the door for me to finally have a way to manage this beast called OCD.

From there I began learning and learning more about ERP, about medications, about therapies like ACT. All the ways that this thing that I called “it”, this ugly “it,” for all these years, it had a name. I get tearful sometimes talking about it because God did answer my prayer.

He just didn’t answer in the way I was wanting. The way I was wanting was just take this thing away, whatever it is. He was pointing me to, “This is what it is, and this is what you can do.” It was just astonishing to me that I could live my whole life, basically until I was 50 years old and never have been able to get help.

There were so many long seasons of just debilitating, crippling suffering, and it was hard for me to believe, but just the relief, so overwhelming. 

Carrie: We talked about that in an earlier episode with someone about how diagnosis itself can be a relief when you get a proper diagnosis. And then you can say, “okay, now that we know what we’re dealing with, what can we do about it?” “What’s our next step forward?

Mitzi: Exactly. Even after you get a diagnosis because OCD is OCD, it’s going to make you doubt but as you begin to bravely risk working with things like Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) therapy for me, it was brave when I was told, I probably needed to try some medications, but that was hard for me. Some of that was pride. Some of it was just because I have never taken anything like that before. What will it do to me? All the fears and that was a big struggle, but it’s so worth it because the alternative is staying stuck and doing the same thing over and over and not getting better and feeling worse. 

I was determined just like with a panic disorder, I was like, “What can I do about this?” And I found out these things are effective. It was hard. It’s not like you began ERP and the next day, I’m all better. It’s a process. The longer you’ve been struggling with the theme, I think it’s a longer process. Your brain’s got this practice cycle of intrusive thought, anxiety response, compulsion, more intrusive thoughts, more anxiety, more compulsions. It’s a habit that needs to be undone and that takes time. 

Carrie: Right. Did you get into therapy at that point? 

Mitzi: I started going to a therapist and I think this is the hardest thing about OCD is being able to find a competent therapist. My therapist was good for dealing with basic anxiety disorders, like panic disorder, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, but when it came to OCD, she was asking me to apply basic cognitive behavioral therapy like you would for depression which would be to challenge the thoughts, to counter the thoughts into right logical reassurances.

Carrie: Which is exactly what you don’t want to do with OCD.

Mitzi: I started doing that and I got worse and I was like you know what, but there was one thing she offered up that was great and I still say it today, it’s act as if, and that’s part of the choice

part of OCD. OCD thoughts may be telling me this and telling me that, but I’m going to act as if these things aren’t true. And in the realm of Christianity and scrupulosity, even though my brain was telling me, “I think you might becoming an atheist.” I could say I’m going to act as if I’m a Christ follower. I’m going to do all the things that a Christ follower does even if my emotions will not validate that choice. That is my choice. So that aspect helped, the other was worse. So I pretty much learned on my own, I did visit some really good websites like ocdonline.com. Dr. Philippson. A lot of his work was just phenomenal to help me understand.

I learned about imaginal scripting, imaginal exposures, and I wrote them and did them and recorded them. I was able to learn that on my own, but a lot of people really do need a competent therapist because it takes a lot of grit and determination and courage to do ERP. I just think having a competent psychologist who’s trained to do these things and understands the disorder is something, unfortunately there just aren’t that many and a lot of it has to do with network, with insurance too, which was one of my biggest hurdles. I could not afford the counselors and the therapists that I needed to see. I had to go to the ones in network and even later on when I was going through a bumpy time with my OCD, after I knew what it was, I was just going through a really bumpy time.

I thought I could sure use someone right now and my therapist had passed and I called around and I would ask, or I would write. I know I communicated through email. I would say, “what do you know about ERP and ACT as far as treating OCD?” And they would say,” I don’t know what that is but I can help you with your OCD.” I’d be like, “Probably not.”  So that’s a hard thing. That’s a really hard thing.

Carrie: It is hard because really, therapists would have to pursue training after their degree to specialize in OCD. And a lot of people don’t do that unless they have some type of personal connection or in my situation, I was working with a lot of people who just thought they had anxiety and then I was starting to see more OCD as I was starting to hear more about what they were actually worried about and struggling with. So that’s kind of how I got branched off into it, but I think a lot of therapists have not received further training on it.

I want to get in with you on the spiritual aspects, really of struggling with OCD. I know a lot of people who are struggling out there probably are praying prayers just like you pray, “God, this is awful. I feel terrible. I’m all tore up inside. Will you please just like touch my body and touch my mind and take this all away.” How did you work through some of that wrestling with God?

