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

In this week’s episode, Carrie shares a six-step guide for finding motivation and achieving your goals in 2024. From understanding your why to making small changes, tune in for practical tips to overcome challenges and finish strong.

Episode Highlights:

  • Why knowing your “why” is crucial.
  • How to learn from past experiences to avoid mistakes.
  • The importance of researching the “how” for effective planning.
  • Strategies for handling challenging days in your journey.
  • Why seeking accountability can boost your progress.
  • Tips for choosing a good start date and successfully executing your plan.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD Episode 112! As we wrap up January, many of us are either pressing forward with our New Year’s goals or feeling like we’ve fallen short. If you’re finding it tough to stay motivated and need a boost to finish strong, this episode is for you. I’ll be sharing practical insights and personal experiences to help reignite your passion and keep you on track with your goals.

In this episode, I dive deep into finding the motivation to complete the goals you’ve set. We all start with great intentions, but maintaining momentum can be challenging. I’ll discuss how understanding your “why” and learning from past experiences can set a solid foundation for achieving your goals. This includes identifying what’s been holding you back and planning effectively to tackle those hurdles.

I also cover the importance of researching and planning your approach, especially when embarking on new habits or changes. From setting a realistic start date to preparing for inevitable challenges, having a clear plan is crucial. I share examples from my own life and how they’ve guided me through my health and fitness journey this year.

For the full breakdown of steps and additional tips on maintaining motivation, be sure to listen to the complete episode. I hope these insights inspire you to persevere and reach the goals that matter most to you this year.

More to listen to!

Hi, welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 112. I know it’s the end of January right now, and some of you may have the gung-ho in the middle of working on goals that you started at the beginning of the year, and some of you may have given up on them completely. And some of you may be somewhere in between.

I want to do this. I want to finish strong, but I’m struggling right now. So I wanted to talk with you today about finding motivation to finish. We can have good plans, good intentions, but if we don’t know how to execute and get our plan from start to finish, then we’re going to have a challenge. I think many times we get excited. Yes, it’s a new year, fresh start. I want to make changes to my physical health. I want to eat better. I want to actually stick to my budget this month instead of just spending erratically. I want to develop relationships. Maybe I want to put more effort and energy into developing friendships, mom, friends, dating relationships, whatever your story is, maybe you have a career goal you’re trying to hit.

I want to reach a certain number of sales or I’m looking to get promoted. Whatever it is, I hope that this episode will help you to find the motivation to do the things that God has laid on your heart for this year. I’m going to give you a step process, and I’m going to give you examples from my own life of something that I’m working through in 2024.

I’ve gone through that process, it’s really helped me solidify how to share it with you who are looking for motivation. You may have hard things that you need to do in therapy, and that may be another thing that you’re trying to motivate yourself towards.

Number one is find and clarify your why.

This is so huge. Why do you want to make this change? I saw a picture of myself in December. It was a picture of my family in front of a Christmas tree at church, and I looked at how I looked physically and realized I am carrying more weight than I want to be carrying at this point. I’ve gone through various weight fluctuations over the years.

I’ve lost it. I’ve probably lost the same 15 pounds and found it several times at this point. Another thing happened in December where something popped up on my Facebook memories four years ago. I had been working out regularly at the Y and it was a picture of me with that class and the teacher had, it was her last day.

So we had all gotten together and taken a picture to kind of wish her well in her new adventure. I contrasted those two pictures in my mind and I was like, “Okay, here’s me now. I’m not happy with not just the way that I look, but I’m not happy with the way that I feel.”

I have this other picture of me where I was feeling amazing. I was moving my body on a regular basis. My mental health was great because of that movement of my body. I was getting all of those endorphin benefit. Everything that was going on. I was sleeping. There’s so many positive benefits to exercise and eating right, so I decided I’ve got to do something different and actually got sucked into a Facebook ad because apparently the little algorithm knows me too well and bought a fitness program and diet and exercise program that involves carb cycling.

One thing I decided at the beginning of this experience was that I was not going to go hungry. That was a huge thing that I had decided like, “Hey, I’m going to figure out a way to not to be hungry.” So that was supposed to be one of the benefits of this program. I had done a lot of calorie tracking and different things before and just something felt lacking. This is a macro tracking program. It’s a little bit different.

All of that is inconsequential right now because we’re still talking about your why. Why do you want to make this change? For me, I wanted to feel better. I wanted to be happier about how I look. I wanted to be more toned. I wanted to have more energy to spend time with my daughter.

I found a cave tour at Mammoth Cave. It was kind of a more rugged cave tour, not just the ones that you do the typical walkthrough of, but I thought, “Man, I would really love to go on that rugged cave tour for some self care and feeling a sense of accomplishment for myself.” I’ve loved caves for a long time. Something I probably haven’t shared on the podcast before, but caves have been always just something that have been really interesting to me. I’ve done several different cave tours, even done several of the ones at Mammoth Cave. I decided I’d really like to go on this, but if I try to go in my current physical fitness level. I am not going to feel good about it. I am going to be absolutely hurting and my back is probably going to be wishing that I really didn’t do that. I knew that I had to strengthen up my abs more. That’s one of my goals that I’m working towards is being able to do that CAVE program. There’s a bit of a multifaceted “why” that I have.

Now, your why may be completely different. A lot of times our whys, though, have to do with our relationship to self and others. If you say, I want to have a better relationship with God, That’s a good piece, but why? Try to dig down a little bit deeper. “Okay, because I know that when I’m more spiritually connected, I am more present in my family life. My priorities are in the right place because I’m putting God first and then these other things are following, just like scripture tells us.” Wen you can really dig down and find your why, and find the things that have gotten in the way in the past, I can put that as number two. I just created an extra step because we’re ad libbing this right now, which is welcome to podcasting.

Find out what has failed in the past and your learning from your past mistakes. One thing that I’ve learned from past health journeys is that the number on the scale really screws me up. I can’t be focused on that. If I’m focused on that and it doesn’t fluctuate the way that I want it to, I end up getting discouraged. If it fluctuates to a certain level, then I’m like, “Hey, I can eat more.” Sometimes I get derailed on the diet aspect of things. I knew that that’s an issue for me. I also have gotten squirrely about numbers in terms of counting calories in the past. I don’t know if that’s a little bit of an anxiety thing where I think it has different manifestations, but it can be things like, “Oh, I only have like 300 calories left today. What if I eat these 300 calories and then I’m still hungry? Do I want that 300 calories? It just can really mess with me. Did I track all of the calories correctly? That can be really derailing for you if you’re dealing with anxiety and trying to make positive health changes. So I knew that that was kind of a problem that I had run into in the past.

What I talked about a little bit earlier was I had a lot of excuses for not doing this earlier. A lot of times for me, it was easy to default and my daughter was the excuse. Well, I don’t have time because I’m a working mom and I’m busy and I’m either working or I’m taking care of my daughter. I’m taking care of my household, so therefore I don’t have the time and the energy that I need to work out. I also know for me that there are certain things I’m just not going to do. I am not going to get up at 5 am. and work out, so not set yourself up for failure if you’re not a morning person. You’ve tried in the past to get up at 5 a.m and work out and it has not gone well for you.

Why are you going to continue to try to do that which you know completely crashed and burned in the past? I see people who do that all the time. You have to find what’s going to be most successful for you. For me, sometimes that meant I have to work out after my daughter goes to bed. It may look like I have to work out at work before I pick her up from daycare or on a lunch break. You have to find what’s going to work for you. Sometimes finding what works for you is learning from the past experience and past mistakes that you’ve made. Learning from the past experiences that you’ve had.

Point number three, research the how. With this new program that I’ve gotten involved in, it’s tracking macros very different from tracking calories, and that has been a huge learning curve for me. I spent a chunk of time towards the end of December, instead of saying, “Hey, I’m gonna start this diet tomorrow, and I’m gonna be like, completely on it.”

I really looked at and researched what types of foods have less carbs. What has more protein? How am I going to get the amount of protein that I need in a day? What are some recipes that I can feed my family? Because I’m not trying to cook three different meals for three different people. I know that that’s not going to work very well. Really researching different recipe websites. What can I prep ahead of time to be able to make my life easier beecause I am a busy mom, I do have responsibilities at home and with my own business. Thinking through my meal planning process and figuring out the different types of food that I can eat to get enough protein or the right amount of carbs depending on the day because it’s cycling between low, medium, and high.

Researching of the how is important. There’s a saying that says “if we don’t have a plan, we are essentially planning to fail.” Having a plan is super important, so before you take any steps or take any changes, Let’s look at this from the mental health standpoint, when I’m encouraging clients to practice skills outside of session, whether that’s deep breathing for anxiety, whether that’s mindfulness for OCD, just learning to notice those thoughts, learning to notice their just thoughts, learning to notice that you can let them go. You don’t have to hold on to them. When they have therapy, they have set appointments to do therapy, but when they’re at home, they don’t necessarily have a specific time of the day where they do that. We talk through that. Would it be best for you to practice this in the morning when you first get up or after you get ready? Would it be best for you to practice this for five, 10 minutes after you eat lunch?

When we want to start a new habit or have a new behavior, it helps us to connect it with something that we’re already doing. You can learn that from the book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. It’s an excellent book. It talks about developing positive habits in your life and removing negative habits, which we all struggle with. I want to go back and read that book some more and really work on implementing some of the things in my life to review some of our points here.

We talked about finding and clarifying your why we talked about learning from past experience of what didn’t work, researching the how and now we’re going to talk about number four, which is plan for challenging days.

Look, I don’t care what you’re trying to do or what new thing you’re trying to implement or what you’re trying to finish. You’re going to have hard days. Make a decision upfront what those days are going to look like. How am I going to handle the sugar craving? How am I going to handle that day that I’m exhausted and don’t want to work out? How am I going to handle the week that I get sick and I’m not able to follow through with the diet exercise plan? This may look like a lot of different things for you. It may look like you writing down your why and saying, “Hey, here’s why I’m making these changes for me.” It’s going back to when I want to eat something that maybe wouldn’t be the healthiest for me. Going back to that picture of this is where you are and you have a picture of where you are and you have a picture of where you want to be. Let’s move towards the picture of where you want to be. Instead of continuing to stay in the picture of where you are, it may be certain affirmations that you write down to yourself, like God is bigger than any challenge that I’m going to face today. That’s something that I tell myself when I feel stuck, when I feel like I can’t do something.

All the strength and the power that you need, you can access through the Holy Spirit, through prayer, and that spiritual connection to God is super important. If this is something that God has called you to do, then he is going to equip you and enable you to be able to do it. I have to speak that to myself on a regular basis. Keep that in mind. Plan for your challenging days. Maybe that means, if you’re trying to change your diet, that you have some quick, healthy foods in the refrigerator. Maybe it means that you have a list written down of “If you don’t have this food, I can eat this food.” If you eat out a lot, what are some healthy options as you eating out.

When you’re talking about motivation for mental health changes, knowing that you can make positive changes and it’s not always going to look like a straight diagonal line. That’s true of any positive change. I tell my clients all the time, you’re going to have your ups and downs as you’re making progress, so don’t be discouraged when you take a step back. Just know you have made this much progress so far because you take one step back. That doesn’t negate the progress that you have already made. I’ve got to keep going and go to the next thing. Go to the next piece and pick up. Today you totally blew it. That doesn’t mean that has to become a habit. That doesn’t mean you have to go back to square one. You can say, “You know what? I can start again later today. I can start again tomorrow. “

Number five, seek accountability.

I have told everybody, including you, the podcast audience of health changes that I’m trying to make in my life. Actually, I broke it to the podcast audience on our email list where I wrote an email about some changes that I was making and asking some of you about changes and goals that you’re doing in the new year. I’ve told my in laws, I’ve told my friends, I’ve told loved ones because I want that accountability. I want people to ask me, how is this going in your life? I know you’re trying to eat more protein and less carbs. What does that look like? How are you doing with that? I have another friend who’s also making some health changes, and she’s telling me about movement that she’s doing. I can share the movement that I’m getting in. I wanted people to know because it really helps me stay on track. If I don’t let other people in my life know the changes that I’m trying to make, then I can just kind of get away a little bit more with not making them and not feeling bad about not making those changes.

Accountability can be really huge and really beneficial to us. That may look like different things for different people. You may want to get in a support group and it could be something mental health related, could be something physical health related where you’re saying, “Hey, I want to make these positive changes in my life.” It could be a Bible study or a church group where you say, Hey, I want to become the person who God has called me to be. I know that I want to be reading my Bible. Our church is going through one of those read the Bible in a year plans. That’s another thing we’re doing in 2024 and it’s really great. Having that accountability where you can say like, “Hey, how was your reading going? What did you pick up on today? or how did you connect with God as you read his word today?” That accountability is very important for us being able to reach our goals. We can’t get there alone. A lot of times we try and we think we can, but you weren’t made to do this alone, regardless of what it is that you’re dealing with.

Number six, pick a good start date. There just are some times that are not a good time to make the change that you’re trying to make. I had situations where I was going through back pain and that’s part of the reason I got off track. I’m not going to say that that’s 100 percent the reason, but there definitely have been some physical limitations and some rehab that I’ve had to do at various points over the last few years. For me to say, I’m going to go on a complete physical journey transformation and walk five miles that just wasn’t realistic and it wouldn’t have been helpful for me because I had to start where I was at. Starting small is good and we’ll talk about that in the last step, but when they talk with people about quitting smoking, they always say, have a quit date, put it on your calendar, make that determination, have it as a visual so that you know after today you are not doing cigarettes anymore. That does something to our brain, really trains us. You had all this preparation beforehand.,Finding your why, figuring the how, planning for the challenging days, getting your accountability on board so that when you pick your start date, it’s a good time to start. You probably don’t want to start your diet plan on December the 24th.

