I am a Christ follower, wife, and mother. I seek to bring a calm, compassionate, and hopeful approach to my practice. I am direct and transparent, ensuring no guessing games or hidden analyses. I believe in taking my own advice before sharing it with clients as we strive towards physical and emotional health together.
I’ve been a licensed professional counselor since 2009, but I’m still learning every day. I’ve been practicing EMDR since 2013 and became an EMDR consultant in 2019, which is the highest level of training in EMDR.
I also host the podcast “Christian Faith and OCD.” This started with a hesitant “yes” to God in 2020, and has grown into a world wide ministry.
Carrie: Welcome to a very special episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD. This is a bonus episode that I wanted to get out to you earlier than putting it kind of in the lineup. Since we have several episodes that are already planned out for the next couple of months. And I have my amazing husband, Steve here with me. Say Hi Steve.
Steve: Hey
Carrie: Glad to have you here. You interviewed me once before on the show for episode 33 of What it’s like to be a Counselor. And I thought it would be good for you to interview me on our today’s topic, which is EMDR intensive therapy. Since it’s something that you’re not familiar with. When I get in the zone and tend to talk about therapy things, I don’t tend to always explain them for the lay audience to understand and break it down very well. So I thought it would be good. And you can ask little filler questions here and there that people might be wondering about, or you might be wondering about.
What is EMDR Intensive Therapy
Steve: Okay. My first question is what is an EMDR intensive therapy session?
Carrie: This is a session that is longer than a typical therapy session. It occurs either for a half day of three hours or a whole day, which is six hours with a lunch break and some small breaks in between it’s for a very specific purpose.
So someone that’s trying to achieve a very specific counseling. It may be that they know, for example, that they’ve experienced some sexual abuse that is getting in the way of their relationship with their spouse. Now it may be a situation where they’re trying to overcome a phobia or a situation where maybe they just know they have a lot of trauma.
They’re going to need to process in a sense, kinda wanna get a kickstart to that process. Another way we use an intensive therapy session for say anxiety or even possibly OCD is to work on some day-to-day level coping skills that people could use as maybe a baseline for them. So it doesn’t have to be used to process trauma.
The idea behind it is to have dedicated time and dedicated space to work on a very specific issue.
Steve: A long therapy session that seems like it might be kind of exhausting.
Carrie: It can be tiring, but it just depends on how you break up the day. Usually what we’ll do is we’ll have kind of a introductory period.
So to explain a little bit deeper, these are situations where I may have been working with someone for. Session a few sessions and they make a decision to do an intensive, or it could be that somebody wants to travel in from out of state and do even multiple days with me, which I would just have to make sure that I had all of the office space available during those days and times.
If people are traveling in and I haven’t met them before the structure, obviously of the day is gonna be a little bit different because there’s going to be a chunk where we’ll have to do a little bit of more history taking kind of getting a clear picture of the problem. Then we can go in and make an EMDR treatment plan.
Basically identifying what memories we need to target that are contributing to their present-day issues. When we go back and we reprocess those memories. In EMDR, we look at the past and then we look at how that’s affecting and present, and then how that person would like to respond in the future.
Typically, with a more condensed intensive session, we would probably process the worst memory that came up on that treatment plan. And the first memory that came up on that treatment plan, sometimes those end up being the same memory. If it’s a more recent traumatic event, we would structure it so that we would really just be focused on that recent traumatic event.
There’s restricted protocols with EMDR to help you process more like within the past month type of trauma. If we were able to get someone in that quickly, So there’s lots of different ways that we can structure it with, uh, phobia, for example, we can structure, you know, starting with, when did the phobia first occur process?
You know, usually like if, if somebody was bit by a dog, for example, when they were a child, they’re afraid of dogs, now we could go back and we could target that memory where they bit by the dog. Then we can look at potentially exposures and desensitizing the present triggers. So we could show them a picture of a dog.
How to stressing is that to you do some EMDR surrounding that as a present issue, we could, you know, show them a video of a dog. There’s different things that we could kind of target. I probably wouldn’t have a live dog, but, you know, I would encourage at some point or another, eventually, them working up to that process as kind of gradual exposure.
It’s kind of a little bit hard to get a live dog in a counseling office sometimes, but you understand where I’m coming from. There’s so many different ways that we can approach things depending on what the person’s presenting issue is. For example, panic attacks. If someone had a history of panic attacks that they would like to focus on resolving, we can often process their first panic attack and their worst panic attack, their most recent get that done in one day. And that will show significant symptom relief for them, preventing them from having future panic attacks.
Steve: Why did you decide to start offering intensive therapy?
Carrie: That’s a really great question. I was actually encouraged by two of my mentors. One of them was Laura Mullis who we had on the show on episode 21, Healing from Childhood Wounds: The key to Unlocking Anxiety. Laura, as well as one of my other EMDR mentors, Alice Strickland had really asked me, first of all, was I doing intensive therapy? And then if I wasn’t interested in doing it because sometimes they have cases they may not be able to take on or might not be the best fit for them that they may want to refer to me. So that was part of it. And the other reason was after doing a few with my clients, kind of during the COVID period online, I did some three-hour sessions with clients where we took kind of a 15-minute break in the middle to target very specific EMDR memories that they wanted to work on.
There’s a few problems that can come up, like in terms of weekly therapy, someone comes in and they may really wanna work through certain issues in their life. But then as we know, like life just happens, you know, then they come in next week and something’s happened with one of their kids or their coworker was really mean to them. Or, you know, somebody went off on them as they were driving their car. I don’t know. And they just feel like, okay, I need to really process what was going on in the present.
A lot of times we can tie that back into how that was a trauma trigger and sometimes work through some of those things. And that can be very helpful. Oftentimes, what I see is that we end up delaying the EMDR treatment process because a lot of times we’re having to go back and forth between working on these present issues and then working on past issues.
If we can devote specific time to working on the past issues. A lot of the present issues will be resolved because they won’t continuously be getting triggered by the same stuff over and over again, in these challenging relationships or situations. So much of therapy too is spent on helping people develop skills to manage their day-to-day present.
And like I said, if we can go back and just kind of clear out some of the junk, there will be less that they have to manage in the present, not to say that they won’t have anything. Going on, but at least it’ll get the symptoms maybe more to a manageable level. Once the trauma is resolved. So it’s really a combination of a couple of different things.
Sometimes another issue that we have in terms of processing memories with EMDR is that we will take some time at the beginning of the session to get the client into the memory to say, okay, now, as you bring up that memory right now, how distressing is it? Where do you feel it in your body? Even before we do that, the client will come in. They’ll say, “Well, you know, I had, after last session I had a nightmare” or they may be updating me on symptoms. Either of the symptom got better or symptoms got worse. That’s helpful for me to kind of know and guide the process as to where we need to go to next. That takes a little bit of a chunk of time, say that takes 10 to 15 minutes. And then at the end of the session, we really wanna make sure that people have time to calm down that they have time to contain, especially if they didn’t finish processing the memory. So then we’re taking another, you know, let’s say 10 minutes to say, “okay, like, you know, kind of ground, put your feet on the floor, take a deep breath, contain the memory.”
No, it doesn’t have to leave you here. When you walk out the door today, go to your safe place, whatever. There’s a lot of different ways we can do that. But the point is, is that we’re taking that chunk of time in the beginning of the session. And we’re taking that chunk of time at the end of the session, whereas in an intensive, you don’t have to do that because you’re not having those times in between sessions.
You’re actually saving time and energy and not interrupt that trauma work because the brain doesn’t know, “oh, wow. I only have about, you know, 30 minutes to work through this.” Your brain doesn’t know that. So it’s gonna kind of continue to be working on things even after that session is over, which can sometimes be distressing for people.
What are the Issues EMDR Intensive Therapy Can Help with?
Steve: Okay. What are some of the issues that you’ve seen be helped by intensive therapy.
Carrie: I talked about some of them previously, things like phobias, panic attacks, very specific recent trauma, definitely anything that we would consider to be a single incident trauma, not like, you know, I’ve had a whole lifetime of childhood, but Hey, my childhood was pretty stable and things were going well.
And then this thing kind of just completely shifted me off track, near-death experience or illness, injury, car accident, things like that. I know that you and I had talked about, even my experience in episode 10 of really building up the confidence again, to be able to go out dating after my divorce, I had had quite a bit of therapy and there were just kind of some lingering remaining things that I needed to process through. And I really needed to do that from a somatic body sense, rather than just talking about it because I had already talked nausea about it. So that’s another area. Theoretically, I could have done an intensive on for myself. I didn’t, but I went at probably 10 sessions had I had an intensive opportunity.
I might have been able to get that, that work done and say probably two days, you know, instead of 10 sessions over, I was probably going every other week. So you think about that if you’re going every other week to therapy too, that’s about say five months that it took me to get through that process. I know.
A lot of times, people are very interested in today’s day and age of getting better, and faster. We have such a microwave generation. This can be good and bad. Sometimes these situations work and you can find relief faster. It’s not for every person or every situation, but as you can see, there are lots of different ways that we can apply the intensive therapy model to help people get relief. Another example would be for someone who’s having difficulties setting boundaries. Oftentimes this relates back to either like very strong authoritative personalities in their childhood or just people were straight up abusive and crossed their boundaries.
So if we can go back to those places, help them process through that realize like, you know, you’re not a child in this dynamic anymore. This is an adult-to-adult dynamic. You have a right, like your needs are important, whereas they weren’t important. Then your values and your desires are important. And you have that takes a certain level of self-confidence to set a boundary, right. To be firm with. So that is something that we could target in an intensive, really like creating a treatment plan surrounding the difficulty with setting boundaries. A lot of times I see people who have emotional trauma that is feeding into disordered type eating, even though I don’t work with eating disorders.
So I kind of wanna make that clarification if you have serious eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia that I’m not saying that this type of intensive therapy is for you, but for people who, for example, would say, “Hey, I’m an emotional eater. I really want to eat healthy. I’m trying, I may have been on every diet under the sun. But just the way that I grew up, there was a lot of shame surrounding food, or there was even abuse situations involving food resolving.” Some of that trauma will shift the way that people approach food in the present. That’s one, depending on how much is back there, they may need a little bit more than one day. It just kind of depends. And we have to create a plan together. I think that’s, what’s really important. Intensives is having a very specific plan and intention that the client and I are both on the same page about what they’re wanting to accomplish so that there’s no confusion and that we stay very focused and targeted for that limited amount of time.
Steve: So who would not be appropriate for intensive therapy?
Carrie: If someone has a serious problem where they may need a higher level of treatment, such as a serious addiction, addictions are typically not something that I worked with. I’ve worked with a lot of people who had an addiction in their past, say a few years ago, and they’re trying to resolve the trauma that led to the initial addiction.
I do work with several clients that have experienced that, but we really want people who are clean and sober to be engaging in this work. I mentioned eating disorders. If somebody has a really serious eating disorder and where they need to be in some kind of hospital or treatment program, if someone finds that they’re dissociating a lot, they’re disconnecting from reality due to their trauma.
They’re losing a lot of periods of time or they don’t have any connection to their body or their emotional experience. Now I will say that if there’s a client that’s really having difficulty connecting to their body or to their emotional experience if they wanted to do an intensive, what we would really focus on is not processing the trauma, but we would more focus on developing that body awareness, developing that emotional awareness. Doing a lot of what we would call resourcing activities, which would be trauma preparation that may be incredibly valuable for that person to do that, and may help them really cope better in the present with that. But I wouldn’t say that they need to come in and, and just start processing trauma because they’re not gonna be able to do that.
You really have to be connected to your mind, your body and your emotions in order to benefit from EMDR, having. I’ve worked with a ton of clients that don’t have all of those things online. And so our first step in therapy is really building those up before they can go through and process trauma. If somebody has a personality disorder or something just very serious going on, then they’re probably not appropriate for intensive therapy.
Steve: And my last question is, are these covered by insurance?
Carrie: They are not. We don’t have a code for this type of intensive therapy session that we could code for insurance. I actually even asked Cigna the insurance that I work with and they, you know, I’m sure if we were sitting face to face, the lady would’ve looked at me, like I had four eyes.
I was trying to explain it to her, but she was just kind of like, “No.” They are used to typical things like individual therapy, group therapy and things that there are codes for. This is not something we can code and charge insurance for. It’s really more for someone who is looking to make an investment in their mental health and they, they know kind of what they want.
And they realize that this pathway is going to save them, you know, time, energy, and money. It’s hard for people to. Sometimes to coming to weekly therapy, they may get started with it, or they may start coming every other week and then childcare becomes a problem or work is adding on more responsibilities.
I can’t get off in time. There’s all kinds of barriers that can happen in terms of people getting the therapy that they need on a consistent ongoing basis. Sometimes there’s certain time limited situations where someone will say. I know I’m going to be moving or going out of the country. And I know this is some, or I’m getting married.
This is just something that I know I wanna resolve before. Maybe a major life event happens as well. And so these people are kinda willing to take that leap and invest in this process. And so also just really great for people who have had a lot of therapy, haven’t been able to get their goals achieved that they wanted to, but feel like this would be something that would help them just as a different approach.
Thank you, Steve, for helping me out by asking some of these questions and allowing me to explain intensive EMDR therapy.
Steve: Yeah. You’re welcome. And glad to be here once again. And it’s actually really good for me to hear that I got to learn something, so it’s good.
How to Receive EMDR Intensive Therapy
Carrie: Yeah. And if people would like to find out more about intensive therapy, they can go to www.bythewellcounseling.com./intensive therapy. If you get to the homepage By the Well Counseling, there’s also a button that you can click on for intensive therapy. There’s a form on the webpage that I’ll ask that you fill out in order to be able to, for us to have a, hopefully, a short video chat, where we can have a consultation, where we can talk about what you’re hoping to get out of the intensive, and I can share whether or not I think that that would be appropriate for you.
It’s really important that we’re able to make sure that you’re gonna be getting what you need from this modality if you’re investing the time and money in it. So I want to take a little time to make sure that that you’re appropriate and that this is appropriate for you kind of, as we talk through some of those things.
One thing that I’m really excited about with this intensive therapy opportunity is that I get a lot of inquiries from the people who listen to the podcast and they say, “Hey, I know that you do online therapy. Can you see me?” But they live out of State. They may live in Kentucky or Connecticut or wherever, and I can’t see them online due to licensure laws and limitations. I’m only licensed in Tennessee right now to see people there. So this will allow people to be able to travel if that’s something that they’re interested in and receive therapy from me. So that was kind of another contribution of why I wanted to do this, that I didn’t mention. Earlier, thank you so much to everyone who is listening to this podcast right now, I will tell you the very first people who heard about the intensive opportunity were our email subscribers.
And Steve, why should you get on our email list for the hope for anxiety and OCD podcast?
Steve: We’re giving away. T-shirts
Carrie: Yeah, Steve, it was actually your idea to start giving away t-shirts to encourage people to subscribe to the podcast newsletter. So since we have currently, as we’re recording 73 email subscribers, I want you to help me pick our first t-shirt winner by people who’ve already subscribed to the newsletter.
So pick a number between 1 and 70.
Steve: I’m gonna go with 14. It looks like Lisa D is our winner. Congratulations, Lisa!
Carrie: She is our 14th email subscriber. I will be emailing Lisa to let her know that she has won a t-shirt and once I get her size and address back, we will go ahead and ship that out.
You also get to pick which color shirt that you want. And if you are not a t-shirt winner this time, because you are not subscribed to our email list, then hop on the email list. We don’t have that far to get from 73 to a hundred. Right Steve?
Steve: That’s right.
Carrie: So once we get to a hundred, I will be giving out another t-shirt for somebody in between the 50 and 100 mark and maybe about every 50 subscribers or so we will give away a t-shirt.
I would love to have 500 subscribers on the email list. That would be amazing. So it’s a great way for you to know firsthand what’s going on with me and what’s going on with the Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast. You can subscribe by going to our website, hopeforanxietyandocd.com. You are certainly welcome to go through our website and buy one, If you are really itching for some podcast merchandise. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. And I hope to hear from some of you soon.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was much discussion in the EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) community about whether or not EMDR therapy could effectively be done online. There were concerns from clinicians about their clients having intense emotional reactions or dissociation and not being present to help their clients calm down. The EMDR International Association (EMDRIA) was in the process of developing guidelines for virtual EMDR, which of course, was pushed to the forefront in the beginning of 2020.
Almost overnight, all EMDR therapists were seeing their clients online. Many clinicians who had been hesitant or scared to try EMDR virtually were thrust into a dilemma: Do I provide a technique I know that works for clients in distress or do I prolong their suffering indefinitely until we can be back with them in the office? For me, this decision was less of a dilemma. Due to moving therapy offices in 2019, my appointments were already about thirty percent virtual. I had even tried EMDR with a couple higher functioning clients, and they managed the therapy well.
Can EMDR therapy be done online?
The short answer is a resounding yes. There are many ways to achieve this, but a well trained EMDR therapist who has experience providing EMDR therapy online will tell you that the technique works just as well online as in person. There are three levels of training in EMDR. Therapists can either be trained, certified, or a consultant. Certified EMDR therapists have completed further training and consultation hours after their initial two weekends of training. Consultants have received additional training and supervision in their consultation of other EMDR therapists.
How do you do EMDR therapy online?
EMDR requires what is often referred to as bilateral stimulation (BLS) or dual attention stimulation (DAS). These terms are often used interchangeably in EMDR literature. Most people see BLS/DAS being administered by eye movements. This is how EMDR is usually depicted in TV or movies. However, the same BLS/DAS can be achieved by the client tapping themselves on their shoulders or knees, following the therapist’s fingers, or using computerized software in which a client looks back and forth. Eye movements need to be utilized with someone on a computer rather than a phone as the phone doesn’t provide enough width.
What if I become overwhelmed during online EMDR therapy?
Whether EMDR is administered in person or online, it’s important to let your therapist know when things feel like they are getting too much. Having a good relationship with your therapist and proper preparation for EMDR therapy is the key to successful EMDR treatment.
Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP of By The Well Counseling is an EMDR Consultant 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.
Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 77. I’ve been trying to do an episode for a little while on postpartum depression and anxiety because this is. Such a common issue in our society. And actually, as several of, you know, I have a young daughter, but actually, I’ve been trying to do this show way before I became pregnant. And it just didn’t work out with guests and so forth. But we have a guest today that has both personal and professional experience. So I’m super excited to interview Julie Lamb, LCSW who’s a life coach at julielambcoaching.com.
Carrie: Julie, welcome to the show today.
Julie: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.
Carrie: Talk with us a little bit about postpartum depression. How would you define it on a basic level for people?
Julie: One of the first things I wanna talk about when it comes to postpartum, depression is we have to understand that birth is traumatic. It is a traumatic thing that happens to your body, and yes, we can say it’s normal, natural, whatever.
It doesn’t matter. It’s still traumatic to your body. It increases all those hormones. It increases all of that adrenaline within our body. The parasympathetic nerves kind of go out whack. And what happens is that every woman that has a child will experience it. Some symptoms of loss, sadness, and some anxiety, everyone will experience. However, postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety come into play. When those symptoms continue generally about two weeks after birth. And so the biggest thing to think about is. Everybody’s gonna have these normal feelings, but if they continue past two weeks is when postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety come into play.
Carrie: Okay. So it’s gotta last for at least two weeks.
Julie: Yes
Carrie: How would you say that it’s similar or different to someone who’s maybe going through a major depressive episode or a dysthymia
Julie: depression has so many different layers. And one of the things that are really fascinating about depression is that it’s not a one-size-fits-all.
It’s not a, oh, you’re sad. Therefore you have dyslexia or you are manic, therefore you’re bipolar. It doesn’t work that way. But there are certain categories that we say that would then say, this is the kind of depression that you have a major depression is essentially where for a period of a long time, you have had these feelings of sadness of overwhelm, perhaps not being able to sleep or having no desire to do anything.
Those continue dysthymia. You have to have that for at least a year. I mean, can you imagine, I have to feel this way for a year before I can finally say something’s wrong. And major depression tends to be a shorter period. So a lot of times people will be diagnosed with a major depression first because it’s something that you can diagnose quicker generally before six months when somebody’s had those experiences and SEIA says, well, you’ve had these a lot longer.
And this is what this looks like. Postpartum depression is just different from that because it’s quicker onset. Essentially you have nine months and some people will also experience depression during their pregnancy. And unfortunately, people will tend to people, meaning doctors will tend to be like, it’s just your hormones, just your body changing.
Women kind of get put to the side, basically. Like that’s not really a problem you’re just changing. And then what happens then is you may have had those feelings and then after the baby is born, they are magnified and they’re made so much bigger. And if you’ve ever had any depression in the past, then you’re more likely to have this postpartum depression and we’re talking any, you could have seriously a week of just feeling really down.
And then you’re more likely to have this postpartum depression that will hit and it will feel even. More triggering more sadness, more overwhelmed, more irritability, more feeling like you just can’t get up and do the next thing. And it all is because of that one event. And that’s having a baby.
Carrie: Yeah. It’s interesting. I’m glad that you brought up being depressed in pregnancy because I got depressed in pregnancy and I felt very isolated because there was all this conversation surrounding postpartum depression that it almost, I felt like a weirdo. I was like “I’m supposed to be happy being pregnant.” And was really struggling because I had a lot of friends and family members that either, you know, had infertility difficulties and I thought, well, here I am supposed to be. Really happy and thankful that I was able to get pregnant and give birth, but it absolutely wrecked my body. Unfortunately, it’s interesting that you said a little while ago, that birth as being traumatic.
And I necessarily wouldn’t have said that for myself and my situation, although I will say that just even the process of the pregnancy and the hormones and different things really mess some things up for me. And I’m still dealing. Some ongoing back issues and stuff that I’m trying to get straightened out because of the pregnancy stuff.
But I think in my situation was a little bit different because it was connected with chronic pain. That was really kind of fueling that depression. I’m curious too, about the onset of postpartum depression. Is this something that happens right after people give birth or can it have a later onset? Like when they go back to work, for example,
Julie: It can happen later and it can happen both.
It can happen almost right at birth, and then it can happen later. Part of my story with postpartum depression is I actually have had very difficult pregnancies when I had my first baby. I actually, my body started to shut down. And so I had to have her cuz it went into help syndrome. If anybody knows what that is.
So my body was shutting down, saying, you have to have this baby. I have an epidural. So it was all natural. She was about three and a half weeks early. So she was little, the whole. I had this baby feeling pretty good. I will say afterwards, you know, maybe a little bit of the blues, but then I had a significant loss.
I had a brother that died about two weeks after the birth of my baby. Wow. And so what happened is that that compounded all of those feelings. Here’s this supposed to be this happiest time? Which I think is a misnomer anyways, but supposed to be this happy time. And yet I’m dealing with this grief and I’m supposed to just move forward with it.
I’m supposed to just, you know, grieve move forward refined. And what I noticed is it was about four or five months later that I went into a real deep depression. You could say, yes, it was postpartum. You could say, yes, it was because of this grief. You could say it was cuz I went back to. You could give all those different circumstances.
The point is that I hit that depressive wall where essentially it was like, I wasn’t bonding with my child. I wasn’t viewing life could be any better and all, because essentially all those circumstances compounded together. And my body said, you have to deal with this one way and we’re gonna make you deal with it mentally.
It’s kind of how I viewed it. Looking back how I viewed it now.
Carrie: Wow. So it was just like, that’s how it felt. It just kind of a shut or like hitting a wall and like, you couldn’t go forward or do the things that you need to do. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into caring for a baby. It’s very time-consuming and it’s very exhausting.
Julie: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing with caring for a baby is that we all think, again, this is supposed to be the greatest time babies are so sweet and precious. You have a lack of sleep. You’re not eating well. You’re 100% focused on this little person and forget the whole idea of taking care of yourself.
Forget the idea of even having a relationship with your partner. Like any of that, it suddenly becomes, I am so focused on just a survival instinct of that day to day. And a survival of this infant, of this person that 100% relies on me. And that’s a lot of pressure. And if you are already not taking care of yourself with sleep with food, or even just rest like mentally resting, it just compounds more and more and more.
And then you throw in the idea that you have some depression in the past, you throw in any circumstance, job loss, financial insecurity, you throw in any of that. And suddenly our brains go, I just can’t do this. it’s just way too much. That’s when postpartum depression almost seems to flare a lot more.
Carrie: Yeah, this is pretty common. I think I read something like one in seven women. Just kind of from what you’ve seen statistic-wise. Okay. Mm-hmm cause this is a pretty common issue, but I think a lot of times people feel. Very isolated by it. If they haven’t heard other people talk about it or, or known someone that’s gone through it.
Do you feel that way? Like just the, what you were talking about, the shoulds and the supposed to that you feel like are on society.
Julie: Yeah. And there’s also this idea that this is what you’re supposed to do, so you should just be okay with it. . And so I think it also leads to a lot of women that are afraid to talk about it.
You mentioned something. And I saw this a lot when I worked with adoptions for years was the fact that there were women that felt guilty for having babies because their friends couldn’t. And I, again, I worked with adoptions and I felt guilty that I could get pregnant. And it becomes this fear of like, well, I should love this.
I should be happy. And if you suddenly feel like you can’t. That’s a huge amount of pressure that you put on yourself and that you put on everybody else around you. And I noticed something really interesting with me was this idea that I had to do it all. And so here I was with this new baby and I was like, I have to make sure the house is clean.
I have to make sure that I’m, you know, that I’ve got food on the table. I’ve gotta make sure my husband’s taken care of and that, oh, I have to go back to work and I’ve gotta make sure I’m working all these hours. And I’m doing all these things. And suddenly it was like, my husband was not good enough with the baby.
It was only me that could do it. And all of us as women. We have this idea that there’s a standard we’re supposed to meet, and this standard comes from maybe something we’ve been taught to, maybe something we’ve experienced, maybe it’s even something that we just inherently believe. And that standard is sometimes what creates this feeling of. Unworthiness this feeling of I’m not good enough. And when we feed on those feelings that it can lead to a lot more depression. And especially that can lead to a lot of anxiety because you’re not living up to that standard.
Carrie: Yeah. I know that that was hard for me more so when I went back to work of handing over more responsibilities to my husband, we had like a dramatic household shift in our world where I was at home for maternity leave for three months, you know, I was doing the majority of the baby taken care of, and he was very much involved and he would come home and spend time with her and spend whatever time we could together, so forth. But then it was like this light switch flipped.
He quit his job. And became a stay-at-home dad. So all of a sudden he was like the primary baby caretaker. And I was like, full-time household provider. And that role switch was just like very jarring for us. And it took a lot of communication and a lot of adjustment, but for me learning that I had to let go of some things and trust him to be able to handle the baby stuff that I had learned to do. Like he can’t actually do some of these things, but I think what you’re saying, like that sense of like, oh, I have to be the one to take care of this, or I have to be the one to handle it. Was it pretty easy for you to recognize that you had postpartum depression? Or were you kind of in a little bit of denial?
Like, no, that’s not me.
Julie: I was in denial because as a therapist, I knew all the signs. I even remember before I had my babysitting down with my husband and saying, here are all the signs of postpartum depression. So you are aware of it. You get to know what it is. And my husband (bless his heart) was like, okay, I get it.