Mitzi: When I didn’t know I had OCD, I did a lot of that and it was a wrestling time. I thought during that time, maybe this was due to pass. Maybe there was something I needed to confess. So I would pour over everything I could think of and current things and confess for the OCD and the anxiety I would go through. I knew these verses, every verse related to worry, anxiety, all of those things. 

I had most of that memorized. Anyway, I did understand what those things meant. What I didn’t understand was the difference. The Bible talks a lot about anxiety and worry, but if you look at those passages of scripture, you will see these are situational.

Worries and concerns, they’re about real-life trials and afflictions. It isn’t this always there’s a free-floating sense of dread and physical symptoms and everything of anxiety that can even be there when you aren’t even worried about anything. It’s like panic attacks, for instance. So that was confusing to me, but there was also a feeling because God wasn’t taking it away just miraculously. Maybe he’d abandoned me. 

There’s a particular Psalm, Psalm 13, I think it says “How long, Oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you keep hiding your face? Please answer me.” 

Just the desperation there of the feeling when we’re going through painful suffering and trials of “where’s God in all of this?” It took a while for me to understand growth through affliction and that came gradually. There’s several aspects of this. There’s my own, not understanding the difference between commonplace, worry that everyone experiences, and a disorder like anxiety or a real mental health issue.

That was the biggest hurdle for me to get over was to learn. So when I learned that I had OCD and I learned I have panic disorder, I was able to shift over into, “well, maybe this is how God’s answering my prayer.” I was able to see just like if  because I do have hypertension, the answer to that, God gave me wasn’t you just miraculously heal my hypertension, it was for me to go on medication, treat my hypertension. And so that helped me to understand that these are very real disorders and to learn about how they develop, why they develop, how they’re genetic. I see that in my family that’s definitely genetic and that it’s not a sin to treat a disorder and affliction and seek professional help for it.

That was something I had to work through, but when you try to talk about it to other Christians, actually, if you don’t know what’s going on, but you know it’s a mental health issue. You may not know, like we’ve talked about how you can have OCD and not know it. So you might be going to a pastor or Christian friend, and you might talk a little bit about your anxiety disorder.

They come at you with what I call “mini-sermons.” They start telling they start quoting you all the verses about anxiety as if you’d never heard them before. It was especially when they know you’re Christian. They know you study the Bible. They know that you followed Christ to the best of your ability.

It’s very condescending because they water it down too. “You just don’t know how to not worry because you don’t trust God.” This is a faith issue. If you had more faith, it’s even gone so far, and this is the one that drives me the most nuts is if you have a mental health issue or anxiety disorder, people will say things to you like you have a theme? That sort of thing. That’s bad. This is awful especially for a person with scrupulosity, religious OCD themes. I mean, that’s horrifying. It just makes it 10 times worse. There’s this lack of knowledge out there when it comes to understanding these disorders.

I really think anxiety disorders are probably the least understood because of Bible verses about worry being equated with an anxiety disorder and they’re not at all the same. And if you’re a sufferer you definitely know the difference, but people who don’t have experience or a loved one who they know and see going through this, they just automatically assume, unfortunately, that this is what it is.

Carrie: Right. It’s hard for pastors and ministry leaders to understand. They don’t necessarily have that type of training or clinical background. And sometimes they’re dipping toes in the water that they need to kind of stay out of and just say, “Definitely we will support you and love you and pray for you but we also want you to get professional help because that’s important and God can use those things in your life. God can use therapy and medication.” These negative experiences that you had with maybe pastors or other people in the church who were well-meaning, let’s say, and trying to help you, did that cause you to want to go public with your story and write a book?

Mizi: Yeah. Yes, it really did. It wasn’t just that though but that was a big part of it. What you just said about they really don’t have the training or the ability to recognize these disorders. Scrupulosity, for instance. If a person is struggling with doubts about their salvation and maybe this pastor has known this person for most of their life and they’re suddenly in their office and they’re going through all these thoughts with them, then the pastor gives them the reassurance from scripture and they’re like, “okay” and then they come back again.

They start saying the same thing over again and even the pastor there’s a level of frustration that can develop and they’re not equipped and they aren’t knowledgeable about OCD and how it manifests itself in a person who’s suffering. So I found that it was really important to share my story about living with anxiety disorders as a Christian and a Christ-follower, but in particular about OCD because it’s so misunderstood. And in particular about scrupulosity OCD because when you go that direction, people are even more inclined to think it’s a spiritual issue even the sufferers themselves really struggle.