If you know you’re going to be having Christmas celebrations with family over the next couple of days and eat way too many Christmas cookies like I did. That was what happened to me. Picking a good start date is important because a lot of times we do these things that We’re not trying to set ourselves up for failure, but then when you take a step back and look at it, it’s like we really planned in a way that didn’t set ourselves up for success, and then we turned around and beat ourself up for it.

We’re like, “okay, I have all these major life changes happening in my life, but I need to make this change.” It’s a huge change. We don’t make the huge change that’s unrealistic, and we say, “Well, see. I told you I couldn’t do it” It gets into all this negative thinking and all this beating ourselves up.

Going back to planning for the challenging days, we’ve got to learn to be kind to ourselves. We’ve got to learn that we’re not always going to hit the mark. That’s what grace is for. That’s what the love of God is here for us and knowing that it’s okay. That doesn’t mean we’re a horrible person. It doesn’t mean that we’re not ever going to reach our goals because we can get into all of this negative thought process. “Oh, see, I told you I couldn’t do this and I couldn’t do that” Wust end up getting stuck and wallowing in a place of shame.

The last step that I want to talk you through is execute. When you are executing your plan and your goals and the step by step process, sometimes you need to ease your way into it. What I’ll find in talking with clients, they’ll say, “I’m going to create a goal where I am walking 30 minutes every day this week.” I’m kind of like, “but you’re not walking at all. That might be a good goal.” Say if you were walking four or five times a week and you want to do every day, or if you said, “Hey, I’m walking every day for 15 and I’d like to walk for 20 every day.” It sounds a little bit more doable, but to go from zero to 100 percent is probably not going to happen and that’s that whole setting yourself up for failure. Maybe if you’re trying to make positive health changes, you just focus on one thing. I’m going to drink X amount of ounces of water a day, whatever is deemed healthily, because that depends on your body weight. I’m going to drink this much water per day, or I’m going to trade one soda for sparkling water, or instead of drinking this soda, I’m going to drink flavored water instead, and making that one small change. When you can stick with that one small change, going to the next small change. Maybe you decide, you know what, instead of pulling through the drive thru and getting a breakfast sandwich, I am going to get the oatmeal or I am going to get a smoothie or make something at home. Whatever you deem is reasonable that you’re going to be able to do, and then you can always change that. Maybe you decide that the oatmeal is healthier than this, but it still has too much sugar or whatever the case is, you can always shift and adjust and change your plan as needed. That’s an important thing to remember.

Let’s talk through small changes that you can make to improve your mental health. Can you reduce alcohol consumption? Can you go to bed at the same time every night? Can you develop a relaxing bedtime routine or a joyful morning routine? What does that look like to wake up and embrace the joy of the Lord? Some of us have a really hard time with that in the morning, but you can do it. Put on a worship song or get up and stretch, move your body, go outside and take a deep breath. Maybe not if it’s super cold, whatever it is that is going to help you like engage in that process. Maybe you decide that your mental health goal is going to be journaling. I’m going to take five minutes before I go to sleep and just write down some of the things that I’ve been thinking about. Maybe going to reach out and ask someone for help this week. That’s huge. That’s something that we have a hard time doing. I’m going to work on saying no more. When what’s being asked of me doesn’t suit me or isn’t healthy, I’m going to set a boundary with a co worker or friend. We have entire episodes on setting boundaries on the podcast that you can go back and look at. Whatever you feel like God has laid on your heart to do in 2024. I just want you to know that you can find the motivation and that you can finish strong. Pray about it. Clarify your why. Sit with the Lord. What failed in the past? What didn’t go well? How can I learn from that? How can I grow? How can I set myself up for positive change? How can I plan for challenging days? Who’s going to be my support, my accountability on this journey? What’s a good day to start and Lord help me execute. I think all of this integrates with our spiritual life so well because self control is a spiritual discipline and we receive that through the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit does his part at work within us and we do our part in doing what we have been called and asked to do in obedience.

Thank you guys for listening to this episode. I hope that you are going to finish strong as we get to the end of January today. As you continue to make changes throughout the year, if there’s anything that we can do to help and support you in that process, please let us know.

I’m always up for episode suggestions. We do have a personal story interview coming your way in a couple weeks of a lady who went from being in a mental health hospital to really thriving and is now a health educator and advocate. She’s going to share some of her story and I know that’s going to be inspiring to you as well.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, Licensed Professional Counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling.

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

111. Using Humor with ERP with Judy Lair, LPCC

This week, Carrie is joined by Judy Lair, a licensed professional clinical counselor specializing in OCD therapy, to explore how to use humor in ERP therapy and how laughter and creativity can be powerful tools in overcoming challenges on the journey to healing from OCD.

Episode Highlights:

The use of humor and creativity as powerful tools in overcoming anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

Customizing ERP techniques based on individual interests and strengths.

Strategies for incorporating creativity to confront OCD challenges.

Insights into the sanctification process and the choice between living in faith or seeking constant certainty in managing OCD.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to episode 111 of Christian Faith and OCD! Today, I’m thrilled to have Judy Lair, a licensed professional clinical counselor, with us to delve into the use of humor in ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) therapy.

Judy’s journey into specializing in OCD began from her own experiences with anxiety and a background as a litigation paralegal. After a transformative period working with a psychiatrist and discovering her passion for counseling, she transitioned to working in OCD therapy. Judy’s approach incorporates humor as a tool to help clients navigate the challenges of ERP therapy.

In this episode, Judy shares how she uses analogies, like the haunted house, to help clients understand and manage their OCD. By embracing humor and creativity, she empowers clients to face their fears in a more light-hearted and less intimidating way.

Judy also discusses the importance of recognizing OCD’s inaccurate threat levels, likening it to a malware virus that skews our perception of danger. Her innovative methods, including using personal interests and humorous visualizations, make ERP more accessible and less daunting for those struggling with OCD.

Tune in to gain valuable insights into integrating humor into ERP and how it can make a significant difference in the therapy process. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review!

Related Links and Resources

www.treatmyocd.com/therapists/76492/judy.lair
Jusy Lair’s Books on Amazon

Explore related episodes:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 111. Today on the show, I have with me Judy Lair, who is a licensed professional clinical counselor, here to talk with us about using humor in ERP therapy. We had a previous episode on ERP that you can go back and listen to; we’ll link that episode in the show notes for you, where we did just a brief overview of what it was. It was also a personal story from Stacy Quick, sharing some of her experiences with OCD and how she became an ERP therapist. Stacy was a therapist we met through NoCD, and we talked about that on that episode. Judy also works with NoCD. 

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Carrie: I’m  happy to have you here today on the show.

Judy: Hi, Carrie. I’m glad to be here. Even with this not being my real voice, I think I can still talk.

Carrie: Yes, she is recovering from a cold here, so thank you for bearing with us on that one. I heard you speak at the AACC conference. That was how we met, and it was exciting to see how many Christian therapists were there interested in a presentation on OCD. That’s not something often covered or has been covered, I guess, at that conference.

How did you specialize in OCD? How did you get that to be a specialty?

Judy: I’ve had a lot of different types of jobs in my life, but one of the things was when I was on the other side of the couch, working through my anxiety and such for about a year, talking to me like, “You can do this, you can be on the other side of the couch.” I’m like, “No, here’s a whole bunch of reasons why, no, it’s not going to be me.” I was never one of those people that everybody came to for advice and stuff; that’s not me. Much more cognitive, I’m much more thinking about thinking, planning, strategic types of things. It’s my forte and stuff. So I’ve worked in a number of areas in different things, especially I was a litigation paralegal in a law firm for a bunch of years.

That was really my background. Then I started working in a doc psychiatrist’s office, and that’s when I kind of got that message from God about, “You really could do this.” So I went back to grad school quite late in life to do that. I found that was my niche, that was the thing I was doing all along; I just didn’t know it. Being a paralegal, educating, and helping people through, I did when people got injured and hurt and helped them through that. That was the start of me counseling. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Carrie: Yes, there’s so many overlaps, I think, between counseling and education and problem-solving. I’m sure that there were things that problem-solving that you had encountered, so I could see how all of the skills would be beneficial.

Judy: Right. I had finished grad school, and I was disappointed because I wanted to work in a Christian counseling agency. Once you spend the time and the money to get your degree, you have to spend extra hours to be able to get your independent licensure. That’s where, at least where I was living, they all wanted independent licensure, and I’m like, “How do I get that if I can’t get that?” It was a quandary. I still worked at the law firm that I was looking at for a bunch of years, and I opened this out of my house. I did evening counseling out of my house. Shortly after I started, there was this woman who came to me and said, “Well, I know I have OCD. I was diagnosed with it years ago. I’ve had treatment at some of the well-known facilities. I now live in my area. So do you think you can help me?” She explained her obsessions and compulsions, and I’m like, “Fascinating. Okay, so when you do this and you do this, then it ends up like this. If you do this instead of this, does it go like this?” She’s like, “Oh my gosh, I have never heard anybody get it who did not have OCD themselves.” I could just get it. It was definitely a gifting from God too. I understand the logic of OCD, which has a lot of logic in and of itself if you understand the root part of it. Once she recommended that, and I started working with her, then I read Jonathan Grayson’s Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I’m doing everything in the book; I already organically knew what to do and how to walk people through that, which was really exciting. I found my path away. So I eventually took the International OCD Foundation’s Behavioral B2BI training. I spoke at one of their Annual conventions, gave continuing education conferences in Columbus where I was at the time. It just really happened from my niche in my area. Now, 22 years in January, that has been my specialty.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I always used to tell counselors that I was supervising, your specialty kind of finds you; you don’t really find it. I didn’t necessarily think that I was going to be working in the areas that I’m working in now, but I’m happy that God has brought me along this path. Mine kind of branched out of working with anxiety, and once you see enough people with anxiety, you’re going to eventually run into some people with OCD, and it looks a little different.  You have to kind of readjust the toolbox and reexamine some of the things that you’re doing. We talked on that previous episode about creating hierarchies in ERP, the idea behind it that you’re exposing yourself to some things that are uncomfortable, starting with some smaller things and then gradually building up to the scarier stuff. You use a helpful analogy with your clients about a haunted house. Will you go through that with us? Just kind of like you would tell a client.

Judy: ERP, exposure response prevention, seems like anybody who’s heard about it has horror stories that it’s going to be so hard, so scary. But using the framework, thinking about a haunted house, if you’ve ever been to an actual haunted house, there are two things that you know to begin with. 

Number one, you know that nothing in the haunted house is designed to physically harm you. You walk in with that kind of knowledge. Second, the reason why people go to haunted houses is they like the uncertainty. They like the thrill that you get when somebody bumps out, and you don’t know or a noise, and you don’t know when it’s going to happen. You get this feeling, this anxiety. I call it anxiety because it would make me have anxiety, but other people are like, “That’s a thrill.” They get this thrill going on. The first time you walk through a haunted house, it’s full of uncertainty. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t continue to walk all the way through and get out the back door. 

The good news for us is that God created a program in our brains called the habituation program. I like to call it Pac-Man. I just like the visual. So you’ve got OCD going, “Scary!” and then we’ve got a big old Pac-Man coming up, and we want to close scary down organically by inside, not us internally doing compulsions or something, but letting Pac-Man do that. The way that happens is if you walk through a haunted house the first time, it’s the scariest because you don’t know what to expect. You walk out the back door, come around the front, you walk through the same haunted house three times; you’re not going to be as scared by the 10th time. Pac-Man’s closing it down, closing down the anxiety to the accurate threat level, which generally is zero. But it closes it down so by the 10th time; it’ll be pretty funny. You walk through it; “Oh, the guy with the fair is going to show up. Yeah, then they’re going to dangle these things and go, ‘Boo!'” You can make fun of it, even if there’s still some level of nervousness in there. If we use humor in that way, like, “Oh, this is going to be silly, funny, scary,” it allows your brain to have that Pac-Man to start readjusting what is true about the threat level and close down the feeling, that adrenaline surge that you get, that feeling of anxiety.

Carrie: Talk about that a little bit more, just the inaccurate threat level related to OCD. Like OCD is telling you that something is going to be super scary, horrible, awful, but like your brain is malfunctioning there.

Judy: Yes, and that is key to OCD versus generalized anxiety disorder. With GAD and other anxieties, there’s still a thought where, “Oh, what if?” kind of thing to it, but your brain is able to quickly, if you use some logic, use some cognitive behavioral stuff, kind of, “Is it really true? Is that really that scary? Has that happened before in the past?” If you use some of those CBT kinds of things, generalized anxiety, your brain is like, “Oh yeah, that’s not really true. Calm down,” but when it’s OCD, it’s like, “No, maybe not that one, but another one and another one and another, and they pop up all over the place like that.” So the key, in terms of understanding if you have OCD, is the inaccurate thread. I call it a malware virus program in your brain. 

If you think of your brain like a supercomputer that God made that always has this underlying operating system running, just like your technology, you’ve always got an operating system running underneath in our brain; that operating system is currently using our senses. What we see, taste, touch, hear, smell. It’s looking for data. Internally, the data it’s looking for are thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and observations. The way it was designed is that if we get one of those pieces of data that pops up, it’s a neutral piece of data initially that brings it to the first program in your brain in the frontal cortex. That program’s design is to say, “Is this piece of data a threat or not a threat?” Definition of threat is jumping out of a plane without a parachute. That is the only definition. There is no other definition that goes with threat. Anything less than that is on a continuum scale of something that don’t really like, gross, that’s really terrible, but none of those are threats. That’s where the malware virus program of OCD gets in there and cherry-picks and hijacks the things that matter to us and skyrockets the threat and says, “Oh, there’s definitely going to be a threat here.” Then it starts pushing those buttons with adrenaline and neurotransmitters, makes you feel like there’s something going on. 

