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95. Healthier Theology of Healing with Pastor Mark Smith

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 95. Healthier Theology of Healing with Pastor Mark Smith

We are privileged to have Pastor Mark Smith from Refuge Church on the show today to discuss the topic of healthier theology surrounding healing and suffering.

Episode Highlights:

  • Why God doesn’t heal everyone who prays for healing
  • The struggle between relying on God’s control and the reality of coping with pain and suffering in this world.
  • Pastor Mark’s personal experiences about how he has learned to depend on God through difficult times.
  • The need to address mental health and counseling in the church and finding a healthy understanding of emotional health and spiritual health.
  • How Christianity is unique in its approach to suffering and death.

Scripture verses mentioned in this episode:

Mark 9:14-29 – Jesus Heals a Boy Possessed by an Impure Spirit
Luke 9:46-47
John 14:2-3
1 Timothy 6:5
John 1:14
Isaiah 53:5

Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 95. Today, I’m joined by Pastor Mark Smith from Refuge Church in Nashville, a bilingual congregation where Pastor Mark preaches in both English and Spanish. Steve, my husband, actually attended this church before we got married, and while we now go to a church closer to home, we loved visiting Refuge, especially during COVID when my regular church was closed.

In this episode, we revisit an important topic: healing. It’s something that keeps coming up in my work as a therapist and on the podcast. Many people ask, “If God can heal, why am I still struggling with anxiety or OCD?” We dive into the deeper meaning of prayer and how it’s not just about getting what we want, but connecting with God. Pastor Mark shares insights on the spiritual tension between trusting God’s sovereignty and grappling with pain. Together, we explore how God’s plans often unfold behind the scenes, even when we can’t immediately see the results.

If you’ve ever wondered why healing doesn’t always come in the way or timing we expect, this conversation is for you. Don’t miss the rich discussion on how suffering can deepen our relationship with God and reveal His glory in unexpected ways. Tune in now!

Explore Related Episode:

2. Unanswered Prayers for Healing with Pastor Troy Powell

Transcript

Welcome to Christian and OCD episode 95. Today on the show I have with me Pastor Mark Smith with Refuge Church in Nashville, which is a bilingual congregation and Pastor Mark preaches in English and Spanish, which is pretty cool. This was a church that Steve was going to prior to us getting together and getting married. Since you guys are so far away from us, not too far, but you’re far enough that it’s hard to get there. We made the decision to go closer to home, but enjoyed coming quite a bit during Covid, while the church I was attending was shut down because they were meeting in a school. So it was a joy to be with you guys during that time.

We, on the podcast, had a very early episode on Unanswered Prayers for Healing. One of the reasons I wanted to do that episode was because so many people were coming to me and saying, I’m praying and my anxiety’s not going away. I don’t understand why God isn’t healing me. But that’s a great interview if people wanna go back and listen to it.

We talk about the value of prayer more than just kind of getting what we want. It’s about our connection with God and communicating with him. God’s always working behind the scenes and a lot of times we don’t know what he’s doing or how he’s using these situations in our lives. And I wanna bring up this topic of healing back around.

I don’t know Pastor Mark if pastors do this, but as a podcaster and as a therapist, I’ll see themes of things that keep coming back around, coming back around. And I’m like, maybe we needed to talk about that a little bit more because it seems to be something like God’s bringing up over and over again. Do you find that’s true?

Pastor Mark: Oh, without a doubt. There are moments when, for example, for years I felt like I was butting up my head against the same. Issues over and over again, and I felt like that was part of the Lord telling me that, we needed to address it as a faith family whether it was mental health issues or marriage issues, relationship stuff, or whatever. There are themes that come up and with every new kind of season in life, things change and I feel like it’s really important for us to be sensitive enough to it to follow the Holy Spirit and say we need to deal with this.

Carrie: One of the themes that keep coming back around for me, whether it’s in counseling or people that contact our podcast, is, okay, we understand from reading the Bible that there were people that they just, they came up and they touched Jesus and they were healed, or Jesus even spoke a word and said, okay, go home. This person is healed. They’re no longer sick. From our self-centred view, I’m gonna call it that. We look at it and we say, okay, God, you could heal me. You could take this away. Why am I still suffering with this? And so if God’s all-powerful and he can just heal me at any point.

Why doesn’t that happen then? People fill in answers. May or other people sometimes will fill in answers for them if they’re talking to people. Maybe you’re not praying enough, maybe you’re not praying the right way. Maybe you’re not studying your Bible enough. What are your thoughts on this?

Pastor Mark: I was telling a few people we were doing this podcast and my only fear in doing this is this is a big issue. And it’s not an easy one. I will tell you even among what people would consider maybe the healthiest of concepts of theology or spirituality, there is a healthy tension between trusting in the sovereignty and the grace and the beauty of God and dealing with pain and suffering on this side of eternity.

How do we deal with that? You’re absolutely right. It’s the most natural thing to look in the scriptures and say, man, every time Jesus turns around, he’s healing someone. He’s helping someone. Why doesn’t he do that for me, I think there are a few things, as I was kind of walking through some of this, there were a few things that I thought were helpful.

One, I asked the Lord, and I said, God, there’s so many scriptures of healing in the scriptures. Is there one place that I can go that I think would be helpful to your listeners today? One of the things that I found was the story of the healing of, and if you remember the boy with the unclean spirit in Mark nine.

Now, I will say this also, there’s very little distinction in the scriptures, especially New Testament between physical illness and spiritual sickness. Sometimes Jesus says, get up. You’re mad and walk. Sometimes he says, your sins are forgiven, and the Bible doesn’t give us a clear picture. Sometimes it’s both.

Sometimes they may be dealing with mental illness or demonic depression, or a combination of the two. I think it’s really important to understand that this is not a simplistic issue at all. That story in Mark chapter two. Jesus and the disciples are coming out of this mountain of transfiguration where it’s been an amazing scene and they want to build these huts and tents and like camp out there. God says, no, I’m no time out. You’re just supposed to experience this and see it for what it is. And then they come back to reality. And the reality is that the rest of the disciples, crowds, and religious leaders are all in this big major debate over the disciples not being able to heal this boy. Now there are some confusing things I would love to help explain because there’s a lot of, I think, misunderstanding about that scripture. Once again, the argument is that disciples can’t heal him and Jesus calls He, it’s kind of a blanket statement to everybody, but he calls them a faithless generation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re faithless because they cannot heal the boy.

Faithlessness comes because they want to use Jesus as a means to an end. You know what I’m saying? It’s about, it’s kind of a results faith. Mm-hmm. They must not have faith because they don’t see any results. And I know we’ve seen that with people suffering through anxiety or OCD, that they’re like, I’m praying this, but I’m not getting the results that I’m looking for. So there’s either something wrong with the Lord or something wrong with me. Right.

Carrie: So many Christians that have memorized scriptures on God’s not giving me a spirit of fear, pray, and peace of God will pass all understanding. I mean, they know these verses inside and out, taking every thought captive, and they are praying and they are seeking the Lord and they’re still in this wrestling place of suffering.

I think. We miss the big picture though, like what you were saying about what Jesus was here to do and what he’s here to accomplish, and it’s not about me and my individualistic theology. I find it interesting, and I’ve shared this with clients as well in the past, in the beginning of Mark chapter one, verses 29 through 39.

Jesus is healing many people. Essentially he sneaks away to go be with God and the disciples are like, “Wait a minute. Everybody at the house is looking for you. What are you doing?” He doesn’t go back to the house and heal the people. He just moves on. I thought that just kind of shows Jesus’ mission, not that he was not compassionate towards these people because obviously, he healed many people, but he didn’t show up on earth to be a healer. That’s something that I think we’ve gotten our theology of healing a little bit confused on, especially in certain circles.

Pastor Mark: Without a doubt. It’s interesting that Jesus, often we see, especially in the gospels, that Jesus shows his power and his strength or his position as the Messiah. But there’s a testimony part of that.

In fact, in Mark chapter nine-story, the parents finally come up to them and it’s clear that they’re not even believers. They don’t even, they, they said, Lord, help us in our unbelief. And Jesus waits to heal the boy. Because he wants to make it a clear testimony to them, so it’s, and though he does have compassion for the kid, he wants to help him, but Jesus is seeing a bigger picture that sometimes when I’m in the middle of my problems or my suffering or my issues, it’s hard for me to see the bigger picture that God may have that I can’t see.

Carrie: Yes, and I was thinking too, as you were talking about that, how many different types of healing stories there are in the New Testament, like you said, some of them are clearly more of a physical nature. Get up your mat and walk and other ones. Say like the man that was lowered down into the house that actually says, like his friend’s faith that brought him there were responsible. Another one I was thinking about was the man who was born blind. Mm-hmm. And they asked who sinned that this man was born blind. Really it was for the glory of God to be revealed. In that situation, and oftentimes we don’t realize how God’s glory can be revealed even in the myths of our own suffering experiences.

Pastor Mark: One of the things I think through my own struggles and issues that I’ve had, one of the things that I’ve learned over the years is how my personal suffering, maybe Jesus hasn’t taken away yet, or maybe I’m still walking through that Dark Valley. It causes us to kind of pay attention to our soul care, to our art. And obviously, the go-to for the disciples in that story you were talking about was blame, right? Yeah. Assigning blame. And we see that in mental health issues all the time. Why is this happening? Is it because of my parents? Is it because something’s wrong with me? Do I not have enough faith? We play all these blame games when if we can get to a healthy point, I believe when we can pay attention to our heart. And our soul, and listen, truly listen, and I’m not trying to find the silver lining and everything. That’s not what this is about. But I do think it’s an opportunity to enlarge our soul through paying attention during that suffering or that reprocess.

Carrie: It’s interesting just working with people, finding what I call the gift of anxiety, the gift of OCD or even trauma. And people will tell me, I really have become a more compassionate person because of these experiences that I’ve had, or it’s caused me to seek God even more than I would have before. It caused me to get to a place of salvation because of these things that I’ve been through and the depths of the disparity.

I know that there’s many things that we’re not gonna understand, probably this side of heaven. And I think if our lives were easy and perfect on earth, there might be that lack of longing for heaven. What are your thoughts on that? Like if we became a Christian and God said, okay, I’m gonna make your life easier.

You’re not gonna have the same types of physical pain and suffering that other people have. I wonder if we would have as much longing for heaven

Pastor Mark: or a depth of compassion on this side of it either. But yeah, I agree. We are promised is that God is preparing us a place. I think that that as much of a physical space, I think a, an emotional space where there is true peace and true freedom, but the longing to get there and the journey that we have to get there along the way.

You know, you mentioned someone that may have come out of anxiety or is still dealing with it, but they’re able to relate to somebody else that’s walking through the same thing and there’s a brotherhood and a sisterhood. That takes place with that. I was talking to a group last week. They were actually talking about how she was a breast cancer survivor, and when she was going through that process, she would never have wished that upon herself or, and not even thanking God necessarily for that.

On the other side of that, the sisterhood that she has with other cancer survivors, she wouldn’t give up on anything. We think about the suffering that you and I walk through that other friends and family walk through, and the longing and the desperate desire to be at full peace with the Lord forever in eternity. That’s an amazing thing to look forward to.

Carrie: Yes. I know there are definitely been times when I can look back for things I’ve prayed for and I’m like, oh, I’m so glad God didn’t answer that. Like, yeah, that was not what I needed. Yeah, it was what I wanted maybe and what I thought I needed, but it wasn’t actually. What’s best for me I think about my daughter a lot because she’s one. I mean, if you let her do her own devices though, like she need cat food and all kinds of things and put stuff in her mouth. She wants to mess with the carbon monoxide alarm. There are all these things and she doesn’t understand like, no, like you can’t stick your finger in the socket. Like that’s not appropriate.

My job is to keep you alive. I think sometimes we’re that childlike in our experience. We think we know more. Like she thinks like, oh, I could just grab this. I can do that, it’s fine, but there are so many things that we have no idea what is coming around the bend in our own personal lives or professional lives.

Sometimes God doesn’t give us things because we’re not ready for them or because he is wanting to do something greater down the road, we’re not at the end of the story till we get to heaven. And so that piece is encouraging to me that God’s always continuing to work in our lives regardless of what suffering we’re experiencing.

This is more of a personal question, but how have you seen some of this play out in your own life, just kind of as you’ve wrestled through struggles of why has God allowed me to go through certain things?

Pastor Mark: Well, for example, some know that we served on the mission field in Guatemala for, lived there for nearly five years. We lost two pregnancies while we were there and there was a lot of spiritual baggage for us. I really question, Lord, we’re here because we’re serving you. We’re here because we’ve sacrificed. We sold our cars, and our home. We moved over here and why is this happening to us? We’re trying.

I’ve walked through trying to blame and trying to figure out, but I will tell you the depth of pain does not match the depth of grace and love that I’ve also experienced through some of that difficulty. Uh, and I know, uh, during, right at the height of Covid, uh, about two years ago between what was going on with the isolation and just in church life and homes and we were all quarantining and, and that kind of stuff. Between that and some isolation that I had with some family members, I developed panic attacks about two years ago. And ended up having to go into counseling for about six months or so to get to a healthy point again in my life. I really struggled with the Lord on why I was having to go through that.

Why did I feel like I was having a heart attack every time I went out on my bike and I went up this certain hill? All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was gonna pass out. I went through all the medical studies and everything and realized it was all related to my emotional health and the lack of control that I felt.

When I couldn’t change the situation, there was nothing I could do. Absolutely nothing that I could do. Now, I won’t say I’m fully recovered. I still deal with anxiety and there are still moments where I’ve been in tune to my heart enough to know, okay, I’m binging on this TV program because I’m avoiding something that I need to deal with or I’m falling into, or I’m eating too much because of this, or whatever.

This issue of control, God has really opened up a new window of spiritual understanding and trust in him that the lie was that I was controlled in control to begin with. Yes, true. Those are a few things that I’ve learned just through my own personal experience.

Carrie: I think for me, one of the things, and I talked about this on my first episode, really, is I had this kind of formulaic version of God and it’s like a vending machine.

If I put in what I’m supposed to, then I’m gonna get out. You’re gonna bless me like things are gonna go well. And then tragedy strikes and you realize, okay, well this is completely outta my control and it doesn’t matter that I’m going to church every Sunday, and it doesn’t matter that I’m trying to serve the Lord and do these different things.

Sometimes things happen in our lives and tragedy strikes and painful things happen, but it took me on a journey really of who God is. That was really the question. It’s like, okay, who are you? Are you really good and are you really kind? And how are you gonna show up in this season? He did and definitely changed so much of my view of God.

I think everything that I go through now has led me to a deeper place of trust, what we’ve been going through with Steve’s SCA, and I’ve talked about that on the podcast. I just remember like when we first got that diagnosis, just every day like. I didn’t understand what was going on. We didn’t have a clear picture of what the future was gonna look like, and I just got up every morning.

I said, okay, God, I trust you. I trust you. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I trust you, and God’s just been faithful and he’s been really good to us through this process. He definitely blessed us in many ways that were unexpected. I think we have this, like you were talking about before, this results in mentality about our spirituality.

Sometimes if I put in this effort, it should be successful, or if I do this, then God should do that. And I’ve been reading the book of Isaiah, which is super challenging. I’m just gonna say that it’s super challenging because basically, God told Isaiah to go preach to some people that weren’t gonna listen to him till the city fell down.

That’s a very condensed version, and I’m like, oh, that’s like a very far cry from American Christianity, right? I’m just kind of like cut to the core of, okay, God. So there may be some assignments that I have that don’t actually work out into this perfect, amazing success, and that’s okay. You’re still gonna be with me through that process, and I still need to follow through and do what God’s asked me to do.

Pastor Mark: I love what you said about that through some difficult or challenging times, it caused you to think about who God is and help maybe redefining that or understanding a little bit more about that. I think that’s a healthier approach than to say, what’s wrong with my faith right now? Or that results base of maybe I’m not praying enough and, certainly there are spiritual disciplines that we should all have, that ought to connect us to God in different ways. And sometimes our anxiety and our O C D or whatever can reveal some pax in the armor that maybe we need to work harder at meditation or work harder at Bible memorization or going on a spiritual retreat. I think anything that reveals more soul care for us personally is a healthy approach.

Often I find God expanding my understanding just of who he is and what his character is about. If I can share it real quick, I was just reading this the other day, but John Piper, who’s one of my favorite preachers, had an analogy between approaching God as a running spring or as a watering trough. He said, “You know, if you approach the Lord as this endless flowing stream, that’s always replenishing. That’s always there. That’s an amazing thing”. But he said, “Oftentimes we approach God like a watering trough, that we have to refill it. I have to work towards that. I have to perform, and I’m so grateful to the Lord for that.

He will not be confined by our limited understanding of that. Oftentimes I feel like we always want to put God in this box. And if we think of God just in those terms, then it’s always about me. It’s always about do I have enough faith. Am I performing enough? This kind of stuff, but if God is truly an eternal source of living water for us.

The only thing that we can do to honor that is to bow down and drink from it. We often think about offering God our best, but sometimes we need to offer God our thirst, our weakness. He says, when in your weakness I will be made strong. He says, “The prosperity gospel cannot explain what we just talked about.” That theology cannot deal with me coming to the Lord in my weakness finding strength in him and finding understanding that element of his character.

Carrie: That’s so good. True. This episode is not coming out anywhere near Christmas, but I feel like Christmas is so important to this conversation.

Just a sense of God becoming human. Jesus coming down to the earth and being with us in the midst of our struggles, that when God doesn’t take your suffering away, that he is always there with you in the midst of that. What are your thoughts on that?

Pastor Mark: Once again throwing me the softballs, but one of the beautiful things about Christianity and our faith, it’s that scripture from John chapter one where it says the word was made flesh and literally made his dwelling among us.

That means several things. We can talk about his divinity and his humanity and so many other things we can talk about that he is our high priest that understands and empathizes with everything that we’re going through. But I would say one of the most beautiful gifts of our faith is the gift of God’s presence in our lives where things may not be resolved, I may still be battling physical, emotional, spiritual issues.

I may be walking through a dark valley. But I sense the presence, the incarnation presence of Jesus walking with me, suffering with me through this. And I know there’s a promise of eternity. I know I’m going to get there at some point, but I know I’m not alone. And that is an amazing gift that we celebrated Christmas, that I think you’re right, sometimes gets overlooked.

Carrie: In the sense of Jesus being the suffering servant. Yeah. And if we are seeking to become more like Christ, that there are elements where we’re going to have to share in suffering within.

Pastor Mark: That’s another thing that’s very unique to Christianity. No other religion in the world talks about it. It’s our nature turn away from suffering and death. That’s a natural response. That’s sometimes what causes our emotional life to truly struggle bcause we want to avoid everything. We want to pack it away and we don’t want to deal with it, but Christianity is truly the unique faith. It says that life is found through death and that liberation and freedom are found through the crucifixion. You mentioned Isaiah 53, the idea that he was wounded and afflicted so that we could find life and peace. That’s an amazing promise that we have that is absolutely unique to our faith.

Carrie: I know we’ve gone deep on this conversation and thrown in a few personal nuggets too. I think it’s really good though, because this is how people who are struggling with anxiety and OCD think, and these are some of the questions that are rolling around in their heads.

I think many people who are in Christian circles that are struggling with anxiety and O C D are struggling from non-biblical theology, from theology that’s coming from man or one or two scriptures pulled out of context instead of looking at the totality of scripture and who God is.

Pastor Mark: Well, I would say a few things about that. I think in general the church has had a negative view of mental health and counseling and it’s kind, it’s, it’s still, it’s crazy to think in our day and time that it’s still a taboo subject for some. And then obviously our church, we have multiple different ethnicities represented in each country. Each ethnicity involved has a different idea of mental health issues and those kind of things.

There’s a lot of baggage that we find here that we have to kind of unwrap to help people understand how to breathe. And it’s okay to say, I’m going to counseling right now, or I’m having panic attacks, or I’ve got issues of anxiety that I need help with. And that we can share that burden together and we can pray for one another.

I would encourage those who are out there if, obviously you need to pray about it, but find a church that has a healthy understanding of emotional health as well as spiritual health. Uh, look for that Lord has taken me on, a journey that I’ve made, a personal commitment to the award that I’m gonna at least.

There’s at least one series that we do every year that is specifically devoted to either anxiety or some other mental health issue. We don’t prop that up like it’s mental health month or anything like that. But we just wanna be conscious and aware of that. Some of the statistics that I read say that one in five adults in America is dealing with some kind of mental illness, and that means one in five in our churches dealing with that too.

What I often do is, I’m trying to teach or preach here in our ministry, is to always look at through a filter of, okay, God, I understand what this says spiritually and biblical, but even emotionally, God, where does this hit me and my heart? Where does it hit our people and how can we address that emotionally as well. Now, I think it’s a healthier approach because there is, and you were afraid to say it, but I will say it, there’s a lot of bad theology out there, okay? It’s detrimental to people who are just trying to figure this stuff out.

Carrie: It’s so important to have these types of conversations. Wrapping up on at the end of the podcast, I like our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Pastor Mark: I already shared some things about my battle with panic attacks a couple years ago and how God has helped free me from a lot of that. But I will say that I still deal with anxiety. I still react in ways that I know is not healthy. Or I will hear something and immediately I’ll go negative or I’ll come up with five different worst-case scenarios that aren’t even warranted.

My hope comes from being a part of a family of faith, and I’m so grateful, not because I’m the pastor of our church, but. I’m just grateful that I’m a part of a faith community, that I don’t have to perform, that I don’t have to be perfect, that I can have a bad day, and others can too, and we can walk in faith with one another, even with our baggage, even with our issues.

I’m just grateful that I don’t have to walk in this thing alone. And not only is Jesus walking with me, but I’ve got other believers that are walking with me, brothers in Christ, people that may not seem significant to the rest of the world. But man, they’re so important to my heart. They’re so important to our faith, and I’m so grateful for that.

Carrie: I think it helps a lot of people reduce stigma just to hear a pastor say, there are times where I struggle with anxiety or the worst-case scenario, and I’ve had a panic attack before, and I know it feels like you’re gonna die and counseling is okay for you. I’ve just appreciated all those messages that you shared with our audience.

I know pastors are busy and sometimes it’s hard to get them on the podcast, so I appreciate you taking the time to spend with me today. My pleasure and I love you and your family and I wish you guys all the best.

I know I asked Pastor Mark a lot of tough questions, but I really appreciate his being willing to take a stab and answer them in a short format version, obviously.

We only have a short amount of time on the podcast to talk about these things, but it’s so important that we do, and I hope this episode challenges you to step back and ask the question, okay, God, who are you? And that you allow Scripture and the Holy Spirit to speak and answer that. I know I’ve shared this on the podcast before, but we get at least one inquiry a week.

It seems now, for a Christian counselor who works with OCD out of the state of Tennessee. Since I’m not able to work with those individuals due to licensure laws. If you have a counselor in your state who you’ve come to trust in has provided really great quality counseling, who is a Christian and can treat OCD, please contact us through the website contact form at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

You may be able to help someone else that you might never meet, but it would just be a great blessing to us if we could get this referral list off the ground.

Hope for anxiety and OD 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.

93. Incognito Christian Counselors with Ann Taylor McNiece, LMFT

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

Join Carrie as she dives into an interesting conversation with Ann Taylor McNiece, LMFT on Incognito Christian Counselors and the integration of faith into mental health counseling

Episode Highlights:

  • Why some counselors are hesitant to publicly identify as Christians.
  • How Christian counselors can provide evidence-based therapy while integrating faith and scripture.
  • Challenges of finding specialized treatment for conditions like OCD and navigating treatment outside of one’s faith.
  • Importance of asking questions and advocating for oneself in therapy.

Related links and Resources:

Ann Taylor McNiece, LMFT

More Episodes to Listen to:

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

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 93! I’m Carrie Bock, your host, and I’m so glad you’re here with us today.

Today’s episode features a special guest: Ann Taylor McNiece, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the host of the Soul Grit podcast. Ann and I dive deep into the topic of integrating faith with mental health counseling, something we’re both passionate about.