They can even know they have OCD and they accepted about all the other kinds of themes and obsessions that they struggle with. For some reason, when it switches over to their relationship to Christ then it’s a spiritual issue. So the book explains why it’s not, and that OCD is OCD no matter what the theme, the treatment approach is the same. If there are things you don’t understand, which is very possible about your walk with God that you can learn through the Bible true, valid, real questions in OCD that can even happen because we’re all at different places in our walk with Christ. [00:37:05] You can still learn that thing, but you don’t have to learn it 50 times. That’s when you know, what’s OCD. It’s like if the answers don’t suffice, if the anxiety isn’t satiated, and laid to rest with answers that are logical reasoned arguments, it’s OCD. Especially if you have OCD, you can pretty much be sure. And so I wanted to lay that all out my own journey because I felt that there’s probably a lot of people with this struggle. If a Christian, a believer, a follower of Christ has OCD, there’s a good chance that it’s going to go that direction and they’re in their life at some point, because OCD always goes after what’s most precious to you.

And for the Christian, their walk with Christ is the most precious thing of their entire existence. So it’s going to go there and I wanted people to understand they weren’t alone, but I also knew there were a lot of people like me who got all the way to 50 or 25 or 30, 40, whatever and didn’t even know that that’s what it was. I thought by sharing my story they could discover that the way I did and, and get directed towards the help they needed and that was important to me. The other aspect of it is the growth in it through that. Before I go there, I did want to add to what you said about ways that the church can support people with these issues, these different kinds of anxiety, all mental health issues as far as that goes. 

I think the number one thing they do is listen and then validate the experience as a real affliction not merely a spiritual issue that can be fixed by more prayer, more Bible study, more faith but to literally be willing to support people and say, “Hey, this is a real medical or mental health issue for which you can get help. We want to encourage you towards going to your doctor and starting that process. We want to encourage you that if they say you should see the specialist to go ahead and do that.

We want to encourage you that if they suggest medication might be helpful to you, by all means, please, please do that because it’s so harmful to say things, like it’s a lack of faith and taking medication, means that you aren’t trusting in God and all the things that you can.

And it’s so harmful and I don’t even know how to describe what I’m trying to say. It puts up such a roadblock.

Carrie: It just makes the problem worse. 

Mitzi: Yeah and it hurts people. It’s important for churches to be able to be compassionate, pray for the person with a mental health issue, and the same exact way you pray for anybody who has any other type of health issue. Treat them the same, validate instead of turning it into a spiritual issue. I wanted to say that this is what the church needs to do. 

Carrie: Yeah. I think that that’s so important and so helpful because we have this ability to rally around people who have just had a baby in the church. We’re really good at that. We can bring you a casserole and we’re really good at rallying around somebody that’s going through cancer or has lost a loved one but then when it comes to something that’s invisible, like an anxiety disorder or OCD, almost like people don’t know what to do with that.

Mitzi: Yes. They either don’t know what to do with it or they’ve kind of bought into the stigma and I’ve tried to kind of sort that out. I don’t know all the reasons people don’t believe in the validity of mental health issues but I suspect that part of the reason might be just a fear of my total health issues because of when I was really young and I was first starting to experience these mental health issues to the point where they were debilitating, all I could think of was I’m going to get locked up in asylum. So there’s these visions and pictures that people have of what it’s like or what people are who are crazy, that sort of thing.

So there’s fear around stigma of what it is to struggle with any kind of mental health issue and it said because there’s so much help out there. There’s so many people in the churches that are sitting in the pews who have mental health issues and you won’t even do that. 

Carrie: Absolutely, that’s huge. So as we’re getting towards the end here at the end of every show, I like to ask the guests to share a story of hope since this is called Hope for Anxiety and OCD. So this is the time that you’ve received hope from God or another person. 

Mitzi: Okay, there’s lots of stories I could tell. There’s been so many things and I get notes from people all the time about how the book has led to them for the first time discovering this is what’s wrong and finally getting the help they needed. So that’s how God’s used my experience where you comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received from God, which has been very humbling to me. For me, I don’t even remember how I knew to read this book, but I picked up a book by a person called John Bunyan that he wrote in 1666 and it’s called “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.” Mr. Bunyan’s story resonated with mine in ways I could not have believed. As I read this book about his experiences, really what he had was OCD scrupulosity. When you read this book, it is just absolutely eye-opening and the struggles that back and forth.

That’s how it debilitated him, how it crippled him, how he would be trying to even preach later on a sermon and the intrusive thoughts would just be blaring in his head and he was so terrified they were going to come out of his mouth right while he was preaching and it just crippled him. He tells this whole thing and it’s so interesting to read because it’s like that’s what it was like for me. At the end of his account, in this book, he says, he admits that this thing was an affliction that God had allowed in his life. It was an affliction. The very next thing he says is God, I’ll use his language, “God Duff order it for my good” and then he gives this list of all the ways God had used this to grow him and his faith. Even his account of how he learned to just accept the uncertainty of the thoughts and to press on in his choice to venture all for the sake of Jesus Christ was ACT basically.