The urgency of now, we have to do it now, we have to figure it out now, know it now. All of that works together to combine to keep the threat being imminent, urgent, right now. That’s the part that with OCD there is no factual evidence that is what is actually true right now. You just think it and feel it, and therefore you feel like you must. Do something to fix it right now, going over and over because you do, you respond to it as if it actually is a threat. Then you create those neural pathways saying this is always a threat.

Carrie: That’s a really great explanation. Originally when I went to a two-day training in ERP with some people from Rogers and I got. Nothing against Rogers, by the way, it was just the training specifically really turned me off to ERP because there were a lot of extremes just we’re going to ban this behavior. You’re not going to be allowed to wash your hands at all, or you’re not going to be allowed to pray because you’re confessing too much to God.  I walked away just feeling not only was this very rigid, but I felt like I was being asked to torture people. And I’m curious, what you’ve done is kind of taken some of these principles and used the scientific evidence of what you’ve learned and yet added humor and made it more fun or let’s laugh at OCD or make fun of it. Tell me about some of those things that you incorporate with your clients.

Judy: I feel like that ERP, if you understand from a faith-based perspective, you know, how God made us and the interaction, learning how to do ERP is very much the same sanctification journey that we want to do in life anyway. We’re always those concepts, the broader concepts of struggling with our fleshly nature. Paul was talking about doing the things he doesn’t want to do and can’t do the things that he wants to do. That sounds very much like doing ERP to me, always has. That’s why I view it in that way. I’m looking at what is the root issue here. And the root issue is that the malware virus is scaring me. That’s something that matters to me is really big and scary. It tells me I should take care of it. I should do it on my own, which is the opposite of what we want to do in a faith-based journey. Yes. In a faith-based journey, we always want to bring God into things. We want to wait on God. We want to hear the truth that God gives us rather than us going ahead and trying to fix things or do it all on our own. So to me, that always made sense in terms of how I do ERP. 

I honestly don’t ever care if somebody who’s afraid of germs is able to reach out, grab a doorknob, and open the door. I really don’t care if they do it with their hand or paper towel. What I do care about is actually finding the courage to get through the door to find out. That really was their brain just scaring them about something and then they’re like, Well, I’m gonna let you do that to my life. I don’t need a paper towel. I’m just gonna keep on moving through. So attitude, that’s the attitude is one of the things that I feel like helps move us through things when we’re nervous and anxious and scared, kind of thing. That way of, let’s go, Jesus, the Rodney staff is with me, let’s go, let’s move it on, get to the banqueting table on the other side. That’s what I’m looking for, is the ability to have somebody be empowered to walk it out. 

Humor and creativity is one of the things I see in the Bible so much. Think about, there’s some amazing, interesting things that, how God does things in the Bible. The biggest one to me is Jericho. Seeing how they won Jericho. That worship band is out front, and all the people are behind singing and worshiping God, and then the walls fall down, like, oh my gosh. 

There’s other things, and I see other stories about how God used different people or situations. We’re very creative that we’re not the norm of how you do that. And that’s what works because God is showing that there’s all of these interesting creative ways of doing things. What I found is humor is really helpful if we can look at OCD. I have people come up with separating OCD as a separate entity and making a Fred Flintstone or one of the funny cartoon characters so that you can like, Fred, I don’t know anything about this thing, germs, or my relationship thing here, Fred Flintstone, what now? Um, and even though inside they’re going to feel like all of this, if you can make fun of OCD in that way and get your family member to say, you leave my wife alone, and then they’re both laughing and the laughter brings that level of urgency and oh no, and oh, it brings it down because you’re like laughing at it. Like you are ridiculous. You just think and think, or “Honey, I think you do,” Yes, you’re the worst thing in the world, being dramatic or silly or whatever. Doing it in these creative, silly ways really helps us as people to move towards something scary long enough for our brain to figure out, like, close it down. It’s not really actually that scary.

Carrie: Yes, I think of the two guys in the Muppets that are up in the balcony, and they’re just yapping around or somebody that’s heckling a comedian, you have that internal heckler, and sometimes it’s helpful to, like you said, create that separation, because it all feels like reality when you’re in what they call the OCD spiral, it just feels like everything’s so real now, but if you’re able to step back and even say, OCD is telling me that I’m going to get sick and die if I don’t do this, or if I go out in public and do these things, Then that helps you kind of create some of that mental separation. I think mindfulness and other activities that we teach clients thought diffusion helps with those things as well.

Judy: It’s really important how God made us and that’s one of the things that I always look for is something that’s sort of organic to how God made us rather than something so rigid and like you said extreme that they’re not, we actually have OCD or not we’re like, that sounds way too far. I would never do that kind of thing. I just feel like that people lost. That’s a little bit too much of the traditional ERP and that makes me sad in terms of understanding that if you work with somebody and with the way we were designed, that it actually helps us to go with the flow. One of the things that when I customize ERP for each client, I always want to find out about their background, things they’re interested in, who they are, if somebody is competitive, say in sports or something. 

I had a teenage client that was like a volleyball player. I’m having her visualize and practice spiking the ball into OCD’s face when it’s trying to give her a hard time because that’s a natural thing that she does and she can use it quickly to say I still feel all of this but I’m going to picture OCD standing there and I’m going to slam this ball in his face. If you’re a sports fan like me and you have your rival teams and you’re like, Oh, that rival team is not going to beat me. No, come on, buddy. You can’t beat me at all. I become animated and silly on purpose so that I can show my client that they can be animated and silly in terms of that. 

We use whatever types of things in that person’s life that they can use as a strength and empowerment strength to stand firm and be able to give some sass and give some, like, you are not the boss of me, give that one to kids a lot. You’re not the boss of me, which they love because they can’t tell that to their parents. They can tell that to OCD.

Carrie: Yes, I love it. I could see my daughter getting in on that if she had all those words right now. She would probably say that. “You’re not the boss of me.”

As far as like traditional ERP versus using humor and creativity, a lot of times I’ll have people just kind of sit and wait it out, right? Like, let’s wait for this anxiety where you’re trying to make the anxiety board, I guess, traditionally kind of wait it out. So you’re using some visualizations with people or. Some other, like, creative techniques where they can visualize and imagine themselves overcoming OCD in that process.

Judy: When you’re just waiting in the midst of it, you’re white knuckling. I hope it goes away soon. I hope it goes away. How long is it going to be? Is it done yet? Is it still here? When is it going to go away? That does not facilitate habituation, that doesn’t give the room for Pac-Man to go and close things down. We have to approach it, even kind of fake it till you make it, in a more empowered kind of stance. So that’s where, come up with a bunch of different ways that somebody can be active, but active exposing themselves and going towards OCD, and active while you’re waiting for that Pac-Man to do its job, rather than just sitting there and white knuckling. and stuff. 

One of the ways that you can do it is that you can say, “Oh OCD, I’m so glad you showed up. You’re such a good guy. I’m glad you’re showing up today. Let’s watch some TV. Do you want some popcorn? I’m not going to talk about what you want to talk about. Talk about TV. Let’s just look here. Oh yeah. You want to talk about this? Eh, don’t really want to talk about that. You can hang around all day you want, but not going to talk about that. Let’s talk about making sandwiches. What kind of meat do you like on your sandwich? What kind of pizza toppings do you like? No, I’m not going to talk about what you want me to talk about. Let’s talk about ice cream flavors or something.”  That is a more just calm, peaceful way for folks that like to be just kind of chill, calm, peaceful. 

You’re accepting that OCD is there. You’re just refusing to talk about what it wants to talk about. You can move it on to being something like I said before, kind of dramatic, real dramatic. This is such an important thing. “Oh my gosh, you are so helpful, OCD. Tell me every little thing. I don’t quite understand how you know. Do you have a question? It’s a hotline to find. Are you on the psychic hotline? Maybe you’re on the psychic hotline. Maybe I didn’t know that you knew all of those things.”

 Some of this like making fun of it, talking about what you’re not gonna take me on, you’re the opposite team. Any of these kinds of ways where you’re active, you’re active in doing ERP, which means you’re keeping your focus on OCD is there, um, looking at your OCD, I’m talking to you, but I am not talking about the topic that you want me to talk about because that thick is your inaccurate threat level on something, I’m not going to go there, you don’t have a driver’s license. You don’t have legs, and you don’t have arms, and you don’t have a face, and you don’t know how to drive. And kind of make it sort of funny that way. You’re being active while you’re waiting for the habituation to happen.

Carrie: You had talked about in your training singing silly songs like Old MacDonald or just other goofy songs.

Judy: I always have to make sure the clients understand there is, any school can be used as a compulsion, so anything you say or do can be a compulsion. Of course, the definition of a compulsion is doing something to make you feel better to avoid and get away from the anxiety, but anything can be an ERP tool as well. 

There are some people that are very behavioral that say you can never sing a silly song or you can never talk about pizza to things. Because it’s always a compulsion, and I disagree, you can use anything to say, “I’m going to look you in the eye, and I’m going to talk about that instead, because I get to talk about what I’m going to talk about.  This is my brain, this is my body, I’m going to talk about what I want to talk about”, and such. You’re using it to expose yourself, where OCD is trying to pull you to its topic, and you’re like, no, not going there. I feel it, not going there. That’s the key, the habituation. It’s not to have your hand on the doorknob for 24 hours without washing your hands. I guess maybe that eventually gets there. But it’s this struggle, this fleshly nature struggle, that where we choose to live by faith in that way, I’m not giving in to our feelings and our thoughts and our worries. As we do that, and we’re an intentional participant, that’s what makes that work better.

Carrie: Yes, I love that verse that talks about working out your salvation with fear and trembling because it’s God that works within you because we have a part and God has a part. One of the things that you and I run into in working with Christian clients is we’ll have people ask us or say things like, I’m praying, I’m waiting for God to take this away, and we’ve talked a lot about healing on the show. We’ve talked about various theologies and prayer and different aspects, but I love what you talk about with this being part of the sanctification process, because whether you have OCD or not, we’re in a struggle with our own minds on a day to day basis regarding are we going to be focused on the things of God and what God wants us to do? Are we going to be focused on sin and self and what other things that are negative? It really kind of fits in line with that sanctification process. What would you say to someone who says, “I just don’t understand. I’ve prayed and why hasn’t God just healed me from this yet? Or Why isn’t he helping me more through this process?”

Judy: What I’d say is that has to go back to our understanding of our role in God’s role and who he is. We have to broaden that picture too.  The Bible is very clear. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. We do not have the understanding, whether it’s about something in our personal life, or why God allows terrible things in the world, and such. It has to go back to, we always make the choice of, are we going to be the ones trying to figure it out and try to get God to answer to us about things that we don’t understand and figure out or if we understand the parental way of doing things. 

If you’re a parent, you understand that there are things that you say you can do with your child that they won’t get. They don’t understand because their age, their developmental age, or they haven’t walked through something yet. We know why we’re asking them to do or not do something, and they just think we’re being mean and they don’t get it and they don’t understand. To me, that’s parallel. “I don’t understand why you don’t take this away from me. I don’t understand why you allow things in the world. That causes me in my immaturity, that’s where I think that comes into our immaturity, back to sort of childishness of like, “I want to understand, I’m going to demand that I have to understand. I demand that you explain it to me”, whatever that might be, which includes that, “why haven’t you healed me” kind of thing, then our immaturity comes out and that’s what I think some of that’s a design to show that coming to the surface again, our fleshly nature is coming to the surface rather than saying, I choose to believe God is my heavenly father, who’s created me and loves me unconditionally therefore, everything he does is for my good. Even though it doesn’t feel like that and they don’t see it that way, I choose in faith to trust that and just walk out. I need to walk out day by day because that’s how I get to a healthier place that God wants me to be. That’s now how we get maturity is choosing to walk it out in faith even when we don’t see that may or may not change at any point in time.

Carrie: How do you work with clients dealing with scrupulosity, who are having some of these difficulties with trusting God, with the uncertainties of our faith and life?

Judy: I have a lot of folks who are like, what if, what I’m thinking or feeling, or even the thoughts that I have are sinful and if I’m not pushing them away, talking about not pushing away the scary thoughts or I’m not reacting to them, then that means, in their mind, that means I’m not faithful, I’m sinning because I’m not trying to push things away.

I go back to the broader concept. We talk about what is their view of God. How do they see God as in a punitive way, as their Heavenly Father? If they’re parents, well, if your child thought this about you, would that be accurate? That kind of thing. Have them understand that this one area that they are worried about doesn’t overshadow all the other things that they actually believe about who God is and how God loves and cares for them.

It’s just out of their fear and anxiety that they want to go out that they want to get certainty and know for sure but nobody has that nobody has that we’re humans and so we don’t have 100 percent certainty of anything honestly about God this side of heaven we really don’t we would like to say we do and folks with especially scrupulosity but let’s see they feel like but my friends or my family say they know what’s Certainty that God loves them or they’re going to have it or whatever they are so certain, well, yes, but no. Nobody has actual sexual certainty and our feelings about anything. If you ask that family member and you track their feeling of certainty from our, to our day to day, year to year, that would change too. It’s just a, a way of speaking at any given time about where we are. feelings but feelings do not equal truth. I broaden it back to how do they want to live out their faith? Do they want to live it out as a faith based journey where they’re walking you know and taking risks in faith or do they want to be the one that trusts in chariots and their own manpower and their own knowledge and their own understanding?