Ann shares her journey of blending theology and psychology, drawing from her own experiences with depression and her early aspirations to combine faith with counseling. We tackle the challenges some therapists face when incorporating their faith into their practice, including the constraints of legal and ethical guidelines.

We discuss why some counselors may be reluctant to publicly identify as Christian and the fear of potentially alienating clients. We also explore how combining Christian principles with evidence-based therapies can be incredibly beneficial for those struggling with OCD and other mental health issues.

For more insights from Ann, be sure to check out her podcast, Soul Grit, and visit her website at soulgritresources.com. There, you’ll find her free e-course on Cognitive Behavior Therapy with Scripture and other valuable resources.

Thank you for tuning in! I hope this episode inspires and supports you as you integrate your faith with your mental health journey.

Explore Related Episode:

33. What is it Like to be a Counselor? Steve Interviews Carrie

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faitn and OCD, Episode 93. I am your host, Carrie Bock, and I’m so glad that you are joining us today to listen to this show

Today on the show we have Ann Taylor McNiece, who is a licensed marriage and family therapist and podcast host of Soul Grit. I am happy to have her here to talk with us about the integration of faith and Counseling.

_____________

Carrie: Welcome to the show. I think that we share a similar passion in regards to integration of faith into mental health counseling, and we both went to seminary, different seminaries, but how did this become a passion of yours? 

Ann: I can actually remember the early years of college just kind of dreaming about this marriage of theology and psychology, and I was just starting to learn more about it. I’ve been a Christian my whole life, but I had just recently started to struggle with depression and had my first experience of counseling in my senior year of high school. And just from there, I started having this dream in my heart that more people need to be aware that these two things fit together. God created our minds and God created helpers that understand the mind and wanna help people and just reach their fullness of life to get away from things like anxiety, depression, and other common health problems that we see.

Carrie: This is so prevalent in the church. There’s so many people who are struggling with common mental health issues, anxiety, depression, even things in the church, people who are struggling with ADHD or autism. There’s so much that’s going on that a lot of times we don’t talk about it enough, and so I’m glad that we’re able to talk about it.

Our faith can be fully integrated. I like to say we can have all of Jesus and all of really good psychological teachings because everything points us back to God. 

Ann: If it’s something good and true and it works and it’s healthy, and that’s coming from God. Humans didn’t create that stuff. 

Carrie: Absolutely, and I think there’s so much more that obviously that God knows than we do about these things because he created our brain and our mind and knows all the intricacies of how everything works. Why do you think some counselors are hesitant to publicly say that they’re a Christian?

Ann: I think it depends if you really are a Christ follower because being a Christian can mean a lot of things. You’re in a different area of the country than I am in Southern California. It might mean something different than it means in the Bible Belt or the South, just to say you’re Christian.

It’s not a very good descriptor of what the person’s actually bringing to the table for one thing. And then the other part is that some therapists are unsure about what are the actual legal and ethical guidelines for bringing your faith into the counseling room. So some people might think, “Oh, I went to grad school. I learned how to be a counselor. I got my license. And I’m never supposed to talk about religion or spirituality or Jesus ever again in my professional context,” and I think sometimes we might get that even from public school kinds of mentalities or separation of church and state. The thing is, there’s nothing about State in my private practice of counseling.

I don’t really have those same guidelines, like a teacher or a politician might have to try to keep those things separate. But I think it comes from people not knowing what are the guidelines and how much can I share with all concerned that will it be ethical for me to share. Will this client feel like I’m proselytizing or trying to evangelize them instead of attending with empathy to their concerns that they’re bringing into the counseling room.

There’s another fear that counselors have just if I put out on my website that I’m a Christian counselor or if I have like a little Jesus cross or a fish or something on my business card to identify me as a counselor or maybe like a scripture reference or something like, Christians are going to know that I’m for them, but am I going to alienate all the other people? Then it comes from this mindset of if I don’t advertise or market myself to everybody. I’m not going to be able to fill my practice and then I’m gonna suffer a financial loss because I won’t have enough clients.

Carrie: I think that’s a huge one. Just in terms of how I was trained. Like if you were trained with really great faith integration, but then you’re also trained as a professional to see everyone regardless of what their needs are. You have to put aside what your belief system is in terms of working with the client from their belief system.

For a long time, I think I fell into what I’m titling this episode, the Incognito Christian counselor standpoint. I wasn’t open about my faith, and it’s actually this podcast that has helped me more than anything step into true authenticity of who I am in my marketing as a therapist, because I thought, well, I never really saw myself as a Christian counselor because sometimes when I think of that, I think of some person that’s opening up a Bible and is, Hey, let’s talk about this scripture and how it applies to your life and your situation.

There certainly are opportunities that I may bring certain things up or ask clients, are you familiar with this Bible story? Or that type of thing. Based off of what they’re saying. But it’s not as, I think formal, maybe as I viewed it.  When I came out with this podcast, I thought, this makes no sense. I have a very Christian name if you understand the Bible because my name is By The Well Counseling.  People who are familiar with the John 4 story are like, “Oh, well okay. She gets it. She has a Bible.” I did have that and then I would say a little something about that on my website. I might check that I was Christian on Psychology today, and I might have a verse at the bottom. But I didn’t really go into like, Hey, my faith is a big passion of mine and I really believe that we can integrate really well.

I think it’s definitely been a big shift in my practice over the last couple of years as to having more Christian clients or clients seek me out because I am a Christian, especially since having the podcast for the last two years. I do think that some people in the community, even other therapists, probably think, oh, well, we’re not going send certain clients to her if they’re not Christian. I have to say, that’s okay how they’re going to view me and I really can’t control that. I think we spend so much time trying to control how other people see us in all contexts, not just in a professional context. 

Ann: I think that the clients I want to see are the ones that are going to want to see me. It’s not so much like you said, bringing out your Bible and telling them what verses are going to apply to their situation, or let’s just sit down and pray about it. All of those things are good things to do.

Those kinds of interventions might find themselves more in a pastoral or biblical counseling setting or where licensed therapists, who, we have a state licensure that’s vetted us. We have done our 3000 hours, we’ve done all the things that we need to be clinical providers, we are going to bring all of that. But what’s gonna underlie all of this as our foundation is a shared value and a shared hope. When it comes down to, I’m doing cognitive behavioral therapy with somebody and they can’t get to that part where they need to create an alternative thought. I’m gonna say, okay, well if you can’t get to it, let’s ask God, what would God say about this? And we’ll find a scripture to that matches what they need to do. And it’s not because I am, well just read the Bible and that’s cover everything that you’re going through. That informs everything that I do as a professional counselor.

Carrie: Another reason I wanted to have this episode too is I think especially for our folks who are struggling with OCD, they have a hard time finding someone who has that training in OCD  evidence-based therapies and treatments, while also having the value systems of Christianity. Part of that is because a lot of the OC D treatment has to do with behaviorism, and that’s not that it’s directly in conflict with Christianity. I think it’s just a little bit different way of looking at the world and we see people as more than just higher evolved animals, is a way to say it, but which is a lot of behaviorism is based on those kind of ideas.

I’m curious, for you as a Christian, do you feel like you would ever see a counselor who wasn’t a Christian? Maybe if you had a certain diagnosis that you needed treating or as you were seeking out a certain type of therapy, and how would you navigate that if you would?

Ann: Well, I certainly want to leave room for. Some of us need really specialized treatment and some of us lived in parts of the country where it’s harder to find providers. Like I said, I’m in Southern California, probably an hour’s drive. I can find a specialist in whatever I wanna be specialized in. Right? But if you live in a different part of the country, especially if you’re seeking in-person therapy versus on a screen like we all did for the pandemic.

Sometimes you want a person that you can be present in the room with and you need them to have a specialization is going to help you break through something and that person may or may not be a believer. There are gonna be times when that is necessary, but for me personally, what I struggle with is depression.

That’s a general thing. Sometimes just figuring out next steps in life, or I might go to marriage counseling or something like those things that I’m dealing with, I’m going to want to have Christian counselor because I know there are people who have faith in God who have similar values and similar understanding worldview that have the training that I need to get through the things that I’m dealing with. I think you have to allow room for both when you can see a Christian counselor and when there’s something that just needs specialists, go ahead and do that, and you just make the best of it.

Carrie: It’s okay to ask questions. It’s okay to ask your therapist what their value system is. They may or may not want to answer that for you, just kind of depending on how they work, but it’s fully within your right to ask where someone is coming from or what type of treatment methods they use.

Know that you’re in an empowered place regardless of where you find yourself in treatment. I’m thinking that we may have a friends that listen to the show that have had to go to an in-patient treatment, or they’ve had to go to an IOP treatment, and it’s not something that’s covered by their insurance.

It’s probably not going to be a Christian-run facility most likely talking to the counselors about what your values are, these are things that are very important to me and I wanna make sure that we’re utilizing them in counseling in a healthy way, and I wanna make sure that you kind of understand where I’m coming from and what’s important to me. And ethically, whether your counselor is a Christian or not, they have to respect that. 

Ann: Exactly. What I really think that God is faithful in this area, that when you’re in a really bad place with your mental health condition, and you need to have some of these higher level of arrangement is made for you like he’s gonna be faithful.

Just be surprised that there’s going to be another patient there, or there’s going to be a nurse, or a therapist or a behavioral tech or something like that. You’re not going to know at first, but then you’re going to find out that person also loves God. And then God’s going to put those pieces together for you so that you can have an experience of getting the healing that you need with that kind of high level of specialty. He is also going be right there saying, “I see you. I know what you need.” As you move down from the higher level of care back into just regular weekly therapy with your therapist, like maybe that might be an opportunity to say, okay, I learned all these kind of technical skills in my IOP or whatever it might be, but now can you help me figure out how I integrate those things that I learned with what I know to be true in the Bible and what God’s doing in my life. And that’s a really good launching point for the next phase.

Carrie: Absolutely. I really like how you worded that. I do think that God is always with us in walking us through situations and just giving us those little glimpses of like, “Hey, I’m here for you. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be able to make it through. This is one of the reasons that you started your podcast because of your own mental health struggles. 

Ann: I think I got into counseling because of my own mental health struggles. But I started the podcast because I saw this need in my community. And yes, it’s Southern California, but my particular community is a little bit smaller and so I was looking for people that I could refer patients to when they were requesting a Christian counselor and I was either full or didn’t take their insurance or whatever, and I would reach out to people and a couple of times I got emails back that would say something like, yes, I’m personally a Christian, but I don’t offer Christian counseling. Why not? That just didn’t make sense to me.

I had to go back and think through all of those reasons why a person who had no faith in Jesus wouldn’t want to bring that into their professional setting. Carrie, you and I both had a seminary background. We had classes that specifically taught us, okay, you’ve had bible and theology. You’ve had clinical classes, here’s how you put them together, and here’s how you bring that into your career, into the room with your clients, but a lot of people who were trained either in a secular university or some other kind of program didn’t have that advantage. Maybe they just don’t know how to do it and don’t have the confidence to do that. I started creating resources that would help them learn how to integrate their personal faith into the practice that they already know how to do.

They’ve already licensed counselors or pre-licensed, and they want to be able to do good work clinically, but then there’s this whole part of themselves that they are leaving out. You just said when you started the podcast, you became more authentic in your work because now you’re bringing in this part of you. I wrote an e-course that was my 2020 pandemic project over the summer. 

Carrie: We all had one. 

Ann: Yes, I put out the E-course and then I thought, you know what? People need an easy on-ramp to find out just to get their toes in the water with this idea about integration. My podcast is for people who do this kind of work like you and I do, but also for people who are just interested in mental health and they want to know, “Is this okay that I’m a Christian and I want to do this therapy thing?”

I’ve done different special episodes on things like brain spotting or transcranial magnetic stimulation or different things where I want to get a Christian perspective on all those clinical things that are out there so I can understand more. I can get the help I need and I can pass on this information to other people that I see in my world or in my church that are needing the help as well.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I think there’s a really, a lack of conversation surrounding these things, which is one of the reasons that I started my podcast too. I had a blog for like a hot second and I realized writing’s a lot of work.

Ann: Yes, same .

Carrie: It’s easier for me to talk, so I decided, maybe podcasting route because it was a lot of work to try to get all these blog posts up there, and then I was like, is anybody rating this thing? But I think this is great. I’ve really definitely looked for a lot of resources and people who are bringing to the table really solid clinical skills and good Christian counseling.

I hope that people will check out your podcast, Soul Grit, and you’ve had a wide variety of episodes on there, different topics. It’s awesome. 

Ann: Yes, Carrie’s going to be on the podcast too. 

Carrie: Woohoo! Towards the end of every episode, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time of hope that you have from God or another person.

Ann: God has done a lot of amazing things like actual miracles in our family story. I’ll just share where I am right now. I actually had a stroke two months ago and that was very unexpected cuz I’m only 40. I exercise most days. I eat healthy. I don’t have diabetes. I don’t smoke or drink.

I don’t have any risk factors, and all of a sudden I found myself in the hospital having suffered a stroke just in November. I didn’t know what that meant or what my life would look like, and it turns out it could have been a lot worse. I have all of my faculties available. I can walk, I can talk, I can think I can do cognitive tasks.

In the meantime, God had to remove me from a lot of the things as a professional mom, wife, all the roles in ministry. December could be like, this is the big time, right? , the week before December started this past year. God just said, no, actually your job is to lay on the couch. And I thought, but God, I’m the mom and I’m the podcaster and I’m the therapist and I lead a small group and I have to do holidays for my family and all those things.

God just made me rest and taking me through right now a journey of figuring out what is really important. And what is foundational? Do I have big ideas and big [00:18:00] goals for my practice or my e-course or my podcast or my other things that do in ministry or family, whatever. But come down to take care of yourself, rest, read the Bible, and spend time with the Lord. Be there with your family, work on your marriage, eat the right food. It’s come down to just very foundational basic things, and I’ll say, this is why, this is my story of hope because right now I don’t see what the result of that is gonna be, but I really have this sense that God has me in this place of the lane, a solid foundation.

Not that I wasn’t solid in my belief in God, or that I didn’t have a good marriage or anything before. But it’s like he’s laying this new layer of foundation that I need for whatever that launch is in the next season of life, and I have no idea what that might look like, but I have hope that if he’s asking me to slow down and rest right now and take care of these things, that means he has something for me then that’s gonna be worth it when I follow him in an obedience to that.

Carrie: Yes. It’s so hard for us in our cultural context to slow down and to rest, but it’s definitely so needed and so important, so I’m glad that God’s working with you on that. Have you kind of had a lot of reflections on just the sense of Sabbath in the Bible and what that really means to rest?

Ann: What’s really funny is in October I did a whole series on rest and ceasing from busyness and Sabbath. That was what the whole, the podcast in the fall was about. Then I had just moved into a new series that I was doing about the body and what God has to say about the body and how our body impacts our mental health and things like that.

It was almost like God said, “Well, you’re doing good work. I see the work that you’re doing, but I’m going to make this really real for you in short order. 

Carrie: Yes, He did. It’s like when the pastor has to preach the sermon to themselves before they give it to the congregation. That’s what they say. They’re like, I had to learn this for myself. Awesome. Tell us where people can find you and we’ll put links in the show notes too. 

Ann: My website is soulgritresources.com, and that’s where you can find the e-course. You can get links to the podcast, the blog that I used to write and for your listeners, I’m assuming a lot of people that listen to your podcast are interested in things like those evidence-based practices.

I have a freebie that pops up. It’s called Cognitive Behavior Therapy with scripture, and I’ll walk you through how to use the scripture to replace those thoughts that you’re needing some help with once you identify them, so they can find that there. I’m also on Instagram at Soul Grit Resources. 

Carrie: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today. 

92. When Ministry Becomes Toxic with Steve and Carrie Bock

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

On today’s episode, I have an interesting conversation with my favorite guest, my husband Steve Bock about toxic church culture

Episode Highlights:

  • Warning signs your church is becoming toxic
  • The danger of putting church leaders on pedestals
  • The importance of knowing the difference between your calling and your desire
  • What happens if you lead your church as a micromanager

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 92! I’m your host, Carrie Bock. If you’re new to the show, we’re all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others.

A few episodes ago, in episode 89, KJ Ramsey shared her story of spiritual abuse and how she and her husband left an unhealthy church where they both worked. I’ve been reflecting on that conversation and wondering: how do we know when ministry crosses the line from healthy to toxic? To dig deeper, I’ve brought my husband Steve back on the show.

We discuss five key warning signs that ministry might be becoming toxic. For instance, it’s crucial to recognize when someone might justify inappropriate behavior under the guise of ministry, or when the need for admiration and respect in leadership roles becomes problematic. We also touch on how focusing too much on numbers and external validation can lead to ego issues and unhealthy practices.

Join us as we delve into these topics and offer guidance on maintaining a healthy and balanced approach to ministry. Whether you’re involved in ministry or observing from the outside, these insights aim to help you navigate and address potential challenges effectively.

Related Podcast Episodes:

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 92. I’m your host, Carrie Bock, and if you’re new to the show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. Back a few episodes ago, on episode 89, we had KJ Ramsey come on, talk about her story of spiritual abuse and how she and her husband left a church situation that was really unhealthy, where they were both working there.

I was thinking about that episode and processing, what are some warning signs, maybe, how do we know when ministry crosses this line from healthy to toxic? And I brought on the show back. On the show again, my amazing husband, Steve. Steve, welcome to the show. 

Steve: Hey, it’s good to be here. 

Carrie: Everybody, forgive Steve. He’s a little bit under the weather today, but he’s making sacrifices for me and is super supportive. In this podcast journey. You and I have been involved in various ministries. We also grew up in a context of our families being very involved in various ministries. I actually wrote all these, but I thought it would be good to get your feedback on it.

What you’ve seen experienced and what your thoughts are on this. I have five different things that I came up with on when ministry becomes toxic. For example, sometimes people will say, well, I just really believe that God is asking me to leave my wife and go have a relationship with this other woman, and obviously that is in complete contrast to the Bible. Anything biblical Or maybe it’s kind of not to that drastic level there, but someone you’re attracted to or you find yourself sharing things maybe you shouldn’t about your personal life or your marriage, and it’s getting to be some kind of slippery slope, but you’re saying, “Oh, well, you’re justifying it. This is a person I’m ministering too, and I need to be the one to minister to them because I have the relationship.” Have you seen this? You don’t have to go into specific examples of how people have justified sin in the name ministry. 

Steve: I have, I won’t say names because I don’t want to offend anyone, but I have seen that and it’s difficult because I don’t think that God’s going to tell somebody, Hey, leave your wife and get with this other woman that would go against what the Bible says. He wouldn’t go against himself. That just wouldn’t happened. I don’t know. That’s a really tough area. I have seen that and I’ve seen people leave the church because of it. So the downside of it is terrible. 

Carrie: We’ve both survived our share of moral failures, ministry, and fallouts. People that had to resign or got fired, and it’s just a tough situation for sure. Whenever that happens, these are kinda warning signs, not for people who are involved in ministry, but also if you see this happening in the ministry that you’re with. That’s why we’re wanting to talk about it today.

Steve: I think sometimes people, there’s your calling and your wants and desires and it’s great if the two all, if all that goes together, if God calls you to do something that’s also what you want, that’s wonderful. But sometimes I think there are people out there who they really want to be a pastor.

They like the idea of it, they like the prestige of it. They like something about it and they do it all in the name of, “Yeah, I’m called to do this.” But sometimes you wonder without being judgemental, are they called or is this something that again, they’re just, they like the concept of it. I don’t know if that fits what you’re saying.

Carrie: Yes and I’m curious about your perspective on how this is somewhat a weakness for men. I think more so than women like this need for admiration. Not that women don’t need that at times in validation, but for people to look up to them, I would say that’s more of a male need than a female need. 

Steve: Sure.  Absolutely, and I’ve known pastors who they really demanded that respect and you should respect your pastor. But I don’t know, sometimes the context of it made it difficult. 

Carrie: I think there’s this balance between we don’t wanna put someone on a complete pedestal because at the end of the day, they’re still a human being and they still have human struggles like we all do. But I think that is a very dangerous thing that can happen in ministry situations is where we elevate people almost too much and it’s interesting because I had a pastor share one time with the congregation that he was on LinkedIn and God really convicted him about being on LinkedIn because he realized that he’s like, this is for people who are looking for a job.

I’m not even looking for a job. But he was almost kind of getting this little high over people, like recommending him and the connections he was able to make on there. And that was just an interesting realization that he had and was able to kind of get himself in check and go, okay, I don’t even need to be on this website right now cuz it’s contributing to something that’s unhealthy.

I think for ministry you really have to dig deep and examine your motives. You’re giving a sermon or a talk, and you don’t get positive feedback. Do you feel still satisfied? Like, okay, well I did what God wanted me to do, or do you feel disappointed because you didn’t get like that? That pat on the back or that kudos of like, “Hey, you did a good job.”

Steve: Sure. I’ve seen where, and I’ve even had a pastor long time ago, he had an altar call, said I felt like God said, have this altar call and no one came forward. And he said once again, three or four times the music’s playing. And after like 15 minutes I’m thinking, I don’t think anybody’s going to come up, but that’s not my call. That’s not my place. I guess you wait as long as it takes for maybe that one, I don’t know, but afterward, he was so beaten up by it and he says, I don’t even know why I bothered. What was the point of that? And I remember thinking, you don’t know what God is going to do in somebody’s life, so they didn’t go forward. That doesn’t mean you didn’t reach them. I think it was really easy for them to kind of get their ego hurt a little bit. I’m not a pastor, but I would think for a pastor it would be really easy for your ego to get in the way and think, look at how many people I’ve saved. I do an alter call and all these people come down and look what I’ve done and just it gets to you.

I was at a leadership conference a couple years back and the guy who’s a pastor, I think that was leading the conference had said, if you’re a pastor, especially if you’re a pastor or in leadership, you have so many people coming to you with their burdens and you have so many things that you’re trying to lead and delegate and just you’re trying to be that sheperd.

If you don’t have a therapist, and I think you probably agree, if you don’t have a therapist in your life with that amount of pressure on you and all of that you’re dealing with, it’s very easy to let that ego get no way, to let the problems bring you down, sort those things out, because otherwise you begin to take over and you push the spirit out of the way.

Carrie: That’s definitely huge. It’s so hard because it’s kind of a slippery slope that I try to work with people on this, okay, well you don’t wanna be in this extreme of, “Whoa, I’m a sinner, I’m a horrible person, and how could God even use me?” You’re completely on one side of the thing. I do believe that we can have confidence in Christ and in what we are called to do.

I think it’s who do you give the credit to. Where does the credit go? Even how you say it, I get kind of nervous, I think like you do when church is focused too much on numbers, because it’s not really about that. If one person got saved, there’s a party in heaven, that’s awesome. But churches, a lot of times, you know, we had 1000 kids at VBS and 50 of them made a decision for Christ. And I’ve already cheered and we’re all excited, but I just almost wish that they would say, we really saw some kids that were impacted by the gospel and we did have some kids make decisions and we’re following up with them and making sure that this is something that’s gonna stick. And they weren’t just doing it because their friend wanted to or anything like. I think that some of the numbers, games and things can kind of feed into the ego. I see this podcast as my ministry, and even in the beginning I was remember being kind of frustrated or just not frustrated as much as just feeling kind of lost because I wasn’t really getting any feedback.

I was asking for people to contact me, and I was like, “Okay, what’s going on? Am I doing this right?” But obviously, like over time I’ve gotten that feedback and I do know that. It’s making a difference and people are appreciating it especially the things that we talk about with kind of a strong clinical focus and having a strong Christian focus that it’s making a difference. I have to be able to step back and say, This podcast is reaching so many people because God has allowed me to have it, and because God is the one that’s bringing them to be able to hear it, and he’s done just amazing things and done the work and put a lot of pieces together in order for this to happen and that I’m trying to stay in a place of humility because as I’m studying and doing this deep dive into Isaiah, there’s a lot of information in there about pride. The dangers of pride and how it can essentially lead you to down a negative path and destruction. It’s not good. So that’s something that I think especially ministry leaders can fall into.