This is amazing. I’m thinking God knew that I was going to read that book. He wrote it in 1666. God knew when I read that book, John Bunyan’s story was going to encourage me and it would show me something. It would show me that this affliction has a purpose. The last chapter of my book, I share the purpose in my own life.

That chapter is called Purposeful Affliction. One of the biggest ways I’ve changed in how I talk about my anxiety disorders and in my OCD in particular, as I used to kind of go along and say, “well, I have OCD, but God can still use me in spite of it.” That’s kind of how I worded it. Now I say, I have OCD and God is able to use me because of it. That’s because of the ways He’s grown me through this experience of affliction. That’s not uncommon. God, Paul talked about it, talked about a storm in the flesh. God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is perfected in your weakness.

Paul ends up saying, I’m going to glory in this affliction because of this because when I’m weak, I’m depending on God’s strength and not my own. God uses these things in ways, perseverance, and empathy. The things that I learned through my OCD in particular, in my OCD scrupulosity is just amazing but reading that book that was just literally a godsend. And you think about it, they didn’t even know what OCD was back then, but God laid it on John Bunyan’s heart to write about it and so 1666, 150 years old. Here we are and I’m like reading this book and I’m like, “this is amazing.”

It just shows that OCD has been around for a really long time. It’s not a new thing. It’s just that we now understand you know what it is and there’s help and there’s hope, and everyone who is struggling with this, I just want them to have the chance to understand what it is and how to get help especially for my brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Carrie: Right. Your story and what you’re doing and just being vocal and open about being a very strong Christian who has also had a struggle in an affliction, I think it’s so hopeful to other people. Hopefully, who will hear this podcast, but what we’re talking about with church leaders that such my passion and desire is that people would just get however they get it, whether they’re getting it through listening to a podcast or reading your blog or talking to somebody with a personal struggle. I just want people to be able to sit with people in pain and say, “We’re here for you.”

Mitzi:  Yes. It’s so huge. It is so important and it’s important to understand that it’s painful. Like you called it invisible and it is. I would still get up every day, go through the motions like a robot. Sometimes I would fix my hair. I would put on my makeup. It was difficult to go out when I was really, really sick, but I still did it. I would sit in church and be tortured because of my OCD, but I would sit there and sometimes I’d want to run out, but you can’t see it. It is really debilitating.

The only way you could see it on me was I would get really skinny. I would get quieter. I would withdraw. I probably didn’t smile and laugh much. Those kinds of things but it’s very painful. For me definitely has been the thing that caused the most pain in my life and the most long-lasting because it can just hang on and hang on. I went through one whole pregnancy with it and then in between, and then another whole pregnancy. I still had the same thing going on. That’s how long it can hang up. 

Carrie: If people want to dive in and read your whole story, will you tell us the name of the book? I will put a link to it in the show notes as well. 

Mitzi: Sure. The name of the book is “Strivings Within-The OCD Christian” and you can find it on Amazon. If you just write that in and even my name, you can look at my name, it’s VAnCleve. That’s the main book I have out there. I do have another book.  We’ve talked about as far as OCD today necessarily, but it’s a direction, another direction up and going, and it’s a fictional book with a little bit of my experience mixed in as a teen. That was about what it was like to have social anxiety and it’s written in a fictional form and that one’s called, “That’s in Your Dreams. That’s the name of that one. That’s all also on Amazon, but it’s kind of a nice book for teens who struggle with that type of anxiety, social anxiety. It might be relatable to them in a story form. It’s just a story about a girl trying to go to high school and trying to fit in, be normal and the social anxiety is always shoving her back down. And so I want to try to work on those kinds of things too for teens, but I haven’t been very dedicated with that.

Carrie: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.

Mitzi: Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity, anytime. I can share not because of what it does for me, but what I hope it might do for someone else who’s looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for someone who can relate to what they’re going through. And also like you said, for the church and for pastors and people in leadership positions to understand better what these disorders are, what they’re like, and how they can help. So thank you. 

Carrie: Ever since I did this interview with Mitzi, I have been really pondering this idea of growth through affliction in our lives. I hope that you chew on that one for a little bit too because there are so many different things that God uses that are hard to go through and yet they grow us closer to him. They grow us closer to other people and they shape our character in ways that we might never have received had we not gone through those difficulties.