I always bring people back to which one of those two do you want to live out? Well, right now you’re trying to live out your own understanding and getting answer knowing for certain and such and nobody has that, so you can keep doing that if you want your life to keep feeling like this versus choosing to take this risk.

Carrie: I think that normalization of doubts and normalization of uncertainty is huge because in certain faith circles, there are things said like, do you know that you know that you know that you know that you’re a Christian and do you know, you know, you know you’re saved and that’s probably like the worst thing that you could say to someone with OCD because we all have to live with a certain level of uncertainty and unanswered prayers and not knowing. We’re not going to know everything, like you said, and we have to accept that, that we’re in the child space in our relationship with God, and we may not know all the ins and outs and the whys and so forth.

I think this episode is going to be really great and helpful for people who are dealing with all different kinds of OCD and maybe some people that are even in ERP therapy that can utilize some of these strategies that you’ve talked about to help them create a little bit more lightheartedness about it and not have to engage with it in such a serious, like you said, scared manner.

People are scared to engage with this type of therapy sometime. I think your presentation and dealing with other mentors that I’ve had have kind of helped me soften a little bit towards my ERP initial standoff ed ness that I had at the beginning of learning about it, I thought, this maybe, I don’t know that I can really do this, but it just kind of opens a doorway for me to be able to integrate some of these things with the clients that I’m working with.

Judy: Yes, at the beginning, the first couple of years, I had somebody, again, not to nullify Rogers, but who was in the Rogers program, and they contacted me for follow up care, and what they wanted me to do was come to their house, time them taking a shower, make sure they got out of the shower on time, and then time them when they were washing their hands to make sure that they got out of it because that’s what they did at Rogers. I did that for a couple weeks and I’m like, this, I can’t, no, I don’t believe in this. I don’t think this is going to help you long term. Have a babysitter stand there and watch you do these things. That’s not how you’re going to learn. You need to learn how to underline. I don’t want this for my life.  I’m not going to let you OCD do this for my life. So I’m going to find some way to give you some sassiness. And some silliness because I don’t want to live this way. That’s what I can provide to people and that has made such a difference. I am so blessed. I feel so blessed and thankful to God that every day I help people get out of these terrible places, these prisons, these torment place because I can help show them the pathway is that God designed this already that there is a way to get there and that you can do it. There is hope. That’s what we bring to folks is the hope that life can change, things can change and God already has it in your head. Let’s go use what God gave you to be able to get you out of this terrible place.

Carrie: Awesome. Well, we’ll put a link to your NoCD profile in the show notes. And I know you’re licensed in several states so people can. Look you up and see you as a option if they’re in one of those states, so that would be awesome too.

Judy: Not bragging, but I have written some books, so if you want to go on Amazon and my name is Judy Lair. I have a series called “Freedom from Fear.” There’s a specific book on OCD. There’s also one in Generalized Anxiety Disorder and one on stress and worry because men do not have anxiety, they might have stress and worry and then have a big one that talks about my journey with anxiety. It also talks about OCD and, and how I’ve come through all of that in the background I came through, how I got here. That talks about my faith and looking at faith in terms of that. You can go on Amazon and find those things if those are helpful resources.

Carrie: Yes, that’s awesome too. I forgot you were an author, so it’s good to put that in at the end. All right, thanks for your time today. 

Judy: All right, Carrie.Thanks!

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Carrie: I wanted to let you all know that we have a new freebie on our website called How to Handle Difficult Thoughts. You can find this at www.hopeforanxietyandocd/free. We have several different free downloads that you can benefit from there, but this download specifically is to help give you a little bit of a taste of our mindfulness course coming up.

This is to give you a little taste of “Reclaiming the Mind: Learning to be Present.” One issue that a lot of clients talk to me about is having racing thoughts, not being able to know how to slow their mind down. Mindfulness is a great way to do that, so this course will be launching soon, and if you get our emails, you’ll be finding out all about it. I Can’t wait to share it with you. 

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

110. Healthy Conflict with Janeen Davis, PsyD, MFT

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

Related links and Resources:

Purpose and Peace Solutions

Explore other episodes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie: That is a very good question.

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

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

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

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

Janeen: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie: That’s good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie: Yes.

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

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

Janeen: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

Related links and Resources

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 107. For anyone new to our show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. I have with me today on the show a licensed mental health counselor and certified integrative mental health professional, Diana Rice of Through the Valley Therapy in Florida. 

Carrie: Are you in the Miami area? Is that right?

Diana: I’m in South Florida. 

Carrie: Okay. Today, we’re going to talk about adverse childhood experiences. People may have heard them referred to as ACEs. I’m talking about how these things impact us, which is really relevant for conversations surrounding anxiety and OCD.

Diana: I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your personal story in terms of just what led you to be the counselor that you are today.

Diana: Wow, I could say I could blame my middle school, my Broward County middle school that I went to. Honestly, my father’s family kind of kept me here. My mom is an immigrant from another country and my dad is as well.

I’m originally from New York, and when I came to visit one summer, they kept me, so I was in middle school and then I started middle school here. My mom ended up coming back, but at that time, she didn’t know her rights. It turned out for God’s glory, of course, because here I am now. But in seventh grade, I became a peer counselor.

I think that’s where my love of helping others plus, my mother’s only child and I have older siblings, but they’re from my dad’s side. I just wanted to help people. I could see now back in the past like I had to disentangle what was I trying to heal because of my background and what is actually my calling, how my personality is and what the Lord has given me to do in this place we call earth.

That’s where it all started, and in high school, I was a peer counselor. I remember they interviewed me in the yearbook and asked,, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I’m like, “I want to be a psychologist.” That time, I was already doing the wrong thing. I wasn’t a Christian then. I was raised Catholic with Santeria, which is a religion. You guys could look it up, but be aware. It wasn’t as bad as you’ll see if you do look it up, but my grandma was a medium.

Carrie: Oh, okay. Wow, so that’s like two different worlds intermingled there.

Diana: Yes, so I had that kind of spiritual trauma along with other things. I know that we’re talking about ACE, adverse childhood experiences, and my score is a six. I did not know these things when they were happening because most of us when we’re growing up, we think that’s just the norm of what’s happening.  Everybody must be going through that plus our brains aren’t fully developed at that time.

Carrie: Right. I think a lot of people are just like, “Well, that’s just kind of how it was. That was the water we swim in. That’s what maybe all the neighbors were going through as well. Until we get outside of our box or bubble of how we grew up, we don’t really know that things can be different or are different for other children and teenagers out there.

Tell us a little bit about how you got interested in the ACE study because I think when you and I had chatted before, you said you felt like it was kind of a life’s work for you, just really understanding this and applying it in your counseling.

Diana: When I was in college, we have to do our practicum and our internship. I spent a year in a Broward County school that was cognitive-behavioral therapy-based. It is sort of an alternative school, but the students that were there, they were from other schools sort of got kicked out or they needed help and they had to be seeing a psychiatrist. At this school, that was my internship and I was basically for that year, the only intern, but there were like eight other therapists, a psychiatrist, and a couple of psychiatrists.

It was probably one of the best educational times of my life for that year. I learned a lot of what not to do as a therapist, the red tape and the understanding of insurance, sorta there. So basically I was just learning from a lot of different modalities of how people practice back then and that was in 2004. It was almost 20 years ago before social media and it was at school. I was mostly teens. I mean, we had middle school and I think there might have been an area of elementary, but most of my clientele that came to me were teenagers. I realized I was there and I’m not the psychiatrist and I was getting frustrated because it was basically they came to me and a fat file of the student or whatever it is that follows them along the whole system. I’m like, “I don’t want to read it. My supervisor would be like,”Yyou have to read it. That’s your job.  I’m your supervisor.”  I’m like, “I know, but then you’re giving me this.” I’m going in already kind of with a judgment on the student.  I’m from Broward County, so I was a product of the Broward County school system.

 I have that little bit of that sass. Basically though, I was seeing like, why aren’t we listening to these students? I’m seeing these things that are happening and they’re angry and they’re frustrated or they’re not being heard.  I ended up taking what Carl Rogers talks about unconditional positive regard and I was new. I was just new to the game. I just basically started listening and questioning and then I would go home and go to my library and research or go back to my college and ask my professors.  I was just always asking why, why, why would we do this back then? I think the DSM might’ve been three or TR or something like that. I’m like, “Why do you keep telling me this book my Bible?”  That’s what we’re taught in a public secular college when it comes to licensing and everything. And then I would open it up and see all the names and I’m like, no offense. Why are all these white people the ones that are telling me what to do?

Why are we not taking into consideration the cultures? Or the understanding of other people’s backgrounds. I was questioning and questioning. Some of my professors loved, that I was questioning things.

Carrie: And some hated it.

Diana: Oh, some of them were, but I was used to that already because that’s how I’ve learned most of my life, even in high school and stuff. Just like questioning why. That’s just how I still do that to this day.

Carrie: Right, and very valid questions. I think psychology was based off of a bunch of white men at the end of the day. It started, that’s not where it is now, you know, things have progressed, but there’s still a lot of that bias in a lot of the research materials and things of that nature in DSM.

Back in the 90s, just for anybody who’s not familiar with the ACE study, adverse childhood experiences. Kaiser Permanente, which is an insurance company that’s more on the west coast of the U. S., if you’re not familiar with them, they decided they’re going to do this study and try to figure out, we have these people that have chronic health issues that are obviously taking a lot of money to take care of.

People with addiction issues, people with high blood pressure, diabetes, all of those chronic conditions that we think about. They wanted to figure out what makes some connection points between their physical health and their mental health and what they found through questions. They had, I think, 10 questions on there. 

Diana: I have the questions in front of me and it’s basically simple and people don’t understand what it does. It makes you understand things that you never do. That’s the way I like it in a holistic practice because we really touch on some stuff and it does get utilized in my practice anyway. In a way that’s like, whoa, but they don’t ever see the correlation.

The 10 questions are like this, “Did a parent or another adult in the household often swear at you, insult you, put you down, humiliate you, act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? And then it keeps going. “Did a parent, or other adult in the household often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you ever hit you so hard that you have marks or were injured?”

I don’t know, I know these could be trigger questions right now for your audience. I want to be careful because now I’ve realized like, okay, because I utilize it so much, every client has to fill this out when they come to me. I’m realizing now that I got to be careful because your listener might never have heard these and they’re going to be like, because if we end up saying all 10 questions and they say, “Oh, yeah.I have seven” then what do we do here as therapists?

Carrie: Yes, people can go look them up online and I’ll link them. Even something like the divorce of your parents is on there and that’s pretty common in today’s day and age.

Diana: Or drinking or alcohol. Anybody had a mental illness or was depressed in your household. “Did anybody go to prison?”  It is questions that are basic, but when you put all 10 of them together and you start seeing the scoring, anything higher than a four, I think is cause for a little bit of concern. The higher the score, of course, the more you going to have to be aware. It’s an awareness. It’s not like you’re doomed.

Carrie: Right. It’s just a look at how that connection is, and they found that people who had scores of four or more ACEs were more likely to have these chronic health issues, the high blood pressure, the diabetes, addiction issues, and it was very significant. It was kind of like the graph was small at 1, 2, 3, and then jumped when it got to 4 and above. It’s a very eye-opening, and it’s not a new study, but I think a lot of doctors don’t take these types of things into account. A lot of individuals who have chronic health issues or chronic anxiety or chronic insomnia don’t take these types of issues into consideration because, like we were talking about before, It was just kind of how they grew up.

It was the water they swim in and they don’t always identify with the word trauma or abuse. I think that’s why some of those questions get very specific. Because if you say, did you experience physical abuse in your household? Someone might just think, well, that was discipline, but yet they ended up with marks, or they ended up getting hit in ways that are clearly not disciplinary.

Diana: What I see in my practice for the last 20 years is that It is a cultural thing at times. I also understand because I use a lot of Myers Briggs too. I try to come up with free assessments so we can have a holistic picture. Say you have this young person who is an introvert and is nervous by nature, like, and that’s okay. All of a sudden the father comes home drunk and is yelling. It doesn’t even have to put hands on, but, your nervous system just gets turned on. All these layers of emotional wounds, that’s how I explain it to the teen or the young adult or the adult that’s come to me is that we have emotional wounds.

We all experience these emotional wounds. The intergenerational trauma. A lot of people want to call it intergenerational sin, generational sin or whatever it is that’s happened. But if we don’t deal with them, then this is why symptoms happen.

Carrie: Absolutely. Those types of things that affect our nervous system and get us into that fight, flight, or freeze energy on the regular basis, that’s almost like teaching our brain for that fire alarm to constantly go off when it’s really only meant to go off in high danger, high-stress situations so that we have that energy to fight, flight, or freeze.

When you’re in a chronic situation like that, and like you said before, your brain is still developing. Now we’re affecting kind of how the brain is developing in these processes with children and teens. Similar to you, I started out working with children and teens, not in a school setting, but in a home setting, trying to prevent them from out-of-home placement.

When I first went into it, I thought, what’s going on with these kids? What is the deal here? Why are they acting up so much? Was it something about how they were raised? I didn’t know. Do they just have no structure in their home or no discipline? But then you start to peel back the layers and you start to look at, we had a, oh, I’m trying to think of what the assessment was.

It wasn’t an ACE assessment, but it was a trauma inventory, and it’s got a really long acronym, but we would go through that with every client and ask about, have you ever experienced this, homelessness, times where you didn’t have enough food, all kinds of different experiences. Has anyone ever hit you? And then you find out all kinds of things that have happened – bullying, abuse that they’ve experienced, and then you go,  “Oh, these kids aren’t bad kids. They’re not behavior problems. They have been through an enormous amount, and their nervous system, like, does not know how to process or handle even day-to-day situations.”