I got it. I’ll know, and this will be fine. but a lot of people think postpartum depression is just that, like, I wanna kill my baby. That’s honestly like, we’re gonna go that extreme. And so here I was like, no, no, no. Like if you notice I’m crying a lot or you notice that I just feel more lethargic. I don’t have a lot of energy.
Those are things to watch out for. It was interesting because he was very aware of that. But I think because we had a death that got mixed in and very confused. Oh, He said he was really good at that. But what happened is that after I started to feel that way, my training kicks in was like, you can’t have postpartum depression.
You’re not allowed to have postpartum depression. So here’s what you need to do. And I remember trying to tell myself, do this, this and this, this, and of course, none of that worked. So I was still feeling really off. And I was like, well, I’ll go talk to a therapist. I went and talked to them, it was not a good therapist.
And I went, talked to a therapist who basically was like, you’ve just had a lot of things going on. Just make sure you get some. Make sure you let your husband do things, you know, whatever. And it wasn’t helpful because on the way home, I could acknowledge that I had postpartum depression and he missed it.
I feel like many times we, as women, we think we know something is wrong, but we almost discount it. Like I discounted because, well, you know, I’m qualified. I should know better. Mm-hmm but I also discounted it because it didn’t seem as severe as what I had thought it should look like. And it wasn’t until somebody actually did discount it, that I was actually able to say, okay, wait, maybe there is something going on here.
And I think many women go to their doctor afterwards. And the first thing they asked them was like, do you wanna hurt the baby? I’m like, no, no, I never wanna do that. Okay, then you’re fine. I
Carrie: just wanna tell you what my doctor asked me six weeks after I had the baby. Literally, this was a question and this was the.
You’re not depressed. Are you? And I was just like, I’m smacking my forehead, you know, as a mental health professional, I’m like, that is not how you ask somebody. And funny enough, the paediatrician’s office, I feel like has been much more sensitive and has given me a questionnaire. Like every time that I’ve gone in there, But, you know, if somebody says, well, you’re not depressed, are you, I mean, then you feel like, well, what if I was like, would I wanna open up about that right now?
Would I wanna tell you if I was, of course, I’m not gonna open up yeah. That was an interesting response. Let’s talk about anger connected to postpartum depression because maybe that’s a sign that sometimes people don’t necessarily like see as being connected and anger can be really connected to depression.
Julie: Absolutely. And anger, a lot of times are like, well, that’s just something that happened to you that made you mad. And they don’t actually recognize that there’s sometimes a rage. And that’s what that anger tends to feel like in postpartum. Depression is just this idea. I’m yelling. I’m screaming. You may not wanna hurt anybody, but you just feel like I said, this intense rage going on, and that is an irritability.
And the funny thing is, is that people will say, well, you just need to go get some sleep or you just need to go relax or something. Yes. Sleep is vital and important. And I wanna know any new mom that gets sleep. It’s more than that. It’s the fact that I want you to imagine all these pressures, all these feelings, all these thoughts being put into a kettle and they are just put pressure upon pressure upon pressure.
And then you have a doctor saying you’re not depressed, or you’re not anxious, or you’re not whatever. And you’re inside you’re bubbling. And you’re just thinking what I am like. You don’t understand. And it just feels like it’s exploding. And what’s interesting is that if you have experienced ever some postpartum anger, you will most likely experience it.
Every pregnancy after. And people don’t think that they’re like, no, no, you can overcome it. But realistically speaking, when your body naturally holds that it almost associates that with every next pregnancy, I had a client that came to me specifically while she was pregnant and said I’ve had postpartum anger, and I need to know how to deal with it now, because I don’t like who I.
So we worked with some very specific tactics that helped with anger. That would also help her as a new mom. And it was interesting. She went to her husband, she says, here’s what I’m gonna do. And she messaged me after she had the baby. She’s like, I have to just tell you my anger. Yes. It’s there, but because I can acknowledge it and it’s safe to say it just doesn’t feel like it’s overwhelming.
It doesn’t feel like that rage that’s gonna come out and just explode at any moment. She’s able to say I’m angry and it’s okay. That I’m angry. and these are the things that I do with it. And I think that’s, yes, anger is definitely a part of all of. Yeah, that’s really good. How did you get the help that you needed?
I knew that something wasn’t right. So I, I first went to my OB doctor and she is fantastic. She delivered all my kids. I’m a high risk pregnancy, so she very much, her and I are, are really good friends. She was like, Julie, here, you should take some Lexapro. You should take, you know, just take something. It will help.
And I will admit that I didn’t want to, because I was like, no, I can do this on my own, but she was there. That’s like, then talk to me, tell me what’s going on. And you need to make sure you have somebody to talk to that you have some resources in place. So it was really great that she was one. She prescribe the medication, if I needed it and wanted it. And there’s nothing wrong with taking that. But she also was like, if you don’t want to, here’s the things that you need to do. So I did go that’s when I went and found that therapist, I would recommend that you don’t go see a male therapist. That’s my number one mistake.
I think I know we should say no out. They’re all getting no, no, no. You need somebody that understands women’s hormones. And that specifically understands postpartum and understands what that is like when you have somebody that knows those feelings, those emotions, and can help you through that. That’s one of the best things I did do some cognitive behavioral therapy.
So with him, he didn’t help me at all. So I went to like with another therapist, friend of mine, And I said, okay, this is where my thought is and help me with my thought process. And so I did have that available, but at the same time, if it wasn’t available, I would have gone and sought out somebody else, another therapist, another somebody else to talk to.
So by all means, that’s kind of what I did. The other thing is, is I actually allowed myself to just take a break. And so I acknowledged that. I’m not okay. I’m not good. This is not what I need to do. And I told my husband, I said, I need to just get away for a little bit because I am not in okay. Place. I wasn’t breastfeeding.
So I was formula feeding at that time. And so I was able to kind of walk away and just like take some time to myself. I knew she was in good hands. When I say take some time, it was literally like a weekend. It wasn’t like I was gone for months on end. I’ve thought about it. No, it was just, it was like a weekend.
And I went and I just like, was able to just kind of relax into that. And I came back. I was really overly in love, I think, with my baby at that point, because it was like, I felt healthy. I felt good at that moment. And I think those are the things that really helped me, especially when I had my next. You and those next two were very difficult and there was a miscarriage in between.
I mean, there’s lots of stories there that just compound all of that. That essentially after I have had my third, I was able to look back and say, here’s the things you did that work. Do this again. Here’s the things that didn’t work. Don’t do that. And I implemented that a lot quicker with number three than I did with number one, obviously
Carrie: From what you’ve seen in your experience is postpartum more common for first-time moms or not necessarily?
Julie: Not necessarily. I’d love to say, oh yes, if you have it once, then you’ll never have it again. But, or if you’ve never had it, you’ll never have it. That’s not true. I believe that there is a chemical that does get impacted very much so with every pregnancy, I explained it kind of my first pregnancy, I left feeling like something was just incomplete within me.
My second pregnancy. I literally felt like all my hormones went back into place. It was like the weirdest sensation. And it was actually the healthiest, I would think after that pregnancy. But I got pregnant really soon after that one. And then it was like, I was depressed pre-having this baby because it was so close.
It felt so soon. I wasn’t sure I could handle this. And then that impact. I feel like my depression. Well, no, actually it was anxiety that hit me after the third one. Depression was the first one, but then I had anxiety the third one. And so I think that that’s important to recognize too, is that you don’t always have to have depression.
I had depression and then I had anxiety at the last pregnancy and they can also look very different. I think the second one, I did have a lot more of what we’re gonna call the baby blues because it was, you know, a new baby. It was hard. She didn’t latch. She was so difficult in that way. It was like some of that.
Whereas with the third one, she was in NICU and that escalated my anxiety escalated some of my concerns in that aspect. So I think you really have to look at the circumstances around each pregnancy to understand sometimes which one somebody may perhaps have.
Carrie: That makes sense. Tell us briefly about postpartum anxiety.
Like, how does that typically show up for moms?
Julie: Anxiety is a worry and it’s a fear almost this is fear-based. And so postpartum anxiety is where for moms, it’s like, you’re deeply worried something’s gonna happen to the baby. And so many moms may not sleep at night because they’re constantly making sure the baby is.
Like nothing’s gonna happen or they are afraid to leave the baby with anybody because something could happen to them or the baby they’re even afraid of. Sometimes they’ll leave their house because what if something happened to them and the baby. And so it becomes a fear-driven base where you are so afraid that something terrible is going to happen, that you then try to protect it and hope that nothing does happen.
Anxiety really shows up that way, shows up more. If that fear and that worry about the incessant, worry about the future.
Carrie: I think that that’s a good distinction to make. And this, we have some listeners who also have O C D. So it’s important for people to realize too, that OCD latches on to things that are important to you.
And so you may have different themes come up, either when you’re pregnant or after you have your baby. And if you start to have, you know, obsessions about harming them, Those types of things, that may be part of your OCD that you might need to get help for. How did you handle that anxiety? I mean, obviously, you felt like, okay, you know, you wanted your baby to make it through the NICU and be okay at home.
I know, like for me, I didn’t realize how still babies can be when they’re sleeping. I know I definitely did a lot of like breathing checks and was a little worried about SIDS, not to an extreme level, but I definitely was like, is she still breathing? Like, oh my goodness. She’s been like, so still she has not moved.
Julie: Yeah. I think what helped me with the anxiety is that actually, this is the same doctor when my baby was in NICU. She came and found me and pulled me aside one day and she. It doesn’t feel like this is a good thing, right? She says, but you know, your baby’s gonna be fine. And she said, you did everything right during this pregnancy.
I was like, of course, she would say that because, you know, she’s the one that delivered this baby, but she’d been with me through two other pregnancies. This pregnancy was more challenging and she’s like, we did everything, right? This is not your fault, which I needed to hear from that professional. Yeah.
And then she told me, you know, that this baby will be right. Be okay in the ni. Your number one focus she said is to sleep. She said “I want you to heal because you’ve had, again, this traumatic experience of giving birth, I need you to heal and Trust NICU will take care of your baby.” And she said, “You will actually feel so much better”
And I really wish that we had more professionals like this doctor that actually were the ones that cared about us as patients. Not only to be able to say, yeah, this sucks. This is hard. This is not what you signed up for, but it will be okay. And here is what you need to do in the process. I did. I cried every single day when I had to leave the hospital, but my husband was so good cuz she also pulled my husband aside and said, you make sure she sleeps.
And so I would get home and that was my job was to just go sleep. He took care of the other two and he’s like, you just go take a nap. You just go to sleep and then we will get there as early as you need in the morning. And during the day I would have all the anxiety that’d be like are my other two.
Okay. And I lived an hour from the hospital as well. So it was like all those things compound. I just remember, as soon as I could bring her home, I was grateful that I’d had the rest because I knew mm-hmm it was like a blessing in disguise where I was able to get this rest where I could heal from giving birth.
And then I was able to bring this baby home and then I was able to know that she was okay and she could breathe. And it was fine. It was interesting though because she had one episode where I think like, I felt like she struggled. And that’s when my anxiety was like, came back in full force. And when I recognized it, I didn’t say, “Oh, Julie, just sweep it on, it’s fine.”
I allowed myself to say, of course, I’m anxious. Of course, this is difficult. And I allowed myself to say, it’s okay. And I cried. And I just, I allowed that. I think sometimes we are so used to just. Pushing through and being strong that you have to be okay to allow yourself to just cry, to allow yourself to feel that.
And there are, some other things that I did, if any of your listeners are familiar with tapping? I did a version of tapping for myself at that time. Okay. I also did some guided imagery just for my myself to kind of find my places that helped me. And those were things that helped a lot. And then it’s interesting.
So my baby isn’t such a baby anymore, cuz she’s seven. And I noticed that this summer my anxiety seemed to spike. It was like, I was worried about my kids, worried about something happening to them, worried like all of those. And it was interesting how I could recognize, of course I’m anxious because I’m worried and I love these children and it’s okay that I’m anxious about them and it’s okay that I then do something with it.
So I. Never ever tell yourself that my anxiety, my depression, my OCD is a problem is wrong. Like it hurts because it doesn’t it’s normal. It’s absolutely just a part. And it is okay to be anxious. It’s okay. To be depressed. It’s okay to have O C, D it’s okay. To tell yourself I have me. I’m alright. And then to be able to say, this is what I’m gonna do with it.
This is what this means. This is how I handle it. And what that may look like for you definitely is very different per person, but that’s, for me, that was the best thing you to be able to say. Of course, I’m anxious and it’s okay. That I’m this way as well.
Carrie: Yeah, it is. Okay. that you feel a certain way and so normal and so understandable.
A lot of times, like when we really look at the situation that we’re going through, it’s like, yeah, this makes sense. you know, that you’d feel that way. One question I like to ask people towards the end of the podcast is what would you say to your younger self who is going through postpartum depression, and postpartum anxiety?
Julie: I’d wanted to know that one, this was completely normal, even though we have those, you know, one in seven we’ll have postpartum about 50 to 75% will experience some sort of baby blues. So that’s definitely more than half. All of us will experience those feelings. Not only is that normal, but it’s also a sign that everything has gone.
Right. And I wish that I had told my younger self that even though the pregnancy felt like none of it went right. The delivery, none of it went right. Like nothing happened the way that it was supposed to happen. Everything went right. And that it was okay for me to take a step back. It was okay for me to not have to do it all.
It was okay for me to acknowledge that this could be somebody else’s response. Or something else somebody else could help me with. I didn’t have to do it all. And I think that would’ve been the advice I wish that I had gotten then. Yeah. Good.
Carrie: Thank you so much for sharing your personal story and your professional experience with postpartum depression, and anxiety.
I think this is hopefully gonna be a really helpful show for people.
Julie: Thank you. I love talking about this. So I’m hoping that this will help others as.
I really feel like this is one of those. You are not alone type episodes. And I love it. If you are struggling with postpartum depression or anxiety, please reach out and get the help that you need. Whether that’s medication therapy, support group, friends, spiritual counsel, whatever that is, just make sure that you reach out and get the help that you need. If you like this episode or found benefit from it, let us know. You can always contact us on hope for anxiety and ocd.com. There’s a contact form at the bottom of the front page of our website.
Thank you so much for listening. Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling.
Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 76. Today on the show, we’re gonna be talking about joy in the midst of trials. And our guest today is gonna be talking about his journey through a cancer diagnosis and treatment. This is John Bennett. He is a banker, author of the book, Build it right for business owners and a cancer survivor. John, welcome to the show.
John: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Carrie: I also should say, I feel like I inherited you as a friend when I married Steve, is that fair?
John: Yes. I think that’s very fair. Definitely.
Carrie: And I just appreciate you and your wife’s friendship and how you encouraged Steve before I even came along that God has somebody for you. And so it’s nice that we have people each in our lives that encouraged us and prayed for our future spouse. So I just think that that’s really sweet.
John: Definitely. It was an enjoyable part of a friendship, for sure.
Carrie: This is gonna be really interesting because I don’t know this part of your story. So I’m kind of learning along with the audience a little bit. Tell us about the process of getting diagnosed with cancer. What was that like for you?
John: Okay. About three and a half years ago, I was totally healthy. Never had any big health issues in my life and started having pain in my lower back. And we thought at first it was maybe. Needed a chiropractic adjustment, different things, check different things out. It kept getting worse. And obviously eventually it was diagnosed as cancer. It’s a blood cancer called multiple myeloma and it’s considered a terminal cancer. Although the treatments have come so far in the last few years that some doctors look at it as potentially a chronic disease and not terminal.
So, it’s still to be determined on that. But I went through a period of time after the diagnosis where I had to go through, started off with chemo. Went through four rounds of that. Actually I started with radiation. They radiated my spine to kill the cancer in my spine. And then I went through chemo and then I had to have three back surgeries because the cancer had gotten into my spine and one of my vertebrae had completely collapsed and another one had partially collapsed. So, they had to go in and fix that. And then I went through a stem cell transplant. And after that I had about 14 more rounds of chemo. So it was a pretty long process there for a while to move through the cancer.
Carrie: Wow! How long has it been?
John: It was three and a half years ago.
Carrie: Wow.
John: When I was originally diagnosed.
Carrie: That’s a long treatment process.
John: It was long. It built even more tenacity in me. Thankfully, I had a good bit of endurance and tenacity, but it certainly increased that. But yes, it was very much a long process.
Carrie: Going back to thinking about when you were first diagnosed and someone says you have this very serious cancer, we consider it to be a terminal cancer. How did you respond to that emotionally?
John: You know, I am a Christian and my faith in God is the rock of my life. I knew I had a choice initially with the diagnosis, so I could either surrender that to God and acknowledge that he was totally in control or I could panic. I could do one of two things. And so I chose to embrace it, which is maybe odd, but I chose to embrace it. And I thought for some reason, God has ordained me to have cancer. I didn’t get really depressed or down like a lot of people do. I chose a different route and the way I had to deal with it emotionally and spiritually was to realize that my time might be a lot more limited than I originally thought it would be.
I was planning on living to a ripe old age and had really tried to keep myself in good health. And I had to look at the very real possibility that the timeframe of life might be drastically different. I knew I would have to reprioritize a lot of things in my life. I knew that career aspirations might change dramatically. I knew that my body expectations of what I could do physically would probably have to be adjusted a lot. I would have to really adjust my expectations and accept my limitations. And yet, try to overcome as many of those as I could too. Cause I kind of wanted to look at it from a balance of I’m trusting God a hundred percent. And if he takes me out of this life with this cancer, I wanna be okay with that.
But it doesn’t mean I’m just gonna sit back and give up either I wanna work. I want to do everything. The doctors are telling me. I want to try to eat as healthy as I can. Exercise, definitely stay on all my medication, stay on top of all the testing, everything possible that could be done. That’s kind of how I looked at it. I guess I’d really just stepped back and looked at it as a challenge that God had put in my life. And I thought somehow he is going to use this in a great way. And I remember sending out an email to all of my coworkers just to let them know what was going on. I thought I would just make it. Really an open situation. So nobody felt weird about asking me or whatever, and I kind of described what was going on. And I remember in the email, I said, “I have no doubt that God is gonna make me a better person and a better leader through this”. And so I’m looking forward to the challenge and I intend to embrace it and, and roll with it.
So that made a huge difference. I think in the way that I was able to walk through the process and did I ever get down? I did have a couple of what I call gut punches in the process. We had a hard time getting me into remission. When I went through the stem cell transplant, I was not in a complete remission. That’s why we went through another 14 rounds of chemo after that, which was probably more than most people have to deal with. That have this cancer. Most people can get into a remission. The first time with less, we got to the point where I was talking to the two specialists I was working with and they were saying, “we may not be able to get you there. You may just be able to get to a partial remission”. And I said, “well, as long as I’m handling the chemo, let’s keep going until we’ve beat this thing as much as we can”. And then determined that I said, “I’m not ready to give up on that yet”. And by the grace of God, we got there, got me into complete stringent remission, which has been fabulous.
I’m glad I kept on, but there was, I would go in and I remember one time I went in and the levels had gone back up. After all this treatment, and that was a gut punch. It was like work so hard and I’m trusting God and I’m moving forward, but it’s going the other way. There were a couple of challenges there where things didn’t go as planned, but overall it was a pretty positive process and God was unbelievably faithful.
Before I forget this part, I’d say the biggest part of my treatment was having. I think, literally hundreds of people praying for me every time somebody would say, “Hey, can I put you on my prayer list for my church or my Sunday school class or life group or Bible study”. I’m like, please do just very, very open about that. And I know I had hundreds of people praying for me on a daily basis and a lot of ’em would text me. Your husband was one of them, Steve. And that I have no doubt.
God answered so many prayers. And he kept me up. As far as my spirit, my emotions, people ask me, you know, they always have to take you through some questionnaires when you get cancer and you have to meet with a counselor. And they said, “you know, are you down? Are you struggling with depression”? I said, “actually, I’m not. I feel great”. I really feel like this is what God has for me. And so I’m not gonna push back on it. I’m just gonna embrace it. I mean, it’s not what I would’ve chosen, obviously, but if this is his plan, I’m gonna trust him. I haven’t always trusted him. I wish I would have, but I thought this time I’m going to, I just said, “God, whatever you got, if you take me out early with this, or if I make it through, just let me be a witness and use me every way you can”.
Carrie: I wanna talk about that acceptance piece because even though you’re talking about a physical struggle, this is so vivid.
To our listeners who are struggling with anxiety and OCD. And I talk to people every day who say, “I don’t want the OCD label, or even, I don’t wanna have to be dealing with anxiety because I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be able to get out of this”. This may be somewhat of a lifelong struggle that I deal with.
Sometimes these can be chronic conditions. Sometimes they can wax and wane and get better, but sometimes people have to deal with them for a long time and they have a hard time. I think, accepting you use the words, God ordained me to have cancer. And I think a lot of our listeners would have a hard time saying, like, God ordained me to struggle with OCD or God ordained me to struggle with anxiety. Can you talk a little bit about like that acceptance piece, just in terms of God’s sovereignty and will over our lives.
John: Sure. I guess with anxiety and OCD it’s somewhat similar to cancer and you don’t always work toward getting that and you may try to stay away from that, but sometimes things in your life can happen and cause that some things that are out of our control, I’m sure there’s people that grew up in situations where it cause anxiety. And they’ve had a hard time shaking that. I don’t know what caused my cancer. I was a guy who exercised, kept my weight down, tried to eat healthy, tried to get enough sleep. I mean, all the things you would want to do. And I was laughing one day and I told my wife, I said, “well, I guess I need to start eating cheeseburgers with bacon all over it and smoking and whatever else I wanna do, because it doesn’t matter. Now I got cancer”.
Anyway, I guess what it showed me was I was definitely not in control. And I know we say that, but cancer kind of really. Puts the mirror up to your face and shows you you’re not in control and no matter what you do, God still is sovereign. And he may allow somebody to have cancer that did everything they could do to be healthy.
Just like I’m sure some people that may be listening. Think why do I have to struggle with anxiety? I’m a Christian, I’m got a prayer life. I’m trying to grow with God. I’m trying to do the right things. Some of those things are just unexplainable. I think, I knew that I couldn’t do anything to change it.
I remember talking to one of my oncologists and he said, “you know, I definitely want you to eat healthy. I want you to exercise and all that, but be assured that’s not gonna beat cancer”. That’s gonna help you to endure the treatments, but that’s not gonna fix what you’ve got. Just showed me how much I was reliant on guide through this whole process. And I guess when you realize you’re out of control, it’s maybe sometimes easier to relinquish that, what you think is control? Because it, I used to think I had certain control over certain things, I guess, in my life. And cancer just kind of wakes you up to showing you how vulnerable you are.
Carrie: You talked too, about accepting your limitations while also trying to overcome some of those. Was it hard for you? I imagine in the beginning, when you had to accept maybe that you couldn’t be as active as you were before, or as social as you were before, because you had to not be around people. Talk to us a little bit about what that is like striking that balance between accepting your limitations and trying to overcome ’em.
John: That’s a work in progress process. It’s something that I still work through each day. I, for instance, I like to exercise. I’ve always been the type of person that likes to get better at things. So I want to try to get a little bit in a little bit better shape or do a little bit more exercise. Well, I’ve had to learn that there is a kind of a point of no return for me with exercise. I can do it only so many days a week. I can do it only so many minutes. Or it’s not gonna really help me to get stronger or have more endurance. It’s gonna work the other way and pull me down. Fatigue is something that I have to deal with on a pretty regular basis, because I’m still on a low dose chemo treatment to try to keep the cancer at bay.
So I take that three weeks a month. And so that causes fatigue. So I have to really balance exercise with rest and I have to do, really moderation, which is not the easiest thing for me. I like to go full steam ahead. I’ve had to realize that less is more in that situation. I do need to be exercising. It’s very important. It helps me to deal with the treatments. It helps me with everything in my battle against cancer in my life. But if I push it too much, it will reverse. And then I’ll have several days to take to recover because it wears me down so much. So accepting that has been hard for me. But as I work through it more, if it gets easier every day, the social part is difficult with COVID. I’ve had to be very protected from being in large group from, with COVID the uptick right now in Nashville, where I live having to be extra cautious with wearing a mask and just really being careful because of my immune system, my weakened immune system, even though I’ve been vaccinated, the doctors don’t know how well I would handle COVID at this point, I’m a person who likes to go to events and be around a lot of people interact with a lot of people.
I’ve had to be a lot more choosy, with what I do. And just, I’ve had to say no to just countless opportunities for things like a, a big event or a concert or a ball game or things that I would love to go to. But I just have to say “no” and go to the things that I can. So I’m much more limited than I was. But when you, for a while, after you do a stem cell transplant, you can’t be around anybody. And so when you look at that, and this may be a key too, to the whole process, When you get to that stage, you learn to praise God for the times you can get out. I focus on that. I think this is awesome. I can actually go to an early lunch and sit in a corner booth and things that I can do that I couldn’t do there for a while. I get excited about that rather than get down about. I can’t go to a concert or whatever.
Carrie: How has cancer been a blessing in your life? I think the joy piece of finding joy in the midst of your trial.
John: I tell you the joy has been overwhelming with it. That’s cancer has been a gift to me. It has helped me to see even closer the finality of my life, that I finite time on this earth. It’s made every interaction, a little more sweet, a little more important. Every friendship, every family relationship, it has helped to focus me even more on growing with the Lord, because I see that when I pass away, it’s gonna be my relationship with God. And those that I love, that’s really gonna matter. Things like career and success and money and pursuit of fame or affirmation, all those kind of things are a lot less important to me now because I see how fleeting they are at this point. And I think I’ve grown a lot wiser.
People have told me that cancer ages you about 20 years and they were talking about physically. And I think it does sometimes age you physically that much, but I think it also ages you in, or it can age you in wisdom. That much too. And not that I’ve grown 20 years in wisdom, but I’ve definitely grown some because it just really puts things in a different perspective. And I think there have been times when I’ve tried to overdo or do too many things because I wanted to hit check all the boxes and hit all the options. And it’s really helped me to dial down and prioritize. And it’s so much easier for me to say no to good opportunities now, because I’ll say, “that’d be great. I’d love that.
But you know what? I would rather do this, or this is more important than the other”. And it really has been a blessing in that way too, to prioritize life more. And when you have limited energy and you have limited possibly time on earth and all those kind of things. It really dials it down so that you prioritize. And I think in so many ways, it’s such a blessing that I got cancer because I could have gotten killed in a car wreck, driving home from work three years ago, if that had happened. And that was God’s will, then that would’ve been what was best. But if that had happened, I would not have had the opportunity to work through learning these priorities and having this time to realize that my life may every away quicker than I wanted it. But I’ve got time to make some adjustments, which to me is a great gift.
Carrie: I’m curious, was there anybody, like in your reflection about your life, was there anybody that you really recognize? I need to forgive this person or I need to seek forgiveness from this person.