Steve: I appreciate that you don’t let that get your head, that you don’t go around. “Hey everyone, I’m a podcaster” with your pinky in the air and your nose up and putting others down who are not podcasters or not as good as you or not as whatever, but you take a very humble approach and I appreciate something you said that you went to others to ask them questions. And I know that you do that. I know that you ask, Hey, how can I do better? What would you think of the podcast? Or would you listen to it or whatever? I appreciate that. I think that’s healthy because you’re not trying to do it all on your own. Sometimes we get thoughts in our heads that we’re better than we are.

I hate to put it like that, but I think we get that idea and we take the credit of what God’s done, but we take it. It shouldn’t be that way. So I appreciate the concept of, looking at what God has done. 

Carrie: Your quiet times with the Lord are all about preparation for a Bible study, teaching time, you’re not really taking that time to examine your heart. Seek confession for your sin, and apply the word for yourself. I can tell you, Steve, this is one I’ve been guilty of in the past for sure. 

Steve: Sure. I mean, I think everyone has, if we’re honest, and I think the best leaders are the ones who are honest. The ones who say, “Guys, I’ve messed up, or I’m not where I need to be with the Lord. I’ve got the series figured out. I’ve got the sermon figured out,” but you could talk all day long behind a podium or behind a mic or what have you, but people are at some point, they’re going to recognize your walk and who you are.

They’re going to begin to see the difference between what you did and are doing versus what God is doing through you. I think it has to be God doing it through you. 

Carrie: That connection to the Holy Spirit and what he wants you to share is important, but you have to preach it to yourself before you can teach it to anybody else.

I was thinking about a pastor, I’m trying to figure out how to explain this, but essentially due to being in college, I was in one part of Florida at one point and another part of the year because it was summer or Christmas break or whenever. I was in another part of Florida and I heard this man who was part of this denomination preach the exact same sermon twice and I thought, this must be something he can have passed in a file cabinet somewhere. He just kind of pulls it out and this is like my top 10 sermons and I think I’m going utilize this one. And it caused me to be like, there’s just something that feels inauthentic about that in terms of making sure that you’re bringing what God wants you to bring.

I could be judging this completely, inaccurately and he could be praying and connected to God and feels like that’s what God wants him to share. But I just thought, I just don’t know about that. I mean, to the point that it was the same sermon, there weren’t answers on it, and I was like, “Wow, this is very interesting.”

Carrie: This is one that we’ve definitely talked about this in the past.

Steve: Yes. I’ve got a lot of pastor friends and I think that’s probably one of their biggest struggles. They know the direction of the church somewhat. There’s a direction in their mind. To relinquish a duty to someone else, to let someone else do that, I think is very difficult. It’s hard. I, know pastors who may want to be in charge of the music, what’s going on in small groups and to the point where everything that’s said is controlled.

I think that to me, I’m struggling because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I don’t want to call anybody out on your podcast here. I don’t think that would be right, but I just think that they have the best of intentions. I think sometimes you might want to pray about that and see if God put this person in this role, and I think God’s in control.

God can show them what he wants in you and what he wants in that small group for that whatever God has to control the foil. I think that’s the best way to say it. 

Carrie: Yes,

Steve: You can’t paddle all the little boats going the same way, if that makes sense. You can’t control everything. You can’t micromanage it all. God doesn’t need micromanagers, he needs leaders. 

Carrie: The reality is we’re supposed to be living in community and thriving off of other people’s strength. When a ministry leader or a pastor identifies like, “Hey, this piece is not my strength.”

Steve: Sure. 

Carrie: I need to hand that off to somebody else who is going to do a way better job because that’s more in their spiritual gifting and that’s just so important. 

Steve: Sometimes I think that the person that should be doing it isn’t even the most qualified, but the most called. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Steve: If you’re trying to control things, you get in the way of that. So a good example, if you open your Bible and you look at the story of David and Goliath. David certainly wasn’t the most qualified to sling that rock. There’s no way. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Steve: He was the smallest guy. We know that story most of us. So if the bigger guy, the more qualified person, the more whatever would’ve slung that rock. It wouldn’t have worked out the same, but David did it and it won the day.

I think you have to look at your church whatever it is the same way. Whatever you’re leading, I think you have to see it the same way. Don’t look at it solely as you got be in charging and no one else can do it, or I got to have this person because they’re way more qualified even though they don’t have the time or the want to do it. And then you got this other person who doesn’t seem as qualified, but they got a heart of God for it. Pray about it and let them do it. Let it go.

Carrie: I think we were just talking about pride, and for me personally, I feel like when I’m in that space of thinking, I can do it all myself or I should do it all myself.

I don’t need anybody else to do this. To me that’s pride, and I’ve certainly been guilty of my sense of trying to control things and we have to be able to know when to let things go. Especially, this is so crucial for preventing burnout in ministry. It’s easy to get into that place. And there was something that happened at a previous church where I was asked to take charge of something and that was going to take a lot of time. I said, “let me think about this. Let me pray about this. I’m not saying yes or no right now.” And I went down. I went back and I wrote down, okay, here’s everything I’m doing for the church and this ministry. And I said, “Okay, well if I’m gonna take on this other role, then some of this stuff needs to come off my place,” which was great because it allowed other people to get involved who had been sitting on the sidelines a little bit, and they wanted a task. They wanted more involvement. Mm-hmm. , they wanted more connections, so it was just a really great opportunity. Whereas we grew the ministry in the sense that we added people that were serving.

I didn’t get burnout and I was able to get some things delegated. Also, some things probably that I wasn’t as passionate about as this project, where I was pretty passionate about that project. I think that’s just a good example of when this can work out well for us. We talk about in churches all the time, what is it? 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

Steve: I’m just thinking about that. That’s funny. You got your 80-20 rule. I think that sometimes the 20% do it every single time because I don’t know if it’s because they’re the extroverts that stand up to do it, or if the 80%, a lot of them just aren’t asked to do it. They’re just waiting for someone to ask them, which doesn’t make them right, but maybe they need a little nudge. “Hey, I’ve got something. I want to entrust it to you.” It would be a good way to start that. I think on pastors, it’s a hard thing. I do have to give them some credit. In the past, I was a manager before and I’ve led other things, and it is easy to ask the same person all the time to do the same stuff because you know that they can do it. But in ministry, that’s not necessarily how that should work. God calls us, we have to do it. 

Carrie: Ultimately not sustainable for that person. I have had experiences in the past where I recruited some people for different tasks and at first they were funny like, “I don’t know if I can do that.” And I was like, “Well, these are the skills that I’ve seen that you bring to the table. You have some of these things that you’re doing in the context of your work, or you’ve been around the church a while, and so you have this level of being a Christian for a while. You have this level of experience and knowledge, and so forth.”

Sometimes people do need that little extra push of encouragement to get more involved and end up really enjoying the service in the ministry over time, once they can get in there and get their feet wet a little bit. People have two different perspectives. There’s some people that go, I have to do this because if I don’t do it, nobody else will do it. And then on the completely opposite side, you have people who say, they don’t need me, they’ve got this kind of under control, and I’m not really needed over here.

Steve: Yes and there’s that side too of similar to what you’re saying, where people will say, I’m too young to do it or I’m too old. I really hate to break this news to you, but there is no retirement plan in church ministry. It’s just, well, maybe there is, but when God calls you to do something, I don’t care if you’re five years old or 99 years old, you do it.

Carrie: I think my grandmother has been a good example of that through the years and when my grandfather died, she got involved in helping other widows as they were grieving the loss of their husbands thought that was kind of a beautiful thing about how she used that experience to help other people who are in a really sad place.

Carrie: Sabbath rest is definitely biblical. We see more pastors taking sabbaticals and we just need this rest to become mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. Have you seen some ministries? 

Steve: Oh my goodness. 

Carrie: That didn’t value rest?

Steve: Yes. Not to interrupt you, but Yes. I had one youth pastor one time that I knew that said, if I don’t do this, no one else will. And if I stop now, it’s all going to fade and go away. I’ve put too much work into this to stop. I just finally said, listen, if you don’t stop and get the rest that you need, even Jesus rested, right? If you don’t stop and do that, how are you hearing God? You’re putting all your time into doing the work. 

Carrie: Yes. That’s huge. 

Steve: How are you getting the energy up to continue? You become your own worst enemy. You’re just going through the motions, but you’re not listening to God and you’re not resting to get the energy up. It’s not a healthy thing to me.

Carrie: I have definitely seen situations and was in a smaller church context and had really challenged the pastor. “When do you get a Sunday off? Who’s able to preach for you?” I think a little bit of pushback of need to be here, need to be involved. And then later there was some other leadership that pretty much kind of forced some time off, I think, which is healthy.

It’s just we need that time away not just to recoup, but also to know. I think that the walls aren’t going to fall down when we’re not there. I feel like that’s really crucial for leaders to know if you raise up other leaders under you in your ministry as you should. You should be able to miss a Sunday and it not crash and burn or fall apart. You don’t need to be the glue that’s holding this whole ship together.

Steve: It’s a leadership position. It’s not a dictator-type position where only you can do it and you tell everybody what they’re doing. God put you in charge of a flock. So help the flock, help them grow and listen. When there’s an area that’s struggling, your job as a leader isn’t necessarily to fill the void. It’s to help someone else grow into that void and fill it in a lot of cases there too. Like I said earlier, I don’t think being a pastor or a leader in church, it’s not easy. I think it’s very easy to fall into that, what we’re talking about today, those problems where you’re trying to do everything and you’re taking the credit for it like we talked about earlier.

I think you have that some point, step back and ask yourself, what is God doing what am I doing and how much can I step out of that and let God step in? I think it’s at that point you’ll find things are going to go a lot better with your church or your program or your whatever because you’re letting God do it, not you. We always fail.

Carrie: We’re so results-driven in our society. We want to put the effort in and see the results. What I’ve learned over years of ministry, not just in church, but in counseling situations, there are times where you’re going to follow the Lord and you’re going to put in the effort and you may not always get the results out that you’re wanting or that you’re hoping for. The obedience is the important piece, 

Steve: Right.

Carrie: That I would go back to, did you do what God asked you to do?

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: At the end of the day, can you rest and say, regardless of how the results came out, did I do what God asked me to do today? And if the answer is yes, then it’s okay. You can move forward, I talked about this on the podcast before with my friend Sarah Slade.

They brought on and we had an EMDR chat, but we were talking about when we were working in community mental health and we were going into homes and working with children that just had very severe emotional behavior problems. We’re getting kicked out of school, all kinds of things happening and going to juvenile detention. I know there were days that I went home and just felt like, oh my goodness, I did nothing worthwhile today, . I drove around in my car and I talked to some people, but I didn’t really make a difference or I wasn’t able to help these people, but I had to come to a place where it couldn’t all be about me, obviously, because I was only one piece of the puzzle in this child’s life, and so I couldn’t put all that pressure on myself to make those things happen and to make those results happened. But also I had to step back and leave room for God and others to be involved in the situation, to get parents on board, teachers, and whoever else was available to support these kids and adolescents. I think what we’re talking about, there’s going to come like a tough time in your ministry if you’re in it for a long time. There’s going to be a season where it’s not easy or it’s not enjoyable. 

Steve: Absolutely. I think if you’re focused on the amount of people in the seats over what the people in the seats are doing, as in how is God using them, you’ve missed the boat. You may need to go back and they have a heart check.

When you stand before God, I don’t think he’s going to say, all right, pastor or leader, how many butts were in the seats? I really don’t think that’s going to focus. I know that for me, looking at my own life, one big decision that I made for ministry was to go into mission work. And what got me there was a little church.

It wasn’t the church that was huge, it was the church that small. Now that’s not putting down the big churches. I’m not saying that, but that little church was more interested in where my heart was at, and that was the growth they were concerned with was my own personal growth, not what’s coming out my wallet and not what’s. 

How many people can I bring to church? Cuz we need a bigger church and let’s see if we can have this many baptisms and this many salvations. Those are all good things, but the focus shouldn’t be solely driven by numbers like we were talking about earlier. I think it’s important to check a person’s heart. Where’s that person’s heart at? What are they leading by? 

Carrie: Steve, is there anything else you would add to this list? Is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you think you might add of what’s kind of a warning sign or red flag of ministry potentially becoming toxic?

Steve: I think when a pastor or a leader, they can’t relax. They can’t be one of the group. I used to have a pastor that every single week he invited people over to his house. That’s a big deal. And it was a big church too, but he always invited people over and said, you know what? If we don’t have enough food, we’ll all chip in and get McDonald’s, whatever we got to get, but I want to have fellowship in our church. If you’re not coming to my house, take some months somewhere. Spend some time with your own family too. It wasn’t about going out to eat every single Sunday. It was more about time together. That was huge to him. I think that’s missed a lot of time. We work so much on the administrative side or the perfect sermon or the whatever, that we actually forget that there are humans out there that just want to grow as a community with us.

I would say relax, let your guard down. Let them see your flaws. That’s the best way to have growth, is to be transparent and to let them see what you can’t do and haven’t done, and then what can be done down the road as you grow as a person. I think that those following you, those in church would probably grow even more because then they would say, well, the pastor’s transparent. I guess maybe I ought to be as well. Transparency and relax. Those are my things I think, and I would add to that, 

Carrie: It’s hard I think for pastors and other ministry leaders to be transparent if they feel like there are these really high expectations of them. 

Steve: Sure. 

Carrie: I think there has to be a give-and-take supportive congregation environment for them to be in where they feel like it’s safe and it’s okay to say, Hey, let me raise my hand and say, I struggle with this too. Or I’m eradicating sin out of my own life through the help of the Lord, and this is how I’m doing it. These are my weak spots and these are things that God is working with me on. The pastor job or ministry leader job is kind of hard because you need to be able to have those good communication skills while at the same time having the relationship skills.

Sometimes there’s an imbalance between the ability to study, communicate, the intellectual side of things, and the ability to have like a warm touch and greet people be empathetic and compassionate. Sometimes it’s hard to find a balance between those two things because both are essentially important.

Steve: Sure. Absolutely. If they are honest and open about things and they have, people that are around them that will hold them up to that level and let them know, “Hey, we’re praying for you ” or, “Hey, you are a little harsh here.” I don’t just mean the pastor’s wife or the leader, spouse, whatever, but I mean having a group of people that will really, truly hold you accountable in those situations that you see, things you wouldn’t have seen on your own.

Your pride gets in the way or whatever, but to be called out a little bit in a nice loving way, not a, Hey man, you stink. Just quit. Why don’t, no, not like that, but in a loving way, say, I think maybe you handled this a little harshly. I think that helps to have those people there. 

Carrie: Being open to feedback is a very healthy trait to have for sure in ministry and in life.

I have a good friend that I meet with once a week, who always appreciates when I give her feedback, whether it’s on herself, how she’s interacting with her business or on her business. This is what I think of when you say, “Is that what you mean?” Or “I’ve noticed you have this pattern.” “What’s going on with that?” And she’s like, “Thank you because I don’t have other people who are willing to really be honest with me, and I appreciate your feedback. It’s helpful.”

Well, thank you for joining me on this episode. Even when you on a day you don’t feel the greatest , and I was wanting to think of if we had any stories of hope to share. I don’t know if you have any ideas, me or you or us. 

Steve: I think one that comes to mind, I felt my situation. Now I don’t drive, I don’t get out nearly as much, but I felt called to do some sort of a small group. Something and we’re involved in a small group already, but something that would allow me to feel useful and be a good tool. It’s not all about me. We decided via Zoom or what have you, to do a small group where individuals like myself could sit from home assuming they feel up to it. You don’t have to drive anywhere. You don’t have to go anywhere and connect online. We could talk to one another and we could do a study, and if you can’t show up, you don’t feel well, you can just text back and forth or email us or whatever. “Hey, this is where I’m at.”

It’s a guy’s group and it’s been good timing for us and it’s, it’s small and I’m okay with that. If it’s just myself and one other guy, that’s fine. There’s actually a few of us that are in it. Thus far, only me and one other person, one other guy, have really shown up, and that’s okay because we talk through text, and we hold each other accountable.

We have a topic. It’s everything you would want in a small group, really just not your traditional small group. It’s an odd fit in a way. It’s an odd situation. We don’t do the traditional thing. We’re not going to one another’s houses or things like that, but we don’t get to go out much or often. So it fits the need, and I feel it’s been a question like, how do I serve? How do I do that? I thought, this does feel hopeless because I can’t be dependent upon as easily as I used to be. I can’t just show up somewhere and say, all right, I got everything together, or have the energy for this long study. It’s kind of have to take it day by day, moment by moment. These guys are in the same situation, so it works out perfectly. A small example, but it’s kind of a big deal for me. 

Carrie: No, I think that’s great that you’re able to keep some healthy social connectedness and male accountability and things like that even within your current situation. Thank you everyone for tuning in and listening today to just kind of talk through some of these warning signs, and maybe you’d have one or two that you might even add to this list.

This was just something that I came up with quickly and I was glad to be able to talk with Steve about it since he’s had a good share of time in ministry situations as well. You can reach us anytime at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

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

89. Personal Story of Spiritual Abuse and Chronic Pain with K.J. Ramsey, M.A.

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 89. Personal Story of Spiritual Abuse and Chronic Pain with K.J. Ramsey, M.A.

Therapist and author K.J. Ramsey talks to us about her healing journey from spiritual abuse and chronic pain.

-How K.J. realized that she was in a spiritually abusive situation

-Wrestling with questions about why God allowed her suffering

-The importance of emotional safety in a church or community

-Her process of leaving a spiritually toxic environment 

-How connecting to her body helps in her healing

-K.J.’s books, “The Lord is My Courage” and “The Book of Common Courage”

Related links and Resources:

www.kjramsey.com/

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 89. I had the absolute privilege of interviewing KJ Ramsey. This was a situation where I didn’t realize before the interview how much we had in common. We both have a background as trauma therapists with more of a somatic lens. We both graduated from the same seminary.

It was very interesting to see her perspectives based on her own experiences and understanding of scripture. Kj, welcome to the podcast.

K.J.: Hey, thank you for having me.

Carrie: I know that with authors, you guys tend to have a lot of podcast interviews. It’s almost like you’re on a virtual book tour nowadays, right?

K.J.: Basically what it is, it’s an extensive virtual book tour. And an introvert.

Carrie: Oh, no. Well, at least you don’t have to meet as many people face-to-face then.

K.J.: I guess in a way, especially during cold and flu season, and there’s still COVID all around. It’s nice to minimize some of that, but it is good. I get to talk to a lot of really interesting people.

Living with a Chronic Illness and Wrestling with God to Understand Her Suffering

Carrie: So my understanding from scoping out your website is that you talk about your personal story on there, and I imagine that is what you write about as well. You’ve written a few books. Is it an autoimmune condition that you have or some issue that causes chronic pain?

K.J.: I have several autoimmune diseases, but I started with one, which is a way that it typically goes if you have one; it kind of blooms into more. I’ve had ankylosing spondylitis for 14 years, and AS is the shortened version of that, which is better on the tongue. Last year, I got COVID-19, which turned into several more diseases I will have for my life under intense treatment. I have a lot.

Carrie: So you ended up with the long haul COVID symptoms?

K.J.: Yes. Because of it, I had long covid and new diseases, which is hard.

Carrie: I’m curious because you also talked in your story about spiritual abuse, and I’m processing, as well, a lot about healing just in general because my husband was just diagnosed last year with a permanent neurological condition, and there’s no cure for it.

I’m curious if you could share some of your thoughts on healing. I think it helps our audience with anxiety and OCD as well because there’s a lot of struggle in wrestling. Why am I having to deal with this? Why won’t God heal me? Why can’t he take this away from me? He’s all-powerful. He has the ability to do that. Can you tell us about maybe some of your wrestlings with that?

K.J.: I was 20 years old when I suddenly got sick and went from being a fully functional young adult to barely walking and could barely hold a pen or drive myself across campus. I was a college student at the time, and that persisted.

I entered adulthood wrestling with this question of why I have this suffering that doesn’t seem to go away. What is the point? And also, what does God care? What is God going to do about this? And really, my better answers are in the book, my first book, this Too Shall Last. I will say that I’m more a writer than anything else, but I’m a trauma therapist learning how to listen to my body and respond to my own sensations with kindness, compassion, and movement.

I really do believe that there is healing in the way that I would say, the capacity to live as fully as we can, even for some things to be reversed. And that’s with me saying that with a person with a lot that’s wrong on my test results.

And a lot of ongoing pain still in my life that I’ve seen things change, and I’ve seen my capacity to show up in my life grow massively as I’ve learned to listen to my body and what she has to say about how safe I feel on any given day or moment. From both a theological and a trauma perspective, I believe there is possible healing in how we face ourselves with compassion and face one another with compassion. And I caveat that by saying how I define healing might be different than sudden spontaneous removal of all of your symptoms. I think that, actually, pain prompts us to pay attention and bear witness to the pain in our lives.

And when I say pain, I mean all of it. Emotional pain too, struggles, the very inconvenient experience of having intrusive thoughts. That’s painful. Pain prompts us to pay attention and can point us to the places where parts of us still need to be unfolded with the care that needs to be held.

And it’s in that process that we experience more fullness, more joy, that’s healing. There’s a difference between healing and curing. The difference is between good removal of all of your problems and experiencing wholeness, and I think we all can experience wholeness even in a body that continues to have a disease continues to have a mental illness.

Finding Emotional Support and Connection

Carrie: That’s incredible. I don’t think that I could have phrased that better because I think that aligns with some of the process of what I’ve been thinking about with my husband. It’s like we haven’t gotten the healing from, or the cure, like you said, from the diagnosis, but we’ve been healed in the sense that we’ve been healed from isolation.

We have support and other people we’re connected to who are going through this. We have a support system outside of those that are going through it. We’ve been healed from the financial stress of paying for medical bills, and God has provided. That’s something that I want to write about a little bit more.

When we started this journey, it was kind; a lot of people were praying for him, and he was having eye issues, and they were praying for him for healing. That in itself is somewhat of a miracle because even though he has a degenerative condition, his eyes haven’t changed in a year, which we are just really celebrating; that, and so thankful that he hasn’t lost any more of his vision, but it’s been a process of, I think his eye doctor’s probably not a Christian and doesn’t know quite how to make sense of that. I thought when we first started going through this, God would take healing in any form that it comes in.

However you want to do this, if you’re going to heal him physically or if you want to heal him emotionally, and there’s the level where he’ll talk about how, even though he likes to be in the background, he has this walker now that puts him in the spotlight. People speak to him, and he’s able to encourage them. Or even people with mobility issues say, “Oh, tell me about this walker.” It’s just a little bit different from your typical walker. How do I get one of those? Those types of things. It’s been very interesting to see how God’s used him differently with this struggle and suffering because it’s definitely changed him a lot. It changed me a lot and drew us closer to God and each other and those things. I’m really thankful for it.

K.J: I love that you started that off office saying God has healed you of; I don’t know if you put it exactly like this, but your individualism. I think that’s one of the core things that we’re all being invited into, whether it’s with struggling with something like OCD or Ankylos Spondylitis or complex trauma, there’s this invitation to be more fully human, which means to be in relationship to others, to be connected. There’s something about our struggles that invites us in a way that is harder to decline, to be connected, and to be supported, to be seen. The way that my body works, I can’t do life on my own.

I can’t. There are many stretches where I can’t take care of myself fully; beyond that, I need the emotional support of the people around me. I don’t love experiencing that, and I love that my body pulls me into a story where I don’t have to be self-sufficient, and nobody else has to, either. And I think that is the healing in which we’re all being bound.

We’re all being invited into. It’s the space between each other. That’s where Joy is. That’s where wonder is through love; our struggles take us to go there.