Diana: On fire, that’s what I say. That’s inflammation and when we understand the science of the mind and the body all together, it’s places of yourself that are inflamed. If your gut is inflamed, you start feeling it in other places. The same with the brain. If your central nervous system is always protecting, I mean, think about back in the day, a long time ago, thousands of years ago, when you have a sabertooth tiger running after the caveman, that’s the alert.

Your adrenal glands are going squirt, squirt, squirt with chemical and it’s fight or flight or freeze or fawn. If you’re on, but the thing is with the chronic, like you’re saying, if it’s happening every day, your system just learns to stay on. And then people that have a safe environment or healthy foods, or they don’t have to worry about resources or gang life or abusive home settings.

They don’t have that understanding and then they’re judging it now. For us therapists, if you’re a therapist listening to this, this is something that can revolutionize your whole practice, understanding the holistic approach to mental health and especially with the ACE, understanding the neuroplasticity and the science behind that, I mean, the brain and the gut connection, things like that.

“If I did not learn these things, I think I would have been, I was a wreck. I mean, I was smoking pot. I was drinking alcohol all through my teen.”  And that’s why they’re like, they’re just teenagers, but if we get to understand the why, why are they taking it so personal? Why are they popping off? I think we’re going to talk about internalizers and externalizers.

Carrie: Yes, let’s go into that. Your externalizers are the poppin’ off kids.

Diana: Yes, the Poppin off kids. The ones that are  people see and they think that they have a chip on their shoulder, like, “What you lookin at”, or whatever it is. If you take those personal, if you’re working with adolescents, or you have one, and you’re taking it personal constantly and saying, well, they’re just teenagers, they suck, or whatever it is or instead of taking a step back and going, “Why are they poppin off? Why are they punching the teacher in the face?” And those are the students that I worked with. I worked from there, and then I worked in a non profit organization that went into the houses, too, into the inner city homes, so I was seeing things we are the richest country and we’re allowing people to live this way.

I don’t get it. I get it, but I don’t. It’s such a system. I’m not even gonna go there. But you have those that externalize, which they’re fighting. They’re angry. They’re the little kid who might be diagnosed with ADHD. They might be diagnosed with a thousand different things and on five different medications. We don’t realize at home they’re eating Captain Crunch and Mountain Dew for breakfast. We don’t see this whole picture because we have to, I get why in the system, if you’re responsible for thousands of kids in one school, you can’t do what we’re trying to do, individualizing therapy for each, so you have to come up with answers quickly so you could keep the fire down.

Carrie: Yes. Absolutely. 

Diana: Those are the externalizers, the ones that you see that are angry or cussing or upset or wanting to fight and you feel it. The internalizers, they’re usually the cutters. They’ll stay in their room all day long playing video games, or they’re doing other things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re the shy ones, they’re the suicidal ones.

Carrie: Right, they just keep everything inside and bury it as much as possible and even occasionally they may blow up at some point, but it’s usually against themselves, like you were saying.

Diana: Some of them will do both, depending on what’s going on in their own system, like in their own body, their vessel. It depends on how much a human being can take. Each one of us only has a threshold. We only have a certain amount of bandwidth.

Carrie: I’m sure it drove you crazy like it drove me crazy that the trauma wasn’t taken into consideration, so then we were just looking at symptoms. We were trying to match people up with the DSM and trying to match people with medication.

Therefore, there was a turning of students who got diagnosed with ADHD and then bipolar disorder. That’s what we saw all the time. 

Diana: ADHD and bipolar borderline. I’m trying to think there was one more. I mean, when I had anxiety and depression that year. I came and I think I am quite fine, I’m in private practice now. After that, when I was working at the nonprofit, I took a little break because of a certain situation that happened personally in my family, and then I went into a different career. After the Parkland shooting, and the Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018, I had a couple of parents ask, “Hey, are you still a therapist?”, and I’m like, “no, I’m not.” And then little by little, the Lord kept saying, “You’re going back.  I’m like, “no”, but I see now since 2018, everything. I’m like, Okay, I’m just going to be obedient. This is of service for you. It’s a calling. I’m grateful that I do get paid for it and I get to help others learn about it. When I went back, I ended up in a school being the crisis intervention counselor serving about 200 students and I was the only licensed therapist there.

Carrie: Wow, that’s a lot of students to take care of. What hope is there? Because this is hope for anxiety and OCD, what hope is there for individuals who’ve had these types of experiences?

Diana: There’s so much hope. Listen, I am one that had these types of experiences. Like I said before, I have an A score of 6. It’s reframing what has happened and understanding, but getting the help and doing the work. Because some people do the healing process, they get stuck in the victim. And they don’t know how to get out of it because it’s been their life for so long and they might be surrounded by other humans in their family or in their community.

That’s all they know as well, so it’s understanding there is hope and it starts with you understanding you being that curious observer of yourself watching YouTube videos on CPTSD. Reading books like Dr. Gabor Maté’s book, The Myth of Normal, or The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Vessel Van de Kock, or CPTSD, From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.

There’s so much information out there. Or listening to podcasts like this, saying, Hey, no, there’s hope and understanding the science of your brain. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. They’re finding it out there in more and more information on the brain and how rewiring your system you can do it. I have done it.

It took a lot of hard work to grieve my childhood to learn to forgive those that hurt me and it’s not only my home. It’s understanding. We’re all raised in a village.

Carrie: Yes.

Diana: We’re all in a village now. If you’re hearing my voice, you’re part of a system. You’re part of a village, but we were also raised by one.

Some people might hurt you which can cause anxiety and depression, which are symptoms of numerous things. Finding out that you are not anxiety and you are not depression. These are just things you’re wrestling with or struggling with. I like wrestling better because wrestling means that you could get up on top of it.

When I use the word suffer, I don’t like that too much because it’s like, “Oh, I’m suffering. Oh, what was me?” To me,  I had to go through that part. I was grateful for EMDR. There are modalities that can help internal family systems, EMDR. I do cold plunges now. I do sauna work, infrared sauna, acupuncture, and things that have been around for thousands and thousands of years that are Westernized medicine. It doesn’t utilize because it’s either free or they can’t make money off of it.

Carrie: The cold plunge. How does that work?

Diana: I just started honestly last month and you go into like 40-degree water and I’m up in 90 seconds. I started off at 30 and I thought it, but it was the weirdest, craziest, most amazing feeling I ever had.

I do Wim Hof breathing. Wim Hof, you should look up his story. I started with the breathing techniques because these things are not taught in churches. They’re not taught our profession either much, and a lot of people see them as woo woo or new age, but I’m like, “No, the Lord made breath.”

Carrie: There are certain breaths that I know, like from yoga. There are certain ways to breathe where you can warm up your body or cool off your body. So are you trying to warm up your body like in those situations or no, you’re trying to take your temperature down?

Diana: Are you talking about breath work or with a cold plunge?

Carrie: With the cold plunge, are you trying to breathe a certain way while you’re in there?

Diana: It is actually trying to wake up my mitochondria to healing. It’s also understanding your mindset. We have a fixed mindset, many of us, especially if we wrestle with anxiety because I do, I wrestle with anxiety, honestly, like I can’t drink coffee. I have to do the work and I have to be okay. Kind of like an alcoholic shouldn’t be drinking alcohol. 

Carrie: Right, yes.

Diana: Someone like me that has anxiety and wrestles with it. I have to do the work and understand like, “No, I can’t touch that substance because that substance is going to make my anxiety worse or depression or whatever symptoms being exasperated by whatever’s around you. With the cold plunge, I am trying to, first of all, wake up myself and at the same time realize that I have the power in my mind to do this. Tthat is the rewiring of the brain that is creating new neurons to be able to connect.” Whatever fires together wires together.” That’s what Jim Quick says.

Carrie: Right. Yes.

Diana: I love to listen to and it’s true. If I would have stayed like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be a pothead of all my life, or I’m going to be depressed, or I’m never going to be able to be around my family because they trigger me too much. I had to rewire my brain. I have also been diagnosed with SERS, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, but I also know it’s because of how high my ACE score.”

It’s an autoimmune, so I have to do the things to keep that fire down because it’s inflammation. And I do the work and it was trying to shrink the inner critic because you grow up in that kind of environment with a high A score. It’s constantly like, I’m not worth it. It’s attachment issues,

Carrie: Putting yourself down a lot from things that you’ve heard from other people and just kind of repeating those things to yourself.

Diana: Because it’s been chronically done constantly, you start believing and that is something I had to realize with my walk with the Lord. To me, guilt and shame, because that’s what most of us who have anxiety, a lot of these diagnoses come and they’re really in guilt and shame. Guilt and shame is from the world. Conviction comes from the Lord.

Carrie: Right. That’s good.

Diana: It’s different. If you’re going against God’s word, then of course you’re going to get convicted.

Carrie: That’s a good thing.

Diana: Yes. If you’re feeling guilt and shame constantly and you’re blaming God and you’re not understanding, like, where is that voice coming from?

Who said those things? And you start recognizing those voices, the inner critic, and then you just sit with it because a lot of people that have anxiety, that I’ve come to find out in this 20 years I’ve been doing this, is they’re storing these emotions in their bodies, so they’re either so depressed and sad about it, and they’re just giving up with no hope, or it is stored so deeply that it’s like when a deer gets hit by a truck, or any animal. 

Carrie: They’re sort of shaking.

Diana: That’s our nervous system, which causes the anxiety, or the OCD. I still struggle with that too, and I have to realize, I got bad news. This is an example that happened lately. My sister was put in hospice.  My husband, because he has done his work with me and understands he or she is starting to clean everything and make everything perfect. She took everything out of the gap because that’s what I did. Then he took me and was just like, “Honey, you’re going to have to go see your therapist. Please calm down. I could tell because it happens.”

Carrie: Fall back into those patterns. I really like what you’re saying on a spiritual sense of that there’s a verse that talks about work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it’s God that works within you and you’re talking about really partnering up with God and the Holy Spirit to do the work, not just kind of sitting back and being a passive observer and say, God, just come over me and just fix all the brain cells, just make them all like wired together the way they’re supposed to and heal up this yuck stuff that happened to me.

You’re like, “No, I’ve actually sought the Lord, but I’ve also gone to counseling and I’ve also done these other healing modalities and read a lot or watched a lot of videos and really absorb the Information because knowledge is really helpful in these types of things and it does help reduce some of the shame so that you’re not thinking why in the world am I responding in this way?

Why in the world am I acting like this? When you understand, you can peel that back and say, “Oh, okay, now I get it. Now that I get it, I can start to take a step towards change.”  If a lot of times we don’t understand what’s going on in the first place, it’s really hard to make changes into it. If we don’t sit with it and go, “Oh yeah, this is what happened to me. This is how it affected me. This is how my relationships have gotten so hijacked for the last 10 years.”

Diana: We have to remember as believers that Satan’s only reason is to steal, kill, and destroy every relationship that you have, including and especially the one with yourself.

When you notice that and you realize, like, this is why I really am a mind, body, spirit connecting therapist here. When people come to me, they understand my position in Christ. I do not force. I’m not a biblical counselo. People argue with me all the time and we all have our journey. To me, what has worked thus far with people. I have quite a few people with a lot of spiritual abuse from church where I have to disentangle because some people don’t understand they grew up and was forced into some kind of say religion or whatever it is. And then they come to me with this hatred towards God and they want to deconstruct. I’m there going, okay, I think you want to disentangle and understand your situation that happened in ACEs is not only in inner cities, I mean, there’s higher scores there because they have fewer resources. It’s just how our system in this society has been for so long. And this is. In the last three or four years, that’s the uprising that we’re feeling and people misunderstanding.

That’s why I encourage those to educate themselves, but it starts within ourselves. Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24, search me, Oh God, and know my anxious thoughts starts with us being responsible for us. Despite anything that has happened to us. That’s the power we have.

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

Diana: Wow. I could actually talk about this morning. I had a client, mostly my clients gave me hope due to them doing the work and seeing the progress. I’m very grateful for that. Just like this morning, I had a client that came to me two months ago and she was in a very, very bad place. When I say very bad place, it was just, I don’t know if I could. It takes energy.   I think the listener needs to understand we’re humans with our struggles and we care about our clients, or we would not be in this. And we care about them, not just for the hour or 90 minutes we have them.

Carrie: True. Very true. 

Diana: We’re trying to find other ways to help them. I’m in a lot of prayer. If you come to see me, I’m praying for you before you come in. We pray together and then when they leave, I pray, “All right, Lord, what do I have to do for the next session? Or what do I do next?” This person came in and I’m just like, I don’t know if I can help them. I can’t after crying out to God for a while.

I’m like by this time, if I can’t help and she came in today and I was just blown away with how much progress it was amazing. It’s like every time I want to quit, I honestly want to retire or go back to the other career I was at because this is heavy work for us.

Carrie: It’s not easy.

Diana: It’s not easy. It is a calling because I’m sure that if you are a therapist listening, you did not get in this for the money. If you got in it for the money, then your heart is not in the right place to be a therapist. If you’re coming in thinking you’re going to make a lot of money, then you’re not seeing your client as the human that we should be seeing them as.

To me, I’m talking to my husband, “Shiver. I’m older now. I’ve done some time already.” The second I think that, a client comes in and boom, something out. I’m like, “All right, Lord. Okay. I hear you. All right.” He reminds me, it’s not about me. It’s not even about the client. All of that price and utilizing our gifts and talents, which each one of us have, and it’s just getting in tune with that. The only way to get in tune with who you are to heal is to sit alone and be still with the Lord.