John: I have tried to always stay on top of forgiveness cause I knew that could make me better and all I’ll tell you what it has really accentuated is to, let go of any conflict or things that were trivial that may have caused some challenges. I have a blended family, so I have some interactions with some family members that I think, it wasn’t everything I wish it had been. There was some, I guess friction is probably the best way to describe it there. And I think I have embraced them more than I did. And I’ve just realized. Those differences don’t really matter. And I’ve been able to, reach out and love them more because God has given me that strength to do that and maybe judge them less and love them more and to let any friction in the past go.
So it is for forgiveness in that way, just forgiving on a regular basis and seeing that, I guess this acceptance too, is seeing that everybody that’s in your life. Is there for a reason, even if they, you have some challenges with them, if you have some challenges with family members or friends or people at church they’re in your life for a reason that too, I think is part of submission to God’s sovereignty and saying, “I don’t really understand why these challenges are here or why”. It’s so difficult sometimes to deal with that person, but there’s something you’re teaching me or there’s something you’ve got for me to be some way a blessing to these people. And so I’m gonna embrace that. And I tell you this, embracing this kind of, it gives you such a positive force to go forward with. Whereas resistance can really eat your energy up. And when you have limited energy, it does train you to say let’s don’t cause a lot of extra resistance to see how much we can embrace this. So we can go further with energy that we do have. I think that’s been a real growth point for me.
Carrie: That resistance is something that I see a lot for people in therapy that are dealing, they’re trying to resist. What’s actually going on instead of grieving it. I think sometimes we have to grieve losses of whether it’s losses of time or opportunities or things that we’re not able to do anymore that we used to be able to, but then getting to that place of acceptance of, okay, God, this is where I’m at right now. This is what I’m dealing with in this season. And so how can you use me? How do you wanna use me in this season of my life? Talk with us about your prayer life.
John: Okay. That has been probably the best thing of this whole process. I always wanna have a better and better prayer life. I wanted to spend more time with God every morning before I started my day.
And I would do that to some extent before, but now it is set in stone and it’s nothing happens for me before I spend my time with God. He is, I really believe in that Matthew 6: 33 seek ye first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. So I made a commitment. That I’m gonna get up every morning. And before I do anything else before I speak to anybody or do anything, I’m gonna go and spend a good bit of time and prayer with the Lord. And just in his word that has helped me, has steadied me through this whole process. And what has grown out of this is a I really fairly early on, I moved from a point of praying and asking God to help me with this struggle.
To where he gave me a passion to start praying for other people that were struggling, whether it was with a terminal illness or it was with a health issue or a loss of job or whatever the challenge may be. And I feel like he’s developed me into somewhat of a prayer warrior for other people. And I love to find out about people’s struggles in my church or in my sphere of influence so that I can pray for them specifically on a very regular basis and keep up with them and encourage them. And I’ve certainly become just a magnet drawn to people that are diagnosed with cancer for obvious reasons. Because I know a lot of what they’re dealing with and I wanna pray for them on a regular basis, pray for their health, pray for their walk with the Lord, or if they don’t know God that they would come to know him and also be an encourager.
I try to call and check up on them on a regular basis. You know, I know they’re having a test coming up or they’re having chemo for three weeks or whatever. I’ll put that on my calendar and then I’ll follow up with them and just check on ’em because I know how important that is and how much that means. Having gone through it. God’s given me a ministry that I never had before. And I, I don’t know anybody that’s listening that probably would wanna say, “gosh, I wanna go sign up for a cancer ministry. I wanna get cancer so I can help other people with it”. But when you’re chosen, you roll with it. And I do believe that God knows what’s best.
I know. It’s really ironic, but I’ve got more joy in my life right now than I have ever had in my life. And I attribute so much of that to what God has done through giving me cancer. And my cancer is very up in the air. It’s still considered a terminal cancer. There’s not a quote cure for it at this point, but there’s a lot of good treatments. And I might have a few years left or I might live to be 85. They don’t really know. It normally comes back in about 80 to 90% of the cases. So there’s a really high chance that I’ll have to fight it again and again, and that eventually it’ll probably take me out. We don’t know when that is. So I think in a way maybe God gave me that type of cancer so that I don’t think, well I’m curative cancer. And I can just forget all these things that I’ve learned.
I think he knows that I need probably that encouragement. And that accountability of knowing that this battle is far from over so that I can continue to keep my focus on him. And I think he allows certain things to happen in our lives, because he knows that we need it. I mean, I didn’t have the discipline to spend the time in prayer with him that I spend now. I didn’t have the focus I needed. And I think really cancer may have been the only way he could get me there. And I’m still growing up. I’m not there yet, but he knows what we specifically need. So I would encourage people if you’ve got a struggle, try to embrace that. And again, not make excuses for it. You still try to overcome it as best you can, but you also realize you’re limitations as a human being and you embrace that. Maybe God could use my anxiety because there is a ton of people out there struggling with that.
Carrie: Wow.
John: So if I can be real about it, maybe that helps somebody else. And that’s kind of what cancer has been for me. And a lot of people have said, “is it okay if I ask you about your cancer or is it okay if I tell so”? And so I’m like, “yes, I’m not, I don’t have the least bit of hesitation about it”. I, for some reason, this is a ministry God’s call me to, so, I don’t want to cover it up. I want to allow him use it any way he wants to.
Carrie: That’s awesome. I mean, I think that’s really great. I would imagine that many people in your situation might feel very anxious when you go back and have scans or tests or things done, just knowing that that’s kind of looming in the background and could come back. Is that just something that you’ve. Another piece of the acceptance for you.
John: Probably with any type of cancer and in particular with the cancer, I have you kind of do you have to look over your shoulder on a regular basis cause you know, it might be coming back and I have to get blood work every single month to see am I still clear and clean there? And so it’s always a celebration when I get that, but you just can’t focus too much on that either. And I, one thing I decided was cancer. Although this is a ministry God’s given me. It’s only a part of my life. There’s a lot of other parts and I refuse to let cancer be who John Bennett is. God’s put that in my life, but so many other, I’m a father, I’m a husband. I’m Christian, I’m a banker. I got hobbies. So many things that I’ve. That are part of me. I think when you have cancer or if you’ve got anxiety or whatever it is that you’re working with, and you’re challenged with, you gotta be careful not to let that become everything to. You know that it’s a part of life.
I don’t sit around and talk about cancer all the time. I don’t bring that up in conversations with people if they know about it, or if I can share an encouragement, encouraging word, because of that, I’ll do it. But there’s a lot of people that know me that don’t even know I have cancer because it’s not everything.
It’s a part of me. And it comes out when it needs to, but I’m more than just a sick person with cancer. And thank God. My health is good right now. I think you have to be careful there. You have to realize that yes, it can. Cancer can come back and take you out pretty quickly. But at the same time, you don’t wanna focus on that or you don’t really have a life, focus so much on your limitations. Then the time that you do have, will be wasted instead of used for the glory of God and for blessing other people.
Carrie: I think that’s so huge just in terms of not identifying solely with your diagnosis, but really identifying yourself as a whole person and spiritually as a child of God, that is, should be our main identity.
That’s huge too.
John: Right. And it is all relative too. I mean, when you look at the age you are, or whatever happens to you. I’ve had a couple of friends, one that got killed in his twenties. And so if I die early of cancer, compared to my friend, I’ve had a really long life, I think too, it’s learning to praise God for your blessings. And I remember going to in, when I first started getting chemo and I had really prayed a lot about this, and I was talking to one of the nurses and I said, “I’m gonna be the most excited cancer patient you’ve ever had”. I said, “I’m coming in here and I’m glad to get this chemo. And I appreciate you guys doing this”. And she said, “Okay, you gotta be joking”. I said, “actually, I’m really not”. I said, “you’re helping to kill my cancer. And so I’m excited about that”. And she said, “well, you’re the first person that’s ever thanked me for giving chemo”. And I said, “well, I’m gonna enjoy this process”. And I said, “that may sound stupid or crazy, but I am not gonna come in here with my head down”. Gosh, I’ve gotta get chemo again. I’m worried about, gosh, what’s gonna happen to me. I wanna come in here and live. And I’m gonna have fun and I’m gonna enjoy it and I’m gonna make the most of it. And not that it’s all pleasant, cause going through some of those things I can tell you, there was a lot of pain.
I got cut on so many times. It’s not funny. I’ve got so many drugs that have gone into my body to try to kill this cancer. It’s overwhelming. I don’t mean to make light of it. But, I was determined. I was gonna find the good in it and praise God for it. And I’ll tell you, that’s made a huge difference. And I was just, I’d seen other cancer patients in particular that got so down and they were discouraging it themselves and everybody else. And I thought, I’m not doing that by the grace of God. I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna come in here and I’m gonna make the most of this. And whether my time is long or short, I wanna live it to the fullest.
I think that’s what God wants us to do. And we all have struggles. I remember when my Sunday school class or some people call it life group, when they first found out, I told ’em about the cancer diagnosis and it was pretty grim in there. And people were really upset and they prayed for me as a group, which was awesome. And I said, “well, let me just say this”. I said, “everybody in here has got struggles. Some of you have a wayward child. Some of you are having struggles in your marriage. Some of you just lost a job. Some of you got financial difficulties, some of you have other health issues. Some of you are depressed. I’m not the only one in here that has a challenge. So don’t worry about me and don’t focus just on me”. That’s all realize that we’ve all got these things that are challenging. And my cancer is not any more important than your problem in your marriage.
Whatever it is that you’re challenged with.
I don’t wanna be singled out and people to feel sorry for me either. Cause I mean, some other struggles that people have are a lot worse than what I have. I think it’s important too, with whatever you’re dealing with to not get on the pity party and not think that, gosh, I’ve just got it so hard. I mean, I think I’m so blessed honestly. And I think we all have to just really focus on that. That to me, that seems, like the antidote for depression is praising God. And thanking God for what you do have. And if you look hard enough, you can find a lot of blessings. I don’t care what’s going on in your life. I have certainly seen that. Just what I’ve been through in the last three and a half years.
Carrie: Absolutely. There’s a verse in James about every good and perfect gift is from the father. And that helped me so much through my divorce that it, it caused me really to look at the good things that were in my life and recognize that they were there, cause God put ’em there. And that like you were saying, I could be thankful. And that helped me through that process become a more thankful person, I think, instead of just focusing on the negative and the hurt and the pain that I was going through at that time, that helped a lot. But if you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self who was just getting diagnosed? Which I guess you do this, because you talk to people who have just been diagnosed with cancer. What do you tell them?
John: Real good question. The number one thing is focus on your relationship with God. Trust him and move toward, trusting him more and find out how does he want to use this in your life and ask him for the strength every day to go through?
Because he certainly gave me that cancer is not easy and there’s some suffering that goes on and there is. I guess some uncertainty for sure about what your life’s gonna look like and how long it’s gonna last, what all are you gonna have to go through and all of that kind of things, but really it’s just, it’s putting your focus on Christ. I think that is the key. If somebody’s not a Christian, that’s my first suggestion to them is that they seriously consider a relationship with Jesus Christ. If they are that work to grow closer with him and spend more time with him. Let him use this process. And I guess be flexible. We were talking about, being willing to embrace what he’s brought.
I remember when I, after I had my stem cell transplant, it was a time where, as somebody told me before I had this, they said, “you’re gonna get what we call death bed sick”. And I understand what that means now because they take your immune system, literally down to zero for a few days. It’s very difficult. When I went through that, I was actually nauseous 24 hours a day for 30 days in a row. And I didn’t want anything to eat. Anytime. Every time we had meal time, I just hated it. I didn’t want anybody to bring anything in, but obviously I had to get food to continue to live through this. The funny thing in, in the hospital, I got to where the one thing I could eat was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And that was the only thing I could eat that I even halfway enjoyed. And so they laughed because they would just fix me a peanut butter jelly sandwich for every meal.
Once I was in there for a while, because the other stuff was just so disgusting to me. And not that peanut butter jelly was amazing, but I could eat it. And I could said halfway enjoy it. And I guess that maybe goes back to, as a kid, I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
So, I ate those and went through that process. But when I got through all the treatment, I was in the treatment room as we called it or treatment lab for my last time with the stem cell transplant. And then I would be moved out of that and go back to my reg oncologist. I remember looking back and I looked at the people that were laying there on the beds, that where I had been a lot of them, where I was, where I was down to nothing almost as far as strength and energy and, and immune system and, and everything.
I remember, it just felt like God was telling me. Don’t you ever forget where you were and don’t ever forget to praise me and don’t ever forget what I took you through and how I want to use you to encourage other people. Because now that you’ve come through that, remember how low you were. I mean, physically I was as low as you can get without dying. I remember just getting up to go to the bathroom in my hospital room, which was obviously right there beside the bed. It was exhausting. I mean, I was literally exhausted after I got up and walked to the bathroom, which was like, I don’t know, four or five steps going through that. I just felt like God was turn around and look one more time and look at those people and don’t ever forget it, whatever challenges I may have in life.
If I look back at that, everything looks pretty good. And I think if you can look back at what God has brought you through and not forget about that, it helps you to see. How blessed you are now, even with the challenges that you may have, how much better off you are and how good he has been to you. And you know, at that point, when I was walking through all that, I never knew I would get to the point I’m at now where, I mean, I’m feeling great. I just have to deal with fatigue. I’ve been able by the grace of God, I’ve been able to continue to work full time, which a lot of people have not been able to do that with this cancer. I’ve just been really, really blessed, but I look back and I know what it’s like though, to be knocked all the way down on the ground, where you are laid out flat.
I think looking back at those times and realizing that God was with me every single day that I was going through that there was a time when I really wondered, am I ever gonna get to where I can eat food again? I mean, after 20 something days of being nauseous, you know, I didn’t know that it was gonna end after 30 days, but I really thought, I don’t know if this is ever gonna change. And the doctors couldn’t tell me when or what was gonna happen. Cause I took an enormous amount of chemo to go through the stem cell transplant. And it just really upended my whole body.
That was one of those things where I didn’t know how it was gonna turn out or if it was gonna turn in a good way anytime soon.
But through that though, I see that God was there every day. I can look back at people that prayed for me. I can look back at people that encourage me. I can look back at things that I read, just so many things. Every day he gave me just what I needed to get through that day. He’s been so incredibly faithful. And I guess those 30 days were times when he carried me as the footprints and the sandpoint talks about. I can look back and see that. He carried me through that, cause I had absolutely nothing to give at that point yet he brought me through that. So he can do that for everybody else’s listening today.
Carrie: This has really been a great interview and I think so, relevant to people and encouraging, not just for people with cancer, but people who are going through any struggle really in their life right now. Thank you for sharing your story.
John: Thank you. What’s been an honor. And I hope that something, I said, blesses somebody and encourages somebody because I definitely know if you have God in your life, there is no reason to give up.
He is too strong and he’s too powerful. He’s too faithful. And he loves us too much. Whatever is knocked somebody down. Our God is a resurrecting God. He can resurrect the dead. He can sure resurrect our lives. And he’s done that with me, with my cancer. And he can do that for somebody emotionally or physically or whatever they’re going through. I just give him all the glory because he deserves it. And it’s been a real honor to be on the program.
Carrie: As I was coming back from maternity leave, I really needed to get some interviews done. And one day, Steve and I were just kind of going back and forth about different episode topics and things. And he said, “well, you know, you should interview John”. I’m really glad that he made that recommendation because I love how this interview turned out. If you ever want to support our show, you can do so. By going to Patreon, we’re also on by me a coffee for one time donations as always, you can find us anytime on Hope for Anxiety and OCD.com. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee, opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 75. Today on the show, I’m very excited to bring an interview with Jennifer Tucker, author of Breath as Prayer. She will share with us her discovery of this practice of breath prayers and how those helped her get through a challenging situation in her own life. So here is the interview.
Carrie: Jennifer, talk with us about your story of dealing with anxiety and depression.
Jennifer: Sure. So, my story of dealing with anxiety and depression is a whole lot of not dealing with my anxiety and depression. I think for a very long time, I wouldn’t even admit that I struggled as much as I did with anxiety and depression. I grew up feeling like anxiety was almost like a sin. It isn’t good. If you’re anxious, ’cause the Bible says, “Be anxious for nothing, do not worry about anything.” So that was crammed in my head so much. And so when I would struggle with feelings of anxiety or feelings of depression. I would really be filled with a lot of shame about that.
I tried to hide it. I tried to mask it for a very long, and I didn’t even realize what I was doing. I don’t think at the time, especially as a teenager or young adult, I really didn’t know that’s what I was doing with my anxiety. I came out a lot as. It is masked as perfectionism, overworking, and extreme people-pleasing. I felt like I needed to control every little piece of my life in order to keep those feelings of anxiety at that day. And then when things, of course, wouldn’t go my way or things weren’t quite perfect. Then, my anxiety would flare up, and I’d have a tough time emotionally. I just felt like I was just an emotional person.
Why do I feel this way? Why do I struggle so much? I’ve always leaned more toward a bit of melancholy, kind of just—more that way. Just my natural tendency is that way. Regarding the depression side, I did not recognize my depression for what it was: the symptoms. I didn’t want to have it, so I masked and hit it a lot. It wasn’t until my youngest daughter, when she was 13, started having very severe panic attacks, and that’s what sent us. Head first into the world of mental health and trying to help her through her severe anxiety disorder and panic disorder. I had to get real honest with myself and my own anxiety and my own struggles with my own mental health.
I’ve learned a ton in the last four years since we’ve been on this journey with her. Much of the work has been working on myself and addressing my anxiety and depression. I see a therapist regularly. I take antidepressants. And I love Jesus with all my heart when those things are not contradictory. I’ve come a long way. My whole idea of mental health has totally flipped and shifted since working with my daughter through all of her struggles and identifying and being honest with myself and with God about my own.
Carrie: I think your story is so relatable to many of our listeners who grew up with that church idea of, okay, well, the Bible says, “be anxious for nothing or don’t be anxious.” Don’t be afraid. And we take that the wrong way. We take it kind of like a directive, like a command, like do not almost like it’s next to do not murder, do not murder, do not be anxious, but really it’s more, I see it as comfort as God sharing with us. I have everything in control. It’s going to be okay. Right?
I don’t want you to have to worry about that. Just like I would comfort my daughter if she cries, it’s okay. I’d tell her everything’s fine. And God does that with us through scripture. It’s just that we don’t have a tone connected to the Bible. And so whatever tone gets laid on by spiritual leaders and others is the tone we take from it—many times. I like what you said about masking your anxiety as other things, such as perfectionism, as the person who’s the high achiever, the go-getter. That’s always moving, always going, the people pleasing. Often, people don’t recognize anxiety symptoms because they are so high functioning.
One of my friends was talking to me about this today, who’s also a counselor, and she said, “You know, so many people deal with high-functioning anxiety. And they don’t even realize it”. And she said, “People don’t think that I’m anxious, but there are times when I’m anxious because I look so high functioning, I look like I’ve got my ducks in a row and I have things together.” So maybe that’s a cue for some people who are listening right now. Perhaps they think they’re listening for somebody else. And they might realize, ” Hey, I have some of those things too.
Jennifer: Absolutely. I think for many years, I kept myself so busy that I didn’t have time to pay attention to what was happening. It wasn’t until I had to slow down that I could identify and recognize those symptoms for what they were when I took away all those masks. I had to quit my job, my full-time job, and stay home. Well, then, I didn’t have that job to keep me busy and distracted anymore. And so I was left with myself in a lot of ways. And so, that forced me to pay attention to what was happening. And that’s what breath prayers that we’ll talk about later have helped me, too: to slow down and pay attention. And I think that’s been vital for me. Unfortunately, I had to do it. I didn’t choose to do it. I had to do it through circumstances, but I’m so grateful looking back for that.
Carrie: And I love that you and other people we’ve talked to are trying to de-stigmatize going to therapy and taking medication as a Christian like it’s okay. For you to struggle with some of these things, it’s okay to reach out for help, whether that’s medical help or professional counseling help. So, I appreciate you sharing that with our audience. You can love Jesus, have a therapist, and take medication.
Jennifer: Absolutely. Because I mean, a lot of this is tied to our brain and how we function, and your brain is an organ, just like any other organ in your body. And that’s one thing I’ve learned through working with my daughter, too. I mean, this is as much a medical issue as it is. Mental health is physical health. It is your health.
Carrie: Yes.
Jennifer: And so treating that there are so many different factors and things. And so one of those could be needing professional medical health professional, psychiatric help. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just like going to a specialist for kidney disease or a specialist; if you have a heart issue, you go to a cardiologist. We need to recognize that the brain is so complicated and there are so many factors. Yes. There are environmental factors and far thought patterns and things that matter, too. Still, it could very much be a physical issue with the brain and those connections there and those, so identifying that and recognizing that and design-stigmatizing that, I think, is critical because it’s not a sin to struggle.
We’re all; we live in a fallen world in broken bodies. They’re going to fail us in one way or another. And that’s just that we all deal with something different. But mental health is, unfortunately, I think, where it intersects with faith. We often feel very isolated and alone, and we don’t know how to talk about it in relation to our faith. And I think a lot of times it’s not talked about enough, and it’s not. And there’s that’s where, like, the shame, and that’s what I lived with for years; I had so much shame piled on me because of my struggles. And God doesn’t want us to live that way. And like you said, when he says, “Do not fear, or don’t be anxious,” it’s not a command. I saw it as a command for so long. But it wasn’t until my daughter was struggling. She’d come to me, terrified and afraid. I didn’t get mad or yell at her for being scared. I wrapped her in my arms, and I reminded her. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here. You’re not alone. You’re safe. And that’s what God’s doing in the Bible. He’s telling us you’re not alone. I’m here with you. You’re safe. You don’t have to be afraid. And that’s the thing that’s shifted everything for me is realizing that difference there, turning how I perceived how the Bible talked about anxiety.
Carrie: In this process of getting your daughter some help and then recognizing your anxiety working through that physically, emotionally, and spiritually, you came across breath prayers, right? So, tell us a little bit about that.
Jennifer: Sure. Yes, this was in the middle of it; it was probably two years ago or so. One of the very first things my daughter’s psychiatrist and her therapist worked with her on, and incidentally, the first thing her psychiatrist told her was breathing is the bridge between the brain and the body.
And so, the breathing exercises were one of the first things they started practicing with her to help her manage her anxiety. I had never realized that before now, different breathing exercises don’t necessarily work for everyone; for my daughter in particular, when she focuses on her breathing, it makes her more anxious and conspires with her into panic. And so this isn’t something that works for absolutely everybody.
So, she’s had to find other techniques for her, but breathing exercises help me greatly in researching. What are different things that can help her? What are strategies that both she and I can use? How can we learn to manage this anxiety? I did. I completely stumbled upon breath and prayers in a blog post online that someone I wrote, and I had never heard of before. It’s not common, at least not in my faith tradition. I had not heard about it very much. But it captivated me from the get-go because it incorporates and ties into your breath, which I already knew was significant in helping me manage my anxiety.
But it brought in the other element of connecting to God through prayer and focusing on his word. And so, when I learned about them, I scribbled down a few of them and even wrote a blog post about them. It was so helpful to me, and I just thought they were a great way to pray when you’re anxious because they are so short that it doesn’t require a lot of because when you’re anxious. A lot of it’s really when you’re anxious. I know for me, it’s hard to think, and it’s hard to process because you get so lost in the worries and the thoughts and the overwhelming feeling just of the anxiety.
Breath prayers give you the words to pray when you don’t have those words to pray or when you’re feeling anxious in particular. And so that had helped me to give me words to pray when I was like, I don’t know, I don’t even know what to say. What do I say? But it wasn’t until last year that my daughter was hospitalized; she was admitted to the hospital last February. That night, I was just such a hard night because we were facing a new battle, and it was going to be, I didn’t know, would happen because she was very, very sick. And I was terrified, and I lay down on the, she fell asleep. It was like 2:00 a.m. in her hospital room. I laid down on this vinyl couch, and I was just overwhelmed with anxiety, fear, and worry. I was terrified; I didn’t know how the following days would go, let alone the next few months ahead. And I felt like in the last three years before that, I had prayed everything.
I knew to pray for healing, strength, and all these things that didn’t happen. And I was like, I’ve said all the words I know to say, God, I don’t have any more words to pray. And at that moment, a breath prayer came to my mind that I had written down months before and was from Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd. I have all I need”. And that’s the only thing I could think of when I had trouble catching my breath. I was crying. I was just so overwhelmed. But I remember those breath prayers, and I started just inhaling slowly. The Lord is my shepherd, and then exhaling. I have all that I need, and then I make myself slow down my breathing and focus on just those words. And that’s when I think breath prayer became significant to me because at that moment, as I focused on where I mean, I was in this hospital room. My daughter was so sick. I didn’t know what would happen, but I’m focusing on the Lord is my shepherd, and I’m a sheep, and he loves me, and he’s here. He’s present with me, and I have all that I need.
I have him. It doesn’t matter what’s to come. I have God; I have Christ. I have all that I need. It’s going to be okay. And I can’t explain the piece that I had at that moment. As I slowed my breathing, my anxiety eased, and I was able to fall asleep. That’s not to say my anxiety went away. Because the next day, I was anxious again. The doctors came in, and different things happened, but I found myself in those next few weeks as we were in the hospital, I’d walk the halls and breathe slowly and pray those, that one breath prayer. I think I just prayed that one mostly repeatedly, but it became my lifeline during those days. It became a prayer. I could pray when I was overwhelmed and didn’t have words. And ever since then, it has been a part of my regular prayer life. It’s not the only prayers I pray, but it’s become a significant way for me to slow down and be very intentional about trusting God and leaning into him when I’m anxious.
Carrie: Wow! That’s really powerful. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about this, and I hate to go too deep here, but when we think about it, the Holy Spirit lives inside of us. And I always just wonder about that. Yes. That’s like the Holy Spirit is somehow connected with our spirit as a person, that we’re spiritual beings. And I always wonder about the Holy Spirit’s interaction with our body. Because it says that we’re a temple of the Holy Spirit. So, I’m just curious if like breath is almost a way for us to connect. I don’t know if it is or not. This is not coming from scripture. It’s just coming from Carrie’s musings. But I wonder if in those moments, like when we slow down, and we breathe, and we pray if, that’s a way for us to just tap into the Holy Spirit that’s already inside of us, and we forget. That God’s that close. You know what I’m saying?
Jennifer: Absolutely.
Carrie: God’s already here.
Jennifer: He’s as close as our breath. I mean, man, he created man. That’s what created life. His breath brought Adam to life and gave him the soul created through God’s breath. And so our breath every day, every breath we take. It is a gift from him. He is giving us life. And he’s the one who sustains our life. And I agree. The Holy Spirit’s in us, working in us; the Bible says he’s transforming us through the renewing of our minds. And I believe that these are ways he does renew our mind and brain. And there’s science to back this up; science and faith are not contradictory. No, no. We act like they are like, no science, but no, the science is only proving what God’s already said. And he has made our body and created our body in such a complex way. And our brain literally can create new pathways in our brain.
As we retrain our brain to, for example, breathe, prayer is one way I have changed how I respond to my anxiety. So, instead of immediately spiraling into panic, I can immediately turn to Christ. Breathe in deep. Remind myself of a truth from his word. And if I do that over and over and over again if I repeat it, it’s just like with any habit or any rhythm we create in our life; you’re rewiring your brain. God’s transforming us by renewing our minds by shifting how we think and shifting how we respond to things. But it takes intentional work, and that’s breath; prayers aren’t hard. They’re super easy, but it does take intentionality to slow down. Stop. And do it just for a few minutes. It doesn’t take long, but it can significantly impact how we think and process our anxiety because we’re rewiring our brains. It’s fascinating.