How K.J. Discovered that She was in a Spiritual Abusive Situation

Carrie: And we’re entirely too isolated and disconnected from each other in our society. I’m really curious about this. It is kind of totally switching topics, but your story regarding how you discovered that you were in a spiritually abusive conversation just gives us a picture of the warning signs of that or when it starts to click like, “Oh, this isn’t healthy.”

K.J.: In my previous book, the Lord is My Courage, I share a lot of my husband and my story of waking up to the fact that we were in a spiritually abusive faith community in this church and choosing to leave it and trying to heal from it. Dealing with the ongoing effects of religious trauma is so hard about spiritual abuse that it’s often quite subtle.

Of course, there are going to be things that are not subtle. But I think the whole, does the fish know what the water is around them? It’s just, you’re in, you’re swimming in the water, and that’s the water. For us, waking up to the fact that the water we were swimming in was toxic was a slow process of paying attention and sensing our pain.

For us, it was noticing how other people were being harmed. My husband was a pastor at this church, and his coworkers would come to him in tears after being yelled at in the pastor’s office. So hearing other people being belittled or overworked, noticing how people are subtly mocked in staff meetings, and being disturbed by that is part of what woke us up.

At first, we weren’t the people being directly attacked because we were doing the stuff that the pastor didn’t want to do himself. My husband was over pastoral care and counseling, and I ran my counseling practice at the church. This pastor wanted to preach, so we were in good graces because we did something that made the church look good and took stuff off his plate.

That favor you can get with a leader can blind you for a while to how they might be treating other people. But as soon as we started to confront, I don’t love how you yelled at that person; that’s when you become the problem, too. I don’t so much to categorize warning signs or red flags.

The most important thing is that we should know, especially in white evangelicalism, that we have been taught to dismiss our own bodies’ signals about how safe we are in our environment. And call it definitely faithfulness that you should serve no matter what, volunteer, and believe the best of your leaders because of so many things.

The inheritance of Nastheism down to the more recent effects of purity culture. We have internalized and ingested a spirituality that says the body is bad and your emotions are untrustworthy. And I’m here to say that’s not scripturally true, theologically true, or physiologically helpful.

Carrie: Yeah, it drives me bonkers.

The Importance of Emotional Safety in Churches and Communities

K.J.: Yes. It’s terrible. And that in itself is, those are the seeds of religious trauma right there. But your emotions and your sensations about being in church and being around other Christians are actually telling you really important things about how safe you are and how safe everybody is in that community, and learning to listen to your own sense of distress and being disturbed by something is actually what helps you move into more safety.

Sometimes, your body has wise things to point out about whether somebody’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Our bodies helped us over time. Very slowly, our bodies begged us to listen. I know it was listening that got us free.

Carrie: This is something that really bothers me, that when people comment in church, and I’ve heard it repeatedly with pastors, you have to choose faith over your feelings.

Those are interacting with each other all the time. God gave us a body and emotions for a reason, and God has a wide range of emotions. That statement, to me, I feel is very unhealthy, but it’s something that I’ve heard repetitively.

K.J.: You can walk around in public and see people wearing shirts that say faith over fear. It’s so prevalent that we don’t even need to understand how it’s been co-opted by certain political movements. But faith over fear is self-harm because fear is your body’s wise response to show you that you don’t feel safe and help you move into safety and connection. And I know this is bold to say on a podcast, especially about OCD.

Fear is not the enemy. Fear is there to move you somewhere. All emotion is energy meant to move you. Emotion, energy, and motion. It’s intended to prompt you to pay attention to yourself as somebody who deserves safety, connection, fear, and faith. Fear drives you to treat yourself as a friend of God. Fear doesn’t have to be something that we fight.

It can be something that wakes us up. Fear makes you quite alert, and often for those of us with mental illness. It might prompt us to be way more observant than we wish we were all the time. The experience of hypervigilance is not necessarily pleasant, but it is a prompt. It is not the problem; I think it’s the space that goes back to talking about healing.

That’s the space I love seeing people get to make a shift because when you start to treat your fear, which is part of your body’s physiological response to danger and the perception of danger. You start treating your fear as a friend with something important to tell you. Your life changes. There’s room for things not to feel as terrible as they do when you’re fighting part of yourself.

Carrie: It’s so rare that I get to have conversations with somebody that’s this mindful because essentially what you’re talking about is mindfulness. This sense of being curious about our emotional state instead of trying to judge it and say, oh, I shouldn’t be afraid. The Bible says, fear not, so I have to cut that piece off and go with God’s given me love and power to sound mind. And it’s this bizarre Christian CBT, is what I call it, where we try to do some thought replacement, and we’re all going to feel better now, and it just doesn’t work.

Healing Through Embodiment

K.J.: I would say, what I’m saying more than mindfulness is that embodiment is the practice of non-judgmentally paying attention to and responding to our sensations.

I take it one step further because I think that even with mindfulness, we can stay detached from our physical experience. What’s happening? I’m making this little movement you can’t see me. You keep making this movement with my hand, like cutting ourselves off at the neck. Basically, what happens when we feel afraid, or when we feel overwhelmed, we feel ashamed?

Any of these activating big feelings that come up is that the way your body works, you’re temporarily cut off from the regulating power of your prefrontal cortex. So your brainstem is very active, your limbic system and your brain is very active, and your body is quickly mobilizing you to seek safety, and you can’t actually access the part of you that’s, well, God is love, and Christ dwells in me. Therefore, I am actually okay. You can’t access that. So we’re talking about a bottom-up approach to belief, which is that response to the sensation happening in your body; that’s what I mean by bottom. So, the lower half of you, starting with your body, responds to this sensation with curiosity and compassion.

That is what brings your body and mind back together so that you can return to that place of faith, of mentally accepting an ascent and receiving that Christ is with you. Embodiment this non-judgmental, which is easier said than done, paying attention to what’s happening inside your body.

Leaving a Spiritually Toxic Environment

Carrie: When you were leaving the spiritually toxic environment because essentially you both had to leave your jobs, it sounds like that’s a significant shift. How did you recover from that trauma to become more embodied? Was that through your therapy process?

K.J.: The recovery began, I would say, I think something that feels in this moment important to point out is part of why we don’t leave is because we are so afraid of losing our livelihood and our sense of belonging; that’s why we took us so long to leave. Truthfully, the fear of how we will pay our bills and how we will afford insurance. That kept us extended our stay in the land of toxicity for years. And a lot of people don’t talk about the practicality of that. Having money to pay for your groceries and pay for your rent is pretty important. And whether you’re working for a church or maybe realizing maybe my community is unhealthy and you don’t work there.

The fear of losing your belongings is massive. Most of these kinds of churches prompt like they are ordered around the church should be your whole life. This is where you go multiple times a week. Your small group is your community. So what happens when you have to leave? You lose everything. And I no longer think your life should be ordered around an institution, but that’s a separate conversation.

Healing was started by leaving, and that was terrifying. And it was a rescue in many ways that God would lead us out into a broader place. And it was once we were out my body got even more vocal. And I was experiencing a lot of anxiety and tremors in my arms. I was falling. I thought I had had so many mysterious health symptoms over the years with my disease, and I’ve been tested for MS before.

I had a lot of tests done. I had at one point this whole brain and spine MRI done and saw this neurologist, and this was such a moment of grace, of God’s kindness. He showed me the pictures of my brain and spine and said, your brain is beautiful. There is no evidence of disease here. “My wife is a complex trauma survivor, and I think what’s happening is he had asked us questions about what’s been going on in your life.

My wife is a complex trauma survivor.” I think what’s happening here is trauma. The further you escape this situation, the better your body will feel; some of these symptoms will disappear. At that point, I was just a therapist. I hadn’t started to specialize in trauma, but to hear somebody named that for me was incredibly helpful because you feel it’s not; what I’m going through is not that bad.

It’s hard to even get to the point of letting yourself call something spiritual abuse. Because we’re so conditioned to be deferential to pastors, to leaders, and we want to be kind. We think that it’s not gracious to say something or use a word like that, but grace and truth go together. The truth is my body reacted with such violent, intense shows and displays of a lack of safety because I had been so gaslit, demeaned, and pushed out because I had been treated less than human.

My body was responding in kind, saying this is not okay. That was my body’s protest. I started there because I think it was my physical experience of such extreme distress of feeling terrible. That prompted me to seek more help to get into therapy again. I believe that, more than anything, put me on a path of studying somatics and beginning as a therapist myself into great somatics into my practice, and that’s now the foundation of everything I do. But I start there; I just gave you the version of if we would have this conversation for three hours. I always trust that you know what; sometimes, in these conversations, there’s always a reason that what comes to my mind first is what there’s an invitation to say. And so that’s where we went.

Carrie: How wise of that neurologist to be admitting. “Hey, there’s some psychological things going on.” But not make it, “Well, it’s all in your head because you’re kind of crazy.: There’s this balance where some have had either of those extremes.

K.J: Yes, I’ve been told it’s psychosomatic. It’s all in your head dismissively, and blames me like I am too broken. And I’m sure so many people listening have experienced this too, and maybe your husband did far before getting his diagnosis. There’s a vast difference between an acknowledgment of how our brains and bodies are connected that says your symptoms are real and they make sense based on what you’ve experienced.

And this is psychosomatic; if you can fix your mental problems, your body will feel better. That’s the sin right there of individualism. That kind of medical model that blames people’s symptomology on their struggle is why they feel these symptoms when our bodies are begging us to hear the truth about the broader systems that we’re a part of, our family systems, our church systems, our society.

I think the point is that these things we feel are such problems or separate us from those who don’t have struggles as much as we do. I say this as a disabled woman. I think there’s some fierce wisdom in the ways that we struggle that our bodies are trying to tell us. You and those around you deserve more love and support than you have received. All of the symptoms of stress that we experience in how they manifest are shouting to tell us we deserve to be seen, held and helped.

K.J’s Book: “The Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poem to Find Strength in Small Moments

Carrie: Very interesting and definitely brought up some things I haven’t considered. I’m curious for you to tell us about the Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poem to Find Strength in Small Moments. How this book came about and the importance of it. Why does it need to be out in the world?

K.J: Well, we’ve been talking about trauma and part of what happens when we’re experiencing trauma. Also, when we’re feeling overwhelmed, we talked about how your body is strongly mobilizing. Energy to keep you safe, but that is sinking you further away from your being able to access the language centers of your brain, for example.

The point is when life is hard, it’s hard to have words, and the Book of Common Courage is really my offering of words for the moments in our lives and the seasons in our lives when we feel wordless and when we don’t have words to pray, and we wish we did. When we are struggling to make sense of our lives, when we don’t feel strength, and we don’t feel seen. We want to that it’s an offering of presence, as I think that books are portable presence in so many ways that there’s something about a book that can enter into the private place of your home, your bedside, your living room.

And be with you and make you feel less alone in your life and story. I think we all need the reminder that we are not the only ones with questions and confusion about God. And when it comes to whether our stories are excellent. So this is just my offering to bridge that gap between belief and the body, between your hard day and the hope that’s yours.

I wrote it, not meaning to write a book. When I was writing the Lord as my courage when I was processing my own story of religious trauma. I started to write poetry and prayers for myself. Just to process the intensity of the story and really to help myself. There’s poetry is a really distilled form of language, so to help myself distill down, what am I trying to say in this chapter?

What’s the most important thing and what’s just for me and my spouse, and what needs to be out there for thousands and thousands of people to read? Poetry helped me find my way, and then, over time, I just shared it and shared some pieces on social media, mostly because I was tired while writing a manuscript and needed something easy to share.

People felt seen by the poems and the prayers. It was before I called it poetry because I didn’t even feel I could give myself that label. It was through other people’s responses to the words that I was like; I guess maybe this would be encouraging for people, not just for me. And it became a book.

Carrie: I love it. It’s based on Psalm 23.

K.J: Both The Lord is My Courage and the Book of Common Courage walk through the exact breakdown of phrase by phrase through Psalm 23. The book of Common Courage is an exploration. It’s praying through the Psalm, but it’s also praying through getting to receive, being in dialogue with Christ as the good shepherd.

Who is the person who that Psalm was pointing towards? Most of the prayers in the book are a colic, short form of prayer, which is intentional. It’s my trauma-informed way of doing less is more. We don’t need long prayers and lots and lots of words when we’re struggling. We need small, and we need a little bit of containment.

So they’re structured, and they’re a little bit of containment to help you feel held. But they’re mostly appointed at Christ to dialogue with Christ as the good shepherd who still is seeking you.

Carrie: I love less is more. We did an episode not too long back on breath prayers. That’s something that I’ve just been able to incorporate in my life at different times or seasons, and those are very short but very helpful.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self who is dealing with chronic pain or spiritual abuse?

K.J: I think that I would tell her your body is not bad. Your body is not betraying you by feeling all this pain and struggling so much. Your body has wise things to say, and I dare you to listen. Please listen to her. I think that’s what I would tell her.

Carrie: That’s definitely good. Your body is not bad. The people hear nothing else from this episode. I hope they receive that piece because, as you said, it’s somewhat so ingrained in our Christian culture to almost be scared. To be embodied, something like you’re getting too new age or something like that is not what we’re doing. And it’s not scriptural to be disconnected from ourselves.

K.J: It’s an expression of faith in God who put on flesh to dwell among us. When I treat my body with reverence, I worship Christ, who decided to become human in a body and still reigns in a body. This is worship.

Carrie: Thank you so much for being on the show today. Share your words of wisdom. I think this is going to be relevant and helpful to a lot of people.

K.J: Thanks for having me.

Carrie: I am currently reading KJ’s first book. I went ahead and picked up a copy after I did the interview, and I’m enjoying it. As always, thank you so much for listening.

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

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

Related links and Resources:

K.J. Ramsey

85. Anxiety FAQ with Carrie and Tiffany

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 85. Anxiety FAQ with Carrie and Tiffany

In today’s episode, returning guest, Tiffany Ciccone, an author and English teacher joins Carrie in a Q&A about anxiety. 

Here are some of Tiffany’s questions answered by Carrie.

  • What is anxiety?
  • How do you respond to someone when they say that anxiety and depression are just spiritual warfare and lack of faith?
  • Everyone says to try deep breathing when you’re anxious. It doesn’t work for me. Why?
  • Should I take medication for my anxiety?
  • I pray but why I’m still anxious?
  • How do I know if I need help for my anxiety?

Tiffany Ciccone

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and ocd, episode 85. Happy New Year everyone. Happy 2023. It’s hard to believe that I started this podcast towards the end of 2020, so we’ve been going strong for a little over two years now. If you are new to our show, we’re all about reducing shame, increasing hope in developing healthier connections with God and others.

Today on the show, we actually have a returning guest from episode 41, Tiffany Cicconi. I’m very excited that you are here today, Tiffany, thank you. Very excited to be here. I brought you back because I thought beginning of the year, let’s break down and do just some very, like get back to basics. Just do some question and answer about anxiety. And I thought it would be kind of fun to have you read the questions. So that’s where we’re going today if everyone’s wondering.

However, before we get into that, I wanted to ask you to give us a little update since we missed you being a part of episode 80 on updating previous guests about what you’re doing now.

So you were writing a book about anxiety when we interviewed before.

Tiffany: How is it coming along? It’s coming along really well. A book is called Anxious with Jesus, and I have a little subtitle for it now. A memoir from the Messy Intersection of Faith and Mental Health or Mental Illness. I forget God, basically provided me with some time to just hunker down and work on it.

So I would say that my manuscript is basically finished and I’m in the process of submitting proposals to a couple publishers, and if they don’t bite, then I’m going to self-publish it. I don’t have a date yet, but it’s kind of new, exciting, unexplored territory for me. That’s where I’m at. Hey, when it comes out, we’re blasting it all over Instagram and get shared on the podcast.

Carrie: I’m very excited about it.

Tiffany: Oh. Thank you.

Carrie: If you need someone to read it and write you an Amazon review, you know where to find me.

Tiffany: Definitely will be doing that.

Carrie: I think it’s so relatable to people who deal with anxiety, because sometimes in their lives they feel like people around me just don’t get it. Even unfortunately, it happens a lot of times in the Christian community. Where if they read a story or hear a story about someone else who’s also struggled, it’s just that relatability is so helpful to be like, “Oh, okay. They’re a Christian. They’re trying to follow the Lord, and they’re also struggling too. And I don’t feel so alone anymore.”

Tiffany: Yeah, that’s definitely a major goal in my book because when I first started, I was diagnosed 15 years ago, and at that time, mental health was not as openly discussed as it is today, and I went through it very much alone. And so one of my goals now is to kind of reduce that.

I’m sharing my story so other people don’t have to live through theirs with a sense of doing it by themself.

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Fire away. What’s the first question? Or FAQ? Episode.

What is Anxiety?

Tiffany: Gladly. Let’s start with the beginning. So Carrie, what is anxiety?

Carrie: Anxiety is a bit of a broad term, so I want to kind of break it down into different aspects, right?

So there’s mental aspects of anxiety, like worry, thinking about the future, oh, something bad’s gonna happen. Being really convinced of these types of things. And we also have a physiological aspect to anxiety. In our nervous system, we have a part of our nervous system called the sympathetic that revs us up.

That’s the fight or flight response, and we have a parasympathetic that calms us down. We call that rest and digest. So people who struggle with anxiety, they’re their fight or flight systemis overactivated and their rest and digest is underestimated. So part of what we do in things like therapy is help people tap into that calming aspect of their nervous system that’s already in there.

We can have spiritual aspects to anxiety where we say, okay, maybe I’m not trusting God with my worries, or I’m closing him off, or not bringing them to him. There’s these different aspects of anxiety that I think sometimes people just look at it at only one aspect, like, oh, anxiety is a spiritual problem.”

It’s not, it’s a physiological and emotional issue. And because a lot of times the emotional components are tied to negative past experiences, times where we’ve been hurt, times, where we’ve been ridiculed, so we’re afraid of those things happening again. That makes sense. Our brain remembers things for a reason, like, don’t touch the hot stove again, don’t speak in front of people because when you were in the fourth grade and you were giving your presentation, everyone laughed at you.

It’s a multifaceted issue. So I think that that’s important for people to know. It’s not just like one simple thing, “Oh, I’m a person who worries or all of that.”

Tiffany: And I think the lack of understanding of anxiety as a multifaceted thing has been the root of so many misunderstandings I’ve had with people, especially believers.

Unfortunately, they might say, “Oh, how are you?” And I might say, “I’m okay, but I’m feeling a little anxious.” And then they come back with a spiritual interpretation of that saying, “Oh, well, when I’m anxious, I learned to give it to the Lord and he takes it.” And I wanna say that’s not what, I mean, that’s not my issue right now. It’s physiological. So I really appreciate that multifaceted definition, and I’m excited for that to kind of spread,

Carrie: Yes. For more people to understand like how our brain, how our nervous system works and that God make us robotic, but we have these complex systems in our body. And let’s face it, they’re not perfect.

None of us have a perfectly functioning body, not until we get to heaven anyway, so things are gonna malfunction and we’re active sometimes.

I Pray But Why I’m Still Anxious?

Tiffany: Absolutely. So this next question relates. It’s, “I can quote scripture and pray, but I’m still anxious. Why?”

Carrie: I think a lot of times there’s this sense of cognitive behavioral therapy that has infiltrated the church. They’ll even quote scriptures like, there’s a scripture in Proverbs and it’s probably not gonna come to me, but it’s something like about a thought process and that being a part of a person. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Tiffany: I don’t know. The first one that came to my mind was trust in the Lord with all your heart leaned out on your own understanding. But yeah, I’m not sure.

Carrie: Okay. Well anyway, scratch where I was going with that. But there’s this infiltration that if we just control our thoughts, we’ll feel better. Like just, okay. So when you have that worry, you are supposed to pray about it and let it go and move on. But going back to the multifaceted approach, we can change our thoughts about something, but that doesn’t mean that our body accepts that fact as true. There are so many people that I’ve worked with that and I think of even in my younger years, There was a very loving mentor that was like, “You just need to know who you are in Christ, Carrie, like that’s gonna change your life.”. And I knew mentally who I was in Christ, but because of previous negative peer experiences, verbal bullying, those types of things, I didn’t have that sense of confidence of who I was in Christ.

I had to heal past garbage and shame and negative experiences in order to really be able to embrace and feel deep down who I was in Christ. So with anxiety, scripture is very powerful and certainly we’re not minimizing that at all, and I do believe that you need to hide that in your heart. But I’ve met so many Christians, I’ll never forget I was, speaking at a conference on the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

It was a statewide conference they have every year on anxiety. There was an older man in the audience during the question and answer time, and he said, “I know like I’m supposed to be anxious for nothing because I was talking about how to help anxiety in all these different areas and it wasn’t a Christian conference, so I did have spirituality in there.”

He said essentially like, “How do I do that? Because I feel anxious my whole life. I felt anxious, and really what I did was I pointed him back to people that were anxious in the Bible and I said, “Okay, so do you think that Gideon was anxious before he tore down his father’s altars? Really going against the grain of society.”

I think sometimes we look at these heroes of the faith and we think that they never had any anxiety, and that’s not what the Bible says. They had anxiety, but they still acted obedience. They still followed God and Jesus’ sweat drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane over going to the cross. He still went to the cross.

He still obeyed God, but he didn’t wanna do it like he was like, “Take this away from me.”. If there’s some other way to go through this, let’s go that way. People forget that or they overlook that a lot of times. And how I see those scriptures is not as a command of like, don’t be anxious. I see it more as like, okay, God is in control.

God loves you. You’re his child and like, so there’s not anything you need to be afraid of. Like if you can rest in that security and know that like, okay, I can bring these things over to him when we pray and we let things go. I don’t think that that’s an easy process a lot of times, right? , like there are some things that really we have to wrestle with in prayer that’s very scriptural going.

And praying about something and saying, okay, God, this I don’t understand. This is really bothersome to me, or what do I do about this situation? And we don’t always get an instant answer. In fact, a lot of times we don’t get an instant answer, right? Like, okay, God, what do I do about this decision?

It’s not like there’s this shining light that comes down and says, go left. We really have to continue to meditate and pray on that. Talk to wise counsel. Search the scriptures. Okay? Is what I’m doing lining up with the Bible? Okay. It’s not a moral issue, but where do I sense the Holy Spirit leading me?

It’s not a quick thing, so I don’t know why we would think that if I just pray about something that I’m worried about, that all of a sudden I’m gonna have like, I don’t know, a warm fuzzy feeling and just be like, “Oh yes, that’s great. I have complete and total peace.” I do think that God gives us peace to where we can move forward to where we can get through to the next thing, but I think sometimes it’s oversimplified. Let’s just put it that way, in terms of how Christians view it.

Tiffany: Absolutely. I just started to look up a verse actually in Philippians when you just said that. I’m not sure where it comes from. This belief, that expectation that we’re supposed to get instant relief from our anxiety when we bring it to God.

And I think there it is a verse in Philippians. And it says, oh, it’s actually in the be anxious for nothing passage, I think. Right. Pray with Thanksgiving and the God of all peace will I forget.

Carrie: You’ll have basically, you’ll have the peace that passes understanding.

Tiffany: Yes. In Christ Jesus. And so I think that a lot comes from that and I love that they write the fact that we have to look at the entire Bible. We can’t just single out one verse and blow it, zoom in on it, and forget everything because life is complex. Scripture is complex, and that’s why I think conversations like this are really important.

Carrie: And God’s complex. Why are we trying to make God simple? He’s huge.

Tiffany: Yes.

Carrie: He cannot be simplified.

How Do I Know If I Need Help for My Anxiety?

Tiffany: Yeah. I have another, I like the next question. I feel like I’ve heard it from other people. How do I know if I need help or my anxiety? Where’s the line?

Carrie: Of course, we’re talking to a therapist and I’m very biased towards therapy, so I truly believe that anyone can benefit from therapy.

I think sitting down with someone and having an objective perspective on your life, I know as a therapist. I practice this stuff, that it’s been transformational to me to receive that support and love and acceptance from another believer who is able to affirm me and validate me, but also at the same time challenge me and say, well, have you thought about it this way?