Carrie: I love your office too. For those that are just listening, she has lots of plants all over her office and natural lighting is a very warm and inviting therapy space. I really like that. I’m still working on my office, I moved into it a few months ago, and it’s just not quite where I want it to be. There are still some tweaks that need to happen, but I’m going to get it settled, and it’s going to be great when it gets done.

Diana: You have to send me a picture of it.

Carrie: Okay, we’ll do. Thanks for being on the show today and sharing your wisdom with us.

Diana: Carrie, thank you for having me.

___________________________________

Carrie: I loved interviewing Diana because it’s always great to find another therapist with a similar heartbeat about treating trauma and letting people know that is possible for them to have a better life moving forward, even if their background has been kind of rough.

As some of you know, I do EMDR intensives with clients who are looking to process trauma in a short, condensed amount of time, instead of having to spread that over weeks and weeks and open up issues and close them up. If you want more information on that, feel free to check out my counseling website at bythewellcounseling.com. I am also working on longer intensive packages specifically for clients who are dealing with the intersection of trauma, childhood wounding, and OCD. If any of that is of interest to you, definitely contact me and I would love to share more about it with you.

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

Explore further:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

Related links and resources:

www.summitwellnesscenters.com

Explore Related Episodes:

102. Anxiety and Coparenting with Tammy Daughtry, LMFT

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

Episode Highlights:

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related links and Resources:

www.coparentinginternational.com

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100. 100 Tips for Managing Anxiety

In this special 100th episode, I dive into a comprehensive list of 100 tips for managing anxiety.  Divided into different sections, we explore various aspects of anxiety’s impact on our life and relationships.

From practical tips to heartfelt reminders, I’ve got you covered in this list.

More Episodes to Listen to:

98. Stories of Hope (Part 2)

We continue sharing inspiring stories of our past guests finding hope amidst anxiety and OCD struggles.

These stories highlight the power of hope, faith, and supportive relationships in overcoming anxiety and OCD.

Episode Highlights:

  • Rachel Hammons, in episode 8, discovered hope through faith and contrasting God’s love with intrusive thoughts.
  • Ed Syner, in Episode 42, found hope with the support of his mother during bullying and emotional challenges.
  • Rhett Smith, in Episode 5, witnessed God’s redemption through his daughter’s confidence in a school play.
  • Peyton Garland, in Episode 26, experienced a powerful moment of hope when a stranger displayed grace and prayed for her during an obsession-related incident.

Steve and I, in Episode 81, also shared our own story of hope, with our daughter, Faith, bringing immense joy into our lives and how her presence reminds us of the goodness of God and His faithfulness.

I also share a bonus story, reminding you of the possibility of finding reciprocal friendships through intentional effort.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 98! I’m thrilled to share part two of our series on stories of hope with you. If you joined us last week, you heard some incredible testimonies about finding faith and courage amid OCD. Today, we continue that journey with more inspiring stories.

First, let’s revisit Rachel Hammons from episode 8. Rachel opened up about how discovering she had OCD was a pivotal moment of hope for her. She emphasized that understanding the character of God brought her immense comfort.

In episode 42, Ed Snyder shared his story of dealing with anger and emotional abuse. Ed’s experience with bullying and the impact it had on his self-esteem was profound. His story highlights how God often works through people to bring us the encouragement and strength we need.

Next, in episode 5, Rhett Smith shared a touching story about how watching his daughter’s confidence in theater gave him hope. Rhett saw his own struggles reflected in his daughter’s success and felt reassured that God redeems our past difficulties. It’s a beautiful reminder that even though we face challenges, God can transform and use our experiences for good.

In episode 26, Peyton Garland recounted a harrowing moment of her OCD journey involving a car accident. Despite the fear and stress, she encountered a stranger who prayed for her and showed her unexpected kindness. This moment of grace provided Peyton with lasting hope and reinforced her faith in God’s providence.

Lastly, in a special anniversary episode, Steve and I reflected on how our daughter has been a beacon of joy and hope in our lives. Her presence reminds us of God’s goodness and faithfulness, even during difficult times. It’s a testament to how God’s blessings can come in the form of everyday miracles.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope these stories have uplifted and inspired you. I look forward to sharing more about my own journey through grief and recovery in our next episode. Until then, may you find comfort and hope in God’s great love for you.

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 98. Today on the show we are going to share some more stories of hope. This is part two from last week.

On episode 8, Rachel Hammons shared with us about her story of hope related to the character of God.

Rachel: I think that there’s a lot of little moments of hope for me, and so I think that, like looking back on my story, kind of like I mentioned earlier, the biggest piece of hope for me was learning the fact that I had OCD that was eyeopening and huge, but I also know that I think one of the biggest pieces of hope too, that I had, if you’re a Christian or if you’re a religious faith, reflecting on who you think God is or even doing some research on like. Not necessarily this specific event, this specific sin, this specific fear, but who is God? If I can learn more about the character of God, and I know that times that I’ve learned more about the character of God, the way that Jesus treated people, that is going to look vastly different than the way that my thoughts tend to speak to me.

When I reflect on who God is or at least even if that is a question because sometimes I’m like, well, I don’t know who God is, like I don’t know how he would respond. Well then just reflect on something that you know about God. I know that God is love. so if God is love, He loves me and He wants the best for me.

At least I know that I have that support. I have that hope. If God wants, just like any, hopefully, parents are loving their kids. God wants the best for his kids. God wants the best for me. At least in that, I know that I have someone on my side that’s walking through Ooc D or walking through my struggles with me, and I think that’s kind of what I tend to reflect on, especially when I’m really stuck in the obsessions and I don’t see an end to this particular one reflecting back on what you know, grounding yourself in what you know to be true.

Carrie: I really liked what Rachel said about grounding yourself back to biblical truths and things that you know about the character of God. Think that that’s so helpful.

In episode 42, Ed Snyder shared his personal story about anger and how he had to learn to manage his anger in a healthier way.

Ed: We’re going to talk about probably a lot of anxiety that I experienced in my life with everything else that’s going on. Somebody being bullied like I was, or you’ve got somebody in your life that is, they may not physically be bullying you, beating you up physically. They are beating you up emotionally and making you feel small, making you feel insufficient. It really messes with my emotions and kind of makes my eyes water a little bit when I think about the kid, Ed Snyder, and I knew me. I just love everybody. I just wanted to get along with everybody and everybody’s making fun of me and tormenting me and all of that stuff.

It literally destroyed my self-esteem. I couldn’t see my way up, and if it wasn’t for God putting somebody in my life that I called Mother, where every day I come home from school after going through a day of it’s supposed to be a day of learning, which was a day of abuse, she was there telling me, Hey, you don’t need those people.

You can do anything you set your mind to do. God’s got great things for you in your life. He’s got stuff in you that you’re going to do great with. She was constantly just hitting me with that, and it really was a saving point in my life. I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for the time that God used my own mother to tell me, you don’t listen to them.

You are better than that, you’re a good kid, et cetera, et cetera. As I grew, God just kept putting people in my life, one being my wife, we’re together. I mean, we’re peanut butter and jelly, and of course she knows me. I think everybody needs in their life is somebody that knows them inside and out, and she knows when to back off of me.

She knows when to get in my face and with that Irish face of hers, and I take it because I know she loves me. It’s amazing how God puts people in your life that will help you. They’re there. To be a blessing to you, to build you up. And of course, again, I don’t wanna take anything away from God, but God uses people.

God uses work. Have your faith. God can do anything. He is everything. But sometimes he uses the hands and the voices of people to make that work. And of course, we’re responsible for putting in the work. Faith without works is dead. I went to the altar and I prayed after my pastor preached the message. And I cried and I wanted God to heal me of this and get rid of it.

I don’t wanna be like this anymore. And I get up and a day or two later, I’m back at it again. I had to figure out the work. What do I need to do? Myself to partner with God’s power and prayer to make it happen. Maybe that’s what I need to help. It’s a listener of yours in your audience. Whether you’re dealing with anxiety or you’re dealing with stress or frustration or even anger, God’s putting people in your life.

This podcast, perhaps get back to this podcast and get the help that you need so that you can put the work with your faith and God’s going to do great things in your life.

Carrie: I think that’s really great that Ed’s mom was able to just speak truth and encouragement over his life. We all need that kind of support.

In episode five with Rhett Smith, “Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?”He has written a book on that, and here is his story of hope.

Rhett: I feel fortunate that I feel like there’s a lot of people around me who’ve given me hope or who’ve encouraged me, but the thing that came to mind was my daughter, who I had mentioned earlier, is 13.

She’s in theater at her school, and so last year when she was in a theater production, I was watching and she had a couple different parts where she spoke and I was watching her speak and she did it with such confidence and that really hit me at the core. I think also because I pictured myself at her age and I was in a school play that you had to be in, and I remember stuttering my way through that and living in fear and anxiety. Seeing her be so confident, I think gave me a sense of hope that God changes and he redeems situations. He transforms people’s lives. Even though that I struggled with anxiety and stuttering and things were really difficult for me, he was able to help me work and to grow that somehow maybe changed my daughter’s life in such a way that she didn’t have to deal with those same struggles.

Though my daughter’s not me, I felt like in some way it was a mirror of God saying things are gonna be okay. It just gave me a sense of hope. I saw my younger version of myself in her and that’s been something I’ve thought a lot about. I think over the last probably five or six months since she had that play, and that’s something I’ve been really encouraged by through difficult times, that things are gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna get through these times, and God will redeem the situations and he’ll fix the broken pieces. That for me is huge.

Carrie: I appreciated that story about his daughter. I’m definitely thinking about my own daughter and things that I want to be different for her childhood than things that I experienced.

I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence when I was a child and teenager, and I hope that I can instill some of that confidence. In my daughter when she gets into those ages. 

In episode 26, Peyton Garland shared with us a powerful story of hope, about a time that she got stuck in an obsession.

Peyton: OCD is just, oh, it’s wild. Harm OCD for me. I’m always afraid of random people off the road. I’m always turning my car around to make sure I haven’t run anybody off the road. There was one day I was in my little black Chevy car that I had gotten in high school, and I was driving home. And I just had one of those intrusive thoughts of, I tried to pick up my phone because someone was calling me.

I thought, oh my gosh, like for those five split seconds, you have no idea. If you were looking at the road, what could have happened? So I just hit the brakes. It’s a quiet country town, but I still hit the brakes in the middle of the road, and I went to whip my car around and somebody sideswipes me because I’m irrationally flipping my car in the middle of the street and I thought, oh my word, I have just caused a wreck.

I have no clue if this person is okay. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell a cop. I have intrusive thought, OCD and that’s why I’ve had a wreck. I pull off on the side of the road and this woman pulls off and I see her and she’s older and I think, gosh, like she’s 85. I have partially killed her. She’s going to need a hip replacement.

This woman gets out of her car. Now I’ve damaged her car like this was on me. She comes over and grabs my hand and she looks at me. And even in a small town, this was one of those random chances where I didn’t know who this was. She said, “I just want you to know that this is God’s providential hand, that you’re safe and I’m safe.” And she prayed over me and just left. And I’m sitting here going, my insurance is going to go through the roof. I definitely just clipped the back end of her car, so no insurance going up. I didn’t pay anything for this woman’s car. I swear she was an angel, but that was just hope because that was a hard thing.

I made a very, mentally I was in a bad place. I had made a bad decision as a driver. And this woman just prays over me, gives me grace, and just drives off. I will never forget that day. I will never forget her face, the street name, any of it as long as I live. That was some serious hope that I will not forget.

Carrie: This last story of Hope is from Steve and I’s second anniversary podcast. We do one every year around our anniversary, and this one was about becoming parents and what our daughter has meant to us.

Steve: When you’re down or something’s just difficult and you’ve got this baby that is just giggling and smiling and sticking her tongue out at you, you cannot be mad.

You cannot be upset with life. I really believe our daughter has this gift, and that is to be an encourager, to be someone who just, she doesn’t even know words yet, but we just kind of pass her around for the hugs and smiles, and it just really lightens the mood. It changes the focal point from your problem to just this happy little girl that just wants nothing more than to make you happy. Just been a blessing.

Carrie: Yes. I think about that too, and just that faith was conceived and born really during some dark times and some emotional struggles, but that. She’s a reminder of the goodness of God and of the faithfulness of God.

You know, when people ask like, “Why did you name your daughter Faith?” It’s like, “Well, you know, it took a lot of faith for us to get to this point, to be alone, and then to be older and find each other, not knowong if we could have a child or not and have her.” I really believe that she was born for a purpose in, in God’s plan. Had we received this diagnosis before we got pregnant, we probably would’ve said, you know, I don’t think we should do this. I don’t think we should go through with this. So she showed up at just the right time. And part of my process right now is, Just trusting God one day at a time, to be able to gimme the strength, to make it through the day, but also to know that he’s in control, that he loves us and that he’s gonna take care of us regardless of what happens, that he’s going to provide for our needs. Just knowing that God is good and he loves us and even in the dark times that he’s still here, he’s still present, he’s for us and that keeps us going just one day at a time, one step at a time. We’re thankful every day that Steve can walk. We’re thankful for every day that you get to see your daughter grow up.

There was a time period where I was praying that God would preserve your sight, that you’d be able to see even be born. You know, we just didn’t know. There was so much we didn’t know at the time.

Steve: We are so blessed. I hope that as a listener you don’t hear this or someone doesn’t hear this and think we have some problems. I hope you see that we are blessed that yes, there’s something I’ve been diagnosed with, but God’s still blessing me.

Carrie: I want to give you a little bonus story of hope in closing that’s a little bit more recent. I was thinking about a friendship that I have and how this person used to be more of an acquaintance role in my life, and I took the risk to step out and say, “Hey, would you like to hang out sometime, you know, outside of our kind of already acquaintance time that we had” It’s hard to do. It’s hard to be vulnerable and step out and make adult friendships. I know that many times it hasn’t worked out where. I’ve tried to reach out with someone or tried to spend time with them, and they’re too busy.