I’m not a scientist; I’m not a doctor. I don’t claim to be an expert in any way, but I have researched, and it is more and more fascinating how God has created our bodies and even the act of breathing. It’s the one body process that we have control of. We can control whether we’re breathing rapidly and fast, or we can slow our breathing. But we can do that. By slowing our breathing, we connect to our parasympathetic nervous system, which tells our brain the whole process of how our body handles anxiety. It’s how God created us. And it’s okay. It’s not bad, especially if you’re going for a hike and you, a bear, come in your path; you’ll be thankful you have anxiety.
Carrie: Right.
Jennifer: Because your body is going to be the gear. That sympathetic nervous system kicks in, your amygdala takes over, and you will act and respond to that threat. That fear that’ll help you hopefully keep you safe because you’ll be able to respond to that. But many times, because of the fall, our brains aren’t always connected the way God originally intended, and our bodies don’t always process stimuli as we’re supposed to. Sometimes, the sympathetic nervous system will get riled up over something that isn’t a threat to us, and we’ll get anxious and worried. And so one way we can calm the amygdala down and calm the sympathetic nervous system down is through deep breathing because our breath connects to the vagus nerve, which connects to all of our organs, our major organs in our body. And so by slowing our breath, we’re telling our brain we’re okay, we’re not in danger here. Then, the brain can send signals to the heart, which slows down as our breathing slows down. And you really, you do feel calmer.
It’s a physiological thing that happens in our bodies and how God made us. And through the breath, we can do that. And when we connect, that’s the physical side of it. But then, when we connect prayer to that, we’re, at the same time, turning our thoughts to Christ, to his truth, to replace. Whatever those worries are, whatever those fears are, with some truth from his word, then we are connecting our mind, body, and soul all at once to Christ. And to me, that’s what makes the breath prayer so powerful. Cause there’s lots of breathwork. There are lots of different breath-breathing exercises you can do. And they are very helpful, and there are tons of scientific studies around that. But I also believe there’s just a significant power in prayer. Combining the two. To me, breath prayer is a powerful tool to manage my anxiety.
Carrie: I love that. I thought it would be cool if you could write a book. Do you put several of these prayers into a book? Breathe as prayer, calm your anxiety, focus your mind, and renew your soul. And I thought it would be cool to give people a little taste of one of those you put in there and maybe lead us through life, like one of those exercises.
Jennifer: Sure, I’ll do my best. Breath prayers are just two lines long. Usually, I, there are.
Carrie: Okay.
Jennifer: There are a few breath prayers in my book in four lines where you inhale and exhale twice to get through it. But most of them are just two lines. You inhale on the first line, inhale slowly as you pray the first line, and exhale slowly as you pray. The second line of the prayer. All my breath prayers in my book are rooted in scripture. They’re all coming from the word of God. I’ve taken verses and made them into prayers, just short little prayers.
So that way, we’re focused on the truth. And it’s from the word of God. Although you can pray, any prayers that you want are breath prayers. But one that I particularly like. It comes from Psalm 55: 22, which says, “Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you”. And so the breath prayer I wrote with that one says, “I give my burdens to you.” Cause I’m talking to God. I give my burdens to you. You will take care of me”. When you pray a breath prayer, the idea is to breathe in slowly and exhale slowly. And one, we typically breathe in through our nose and out through our mouth. And I like to remember that by smelling the flowers and blowing out the candles. It’s a common phrase that’s used with breathwork.
So you pretend that you’re smelling the flowers slowly and then slowly blowing out all the candles on that cake as you exhale fully. There are lots of different patterns and rhythms to breathing that you can do. But my favorite is to inhale for five seconds and then exhale for five seconds. I’ll try to lead you in that by just saying inhale because I can’t talk as I inhale. So I’ll say inhale and then read the first line.
Carrie: Okay.
Jennifer: Then I’ll say exhale and read the second line as you slowly exhale. And then we’ll repeat that just a couple of times.
Carrie: That sounds good.
Jennifer: And that’ll be it. Okay. Inhale slowly. I give my burdens to you. And exhale; you will take care of me. Inhale again. I give my burdens to you. Exhale. You will take care of me, and we’ll do it again. Inhale slowly. I give my burdens to you. And exhale, you will take care of me, and that’s as simple as it is. And you can repeat it as many times as you want. I typically try to pray them for at least three to five minutes. But you can start with just one minute; repeat it a few times. And you’ll find that just as your prayer aligns with the rhythm of your breath and you’re slowing down and focusing your mind on these words; it does help to calm your feelings of anxiety.
Carrie: I like this because it’s short and you could use it anywhere you can use it in the grocery store. You can use it in the car if you start to feel anxious. If you’re driving home, you don’t even have to close your eyes. You can breathe.
Jennifer: Absolutely.
Carrie: Breathe in and out. You can use this before going into an important meeting, say that you have for work or school. There are so many applications, I think. And I think you could even use this at the beginning or end of a longer prayer time where you’re giving your burdens to the Lord. And then all of a sudden, it brings up like, okay, well, these are some things that are on my mind that I’m thinking about that I want to talk to God about more in-depth or more fully.
I think we make prayer so much more complicated really than it has to be. Right? We believe it has to be a specific format or structure. That somehow God will be unhappy with us if we say something the wrong way, but God is longing for that connection with us. He wants us to honor him in our prayers and be respectful, but he also wants us to tell us exactly how we feel and what’s on our minds, etc. This is a great way to do that. And it’s simple; it’s a good strategy to integrate with, like you said, deep breathing, which is, this activity is a mind, body, spirit practice.
Jennifer: And I found just what you said, the breath prayers. They’re not the only prayers I pray. Usually, more times than not, I’ll start out praying a breath prayer, but it leads right into a more profound prayer with God in a longer prayer with more specifics; it just helps set the tone. It helps me slow down and be intentional. It opens that door to prayer for me and really kind of centers my mind more on Christ, gets me out of my worries, in the middle underneath all of my anxieties, and points me more toward Christ. And that allows me to pray more honestly with God and be, you know, it does. It has helped a lot. And so, for those who don’t pray a lot or don’t know what to pray, this is a great way to start. It’s a great thing to begin with.
Carrie: It’s very mindful, too, in the sense that it connects us back to the present moment because we’ve talked about mindfulness on the podcast and how that can be helpful for anxiety. Just to bring us into the present moment with God.
Jennifer: Absolutely.
Carrie: That’s great. So, your book is coming out August 16th. I’m not entirely sure when this episode airs, but I know people will listen at different times, too. So, if it’s before August 16th, there are presales. And if you pre-buy the book, you get extra goodies and things like that. And if you catch this after August 16th, it’ll be out, and they can find it. I’m sure wherever they buy books.
Jennifer: Absolutely.
Carrie: Is there anything else you wanted to say about the book?
Jennifer: I hope it’ll be an encouragement to people. Even if you don’t struggle with anxiety, you know, somebody who does.
Carrie: Sure.
Jennifer: I mean, I think we all have struggled with some form of anxiety, and I do make the distinction in the book, the difference between anxiety, like your normal anxiety, and anxiety disorders; those are very different things. And I think that’s an important distinction, but if you have anxiety. It’s okay. God is not mad at you. He loves you. And he’s just inviting you to turn to him. And for me, anxiety has become, instead of an enemy that I felt like I had to fight or hide from, it’s become more of just a reminder to me. I need to turn to Christ.
It’s become more of a trigger to turn to him rather than a trigger to spiral into worry, and panic becomes something. In some ways, I’m grateful I have it because it makes me turn to God and reminds me of how good he is and his presence in my life. It’s okay. I sometimes feel anxious, but God knows that I will. That’s why he says, you know, that he’s with us not to be afraid. What’s more, you don’t have to be afraid. He has to remind us a lot because we forget a lot, but I
hope this book will be an encouragement, even if it helps just one person. I’ll be grateful. I’m just thankful that you let me talk about it briefly.
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Carrie: At the end of every episode, I like to ask people a question, and when it’s a personal story, I like to go into, like, if you could go back in time, what encouragement or hope would you provide to your younger self?
Jennifer: I always get a little tender. When I think about my younger self, she was full of so much shame and so much fear and denial about it all. And I would just, I think I’d, go back and tell her that God’s not mad at you or disappointed in you because you have struggles. It’s okay. And you don’t have to try so hard to be so perfect. My younger self was so determined to be that perfect—good little Christian girl. You know, I was raised in church, and I knew all the right things, and I wanted to do all the right things. And that caused me to live in so much shame when I didn’t meet my expectations or what I thought God’s expectations were for me.
But I think I would tell her that you know what God loves you, and you’re okay. And you don’t have to be so hard on yourself, and you can trust him. You can trust God. And you don’t have to have control over all things because he does. And you’re okay. Relax a little bit. I would tell her that I’m very tender toward my younger self. Bless her heart, too.
Carrie: That’s awesome. Well, thank you for sharing with us today.
Jennifer: Thank you so so much. I really appreciate it.
Carrie: I like any time we can combine our physical, spiritual, and emotional health into a practice. And knowing that you’re increasing health in those different areas at the same time, we’d love for you to interact with us on Facebook or Instagram. And we will put those links in the show notes for you.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By The Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
I’m privileged to be interviewing Stay Quick, a licensed professional counselor and therapist at NOCD. Stacy talks about how Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP) works for OCD and her own experience with OCD.
Carrie: Hope For Anxiety and OCD episode 74. Today’s episode is on exposure and response prevention, which is often used in treating OCD. I had wanted to devote an episode to this for a little while, because it’s something that’s talked about and has come up on our show before in personal experiences however, there’s a little bit of tension in the community between what I do. That’s a little bit different type of trauma informed approach and ERP as a result, some people have chosen not to appear on the podcast or have been very critical of some things that I have said or written regarding treatment methods, such as EMDR being used for OCD.
One person even actually accused me of spreading lies on my website before they even had a conversation with me about this. That was a little rough, but we recovered. And unfortunately, today’s guest contacted me to share her personal story and also the work that she does with exposure and response prevention. Today on the show, we have Stacy Quick, licensed professional counselor and therapist at N CD. Welcome to the show today.
Stacy: Thank you for having me on. I’m excited to be here.
Carrie: So I know that a lot of times we talk to professionals on our show who treat OCD and sometimes they have their own personal experience with OCD. And you had shared with me that you dealt with scrupulosity in the past. Can you just tell us a little bit about your journey of recognizing that you had OCD the symptoms being diagnosed with it?
Stacy: Sure. I’ve actually had OCD for my entire life. I don’t really remember a time not having it. Obviously, I wasn’t diagnosed with it for quite some time, because this was back in the eighties and kind of nineties. And so not as much was known about it.
Carrie: Sure.
Stacy: And some of my first, I guess memories, I would say is about age five or six and some of the very first ones that had started were more, what I would now know scrupulosity where I was having images of religious figures that were kind of inappropriate, that kind of things that would, or thoughts about that, that would pop into my head from a very young age.
And it would really, really bother me. And I can remember, I wasn’t really sure what was going on.
The interesting thing there is that at that time in my life, my dad was pretty much an atheist and we didn’t go to church. We didn’t really believe. So it’s interesting that it took on that form that young, I’ve always wondered about that, but it did. And I know my grandma had been religious and so I assume she had probably talked to me a little bit about stuff and she probably had pictures around her house. So I kind of knew the basics. I knew Mary, I knew Jesus. I knew that kind of thing. And then I think my brain just kind of went wild with that. And then it blossomed into lots and lots of things I joke and say, I think I’ve had every theme or form out there over the years.
Carrie: That’s important for people to know just about OCD in general, if they haven’t researched it, a ton is themes do shift. So sometimes they’ll think, there will be some kind of sense of relief when they’ve gotten through one theme, like, good that’s gone away now. And sometimes they can deal with a theme. The next theme is a little bit more manageable, so they don’t really feel like they have a problem. They’re like, well maybe that went away. That was super distressing. And then they’re able to manage or cope in their life with the next theme better. And then another theme hits that’s unmanageable. Have you gone through periods of like that because OCD has this tendency, you know, to like wax and wayne.
Stacy: Definitely. Almost all of the members I’ve seen throughout the years of doing therapy have said very similar things. They’ve said it comes and it goes, there are times in my life. Where it is really loud in times where it’s much quieter. And that seems to be reflective of many people’s experience, not just my own, but theirs as well. One of the things that I think research would support is that when you’re under more stressful times in your life or big life changes, that’s when OCD seems to be more prevalent. It kind of, I think of it in my own life as it kind of hangs out. And then it demands a little more attention during times of change or challenging times in my life. It tries to anyways.
Carrie: That’s a really good way of describing it. It’s like, it’s always there. And sometimes it’s a little bit more in the background and sometimes it’s more in the foreground, like knocking on your brain, demanding attention, like, Hey, pay attention to me.
Stacy: Yes. That’s definitely how I think of it. And I know what I always tell people, people always kind of ask, is it curable? Right? And what I say to that is. It’s very, very manageable. Right? You can live in recovery because of my beliefs. Do I believe that yes, it could be cured. Absolutely. And at the same time, my experience says that’s a very rare thing to happen. I believe God could do it for sure. And sometimes He doesn’t usually, He doesn’t for whatever reason, He knows a lot more than me. So I’m just gonna address that.
Carrie: I think that’s a great perspective to have on it that regardless of what people are dealing with, whether it’s anxiety or OCD or depression, sometimes we have battles in our life or trials that we go
through that are long term that are ongoing and we do struggle with why won’t God take this away from me? I don’t understand it. Why I’m having to go through this. Did you experience some of that in your own spiritual wrestlings with God?
Stacy: Absolutely. I really struggled with that throughout the years. I’m in my forties now. And so having had this for 36 years, at least. I started my relationship with God when I was probably around 11. And so since about that time, I struggled. And what has really helped me is when you look at Peter and what Peter says about how I have this thorn in my side, and I often go back to that where he basically says, I ask God three times to take this from me. And he didn’t. And he said, my grace is sufficient for you. And so for me, that’s what I go back to when people ask why, I don’t know why. And it is something that’s my thorn and it’s something I’ve carried doesn’t mean he won’t someday heal it.
But what it has brought into my life has been this calling, right? I would not be doing the work I do had I not had these experiences. And so I am a big believer that the things we go through or the trials or battles we face are meant to do something right. We’re supposed to do something with them. At least that’s my thoughts. And so I do think that definitely led me down the path. I would not be doing this if it wasn’t for that.
Carrie: There’s a really great verse in second Corinthians towards the beginning that I like that talks about how we comfort other people with the comfort that we’ve received from God. And I feel in a lot of ways, that’s like my life first, the sufferings and the trials that I’ve been through and have experienced with God. It’s like I’m able to pass the Baton and help other people through some of those similar trials and situations.
Stacy: Absolutely. I agree a hundred percent. I think the majority of the people I have worked with, who I’ve shared parts of my story with when it’s appropriate, have been so grateful just to find out I’m not alone. There’s someone else who has been down this road because I think OCD in particular has this. Certain peculiar missed about it, that people do feel very alone in it and feel like nobody understands it, because it can take on some really bizarre themes and it jumps so much. Right? So I think people find comfort in that, that, my goodness. Here’s somebody who has been through this and has in a sense, come out on the other side.
Carrie: So I wanna shift a little bit and get into talking about exposure and response prevention, because that’s the therapeutic tool that you use probably most often on NO CD. I’ve had a little bit of struggles over the years with ERP and I shared some of those with you before we started recording.I don’t dislike ERP I’m completely open to it. I know that it helps some people. I also know that from my background of dealing with trauma, that if someone tries to just use a straight ERP model with someone who’s experienced trauma, sometimes that can make their trauma experiences, PTSD symptoms and worse. And so there’s this balance of having to make sure that we’re helping people who have been diagnosed with multiple things. And a lot of times people will say, well It’s been research that ERP works well with OCD, and we know that people are people they’re complex. And I’ve tried to get someone to talk about ERP on the show and was basically told that I was spreading lies on my website because I talk about treatments that are not just ERP. And we’ve talked about all kinds of things on the show.
We were very open to whatever helps people like get the help that you need. And we had someone say they got help through brain spotting with their OCD and that’s awesome. Some people are helped by EMDR and by other methods. And so whatever you can get around you that is gonna help. I want people to be helped, but I’d love to have more of this conversation about how does exposure and response prevention help people who have OCD.
Stacy: I think you bring up a really great point. I think that’s why it’s so important that if you have been diagnosed with OCD or you suspect that you have OCD that you see somebody who specializes in it’s, somebody who is very familiar with it, because it is often misdiagnosed. And there are many, many people who get misdiagnosed and it can be harmful. Right?
Carrie: Yes absolutely.
Stacy: We’ve had people who have been diagnosed with psychosis and things like that when it wasn’t, but you really have to know it very well to see the differences. And you want somebody who’s trained enough, who also knows other forms of therapy so that they can tell what else you might need in conjunction. Right? Because you’re right. People often don’t come to you with just straight depression or straight anxiety or straight OCD, right? It is often a combination. And so one of the things we do really well, I think at OCD, is that we are careful to make sure that we’re also giving people resources and referrals for treatment providers that would deal with say complex trauma or major depression and things like that.
We know that when people do ERP for obsessive compulsive disorder, when it’s comorbid with depression and anxiety, it often does help relieve some of those symptoms. And there are times when they also need to be addressed separately and regular cognitive behavioral therapy or talk therapy can be very helpful for depression and for anxiety and for many other things.
And so I do think it is often a combination because it’s not often that you see somebody who just has OCD. And at the same time, we do know that exposure in response prevention is the gold standard treatment for OCD, but you’re right. You also have to have somebody who takes into account.
There might be some other things going on, and I’m very careful to do a trauma screening with everyone I see, because I do think you have to go about that in a very cautious way. Right? And often people can be doing trauma work separately while they’re working with me on street ERP. And so I find that to be very useful. And then we coordinate things.
Carrie: I appreciate your openness on that, because I know that there are some providers that are very rigid surrounding only using the ERP model. It’s a little bit frustrating, because there’s a level of rigidity with OCD that I feel like almost gets, there’s a parallel between that almost in the professionals that treat it, that I don’t feel like is helpful for the clients, just in general. Exposure and response prevention. There’s a lot of different things that go into that, but can you just give us kind of a brief overview.
Stacy: Sure. It’s basically gradually exposing you to triggers that typically would cause intrusive, unwanted, either thoughts, feelings, or urges, and then it works with you to prevent the compulsive response. So typically in order to be diagnosed with OCD you have to have obsessions or intrusive thoughts, images.
That are unwanted or urges and then compulsion something you’re doing that reduces those feelings of anxiety and discomfort or in a way neutralizes it. Right? And those can be internal or external. Right?
They can be things you see such as the most common ones, I guess, that you hear about are checking things repeatedly, or it might be saying prayers out loud, repeatedly, but it can also be internal. It can be mental compulsions, like trying to solve problems by replaying them over and over and over again. Did this really happen like this, or trying to reason sort of with the OCD? That’s the other reason it’s really important to work side by side with a trained therapist, because you might miss those mental compulsions. Right?
Carrie: Right.
Stacy: Sometimes it’s something as simple as I have to say this in my head or count this number in my head. Right? People don’t always recognize that as a compulsion, but it is.
Carrie: Because it becomes so automatic and just part of their process. I know that reassurance seeking is a really big compulsion that a lot of people have, like that need to talk to somebody else about it, or sometimes make confess certain things to another person.
Stacy: For sure. I know those are ones that often people don’t even realize they’re doing or they realize it, but then they get sneaky. Right? They don’t try to get reassurance without straight out asking for. Right? I know one big one for me when I was a kid was confessing. And I see that a lot with kids, especially really young kids.
That’s one of the first things I’m looking for when I’m talking to parents, are they coming to you a lot and telling you things that maybe. Another kiddo would not do. Right?
Carrie: Right.
Stacy: Cause I just remember that a lot with my mom and that really is reassurance seeking because then that person typically says, no, you’re fine.
That’s just a thought or that’s not something you’re really wanting to do, something to that effect.
Carrie: So there’s a exposure hierarchy where you’re kind of trying to start with maybe some things that would be easier for people to expose themselves to, and then gradually work up to harder and harder things.
Stacy: I always call it. I have this latter hierarchy that I always use with people. We’re taking it step by step. We’re not throwing you in the deep end and saying, “good luck I hope you swim at your worst level 10 fear”.We wanna baby step it. And some people can go in bigger chunks and some people, it takes smaller chunks. And so we really are working. Alongside with our client to make sure that it’s not too much and we’re monitoring it, we’re asking them, you know, what’s your anxiety level before this exposure? What is it during? What is it after we’re having them monitor that regularly? And we’re also doing it with them in session, as much as we can, because we know that in order to create habituation, which is why this treatment works so well for OCD.
We’re trying to really, in a sensory wire, your brain, you have this whole, your alarm system that’s going on and it’s telling you you’re in danger because of these thoughts. Images are urges when you’re not. And so you’ve developed this process of trying to rid yourself of those feelings, but it’s all based on this faulty alarm. So our job in ERP is to get that alarm when it goes off to recognize that it’s a false alarm, you’re not in any real danger. And that’s what ERP really is working towards.
Carrie: I’d like to tell people about this analogy. It’s almost like we have these pathways in our brain and there’s a saying that “The neurons that fire together, wire together”. Your brain has gone through this pathway of obsession, compulsion, obsession, compulsion, over and over.
And the more that you do, the compulsions and you, the more that you start to have the obsessions and you’re trying to get relief, but you’re stuck in this negative loop. It’s almost like a path through the woods. That’s really well worn. It’s been walked a lot. The sticks have been moved. It’s very easy to get through. And then when we’re trying to create behavioral change and new patterns, it’s like creating a new path in the woods.
There’s maybe some limbs down on it. It hasn’t really been walked through that time. So of course, it’s going to be uncomfortable when we do these new things. And we expose our brain to new experiences. It’s not always going to feel good, just like walking through the tall grass. There might be some bugs or things that you might encounter, but the more that you walk down that path, the more well worn it is. Just like you were talking about with habituation, the more that you’re able to expose yourself to something and reduce that anxiety, or learn to sit with that anxiety and know that it’s not gonna kill you. It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be able to work through it. The easier that path is gonna be able to take the next time. And it’s a process for sure.
Stacy: I love that. Actually, I love that metaphor. I think that’s a perfect explanation for what we’re trying to do is to get you to a place where you recognize.
That, yes, this is uncomfortable. And I’ll get through it and it won’t always feel like this. That’s the one thing over the years I’ve learned. Yes. Let me go back just a little bit. Everybody has the same thoughts that people with OCD have. They probably don’t have them as often, right? Because they don’t get stuck it’s they filter their filter works properly so they can take these thoughts that maybe aren’t very important and disregard them.
They have enough confidence, not certainty, but confidence that this is probably just a bad thought or just something that popped into my mind that I wouldn’t act down. The person with OCD though, for whatever reason, there’s a lot of mechanics in the brain. They get stuck on it and they say, why did I have this?
There must be a reason. What does it mean about me? And they internalize it. And then they start to think I’m bad or I’ve done. And that starts this whole, once you’ve latched on and gotten stuck on a thought, then it’s gonna be there more often. It’s like trying not to think about something. You’re gonna think about it. And so people with OCD it’s not that their thoughts are different from other people, but it’s that they get stuck on these thoughts and want to give them meaning. Why were they there?
Carrie: Stacy, I think that’s absolutely true and makes a lot of sense is that people do research about the general population. How many people have ever had a thought about driving their car off the road. There’s actually, I think about half of the people have had that type of thought and just even different thoughts about robbing a bank was one of them that I saw surprising sometimes how many people just have these thoughts go through their head. I have a fear of heights and so I will get certain places. And I shared with a friend who also has a fear of heights. I said, “do you like picture yourself falling from places because I do that”. And I thought to myself that was weird.
I didn’t realize that other people also have some of those thoughts too. And he was like, I also have that I struggle with. So it’s things like that, that if you allow yourself to get really attached to it and you can’t help it, because sometimes it’s, there are genetic influence. That happen with OCD and sometimes you just can’t help having these thoughts. You just pop in there. You don’t choose. I don’t think every time I go to a high place, let me visualize myself falling off of here. It just comes in. It just comes outta nowhere. What if I fell off of this thing and I died, you know, or I was permanently injured in some way, shape or form. And then it makes me want to not get close to any edge of any high thing.
Stacy: People often say, well, why does it latch on to some thoughts and not the others? The other thing we know is that it tends to latch on to things you value things you care about. One of the things that OCD seems to really attack is anything taboo, anything that would set you apart from someone else, anything that would make you bad or make you seem different. And so it really latches on and try to convince you in a sense, or have you doubt who you are as a person and the things that are most important to you. And I think that’s what makes it such a tormenting disorder. It goes after the things you care the most about.
Carrie: And that’s where we get to talking about. We’ve had people show in the past who have had children thoughts about either their children being hurt or thoughts about harming their children, that those can come in after they have children. They never had before they had children. Oftentimes people of faith will have scrupulosity, obsessions and compulsions because their faith is really important to them. People who are concerned about getting things done the right way are going may have obsessions compulsions about the, just so warm of OCD. That makes a lot of sense. I’m curious about, because I don’t know a ton about it, your work on NO CD. Tell me a little bit about that platform website.
Stacy: Sure. My work at NO CD is, you know, we are a very fast growing company.
And there’s a need out there for treatment. There’s a need for the right kind of treatment for OCD. OCD had, had an app for quite some time as my understanding. And then right around the time of the pandemic, there became a real need for therapy and it just has exploded. We’re helping so many people get this treatment that can be lifesaving. It really can be. We have a free app that you can download at treatmyocd.com. The cool thing about that is there’s like a little community in there. It’s sort of like a social media community where you can talk with people who also have OCD, and it’s very friendly community. That one of the most important things we’ve found is just knowing that there are other people out there who have this, who experience these things can be healing in itself, right?
Carrie: Sure.
Stacy: This not alone. And so the work that we’re doing is really trying to reach as many people as we can with affordable therapy. We know that many, many people can go upwards of 10 years before they get treatment and a proper diagnosis. And I can definitely vouch for that. I mean, I was 15 when I found out that this had a name. And the only reason I found out was 2020, this show kind of like a dateline show, aired an episode about OCD. And that’s how we found out that’s what I had. And then it would take me about seven years before I found somebody who could actually treat it, in a way that was manageable. And unfortunately back then we didn’t have the resources we have now where you can Google and you can type in and you can get just tons of information and, and misinformation. Right? That would’ve been a lifesaver back then. And, and we’re even seeing kids as young as five who are coming through for assessments and who have OCD. And so we’re catching it much sooner, which I really believe in. And I believe that that will be life-changing for them.
Carrie: Absolutely. That’s huge. Just the ability to have early intervention. One of the things that I really like about NO CD is that you take insurance. That’s so huge. I know in the Nashville area, most of the providers, and there’s a large treatment center, most of them don’t take insurance. And so people can spend hundreds, thousands of dollars trying to get the help that they need. And some people just aren’t able to do that with their financial situation.