I hope that this podcast has encouraged you. If it has, will you do me a big favor and tell a friend. There’s probably someone in your circle of influence who needs messages that will help them reduce shame and increase hope and that’s what we’re all about on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. 

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

What About this Command to Not Be Anxious Part 2:

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety. No Comments on What About this Command to Not Be Anxious Part 2:

Last time on the blog, we broke down how the two verses prior to Phil 4:6 provide some guidance to help with anxiety. If you happened to miss that post, you can read it here.  Today, we are going to go through verses 6-8.  

Verse 6 follows instructions from verses 4-5 to rejoice in God, examine thought process for reasonableness, and understand God is right here. What comes next, “Do not be anxious about anything,” makes sense in light of the entire context. This verse is not meant to produce guilt for worrying. Now don’t get me wrong, Paul has been known to lay the smack down on some people when necessary (1 Corinthians), but this is a different letter.  With love and appreciation, Paul is thanking the Phillipians for supporting him financially, giving ministry updates, and encouraging their walk with the Lord. Even though Paul was under house arrest at the time, he was joyful because he was seeing the work of God all around him. If anyone had a reason to be anxious, it was Paul. He was not just writing words that sounded good. He was living this stuff out. 

Let your Requests be Made Known to God

“In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (verse 6). There is absolutely nothing in my life I can worry about that I can’t pray about. I was driving to work one morning, and I was praying about something. I don’t even remember what it was. When I got done, I was actually apologizing to God about my prayer!  I was like, “Well God, I know this is really just a first world problem, and I shouldn’t even be bothered by this or worried about it, so I’m sorry I even brought that up.” That was the day God spoke to me that all my prayers are important to Him, even the ones I see as silly or trivial in the grand scheme of things. 

With Thanksgiving

Let’s talk about this “with thanksgiving” part. What do you have to be thankful for? What good things has God done in your life? Are you healthy? Is there a friend He has blessed you with? Are your bills paid? Do you have not everything you want, but everything you need? Be thankful. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17a). If there’s something good in your life, God put it there. I can also be thankful when I pray that God hears me, and will answer even if it’s not the way I expect or in the timeframe I expect Him to. I can thank Him for how He is going to work in this situation or how I will experience Him in a way that maybe I haven’t yet before. 

The Promise

Here comes the promise, and this is the best part! “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (verse 7). You have been promised peace. This is great news. I think sometimes we confuse peace with circumstances going well, things working in our favor, or a warm, fuzzy feeling. Peace is a sense that even though circumstances are not lining up the way I want or I don’t see a way out of this mess, I have a deep knowing in my spirit that it will somehow be OK because of God’s divine intervention in my life. God has this situation taken care of before I even ask. Oftentimes, we rob ourselves of peace by not doing the things contained in the verses prior- praising God, recognizing his presence, thanking Him, and requesting intervention.

As a caveat here, I know some people struggle with a high level of physiological anxiety, which in my therapy experience, is usually connected to some type of past trauma. You may need physical and emotional intervention along with spiritual intervention.  That is OK. I have had several clients in therapy who had a sense of spiritual peace even though they were physically and emotionally anxious. 

Think on These Things

Last, but not least is verse 8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” This verse is a refrain of verses 4-6, but important subjects are worth the repetition. I could probably write a whole post on this one verse, but if you were wondering what to think about, here is the litmus test.  

Now, you don’t choose what pops in randomly, but you do choose what you dwell on (exception of OCD). Learning to switch thoughts from something that is negative or anxiety provoking to something that is positive takes practice, intentionality, and time. You can learn to change the channel in your mind. How about starting by memorizing some of the above verses, so you have a positive go to?

My hope is that this post and the last have provided perspective shift on, “Do not be anxious,” not as a command, but perhaps a desire from Paul for people to experience the same peace that he had found in Christ. I’d love to hear what you think as well as other topics you’d like me to address on the blog.   

What is EMDR?

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

When people first hear about Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), they are often skeptical. That’s OK because I was too once. I wasn’t sure how waving my fingers back and forth in front of my clients was going to change how they felt about the past. However, I was desperate. Cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of trauma just wasn’t cutting it for the complex client presentations I was seeing. We could talk for hours about how the abuse a client experienced wasn’t their fault. They could give me the right answers, but didn’t feel it. They could change their thoughts, but their bodies were still reactive. Once I started using EMDR and saw first hand how great my clients were feeling, I was hooked.   

What is EMDR?

EMDR is an experiential therapy that allows clients to process trauma at a brain level to access healing at a different level than traditional talk therapy. Other approaches to healing from trauma such as Exposure Therapy or Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) require the individual to tell the entire story of the trauma repeatedly in order to become desensitized from it. However, with EMDR, telling the story of the trauma is not a requirement. This brings a sense of relief for clients who do not want to retell the entire story, cannot remember the whole story, feel it would be too lengthy to tell, or are bound by security clearances. 