Maybe you’re only looking at one side of the story and not the whole thing. However, when we’re talking about medication counseling, those types of things, getting help, I think we’re looking at the domains of a person’s life. Are the domains of your life impacted? So those would be things like your relationships.

Sometimes people come to counseling because they may say, “You know what? I know, like I’m driving my spouse nuts, and it’s to the point where they don’t know what to say to me. They’re trying to be supportive, but they kind of said, Hey, like maybe you need somebody more professional to talk to about this, because I’m kind of like at the end of my rope, I don’t know what to do.” Or

the anxiety is affecting their ability maybe to go out with their spouse and have a good time or be able to enjoy life with them. It may be it’s impacting work or school. So the anxiety has gotten to a point where I can’t complete my assignments because I want them all to be perfect and I’m super stressed myself out over.

I’m not sleeping, so we’re also looking at symptoms. Things like sleeping, eating too much to cope, not eating enough because you’re so anxious I can’t eat. Same thing with sleeping. Typically with anxiety, people sleep less or they’re waking a lot during the night. That can be another issue. Those types of things. Daily functioning. Is it hard for you just to get out of bed in the morning and get going? A lot of times if people have been anxious for a long period, they’ll get depressed because it’s really hard. Same with OCD.It’s just really hard to wrestle with it every day in and day out, every day, and that can really lead to a place of depression.

So sometimes when you treat the anxiety, develop some better coping skills for it, then the depression will relieve. Or sometimes antidepressants can help and different things with that too.

Should I Take Medication for My Anxiety?

Tiffany: Well said. I love that you mentioned antidepressants because that begs a whole, whole new question. New topic to explore here.

Should I take medication for my anxiety?

Carrie: Yeah. I think there is the stigma in the church about taking medication for mental health issues, which is really interesting to me because there are a lot of people in the church who take medications for other things like blood pressure or cancer or diabetes, or they have some personal family members that I know that take medications for these types of things and,

I would never say to my relative, “Well, you shouldn’t be on that high blood pressure medicine. Really what you need to be doing is exercising and eating right.” Well, they need to be doing that too, but at this point, since it’s not managed very well or their high blood pressure may be genetic, cuz sometimes it is, then that’s a medication that’s helping them live and helping them function in day-to-day.

If I have high blood pressure that is can be dangerous. So when we look at anxiety and talking about it as a multifaceted issue, if it’s affecting my physical body, then why should it be wrong for me to take something to help my physical body? Just like it’s helpful to take these things for other issues, medications for people. I always say it’s a personal decision because medications, sometimes people have had negative experiences with them or they’re like, you know what? I’m the person that gets all the side effects from the medicines and I have a hard time with them. So there are people, even though I will say there’s different options, just talk to your doctor about it.

If one thing doesn’t work well for you, you can look at something different. But some people say, “You know what? I’ve tried a medication or two, I just wasn’t happy with it, or I didn’t feel like it really helped me the way I had wanted it to.” And so they try counseling. Sometimes we try counseling for a while and then we roll back around and say, it’s really like hard for you to engage in these positive activities because of the anxiety. Your depression is so bad like would you be considered taking medication for it? And so those can go either way. I always think obviously, it’s a very personal decision what you put in your body, so I never tell people like, oh, you have to be on medication to see me or anything like that.

It’s just, “Hey, this is something that could be helpful for you. If you’re interested, why don’t you talk to somebody about it?” Whenever people initially come in, if they haven’t had just like a general blood work screening for things like vitamin deficiencies, thyroid, iron, that’s another thing that can cause issues, although that’s probably more on the low energy side rather than the anxiety side.

But anyway, the point is all of these things we talk about in a very early episode with a nurse practitioner about how all of those things can contribute to anxiety. So always like people to have a blood work rule out too. And we don’t wanna assume it’s all emotional if they’re also could be something physiological going on that could be contributing to the symptoms.

Tiffany: Absolutely. Yeah. That holistic approach is really important. And I’m gonna mention it’s just so on topic with a lot of things I’ve thought about and wrote about. One of my chapters in my book is called Therapy and the one after that is called Medication because that’s my story and I’ve been on medication for over 10 years now.

And like what you’re saying is absolutely true. In my case, I’m able to actually engage with life, engage with people, engage with God better because my mind’s working the way it’s supposed to with, you know, a boost from the medication I take. But it definitely was a journey. I know people who all over the place.

A couple good friends actually I saw go through hesitation with medication. One because of breastfeeding issues. Another because of one thing you mentioned with the, oh, I get all the side effects from everything I take, and it’s been a blessing to be able to walk with them, just kind of watch their story unfold.

And like you said, it’s not for everyone, but actually they both ended up trying it because when things get really hard, for me anyway, I end up at a place where it’s like anything to stop the anxiety. There’s something that can make me feel better. I’ll try it. That’s just my story.

Carrie: I talked about this in my first episode as like when I was going through my divorce, I was like, I’m not functioning.

I mean, I just remember periods where I would like, I’d be trying to write something for work, like a progress note, and I’d literally just stare at the computer screen for 30 minutes and all I could think about was you know my marriage that was ending. . It was very tough. I remember that was my realization moment.

That was like my wake-up call. And it was interesting because I think either that week or shortly after my therapist had said, “Have you thought about getting on an antidepressant, at least for this period? Like until you can get over this hump?” And I saw my doctor and ended up taking one for six months and it was probably one of the best things I did at that point in my life.

I think that’s another thing to tell people too, is not everybody has to be on it forever. I don’t know why people think this, because like I said, it’s not true for other medications. There’s people that might start taking medications because they’re pre-diabetic and then they can come off of. They manage with diet and lifestyle, those types of things.

But for some reason, when it comes to mental health meds, people think that somehow they’re gonna get sucked into this vortex and they’re gonna have to take it for the rest of their life. I don’t understand, cuz we don’t believe that about other kinds of medication. , it’s so bizarre. But that’s a thing that I hear a lot from people.

“Well, I’m gonna become dependent on that and I’m gonna have to have it all the time.” Plenty of things that you can take that are not addictive, right? Certainly for anxiety. Now there are some that can be potentially addictive. Those are typically prescribed more for like short-term relief, panic attacks, those types of things.

Even with that, there’s, you know, other options as well. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna get addicted if you get on an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication.

What Do I Do If I Have No Idea Where My Anxiety is Coming From?

Tiffany: Right. Yeah. Thanks for diving into that. Let’s see our next question. This is a good one. I’ve been there. What do I do if I have no idea where my anxiety is coming from?

Carrie: Yeah, I think this is a good one because people are always trying to find like the answer, right? So like if I’m anxious, there must be some kind of reason that I’m anxious. Let’s face it, because we’re both females. Sometimes you just feel stuff, , and you have no idea why. I don’t know. Hopefully, men could resonate with that too, but I really believe like there’s some hormonal components at times that we don’t know are working behind the scenes.

You know, maybe we ate something that wasn’t agreeable. Maybe it’s just something with our nervous system that’s malfunctioning and to really be able to say, you know, “Okay, I don’t know why I’m anxious right now. Like you, you may know. And if you do know, then you can acknowledge it and go, “Okay, like, yeah, I’m really worried about this test that’s coming up on Friday.

It’s worth like three grades. I’m afraid I’m gonna fail it.” and then I can approach that several different ways. Obviously, I can breathe into it, I can pray about it, I can study, I can say, you know what? I’m gonna do the best I can. And if I fail, you know, I fail.” And then we’ll have to regroup from that.

But most likely if I study, I’m not going to fail. I’m not gonna get to that point, but if you don’t know and you just feel that, especially the physiological sense of anxiety. Sometimes it can be because something from the past is triggered that something going on in the president has kind of reminded us of a previous time, and our cognitive brain is not necessarily able to link it.

But it’s stored somewhere in our body. A lot of times trauma can be stored in in the body. When we realize that, I think it’s just, we lean into it and we say like, okay, I don’t know why I’m anxious right now, but that’s where this place of awareness and acceptance comes in. So I’m gonna acknowledge it first of all, like, “Okay, I’m acknowledging that I’m anxious right now and that we can’t snap my fingers and let that go.”

But what I can do is try a coping skill. I can try to think about something positive. I can breathe, I can go outside for a walk, you know, I can pet the dog. I can think about vacation I wanna take, that would be really peaceful. Those types of things. Even though that can be scary because we feel outta control, it’s like, “Oh gosh, this is just coming up

Seemingly out of nowhere.” A lot of times it’s not really as out of nowhere as we Think it is. If we’re able to kind of like dig in and do some work in therapy. But that’s kind of what I would recommend. I think

Tiffany: That’s good. I once had a therapist recommend to me if I’m interested, if you would agree with it, recommended, you know, if you’re feeling your anxiety physiologically, if it’s just a, I think she said somatic thing, then you should attack it on the somatic.

She recommended like a jog, try yoga, you know, breathing those things. Because you have no thought to work with it. It does make it a little more challenging. Right. And I’ve actually just went through a bout of that about a month ago I was unemployed and I was shocked by how much jogging actually helped work it outta my system or something. Nothing else would get rid of it. I just go run it off and then I feel better.

Carrie: Yeah, exercise is really great. It’s really, really good for anxiety and depression and does wonders for our body, but I would agree with that. Yeah. I think a lot of times this is another problem that people have if it’s physiological, then a lot of times what they’ll do is they’ll sit there and they’ll go, “I have no reason to be anxious.

I’m fine. My life is good. It’s okay. Move on. Like what’s the next thing?” Instead of like using something physiological to help themselves calm down. Take a deep breath, quiet your mind. Meditate, walk. Good.

Everyone says to try deep breathing when you’re anxious. It doesn’t work for me. Why?

Tiffany: Yeah. So speaking of taking a deep breath, the last question I have when I got from, a friend, this one says, “Everyone says to try deep breathing when you’re anxious. It doesn’t work for me. Why?”

Carrie: This is a good question, and I think there could be a few different reasons. Some people have get really weirded out focusing on their breath, or they start to have some obsessions about it or doing it right, something of that nature. So it really trips them up to kind of have that focus is one thing I’ve seen.

Another thing that can happen is people are not breathing in a way that’s activating that calm-down response. So like we were talking about the rest and digest, there’s something called your vagus nerve that is around that diaphragm area that if you’re breathing from your diaphragm for anybody that’s. Taking choir or anything like that, it’s right above your belly button.

So if you’re breathing into that area, you’re pressing on the vagus nerve, and that’s gonna trigger that calm down response. Sometimes when you see people take a deep breath, it comes from their chest, and it’s like, if it’s way up top, then they’re not activating that parasympathetic nervous system response.

So that’s a problem. It also could be because if you’ve had a lot of trauma or negative experiences, it may not feel safe to be at a place of rest. And this happens a lot for clients that have experienced chronic developmental trauma. So for example, growing up in a home with an alcoholic parent, I come home.

Dad’s been drinking. Dad gets violent sometimes. I don’t know. Is he gonna hit mom? Is he gonna throw something? Is he gonna just gonna be passed out in the chair? I don’t know. But I need to somehow be on high alert when I get home because I need to be prepared at all times for whatever it is that I’m gonna face.

And so that will linger in people’s nervous systems and in their body. So even though they’re a grown adult, they have a good spouse. They have kids, like their home life is actually okay and can be, you know, reasonably calm. They may wonder, why do I feel so anxious? But they’re still keyed up from all that stuff that happened to them earlier that they haven’t been able to clear out of their nervous system in some way, shape or form.

So when you try to teach relaxation skills to these people, you say, “Okay, like take some deep breaths.”. It’s almost like there’s this part of their body that’s like, “Nope. We can’t do that. Not safe. Okay.” . And it almost like, sounds this like secondary danger alarm, like, “Nope, nope. It’s too dangerous to relax.”

So in those types of situations, we really have to like ease into it and kind of like dip our toe in the water and even like recognize that anxiety and like acknowledging and validating that like, “Oh, okay, it didn’t feel safe when a kid to relax or didn’t feel safe to let your guard down.

Sometimes vulnerability is super hard for people, so it may take them time to open up in therapy or time to be able to feel comfortable enough. Sometimes it’s like having another person in the room. It feels too vulnerable to relax in the presence of another person. That can be another issue that comes up with those types of things. Multi reasons. Someone may have difficulty using breathing to relax.

Tiffany: Thanks for sharing. That’s all really interesting. I’ve never been in that place myself like the deep breathing, I have positive reactions to it. I find that really interesting. It makes a ton of sense. I also didn’t know that about the vagus nerve, about that being a reason why it helps calm down.

How Do you Respond to Someone When they Say that Anxiety and Depression are just Spiritual Warfare and Lack of Faith?

Tiffany: The last question comes from a friend of mine, and it’s something again that I’ve heard plenty of people say when I’ve come out about my anxiety. Basically, what do you say or how do you respond to someone when they say that anxiety and depression are just spiritual warfare and lack of faith?

Carrie: Yeah. Okay, so there’s two different aspects to that, right? , I think we have to address those one at a time because they’re two different responses. So our anxiety and depression, spiritual warfare, I think they can be, sometimes. , but I don’t think that they always are. So that’s really the defining piece. I think that there are times where I have like a feeling of oppression on me.

That’s the only way I can kind of describe it. I can verbally say like, “Okay, this is not from God. I don’t know where it’s from. I don’t know if it’s from Satan or if it’s just depression, but it definitely feels like, okay, this is something that’s trying to pull me down. If you acknowledge that, kind of going back to the multifaceted view of anxiety.

You know, there can be spiritual components to it where you say, “Okay, I have put my faith and trust in say, money, for example.”. Maybe you are a person that was like super financially secure and then you lose your job. Well all of a sudden you’re like trying to do it all on your own. You’re not like necessarily praying about it and you’re just, you’re getting super stressed out cause you’re like, I have to make it happen.

Pride can get in the way or not trusting. So can anxiety be a faith issue? Can it be spiritual warfare? I think it can be. However, it’s just not always going back to people like, I think to give simplistic responses to more complicated issues because they don’t. What to say or how to respond. So going back to looking at people in the Bible who were anxious or who were sad. I mean, there were people in the Bible who wanted to die, you know?

Because they were so sad about their situation. So I don’t think that those individuals had a lack of faith. When you look at faith, You look at like David prayed for his son that was sick and then the baby died. Did the baby die because David didn’t have enough faith? No. That’s not what the Bible tells us. Or there are other situations you look at Paul with like the thorn in the flesh. So did Paul not have enough faith that he could be healed from this? Well, no. It was something that God used in his life as part of his sanctification process. Mm-hmm. . One of the things that I’ve really come to learn is that the things that we want God to take away in our lives, the things that we say, Hey God, I need this.

Like I need this tho removed and I need it removed right now is like the very thing that God may be wanting to use in our life to make us more like Christ.

Tiffany: Amen.

Carrie: My husband was recently diagnosed. I’ve talked about this on the show before, but he was recently diagnosed last September with basically a life-altering neurological condition and it’s degenerative and there’s no cure.

And so I think it, it’s been interesting kind of to see some similar responses to it. Like, “Okay, well we’re gonna pray for you and we’re gonna lay hands on you and God’s gonna heal you.” And he has had people lay hands and pray for him, and that’s been incredible. But also what I’ve really seen happen over the last few months as he’s, you know, walked out his life in his struggle to walk with a walker in his forties is that other people look at him and become inspired or their faith is increased.

I don’t know how you are so positive while you’re going through all of this. You know? So I would say if somebody’s struggling with anxiety or OCD, never underestimate how God may use that in your life. Or may use it in someone else’s life. When my husband was diagnosed, I remember just sitting there and telling God, like, “I don’t have the prayer life for this.”

You know, it’s definitely transformed the way that I have depended on God. It is transformed how much I’ve realized I need community and the body of Christ instead. You know, living in a lot of independent pride for a long time saying, ah, I don’t need your help. No, we got this. Like, we’re good now. I’m just like, yes, I need help. I raise my hand. “Can I have some help over here?” And that has been incredibly humbling, and hard.

This is, none of this that I’m talking about has been easy, but I’ve been reading in Olympians and Paul talks about being in Jail. He’s like, Hey, I’m in jail. And it’s totally like advanced the gospel all over the place.

Everybody knows like I’m here because of Jesus. And that’s what I really pray over my husband is that when people see him and they see his positive attitude that they’ll see like, This is Jesus, you know? In him. And that’s how he’s able to get up every day and do the things that he’s doing and have hope and to keep moving forward each and every day.

That’s a long response and some, you know, extra personal info in there. But I think if we run around every corner and say, you know, that must be Satan, or you’re not trying hard enough, because I think the lack of faith response, my husband gets really, , tiffy about this one because essentially, it’s saying, you’re not a good enough Christian, essentially, right?

well, you don’t have enough faith to be healed, then you know you’re not a good enough Christian. And we just don’t know like what God is doing behind the scenes. So many times in our life, we just have no clue. Like if you never had anxiety in your life, And this happens to people. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but like if you went forward at a prayer service and someone laid hands on you and you never felt anxious again, you and I like, we wouldn’t even be sitting here having this conversation, like trying to give hope to other people.

You wouldn’t be writing a book to encourage other people. You just never know. We don’t always see the purpose in it when we’re suffering, especially in the beginning of our suffering, we do not see, we’re like, whoa, this is awful. Take this away. Right? God’s at work all the time.

Tiffany: Amen. That’s beautiful. And we see it in Jesus himself. So, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Carrie: I kind of shared a little bit of a story of hope at the end, but a lot of times I like to, I didn’t prep you on this ahead of, but do you have, you have any recent story of hope, like where you received hope from God or another person?

Tiffany: I like that. Sure. I know I do. There’s been a lot going on lately. I think there’s a girl who’s kind of recently come back around, a church, church that I meet with, and she struggles from anxiety and trauma growing up. She’s in her early twenties. Context. I’m 40 in a month, so we have a bit of an age gap, but we’re in the same small group together.

And she called me one night asking if she could have a ride to the emergency room, and her anxiety had been so bad recently that she got to the point of throwing up the hospital visit. They said that there was more going on than just anxiety there, but I see hope in that. She called me and I stayed there with her in the hospital until 2:00 AM.

Carrie: Wow.

Tiffany: When we got out, you can’t explain that other than Jesus, like we don’t have a whole lot in common. We both really like coffee. We both have anxiety. , but, but that’s Jesus. Like, I don’t think I would’ve stayed if I didn’t know how it might feel to be in anxiety alone.

Carrie: Right. And I didn’t want that for her. And there was another occasion before that where she texted me, “Hey, I’m really anxious right now. Can you pray for me?” And I texted her back, “Yeah, should I call you?” And she said Yes. And so I called her. And I don’t often pray for people over the phone, but this is just one example, like how your husband’s, how his

disease has reawakened your prayer life. I guess that’s kind of a micro example of that. Her reaching out to me saying just like you, you know, I need help that awakened my prayer life. And reminded me of years ago when I was like much more practiced in my intercessory prayer life. And you know, I feel like God used that to kind of start nudging me back toward that and she’s, I’m going to her birthday party in a weekend or so. So that’s definitely a story of hope. I can definitely see hard things bringing people together and the body of Christ coming together in community to support one another.

Yeah. That’s awesome. I love it. I’m so glad that you joined me on this episode. It’s been a lot of fun.

Tiffany: Me too.

Carrie: It’s good to have like your insights and your feedback as well. That’s awesome. Glad we could work this out. Well, like I said before, let us know when the book comes out. We want all the details and all of the links and people can go follow you on Instagram too to keep up with you.

Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. It’s uh, Tiffany and some Italian last name, .

Carrie: I’ll link it in there for you all so you can just look in the show notes.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Carrie. I really enjoyed this too.

Related Resources:

Tiffany Ciccone

84. How Do I Set a Boundary? with Kristen D. Boice, LMFT

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 84. How Do I Set a Boundary? with Kristen D. Boice, LMFT

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Kristen D. Boice, LMFT, a psychotherapist, coach, speaker, Close the Chapter Podcast Host. Kristen and I talk about how to set healthy boundaries:

  • Signs that you need to set boundaries
  • Why is setting boundaries difficult 
  • How to determine and communicate boundaries
  • Examples and scenarios for setting boundaries

Related Resources:

Kristen D. Boice, LMFT

What are Boundaries and Why are they Important? with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

Support the show

If you enjoy the podcast and want to support what we’re doing via monthly subscription, go to www.patreon.com/hopeforanxietyandocd
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Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 84. if you’re just finding our show, I am your host, Carrie Bock, and our podcast is really focused on reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. Today we’re really focused on that third goal as we do a follow-up episode on boundaries.

So back on episode 70, wee had an episode about What are Boundaries, and Why are They Important? with Erica Kesse. That was more of an ideological episode, more on the theory of boundaries, and this episode is going to be more practical. So I’m really excited to have found a guest who can. Walk us through the practicality of what it means to set boundaries.

I know that this is a very important topic for people who struggle with anxiety and something that I’m constantly working with clients on because when we don’t have healthy boundaries, we end up being, we take on too much and we end up becoming more anxious about it. It’s interesting. Kind of before we get into this conversation, I am in the season of No right now, which has been very interesting for me because.

I have had to say no to a lot of different things. I’ve said no to professional events and trainings. I have said no to personal meetings with people and it’s just reminded me how saying no to all of those things because in my season of life right now, I have a six-month-old. I have a husband with some health issues and some other family things going on that this has allowed me to say yes to the people and the priorities that are most important to me, even though sometimes it hurts to say no because some of the opportunities that are coming my way are really good and things that I want to do, and sometimes it’s just not the right season to do those things.

So today I have with me Kristen Boice. So Kristen, welcome to the show.

Kristen: Thanks Carrie for having me. And in your intro I was thinking this speaks to so many people to have the season of saying “no” so you can say yes to what matters the most in your life. And it’s not always easy.

Carrie: No, it’s not. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Kristen: So I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and I have a group private practice with 15 clinicians. We specialized in trauma, EMDR, and brain spotting here in the Indianapolis area. My passion is helping people feel centered in who they are, that it’s okay they have their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and they’re able to have a voice without feeling guilt and shame over what they need, what they want. And having more clarity, confidence, compassion, calm in their life.

So that’s really what I feel passionate about helping people really find their center, find that anchor point within themselves so they can feel more confident in their decision-making and self-doubt.

I find a lot of people doubt even when they set a boundary or make a choice, and they’re like, “Ooh, are they gonna be upset with me? Did I make the right decision? Was that what I should?” The “should” Is that what I should have done? So that’s what I feel really passionate about. And then I have a podcast called Close the Chapter where we focus on closing, what doesn’t serve you and opening the door to possibilities.

Carrie: Good. I like all of that. That all sounds really great. 15 people is a pretty sizable group practice too. I’m sure that did not happen overnight. You have stuck the course and built the thing.

Kristen: That was definitely Holy Spirit-led. That was not me. I’m just the vessel and my team is very centered in that, and that’s really at the heart of what we do.

It’s we’re just the vessel to help people find healing. So it’s not one of those things that I went out and created. It kind of created itself, so to speak. I mean, yes, I’m managing it. Really, I never solicited one of the clinicians

Carrie: Wow.

Kristen: That’s all God-led. So it’s really been remarkable to be a part of it and it’s been an honor and a privilege to walk clients through the healing journey.

Understanding Boundaries and Their Importance

Carrie: Absolutely. So I’m curious for you, like when you know, like we were talking last episode in terms of identifying that a boundary needs to be set, like maybe an internal feeling of anxiety or anger, what internal cues like do you personally experience when you know like, “Okay, it’s time for me to set a boundary here.”

Kristen: My body will tell me the cue, so I might get a pit in my stomach. I might get that. Oh, I can see, for example, you have a family member that you know is gonna activate your nervous system and you can see them texting you or calling you, and I can immediately feel that in my nervous system, that butterfly in my stomach, or that adrenaline rush or that.

My body might even tense up in my shoulders or my jaw might get tight. Yeah. So my body is the first thing, my nervous system to tell me to check cuz it can zap your energy that if I’m not protecting that energy, that can wipe me out from being the mom I wanna be from being the partner, I want to be the wife, the leader of the team, the best clinician I wanna be.