Stacy: They are constantly adding more and more providers and trying to get more and more insurances to cover our services because it is such important work. And we see so many benefits. There are so many people who are getting better and it’s hard.
It’s hard to see the stories of people who can’t get the help they need, because. Insurance doesn’t cover it or, you know, it’s too expensive. And so it is, I think in general can be expensive depending on a lot of factors, but ERP in particular, but NO CD really does offer affordable payment plans for people who can’t afford. And so that’s been really great to see as well, people who wouldn’t normally get in treatment.
That’s what we’re all about. We want everybody who’s suffering from this disorder to at least have access to that because a lot of rural communities, I know where I live, there was no specialists. And the people that I see as members often will say, well, there’s one specialist that’s, you know, within an hour range, but they have a six-month or a year wait list. That’s, what’s so amazing about NO CD is you can get in within a week.
Carrie: Are these video session that you’re doing with people. I mean, it’s all Telehealth, right? Either through the app or the website.
Stacy: It’s all Telehealth. There’s actually was just a study that came out about it and about how effective it is. It really is. I mean, I honestly, as somebody who has done face-to-face therapy for many, many years prior to this, I can honestly say I don’t notice a difference because in some ways it’s actually more helpful because I’m in the home with them. And I can walk with them like they’ll device throughout the house and do exposures. And so in some ways it’s actually more beneficial because I’m there with them.
Carrie: I would agree with that. People being able to do those exposures in their own environment is really helpful and powerful. You’re able to do things that you wouldn’t be able to do in the office we have Telehealth. That’s something that people don’t realize. A lot of times they may look at Telehealth as, it’s a deficit or that’s not as good. But one thing that we learned through the pandemic when everyone was seeing their therapist online was how effective Telehealth can be.
Stacy: Sometimes I feel like people are even more open. In this setting, then they are face to face. There’s almost like a safety net there or something, but people are more open and seem to be able to express themselves more quickly than maybe in a face-to-face setting for whatever reason.
Carrie: Awesome. I like to ask people a question as we get towards the end of the podcast. And since some of this was about your personal story and experience with OCD, I just am curious what is something that you wish you could go back and tell your younger self who is struggling?
Stacy: I love this question. I get this question a lot, actually, cause I have had it for my entire life. I wish I could go back and say, you know, the things you’re worrying about, they don’t ever happen.
And when they do, you will get through it. You will because there’s no other choice. I wish I could get back time. I wish that I hadn’t spent so much time on this. That’s what I would tell myself.
I know it’s not a choice, obviously, as a kid, you don’t choose to have OCD and at the same time, I wish there had been someone to intervene to say, “Hey, this is a real thing, this is a disorder, this is how you treat it”. And then I would’ve been able to do that a lot sooner, but you can’t go back in time. You can’t undo the past. And so if it’s moving forward each day, I take it and I say, you know what? I’m not gonna waste any more time. Right? It’s already had a ton of time. That’s all it’s getting. And that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t creep up because it does. I’d be lying if I said otherwise, there are times when it’s hard, but it’s so much easier than it ever was. And I can truly say I’m 90% better and, and life is good. I wish I could just tell my little self, like, stop, stop being in your head. Just go have fun.
Carrie: I think that’s so relevant to people with, with any mental health issue is sometimes we can get so laser focused in trying to fix something that we miss, that we’re a whole person with social relationships, hobbies, dreams, goals, desires, that this is not who you are as a person, your diagnosis. You’re a whole person who struggles in this area. And yes, it does affect some of those other domains. And I’m not making light of that, but it’s much better if we’re able to say, “Hey, I’m a person who struggles with this rather than I have this”.
Thank you so much, Stacy, for taking the time to share with us your story and the work that you’re doing as a therapist on NOCD. We’re gonna put links in the show notes so that people who are looking for help or want to find out more information about you or NOCD. They can do that through the show notes.
Stacy: Thank you for having me on this show. I appreciate it so much. And I hope that there are listeners out there who recognize some of these symptoms and can get some help a lot sooner. And I appreciate you doing the work you do to get the word out there about this.
Carrie: Thank you. I enjoy this episode with Stacy and I hope that you do too. We may invite her back to enter some more specific questions about scrupulosity. If you have and already please be sure to join our Facebook group. We’re really trying to create a positive and supportive environment for people with anxiety and OCD. But then a little neglect full time about giving in near and hosting things but I really want to work on. Growing back online community this year. You find the link in the show notes.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Carrie: Welcome to Hope For Anxiety and OCD episode 73. I just have to do a little short shout out before we get started. Cause it’s actually coming out on my brother’s birthday. Happy birthday Paul, and hope that you have a good one. I am here with my good friend, Erica Kessie who we have known each other for over four years now. Did you realize that because.
Erica: Great.
Carrie: Erica actually through my business. It’s very first birthday party. When my business, By The Well Counseling, turned one and we were in the suite together. So that was just a really fun time. And my business just turned five this year. That was exciting too.
Erica: Wow. Five years old. What they say about five years, it takes you about five years to become profitable in your business.
Carrie: Wow. Well, fortunately for counseling, we’re able to do that a little bit earlier. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here. Most businesses don’t last to five years though, right?
Erica: They don’t.
Carrie: So that’s, that’s exciting.
Erica: Yes, it is. Congratulations.
Carrie: Thanks. I wanted you to give us an update Erica, on your business, because I know that some things have shifted changed from when we recorded last, that was on episode nine, which was the very end. The very end of 2020, what’s been going on in your business in the last year and a half.
Erica: So many wonderful things. The more that you’re in business, the more that you get clear on who you serve and how you want to serve them. I have coined myself now, the leader’s healer, cause I wanted to broaden my target out to all leaders. Be mothers, doctors, nurses professionals, because I recognize with my own experience that sometimes leaders feel lost and in order to not be lost. It’s important for you to make sure you take care of yourself. That’s so important and putting yourself first, those who have servant hearts, right? They are leaders and they put everyone before themselves. So it’s important that they take care of themselves, do their own work.
Carrie: Right.
Erica: About own anxiety and their depression and imposter syndrome. And also if they do their own work, they will also be doing something that’s so important. And dear to my heart is to do no harm. I think a lot of people don’t talk about that. But there are many circumstances in which Carrie knows that counselors and therapists and even other leaders do harm in ways, because they haven’t did their own work. So I’m the leaders, healer and the entrepreneur therapist. I provide professional training and speaking, as well as civil little counseling and coaching alignment, executive coaching.
Carrie: One of the things that you do that I really appreciate is you help businesses and leaders, like you were saying, “understand the importance of counseling skills and how those can be useful in their business environment”.
Erica: I have a book called “Honey”. You need counseling skills. And these are soft skills as well as life skills. It is vision casting. A lot of even entrepreneurs don’t know the difference between vision and mission. So vision casting, mission creation, time management, communication skills, and thrive planning, which is it’s a strategic and personal plan to thrive. We have a plan for everything else. Why don’t we have a plan to thrive?
So there’s thrive plan for that.
Carrie: Awesome. Today we’re talking about boundaries, which I’m really excited about, I just.
Erica: I’m so excited.
Carrie: I’ve decided to dial some things back on the podcast and do some like 1 0 1 type episode. Let’s consider this boundaries 1 0 1 there’s lots of conversations we could have on boundaries. We’re gonna keep it really simple today for people because it’s a word that’s thrown around. And a lot of people don’t really understand what it means or how they can start to begin to even look at boundaries in their own lives or setting them. We’re in a society right now, unfortunately, where all, all kinds of lines are being blurred, lines between work and home, lines between professional relationships and personal relationships.
I asked a group of therapists today, I said, is professionalism dead. And we kind of had a chuckle about it, but I was serious, you know.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: Because there’s a lot of people that are in professional roles that are acting in unprofessional ways. So this conversation on boundaries. Is super important in the same way between client and therapists. There have been lots of different ways that receiving therapy has changed. Whereas maybe, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago we would never have texted with a client. And I still don’t text with clients in that way, but some therapists, that’s how they set their schedule. We have to kind of talk about some of these things of boundaries lines, and we won’t get into all the ethics today.
Although that cause that’s gonna be another episode. I know that’s something that Erica is really passionate about is, good ethics for professionals and leaders. Let’s talk about what is a boundary, how would you define that for somebody?
Erica: I wanna keep it as simple as possible. There’s a book called it by Henry Cloud. He’s an older book and it’s called “Boundaries”. And the way he explains it is like having a fence in front of your house. Certain people can come in the fence. For example, your mailbox is outside the fence. The mailman only goes and handles that particular part of your property. Then you have individuals like the Amazon man. He comes to the door and he drops your package he’s off, but he doesn’t come in. Correct? Or you can even say, leave it there and don’t knock. Right? When you send message, when you create your package, then you have people that can come be in your living room, your kitchen.
They can even walk down the hall sometimes and be in the spare bedroom, but only certain people can be in your master bedroom, in your bathroom. Think about it that way. It makes it really simple on how we have to isolate out who deserves to be where in our lives we are our house. This is our temple. Okay. And only certain people should be able to come through our eyes, through our ears and to allow them to be a part of our space. These are guidelines for ourselves and for others to keep us safe.
Carrie: There’s internal boundaries. I think that we can even set within ourselves. I think a lot of times we think about boundaries with other people, but there’s internal boundaries that we can set within ourselves. Just kind of knowing our move and groove of life. For example, and I know this has to do with other people. But for therapists in terms of like how many sessions that we choose to do in a day, or, you know, how many clients we see, how many of them are going to be new clients. I know for me, it’s harder to meet with new people than it is to meet with people that I’ve known for a long time.
I already know how they’re going to act, to flow. They’re not gonna read me the wrong way or if, if I say something funny, they’re gonna be like, what is that? You know, they’ll call me out on it. Whereas if I have a new person, I have to be a little bit more cautious about what I say, how are they gonna receive this and so forth. So that’s kind of maybe an internal boundary within myself that I might set for myself, or I could tell myself, you know, a boundary is that I’m gonna shut off all my electronics at a certain time so that I can get a good night’s sleep. Can you think of any of those that you have for yourself?
Erica: Oh yes. Internal boundaries. AKA your discipline, your own discipline. I have a certain discipline as 12:00 I take lunch. No one has that time. One o’clock is usually my nap time. If I don’t have a nap, I usually have a nap another time during the day. I am Adam adamant about it.
I need a nap. It’s just good for me to have my siesta every day. And those are internal boundaries, but I have other boundaries regarding myself as far as making sure that I don’t overextend myself. I have to watch myself every day. Not to have the savior complex. I’m sorry, I’m adding in things that are more complex.
This is the perfect actually podcast to talk about the savior complex. None of us is Jesus. We need to not try to be Jesus.
Carrie: That’s right. We’re not out here to rescue everyone who’s in crisis.
Erica: Yes. And so we have to decide to remind ourselves. I have to remind myself every day, I call my reminder not to overextend myself, to watch all my obligations and watch my schedule to make sure I’m not doing too much boundaries of making sure that physically making sure that I eat. And I’m cognizant of everything that I put in my mouth. So really being intentional is my internal boundaries.
Carrie: Why do you think that boundaries are so important? Obviously what you’re talking about is boundaries relating to self care. Why else are boundaries important?
Erica: Boundaries let you know exactly where you end and somebody else or the environment begins. It’s a great way to make sure that you have all the things that you need and that you’re cognizant of all the components of your life in order for you to have harmony. It’s important for you to have harmonies physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, professionally, all these ways. And we have to be cognizant of doing that. That’s the hard work. That’s a lot of work actually to do, but it it’s the kind of work that we should be doing instead of putting ourselves out there. To help other people. It’s so easy for us to extend ourselves, to help other people and neglect ourselves.
So it’s so important to have boundaries with yourself and to be cognizant of taking care of yourself, because guess what, you know, everybody’s heard this, you gotta put your option mask on in order to help other people, or one thing that I say, going back to that vision, that we were talking about my vision for myself, which that’s why this is a boundary as well. Is, I will if I like and love myself so authentically and thoroughly that I overflow onto those who stand close. Part of that boundary is, I’m not gonna seek out people to help. They will stay close if they want my help. And I will make sure I focus on loving myself and going a step more into liking myself.
So sometimes we may love ourselves and we may not like ourselves. Right? So we have to like ourselves too, and know what we know like and trust about our self.
Carrie: Boundaries really connect with our values. We really connect with what’s important to us. So if I say that my daughter is important and you have a daughter too.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: If we say our daughters are important to us, and then we don’t set up boundaries to protect that time that we have with our children. If I don’t take the time, set up boundaries to protect time that I have with my spouse or time for church and investing in my spiritual health. Not just church, but time at home where I’m reading, where I’m praying, then my values are not in alignment with my actions.
And then that causes all kinds of anxiety and internal conflict, right? I wanna be with my daughter, but I’m doing all of this over here. I’m taking on extra responsibilities. I don’t need to, you kind of call me out and say, you know, you’ve just had a child. Your normal is changed care. You have to accept that. You’re not gonna be able to go back and do all the things that you used to be able to do, which was a good call out, by the way, you know, you need to have friends like Erica in your life to call you out.
Erica: Well, you call me out too, is the end goal. Why are you doing this? This is so helpful for me, who run off trying to help people like what’s the end goal. We gotta get our money. We need to make sure we are. Moving towards getting money, not just doing all these things, because that’s how we need food, clothes, and shelter. That’s why we work. She calls me out too.
Carrie: Don’t do too much. I wanna talk about examples of situations that the people experience in life. That cause them to have difficulty setting boundaries. It caused them difficulty to be able to say no, or say, man, that’s an excellent opportunity, but it just doesn’t fit in my life right now. You know, maybe later, let, let’s talk about that another time. I mean, there’s lots of different ways that you can say no to something or say yes to something, but what are some situations people go through that cause them difficult their boundaries.
Erica: That’s a great question, Carrie. I don’t think people talk about the situations,
Carrie: Right?
Ericaa: When you grow up, you as a child, sometimes don’t wanna do something, right? And then your parent tells you you’re gonna do it. Okay. I have to abide by this person or I have to please. Most children spend time wanting to please their parent, guess what? Then they grow up being people pleasers. Then you have a problem saying no that’s having poorest boundaries. When you are unable to say no and get yourself involved in everybody trying to help people. Then if you have some kind of trauma or you’re a pain that happens in your childhood, you’ll have rigid boundaries around certain things.
Scenarios would be, you have a balls.
There’s a power differential between you too. You don’t want to what lose your job or being seen in a negative way or retaliation in any kind of way. So you say yes to things that are against your values. You can’t go spend time with your daughter because your boss wants you to work extra hours. There’s so many scenarios with our partners. We may not want to do something like they wanna watch anime all night. You’re like, I gotta go to bed and they’re like, we don’t never spend no quality time with me. That’s a guilt trip, FYI. Let’s going into those manipulative tools. Anyway have to be able to say the boundaries, but you may have a rift in the relationship that you don’t wanna experience because you had to assert yourself and say, “I don’t wanna do this”.
So you have to have good communication skills. You have to be able to assert yourself. You gotta be brave to hold your boundaries.
Carrie: Let’s talk about parenting for a little bit, because this is a huge issue. If you had parents who were like, I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m the adult, you’re the child. It reminds me of that dad in Matilda.
She’s smart enough to realize that some of the things that he’s doing are wrong. Right? As a child, she’s like, wait a minute, dad, that’s wrong. You’re cheating people up to go into a movie analogy, but that’s basically what he tells her, you know, I’m right you’re wrong. Then we’re not teaching kids to think for themselves.
And there’s no autonomy there that’s learned. So it’s, it’s finding this balance. You wanna set boundaries for your kids, but you wanna help them understand why those boundaries are there.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: There’s a reason. There’s a difference between saying don’t you ever talk to a stranger, you know, and, and threats and those types of things, I’ll spank your behind If you do that and a parent who says, Hey, we don’t talk to strangers and let me sit down and tell you why I’m telling you, you don’t just run up to the guy that says he has puppies to show you. There are people out there that want to do your harm. Here’s the lines that are drawn. You know, I’m asking you to pick up after yourself because one day you’re gonna be an adult with a house and you’re gonna have it. Learn how to manage a household, not just your room. So if you can’t pick up your room, you’re not gonna be able to manage a household.
Erica: Oh my goodness. You understand this because also you used to work with children as well. And I also, we both specialize in planning, express for arts therapies. We understand that we need to respect them and honor their thoughts and honor their behavior and try to empathize the reason behind the behavior that they’re exhibiting. I always find that it’s the parents. If I need to get the parents straight, cause it’s not the kid, the kid does need a healthy relationship with somebody who was going to honor them, who was gonna respect and listen to them. You have to teach your children communication. You have to let them know the reason behind it. You don’t just say it’s because I said so.
Carrie: Right. Everybody at one point or another, I’m sure there’ll be some point where I say it, you know, so , I’m not gonna call anybody out for that. But I think growing up in a type of household where the boundaries were not just strict, cause a lot of people grew up in a strict household, but where the boundaries were too rigid really. I mean, you got in trouble practically for breathing in some of those households. It can be, people have a really, really hard time setting boundaries because they were always told, no, you can’t do that. And it was very much that authority position.
They probably felt less than. And, you know, growing up in some of those environments or let’s talk about something even further where there were environments of abuse, there were boundary lines being crossed. In that person’s childhood, it doesn’t matter what kind of abuse it was, physical, emotional sexual. There was a line that was crossed and it was basically told your rights, your needs, you know, were not valued, were not important at all. And there was a violation there. And so people who have had their boundaries violated often have a hard time setting them for themselves. I mean, is that something that you’ve seen as well.
Erica: Definitely. They don’t understand what healthy boundaries is. So let’s explain what that is let’s define that. And then also go and look things up. One thing that I say is don’t listen and wait for someone to define things for you. This is what I tell my daughter. Go and find out for yourself. Look it up, go to the library, Google it, ask around. That’s one reason how abuse happens is the isolation of the information and your experience with an exposure to things. So always define things for yourself. Let’s define healthy boundaries. That’s when you are able to say yes to something or no to something based on how you feel, you understand how you feel about the circumstance and it aligns with your values. Going back to what you said, your values, and you understand how to assert your boundaries and say clearly and not have a problem with saying clearly. Yes, I can do this because, or no. And guess what period.
You don’t even have to give any definition. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t wanna do it. It’s simple. You can say no and that’s it. And I know may, sometimes people feel like, I can’t say no, there’s gonna be backlash if I say no, but a lot of time. It is you that’s stopping you from saying no, it’s your fears. So you have to interact with your fear and ask that fear. What’s why are you coming up? What’s going on? There is fear and there’s love. So how can we bring love into this circumstance to kinda dissipate this fear that you have that you can’t say no for something you don’t wanna do.
Carrie: And it’s okay to have physical boundaries with people. I think I wanna throw that out there.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: If you don’t feel comfortable, some people are huggers. I like hugs, but I’m more of a person that I want to hug people that are close to me, that I know really well, that I’m really comfortable with and have had that kind of relationship. Some people just wanna hug you the first time they meet you. I’m not quite Into that, you know, but, I’ll probably have an uncomfortable look on my face and kind of do one of those tap hugs or something like that, where you just kind of lightly tap ’em on the back. Hey, it things, things like that. If you have somebody maybe that you feel like is too touchy, you know how the, some people just wanna touch you when they talk to you.
Maybe this is not as much cause of COVID maybe we’re we’re keeping a little more distance. I don’t know. I remember there was one time where I was talking to somebody. And a kind of a dinner thing and they just kept touching me. And I didn’t say anything about it, but I thought, well, this is really, you know, kind of odd and thinking about it just in terms of interpersonal context and things. But if you don’t want somebody to hug you, or if you’re in a dating relationship and you’re not comfortable.
Erica: I’m think about that Carrie all the way.
Carrie: With certain things, then it’s okay for you to say, I’m not there yet in the relationship. I don’t wanna kiss you yet. You know, I’m not there. Those are examples of physical boundaries that we can set for ourselves. And if you’re in a dating relationship, you probably need to have some of those conversations pretty early about where you’re at, what your expectations are, what you want, what you don’t want, because those can really go south fast. If you’re not upfront with the other person absolutely.
Erica: It’s all about having the right fit. If you feel like you can’t say no to someone, then you probably need to investigate that relationship about why you feel unsafe to say no.
Carrie: And regardless you brought up bosses earlier, and if you were an adult
to adult relationship. That’s what we’re trying to seek out. Even though there is some power differential there, you do have to respect your boss. You do have to listen to them. You do have maybe, probably some things from your job that you can’t say no to, but let’s say for example, that your boss hires you. This happens all the time, America, right? Your boss hires you and says, “Hey, you’re gonna work Monday through Thursday, 10 hour or you know, you’re only gonna put in 40 hours a week. That’s all we’re gonna ask from you”. And then next thing you know, you’re into the job two months later. Well, you know, we need somebody come in on Fridays. We just don’t have anybody come in on Fridays. And can you please, we really are gonna need you here this Friday. That’s an example where somebody has a freedom, perfect freedom to set a boundary, even though that’s their boss, even though they’re in authority role.
Erica: Yes, very much so like right now we have the great resignation that’s happening. Cause most people recognize that I don’t wanna be disrespected. I don’t wanna be disregarded for my personal life. And this is my job description. I’m supposed to be able to deliver this, but you also have to be courageous enough to speak up and say, that’s what it is.
Everybody knows the 80 20 rule when you’re working 80% of the people are not working or lacks of days old on how they work. And 20% are doing most of the work, right? Don’t be 20%. You have to decide that I told plenty of my clients, you should probably work. Give them 20% of your energy. And she actually got an award for her work ethic. After she did it, but also I told another lady who was having heart issues and stress and anxiety about working to slow down and only give them 20%. And her heart palpitations stopped.
Carrie: Wow.
Erica: Sometimes we do it to ourselves. A lot of this. Is, we have to step back now. It’s hard to do it in a job that you went in there and I’m gonna fix it all. And now everybody think you gonna keep on fixing it all. But if you go to another job or you could try to fix help with the boundaries, boundaries are easier with new circumstances sometimes because.
Carrie: That’s true. They’re definitely.
Erica: You can say this is who I am and they don’t know you to be a pushover. They don’t know you to be a doormat or a people please. But when you really wanna decide for yourself that boundaries need to happen, sometimes environment has to an environment change has to happen too.
Carrie: I don’t think I can stand behind giving your employer 20%. I think you’ve got to really work as an unto the Lord, you know, as a scriptural principle. And so I think that you have to put forth the effort to do a good job, but there’s, there’s a difference between doing a job where it’s like you said, kind of killing your health. And, and if you’re at that point, then I think that a conversation needs to happen to with your employer or your spouse. If you need to take a step back or whatever, to be able to say, you know, this job really is affecting my physical health, my mental, emotional health. And sometimes people have to either work less or they have to pick a less stressful job or different work environment. Maybe they need to be working from home.
Whatever the case is there are a variety of different boundaries and it’s okay to say to your employer, you know, I feel like I’m doing too much. I feel like the workload is too heavy. I don’t think that I need some help with this. How can we delegate some of these responsibilities? Is that okay? That those types of conversations I think are super important because unfortunately not just employers, but if someone sees that you are willing to have your boundaries crossed time after time after time again, like if you come in on that Friday, just this Friday. And then next thing you know, two Fridays later. You know, we need you again on Friday. It’s like, no, I agreed to work Monday through Thursday was our agreement. I’m not gonna be able to come in on Friday.
I had a friend a long time ago who, one of his first jobs he worked at McDonald’s when he was a teenager. And he said to the people, when he got hired, he said, “Hey, I just want you to know that I will work any day, but Sunday I’ll work, you know, the evening shift I’ll work late at night. I’ll I’ll work in the morning whenever I can”. Obviously it was the summer or something. He wasn’t in school. I’ll work here, but I will not work on Sundays. And so is that okay with you? I just want you to know that, is that okay? They said, “sure, that’s fine we can accommodate your schedule”. So the first time they scheduled him for a Sunday, he said, “now you remember that I told you I’d work any day, but Sunday and I’d work all these different shifts. I’m going to church on Sunday and I won’t be here. I just wanted to let you know that ahead of time, because that was our agreement”. And you know what, they had to honor that at the end of the day, cause that was what they had agreed to. But had he said, they put me on the schedule. I’ve gotta do it. I’ve gotta go in. They would’ve probably continued to schedule him for some days. And then that would’ve been a violation of his, not just his boundary, but his values of church and spiritual rights.
Erica: His religious rights as well. I wanted to go back really quick to say that most of my clients are really high functioning individuals that give like 200% work. So I have to say 20% to help them to edge off.
Cause if I told them only give them 50%, they would still give them 150%. So I’m trying to get them to edge off and not do so much because they’re a lot of their energy, cause they’re just high functioning individuals who feel like they have to work very, very hard. Those are usually my clients. I have the high functioning anxiety clients most of the time.
Carrie: So you, you have to throw out something drastic to get them to dial it down just a little bit. Okay, let’s talk about how do you know a boundary has been crossed?
Erica: Great question. First of all, you can feel it. It’s a gut feeling.
Carrie: Yes.
Erica: You can feel it. The thing is we ignore our feelings because going back to what we said about growing up, we had those good feelings and our parents shut it down. We were silenced. So you think, this is the feeling that I always have here, but I had to do it anyway. So I’m just gonna go ahead and do it anyway, like surrender to. I’m saying if you have this feeling, listen to it and acknowledge it. I feel statement is amazing. Go ahead and figure out what the feeling is. I feel irritated, frustrated. It doesn’t matter who this is, whoever you’re talking to, you can say this statement. I feel when you, whatever they did, I would like you to there’s that boundary. I would like you to whatever you would like them to do. That’s very explicit on what they can do to help you not feel frustrated. Now sometimes people do not respect your boundaries.
First of all, if they don’t respect your boundaries, then you have to go ahead and recognize that in this relationship, this person does not respect me. You have to decide if you’re gonna continue to be disrespected, or you’re want to figure out a way that this relationship is something that you maybe need to not have in your life.
And the other thing is, other than disrespecting you, you have to make sure that the individuals are clear, very clear on the boundary that you set. A lot of times, we’re kind of, you make me unhappy. I will like you to make me happy no like.
Carrie: What in the world does that mean?
Erica: Right. What does happiness to you? So that means that you gotta do some internal work to know what your boundaries are. I think a lot of times people wanna have boundaries. But they haven’t figured out what they like, how they want people to treat them. What do you want? I ask you for that. I ask a child that what they like want they know.
Carrie: Yes.
Erica: I know because they’re so accustomed to accommodating others, especially women, Carrie, let’s talk about that, that story that you said it was a man.
I haven’t heard many stories like that when a woman doesn’t to it and go ahead and go with.
Carrie: I mean, you look at women are much less likely to negotiate their salary going into a job. Because they just feel like, well, someone’s giving me a number. That’s what they’re comfortable with.That’s just what I’m supposed to take. And going from there, you know, that’s a boundary. If you say, you know, I have the skills and experience and I can show on paper that I should be making this much money or somebody else offered me this, are you able to match that? Or I need to be making my current salary. That’s okay to have that boundary. I think in terms of going back to like, feeling like a boundary has been crossed for me, it usually comes up as anger.