The other difference between EMDR and cognitive based therapies is that EMDR addresses body sensations associated with traumatic memories. A rape victim may no longer believe the rape was her fault (changing the thought), but may still carry a sense of shame and distressing body sensations that accompany that emotion. Trauma is often stored in the body can manifest as physical sensations such as chronic digestive issues or panic attacks. I have seen several clients have a reduction in physical symptoms after EMDR therapy. 

What is the EMDR process like?

There are eight phases of treatment in EMDR. The initial phases involve screening and preparing the client for being able to reprocess the trauma. The therapist works with the client on building awareness of their present experience emotionally, physically, and mentally. The client also develops skills to tolerate a variety of emotional states and cope with day to day symptoms such as anxiety, nightmares, or intrusive thoughts/memories about the trauma. Clients with an extensive trauma history may take months to prepare for trauma processing. On the other hand, clients who have had previous talk therapy and have coping skills to manage their day to day life may find more value in doing an EMDR intensive. 

The next phases are focused on targeting traumatic memories to reprocess the various aspects of the trauma. The client may see pictures, feel intense emotions, and experience body sensations that were happening at the time of the trauma. This process can be difficult and disturbing to the client, which is why not rushing the preparation phase for clients with complex PTSD is crucial. Bilateral stimulation to the brain is utilized through the use of eye movement, tactile stimulation, or alternating audio sounds. The bilateral stimulation is not painful and does not cause the client to go into a hypnotic trance. The client will be present during the reprocessing.   

EMDR allows the traumatic material to get unstuck and connect to more positive, adaptive material in the brain. At the end, memories that were highly distressing are no longer distressing to the client. Sometimes the change is very surprising because the client expected to always be bothered by the memory! By healing from these past wounding experiences, clients are able to respond to present situations in new ways. Sam no longer blows up every time there is a conflict at home. Susan is no longer having frequent pain attacks. John still has intrusive thoughts related to OCD, but he is able to dismiss them instead of giving into compulsions.    

How do you get trained in EMDR therapy?

If you are interested in learning more about EMDR therapy, you can visit www.emdria.org. This is the website for EMDRIA, the EMDR International Association. Therapists who have been trained in EMDR through a training approved by EMDRIA have completed six days of training and 10 hours of consultation. Training in EMDR therapy is an experiential process. The therapist has to perform EMDR on others and receive it themselves in the client role. Those who have been certified in EMDR have completed an additional 12 hours of advanced training along with an additional 20 hours of consultation with an EMDR consultant. An EMDR consultant has gone through additional hours and has had their consulting supervised by another consultant.    

I was initially trained in EMDR in 2013, pursued certification, and became a consultant in 2019. Over the years, I have been able to help clients suffering from PTSD, recent traumatic experiences, anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, OCD, depression, and dissociation to name a few. I have also started providing intensive therapy in EMDR for individuals who are looking to heal faster in a shorter amount of time. 

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 individual and 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.

What About this Command to Not Be Anxious Part 1

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

Last week, I posted a blog Is Anxiety a Sin? Today, I want to talk a little bit about how we address what appears on the surface to be a command from scripture about not being anxious. Phil 4:6 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil 4:6). 

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10 Ways to Have a Calmer Mind and Body in 5 Minutes or Less

12. 10 Ways to Have a Calmer Mind and Body in 5 Minutes or Less

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 12. 10 Ways to Have a Calmer Mind and Body in 5 Minutes or Less

Are you looking for simple ways to relax and calm down? Often people use things like taking a bath to relax. That’s great, but you don’t always have that much time. Here are some go to strategies that you can use no matter where you are. No extra items or props needed! 

  1. Acknowledge the presence of God or Jesus
  2. Gratitude
  3. Spend time with an animal or at least think about them
  4. Connect with your breath
  5. Sing a song- For more info, see episode 6 with Tim Ringold.
  6. Think about the most loving and supportive person in your life right now
  7. Think about the absolute worst case scenario 
  8. Find the calmest part of your body
  9. Connect with the present moment
  10. Find your happy place

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 12

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety And OCD Episode 12. We are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. 

I am so glad that you are listening today. We’re going to be talking about 10 ways to have a calmer mind and body in five minutes or less. Yes, this is possible. Sometimes people feel like they need a long time in order to calm down like I need to go take an hour bubble bath. That’s awesome. Sometimes you’re able to do things like that, but sometimes you have five minutes before you walk into your dentist appointment and you’re super nervous about your tooth extraction. 