If I’m putting my energy towards something that’s gonna zap. Yeah, so I’ve learned energy is so important and if I don’t honor that, then I don’t have it to give where it’s most important to me. Yeah, and that’s so relevant in terms of self-awareness of just us being tuned in to what our body is trying to communicate to us.

I really believe that God gives us that for a reason, just that internal sense to be the first. And I’m just curious, I know I’ve talked with clients who have said, I just don’t even feel like I have the right words or the right language because maybe boundaries were never modeled for them in their family or in other relationships.

Practical Steps to Setting Boundaries

Carrie: And what kind of help would you give those people in terms of like tone of voice and word choice that we want to use, like when we’re setting boundaries? This is the one thing I feel so passionate about. We’ll even do role play, like, okay, I’ll be like, You’ll be you. I’ll be the person you’re setting the boundary with so they can get more comfortable in their own nervous system to say it.

Kristen: So the first thing I recommend, kind of the first step is take a deep breath. Hmm, that’s good because we wanna anchor in and feel centered. So I like feeling your feet on the floor, kind of feeling yourself present in this space, in this time. So it might take three or four breaths to get kind of centered to get the courage to say what you wanna say, to get the clarity.

And I encourage people. The second thing is, if you’re nervous about it, to write out what you might wanna say, for example, So let’s say your mom is blowing up your phone, . You’re like, I love you. So I will say the acknowledgement sandwich. I love you and I can’t talk right now. I will text you when I have a moment, something like that.

And the “I love you and it’s not, I love you, but because the “but” kind of take it, erases, it kind of feels manipulative. So I like to do the acknowledgement piece first. You don’t always have to do that. Or let’s say someone invites you to do something at school and you’ll say, Thank you so much for asking.

And right now I can’t, let me know the next time and I’ll see if I have the. Or the time. So what you’re doing really is creating a positive on the front end and the back end for people. I’ve heard some people say this, I don’t know if they call it the compliment sandwich or the criticism sandwich, something like that.

I called the acknowledgement sandwich where you’re acknowledging that the person’s intention was pure on the other side, like they want, And it’s not always, but for example, if like the school wants you to volunteer for something, you can understand that they need it. Sure. I know you really need a volunteer and I so wish I had the time to help and unfortunately right now I don’t.

Thank you so much for asking that. Acknowledging that intention on the front end and setting the what you can and can’t do. That’s the boundary. What can and can’t I do. So it might even look like, thank you for asking for me to bring, I don’t know, xyz. I can’t bring that, but I can bring chips and salsa like so I’m saying what I can’t bring, like I can’t make a homemade dish right now and homemade brownies.

However, I’m more than happy to bring chips and salsa. So you can’t say I’m giving you kind of benign examples, but you can offer like, Here’s what I can do, here’s what I can’t do. Those are nice f. And the tone of voice. So if it’s more of a harder boundary, for example, it might be a family member might feel really activated or triggered by that family member and really taking the deep breath.

And if you cannot respond, where you’re gonna be more intense and maybe have more of an angry response. Where it’s, you’re not gonna be real regulated. I always recommend take a pause. When you do feel like you have the, you’re more centered in your response. Maybe you pray over your response, you feel more clear in your tone of voice texting so hard.

But if you’re saying it verbally, where you can soften your voice a little bit, you can still be clear and direct. People are afraid. I don’t, I don’t wanna be nasty. You don’t have to be nasty at all. I can be very loving, but very clear and direct in my boundary. So I know you really wanna connect right now cuz that’s why they’re texting you and I’m not available.

I will reach out when I have a moment and I’m not sure when that is, but I’ll reach back out when I have a moment. Or if you’re on the phone with somebody, let’s say they’re getting really intense on the other line and you can feel your nervous system kind of getting really activated. You’d say, I love you and I need to get off the phone right now.

Overcoming Challenges and Reaping the Benefits

Carrie: That’s good. So sometimes nasty. I’m just clear and sometimes you can plan your boundary setting if it’s an ongoing issue that you know that happens such as mom gets into rages on the phone, and then you can say, Okay mom, I just want you to know when if you start to escalate or if you start to raise your voice at me, I’m going to get off the phone.

Just so that you are aware of that, and then you can tell ’em kind of ahead of time and then when it happens in the moment, like you’ve already prepped the person, right? So then when it happens, it’s not a surprise to them anymore. You’ve already, then you’re just enforcing the boundary that you’ve already said.

Okay. You know, remember when we talked that if you started yelling, I was gonna get off the phone, I’m gonna get off the phone now going through the next thing I. A lot of times when people don’t have the confidence, they come, their boundary comes out like almost like they feel like a mouse is talking like, Oh, please don’t, Well maybe if you could not do this, and it’s this long drawn out thing.

What I’m hearing you say is really keep it short and more direct, so we don’t want anybody to miss what we’re trying to communicate to them in these situations. Just be short, clear. And one of the things I think that I really wanna emphasize on the back end is people think, well then they won’t be upset with me if I just say it a certain way.

If I just, And that’s when we go on and on and on cuz we’re trying to manage their response or their reaction or their emotions and we can’t. So when we go, okay, they may respond well and they may. and I can’t control how this is gonna land for the person. I can only manage how I say it and feel really good about how I said it and feel like I came with a regulated as much as I could, nervous system, and I said it in the most centered way I could.

Kristen: So what was my centered message? My centered message is It’s not okay. Maybe it’s not okay to yell at me and I’m gonna get off the phone. Now. We had, I kind of explained the ba, you don’t even have to say the word boundary. I explained if you start yelling, I’m gonna get off the phone. I love you and I’ll talk to you later.

It’s more your centered message and your centered in your nervous system. Those go hand in hand.

Carrie: And even, I think adults and children respond similarly because when we think about setting boundaries, a lot of times we think about that in terms of discipline with children, No, you’re not allowed to run in the house.

Those types of things. And. If you give this long, drawn-out explanation about now if you run and this could happen, that could happen, and your message of what you’re trying to convey can actually get lost in the shuffle, rather than just saying, This is the line in the sand, and I think adults are similar.

I mean, would you agree with that? Like just respond similarly to the message? For sure. I think one of the most important things is if we aren’t clear and direct, the person has no idea. I’m working with couples especially, they’re like, Well, you were, I know you’re really trying to be helpful, which is nice.

Kristen: That’s a good front-end kind of acknowledgement. But then they go on and on and on and then they’ll say, And I just wish we could have a little more connection time. And I’m like, “Okay, what are you exactly saying?” Oh, you want the person to put the phone down when you’re at dinner, turn the phones off so you can have more connection time.

So that’s more clear and direct rather than making it this big, broad invitation where the other person feels so overwhelmed and lost and not clear on what you’re saying. So it can be helpful to the other person’s nervous system, even though they may not like it to be more specific. Then they can decide whether they wanna do that or.

So if someone says, I would love to have where we put our phones away for dinner, would you be willing to do that? And they say No, then you’ve got it. Then you have to deal with your own feelings around that.

Carrie: Yeah. I think this is good because I know that I’ve worked with a lot of women who think that they are communicating something to their spouse.

And I won’t understand it, what they’re trying to communicate that they’re saying. And I’m like, Okay, so let’s boil this down to like, what is it that you actually want? Knowing what you actually want can be a really good precursor to setting a boundary or communicating with someone else about something.

And that I think you can kind of queue in just being more mindful internally. What is it that I would like in this relationship? I want more connection. Okay. So if you had more connection, what would that look like? Oh, he wouldn’t be texting on the phone during dinner. Okay. Well, that’s a pretty clear behavior that could be changed by someone that you’re asking.

I think sometimes If a man hears, I want more connection. Well, I mean, that could. 20 different things, you know, what does that mean? So I think that this is a really good concept for people to, when they’re creating the boundary. I like what you said earlier, and I wanted to circle back around to it and not miss it.

You talked about writing down what you want to say, and I definitely have made some bullet points on a post-it note for things that I wanted to make sure that I communicated to people in my life, especially when I knew they were gonna be hard, heavy, emotional conversations. Sometimes you can’t be a hundred percent regulated, you know you’re going to be nervous in that conversation or you know it’s gonna be hard.

And you may forget things because of that emotional reactivity you were talking about. So just having those one or two points, that’s kind of like the bottom line message that you wanna come across with, I think is so valuable and beneficial.

Kristen: Yes. I’ve worked with several clients where they had an emotionally unavailable parent.

What does that mean? Like they didn’t, the parent wasn’t available to acknowledge their feelings or hear what they had to say. Really be attuned to them. So I had one client and what I had typically as I’ll do a letter writing exercise where you’re writing, this is not to give them, this is for you to get clarity on what are you wanting specifically from like what are you hoping to get out of this conversation?

Right? Yeah. So they write the letter and then we do three bullets of what are you asking for? What are the three central messages, what are your centered messages that you are trying to communicate? And you put it in the three bullet points. And then when you go into the conversation, it’s okay to take the letter.

It’s okay to take the bullet point, post it. It’s okay to take those or put it in your phone to have something to re. Because your brain will then cue when we get anxious, sometimes we can go and fight-flight, freeze Fawn. Fawn is that people-pleasing response or even flop, or you kind of just faint, like your nervous system gets overwhelmed.

This can help you kind of cue the brain on, Oh yes, this is what I was trying to say. You feel more confident and clear. And what you’re communicating, and that can be really helpful when you’re having hard conversations or trying to communicate a boundary, what’s okay, what’s not okay with you, or what you’re wanting or needing. It’s more clear and specific.

Carrie: Yeah. So I wanted to go through a couple scenarios and I think you’ve already gave us some great examples and language and talked about the acknowledgement sandwich. So I’m gonna give you a couple maybe that are hard, more in terms of relationally, right? Like if someone we don’t know ask us to do so.

Might be a little bit easier to say no to it versus when someone asks something of us that we really want to please that person, or we have a close relationship and we’re afraid that somehow that relationship might get threatened if we set a boundary. So I’ll read you one of these and then just, I’d love for you to just respond how you would respond.

Kristen: That sounds wonderful.

Setting Boundaries: Saying No to Close Friend’s Request

Carrie: So let’s just say that your close friend asked you to help with the school fundraiser coming up next month, and now this is not just showing up for it, but it’s planning, there’s preparation, and then actually showing up. And so due to family and work commitments, you don’t feel like you can add one more thing on your plate right now. What do you tell?

Kristen: Thank you so much for asking for me to help with the fundraiser. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. I so wish I could help and unfortunately, I can’t right now. Let me know in the future if you need help and maybe at that time I’ll be, I’ll have more bandwidths.

Carrie: Good. I still feel like you like me when you said that.

Kristen: Oh, good because maybe that’s feel connected.

Carrie: Yes. Like being able, to keep the relational connection because if someone’s asking you to do something, They know that you would be a good person for that. Probably like maybe you’ve done fundraisers in the past, or maybe you are a person that they know is going to show up and actually get the work done that needs to be done. So that is somewhat of an honor to be asked to do something like that.

Kristen: It is, and it feels good to us if we’re honest. A lot of times it feels good that we’re chosen because maybe our inner child says, Well, I was always picked last in gym class, or no one ever wanted to sit with me. And so that little part of you inside says, “Oh, that feels so nice to be picked.”

And yet we know we don’t have the energy or the time cuz it’ll take us away from what we want, need to pour into, which might be our child, our newborn, our husband that needs our attention, our friend, our another family member, or even yourself, right? Maybe you’re just at a burnout. And you’re feeling really run down and your tank is empty, you don’t have it to offer.

And that’s okay. We are so conditioned to be givers. And when the tank is low, I’m not at my best self. And then that brings shame of I’m not a good enough mom, or I’m not good enough wife, or I’m not a good enough boss. Fill in the blank. And. I don’t have the energy to really kind of recover cuz I’m sleep deprived, I’m exhausted, whatever.

I’m giving out too much and my tank is too low, so then I don’t have it to give what matters most to me. Yeah. So it’s so important that we are giving ourselves permission to identify when your tank is low, A boundary is necessary..

Carrie: I interviewed a cancer survivor recently who talked about accepting your limitations, but also not being defined by those limitations. Finding a balance and just respecting his energy level and what he has to give, and he has to say no to a lot of different things due to still being on a maintenance dose of chemotherapy and so forth. It was interesting to have that conversation because I think that it’s hard and somewhat painful sometimes for us to admit our limitations, to admit that we have a low level of bandwidth, or that we’re exhausted right now, or because of our mental health struggles, we’re not able to do something that’s a hard admittance sometimes for people.

Kristen: It is because the shame tells us you should do it. You should be a giver. You should be a good Christian, you should be a good person, you should be a good mom, you should be a good volunteer. The shame stories that we have and the conditioning block us from actually taking care of ourselves. Because once we get to the body shut down, we are really depleted. If we are getting sick, we are getting run down like we are. The body has tried to give us signals all along, but we’ve pushed through and now the body is saying, screaming at us. I am begging you to set these boundaries. I am begging you to listen to me, that I can’t keep going.

But the shame says, “Oh, but what are they gonna think if I say no?” See, the shame stories are big. Yes. And they block us from having the healthy boundaries many times. Absolutely. So watching the shame stories though should, and that guilt really is an invitation for us to go, Okay, I need to kind of regroup here.

I need to take a pause. And sometimes taking a pause to give you some time to come up with how you’re gonna respond is okay. Thank you for asking. Let me check my calendar and I’ll get back to you. So that pause can give you the space to then reenter and come back with. Thank you so much for asking. I wish I had the time. Unfortunately, I don’t Keep me in mind for next time, or you don’t even have to say, keep me in mind for next.

Balancing Work and Personal Boundaries: The Challenge of Saying No

Carrie: I have to admit that we’re gonna start talking about work boundaries right now, and I admit that I’m my own boss and I imagine you’re your own boss and have been for some time right now. But I have had many bosses in my day.

Don’t be fooled. I remember what it’s like to have a boss. Don’t worry. And I think a lot of times people feel like I can’t set a boundary at work because my job is my livelihood and I cannot threaten my livelihood. Will you talk to us about that piece a little bit? Because I feel like we are in the day and age where employers will just push and push and push the envelope to burn people out and sometimes don’t care.

Kristen: This is a whole different world now with the phones and we are mobile. Yes. So the boundaries feel very diffuse and like we feel like we should respond to the email right away, or they’re gonna think they’re, I’m not working, or they’re gonna think I’m not doing my job. So there’s a lot of fear in setting with authority figure, so to speak, where it feels like your livelihood is tied to your performance. And oftentimes I’ll work a lot with clients on, okay, let’s really take a look at what’s realistic for you to be able to do and what isn’t. And the lines are very blurry there, right? Because they feel like they should be doing all of this. And then we’ll walk into, okay, what are you really wanting to say to your boss? pretend like, or I’m your boss. What would you really wanna say to your boss? And it’s. So their brains kind of have to fight flight or freeze response or fawn, right? like we talked about, that survival state response, that they don’t feel like they have a voice. And so we’ll work on, okay, what if we said something along these lines, and this is just an example.

I am so grateful for this job. I love working here, and maybe you don’t. So you have to tweak this based on what’s real and true for you. So it’s authentic. We don’t want it to be inauthentic. Authenticity is good. Yes. So important. And I’m just feeling this sense of overwhelm and here and be specific.

Here’s what I think come up with solutions. What I think would be helpful is if we. Here’s what I think I can still meet deadlines with, and here’s what I’m not sure. I’m not gonna be able to meet this deadline realistically. So I come up with a solution. Here’s some ideas on how I could have so and so really help me with this piece or that piece.

Oftentimes we get into, I’ve gotta do it. Without thinking about other solutions or options. Yes, that’s very true. Not knowing how to delegate or how to work as a team or ask for help. Those are all very important skills to have in these situations. Well, we can say I feel overwhelmed and I kind of feel like I’m knocking at the door of burnout.

Overcoming Shame and Guilt: Setting Boundaries for Self-Care

Those are important conversations now that really a lot of companies are talking about because their employees are burned out. And is this a healthy environment? This is the other thing sometimes we have to explore. Is this a healthy environment for you? If not, and this can be a journey, this is overnight.

Do we start looking for other options that might be a healthier fit for you? Yeah. That you’re gonna be able to have some limits. And so at five o’clock you’re. So some folks just need a healthier environment and it depends on, So it depends on the health of the organization too. So if you have this conversation and it’s not received well, then we have to process on the back end, what comes up for you?

Is this the best fit for you? Is this the best job for you? Now, that’s not always. Sometimes that’s what is a great job, and it is a great. And it’s worth exploration to say, what is my fear if I speak up? A lot of times it’s, I’m gonna lose my job. I’m not gonna get the promotion. They’re gonna think I can’t handle it.

I’m just naming a few, right? Sure. They’re afraid of rejection, they’re afraid of failure. And when we can process what’s really at the root of that? Then we start having a voice. So there’s an important concept here. I think when we talk about boundaries, it’s not talked about often that is essential. And as therapists, you’ve heard of this before, but we look at the human developmental continuum.

I’m gonna throw this out there cause I think it can really be helpful for people when they’re looking at workplace boundaries or boundaries in a family system or in a marriage or in a partnership. There’s a concept called individuation and separation. Okay, This is differentiation.

Boundaries in Family Dynamics: Codependency and Setting Limits

So in a family system, if you’re allowed to have your own thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and it’s okay, it’s celebrated. It’s a normal part of human development. It’s not a threat to the system. The system can say it’s okay. This is normal for you to question things, for you to kind of integrate what your own thoughts and feelings and opinions about it to land on, what resonates for you.

If we weren’t allowed to do that in a family system, we are gonna struggle with boundaries. That makes a lot of sense. So if we weren’t allowed to differentiate ourselves from the, like the thoughts and feelings and opinions of the family, you weren’t allowed to have your own kind of questioning and exploration and question things, and you could do that in the family and you could feel differently about something and that was okay.

It wasn’t a threat to the system. You’re gonna feel more confident having a boundary. Yes. If you didn’t get that and it was, which a lot of people didn’t right, that it was threatening to the system. You were disciplined, you were punished, you were ashamed, you were not allowed to kind of explore your own thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

It’s gonna be very scary to say how you feel. So a lot of times what we work on is being able to have your own thoughts, feelings, and opinions without. Threat. Like you’re scared that you’re going into a survival state and trying to fawn or people please, Right? Or you shut down and you just go in a freeze.

If someone gets upset with you, you have, you’re, we’re building that window of tolerance that to tolerate that it’s okay if they have a different opinion. It’s not okay if they yell at you, but it’s okay if they get sad over something that you’re like, Ooh. It’s okay. You’re not responsible for managing that emotion.

So in the workplace, when you can go, it’s okay for me to say, this is what I can do and this is what I can’t do. Yeah. We then have more centeredness and a voice. So that individuation process is very important to explore what we set boundaries.

Carrie: Yes, absolutely. In the sense of, you know, a lot of family dynamics.

There’s a level of codependency, not just in homes with people who have substance abuse issues, but in other homes as well, where it was like, well, we had to do. Please mom at all costs or please dad at all costs. And then if we went against anything on that, there was maybe harsh punishment because it was Dad’s way or the highway.

I find that in those situations, yes, boundaries are very difficult and a lot of times I work with my clients on. Kind of like goals of adolescence maybe that they never achieved. Because I really feel like what you’re talking about is part of a goal of adolescence is like you go out, you explore the world, you decide what you like and don’t like.

You decide what things you wanna take from your family and what things you don’t. And in some situations, That was not allowed. Kids were very sheltered or shamed for having a difference of opinion or thinking on their own. This is definitely very relevant. So let’s say that your boss asked you to take on a large project for work.

It’s not a requirement. But it definitely would help. Your career might say, you aced this project, it would give you a promotion. You’re also in the process of caring for your elderly mother. Don’t feel you have the mental and emotional energy to give your best work to this project, require additional work hours, additional stress, and you don’t want to disappoint your boss and are afraid of maybe hurting your career or not getting that promotion.

Kristen: This is so big to unpack So many, lots of layers. Lots of layers, and it depends on what do you want, Like how badly do you want the promotion On a zero to 10, I have people do a lot of scaling so they can get more clarity on their internal needs in wants. So I’ll go on a zero to 10. 10 being, I’ll do whatever it takes.

A hundred percent. I want the promotion zero. Nah, don’t really want it at. So sometimes we don’t, even if we weren’t allowed to differentiate, we don’t even explore. Why do I want that? It’s like the first step. Yeah. Or are we doing an automatic response, like that’s the next step. I need the promotion and that’s like my next thing.

I’m not even looking at, do I really want it? Why do I really want it? Can I even handle it? So let’s say you do really want it just to play this out. Let’s say you really want promotion and you’re still taking care of your elderly mother. Here’s the bottom line you’re gonna need.

Carrie: Yes,

Choosing Priorities: Balancing Career Goals and Caregiving Responsibilities

Kristen: I am much more rooted in reality and the reality rather than the fantasy of what we think we can do.

The reality is you won’t be able to do both well, I mean, you won’t be able to do it all. We know this. It’s a fantasy. If I think I can do it all, something’s gonna give and it’s gonna be my health, it’s gonna be, I’m gonna feel resentful towards my mom. The job I’m gonna go to burnout. So I think the first thing when we look at that is, am I willing to ask for help?

Yes. If I’m not, I’m probably not gonna be able to do this promotion well, and it’s probably gonna be a cost to me. So I think the first thing is asking yourself, what do I want? Am I willing to ask for help? And let’s say you are. Let’s say you’re like, Yes, I can do it. Okay. I think being transparent with the boss and saying, Here’s, and I know this is feeling very, I’m about authenticity, requires transparency.

And that the truth self set you free. Now it’s a healthy work environment. They’re gonna go, Oh, I, that makes sense to me. If you say something like, I really, really would love to take this promotion. This is something I’m passionate about, I really am excited about, and I wanna let you know I’m taking care of my elderly mom.

And so there may be times where I might have an emergency and I’ve gotta buzz out, or I have to take care of my. I’m going to be seeing if I can get some help with my mom. I wanted to let you know up front to be transparent. So my nervous system then goes, Okay, I’ve told them up front. I was transparent up front about my what’s going on so they know, and maybe they’re not comfortable giving you the promotion at that time.

That’s a risk you run. But transparency leads to. If we’re hiding, we’re maneuvering. We’re trying to act like we have it all together. That will lead you down the road to exhaustion. Yeah. It will lead you down to the road to unfulfillment and dissatisfaction and resentment. Every time I’m like, play the movie out, I’ll say something to a client like, I’ll go, Okay, play the movie out.

Like you get the promotion and you’re taking care of your elderly mom. Tell me what you see in the movie. They’re like, I can’t do it. I’m burned out, exhausted. I’m like, Okay, so what would you need in order to take the promotion and take care of your mom? So we get more clarity when we play the movie out of what is real for me, What will work for me, what won’t work for me.

And now we have to work on the courage to say it out loud. That’s the hardest part, typically. Mm-hmm. is saying it out loud cause we’re scared we’re gonna, then they won’t consider us for the promotion. But real in the reality of things, when you’re transparent, builds trust, transparency builds trust. It’s whenever there’s a betrayal, we know that transparency is essential to rebuild that trust over.

So when you’re with a boss and you’re transparent, the boss goes, Oh, I really appreciate you sharing that with me. Yeah. If you have a healthy boss, right? I mean, this is mm-hmm. . So there’s a lot of layers to this to consider when setting a boundary. Yeah, for sure. And I’ve definitely been in environments where I was transparent and it was used against me, and of course that made me pull back and not want to be transparent.

So recognizing what your relationship is with your supervisor. How that information is gonna be utilized. I do find that people are much more understanding when we’re upfront about things versus when we’re not. We don’t have to overshare. That’s the other key. It’s you don’t have to give every detail.

It’s a high level, I’m taking care of my EL elderly mom, and if it’s not received well, that’s information for us. , Yes. Evaluate whether the long term, this is gonna be a healthy place of employment. And that’s key information. So like you said, it’s used against you, which has the, which happens, which definitely happens.