A lot of times, like, I’ll feel this feeling of anger. And a lot of times, you know, I’ve been in business five years. I talked about that. And so when I feel like something’s not working and it was frustrating me, I would say, okay, Something’s frustrating me about this process or this system, what do I need to change? But that anger came first and that was a good gut check for me. Okay, I’m frustrated, I’m angry. Why am I frustrated and angry? Okay. Well, because maybe I took on this client that wasn’t the best fit for me. You know, maybe it was a referral from a colleague and I felt like I really needed to take that person on.
Maybe it was somebody really begged me. They couldn’t find a therapist. And so those days are long gone. If I don’t feel like people are a good fit, I don’t have any problems, you know, referring them out or something.
Other things, I’m just thinking of other things that came up were phone calls. I was spending a lot of time on the phone with, you know, people that hadn’t really researched who I was or what I do and was trying to, I literally was trying to help everyone that called me on the phone, whether they wanted anger management classes. And I didn’t have anything to do with that, whether they wanted, you know, something for custody issues with their children, which I didn’t do. And so here I was trying to find resources for people and pick up the phone every time I called, because I thought, well, these people really need help and I need to be the one to help them.
I had to really let that go because. I recognize you cannot help every person that calls you on the phone. That is impossible. You’re not the right person to help everybody that calls on the phone. Some of them need other things and it’s okay. You don’t have to pick it up every time it calls, you can let it go to voicemail and you can return the call later. It’s gonna be okay. It’s not gonna be a huge thing, but that was some hard boundaries for myself in terms of, setting boundaries just in my business, interpersonally in terms of working with clients. I just know that for me, a lot of times it comes up as anger or as a gut feeling, the gut feeling is like, you know, it’s just like this. Something’s just not right about that.
Erica: Dare they did that to me, you know.
Carrie: You feel that sense of like and dictation.
Erica: It does not feel good. It’s like a gut and hard feeling. And I immediately, I think about my feelings, like, what is that? What is that? I immediately go to what’s the feeling. Okay. And I do, and I feel saving, even if I don’t say it to that person, I have to write it. I have to say it to get it out of me. Otherwise it’s going to just eat at me. And then I figure out a way to talk with them. Sometimes I just write it in my journal and it’ll all work out on its own in some kind of way in a conversation without me specifically saying anything, especially if I’m really mad about it.
Carrie: Okay. That’s good. I mean, I think that that’s a really good pathway. Of like teaching people how to do that work, how to tune in internally and then try to figure out like, okay, what’s the next step? What is that next step that I need to take here?
Erica: Usually when you feel that you’re triggered in some kind of way, what is it taking you back to going back to a scenario where you were disrespected or dishonored or felt the same feeling before?
Carrie: That’s good talking about trauma trigger. That come up for people.
Erica: Because you didn’t set a boundary. So then it’s always gonna keep showing up, cause the boundary’s not there.
Carrie: Let’s talk about how do boundaries align with the Christian faith? I think people have this view that if I’m a Christian kind of going back to, I’ve gotta help everybody.
I’m to be loving towards people. And if I say no to them, I’m not being loving towards them. But I mean, we kind of gave that example of parents and their children. You can’t always say yes to your children because that’s gonna lead to disaster. There are times where you need to say no for their own, even personal safety.
Erica: Boundaries is part of the Christian faith. I know that it says, okay. And we kind of capitalize on that part of being selfless and don’t be selfish, but the Bible does talk about, like, there is boundaries, the 10 commandments are boundaries there.
Carrie:Yes they are.
Eric: You know, there are other things that are told to us lot and his wife don’t look back. Right? That was a boundary. And then we saw the consequences. You have to have consequences too, to your boundaries. You can’t just have these boundaries. It’s like you are a Chihuahua, Chihuahua. You’re a Chihuahua barking saying you, this is your boundary, but you’re not doing anything. And people are gonna keep pushing over. What’s the consequence that there has to be some kind of consequence. To pushing over your boundaries.
I just wanted to mention that, but in nutrition faith, we have boundaries. They are parents throughout the Bible. I don’t think people look for those because I’m gonna say some, I’m gonna say some, I think that a lot of people who may be leading flocks want them to follow along with what they are saying. So if you tell them, empower them in too many ways. They then are thinking for themselves and not following along. So they’re now share that kind of information.
Carrie: Well, I, and I think that’s why we have to go to following Jesus in the Bible versus following man, you know. Because not everyone is following Jesus in the Bible who is in leadership.
Erica: Too many times. I’ve had some scenarios of, man, pastors doing many things that should not have happened or I felt it. I was like, this is not supposed to be right. But it wasn’t like no one said to me that this person is not supposed to do it, but he’s up in front of me telling me that the gospel telling me the way to go, but it doesn’t feel right. You always have this feeling. It doesn’t matter what kind of leader it’s there. You have to listen to yourself. You gotta tap in and find your own answers.
Carrie: I picked out a couple of Jesus examples for how do boundaries align with the Christian faith? There was in Matthew 12 Jesus refuses to perform a miracle.
So people were saying to him, perform a miracle to show us, you know, that you’re the Christ. And the funny thing is Jesus was already performing miracles. By this point, it wasn’t like this was gonna be a new thing. They had already seen evidence that he was a Messiah and he told them, no, I’m not gonna do that because you’re basically you’re unbelieving. And you’re showing that you don’t have faith. You know, and I’m not gonna give you a sign.
Erica: I’m not gonna be a politic for you like.
Carrie: Not gonna perform miracles on demand. There was a time in Luke nine 60 that the verse, you know, let the dead bury their own dead. There was a man who he had said, Jesus said, come follow me. The man said no. First let me bury my father. And Jesus said, well, let the dead bury their own dead. It wasn’t, a cruel heartless type of thing. He was wanting to wait around for like some year long ritual that was gonna be happening. It was, what do you call that? It’s more about tradition than actually. Just a regular funeral. We have, we have probably really quick funerals compared to what they did back then in the whole process.
So Jesus was like, no, you really need to come follow me. You know, you don’t need to basically make an excuse about why you can’t come at this point. I mean, Jesus told the rich young ruler, he had to sell all his stuff too. It wasn’t really about him selling his stuff. It was more about your heart’s not in the right place.
Erica:Yes.
Carrie: To be following me. So these are all different examples where Jesus really put people in their place in a lot of ways. And times that we look at that and we’re like, that’s really radical that he said that, or I don’t know if you do that. Sometimes I read the Bible. I’m like, I can’t believe he just said that. Wow. That was.
Erica: I love it.
Carrie: You know, that was intense. .
Erica: My daughter has the Bible now we’re reading again. I loved reading the Bible. It’s great like if you read it, so I think people take, read it as if it’s a book and it’s great. It”s so much going on to so many heroes. It says that Jesus is a first superhero and that there’s sons of other heroes like Ruth and like, Esther, it’s just like, it’s radical. It’s a, it really talks about all the situations that we have even now in trying to relate to others. Jesus does plenty of parables talking about boundaries and how you should interact and what’s your value system and how to have your certain Christian values that I feel like are not upheld. They should be in a real authentic way.
Carrie: I was so glad that we are having this conversation, you know, essentially a, a boundaries 1 0 1, because there’s so many people that misunderstand what a boundary is, or they don’t think that they can set them with a boss, with a parent, with a spouse and boundaries are for many different areas of our lives. We have to learn how to set them respectfully and so fort. Let’s talk about boundaries with a parent, because I think that’s another one people carry their childhood into their adulthood of, you know, well, this person is my parent. I have to honor them and I have to respect them according to the Bible. So I can’t say no. If my parent wants to call me at all hours of the night or if my parent wants to just drop by, I just have to be okay with that because that’s my mother. That’s my father.
Erica: I’m the one to talk to about this. Or I was in my internship, I was trying to create this group called “Toxic mom relationships and how to manage them”. So when I talk to every people, just, you know, one on one, every last person has some kind of issue. With they mama or they daddy, or both of.
Carrie: We call those family of origin issues. Everybody has to deal with their family of origin issues.
Erica: This is actually the first, I think people they’ll have problems in their relationships, their intimate relationships, you know, sexual intimate relationships.
And it be the same problems that they have with their parent, like the same boundary issues, being people pleaser, or thinking that you have to say yes to everything. When you become an adult, like first of all, you were supposed to be expect when you were a child, maybe didn’t happen. You have to understand.
Now you’re an adult. Okay. And you’re taking care of yourself. And even if you’re not, cause I have a lot of college students, I have individuals who are still on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26 and they’ll think, I can’t say no, cause I’m still tied to them. You have to decide. What’s right for you.
Your life is your life. It’s not your parents. I think a lot of times, some people have issues with feeling like they are connection or, you know, a part of their parent instead of them being a whole person and they have their own thoughts and their own feelings and their own way of doing things that fits best for them. And you have to going back to being brave. Being brave to say and speak up for yourself. Now, let me just tell you if your parents love you, love transcends all of this, and it’s opposed to transcend all of this. And if they reject you because you asserted your boundary, then maybe later on, they will think more about this relationship and not. Let it be severed, but you get to have your boundaries and it’s important that you have them and you have to assert them. You have to be clear on what and who you are.
Cause a lot of clients say, my parents don’t even know who I am. You haven’t shared who you are with them because you’re afraid to share who you are with them. And then a lot of parents say, all my kid only calls me once a week or I only see ’em on holidays, probably because you have no idea who they are and they are afraid to show you who they are. And it’s such a sad circumstance to live in a life where a person brought you into this world, but you can’t share who you are with them.
Carrie: That is a sad state. This has been such a good chat and I hate to cut it off, but I know we’ve gone a little while and maybe at some point I’ll do boundaries 2.0 or, or we can do it or something like that. We’ll figure it out. But I think that this has been a great intro for people to understand really what’s a boundary and hopefully it’s got people thinking like, maybe through the podcast, like maybe there is a boundary that I need to set with myself or with other people in my life and knowing that. Not only is that okay to do so, but that’s a healthy thing. And we can follow, you know, in Jesus’ example, in terms of, of setting boundaries.
Erica: Yes. Going back to the book I recommended was Henry Clouds “Boundaries”. It is actually Christian based. So if you’re listening to this podcast, it puts a lots of information in there about Christian examples of how you should move in your boundaries in that you are not meant to be selfless, but you have boundaries. And I do wanna be before I end, is to talk about hunting unique counseling skills, because that book is a book that you can get on Amazon that I wrote and boundaries is in that book.
So I talk about it in that book, as well as other counseling skills that are needed, like communication and time management.
And lastly, I have a freebie. Because it’s, I am this boundary thing is so important. So I have a freebie it’s 11 page ebook called “Boundaries guide four leaders”. You can get that at www dot heal yourself, grow.org. Heal yourself. grow.org. And you can get free freebie on how to even discover and set boundaries under eight categories and even affirmations in order to hold your boundaries and reiterate your boundaries to others.
Carrie: Okay. And we’ll put those links in the show notes too. If people are listening to this in their car and didn’t have a chance to write that down so they can go back to the show notes and, find the links in there to your book and to the, boundaries resource that you have there. That’s awesome.
Erica: It’s so great. I love, I love talking with you.
Carrie: We have good times. I had so much fun having this conversation with Erica about boundaries 1 0 1. Stay tuned for boundaries 2 0 2. I may do that as a solo episode another time. We do have some great interviews coming up in the next month on breath prayer and on exposure and response prevention. So stay tuned for those episodes. If you like our show, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with someone else. So I know that you know, someone in your life probably who’s having difficulty with setting boundaries or they feel like if they set a boundary, that’s somehow un-Christian of them to do so. So feel free to forward this episode onto them. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee, opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By The Well Counseling.
Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, Episode 72. I am your host. Carrie’s Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.
I think a lot of times on this podcast, I love to create content for the younger version of cure. What that means is things that I wish people had told me earlier on in life or encouragement that I wish I would have received at different points.
So for example, we had a previous episode called sending hope and love to the, not yet mothers. And I did it for mother’s day. That is episode 27. If you want to go back and listen to it, but I know how hard it is to be in the church and not be a mother or be waiting for that time in your life to come. So, therefore, I created an episode about it, where I had stories of hope combined together. Some that had already been told on the podcast. And then I added some new ones in for people who had waited a long time to have a family either because they were single for a long time or they had gotten married and were dealing with infertility.
One of the reasons I want to do this episode on reducing anxiety about having a baby is because there’s so much negative energy out there and communication about having a child. It’s very interesting because at least it’s this way in American culture. I know it’s probably different in different cultures, but in American culture, when you tell someone that you’re pregnant, of course, people usually say, congratulations, we’re happy for you, et cetera. But then the other material that you get from people is some version of some horror story surrounding their birth. “Oh, with my second baby, I was in labor for 30 hours. Oh, I couldn’t get the epidural. I progressed. too fast, you know? Oh, I just couldn’t sleep that last week of pregnancy,” whatever it is. It’s almost like we have this badge of honor, if you’ve had a negative birth story.
So I wanted to put something out there just saying that I had a positive birth. Just let that sink in for a moment. If nobody else has given you that message. I have had a positive birth story. Therefore I can have a positive birth story too. I made the decision early on that I wanted to hire a doula and I wanted to try for a natural birthing process.
Things did not play out the way that I had planned them to. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about my story. Some things that went well, some things that didn’t go the way that I planned, but still turned out okay. In the end. So I’ve broken the how to reduce anxiety about having a baby into five points.
Point number one, educate yourself on the process of birth, and what to expect. Naturally and medically, regardless of what kind of birth you want to have, this is so crucial and important because I know many women come into the process of pregnancy going well, you know, I’m just not gonna worry about pain management because I’m just going to get an.
However, unfortunately, many women don’t even know what that means or what that process is like and what to expect there. On the flip side, there’s some women who say, “I want to go all-natural or I want to deliver at home.” And they have certain things that they’re wanting, and they’re very held onto that, but then they don’t research the other things.
So. Yes, maybe you want to give birth naturally, but if something might happen where you would need an epidural or a C-section, you want to be informed about those things as well. You can do this by very simple ways. Just going on the hospital page, seeing if they have some type of virtual tour classes, and educate yourself about the stages of birth and what to expect in each state.
Ask a lot of questions. That is what your OB is there for or your midwife. If you have a doula, that was one of the best things about really having a doula was I had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and I’ll tell you just for a moment on kind of hiring a doula, what that is, who that. We had so many people who didn’t understand us when we told them that we were having a doula, they automatically assumed that we were having a home birth and that wasn’t the case.
So what is a doula? A doula is a person who supports you through the pregnancy and the birthing process. So they’ll come out and they’ll meet with you ahead of time. They’ll talk with you about what your options are related to birth. They’ll find out what you want. They’ll help you make informed decisions by giving you information, but they won’t make decisions for you, obviously.
That’s your choice about what you want. If you want to give birth at home, they will meet you at your home. If you are giving birth in the hospital like I did, they will meet you at the hospital when you call them and tell them to come. Doulas are not medical professional, like a midwife. They have a lot of information and experience surrounding being with women who are giving birth, but they don’t actually have medical training.
So that’s an important distinction to know you will still need to have. A midwife or an OB, whoever is actually going to go through that birth process with you on the medical side of things. One of the things that I went through with my doula was hypnobirthing classes. And this allows you to teach yourself self-hypnosis how to relax and really get in a good state of hypnosis so that when you go through the birthing process that helps you with pain management. The classes were super helpful, not just for myself, but also for Steve because he was involved in all of the classes. So he kind of knew what to expect in the birthing process since this was also his first time having a child and going through that with him.
You want to make sure that your education surrounding birth and what to expect is positive. You don’t want to get on and read horror stories of other people’s birth experiences. Like I was talking about that people apparently love. For example, I was in a Facebook group for first-time mothers over the age of 35.
And I ended up having to either snooze that group or get out of it. I don’t remember. Maybe I stopped following it for a time period. There were just so many women in there talking about. Negative painful, unexpected birth stories that I really couldn’t handle all of that information. I noticed that it was turning up a lot of anxiety within me to hear these people say, oh, you know, I had this horrible labor and this was why, and this is how it went.
And therefore are other people being negative surrounding natural birth, which was something that I was wanting. You will find that if you are looking to give birth naturally without an epidural, that you will face even more negativity, more criticism, more people telling you, oh no, you’re not going to be able to do that.
So just kind of be prepared for. But I will tell you from personal experience, it’s completely possible. One of the things that I did was I got on a site called I think it was a mom and natural, and I read stories, positive birth stories from other people who gave birth naturally since staff was something that I was wanting to do.
And I felt like that was important and critical to my process. I will say that some of the materials on the website more her articles were not as helpful. And there were a little bit more fear-driven in my experience have made me very afraid of certain things. And I’ll talk about that a little bit later, in addition to taking the class with our hip, no doula, which was a very extensive six-week class theme.
And I also took a very. Class from the hospital, more so to become aware of their procedures in their processes of doing things. This helped me know more about what my options were. So for example, I knew that the hospital I was delivering at had laboring tubs, but their policy is they will not allow you to actually give birth in those tubs.
So that was important to know. I knew that if I needed to have certain medications like Pitocin, that I wouldn’t be able to be in the laboring. One of the best pieces of advice I got from the hospital class though, was to bring my own pillows. They said the hospital pillows are terribly thin and plastic-y not comfortable at all.
So I was glad that I brought my own pillows to the hospital. For sure. Educate yourself sometimes on the medications that may be needed during the labor process. The stages of labor, how your hospital birthing center does things, or if you’re having a home birth, what that is going to look like? For me being a highly sensitive person, just having the opportunity to have the visual tour of the hospital, to see exactly how the birthing room was laid out exactly how the postpartum suite was laid out. That helped me tremendously. If you’re giving birth at a hospital, you can talk with other people who have had experiences at that hospital. For me. I knew that mine had very high ratings year after year for people who’d given birth there. I talked to some people who had tremendous experiences told me great things about the nurses.
And so all of that really reduced my anxiety for people to be able to say, wow, that hospital is really great. The nurses are awesome. They really love what they do. That helped to reduce quite a bit of my anxiety. And then just knowing the process. This is where you go. If it’s during regular hours, this is where you go.
If it’s after hours, this is what floor you need to go to. All of that was super helpful for me to just kind of know what to expect when you have anxiety. Just knowing what to expect helps so much. I had some anxiety surrounding my doctor not getting there or someone from her practice, not getting to the hospital and having my baby be delivered by just whoever the general on-call person was at the time.
More. So the anxiety about that person being male, I had, even though I’ve had male doctors in the past that have had positive experiences with, there was something about my birth space that I really only wanted female medical professionals in there. People who had actually had the ability to give birth.
That just felt most right. For me. I had a lot of questions for my doctor because I had heard a story about someone that happened to from their practice. She really provided a lot of assurance to me that either she or someone else from her practice who were all females were going to be able to get there.
And that they very rarely had someone from the hospital deliver one of the babies. That provided me a lot more reassurance. My second piece of advice on reducing anxiety is to create a plan, but also to hold on loosely, I think it’s good to create a birth plan. Some people say don’t create a birth plan because you’re just going to have to throw it out the window.
Anyway, that doesn’t make sense. That’s kind of like saying, don’t have a blueprint for your house just because you can’t put the kitchen on the left side because of where the water line is, whatever. You still want to have some kind of plan, but also know that things are not going to go exactly how you have it on your plan.
So it’s important to have some flexibility and to hold on to things loosely. One of my fears was that my daughter would not come and then I would need to have an induction. This was a fear because I knew that I’m older and when you’re having a baby, when you’re older, they don’t want you to necessarily always carry to 40 weeks.
So I was praying and really wanted my daughter faith to come at just the right time so that I wouldn’t have to be induced. I had some serious anxiety about Pitocin. I had heard a lot of horror stories from people who had experienced induction. Pitocin or not just inductions, but also like, uh, trying to speed up their labor with it.
I had read a lot on the internet about the horrors of it and how it’s overutilized in America, et cetera, et cetera. I had read a lot of information about inductions leading to C-sections different things. Here was all this anxiety. My plan was. To really do some early laboring at home. Get to the hospital, allow things to progress.
Naturally, not have medication, not having an epidural, be able to give birth more quickly and move on with. I was also planning to use my hypnobirthing for pain management, those things I just listed pretty much did not go according to plan. I had done a lot of research about Pitocin and inductions, even though those weren’t routes that I wanted to do.
I was able to actually advocate for myself when I needed an induction. I was able to talk with my doctor about the concern regarding inductions leading to C-sections. She was able to provide me some reassurance that her C-section rate was actually a lot lower than the average that I had read about online, because I expressed to her my concerns about Pitocin increasing pain of contractions. We were able to come to an agreement to start me out on a really low dose and to gradually increase that through my birthing process. One of the things that my doula told me after that experience was that, you know, my level was started on a two, whereas she had seen other people’s level, just be started out on a 10 and.
I’m so glad that I did that research and expressed my concerns because I think it helped me have an easier labor process. I actually never got up to a 10. I only got up to eight before I delivered and everyone’s different in terms of what their needs are. And I don’t know how it translates. I just know the number that I was seeing on the medication, but my point is that doing your research allows you to make informed choices later.
And in doing that research, understand that everything you read online doesn’t mean that that’s how it’s going to go for you in your specific situation. Same thing with experiences that you hear from other people. Just because they had that experience. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to have that experience in the end.
I’m glad that I had a birth plan, even though I changed it last minute to adjust it for the induction related to my health concerns that I had at the end of pregnancy. The things that did go according to my birth plan were really being able to advocate for myself about wanting to have as natural birth as possible.
That was really respected by people in the hospital. And they didn’t try to push medication on me, which I really appreciated in terms of pain medication or epidural. I had a request that there were to be no male medical staff in the room while I was giving birth. And that was respected. I had been told by my doula that they usually bring over a mirror to allow you to see what’s happening in that pushing process.
I told them I was not interested in that. And fortunately, the hospital that I went to already practiced some good afterbirth things, such as, you know, skin-to-skin, contact, delayed cord, clamping, those types of things. I didn’t have to worry about putting that in my birth plan as much. Although you may want to check with your hospital and to see what their policies are on.
My OB had a saying about birth. That’s the only thing predictable about it is the unpredictability about it. With that being said, it’s good to have a positive relationship with your provider, where you can talk about what you would like, what your plans are, and with the understanding that there’s some give and take about what’s able to happen.
What’s not able to happen. One of the things that I did not want. Was an IB and that wasn’t really a possibility. They said, you know, it’s really just hospital policy, even if you’re not getting these IB medications that you still need to have one in just in case of emergencies so that they can get medication in you quickly.
However, I knew that going in ahead of time, which was good for me to know. I also communicated on my birth plan that I had negative hospital experiences in the past. And wanted this to be a more positive experience. One of the reasons I felt like experience was negative in the past was due to lack of communication.
And so I really wanted to make sure that they were communicating everything to me, that they were explaining things to me before they did them. I know that other people I had heard from had had experiences where things just kind of happened, or they were given medication without being told about it ahead of time and so forth.
And so. So create a plan, but hold on loosely, pray about it, but also know that God is in control and it’s going to be okay. Number three, visualize what you want, not what you don’t. Our brain has a way of trying to protect us from danger and negative outcomes. That means that we’re going to create all kinds of what if scenarios in our mind, what if this happens?
What if that happens? And when we worry, we’re basically visualizing what we don’t want to happen. Right. So we’re dwelling upon. Okay. And, and I had this very negative vision of, I go into the hospital. It’s some kind of medical emergency happening. People are rushing in there. And so then I was able to kind of talk through with my duel a little bit about what if that did happen?
What if there was an emergency. You know, you would deal with it. You would make decisions based on the knowledge that you have and the knowledge you’re receiving from the doctors. And you would, you know, go with the flow in that situation. But what if those things don’t happen? What if things progress very normally or expectedly, then you’ve wasted all of this time with this worry and this negative visualization in your mind.
So it’s important to be able to sit and visualize the type of birth that you want, not the birth that you don’t want. You want to be able to visualize how you’re going to manage the pain and discomfort that comes up from giving you. For me, one of the things that I really wanted was to be able to have letters from friends and family read to me while I was going through labor.
This was actually the most beautiful part of my birth process. Steve did just an amazing job of reaching out to people. Talking to various friends and family members and saying, Hey, will you write a letter of encouragement for Carrie? Will you write a note? So beautiful. Just people that had verses that they shared in their notes, people that wrote things like.
A funny story, maybe that they had experienced. I know several people mentioned in their notes that they would be praying for me and talked about how really conceiving our daughter was such an answer to prayer for Steve and I and how God was going to get me through this process. One thing that happened that Steve didn’t know that I did was I created a little book.
And in the book, I put scripture verses of encouragement. I put positive birth affirmations. And then after that I put little post-it notes that he had written to me left around the house. This is just kind of something that he does husband award here. He writes just little positive encouraging things for my day.
And so I had kept some of those that meant a lot to me. And during the process, when things got difficult, I asked him to read those back to me and he said, this is very strange. Like I’m reading something that I’ve written previously to you out loud, but it was just such a good thing. One of the things my doula said was that when Steve would read those notes to me, she just noticed like that my whole body would relax and they were able to kind of see on the monitors and things while my blood pressure was doing.
And she just. It was really healthy and really allowed me to kind of get through the process, letting go of the, what-ifs. One of the things that I really loved about the hip, no birthing process was that there were positive affirmations that we listened to every day. And it was 40 minutes of positive affirmations.
And at first, I was kind of like, okay, this is really cheesy and cheeky because of. Someone repeating things over and over, like you deserve to have a wonderful, beautiful birth, you know, and a lot of times actually they were in the first person. So I’m trying to think of what some of them were. So they would say things like, you know, my body is healthy.
To give birth. My body knows exactly what it needs to do. One of the sayings in hypno babies is each birth wave. They don’t call them contractions. They call them waves, you know, brings me closer to my baby is all very focused on the positive. They changed some of the wording, so that. You don’t associate birth with pain and negativity.
They don’t call it labor. They call it birthing time because labor just sounds like it’s really hard work and their whole idea surrounding it is to have a more easy, more comfortable birthing process for them. So these positive affirmations helped so much in, even though in the beginning, I thought they were kind of cheesy.
They helped so much in being able to shift my mindset and just remind me that my body is prepared to give birth. And that that’s already hardwired in just like other bodily responses, like breathing and sweating. It knows what it needs to do. And if we’ll just be able to back up and stay out of the way, then we can allow our body to do what it needs to do.
But what happens when fear takes over is that we create tension, which then causes us to be in more pain. So the more that you’re able to relax through the process, the more your body will just, your muscles will engage and do the things that they need to do. But that fear. Slows things down. And that fear actually constricts you from opening up, which is one thing you need to do, right.
I’ts open up quite a bit. Once you’re able to like relax and open and be calm, then things will just kind of follow as they need to flow. It’s easier said than done. But the more that you practice and the more that you put those positives in, and kind of even, they talk about visualizing your cervix, opening and dilating, maybe even like visualizing as you’re going through the birthing process, visualizing, you know, your baby moving through your body, those types of things.