You don’t always have a lot of time to relax. So I want to teach you some quick, relatively easy-to-implement ideas also that you can do anywhere.

You don’t need any special equipment for these. I also know that these exercises work. They’ve been tested, they’re tried, and true. I use them with clients on a regular basis. What I will say is that all of these may not resonate with you, and that’s totally okay. If you can find one or two that you really resonate with and feel confident in being able to utilize, practice those. The more that you’re able to utilize these strategies when you don’t need them the more likely you’re able to have that in mind or online when you actually do need them. You’re going to want to connect with these exercises in a whole-body experience type of way. What I mean by that is mentally, emotionally, and physically. 

Too many times, we just try to change how we think about something. We do this in the church all the time and it drives me a little bit batty because people are like, “okay, well you believe God doesn’t love you.” I mean, the scripture says he does. So just change that in your brain and move forward. It’s a lot more complicated than that. We’re not just one-dimensional. If we just try to change our thinking, we haven’t tapped into the other God-given aspects of our self. Occasionally one of these activities may take you to a negative place. So if for any reason it does, just tap out and use a different one.

The 10 ways to have a calmer mind and body in five minutes or less.

Number one. Acknowledging the presence of God or Jesus.

This may or may not be helpful for you depending on your view of God right now, and how you feel about him, or you may be experiencing obsessions that get in the way with this activity. 

Oftentimes, if people have a hard time connecting to God, they can connect to Jesus. I believe the reason for this is because we know that Jesus experienced the same struggles on earth in relationships that we experience, things like rejection, betrayal, temptation.

He had all access and authority in the spiritual realm. At the same time, He fully understood what it was like to be human. We know from a logical place that God is always with us in Matthew 28, 20 Jesus said, “And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” What does that mean for you right now? As you’re getting ready in the morning, driving to work, or sitting in the pickup line at your kid’s school. 

What does it feel like to notice that you’re not alone and that God, Jesus is with you? Right now, is there a positive feeling or a physical sensation that you would connect with that? Just sit with that and notice that for a moment.

Number two. Gratitude. What are you thankful for today? I want you to stay away from generics. Don’t just say I’m thankful for my spouse or I’m thankful for my parents or my kids. See if you can make that specific. 

So today I’m thankful that my spouse jumps in and helps around the house as needed. You might say I’m thankful that I get to watch my kids excel in a particular area like music or sports.

What is something that you’re thankful for that happened today? 

Maybe you’d say I’m thankful that I didn’t get stuck in traffic when I had to make a long drive or I’m thankful that I got to have a conversation with a good friend.

Developing a regular gratitude practice will change your life even if you take a few minutes a day to jot on a calendar something very specific that you’re thankful for that day. I did this during a very sad and dark period of my life, and it really helped me get a different perspective. 

Number three. Spending time with an animal or if you can’t do that, at least thinking about them. Of course, if you have an animal at home, you can interact with them.

I talk to my cats all the time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If you don’t have animals, you can watch baby animal videos on YouTube or funny animal videos, and that can get you in a different headspace as well. 

I’ve found that even when clients don’t have an animal in session, they can bring up how their animal makes them feel. So think about what it’s like when your dog is right next to you.

What does it feel to stroke his fur? What kind of funny things does your dog do that really make you laugh? And as you think about your dog, how do you feel, and how does that make your body feel?

Number four. Connect with your breath. This may cause some distress if you have a hard time tuning in internally to yourself. Just start by noticing your breath without feeling any pressure to change it. After a little bit of time, see if you can make a shift in how you’re breathing. Maybe breathing out a little bit longer on your exhales, kind of slowly releasing the air. Trying to breathe from your diaphragm and not your chest.

Some people find it helps them to count every inhale or exhale so they have something to focus their mind on while they’re breathing. 

Number five. Sing a song. Notice I said, sing a song, not passively put music on in the background. 

As we learned from Tim Ringgold in episode 6, he talked about using music to help manage anxiety.

It’s better if you engage with the music in some way, such as singing along, tapping to the beat, or even singing in your head works as well. So if you’re in a crowd, you could just sing the lyrics in your head instead of out loud. This brings you into the present moment as you’re focusing and engaging with that music.  

Find a favorite song that puts you in a good mood every time that you listen to it.

Number six. Think about the most loving and supportive person in your life. 

You want to pick someone that you’re not in conflict with currently. Think about something they’ve done recently to show you that they loved you. 

How do they make you feel when you’re around them? What is it like to be in their presence?

Just see if you can receive some love from them as you bring them to mind.