They’ve got this going on or that going on. Maybe they don’t have room for other people in their lives. Well, what I’ve found is that the more people that you. Reach out to or invite into your world. Eventually, you’re going to find someone who’s also looking for that same sense of friendship and companionship that you are.

It may take you a little while to find your person, but for somebody out there that’s. Feeling a little bit lonely today. I wanted to really encourage you that you have to put a lot of intentionality into your friendships after adulthood, especially after getting married or having kids or working a high stress job.

You just have to be really intentional about getting together with people, and if you’re not, then a lot of times that’s where those relationships sometimes can fall by the wayside. It’s hard to find a reciprocal friend, but I know from experience that if you keep working on it and you keep looking at it, that you will find probably somebody in your acquaintance circle that you can bring in a little bit closer.

It just takes some risk and working through some potential fear of rejection on the front end. I hope you have enjoyed these stories of hope today. Thank you for everyone just giving me a little bit of time and bandwidth to be able to recover from the grief and loss journey that I’ve been on. I hope next episode to be able to share some of that with you, what that experience has been like for me. I went to a grief intensive and it was absolutely powerful and therapeutically healing for me 

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

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

96. Theology of Suffering with Jon Seidl

In this episode, Carrie is joined by Jon Seidl, author of “Finding Rest” and president of Veritas Creative. They explore the theology of suffering and delve into Jon’s personal journey with anxiety and OCD, emphasizing the need for a proper understanding of suffering.

Episode Highlights:

  • How suffering can serve a purpose in our lives.
  • The importance of empathy, understanding, and a proper theology of suffering in supporting individuals with anxiety and OCD.
  • The significance of finding rest amidst life’s challenges.
  • Valuable insights into the intersection of faith and mental health.
  • More about Pastor Jon Seidl’s book, “Finding Rest.”

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 96! I’m so excited about today’s show because I have a special guest, Jon Seidl, author of Finding Rest and president of Veritas Creative, a digital consulting firm. Jon was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, and after reading it, I realized many of the topics he touches on are things we often discuss here on the podcast.

Today, we’re diving deep into the theology of suffering, something that often gets overlooked in our Christian walk. Jon shares his personal journey with anxiety and OCD, what he’s learned from his struggles, and how suffering can actually serve a greater purpose in our lives. It’s so common to want to run away from suffering, but Jon helps us see its importance in our spiritual growth.

Jon opens up about his writing journey, where he eventually penned a powerful article revealing his struggle with anxiety and OCD. The response from readers, especially Christians who also felt silenced by their struggles, was overwhelming. Jon emphasizes that many people in the Christian community feel shame when it comes to mental health, often being told to “pray more” or “repent.” His own experience led him to write his book and begin challenging these negative messages within the faith community.

Related links and Resources:

www.jonseidl.com

Explore related episode:

95. Healthier Theology of Healing with Pastor Mark Smith

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 96. I’m very excited about today’s episode. I have an interview with Jon Seidl who’s the author of Finding Rest and also the president of Veritas Creative, which is a digital consulting firm, Jon happened to send me a copy of his book, so I’ve been able to look at a lot of the topics he covers are things that we often talk about on the podcast.

We’re gonna take a little bit deeper dive in today on the Theology of Suffering and from his own personal story with anxiety and OCD, what he’s learned and the benefits to us suffering, because oftentimes we run from suffering, want to get away from it, and we don’t see how important it is as part of our Christian journey.

Carrie: Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon: Thank you so much for having me, and I’m so excited to talk about this topic. 

Carrie: You are a writer, really, and have been writing thousands of articles in various formats, and various topics, and one day you just wrote an article and came out about your anxiety and OCD. Was that huge, like sharing that part of your story?

Jon: Yeah, it was one of those where it’s not like I woke up that morning and I said, okay, today’s the day. Right? But at the time, I was editor-in-chief of the non-profit. I’m second, and I was in charge of especially over all of the writing that went out from the organization and I needed an article for our blog.

We had just been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff recently on the blog. I just kind of got that prompting of like, okay, you know, you need an article. And everything that’s been published up to this point recently has been very vulnerable. I was was like, “What is that thing that I can be vulnerable about?” That kind like started welling up and I’m like, no, no, no, no. Anything but that, right? You just kind of step it down.

Carrie: “No, God no. Don’t let me know.”

Jon: Yes. As I went throughout the day, it was like, I need to write about this. It’s time. Then the title of the article ended up being It’s Time to Tell the World My Secret.

I literally just shut my office door and I sat down and it just poured out, and I was like, okay, all right, here we go. And so I published it and wow, the response was just incredible. Overarchingly, I mean, was positive towards the article, but what really took me aback was how many people said, you know what?

I am a Christian and I’ve been suffering in silence, or I’ve brought this to my pastor or my parents, and I’ve just been told to pray about it more, to have more faith to repent. Maybe there’s some sin in your past or maybe you just, you drank too much this past weekend or we’re a little too mean to this person, and so this is just what happens. That was similar to my upbringing and got this kind of righteous anger and just knew that, okay, I need to be talking about this more. That really started the journey and that was the impetus for the book. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s very similar to some righteous anger that I had before starting this podcast. You know, I’m tired of these negative messages towards Christians, and I wanna put out something more positive. That’s about reducing the shame and stigma, but also letting people know there’s help and there’s hope, and you don’t have to continue to suffer in the same way that you were suffering before. Not to say that we won’t continue to have struggles sometimes, but with the level of shame, at least that they were dealing with related to their mental health. 

Jon: So much that says, again, I don’t know if you guys have covered this, but yes, it’s just about believing more, right? 

Carrie: Having enough faith. 

Jon: Yes and I grew up in a very charismatic household that was subscribed to a kind of prosperity gospel-type teaching. Your father owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If you just want and claim victory in this area of your life, then it’s yours. And if it doesn’t happen, it’s a problem with you. What we’re gonna talk about today is that is not the proper theology of suffering that I came to learn as a result of my diagnosis.

Carrie: Did it take you a long time to get diagnosed with OCD specifically? 

Jon: Yes, only because of the way I was brought up. It was so taboo and so ingrained in me not to get medication, not to go to a doctor for mental health that it’s like I never really considered it growing up. I always knew there was something different about me. I just kind of figured I’m a little high-strung. That’s what I told myself. That’s the term I used. My grandma was high-strung. My mom was a little high-strung, my sister was high-strung, and I’m like, okay, I’m just wound a little tighter. When it finally came to a head, as many people may know, marriage has a way of revealing your blind spots.

Carrie: Absolutely.

Jon: About five years into my marriage, there was an incident and my wife just kind of said, okay, listen, I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t continue like this. You understand this and people listening to you will understand this. It was like the wrong sweetener was in my coffee. We went to a coffee shop.

I told her, “Hey, I’m going to the bathroom. I don’t like Splenda, so make sure that there’s sweet and low in it. I came back, took a sip of the coffee, and there was Splenda in it, and it just ruined our entire weekend. 

Carrie: Wow.

Jon: I could not stop ruminating on that. I think that when the person you love is broken down in front of you saying, this is not working, that’s when I finally decided to get help. That was in about 2014, I believe. I went through my whole life up until that point just thinking, eh, okay. It’s a little annoying. I’m a little high-strung like I said, but not thinking that anxiety in OCD.

Carrie: What was that journey like for you? I know you talked in the book about telling your mom like, Hey, I’m taking medication now, and there were some struggles there.

Jon: That was not a fun conversation and it wasn’t what my mom said because I think my family has gone through an evolution since the way that we were when I was younger. She didn’t say like, “Oh my gosh, you’re sinning. How dare you.” It was the dead silence on the other end of the phone. It was the, well, I just don’t know what I did to raise you kids wrong.

She started inter like, “Oh my gosh.” Again because there’s always someone at fault in that type of theology. It’s like, what did I do? Right? Then you get into things about generational curses and this is her. “Did I not pray hard enough for you?” I think I remember getting off the phone, I talked about this in the book, and I just cried like a baby in my wife’s arms.

I just wanted some acknowledgement and it just didn’t end well. I mean, since then, listen, my mom and I, it’s not like we had to reconcile because I think by God’s grace there was a grace that he gave me for her, but yet even in that grace, it can still be heartbreaking. We’re in a great place.

She had to sign a release from the publisher to be featured in the book. It’s nothing that she didn’t know was gonna be in there, but God has, like I said, not quite reconciled. I think that’s too dramatic of a word, but we’re in a great place. But it was still hard. 

Carrie: Talk to us because we have other people, like family members and friends who listen to the show as well, that are trying to help someone. What was it that you really wanted to hear, whether it was from your mom or somebody from the church?

Jon: I think for me, from my mom, even just more of the bare bones of, I’m so sorry you’re going through that. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Jon: Because of the theology and the way that we were raised, like her mind immediately went to, “Okay, I did something wrong, or this isn’t right, or What’s going on?”

There wasn’t a,” just sit with me in this for even just a minute and acknowledge that this is hard.” This has been that point of 20-something-odd years of struggle that I’m just now starting to unpack. I’m looking back at things when I was 8, 9, 10, and I remember that. My mind just starts getting blown in so many ways.

I think for me, I wasn’t even looking for her to be like, doing an about-face on mental health medication. I was really even just looking for a bare minimum of, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I can only imagine how tough this is. And so that is my encouragement to family members. You don’t have to promise the world.

You don’t have to say, okay, I’m gonna drop everything and just fly to you right now if you live across the country or something like that, but just acknowledging that this is tough and everything that they may be going through is a bare minimum and yet can go a long way. 

Carrie: Talk to us about what you’ve learned through suffering with anxiety and OCD, whether spiritually or other things.

Jon: I think for me, and this goes back and you had asked that earlier question like. How long did it kind of take me to realize adopting what I call a proper theology of suffering wasn’t an overnight thing? The origins of it were, that I grew up in Wisconsin, went to college in New York City, and I live in Dallas now.

I was back home in Wisconsin for Christmas break, the DJ came on the Christian radio station that my stepdad and I were listening to and said, “We’re big Packer fans up there, right? I’m a Packer’s owner. ” I got their fake Super Bowl rings behind me. And he said, “Reggie White who had this title, minister of defense,” He was a preacher. He was evangelizing in the locker room, like you talk about a godly man and the DJ comes on and says, “Hey, Reggie Whites died of sleep apnea.” And my stepdad looks at me and goes, “Hmm. Well, that’s sad because Reggie must have had an unrepentant sin,” and I was like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yes, the bible promises us 70 years. If that doesn’t happen, obviously there’s an issue there.” I just remember getting so upset in like this righteous anger. That really started my journey, because I know there’s something inside of me that says that’s not right, but I don’t know why. Over the next few years, I started really absorbing the book of Job and so it was the book of Job that really, I would say is the first domino in my understanding of a proper theology of suffering.

I’m sure your listeners know the story of Job. There’s a little detail in there that I think a lot of people missed, and it’s this. It’s that Job is called a righteous and upstanding man. There’s this conversation that opens the book of Job between the devil and God, and I think a lot of people and me too, right?

You kind of assume that “the devil goes to God and asks God if he can inflict all this stuff on Job. God says yes, just as long as you don’t kill him,” but that’s actually not the story. The devil and God are having this conversation and God brings up to the devil. Have you considered my servant Job? Wait, so God is the one that kind of, Hey, bad job. Sometimes God is the one that’s allowing these things to happen. Now, he didn’t cause it. The devil was still the causer if you will. Right? He was still inflicted, but God is the one that kind of allowed us. He could see that in the end. This was a story that needed to be told that needed to happen why?

Well, you get to two reasons for the job’s good and God’s glory, and that starts to form the basis of a proper theology of suffering, knowing and understanding that our afflictions are mental health situations are allowed to happen for our good and his glory. That’s the basis, right? And then we can just take off from there.

Carrie: Yes. One of the things you talked about was losing some family members pretty tragically, and the pain and the hurt that you went through for that. I really appreciated what you said about your mom saying, are you believing for healing for your stepfather? And I just want you to kind of talk through that response because I just feel like, oh, this is so powerful.

Jon: Yes and it was the middle of Covid and I was helping my church. We had gone completely online because of my digital media background and the consulting work that I do. I was in charge of filming capturing and editing and posting our services. There we were doing the Easter service and we’re getting ready to film it and my pastor’s giving the message and I get a call from my sister.

My mom is not in great health. Whenever my sister calls, even if I’m just like, Hey, is everything okay? Yeah, great. Okay. I’ll call you back. I answer, I answered it and she goes, “Hey, have you heard?” And I said, “Heard what?” She said Mike, who is our stepdad, collapsed at home. He came home from work early. He wasn’t feeling well. He started vomiting, and he collapsed. He’s in the hospital, but he’s unconscious and it doesn’t look good. Long story short, my stepdad, who, one of the healthiest people I know, the guy who said we’re guaranteed 70 years died on Easter Sunday within two days, and he had a massive stroke in his brainstem and went brain dead and that was it.

Ironically died before he was 70 years old. Again, one of like, you talk about prayer warrior, you talk about the guy who every time the church doors were open, my stepdad was there. TYhe most generous person too, sometimes my mom chagrin, my mom’s like, “Hey, we need that bread. I could use that bread.” He’s like, “Ah, they need it more.” When I’m sitting there, this was right before he died, my mom pulls me aside or we’re sitting at my brother’s kitchen table, I guess, and she said, they called me Johnny growing up. That’s my name. Everyone back home in Wisconsin calls me Johnny. She looked at me and she said, “Johnny, are you believing for a healing?”