As I was going through different stages. My doula would talk with me about, you know, okay, this is like face, like she’s moving now. Like, you know, her, head’s almost about to be out. Just kind of like talking me through that process. Like, this is a good thing everything’s progressing. Well, you know, you’re doing what you need to do.
Number four. Understanding that everyone has anxiety at some level about giving birth. And that’s a normal thing. Anxiety is not always bad. And I think we often label it as something that’s bad. But one of the things that we talk about on the podcast is that anxiety at some level is informative for us.
Anxiety causes us to lean into God, more anxiety causes to really seek after God and pushes us to do bigger things than we would normally do on our own. So anxiety in itself is not always bad. It was understanding it is your body and your brain’s way of trying to protect you. And when you’re able to say back to them, You know what I am a child of God.
I know that he loves me. I know that he cares about me. I know that he is not going to allow something horrible and awful to happen unless it’s somehow part of his redemptive plan. So if something goes wrong and something happens to me or my daughter, that God still has a plan for the future. And that it’s a good plan and I can move forward in that.
That is huge. There were things that I found out about my body, my physical health kind of declined, unfortunately very rapidly towards the end, right before I gave birth. And that was really hard to deal with. I got diagnosed with something called holy state. Of pregnancy, that’s something I heard, Michael Phelps, his wife, I believe talk about on a birthing podcast.
I think she also had that with some of her pregnancies with Cola stasis. There is a higher rate of stillbirth and I was already at higher risk of stillbirth for being older. That obviously was hard to hear and was anxiety-provoking. There were two things that I clung on to though they would always tell me when they did ultrasounds and so forth, that my daughter looked healthy, that everything looked okay.
They didn’t see any issues. And so I thought, okay, this is a good thing. Even if my body isn’t reacting well to the pregnancy, my daughter is still okay. The other thing that I held on to was I really felt like God gave me this baby. And I thought if God has given me this baby as a gift, then I just believe and have faith that he’s not going to allow this to end negatively.
This is going to have a positive ending to the story, going back to the positive affirmations for a moment, that experience caused me to really think. What if we, as Christians selected some verses about who we are in Christ and listen to those or read those every day because I probably did this for well, at least six weeks that I was in the.
That’s a long time. What if we really meditated on some of those scriptures that said that we are loved, that we are a child of God, that we are a part of his family. Would that make a difference in how we live our lives? Out of that, a love and acceptance from God. I really think that it would, and I challenge you and encourage you, even if you find a scripture too, that encourages you, that challenges you to really meditate on it every day for a while and see if that changes.
Number five, don’t get so stuck on the process of pregnancy giving birth that you lose sight of the outcome is kind of like a wedding. Weddings are beautiful thing, but they can be really stressful. There’s all this planning that goes into it. And then same thing with giving birth, something doesn’t quite go right.
You know, the caterer shows up late, you have a family member that can’t find the venue. Whatever the case is, there’s always something that doesn’t quite go according to plan. But at the end of the day, you’re married. This is what I told our wedding photographer. And when she was shooting some pictures of our wedding, I said, we’re very laid back.
And we understand that regardless of what happens at the end of the day, we’re going to be married. Did everything turn out perfectly or as we planned? No, but the outcome was very positive. The outcome was what we were looking for. Apply this same thing to your birth, visualize yourself, holding your baby.
Even if you don’t know what they’re going to look like. Although I will say those creepy 3d ultrasound photos are pretty accurate. If you happen to have any of those, they kept trying to get a picture of face, face. I was like, I don’t care because I had to have all these ultrasounds at the end because of the coleus stasis.
It doesn’t matter to me, however, I can go back and look. And she had those same chubby cheeks on the ultrasound that she had after she came out. So those things are pretty accurate and incredible. Visualize yourself, holding your beautiful baby. That is what you want to be focused on. Don’t get so stuck on the process and all the ins and outs of what could happen, couldn’t happen.
And then understanding. It’s hard. I think to fall in love with someone that you’ve never met before. You’re trying to kind of do this ahead of time, but holding your baby is a great thing. It’s almost, there’s a verse in the Bible that talks about how after you’ve had a baby, it’s almost like you forget the pain of labor.
And I think there is some truth to that. When I look back on my process, I don’t remember necessarily or tune into the hard thing. I remember her coming out and thinking like, oh, wow, like this is over now. I remember Steve reading me, those encouraging stories and some of the things that people said. I remember some of the hard things, but they’re not attached to paying.
If that makes sense. I don’t know any other way to describe that. It’s like when I look back at the process, I see the whole thing is a positive experience because I was able to birth my daughter. She came out healthy and it was amazing. I will say that anyone who’s interested in a more natural or a non-epidural.
That there’s something very empowering about going through that process and knowing that you did that people say that I have a high pain tolerance now, or they think it’s somehow amazing that I did that. I don’t really see it that way myself. I think my pain tolerance probably is higher than it was before.
I’m more look at it as this was something that I knew I could do and set out to do and wanted to do, and had very specific reasons for wanting that. And I was able to achieve that. So did my birth story go according to plan? No, because towards the very end. My health declined. I was diagnosed with Cola stasis, as I explained earlier, had a higher rate of stillbirth.
So my OB really encouraged me to deliver at 37 weeks as I was in the process of going back and forth with talking to Steve about, do we take that recommendation or not? Do we let her mature in there a little bit longer? My blood pressure ended up spiking. And about a week before I gave birth, I am. Being diagnosed kind of at the last minute with preeclampsia too.
So having those two health conditions, God really gave me peace about the induction that this was what we were supposed to be doing. There was a lot of prayer that went into that process and honestly, a lot of anger towards God, because. I was so mad that he didn’t answer my one prayer that I had kept praying that faith would come in her own time and that I wouldn’t have to be induced.
However, is one of those situations where God gives you what you need, not what you want. So the process of becoming a parent is hard sometimes. Things don’t go according to plan, it’s a lot of trial and error. You just have to roll with it, but being able to have my daughter, the way that I did and the way that things happened, and yet she still turned out, okay.
She still turned out healthy, just really gave me an increase trust in God and an increased confidence that even though things don’t go according to my plan, that he has a plan and that he loves me to not always give me what I want or what I asked for in prayer. He loves me enough to give me what I need, even when I don’t know that that’s what I need at the time.
So that was something that God gave to me through my birth process. I think that’s helping me as a parent now to just be okay when things are a bit out of my control or faith is crying and I don’t know exactly what to do. Okay. Maybe. Try this or try that, you know, why is she upset right now? Or had expected her to take a nap at this time sounds small.
And she didn’t or so forth. It’s just helping me be more go with the flow because of what I went through. And how hard that was for me to accept being acceptance of all my plans changing. It’s also allowed me, given me the opportunity to be able to live more day to day in a mindful sense of in the moment, teaching myself that I can only deal with the information that I have on the table right now.
That was something that happened throughout my pregnancy process. I could only deal with what was in front of me at the time. At first, my levels were elevated, but they weren’t at the threshold of cholestasis. I just had severe itching on my hands, on my feet, other areas. Actually, I didn’t really have as much itching on my hands, but that’s one of the symptoms.
I had more so the itching on my feet, I would have to run them under cold water at night in order to be able to just relax enough to sleep. And one of the things that got me through that was a story of hope on one of our very early podcasts, where one of my friends had shared a condition that she had during pregnancy that caused her a lot of problems.
And, that continued even after she gave birth. So when my levels were elevated, I just had to deal with the symptom. Then it crossed the threshold and then there was new information and there were other things that happened. There were more conversations to be had. Then my blood pressure spike. I couldn’t really deal with how my birth was going to go way back, you know, several weeks before and really had to make a lot of shifts and a lot of changes to be able to get myself ready, business-wise even, and so forth to deliver three weeks early yet, everything was already in place that I needed to have in place. My clients had referrals. I had things ready to go, you know, by that point so that we were ready at that time. If there’s anything that I could leave you with it’s to know that if you follow some of these steps, it’s really going to help you have a more relaxed birth process.
It’s not going to be a hundred percent relaxed. It’s not going to be pain-free, but it’s going to be a process that you feel some more greater comfort level that you’re going to be able to get through and work through something about giving birth. And that’s a hard thing, but once you get through it and you’re like, wow, well, I got through that hard thing.
I can get through other hard things too. Thank you for tuning into my episode on what younger version of me and I, when I say younger version, I mean like a year ago, wish that she knew about giving birth and I hope that it helps somebody else. Maybe that’s in. Station of their life to hear something positive.
And even if you get nothing else out of this, just know that you can have a good birth experience. You can reduce some of your anxiety about having a baby. God is in control. He loves you and it’s all going to be okay, whatever happens. It’s going to become a part of your story. Thank you so much for listening today.
I know, even before I became pregnant, I was trying to get people on to talk about postpartum anxiety and depression, because it’s a big thing that happens in society that unfortunately people don’t always talk about. I haven’t had much luck on getting a guest for that. So if you know somebody that does that kind of work, feel free to have them contact me through the website. The best way to know about what is going on with the podcast is to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or sign up for our email newsletter. You can find us anytime at hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Thanks for tuning in and you’ll hear from me in a couple days.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling.
Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling.
Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time be comforted by God’s great love for you.
We are privileged to have Stormie Omartian on the show today. Stormie is a bestselling author who personally connects with readers by sharing experiences and lessons that beautifully illustrate how God changes lives when we learn to trust in Him.
Stormie’s struggle with anxiety and phobias
Her horrible experience of growing up with a mother who has mental health disorder
Overworking to cope with trauma and depression
Finding hope for the first time and surrendering to God
What does the process of forgiveness look like for Stormie
Carrie: Hope for anxiety and OCD episode 71. I’m very excited to bring you this interview with Stormie Omartian. Some of you may be familiar with her books, such as Power of a Praying Wife. She’s also written a book called Power of Praying Through Fear. While I’m sure Stormie and I could have had a long discussion about her book. This episode is more about her personal story of coming to Christ and how Christ delivered her from the intense fear and depression that was over her life, lagging her on a daily basis.
There’s so much hope and encouragement that can be received from hearing other people’s testimony. So I hope that that is what you get out of this episode. Normally I don’t put trigger warnings on the podcast if you’ve been listening for a while, because there are so many different things that probably that we talk about that could trigger people. However, I do want to make mention that topics of child abuse, mental illness in the family and suicide come up in this episode.
Carrie: Stormie, I knew that you had written books on prayer and I actually received some as, wedding presents. One of the sweetest things that someone did for me was an older lady in my fiance at the time’s church. And because we started going to my church after we got married. There was an older woman from his church who sat down with me and got me coffee. And we just talked about, you know, how marriage can be hard. And she gave me The Power Of A Praying Wife. And she said, “this is something that’s really helped me in my marriage. And I just wanted to give that to you”. And it was just probably one of the best wedding presents that you could get is just some mentorship from someone who’s been there and been in the trenches. And gone through some hard things. So that was really wonderful. And I know that you have several books on The Power of A Praying Husband and Praying For Your Children and so forth.
Stormie: Yes.
Carrie: And I didn’t know until really my assistant brought it to my attention that you struggled with anxiety and phobias earlier in your life. I was curious about hearing that story from you.
Stormie: Bless the lady who gave you that book. I wish I had had that book when I first got married. You know, it took me a number of years after I was married. To figure that book out. I mean, to learn enough, to be able to write that book. And so it really changed our marriage. When I learned how to pray like that. The Power Of Praying Wife and Power Of Praying Husband tells you how to pray. And I was raised by a mentally ill mother. And sometimes when we think of mentally ill, it’s just some kind of, you know, not a big deal. As far as, I mean, it’s a big deal for the person, but not a big deal for other people, but for her, my mother, she wasn’t just a little mentally ill.
She was like raving crazy. I mean, really she was really abusive. Locked me in a closet much of my early childhood, very erratic the way she behaved. I mean, she would just slap me across the face, outta the blue, and it always shocked me cause I didn’t know what I’d done. And then she would lock me in the closet and I couldn’t cry because then I’d get punished for crying. I couldn’t ask to get out because then I’d get punished for that. It was scary to live with her. We were on a ranch, isolated from the rest of the world, really 30 miles from the nearest lake.
I was really isolated until I started school, but I was really terrified to go to school, probably a 20-mile ride into school and where the school was. And I was just afraid of the children cause I wasn’t around children and they just seemed loud and scary to me. And so it was scary to go home and it was scary to go to school. And I grew up with so much fear and anxiety and feelings of futility and hopelessness. All always afraid of, what was gonna happen. And my dad, we had a ranch and he worked the ranch. When the weather wasn’t good, he’d go to the logging mills and he would stay there to make money in the winter or when it was a bad season, you couldn’t grow crops or you couldn’t, you had to keep your cattle protected and stuff like that. He wasn’t always around.
So I was with her and she just constantly talking to the voices she heard in her head, it just so scary. I mean, she wasn’t just like a normal person who had problems. She was a scary person. You didn’t never know what she was gonna do. And so I grew up with these feelings, so strong fear and anxiety and hopelessness and helplessness. And just all of those things. I was just afraid all the time. I was afraid to do anything. I was afraid to do something wrong and I didn’t know. And when I did get slapped across the face, I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. It was really bad. And so, so much so that by the time I grew up. I still, even though I got out of the closet, we moved to a small place that didn’t have any closets. I mean, the closets were two feet wide. You really couldn’t put someone in there. I wasn’t in the closet anymore, but she was still nuttier than ever and more abusive. And she talked about me in degrading, profanity, always things about me. Most of them are unrepeatable, and being described in those terms is really hurtful.
I just felt she was just always mean and always nasty and always abusive, always violent and crazy, always crazy talking to all these voices that she heard and showed out, people were out to kill her. And it was nutty. You never felt any normality. And so what I carried with me from all that was by the time I was out of the house, supporting myself and I was still locked in a closet. It was an emotional closet as opposed to a physical closet. I mean, it was, went with me everywhere. I tried everything when I was growing up to get rid of that pain. I had that pain all the time and always feeling, always feeling like crying, always feeling like I would never be accepted anywhere.
Nothing was ever gonna go right. Nothing was ever gonna be good in my life. And I just wanted to get away from the pain. And so what I did when I was 14, I just swallowed all the pills I could find in my house, cause I didn’t wanna wake up anymore. Cause it was so painful. I felt out of place every place I went, she was nutty enough that she mixed all the medicine up.
So I don’t even know what I took, but I was very sick, I know that. So, once I lived through that, I thought I’m just gonna try as my best to do the best I can to get good grades to develop any talents or gifts. I felt like it could do carry off and hoping that I could become a workaholic and just get out of my mess, graduate from high school and then went to UCLA.
I put myself through school. I was working in the evenings and on the weekends. I don’t even know how I did it, but I had to do it, we didn’t have any money. We were very poor and rats used to run across my bed at night. Often I went to bed hungry and that’s when I was with my parents. So they couldn’t provide any help at all. And so I was trying, putting myself through UCLA and I thought, wow! I don’t know if I can make this, but I started getting work in Hollywood. And the TV shows, there were a lot of musical TV shows. So I was singing on them and dancing and, and little acting with comedy skits and things like that. So I was working a lot.
I was working seven days a week. I’d work as much as I possibly could, two jobs, which is really hard to do. I had two shows that I was working on: the Glen Camel Show and then another local show called Loman and Barkley which was LA. So I worked seven days a week and I was really killing myself because I knew I couldn’t rest. I was so insecure that going to bed hungry really affected you as a child. And you’re always afraid you’re gonna end up homeless or, you know, and I wasn’t going back to live with my mother. I was gonna make this work, but I, I could never shake the depression and the anxiety. And if I got insecure on one of the sets, I would just go into one of the bathroom stalls and just cry and cry and cry. And so no one could hear me, but I just, it was so depressed and so anxious and so hopeless.
Carrie: And was staying busy, kind of one of those ways that you just coped with that anxiety. If I just stay on this hamster wheel and keep going and going, going, maybe.
Stormie: Exactly. Exactly. That’s exactly it.
And I was too insecure to turn down any work and the work, like that comes in seems like in seasons, in season, outta season. But I worked all the time, all the time. I was always auditioning, always getting jobs, always getting another show and I was getting worse and worse and worse. As far as the depression goes, it wasn’t getting better beause that’s kind of an insecure kind of job. Anyway, you just feel like you’re only as good as the last day you worked. You know what I mean?
Carrie: Wow!
Stormie: You were judged every day. What you did do and how did you come through, was this good or was it not? And, I always judge myself so harshly that it was you. If I had a good filming thing where we did a great taping of a show or whatever, then the next morning I was really depressed, cause I didn’t know if I was ever gonna work again and then I’m going on to the next job and the next and it just, I never got better.
I just, it got worse. It got worse and worse and worse. I always thought that I, you know, if I got out of the situation with my mother got out of that, worked really hard. Then I could be free of all that, that didn’t happen. It just got worse. I think the older I got and not that I was getting old, but I was in my twenties. And at that time, if you got in your late twenties, you were, like pretty much washed up. You know what I mean? So that was always bothering me too. You know, that I was getting older. Didn’t seem to get any better. It wasn’t until everything in my life just collapsed. All of a sudden my health was bad. My mental health was bad.
I was just depressed so badly that I could hardly function. And I just, and emotionally just, it was awful. And I just felt like I, I couldn’t go on anymore. And that’s when one of the girls I was singing with in the TV studio and the recording studios too. Cause I did a lot of background singing for other artists and stuff like that. And that lady, Terry, she was a little younger than I was. She took me to meet her pastor at the church. That was not far from where we were doing all this work and all the studios and everything. And she introduced me to the pastor and he just described Jesus in a way I could understand. He said, “God has a purpose for your life and He has plans for you”. I never heard such stuff, really never that I had a purpose. Wow! I thought I was just scratching, clawing for a purpose, you know, but God had a purpose for me and if I would receive him, He would change me from the inside out. And I thought, wow! it just seemed too good to be true. And so I did receive the Lord in his office and my friend Terry was with us too. And I felt hope for the first time.
I don’t remember feeling hope before. And then I thought I was, it was really big. And I thought I have a purpose. And there’s hope for my life. It’s almost like I saw a light at the end of the long dark tunnel of my life. And I just started coming with Terry would pick me up every week to take me to church. And I mean, for months and months, she did that cause I was too depressed. Depressions I had, I could hardly get out of bed. And so if there was a day, I didn’t have to get outta bed, but she would come over and get me out and I’d throw something on and she’d take me to church. And as I went to church and started hearing the truth, being told of how God gives us a sound mind of how He has a purpose for us. He has plans for a great plan for our life. He’s the God of the impossible. And He can do things that you feel are impossible.
The hope began to grow. And I met my husband. I had been on a recording session with him, and Terry had introduced me to him when, after I got into this church, he came to the church for the first time when I did in this particular church.
And so we meet again there. I met him on a record session that Terry had contracted us to do. And when I met him the year before, I didn’t feel good in my own self. To be able to have a relationship with someone who was a really nice person. And, you know, you don’t wanna just give someone a, a beat-up kind of damaged emotionally person.
But so, when I saw him again in church, I thought, wow! I wish I’d been going to this church for longer than just a week. We started dating, and we got married within that year. I was so surprised to have the Lord and a faithful husband who loved me, but I still had depression. I still had it. I can believe it. I thought that would solve everything.
Carrie: Right.
Stormie: But it didn’t. I still had it. I still had the depression.
Carrie: When you get in a healthy relationship after being in such an unhealthy relationship for so long, it’s almost like it’s hard to allow people to love you. And it seems kind of foreign.
Stormie: It does. That’s exactly right. That’s a way to describe it, cause you’ve not had that before and you think, well, they are, they’re all together and everything. And I know that I am not, you know, even though I’m not telling people that I’m not, I knew, but I was surprised to find myself so depressed. And so I couldn’t believe it. And I thought, oh my gosh, what is the matter with me? Why am I still depressed? You know, I thought these things would fix it and it didn’t. And so my husband would say, “why don’t you go to the church”? He knew that the church had Christian counselors there. They were, actually the pastor’s wives and these wives are really why they knew the scripture.
They knew what God has for us in the way of wholeness. They knew how to pray. They knew how to pass and pray. And you know how to teach the scripture in a way that would really help you hang on to the truth. And so when I went there, this lady, one pastor’s wife, Maryanne, talked to me for an hour and I told her everything. I never told anybody everything. I had told my husband everything about my past, but I never told anybody else. And she said, you know what? We really need to fast and pray. And she said she would fast and pray with me. And she said for three days, and this was really shocking because, you know, I had gone to, with too many times, hungry. I’m very hungry. I was hungry.
Carrie: Sure.
Stormie: And then deliberately go to bed hungry for three days. I thought was insane, but I really wanted what God had for me. And I really trusted her cause she was really intuitive and really understood. Just understood everything. And so I did, she said you can fast for three days and then come back and then I’m gonna pray with you and we’re gonna get rid of this depression. I thought, wow! I didn’t know what to think of that. And really, I never heard anything like that and I didn’t know what the possibilities were, but I thought it would be nice it. He prayed for it, you know? So I did that, went home when she said, write out a list of all of your sins that you haven’t confessed. I thought, whoa!
I don’t, you know, so, so I did, I wrote, I just had a list and I just was writing everything that came to my mind. And I was really afraid of what was gonna happen when she read it, but she didn’t wanna read it. She just laid her hand on that paper. And when we started to pray, I, first of all, had to confess my unforgiveness toward my mother. I’ve been trying to forgive her and what I knew was a done deal yet. I knew that I had such bitterness and all those years that she was brutal toward me and I had to confess all my cult involvement. I had been searching in the cult, you know, trying to find a way to God, I couldn’t get it. I just couldn’t. I tried all these things.
I tried hypnosis and astral projection and all these new age and cult things that I was in. And so I had to confess all of that and say, “Lord, I, I wanna serve you. I don’t wanna serve anything else that’s not of you”. So, she said, “The sooner you get rid of the things that are not of God, the sooner you can move on with God to become all He created you to be”. The third thing was see, forgiving my mother, and getting rid of the cult involvement. And I can’t remember what the other third thing was. Wow! I was, I’ll think of it. Anyway, gosh, I’ve been talking about this for a hundred years. So when I did those three things, she put her hands on my shoulders and my head and she prayed for me.
She had invited another pastor’s wife when I made those confessions. It was like God just lifted that depression off of my shoulders. It was a wildest thing. I tried medicine. It wasn’t my, like, I hadn’t taken medicine for it. I’d tried drugs and alcohol and just anything. I didn’t do that when I was working. It’s not like I was an addict or anything like that. I just was trying to kill the pain in whatever way.
Carrie: Sure.
Stormie: When she prayed for me, I felt the depression lift. And now that’s a physical manifestation of just heavy things on my shoulders and my head and my chest. And my heart felt it lift, lifted off. I thought, wow! I mean, I was amazed. I didn’t even know that was possible when that lifted. I kind of expected it to come back the next day. You know what I mean? When I get depressed again, I am coming back here every time I get depressed, but it doesn’t come back. It’s not like I was never depressed again, you know, or never anxious again, but it never controlled me.
I had before it was controlling my entire life, the depression and I couldn’t function. I couldn’t hardly be a good friend, but I always got myself out of bed to go to work. That was a necessity, but I, when that thing lifted and it didn’t come back, wow! If God would do that for me, what else does he wanna do for me? And then I started thinking of other people and saying, “what else does he wanna do for other people”? There’s power in prayer in Jesus’ name, there is power. And to see it manifest is just really mind-blowing. Because I tried a medicine as well, is all these other things, I was trying to medicate it and it didn’t help.
It didn’t help. It just made me feel drugged. Didn’t make me delivered or free. And so I, I saw that you can be free and I’d tried everything to get free before I’d gone to psychiatrists and psychologists and counselors secular, and they kind of helped. They’re probably what kept me alive for so long, but it just, they weren’t the answer and I’m not putting it down for anybody taking medicine at all.
Believe me, I feel that that’s a gift from God in itself. To have that to relieve the pain or the symptoms that you have, but God is the one who can really make you whole, and it’s his spirit in you that changes you from the inside out? That was really an amazing thing to understand that there’s really power in prayer. And again, I don’t wanna discourage anyone from seeing a doctor or a counselor or anything, or take the medicine you need or whatever, whatever works for you. Let you know that there’s a deeper freedom you can have where you can really be set free from it.
Carrie: I think it really makes sense to me from a psychological perspective about people will say, sometimes that depression is anger turned inward and so we’re really angry still at your mother, understanding.
So for everything that happened there, and that was a stronghold in your life, there was some bitterness there. And then you had all of those insecurities about yourself.
Stormie: Yes.
Carrie: And so there may have been some of that anger towards yourself there that was stuck.
Stormie: That’s so true. And after I had that freedom from the controlling aspect of depression and anxiety, I had my first child, was born. All those feelings toward my mother, which I thought I’d work through. Forgiving my mother was an ongoing process. It would, wasn’t like one and done, forget it. It was every time you thought of something else that she did or you talked to her again and she would just attack you on the phone or, you know, that’s the way she was.
She was just, it wasn’t a normal person. She was just really lonely all of that came back when I brought my first child home and thinking, “What could a mother treat her child that way?” I couldn’t believe it. That’s the last thing I thought I would do anything like that. But then I began to see that there was stuff in me when I couldn’t get the baby to stop crying, it would feel like a rejection of me as a mother. I just felt like there was a monster in me that this, all this anger and hurt and everything’s coming back up again. And I couldn’t understand why I thought I was done with that, but it’s a process. And so I, I learned that I had to, when I started to get those feelings in me, I just had to put the baby down in the crib and just go into my room and get on my knees before the Lord and say, “God, just take this away”.
Take this horrible thing in me away that just rises to the surface in just almost a rage of anger and just, just all these horrible feelings you don’t wanna have. So that was a gradual thing. I I called the counselor, I finally told my husband what was going on. We talked to Maryanne the counselor and she said, “Just as long as the baby’s not in any danger”, he said, “Just keep doing that. Just keep asking God to set you free of it”. So certain things like unforgiveness is like a process,
Carrie: It is, it really is.
Stormie: You have to forgive something else would come up and you go, I just feel, I felt such a resentment for so long for her. Cause I felt like I, I started way behind everybody else cause everybody else taught and, and loved, you know, and, and taught things and, and taught how to live and how to be with people and stuff like that. And I did, I wasn’t, you know, and so I just felt resentful about that for so long, but I just kept forgiving her and forgiving her over and over and over. And because she was such a source of my depression and anxiety and hurt and sadness and grief and all of that. It’s just a those kind of things are a process.
You know, sometimes you can just get a deliverance that’s just instant, like set free from that, from that depression that day, which just, it just lifted like, wow! that’s amazing. But then the thing where all this stuff would come up when I was with my child and then I’m resenting her even more thinking I wouldn’t do, like anything like this to my child. Why would you do that to me? It was, it was ongoing. I’m telling you it was ongoing forgiveness until I thought it was free of it.
Carrie: I don’t really believe that healing comes in layers. Sometimes we’re only able to do that top layer and God knows that, you know, he allows us other things to come up.