Number seven. Think about the absolute worst-case scenario. 

I know this sounds counterintuitive because you may think that you think about the worst-case scenario all the time. But now I want you to play it all the way out to the end.

Let me give you an example. I’ve had several people be concerned about losing their job. So I will say something like, “okay, so if you lose your job, then what?” “Well, then I’d be unemployed.” “Okay. And then what? “Well, I’d have to go out and send out a lot of resumes and look for another job.” “And what if I don’t get a job right away?” “I might not be able to pay my bills.”

“Okay. And what would happen if you couldn’t pay your bills?” “Well, I would end up moving in with my mother who I have a hard time getting along with.” 

“And then what?” “Well, mom would just drive me absolutely insane, and I couldn’t live with her anymore. And I don’t know. I might end up on the streets.” 

As that scenario gets played out, either one of two things will happen. Either it will start to sound really ridiculous, like something that may have a very low likelihood of happening, or you may get to the end and say, “well, if that did happen, it’s pretty rough. I wouldn’t like it at all, but I think I could make it. I could manage it and get through.”

Number eight. Find the calmest part of your body. 

Usually, when I ask people to do this, they look at me really strangely because people aren’t used to finding the calmest part of their body. They’re used to finding the most distressed part of their body. So it may take you a little bit longer to figure out where that is, but it’s a good exercise for your brain.

The calmest part of your body does not have to be a large area. It can be as small as your pinky toe. As you start to focus on that calm area, sometimes it will reduce the distress in the other areas of your body that don’t feel as calm.

Number nine. Connect with the present moment. Oftentimes the present moment is not actually where the distress is. Distress with anxiety often comes from an imagined future outcome that’s negative. Therefore, when you’re anxious, you may be living in the future. 

When you bring yourself back to what’s actually happening right now, you’re typically okay. 

Let me give you an example, going back to the job example, let’s say that you’re anxious because you have a meeting with your boss in two days, and you are absolutely convinced that this meeting is where your boss is going to tell you that you’re being reprimanded or that you’re going to be fired. When you bring yourself back to the present moment, you notice that you’re sitting in your living room with your cat and everything is actually okay. 

Oftentimes, living in the future creates anxiety whereas living in the past creates shame or sadness, or other uncomfortable emotions. By learning to be in the present, this can reduce your overall distress. 

You may also look at “what do I know” and now you know that you’re employed now. You know that you’re doing the best that you can at your job. You know that God is going to take care of you and provide for your needs. You know that if you did get fired, it may take you a little while, but you’re going to eventually be able to get another job.

You can only control your behavior in this present moment. You can’t go back and change anything you did in the past, and you can’t control the future.

You can’t control other people’s behavior or what they’re going to do. Sometimes acknowledging that in itself can bring a certain level of relief.

Number 10.  Find your happy place. 

This can be a place that you go to all the time or can be a place that you enjoyed on vacation. The place itself doesn’t really matter as long as you can connect positive sensory experiences to it. 

I’m going to tell you about my happy place and describe it based on my senses as I experience it. My happy place is a park that’s in Nashville. There are beautiful trees along this wooded area. There’s a beautiful lake trail. You can go out on a pier and see the lake. It’s very quiet and peaceful out there. You may see birds flying. It smells like trees, grass, fresh air. There’s a cool breeze coming off the Lake and I think about walking with Steve there. Just enjoying his company. 

When you get really good at going to this place in your mind and bringing up the positive body sensations that you have associated with it, you can actually attach what we would call a cue word to it. This word is going to help prompt you to think of this place. The cue word could be anything associated with that place or how it makes you feel. I may decide that because the park causes me to feel peaceful when I’m there, then the word I’m associating with it is peace.

I hope that you’ve found the 10 ways to have a calmer mind and body in five minutes or less helpful to you.

I wanted to give you a secret on how you can get number 11. If you go to hopeforanxietyandocd.com and subscribe to our newsletter, I try to send out about one email a week, so it will not bombard you. I have a free relaxation audio that you can connect with. It’s another activity that I’ve used with clients that they’ve really enjoyed. I’ve even had people tell me that this relaxation activity helps them calm down when they started to experience a panic attack. You can also find other free and paid resources on our website to help you with anxiety and OCD.

I want to tell you about some of our future episodes that I am so excited about. We are going to be talking with a marriage and family therapist about how to help your anxious spouse.

I’m also going to be interviewing an author who’s a Christian to talk with her about her book on mindfulness. I have another solo episode which talks about how to find a therapist who is the right fit for you. 

I hope that you will hang in there with us and tune in for these episodes. Thank you so much for listening.

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

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

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.

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?

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.