It was one of those kind of out of body experiences that came out of my mouth? I knew it was me talking. I’m not saying I was taken over by the Holy Spirit, right? Or something like that. But it was definitely the holy spirit in a sense, giving me that. And I said, mom, listen, I do believe that Mike is gonna get a healing.

What I don’t know is if it’s gonna be on this side of glory or on the next, and if he doesn’t get it here, I know that the Lord is still faithful to give him a healing because he will wake up next to Jesus tomorrow, being able to talk and dance and all the stuff that he’s wanted his whole life. It was just kind of this seminal moment between my mom and I.

I’m not saying like right then and there, she’s like, oh my gosh, that’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard because she lost her husband the next day. But I think we lose sight of that sometimes. We say I’m gonna claim my healing. I’m gonna be healed now here when I want. And the Lord is saying, maybe I wake up every morning, I say, Lord, like please take this from me, and he hasn’t. So then what? That’s where the proper theology of suffering comes in. What I would say is, and I’ll expand on what I was saying earlier, is you look at Job, but then you look at Paul and you look and you see the story where Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh, and I think there’s some important words there where he says, to keep me from being conceited, if you just stop there.

That’s all you need to hear. I mean, it gets better, but to keep me from being conceited, I was given this thorn in my flesh. That is the summary of a proper theology of suffering because he was given a struggle that made him better and glorified God. I mean, I love Paul. You should be on the Mount Rushmore of faith.

Honestly, you know what I think, and if you think about Paul’s past, I think Paul had a proclivity to be a very prideful person, and that’s not me saying that I’m literally just using Paul’s words to keep me from being conceited. Here you have Paul. He says, to keep me from being conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh and goes on to talk about how it does glorify God.

I think what we have lost in the church is the idea that our suffering, while in an unfallen world, God wouldn’t need to use suffering for our good in his glory, but we do live in a fallen world. Now, when you look at Job and you look at Paul, it’s like the Lord is saying, listen, I love you and because I love you, there are times that I’m gonna allow you to go through things.

Sometimes maybe it’s a day, maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s a month, maybe it’s five years. Maybe it’s your entire life because I know that I need to keep you from being conceited because pride is much harder and is gonna lead to much worse things than if I allow you to go through this and you have to trust me.

Carrie: Wow, that’s good. Obviously, like really being able to lean and depend on the Lord every single day. When you have a condition like anxiety and OCD and you don’t know how that’s gonna impact you, sometimes people can get really worked up when they just wake up in the morning, like, what’s it gonna be like today? And to be able to bring that to God and say, regardless of what happens today, I know that you’re with me and I know that you love me and I know that you’re for me, and somehow you’re gonna work this situation in my life for good. 

Jon: Here’s the thing, like someone once told me, they’re like, I was kind of talking on this and they pushed back, which I was grateful for, and they said, is that the same message to someone who loses a loved one tragically, or whose husband cheats on them and lives the family. And the way I respond to that is a, I’m not like out here rooting for you to go through bad things. I’m not out here saying that. I hope that you go through some of the worst crud in your life. I’m giving you a framework to make sense of it. Then I tell people, listen, I can’t make sense of my mental health struggle without that. I can’t make sense of it without the idea. And this is, I borrowed this from a pastor out in Phoenix and I name him in the book, can’t remember it off the top of my head, but where I get to a place where I don’t judge God by my circumstances, but I judge my circumstances by who I know God to be.

I know he’s good. I know he will work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Now, I grew up in a tradition that claimed that if you like, needed a good parking spot at Walmart, but I think it goes much deeper and it’s much more comforting than that.

Listen, the only way that any of this makes sense is by adopting that framework, that proper theology of suffering and knowing, okay, God, kind of those baseline problems that you do in like Philosophy 1 0 1 in college. If I know A to be true, and I know B to be true, I know A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C.

Carrie: Yes.

Jon: I know God is not bad. He can’t be bad. I need to start there and then work backwards in my circumstances, right? Okay, well then I know that God is gonna use this for my good and his glory. 

Carrie: That’s so good. I was thinking about my mom. She died of pancreatic cancer last year and it was tough because, kind of similar to your stepfather, she had been very healthy and was walking and she wasn’t overweight and she was eating right and doing the things. That was a big struggle for me because I said, God, I prayed and I said, God, I don’t understand. She literally served God her whole life was in church and involved in everything. I said, why did she have to go out like this? Because if you’ve ever watched somebody die from pancreatic cancer, it’s a very painful and very awful way to go, probably any cancer, but that one kind of hits you hard and hits you fast and really what God showed me through prayer in that situation was how much opportunity my mom got to witness to people in the hospital. Because if you’re on your deathbed and you know the Lord, you know what is holding you back at that point.

For her to give little informational tracks to people and different things and just say, Hey, this is what I believe, and I hope that you read it and take some time to consider it and think about it. That was the good that came out of that ending and probably a lot of things that I may never know on how God was glorified because I didn’t see everything behind the scenes and how he was working in other people’s lives who interacted with my mother.

Jon: I talk about my stepdad, but I also talk about my sister and it was a very similar situation. My sister was, did lead a very troubled life. She was an addict. She was in and out a rehab. She was in and out of jail. And she was going to pick up a part for her car. She had a retired mechanic who was helping her out.

They were in a van driving down the interstate and one minute they’re driving down the interstate. The next, someone from the other side of traffic going the opposite direction, crosses the median, hits some head on, and all three of them are killed instantly include my sister, who then left three kids.

Without a mom and looking at that funeral, I grew up in a smaller town in Wisconsin. We had to rent a local junior college auditorium for that funeral because so many people attended. And what that meant is so many people heard the gospel of Jesus and more people than I know that my sister ever told in her life because she was struggling.

In her death, more people were witnesses to Jesus than ever in her life. And again, we live in a fallen world. I’m not saying “Oh, that’s great.”Well, no. I mean, her kids now don’t have a mom and I don’t have a sister. yet the Lord takes what’s meant for evil, and I think that’s a good distinction too.

Well, I think the Lord allows things, right? There is also a prowling lion out there trying to seek, kill, and destroy. We can’t discount the fact that the devil is at work as well. There is spiritual warfare. There are things that he is putting into place, and yes, I guess we know that God could stop anything at an instant.

He doesn’t. Again, that’s one of those things that we know about God. We know that he’s good. We know that he can, but he doesn’t stop every tragic thing. What are those ultimate conclusions that leads us to, and so for me, it’s like seeing how many people were introduced to Jesus at her funeral was just mind-blowing.

With my stepdad and my sister, let me put it this way, those deaths broke certain people in my family. I’m not gonna say who but there’s a lot of hardship that has come from those deaths. And in God’s grace, Well, I’m still navigating there. I’m still in therapy for staff. My sister still comes up and my stepdad still comes up in therapy, but I was able to navigate those deaths in a way that a lot of other people in my family were not.

I don’t say that to bolster myself, but I say it to bolster God because the only way was because I had gone through this suffering. I had gone through these trials of like being undiagnosed in my mental health and then getting diagnosed and then doing that work of Paul and all those things that then when those tragedies struck, I was in a much better position to acknowledge that I serve a God who allows things for my good in his glory. And my wife sometimes jokes. She’s like, why aren’t you more messed up? You know? Like, only by Jesus.

Carrie: Absolutely true. 

Jon: I’ve actually now gotten to a place where I thank God for my mental health struggle, and it’s in the sense of like, it’s in looking at what Paul said, That’s really got me there is that like if I didn’t have my mental health struggle, who knows?

Maybe I’m the most maniacal, prideful, arrogant, conceited, mean nasty. I don’t know, fill in the blank with whatever adjective you want. But because Paul can say to keep me from being conceited, I can say, Lord, obviously I’m still struggling with this because I need to still be struggling with this. Maybe there is humility and grace that I can give to other people not just in mental health situations. but to my wife and my kids in certain situations because I’ve struggled and know what it means to be in the depths of despair. And by the way, it still happens, right? I just got out of a depressive episode that happened over the fall that I can say, you know what, God, thank you. I thank you for my mental health struggle because obviously, I’m a pretty rotten person without it even more rotten than I already.

Carrie: Yeah, and just thinking about it, you’ve had a lot of success in your life. You’re the president of a company, you’ve written a bunch of articles, you’ve had your share of accolades on your book, finding rest and other things that you’ve written, and I could see that. I could see how you could kind of lean on that and say like, “Okay, well look at me. I’m successful.”

Jon: If you’re watching the video version, you can see I always have a CS Lewis book behind me. He has done so much great writing on pain and suffering. He has that really popular quote, and it’s popular for a reason that basically like God shouts to us in our pain. It says, megaphone to rouse a dead world.

Guess what? You and I are really hard of hearing how many times, I mean, I’ve fallen into this trap a lot when things are going well, in my spiritual life. It’s way more easy for me to set that on cruise control. When things are going well, I am nailing it since. This is awesome. My kids are behaving. I haven’t had a depressive episode or an anxious thought or an OCD thought cycle and whatever, and that’s when I really easy for me to put my spiritual life on pause, I’m good, but it’s in those times where man, I just can’t get out of bed. Then I’m like Lord, I need you. My prayers become shorter during those times, but man, they become a lot more desperate and I think that’s when we crawl up into his lap and find that comfort. At least I have.

Carrie: One thing I like to ask all of our guests who are sharing a personal story towards the end is, what would you tell your younger self who is going through anxiety or OCD?

Jon: That’s a good question. I’ve thought about this. There’s a lot of things. First of all, like I think back to my first intrusive thought episode, and it’s even more scary for a reason. I’ll get to you in a second, but. I was going to get the mail. We lived in the country in Wisconsin and so we had this long winding gravel driveway past a couple of old barns and it’s an old farmhouse.

I remember we would always basically draw straws for who had to get the mail at the end of the driveway. And because in Wisconsin, like nine months out of the year, it’s like 30 degrees. I remember my sister and I drew straws and I got the short draw. And so I get out there and I go to get the mail and I look through it.

Never thought about this before, but it’s like there’s nothing for me in here. Not even a piece of junk mail. And I just could not get that out of my head. I tell you that because that’s set in motion. Way more of that kind of intrusive thoughts and I think, I thought I was. When I said I knew there was something different about me growing up, I think a lot of times that ended up being I’m just like, shame. Not shame in the sense of, I knew what it was, but just frustration. Maybe that’s the better word. And so I think I would tell myself, it’s okay, you can’t control this. And in the end, my anxiety in OCD I talk about this as in the book, is like there’s a physical component. My brain is broken, but there’s also a spiritual component. I’m willing to recognize that now the church has historically treated it only as a spiritual issue. While the world has historically treated it only as a physical issue. it’s both and, but in the end, it’s a pride issue. It says I can control everything, not just I want to, but I can. So then in my OCD all the stuff that I do, the rituals and all that, it’s a fight for control.

I think I would tell myself, listen, this is not something you can just control. I think I would tell myself, you’re not alone. I remember growing up in the household that I did that they said like, my mom would say live like all the people at school wanna, would want what you have. And I remember thinking this was in my high school, ninth grade, freshman year hallway.

I remember walking and doing classes and like someone had said something in class and looking back, it was pretty innocuous. I just was ruined. And I remember thinking, walking down that hallway, why would anyone want what I have now? Even at the time, I didn’t know I had it. I just like, whatever this is, no one would want that.

What I’ve gotten to the point of is I’d say, you’re not alone. You can’t control this, but then I would also say, you are broken. One of my favorite messages of all time from a pastor here, we went to the church for a long time, Matt Chandler, who said, I was talking to someone the other day and they said Christianity is a crutch for the week.

I told them, absolutely, it’s a crutch for the week. You just don’t realize that your legs are broken. My legs are broken. Your legs are broken. It would be to rest in the fact that, yeah, you are broken. And to the conversation I had with my mom, we’re not gonna be fully healed of anything until the next side of glory. Our bodies are gonna continue breaking down. Right? 

Carrie: Right.

Jon: You can probably hear my voice right now. Allergies here in Dallas area and it’s just like we’re gonna suffer from that kind of crap. Tell kingdom come so long answer. You got me on a good day when I’m just nice and long winded. Those are what I would tell my younger self.

Carrie: I think that’s great and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. Everyone, find the book Finding Rest and there’s also a workbook companion to go with the regular book, however, you say that, but the first book and the workbook both called Finding Rest. Just so we’ll put the links in there to Jon’s information for you if you are looking for him.

Jon: Well, thank you so much for having me. The book has been such a great conversation starter. I just got back actually from a luncheon that we were talking about offline, the opportunities to talk to people who even aren’t Christians, because I think so many people are struggling with this, right? And if you can bring up that proper theology of suffering that we were talking about, here’s the beauty of that.

It doesn’t just apply to mental health. It does apply to the person who’s lost their job. And again, I’m not saying you like, if someone comes to you tomorrow and says, I lost my job, or my husband or my wife just walked out on me, I’m not saying that you go, okay, I wanna show you in job one, one this really cool thing. No, sit with them for a little bit, but as long as you have that understanding, pray for the right time to bring that up and to engage people in those type of conversations. But Yeah, it can apply to mental health. It can apply to so many other things, and that’s the beauty of the gospel. It’s not just a one-trick pony. It answers everything.

Carrie: Yes. Very good. 

I love podcasting because I have gotten the opportunity to interview some wonderful people with amazing stories. So thank you for tuning in and listening today. We will be back with you in a couple of weeks for a compilation of some of our stories of hope episodes. We’re going to do a couple episodes on that as we get prepared and ready for our 100th episode that will be coming out, which is going to give you a hundred tips on managing anxiety,

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 be comforted by God’s great love for you.