Is this gonna be a long term healthy environment for you to continue to work in? Right. And that’s scary for people to think about changing, Right. Their place of employment. And it can also be empowering when they do decide to make a change, whatever that looks.

Carrie: I was in a, what I would consider a toxic work environment for a period.

And what I realized in that process was there were a couple times they would vacillate between, We love you, we hate you. And when they loved me, they loved me. And when they hated me, they hated me. But when they were on the downswing, they would say, Well, we’re just not really sure that this job is a good fit for you.

And I think that I took that inadequacy shame piece, like, Oh, I’m not enough. I’m not living up to the expectations. And it’s so interesting to be out of that environment and to be on the other side now saying they were right. That job wasn’t a good fit for me and there’s nothing wrong with that. It just didn’t fit the fullness of who I was and what I wanted and how I wanted to show up for clients that wasn’t me.

And it’s okay that it wasn’t. Made for somebody else. I could see you even lit up. Like the freedom you felt like they were. Right. That wasn’t the right job for me. It was stifling you. It was like it wasn’t expanding you. Yes. Full gifts was stifling you. Yeah. But it’s hard sometimes when you’re in the middle of it, and I think that’s why talking to someone like a healthy friend, family where a counselor can help you process through some of these things to know like, this is what they’re saying and this is what I’m sensing, and what’s your objectivity on it? Cause you can feel in those type of toxic work environments where the expectations are too high, sometimes you can start to feel a little crazy or inadequate like, Well, I mean I see other people maybe doing this or they’re expecting that I do this, so I must able to do it and that’s just not always the case.

Kristen: Yes. And I think talking through it, cuz sometimes our work environments mirror our family dynamics that we grew up in. Yeah. So it’s hard to see clearly cuz we’re reenacting almost like the same system we grew up in. We just don’t know. Cause it just seems normal to us.

It seems familiar until you start doing your own healing. And then you’re like, Oh, I recreated the same family system dynamic at work. Oh, and I did that in my other romantic relationship. Yes. And there’s the light bulb. That’s why that self-awareness piece and understanding families, not to blame anybody cuz that’s not the idea.

The idea is empowerment to go, I can break the chain of this dynamic. I can see now the parallel between my work environment and my home environ. And how I put myself in that same role and didn’t recognize it. So I wanted to kinda shift gears. I know we’re cramming a lot into this episode. It’s so good. I know that Christians a lot of times struggle feeling like I have to say yes, I’ve gotta help people.

God wants me to be giving. God wants me to be hospitable. And how would you really encourage these individuals that it is okay to say no sometimes. And you’re still a good Christian. I love the and in both. So I can be a loving, caring, compassionate person. As long as I’m having boundaries, I can still be that, but I might be resentful.

I might be worn out. I might be angry because now I’m giving and I might take on a martyrdom role. God doesn’t want us to, like, you’ll have some people, maybe your family system that they were like, I’ve done everything I’ve given, I’ve given here, I’ve given there, and now they’ve taken on this. Look at me.

I’ve done everything role. And they feel bitter and resentment, and it comes in between their relationships that matter the most, Maybe. With their child, maybe with their partner, maybe with their church group. It doesn’t, so that can lead. If we don’t have boundaries, it’s hard to be our best-giving self cuz I’m giving, and there’s resentment tied to it.

We wanna be giving because we are led to be like, Oh, I want to do that because I feel filled up. I now have enough to pour out and I don’t expect anything. There is no ties to needing anything back. I’m doing it because it’s pure agape love, like I’m just letting it flow from my soul. If I’m doing it out of a, I should be doing this consistently, you’re gonna be on the road to resentment and expectations or resentments waiting to happen.

We are just going to feel a level of burnout. And resentment that doesn’t feel good to us, and we’re gonna be like, Why am I even doing this? No one cares. No one even acknowledges me. And when we get to a thank you is wonderful. And I love a good, and, and we don’t wanna do it to get a thank you. Yes, that’s true.

It’s icy on the cake like it feels. That’s why I love acknowledgement cuz it feels so good to our nervous system cuz we all wanna feel seen, appreciated, understood, and loved so much. And when we are filling our tanks up, we can give that out freely and it feels so amazing to just give it without any expectation back icy on the cake.

Carrie: So tell us a little bit about where to find you and what you have going on.

Kristen: So close The chapter podcast is probably the best place to find me. And then on Instagram and Facebook, you know, all the socials at Kristen d Boyce. And then if you want a free journal that I love to give out to my clients and it’s free, you can reuse it. Beause I’m a big journaler and I believe in it in terms of getting clarity from the Holy Spirit. Like it just is so powerful to get centered at kristendvoice/free resources and it will be emailed to your in. And what I love about that is I love how God gave us the breath to kind of come back.

Yeah. Reground us in nature and all these gifts. And if we can come back to ourselves and listen to the leading and have clarity, that is the leading, that is in our fear talking. That’s the Holy Spirit talking. Our nervous systems are freed. And there’s so much healing that can take place when that happens.

So I’m a firm believer in journaling. I love it. That’s why I wanna give it to everybody. I’m like here, cuz everybody’s like, Well, I don’t really like journaling, and what am I gonna write about? And this helps kind of guide the process.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I like that. So since this podcast is called Hope for Anxiety and O C D, we like our guests to share a story of hope at the end. A time where you received hope from God or another person.

Kristen: There’s so many. Really what came through to me when I was praying over this question, I was thinking about a client just came through, and I’m not gonna give specifics, but when I work with people that you feel like, how are they ever gonna recover from this loss or this trauma?

And you think, how can they get up in the morning? How are they gonna move when you’ve lost all your children due to a tragedy? How are you going to ever recover from that? And I’ve seen over and over and over again how God like pours into the pain. And once we work and acknowledge the pain, God can tend to it and walk alongside us in it.

I always think like Jesus walking hand in hand with us going, I know honey, I know it. And I know this is so painful and you can’t understand it right now. Yeah. And I’m right here with you just holding the pain for you. And that’s the privilege of seeing God’s transformation was some of the most painful things anyone could ever go through.

And the second piece that came to me is as a community, we had a school shooting back in, Oh yeah. It was several years ago. No one would’ve ever expected that to happen in our backyard. And as a community, it opened us up in such a way for healing. For us to come together, love one another, and acknowledge each other’s pain and fear.

Yeah, and just so there was so much transformation that happened in a whole community. And as a result, I do a, every other week, this is about me, but as a result, not of just the shooting, but at the pandemic. Mental Health Monday with our mayor on Facebook, and now we’re talking about mental health. We’re talking about all these hard topics that’s transformation.

Like here we are trying to hold the pain and acknowledge people’s pain in the midst of all of this. And we came together despite trauma and tragedy. So those are the two things that came to me when you were asking that question.

Carrie: Mental health Monday with the mayor. That’s a lot of ems, but I like it.

It is. It is. We don’t say with the mayor. I just was adding that piece. It’s just called Mental Health Mondays.

Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your wisdom. I think this is gonna be very practical for people who are looking to set boundaries and then also identifying throughout.

We kind of identified some things that get in the way of people are struggling with anxiety of setting boundaries.

Kristen: Thank you so much for having me on, and the work you’re doing.

83. The Power of Gratitude and What I am Thankful For

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 83. The Power of Gratitude and What I am Thankful For

Today’s special is a solo episode about the power of gratitude and how it can help us through hard times.

  • Things I’m grateful for
  • How to be grateful in any circumstances
  • What the Bible teaches us about gratitude
  • What are the benefits of gratitude
  • How to practice gratitude and enjoy the simple things in life

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 83. Today on the show, we are talking about the power of gratitude and some things that I am thankful for in this season. It’s been a unique season to be writing a list of things that I’m thankful for because we’re definitely going through some challenges right now, but I thought that working through this with you might kind of help you think through some things that you are thankful for as well as we go along the process.

Biblical Teachings on Gratitude and Thankfulness

You can think of people in situations, positive things that are going on in your life right now. Throughout the Bible we are told to be thankful and I just wanted to go over a few verses with you that express this. Of course, there’s many that we could cover together obviously, but I just picked out a few that I thought would be good. 1 Thessalonians 5: 18 says, “Give thanks In all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” All circumstances. It’s not always easy to be thankful. That is a tough one, but we’ll talk about that a little bit more in-depth later.

This next verse literally changed my life. I’ve probably talked about this on the podcast before. In fact, I know I have is James1:17. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” This first changed my life because I read it while I was going through my divorce in very dark time of my life, and I realized that if there was anything good in my life that God put it there, and it just caused me to be so thankful and really just pour out a lot of gratitude towards God in prayer for all the little things I had to be intentional in that time to be thankful and to find those things that were good in my life.

When you’re intentional and you look for things to be thankful for, you will find them. Where most of us are pretty familiar with another scripture passage in Philippians 4 that talks about don’t be anxious about anything. Oftentimes we don’t rewind a couple verses before where it says, “Rejoice in the Lord. Always. Again, I will say rejoice.” So when they repeat things in the Bible, it’s for emphasis purposes. When you’re reading something, it doesn’t have a tone of voice to it, but if you repeat it, it’s like, “Oh, hey, that’s important.” This sense of like finding joy in the Lord. That is can help us with our anxiety and a lot of times we don’t take that into consideration. I talked about this on a blog post, I believe a while back that’s on our website and maybe my assistant can link that to in our show notes for you guys. In Hebrews 13: 15, it says, “Through him, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”


Sometimes praising God does feel like a sacrifice. Of course, in the biblical times in the Old Testament, people actually did like provide physical sacrifices For us, it’s a sacrifice of our time. It’s a sacrifice of our energy, and it’s a sacrifice sometimes of laying down things that we. For things that God wants, but we want to be a grateful people, which is hard in our society because advertising constantly tells you about what you don’t have, and they try to tell you what you should want and need.
We are inundated with advertisements, whether from the internet, from tv, from media that are constantly telling us, you know, “You need this car because it’s gonna make you feel like a million dollars,” or You need this product because it’s gonna help you get a member of the opposite sex,” whatever the case is.

Finding Gratitude in Challenging Circumstances


So we’re constantly put in this state of like, “Oh, I don’t have that.” Or like, “Oh, I want that.” And it is not so healthy for us, and we have to shift gears out of that. To really look around us and be thankful for the blessings that God has given us the simple things maybe each and every day, and I know that for me, I never really used to be a thankful person.

I struggled a lot with that since I was a child. Really just with this the glass half empty instead of half full mindset. My parents, I would be kind of like grumbling and complainy and they would say, “Carrie, tell us something you’re thankful for. ” And when you’re grumbling as a child, that is not exactly when you want to be thankful.

Gratitude and its Positive Impact on Mental and Physical Well-being

I do appreciate that they tried, but I don’t think it really helped me become a thankful person. What probably helped me the most were those dark times in my life and having use gratitude to pull myself out of them. I have told you what the scripture said about being thankful in gratitude, but also wanted to tell you what the psychology says about it, which shouldn’t surprise you, but here we go. “People who practice gratitude feel better physically and emotionally.” That’s awesome. They’re happier, they have better immune function. Whoa! That just blows my mind like our body works better in terms of our immunity.

If we are practicing gratitude, they sleep better, they have more ability to be in the moment and cope with life is really where mindfulness comes in. This sense of just being in the present moment. Gratitude is a present-moment activity. You can’t be stuck in past regret or be worried about the future and be grateful at the same time. Those two things can’t coexist inside your system.

Incorporating Gratitude into Daily Life

So how can we practice gratitude? I used to have this, I think it’s called the Five Minute Journal, something like that.
And you do maybe five minutes in the morning or five minutes in the evening. I can’t remember. But I ask you the same exact questions every day, and one of the questions it asks you is, I believe, like three things you’re thankful for, which is great, but I think it gets a little mundane after a while because you tend to kind of think about some of the same things, right? Like if somebody were to ask you, what are you grateful for? Like, “Okay, well I’m grateful for this person in my life, or I’m grateful for my child. I’m grateful for waking up today.” You know, it’s a new day and it’s hard to get specific. So I would encourage you if you struggle with gratitude, I’ll just tell you some things that I did that helped me.

I had a little one of those pocket calendars from like the dollar store. It’s not even the dollar store anymore. That’s sad. But anyway, I had one of those pocket calendars I would write on each day. Something specific about that day that maybe had happened that I was thankful for, or maybe that I noticed, like, “okay, I was thankful today that I got to smell some flowers outside and they smelled really good.” Or I’m thankful that you know, I got gift today from somebody, it was just a card, them telling me they cared about me, whatever the case is, and a lot of times I could go back and read those and you forget, you know, if you don’t write something down, a lot of times you forget that some of those things have even occurred.

It’s just a really great activity as a practice and it doesn’t take very long at all like two minutes to write something down on the calendar. I do think it’s important to be very specific. In your gratitude practice, even if it’s not about that day, just being in prayer and meditation of, “Okay, I am thankful for these very specific things.”

Personal Examples of Thankfulness and God’s Provision


So I thought I would go through some of that for you guys of what I’m thankful for in my life. Maybe to give you examples, I am specifically really thankful for my husband. You guys have heard Steve on the podcast before. If you’ve been around for a little while, if you’ve listened to any of. Marriage episodes together, he has an incredibly positive attitude, even though he’s going through some intense physical balance challenges right now. He got in what’s called vestibular therapy, which is for balance walking, those types of things. It’s a very specific type of physical therapy, and I really see how hard he works, how much effort he puts towards that, and his therapist tells him, “You know, a lot of people with your condition, they just sit down and they stop working and if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Those types of things. So I really see how he will tell other people, a lot of times if they feel bad or say, I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.

Oftentimes people will say, everyone goes through something and this is my something that I have, and you know, it’s.
He has this incredible gift and ability that he doesn’t worry about things. I wish he could give me that. I don’t know how he does that, but he just somehow he knows or has his just like internal confidence compass that it, it’s like everything’s gonna be okay. I’m like, can I get some of that? That is a gift.

Steve is also has a great heart just desiring to help other people. He writes me little encouraging notes around the house. A big thing that he and I are thankful for is that he went back for. His follow-up after a year of working with his eye specialist and he hasn’t had changes in vision, so we are so thankful for that, even though he’s had these other balance challenges.
I think at least I lived in fear for a little while that he was going to go blind, and so I’m just thankful that he’s not blind and he’s able to see his daughter grow up and at this point he’s not in a wheelchair. He’s still able to walk and still able to get around and have some levels of I. We are thankful for that every day that he has that ability. We have been told recently that it’s not really if you’re in a wheelchair, it’s more of when you’re in a wheelchair, but nobody can tell you if that is 10 years down the road or two years down the road, or six months down the road, which is hard for life cleaning.

Of course, I am also incredibly thankful for my daughter Faith. She just has this smile that lights up the entire room when she wakes up in a good mood. You love it. And she doesn’t always wake up in a good mood, cuz you know, a lot of times she’s hungry, but sometimes she wakes up from a nap or after she’s, you know, gone back to sleep and woken up and just smile at you like, she’s so happy to see you. That’s the best thing that happened to her day, which is really great. She is pretty easy baby, like pretty easy going and she just adapts. You know, I have to take her. We go to various appointments and things for Steve, and a lot of times I will take her and stroll her around while he’s in an appointment or something of that nature, and she just kind of goes with the flow. She sleeps really well in the car, so thankful for that because if she didn’t sleep well in the car, or wasn’t able to get her naps in that way, some days, that would be really tough on her.

I think one of the favorite things, blessings, in terms of her right now is just being able to hold her. She’s going to sleep and rock her, and just kind of like that sense of gentle trust that she has in us right now. I know that one day she’s gonna get older and not wanna cuddle up to me, so I’m trying to enjoy all the cuddles while I can.

We are very thankful that we have a house to live and that’s in good shape. We have been praying about a one-storey house and it looks like we may be able to move into one pretty soon, possibly in January. It’s kind of a still a possibility, not a for sure thing, but so thankful for that, that God seems to be answering that prayer. If for some reason that doesn’t work out, I know that he will provide something else for us that was really going to just take a lot of pressure and stress off of us with all of the balance conditions that Steve’s having. Our driveway is crazy and we have stairs and then some more stairs when you get into our house. It’s just people are kinda like, “Why don’t you build a ramp?” And I’m like, “It’s not that easy.” I appreciate those people that have wanted to do that for us. However, we really just need to get into one storey with some flat land and it looks like God is opening up that door and providing that for us, and also will be able to still be, you know, local. We’re not moving super far or anything like that, so that’s nice.

I am thankful for my car. Let me tell you this, I got the opportunity to drive this, let’s call it a small SUV. It was a 2002 and we drove it to Florida for a family funeral and had to bring some stuff back with us and so forth. So that was why we didn’t choose not to fly for that one, and I so enjoyed driving this car. It does all the things that like my car does not do because my car is a 2013. However, I will tell you that I’m so thankful that our car is paid off. I joke around that it’s the only car I know of that has a walker and a baby stroller in it, and we really have to kind of cram stuff in there. It’s not a big car and so enjoyed driving that, that small SUV because we just had room for things. So thankful for our car and that God has provided us a way to get to Steve, to his medical appointments and Faith when she has appointments and checkups and things that we can take her there, that we can get to the grocery store, other things. So I’m really thankful that our car is running well and that it’s paid off.
It’s not the newest thing in the world, but it gets us from point A to point B, and we’re thankful for that for sure.

I’m super thankful for God’s financial provision in this season. We’ve had a lot of medical bills, obviously for everything that’s going on with Steve, and I wanna tell you a quick story because this is just a story of faith. I want to write down for my daughter to let her know that God hears and God understands and he knows like exactly what we need. I had an unexpected expense come up recently that I really, you know, did not know I was gonna be hit. And it was $300. I was like, Okay. You know, trying to think through where is this $300 gonna come from, so forth. So I just, I prayed to God and I said, “You knew that this $300 bill was gonna come. I didn’t know it was gonna come. And so, because you knew it was gonna come, I just believed that they’re gonna get the $300 and I don’t know. Like how we’re gonna get it. I don’t know where it’s gonna come from.: I just pray and I believe that you’re gonna provide it for us because this is something that we really need.
And no lie, literally the next day we get a card that has a hundred dollars in it. We get another card that has $200 in it. Completely was not expecting that, and it was just like God showing me like, :Yes, I’m taking care of you. I know exactly what you need. I’ve got you.” God will do that for you.

That’s not just like a God does that for care thing. God will originally supply all your needs according to his glorious riches and Christ Jesus. Philippians, I believe that’s 4:19 tells us, and that’s just something that I have repeated to myself over and over. You know, as we get these different medical bills and therapies and things like that, I’m like, You know, God will supply all my needs. God will supply all my needs. It just almost has become like this prayer that I have repeated and has helped me really calm during those seasons where I get anxious about bills. I am super thankful for our church in this season.

Something happened to us and I actually asked Steve if he wanted to talk about this on our marriage episode, and I don’t think that he wanted to talk about it, but I feel like it’s important and it’s important to talk about for the Thanksgiving episode, God uprooted us from a church, a place that I had been in for several years. Steve had been in since we were married, and I believe that God uprooted us because he wanted to plant us somewhere else. But I will say that there was a time period in between where we were a bit lost, going through some hard things that were going on in the family. And didn’t really have support like it was just rough, trying to kind of reach out to people even emotionally and say, “Will you pray with us? We have this and this and this going on in our families.” And it was just, it was tough. We weren’t getting the support and even just the prayer support that we needed in that season. And I’m telling you that God did what only he can do. He planted us in a completely new church that someone had invited us to. We knew the moment we walked in the door that this is exactly where we’re supposed to be. This is what we have wanted for months, um, for a long time. And it was around the time where Steve got his diagnosis shortly after we started going there. And there’s just been this outpouring of love of people that barely know us, really. I mean, that brought us over meals that have taken, driven him to appointments that have just, you know, brought us things that we needed. Absolutely incredible. Totally blown us away. We feel very undeserving but just incredibly grateful that God has put us in this place to be really wrapped around and loved by these people in a big way.

We have a great small group through that church as well, and it’s just been good positive relationships for us in this season. And with that, I will say that I am thankful, even though it’s been hard this year. I am thankful for my friendships.
I’m thankful for the people that God kept in my life and I’m thankful for the people that have walked away, which may sound super weird because it’s definitely not comfortable. It’s actually pretty painful when people walk away from your life or when you know you, you have a friend and they’re just kind of, they’re disconnected and not really there for you.
That can be super challenging. However, I think what I’ve learned over the year is that God brings different people into our lives for different seasons, and some people are meant to go that one or two miles with us, and some people are meant to go that those 10 miles or 10 years with us. And not everybody is meant to go that far with you, but it’s definitely a blessing when you have one of those longer-term relationships.

I’m thankful that the people in my life right now are people who are really invested in mine and Steve’s wellbeing, and that I feel incredibly thankful and blessed about. I am thankful for going through some of these challenging things recently because it has made me be a stronger person and draw me closer to God.


When Steve first got diagnosed, I remember thinking like, I don’t have the prayer life for this. I don’t have the dependence on God that I need in my life to get through this. So that has been something that I have been actively cultivating. Definitely still in process. But I know that even though it’s hard, each day brings me closer and closer to God and to knowing who he is and understanding his purposes for our life.

And this year, how do I explain this one? Because I am not thankful that someone died, but I had a close family member pass away this year. It’s not something that I’m ready to talk about in-depth, but I believe that I will at some point in the podcast because I think it’s important to share that story with you and my process of that grief. The piece that I’m thankful for though is not that I lost a family member. I am thankful that that family member is in heaven. I’m very thankful that they’re no longer suffering because they were suffering with cancer really badly, and I’m thankful that God in his sovereignty at the right time, took them home and didn’t allow them to suffer than they already did because it was just, it was a lot. And I’m thankful that even though that family member isn’t here with me anymore, that I really feel still very connected with them. And I feel like I know kind of what they would say to me in different scenarios, in different situations in my life.

So I’m thankful that even though I’ve lost that family member, I still feel close to them. It’s very bizarre because I haven’t ever had this experience before with anyone else that I’ve lost. I think it’s because I was not as close to other family members that I have lost before, but since I was very close to this individual, it’s allowed me to still feel very connected or having some kind of sense of presence to them. And that’s the only way that I can explain it. I don’t really know what it means other than maybe we are somehow connected in on a spiritual level. I don’t know.

So that’s the roundup on what I am thankful and grateful for. I hope that it helped you make your own list or helped you think about how you can incorporate gratitude into your own practice, spiritually and emotionally which will also help you physically as we learned earlier.

It’s so incredible how God has created our systems to interconnect emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It’s just so intertwined and it makes so much sense when we read the Bible and then we look at these psychological studies. They’re not in contradiction to each other, right?

The Bible says, Give thanks and then the studies say, “Hey, giving thanks causes all of these positive health benefits.” It’s just so cool when we look at things like that. I think just confirmation of things that we know to be true. We’ve got one more episode this year on how to set a boundary, and it’s a good one.

I asked our guests to go through some very specific scenarios with us on what she would say and how she would handle the situations that I brought up. I think it’s great, and it may help some of you as you’re going into the Christmas season or spending more time with family. We’re only putting out one episode in December to take a little bit of a break for Christmas and end of the year. We will definitely be back in January with some question-and-answer episodes on anxiety and then on OCD. So please send us your burning questions that you have either for the Q and A anxiety episode or the Q and A OCD episode. We would love to feature your question on the air. You may send those via our website at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

As always, thank you so much for listening.

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

Related Resources:

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82. Trauma-Informed Ministry with Suzanne Burns

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 82. Trauma-Informed Ministry with Suzanne Burns

Suzanne Burns, founder and executive director of  Foundation House Ministries and BeCharityWise. Today on the show, she will share with us about creating a trauma-informed ministry. 

  • How Suzanne started her work with mothers in crisis situations
  • What led her to do some more research about trauma-informed
  • How to effectively minister to people
  • Reframing the role of ministry
  • More about BeCharityWise 

BeCharityWise

Foundation House Ministries

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 82. I am your host, Carrie Bock, and if you’re new to our show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. Today on the show, I’ll be talking with Suzanne Burns about creating a trauma-informed ministry.