Stormie: They do. And, and then the thing is to not get discouraged when that happens, when you think you’re free of something and all of a sudden you feel like it’s coming back, like it never, you know, you were never healed and not to get deceived by that or misled by that because he let you go down deeper. In your memory and your experience, you know, whatever is surfacing, it’s what you deal with.
Carrie: Right.
Stormie: You can’t do the whole thing, cause it’s so deep, but not to think that you’re going backwards, if that happens because it’s just a new level of freedom that God wants to lead you into. It’s gradual.
Carrie: And sanctification itself is a process.
Stormie: It is. It’s, you’re not totally 100% perfect. Right? From the first time you receive the award, not at all, it’s just where you’ve got you. Now you have the tools and you have a God who loves you and, and who wants you to get totally whole, and it, it is definitely a process. So I just didn’t want anybody to get discouraged when they think, oh no, it’s coming back.
So nothing happened. I, you know, I’ve never been set free and it’s not true. It’s a deeper level that God wants to set you free from.
Carrie: Absolutely. What would you say to someone who’s really praying and seeking to release their fears over to God, but still feel afraid and anxious? This sometimes can be a lifelong struggle for some people.
Stormie: I know. And I, the thing I found was that having some prayer power, having someone pray with you, it’s really powerful. Someone who has great knowledge of the Lord who understands what God has for us, who understands that He wants us whole, He doesn’t want us to carry fear. That’s paralyzing in my book, I have a book called The Power of Praying Through Fear and a lot of, you know, our depression and anxiety like you said, is caused my fear.
I mean, just the fear, of the unknown. The fear of something else happening. That’s like what has happened to you already? The fear of the memories coming back of some horrible thing that that’s gone on or something someone’s done to you or, or you’ve done to yourself or whatever, and just carries this guilt with those things.
For example, when you take a lot of drugs that really hurt your body and you think, wow! I’ve really ruin myself like, wasted my health and things like that. You can carry such guilt over that, but you can pick up right there and start right there to live in a way that blesses you and blesses your body and blesses your mental health and all of these things. And so that’s one of the most important things I think is remembering that even though you can struggle with fear in your life or like phobias, that which fear taken to the extreme. God says He doesn’t want us to have fear. He says, He’s given us love power and a sound mind, His love, His power and the sound mind He has for us.
And I remember having to say that over and over, God has not given me a spirit of fear.
Now, the spirit of fear controls your life. It’s not, I mean, everybody’s afraid of something, but when you, the fear controls your life, you know, it, you know, it, you feel like you’re almost paralyzed by it. It’s, it’s a horrible thing. And I had to keep saying over, over and over to myself, that God has not given me a spirit of fear. He’s given me his love, his power and the sound mind He has for me. I had to say that over and over and over until I got free of that. And the thing is I explained in my book that there’s good fear and bad fear.
Carrie: That’s true.
Stormie: God allows fear that leads you to Him. If it’s a good fear, it will draw you closer to Him. And if it’s a bad fear, it’ll separate you from God. It will cause you to try to handle things your own way or to not go to God, but to try to find help in, within yourself or within like I did with alcohol and drugs and Eastern religions and cult practices and things like that. So really important to know that God does not have fear for you. He doesn’t want you to be paralyzed by fear or controlled by fear. But if it’s fear that he’s allowing to get you on the right path or to keep you from going the wrong way, that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. So you gotta ask the Lord, what is this fear? Is this a good thing? Is this gonna protect me? Or is this something I, that you want to deliver me from? And that’s really important to make that distinction between the two it takes asking him, saying, Lord, show me, show me.
Carrie: And sometimes we have a certain level of anxiety and we’ve talked about this in previous episodes where it’s like, you feel like God wants to do something big and it’s beyond you.
Stormie: Yes.
Carrie: And you feel a certain level of anxiety about it. I don’t think that I can fulfil my calling.
Stormie: Yes.
Carrie: What you asking me to do, but like you said, that leads you right back to him to say.
Stormie: Yes.
Carrie: Okay, if this is of you, then I need you to help me out with this because it feels really big.
Stormie: That is so right on. Absolutely right on hundred percent, because that’s where I felt. I felt I’ve been in way over my head for the past 50 years, because he’s always calling me to do something and I go, I can’t do that. I can’t do that. Get someone else, you know. And, and you’re right. Well, it causes you to be on your knees before the Lord saying, I can’t do this. You gotta fill me with your spirit, your love, your power, you all of these things that you are, God, you have to do this. I, I don’t even know where to start. And, and he does, its amazing. And, and the more dependent you are on the Lord, the greater He can do great things through you. I mean, the more he can do great things through you. So that’s, you’re absolutely right on with that.
Carrie: I’m curious if you could go back in time, what encouragement or hope would you provide to your younger self?
Stormie: Wow! I wish I could. Wow! it was so serious being with my mother. I could not see a way out. That’s why I tried to kill myself when I was 14. I couldn’t see a way out. I didn’t see how it could ever be any different. I would talk about the Lord and say, look, God’s got a purpose for your life. He’s put gifts in you and He will develop them if you surrender your life to the Lord. And, I just to be able to know that. There was a way out of this that it will get better.
I just didn’t see any hope at all, tried to make it work myself and I couldn’t do it. And so just to, to tell me myself that look, it’s gonna get better. You’re gonna find a way out of this. I’ve got a way out for you. And that would be the biggest thing. And just, to know about the Lord earlier, I never did. I mean, I never did until my friend Terry in the studio, talked to me about the Lord. I mean, she talked about, and from the standpoint, point of what he had done in her life, she wasn’t saying you need to do this. She was not like that. She was just showing me what her church was like.
I mean, just telling me, and when we have breaks, you know, on the record sessions and stuff, she’d just tell me, this is what we did in our church last night or yesterday. And, and it’s really powerful. You’ve gotta come sometime and just see how the Lord moves. And I kept saying well thinking, well, that’s really nice for her, but I’ve tried everything and nothing works knowing the Lord earlier, would’ve been great, but I’m so glad I did. I did that. She let you know, led me to her pastor and he helped me to understand who God was and who Jesus is and all of that.
Carrie: That’s the greatest gift that we could ever give to somebody.
Stormie: Yes, it really is. It really is the lady who led me to the Lord. She just died a couple of weeks ago and it was so sad. She had cancer, had found healing from it and then it all came back. You know how we hear that story?
Carrie: Sure.
Stormie: So if I hadn’t known her, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me beause I was planning a second attempt at suicide this time I was gonna make it. It was gonna work. You know, I was gonna take enough pills and to do the job right. And the fact that she intervened, she said, “I’m not, you can see you’re not doing well. Could just come with me to meet my pastor? What have you got to lose?” You know, she said, and I thought, well, you know, I’m not ready to get enough sleeping pills to end it. I might as well just go see what he has to say. And if she hadn’t done that, and if she hadn’t come, pick me up every week, every Sunday, every time for, I mean, for so long, I wouldn’t meet her today. Really, she was so selfless and so kind, and I was just so great that I’m so glad I knew her. And, she’s gonna be greatly missed by so many people. She saved my life, so grateful. , I told her before she died, I really hope that my mansion in heaven is close to yours.
Carrie: That’s really sweet.
Stormie: It was really touching. I was so glad I knew her for 44 years. She was a really close friend.
Carrie: Well, thank you so much for taking some time out today to talk with us. I think this is gonna be really encouraging and hopeful for our listeners who are struggling.
Stormie: I hope so. To anyone who’s listening right now, who’s struggling just with emotional pain and hurt and the things that happened to people and how they’re mistreated and or how they were abused either as a child or later on or whatever my heart goes out to them beause I know how hard it is, but I just wanna say there’s hope. There is hope to be free of it. It can happen, and it will just don’t give up.
Carrie: By the time this episode airs, I hope to be doing some more podcast interviews. I had done several during my pregnancy to stock up for when I was gonna be out on maternity leave. And now that I am back to work in the action, I hope to be interviewing more individuals. So if you have guest suggestions, you can always go to our website, @hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Fill out the contact form. And let me know who you would like to hear from, or maybe you are the one who has a story to share. You do not have to be a public speaker or author to be on the show. That’s not a requirement.
If you want to keep up to date with what’s going on with the podcast, make sure that you follow us on Facebook or Instagram. You can also sign up for our newsletter on the website as well. All the links you need will be in the show notes. And thank you so much for listening.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By The Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Dr. Nicolas Grier is an Associate Professor of Practical Theology, Spiritual Care, & Counseling. Dr. Grier is also a mental health therapist and author.
How do churches minister to the mental health of Black men
The stigma surrounding mental health and receiving help in Black Community
Common struggles that black men are facing today
Early beginnings of Black Psychology
Dr. Grier’s view on APA’s formal apology to people of color in promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism.
Dr. Grier’s Book, Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of Black Men
Carrie: Welcome to Hope For Anxiety and OCD episode 70. Today on the show, I have an interview with Dr. Nicholas Grier, an ordained minister and therapist and author of The Care For The Mental and Spiritual Health of black men. He’s gonna talk with us about mental health in the black community. One of the things I really value is hearing from people who have other lived experiences or cultural backgrounds that I don’t possess to try and I guess understand where different people are coming from because I see all different types of clients and it helps me to be able to empathize with others. So let’s go ahead and dive into this interview.
I know that I had talked with you earlier that this particular episode was kind of prompted by something a close friend of mine said in an earlier episode, episode nine, actually. And I was asking her about her experience with mental health in the African American church. And she said, “well, you know, the pastors in those churches are like ostriches, and they just have their head buried in the sand, they don’t wanna look at their own issues”. And so I really thought, okay, there’s somebody in this community that understands mental health that we could talk to and really combine those two worlds. And I thought it would be awesome to provide an alternate perspective that was her lived experience. And so I was glad that she shared that, but I’m just curious, has it been a challenge for you. Since you work with churches to know how to minister to the mental health of black men?
Dr. Nicholas: That’s an excellent question and observation. The first thing I consider is the fact that there are a number of black churches, right? so there’s a.
Carrie: Sure.
Dr. Nicholas: Diversity of black congregations. And so from that perspective, I think we have to go into that question, realizing that, like there are different ways that your various clergy, respond to this, very same question.
So for instance, last summer, I was working with a number of clergy on the south side of Chicago with a grant that really focused on this very thing that you’re talking about, you know, so the mental wellbeing of clergy on the south side of Chicago, and most of them were African American. There were, you know, 40, 50 clergy who were part of this program. And so from my experience in that program. In administering that grant. My goodness that the clergy were more than willing to dive into, their own, you know, experiences with, the heavy load that many of them carry the emotions, the psychological burdens that are placed on them.
So I think when we think about response to this question, we have to think about, okay, who are the specific black congregations and black clergy that we’re talking about? Because my experience, especially recently, there’s a lot of openness from, you know, black clergy really saying that, “Hey, this is something urgent that we need to reflect on”. So not only was that a particular experience that I’ve had with clergy, but most recently there’s another denomination. That’s also, you know, asking me to work with them on developing a program to help their clergy deal with the mental health experiences.
Now, I think part of that is also who do clergy feel like they can trust specifically who do black clergy. Well, they can trust. So, so I realize that perhaps have maybe a little bit of an inside edge, if you will, just to take very seriously the experiences of clergy. So from this perspective, because I am an ordained clergy, cause I also happen to have a PhD and a licensed professional counselor. Well, they tend to trust me, in that sense. But I think part of that too is the ways in which I try to engage them. So I engage them with a lot of respect, deep appreciation for who they are. So I think all those things affect how we think about mental health and black faith communities.
Carrie: Sure. And obviously, if you’ve already been there and had some of that lived experience of ministering in the church, that’s huge. So in the counseling community, we’re always like working really hard to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and receiving help. Do you believe that black people face more challenging stigma to receiving mental health services? I don’t know for example, in the past I’ve had someone share with me that it felt very punitive for them almost like you’re gonna to therapy, but it was kind of like a punishment like you’re kid that’s in trouble and you’re going to therapy now. And it just, wasn’t a positive experience for that, for that individual who was in the black community.
Dr. Nicholas: Well, I’d be curious to know more about that person’s experience. And you know, this to me is, you know, back to my emphasis on focusing on particular situations. And so each situation has its own nuances. And my sense, when I think about a type of situation like this is. That there are a number of, I think, complexities that one must engage. When we think about how do we, address the experiences, that the emotional, mental, and psychological experiences of black folks going to therapy. So in one sense now, which is one of the reasons why I’m so passionate about the work of coloring mental health collective, which is organization.
I started that advocates and organizes for the mental well-being of black and brown people. One of the things we’re passionate about with that work is to say that, “Hey you can tell a black person to go to therapy”. But if they’re going to therapy with a therapist, who’s practicing out of theories and Ideologies that actually perpetuate colonization racism and things that sort, without them even being aware of that, then that can actually be very detrimental to the black person going to therapy.
So in actuality, they’re actually worse off for going to therapy. If they have someone who’s not practicing out of theories and ideology, that’s actually helpful for black people. So this is why I’m so passionate about reflecting on how can we help equip clinicians with theories and practices that actually nurture the holistic wellbeing of black and brown folks. So this can be done by taking very seriously, you know, for instance, the literature of black psychology of womanness in Mahata psychologies, right? So there are a number of resources that a clinicians can use. So I think that’s part of what’s at stake in this type of situation, when a person says, okay, feels are punitive when I’m going into therapy.
Well, I mean, my experience at doing therapy with black folks is that they often like wanna meet multiple times a week and even want to go over the sessions. I mean, in my view, it’s because. They feel respected, they feel understood. And it’s not all just having to explain my reality, to someone else.
Carrie: And I think that we’ve come a long way from original psychology in its infancy was a bunch of white European men. And now we have a lot more diversity in the counseling community as a whole. We have a lot more people of color. A lot more people of different ethnic origins and backgrounds. And that helps a lot with people being able to find someone that they can relate to, that they feel like, this person’s really gonna get it. And they’re really gonna have that level of like cultural sensitivity to their work.
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely. And you know, I was just inviting womanist, pastor theologians and therapists to a class. So I’m teaching a woman is pastor theology and spiritual care class where I teach at Clare Osteology. And one of the things that was significant. So Dr. pH shepherd was the person who came to visit us and she teaches at Vanderbilt. And she was just naming that when she, teaches her students about, you know, women as pastor or theologies and womanist psychologies, she’s like the things that we’re contributing, like these are not necessarily brand new. In other words, she was naming that even before like certain books and certain academic fields. There were actually black women writing of.
Carrie: Wow.
Dr. Nicolas: About psychology, right? And about, you know, spirituality. So just because psychology came into existence as like this Western Eurocentric male-centric field, that was not the beginning of human psychology.
Carrie: Right. No makes sense.
Dr. Nicholas: You know, it actually existed before then. And so, when we realized that the fact that, even if we take a very seriously a, you know, African traditions and indigenous African traditions, a lot of these traditions were oral traditions and things that were passed down. And so there’s a lot of diverse types of wisdom that we can pull from whether it’s from the oral traditions or even like the other written works that don’t get highlighted in traditional psychology.
Carrie: So you’re really feeling like there’s more of an openness in the black community towards mental health, more openness, maybe towards clergy to be talking about mental health and how can we apply these things to ourselves to be healthier clergy, but also how can we help the people in our congregations be healthier?
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely. I think a lot of it’s trust. I mean, I’ve been clergy in the local church setting. I’ve worked with clergy in the local church setting. I know very well, the suspicion, and I would say a healthy suspicion, oftentimes that black folks have of, you know white, if they’re not centered in a deliberative practice. I mean, they can sniff it out just like that. And so when you have clergy, for instance, who are trained in, you know, like liberation theology, being a type of theology that takes very seriously that systemically marginalized and that systemically oppressed and tries to nurture their wellbeing. I mean, I, I can think about the work of Howard Thurman. Who asked the question? What does the religion of Jesus have to say to those who love where their backs against the wall? And so when you’re doing ministry and theology from this vantage point as a black clergy person, well you wanna make sure that a therapist you go to is also reflecting on, how can I conduct therapy in such a way that helps people who are living with their backs against the wall?
Carrie: What are some common struggles that you see black men facing today?
Dr. Nicholas: The struggles that I see again, I guess I wanna repeat the thing that these are diverse struggles, right?
Carrie: Sure.
Dr. Nicholas: There’s a difference. In other words, there’s a lot of variation within black communities. You know, no one black man is alike. And so I, I think it’s important to honor that, but then also when I think about some of the common themes that I’ve seen with black men, even as I wrote my book on the mental and spiritual health of black men. A lot of these things, get back to what I name as like, the social pathology. In other words, what’s wrong with society? What’s the dysfunction in society? I mean, a lot of Western individual psychology looks at the pathology as individualistically based. They point, even when you look at the DSM. It’s always ask Okay. What, what disorder does this one person have? Part of what I wanna ask is what disorder does society have? That causes a black man to struggle mentally and emotionally as they might.
So from that perspective, I think there’s a lot of ways in which black men experience people, looking at them as if they’re not educated as if they’re criminals, as if they’re dumb as if their ultimate destination is to be locked up or, you know, killed by police. Or if they’re going to be successful by being some type of entertainer, whether it’s, you know, an athlete, visual artist, musician, you know, rapper, things of that sort. So these are all things, themes that came out of the interviews of black men, that I put in my book of The Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of black men. I, I think when we realize that these are common things, you realize these are significant odds. So, so this gets back to the whole concept in psychology of projection and projective identification.
So one of the questions I asked black men in my book was what does society say about you and what does society think about black men? What is the ultimate life destination that society sees for black men? And that’s when they responded with all of those things that I named in terms of naming that, you know, black men, that society sees black men as criminals bugs as, you know, savages, as people to be feared, devalued, discredited folks who are not known by society, unless we actually take time to have conversations like this. Right? So, so it’s almost like as a black man, even though I’m a person like I’m a professor, I have a, you know, PhD minister, all these things. I often have to like, earn my way, even having these things.
I have to earn my way to be received by someone as something who actually is this person, as opposed to whatever thing they have in their imagination of who I am. And so when you realize that there’s so much resistance, that that has to go on in a black man’s life, you know, in other words, I’m having to, and black men are having to resist these negative projections that society has of us. Right? And so, when I look at the various psychological theories I studied, which is one of the reasons why I decided to write my own theory for the mental and spiritual the black men was because I noticed that when I was in graduate school, you know, studying psychology, a lot of these theories when they talked about these are the things you need to be. Well, psychologically, whether some of them talked about it from the perspective of everyone has like, you know, mirroring needs. Everyone has idealization needs. Everyone has these needs to be safe and all these things, I mean, these are all good and well, but they weren’t even talking about the specific things that black men face.
So this is why I think that when we realize all these things that black men face, we have to then take a step back and say, “okay, there are some additional things because of the realities of racism, sex, and classism in black men’s life”. One of the things that black men need to be able to do is to resist on a continual basis. All these negative projections. But then a part of that means that because we’re resisting so much in our lives, we also need to be able to experience mental and emotional healing on a consistent basis as well, because those negative projections keep coming our way.
Carrie: And I think being able to talk with someone who can really validate that, their lived experience of, okay, I’m feeling like I’m having to work harder or climb this extra mountain, just to be able to do the things that other people may be able to do easily, reputation-wise and things that you were talking about. I think that that’s really important in terms of just the therapeutic context of validating that. That those things are real, that people may look at you and it doesn’t matter that you’re well educated and you’re dressed nicely. They may assume you’re a drug dealer who, you know, because of their own preconceived notions that they have.
I found this interesting that it, it really just came out very recently prior to us recording this, that the American Psychological Association, it recently published a formal apology for their role in promoting perpetuating and failing to challenge racism, racial discrimination, and human hierarchy in the US. And I’m curious about your response to that article,
Dr. Nicholas: I’ll say, “yes”. I’m curious, what else that we want to reflect on from it?
Carrie: Do you feel like that, that’s been a long, like overdue statement that they made basically. I mean, cause they listed several different things. Just, you know, not taking into account marginalized populations. When we look at studies, sometimes the studies are not diverse. And then we’re trying to apply something that was not studied on people of color to people of color. For example, just some of those types of things. From your perspective as a black man, does it feel validating like, well, it’s about time.
They got around to that. Just what does that feel like for you?
Dr. Nicholas: That’s a very good point. The reason why I respond to that as I do is because there is a way that I would say people of color and certainly black people see it, you know, see this, apology and say, “okay”, well, you know, the response might be, I’m glad that that happened. And also we know that like our livelihood, our survival, our liberation, our flourishing is not, you know, predicated on whether or not we’re gonna get this apology, right?
We know that it may or may not happen. History has proven itself a black folks will go to the grave without getting a certain apology or reparations or things of that sort. So we’re not basing our livelihood, our survival and flourishing on whether or not certain groups apologize and give reparations. Now, of course we’ll strive for these things to happen, but we’re not waiting for that to happen in order for us to nurture our own wellbeing, an approach that many of us have. And I can think about groups that I’m a part of. Well, we organize within ourselves to nurture our own well being because we’re like, we know they may or may not get. But we know we have the wisdom, the genius within us to nurture our wellbeing. One of my amazing colleagues, and I will say, you know, she’s someone who I admire deeply because she’s the first black woman to have a full book. And woman is pastor theology and spiritual care. So this is Dr. Carol Watkins Ali. She wrote the book Survival and Liberation, which focuses on pastor or theology and pastoral counseling in the African American context.
One of the things that she said is if the trauma isn’t the DNA, then the healing is in the DNA. She talks a lot about, you know, black women, especially poor black women and saying that all of society will be better if we care deeply for poor black women, because a lot of our capitalism, the ways and we profit are built on the labor backs and suffering of poor black women. I, I think it’s very important to honor that. And so, when we take seriously the reality that folks who’ve experienced the trauma know very well of the experience of it and have the ability. If we nurture constructive self-reflection and ways to engage and respond to the suffering, then we ourselves can nurture our own wellbeing. And of course, there’s always room for allies in the struggle.
One of the things I’m clear about is that, you know, black folks not waiting on whoever to apologize to us, like we know we’ve got the power, we’ve got the ability, the wherewithal to nurture our own wellbeing. Even as we work with willing allies.
Carrie: And I think, definitely actions speak louder than words. And so it may take time for some of these things that you’re talking about for change to occur. Obviously, if you’re talking about things that have been going on for a while. Takes time to make changes.
Dr. Nicholas: Right.
Carrie: Tell us a little bit more about your book, The Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of black men.
Dr. Nicholas: So, as I alluded to earlier, you know, I just got tired during my PhD program, seeing all these psychological theories, not, you know, fully addressing. Emotional psychological and spiritual experiences of black people in particular. And when you look at, you mentioned the early beginnings of psychology, even when you look at the early beginnings of black psychology, certainly a lot of it was focusing on the strengths of black people and, you know, how do we engage a strengths-based model instead of a deficit-based model, which is significant shift from how a person engage, you know, traditional Western therapy. So that’s been a part of black psychology, but a lot of the beginning of black psychology was about responding to what centric psychological theories were saying. So a lot of these early psychological theories and literature about black people about how black folks are less than, and you know how we’re so different from white people.
So then you have a lot of black psychologists coming along saying, “wait a minute, we need to respond to that”. Because that’s not true. We’re not less than white people inherently. And so when I look at the work that I do, I’m dishonored by those who came before me, because I’m only able to do what I’m able to do because of those who’ve paved a path.
In other words, if I came into existence at a point in time in human history where nobody had defended against this oppressive thought from early psychology about black people. Then, a lot of the tasks of my work primarily respond to these negative perceptions of black people by white psychology. And so, because you have so many folks who’ve come before me, who’ve already done that work. I then can develop an approach to counseling and mental health that, you know, stands on their shoulders and enables me to think about how do we nurture not only the survival of black people, but the flourishing of black people.
So, this is how I enter into the conversation in human history is to say that, you know, look at these amazing black psychologists, who’ve done this work up until now. And even in more recent years, you’ve had, you know, certain works that highlight, you know, black psychology. I’m thinking about various volumes, on the black psychology, which are available. All we gotta do is look ’em up and, and teach from them and study from them. And we’ll be better equipped to care for black people. And one of the things that I saw was even as I, I did the research, there was not much of anything highlighting the experiences of black men in their own words. And so I felt like it was important to actually, how about we actually talk to black men, see how they experience life, make a space for their stories to be told, and then, to do some reflection about how can we nurture, not only their survival, but also their flourishing.
So this is how and why I develop, what I name as a hope to keep going model. For care and counseling, which is in my book care for the mental and spiritual health of black men. One of the, the folks I build off of is Victor Anderson. Who’s also at Vanderbilt. And one of the things that he talks about is that for too long, black existence has been taught to suffering and resisting that suffering. So in his book beyond ontological, blackness, you know, he makes an argument that, black folks should not be tied solely to an existence of, you know, suffering and then having to resist that suffering. But he’s like everybody wants to flourish including black people.
Carrie: Right.
Dr. Nicolas: So what does it look like for us to not. Get rid of the need to resist all these oppressive things that cause us to suffer. We’re always gonna have to resist those things, but what does it look like to also think about how do we intentionally nurture the, the flourishing of people? So I pick up on that in my book and say, “Hey, this book is about certainly nurturing the survival, the healing and the liberation of black men”, and also the ultimate step of this work is to nurture the flourishing of black men. So that’s a significant aim of my book.
Carrie: Awesome. It’s really great. So at the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.
Dr. Nicholas: Wow! I was just thinking about this the other day with the person and saying that there was a moment when I was, it might have been 11 or 12 years old, and I started playing piano when I was five years old, started playing saxophone when I was nine years old. And I remember I was at a church, my home church there in Atlanta and the pastor at the time, you know, he references, you know, the words in the Hebrew Bible and you know, the Old Testament during his sermon, he asked a question, what has God placed in your hands? And that was a significant question for me to reflect on, right? Because I then began to recognize, oh my goodness, I’ve been blessed with all these different gifts and ways of being. And, and then part of that work of God and the act of God that I experienced throughout my childhood was a village of people. Whether it was from that church or, you know, from the various schools I attended, you know, and certainly middle and high school. People who saw these gifts, these things that God placed in my hand. And help to nurture those gifts.That that’s been a significant, you know, gift that I experienced and, and act God in my life that has nurtured my own survival and flourishing.
Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s really, like amazing. We take that step back and realize, like what God has gifted us with.
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely.
Carrie: Thank you for having this conversation. I’m always very interested and open to hearing people from other perspectives and other lived experiences that I haven’t experienced. So I, hopefully it will enrich other people, as they listen to conversation as well.
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely.
Carrie: Regardless of your cultural or racial background, I hope that you found this interview interesting, and that maybe you learned something from it that you didn’t know before. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about doing the podcast has been the variety of different people that I’ve gotten to interview and talk with people from really all over the world, Canada, London, Africa.
We haven’t had anybody that I’ve interviewed from Australia. So if you’re in the mental health space in Australia, I know we have listeners out there, certainly hit me up on the website and let me know what you’re doing in your community and in your part of the world. For all of our listeners, if you enjoy the podcast and you really feel like you have benefited from these episodes, I want to encourage you to think and pray about giving back. This is a ministry that reaches people all over the globe. You can support our show financially either through Patreon or buy me a coffee. We will have both of those links in the show notes for you. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of, By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guest are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By The Well counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