I feel like this is so important people in the church to understand and know about, and we’ve had other episodes about helping people with anxiety in the church. So I’m excited about this episode as well. Suzanne, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Suzanne: Yes, I am the founder and executive director of a maternity home, residential and non-residential program for mothers in crisis.

We serve women coming out of jail, out of rehab, pregnant, and a. Sometimes they’ve lost custody or are working towards reunification, whether that’s with family members or with the state. And so we’re part of that process towards getting them to a place of being able to build sustainable stability. And out of what we’ve learned through doing that for the last eight years, we’ve also launched a kind of a side to other churches and nonprofits to help them understand how trauma and poverty mindset and addiction affect the people that they serve so that they can serve more effectively as well.

Suzanne’s Journey and Mission to Support Women Coming out of Difficult Situations

Carrie: Awesome. Now, how did you get started in that work in, you know, mothers in crisis pregnancy situations?

Suzanne: Yeah, I was actually a single mom for a number of years, myself.

I had a crisis pregnancy when I was in college, and then, um, got grew up in a very, very Christian home and found myself by the time I was at a junior, at a Christian university, I was smoking, I was drinking, I was experimenting with illegal drugs, and then I ended up pregnant. And we did get married and it was not good a marriage as it wasn’t a dating relationship, which led to divorce when my son was just right at two.

And then several years of single parenting, I met and married my current husband. We’ve been married now almost 20 years, had a second son.  And as I began to kind of rebuild and restabilize, I wanted. Be able to give back to women that were in the same situation that I had once been in. And so I began volunteering at a local pregnancy health center, and I was there for seven years.

I ended up really, really loving it, loving what I did. But we just began seeing more and more women coming through that needed a deeper level of support. They were pregnant and living in their cars. They were afraid of being kicked out by, you know, angry stepdads. They were 24 and didn’t have a g e d kind of floating like a leaf in the wind.

So many of these girls, one particular mom that I recall, she came in one day and she was really frustrated because she had been looking for a job. And so I’m kind of a fixer. So I was asking her, “You know, maybe, are you applying for the wrong kinds of jobs? Are you a poor interviewee? How can I help you fix the problem?”

And she said. “Well, you know, at some point in the interview the baby gets fussy or he needs a diaper change and you know, I’m pretty sure the interview is kind of over at that point.” And of course, my first thought was, “Oh, I’m pretty sure the interview was over when they saw you pushing in the baby stroller.”

But I had been there long enough that I knew that’s never the full picture. So as I began asking more questions, I realized that the reason she was taking her child with her in the first place was because she was living with the baby’s father who was a violent drug dealer and people in and out all day and night.

And so she did not trust him to watch their son even long enough for her to get a job. And I went home that day and told my husband, We have got to do something. It has to be. No one else has stepped up. It has to be us. It took about two and a half years of fundraising and developing, and we opened in 2014 and that conversation was in June of 2011.

Getting Started and Early Challenges

Carrie: Wow. Tell us about, as you started that ministry and were working in it, some of the challenges that you had earlier on that led you to do some more research about trauma information.

Suzanne: Yeah, it was pretty much everything I’ve learned has been because a client came in that we didn’t understand or we didn’t know how to handle, and that is what sent us then to the research.

The Lord is so gracious in giving me a picture and then giving me the education behind it, and then bringing others who need me to know that information. So first it was a poverty mindset, understanding how chronic poverty kind of reshapes. Thinking the worldview of individuals living, especially those living in generational chronic poverty.

Then we started getting some clients coming in who had a history of trauma, but we didn’t understand what that meant at the time because I was used to seeing clients like. One hour every three weeks. You know, living with them is a whole lot different. And so we were getting frustrated and, and we were having a lot of girls come in and go right back out again.

We had one girl come in and she was sick constantly and it was always like an E.R  worthy trip. She would go in to, you know, about every three to four. And we began to like time. We began to say, Okay, well it’s been, you know, this period of time we’re about due. And it was always like bladder infection, urinary tracted infection.

It was always something similar but not exactly the same thing. And it was always validated by the doctors, because of course we were like, well, you know, at some point she’s gotta be faking it. and simultaneously with this, she was also losing jobs because of the time off that she was having to take her cycles was six weeks.

And so we were seeing that about every five weeks she was, you know, getting sick, not able to go to work. Her work isn’t happy. They end up firing her, she goes to the er and then we start the cycle all over again. She ended up that year with 13 different W two. And we were so confused. We were so frustrated cuz she was super, super sweet.

And then we had another girl move into the house who like used unbelievable amounts of toilet paper just by herself. This was way pre-pandemic, way before there was an actual toilet paper black market. But we were just like, how is this disappearing? How can one person be using this much? What is going on?

Understanding Trauma-Informed Approach

And then we had a student intern, a Masters in Social work Intern, doing her their practicum with us, and she had us watch a video by Bessel VanDerKolk, who is the author of The Body, Keeps the Score and instantly pieces fell into place. Immediately, we began to realize that this is the physical outgrowth of the trauma that these women had experienced.

That was the big awakening, eye-opening. We were immediately addicted to absolutely everything, trauma-informed to the point that we began teaching others just because we knew so much. We just saw the vast needs. There’s such an ignorance and such a lack within the church to understand. It was so fascinating and it was also such a relief that, “Oh, that it can be fixed.”

There is reason why her stomach issues were so constant. There is the reason why she was unable to process, to digest the healthy nutritional foods we were giving her. Her body had actually acclimated to Mountain Dew and Cheetos for lunch because that had been for years. So when we’re having salads and you know, fresh fruit and.

That was what was abnormal to her system. So layering for me, layering the poverty mindset with the trauma made it so much easier for us to then deal with women coming in with a past of addiction. Those coming in with a history of mental health because it, to me, it’s just like a layer cake based in the generational chronic poverty thinking that then the trauma is, it is components, you know, it’s either affecting or affected by the client and.

That leads to addiction as a coping mechanism, right? It leads to mental health as an epigenetic response to the trauma. It, it’s all interrelated, but it’s all rooted in their trauma, but also rooted in poverty thinking. Just from learning all of that, we have radically revolutionized how we work with.

And we now boost a 97% success rate of our clients being able to maintain their stability at least a year post-graduation, which to us is a housing, transportation, employment, and childcare.

The ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study and Its Connection to Chronic Health Conditions

Carrie: Wow. That is really amazing because those are a lot of pieces and a lot of times what we see is people come into programs and they’re doing okay and then they leave the program and they relapse or something happens and you know, they’re back into that cycle again, like you were talking about. We wanna talk a little bit about the ACEs study, and I’ll have to kind of explain this a little bit to people, and then I have a question for you. So many years ago, I think this was actually done maybe in the nineties or early two thousands, Kaiser, the eighties early is when it started.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, so Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare company that’s out west in the US, they said, we really wanna look at these people with chronic health conditions. We weren’t even talking about mental health. They were talking about physical health, things like high blood pressure, and diabetes, and looking at the connection between what they called adverse childhood experiences and these chronic physical health condition.

They had a scale where there’s 10 items on the adverse childhood experience scale. Some of them are things like parental divorce, obviously types of abuse, you know, physical sexual abuse. I think maybe having a parent with an addiction, isn’t that on there? These types of experiences that people had in childhood, and what they found was that okay if you had one or two, there was maybe a little bit more of a risk for you to have a chronic health condition, but once you got four and above, all of a sudden it was like a graph skyrocketed at that point like “Whoa, for these people to have addictions and actually end up with not just addictions, but that was one of the things they were looking at. Like I said, the high blood pressure and cholesterol, and so. and looking at people who have had more adverse childhood experiences may even have a shorter lifespan because of some of these chronic health issues that also arise.

What you had told me when we had talked previously. The average church attender has zero to two adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs are usually and the average range for your ministry is seven to nine, so obviously, that’s a big gap to bridge in people kind of understanding what some of these women have been through like can you talk to us about like the challenges of bridging that gap?

Suzanne: Yeah, exactly. So many of them have this significant trauma history. Someone with an ACEs score of seven to nine means that they have experienced at least one instance of seven to nine of those items on the ACEs study. And just for your audience, they are physical, emotional, sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, and then household dysfunction category is a family member with mental illness and incarcerated relative domestic violence, mother treated violently, substance abuse or divorce, but that also can include fatherlessness. What we found was that these women are coming in and they’re carrying this load of trauma.

They’re carrying the past pain, they’re carrying the physical effects of this. They’re carrying the social and emotional and cognitive impairment because of that, you know, many of our moms about 70% did not graduate with a high school diploma or GED because all of this trauma is happening as children.

And so that is significantly affecting them as far as school goes. Then you get labeled a bad kid, and so then you begin adopting those risky health behaviours, whether it’s teen boys that are driving too fast, whether it’s dating the wrong kinds, whether it’s, you know, drugs and alcohol and, and all of these different things that then lead to disease, disability, social problems, you know, in and out of jail, in and out of rehab programs, which can then lead to early death. It can also lead to chronic heart disease, to certain forms of cancer, to COPD and so many different things that we don’t even associate usually at. For an 18 to 22-year-old, the ACEs study does demonstrate.

So we have women coming in from the church who want to volunteer. You know, in this world that have experienced, like me, the ACE questionnaire asks you from birth to age 18 that to answer that I was a zero. All of my ACEs occurred during this one single relationship. And I went from a zero to a seven and then kind of back down again once I began to get my life back together.

Challenges in Ministry and Volunteer Engagement

I have a certain degree of experience, but I cannot relate to the majority of our clients. In the fullness of what they’ve experienced. And so these little volunteers from the churches would want to come in.  I experienced this when I was young, you know, I did that. And so they think that that is enough to balance out the relationship.

It really isn’t because they can’t understand the depth of the brain changes that have occurred. So one of the most important things for us when we’re talking with new prospective volunteers is to really get them to understand what has changed in the brain development of our typical client. They think differently. They respond differently. They have been conditioned to think in these certain ways, and so their behavioral patterns.  It takes a long time to change those. So you’re going to see more rapid outbursts of anger. You’re gonna hear foul language as just as common. You’re going to see and hear things that you’re not going to expect in a typical ministry, and you don’t necessarily have permission to address it.

That’s usually the hardest part because that is hard. They haven’t built trust with our clients. We have, many of our volunteers want to come in and they wanna do bible. Well, many of our girls just flat aren’t interested first of all, and second of all, even if they are interested, they’re not ready for that level.

There’s a great deal of biblical illiteracy, but there’s also a lot of church hurt and church abuse that has to be gotten over before they’re ready for these types of things. And so many times they wanna come in and volunteers from the church want to come in and do these big deep Bible studies with the.

That impacted them, but they’re not a good fit for our clients because maybe they can’t read that well. Maybe they’re not equipped to do the amount of homework that is associated with some of these types of programs. Maybe they’re not ready emotionally for what is going to be unveiled. Maybe they’re not ready as far as just being able to read scripture specifically.

Some of those Old Testament names are really complicated, especially if you accidentally ask one of ’em to read out loud because you’re wanting to draw them in. You’re doing the things that in a typical church environment you want to do, it can backfire. And so we have to be really, really careful to equip our volunteers wisely so that they’re not set up for failure because our mission is not our volunteers.

Our mission is our client. And so our volunteers cannot run off our clients, but there have been several times where our clients run off volunteers.

Carrie: Yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah. If you haven’t been used to that, kind of, that experience of what those people have been through in terms of the emotional reactivity that can happen with PTSD over something that, to you seems very slight, but it was a huge deal exactly for that individual.

It was a huge trigger and I think, one of the things that you’re touching on is a lot of times what the church can be guilty of is in these types of ministries going in and trying to like clean people up, like, “Here, let me help you. Here’s some money, or here’s a job, or here’s some clothes and you know, we’re just gonna fix you all up and everything’s gonna be good.” When really true transformation has to happen from the inside out.

The Importance of Understanding and Patience When Working with Individuals in the Healing Process.

I’m curious in terms of like what you’ve seen regarding that may be in your work with other ministries, kind of how you’ve helped them to like reframe that like their role.

Suzanne: Exactly. A lot of times. Well, so it’s two-fold. One is the focus internally and how you work with clients, and the other one is how you message that to the greater community, to your donor base or to your volunteer pool, or like your occasional volunteer pool.

A lot of times, I’ll use the analogy of a pound, because sometimes if you can change the picture from people to animals, it’s a little bit easier to process. Not that I’m equating our clients with. But sometimes it’s just an easier word picture to process. You find a, you know, a stray dog on the side of the road and he’s dirty and matted and, and filthy and you know, you’ve got all sorts of insects and everything crawling all over him.

He’s just really unhappy, starving. And you pick him up and you take him to the pound, they’re going to do a lot of work. They’re. Be checking him out by a doctor. They’re gonna be cleaning him and, and de fleeing and debugging him. Whatever’s crawling on him, they’re gonna be getting him the nutrition that, that he needs.

That’s a process. It’s not an instantaneous, “Oh, I found a dog on the side of the road and now he’s ready for adoption into a new home”. They have to see what’s his temperament. What kind of personality he has. Does he get along well with other animals? Does he get along with small children?

Before they can put this animal into the adoptable population, they have to do some rehab work. But when we look at people on the side of the road, it’s like we have the expectation that all you need is a shower, a hot meal, and a change of clothes, maybe a haircut. But you ought to be fine now and go get you a job and let you know.

Start paying your own way, and it’s not at all the same. The women that we work with are so broken and they have been holding themselves together for so long that a lot of times our first few months is just giving them space to finally acknowledge their broken. And finally, feel all the feelings that they have been hiding from for so long before we can even begin the process of rehabilitation to get them to the place where they can then learn, then grow, and move forward.

Our motto is rescuing mothers, rebuilding lives and restoring futures. And that is very much the progression that we walk through with these women. Rescuing can take upwards of six. Rebuilding. That’s the point where she’s finally ready to start working and getting the job skills that she needs and figuring out, you know, credit and starting to save money to buy her first vehicle because we, we live in a semi-rural area where there is not public transportation, and so a car is almost always her first goal.

And then getting daycare and getting healthy, getting her into the ob-gyn office and, and checking her out, making sure the baby is doing well. And then as she begins to kind of master some of these things and start looking towards the future. Now we can start thinking about what does rebuilding look like for her.

What does living independently look like for her? And that whole process. Overall, pre-pandemic, we were looking at six months to a year for most. And since that time, it really is more like 18 months to two years, partly because of economic changes and partly because we are seeing a significant increase in the severity of the women that come to us.

And just for a frame of reference, we’re the only maternity home within 150 miles. So we serve 13 counties by design and several others by default. So it’s a really vast population that many, many, many are in this boat, but they are not being served because we are so limited on staff in size.

Carrie: Where are you located at?

Suzanne: Right outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Carrie: Okay, great. Tell us about BeCarityWise.

Suzanne: Yeah, that is our training arm. We have online videos and we also do in person, whether live via Zoom or local trainings to help other churches, and nonprofits understand how trauma and poverty mindset and addiction affect the people that they serve so that you can serve more effectively if people are interested in going to becharitywise.com.

I’ve written a short little book called The Accidental Social Worker that helps you get a feel for the why behind some of these things, why poverty mindset is an issue, and why trauma is affecting [hysically. Many times we just assume that, okay, well you’re not in trauma anymore. I’ve rescued you out of that. I’ve got you a safe bed to sleep in. I’ve got new food. You know, that should be enough. But the trauma carries with them because the trauma is not actually the event that happened. It’s the emotions associated with the event that happened, and that can carry through really for a lifetime until these women are able to find healing.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s huge. A lot of overlays between what you are talking about and foster care. You know, this sense of like, okay, so we’ve removed this child from the home where there was addiction and poverty, neglect, and now we’ve put them in the suburbs with this. Nice family and everything’s safe and good, but they’re still responding as though they’re in that abusive, neglected environment. You know that that happens.

Suzanne: Exactly.

Carrie: Quite frequently and a lot of times people, they’re very confused by that. Like, what in the world is going on where? Responding this way? I think that what you’re doing is so important in terms of us being able to effectively minister to people out in the community, like the real world, real life stuff that you’re seeing, and so I appreciate you sharing with us about that.

At the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Suzanne: The one that sparks me is actually what got me out of my first marriage and on this long journey, even though at the time I really didn’t realize it. I was so, I was still in active addiction with my first husband, but I was managing it, You know, he was a musician, which meant he didn’t have to work apparently.

and so I was doing what I could to earn more like I had sold mortgages at this time. I was selling insurance and I had had a really frustrating day and I went to go to my mother-in-law’s to pick up our son, and I was just kind of complaining, you know, these were good little church people as well. And so I was still talking the talk when I was around them, and I just said, You know, it was so frustrating.

I just, I don’t understand why God just won’t bless me. My mother-in-law just very graciously turned around and said, Well, What are you doing that God can bless? And then she just went back to filling my son’s little backpack as we got ready to go home. But in an instant, I was just stripped naked. I was so raw and open and vulnerable.

I finally saw myself through the Lord’s eyes, and that was the day that I had to shift everything. That was November. 2000. And from that point forward, it took several weeks for me to quit smoking. But uh, that was the only thing I was really personally addicted to. But the cigarettes, the alcohol and the drugs just stopped immediately.

My marriage was, was more of a challenge. But by February, my son and I were living independently because I couldn’t stay any longer. The veil had been, And I couldn’t unsee it. And I knew that if I stayed in my first marriage because my first husband was not willing to leave that lifestyle, I knew that I would not be strong enough to stay stable on my own.

It was either with him and clean or without him and clean. And he chose without. And so, that to me is one of the defining conversations of my life. And it was probably 15 seconds long.

Carrie: Yeah. Sometimes all you need is that like kind of one or two sentences and it just sparks something within you.

That was huge, Sounds like a turning point. And change the whole trajectory of your life.

Suzanne: It sure did. Yeah.

Carrie: Wow. And we’ll put links in the show notes to where people can find you and hopefully, some people will kind of take advantage of these trainings for their churches and, and ministry sites.

Suzanne: Yeah, I would love that.

80. Where Are Our Guests Now

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 80. Where Are Our Guests Now

Where are our guests now? To mark the Hope for Anxiety and OCD 80th episode, I’m giving you some updates on some of our past guests.

Some of them recorded their own updates and some sent us the update via email to read.


           (17:27)  Podcast Updates

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Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 80. I thought it would be kind of fun to do an update episode where we hear where our guests are. Now, the podcast has been live for almost two years. Some of our guests are doing some new things that you might be interested in. And this also gives me an opportunity to remind you of some of the episodes that you may have missed and wanna go back and listen to.

Some of our guests recorded their own updates to put in the podcast and some sent us the update via email to read. I’ll start off by giving you several author updates. I mean, you always wanna keep up with the authors because of course they have written more book.

Holly Gerth

Holly Gerth brought us episode 19, Thriving as an Introvert in an Extrovert World.

This is truly one of my favorite episodes that we did because I wish I had understood intro introversion 20 years ago, as a young adult. I think it would’ve made just such a huge difference for me in understanding myself and how to navigate the world. Holly has written a devotional book for people, struggling with anxiety called what your mind needs for anxious moments that came out in September. And she’ll also be hosting, Breaking Free from Stress Worry and Anxiety Summit.

Peyton Garland

Peyton Garland told us the story of her O OCD diagnosis and treatment in episode 26. Here’s her update.

Peyton: Hey everybody. It’s Peyton Garland. I had the honor and the pleasure of being on the hope for anxiety and OCD podcast about a year, a year and a half ago. And I just wanted to hop back on here and let you guys know that there has been so much growth in my life. And you know, it probably sounds a little cheesy because hope is in the title of this podcast, but I’ve found lots of hope in the past year.

Since I last chatted with you guys, I have found hope and a little white better known as Zoloft. I am so thrilled that I have finally found a medication that seems to be a true miracle and is working so well for my brain. And also my soul. My husband and I just bought an old 1894 farmhouse in Tennessee on about 13 or 14 acres and, you know, OCD for me as someone who struggles with sensory overload.

I am so to finally seem to get some serenity and some peace and have just the quiet of nature to nurture my mind. And aside of that last time I talked with you guys, I just released not so by myself, my first book, and it was a memoir that dug deep into my, my big battle with OCD, you know, kind of pre-diagnosis.

The day I got the diagnosis and post-diagnosis and how to trudge through difficult seasons. Well, and I’m so honored to let you guys know that I have a second book releasing actually in about a couple of weeks, it’s gonna be called Tired, Hungry, and kind of Faithful, Again, diving into this concept that life is messy. Life is muddy, but it is so beautiful, even in seasons of hunger where you’re thirsting for more, where you feel that your faith and your hope are kind shoved in a glass that’s half. But there’s so much room to fill that cup. And, and it’s a cup that’s mid by God to overflow and yeah, a year later still strugg ling with OCD, but finding so much hope.

And I would love for you to check out my next book. It’s got lots of funny stories. My dogs are in this book as well. Lots of tidbits on my battle with OCD, but I think most of all, it’s just. The story of me discovering that there is true beauty from Ash and that that beauty from Ash is something that’s attainable for you as well.

So again, I’m so excited to be back on here and to tell everyone, Hey, life is full of light and hope amid the mess over in Peyton Garland’s world. And I’m so excited to catch you guys later.

Dr. Irene Kraegel

Carrie: Dr. Irene Kraegal who joined us for episode 16 on his mindfulness for Christians had a new book come out on August 2nd, published by Zondervan.

The book is a Christian mindfulness devotional for teens, also applicable for adults. Each of the 150 devotionals includes a scripture passage, a spiritual reflection and a corresponding mindfulness practice. Written guides for classic mindfulness based stress reduction exercises are included such as a body scan, sitting practice and movement meditations along with instructions for informal mindfulness practices that can be incorporated throughout each day.

The devotional also includes introductory and frequently asked question information about effective integration of mindfulness with the Christian.

Pastor Steve Hinton

Carrie: Pastor and author Steve Hinton joined us on episode 37 to discuss doubt and faith. This has been a popular episode in regards to downloads. So if you missed it, you might wanna catch up on that one.

Steve Hinton: Hello, Carrie let me just first say congratulations on reaching number 80 in your ministry and podcast journey. Wow. Your 100th episode is just around the corner. And Gary, I know that your work is encouraging so many people on my end. Well, I’m actually on an extended social media fast this summer, but I am gonna pick up my blog work again the second in September.

You know, social media fast might be a good idea for many of your listeners because there’s so much stress that we unknowingly allow into our lives. And that can’t be prevented by governing what we bring into our hearts and minds from the world around us. But I am planning to get back to the blog in September and I will do this.

I will send a free copy of the confessions book to the first person in your audience who leaves a comment or question in the blog post. When I kick back into it in September the kingdom.com blog post, in addition to my preaching role with a local church on the north side of Houston, I am working with a ministry designed to help foster soul care for pastors, which really is a vital need in our day and age.

I want you to know that pastors need encouragement as well, but again, you have done a wonderful job and, and I’ve been inspired by your podcast and my preparations to launch a future podcast, myself, keep going and as the British say, good show. Thank you, Carrie for all your work.

Carrie: Now we have a few counselor updates for you.

Dyana Robbins

Dyana Robbins: Hi, Carrie and Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast guests. I am Diana Robbins and I was a guest on the podcast talking about my experience, parenting special needs, and children who struggle with anxiety. Since that podcast aired. I have moved back to the United States from Singapore and I’m working as a licensed professional counselor and group and private practice in Texas,

My specialty areas are trauma and grief recovery. I am also developing a program entitled building resilience and parents of exceptional children. For my doctoral dissertation. This program will provide information, support and counseling interventions to help parents thrive at every stage of parenting special needs children.

This month, I have also been a presenter at the trauma and mental health conference where Christian leaders from many fields provide guidance in helping those affected by trauma. You can learn more about my work and contact me through my website dianarobbins.com. That’s D Y A N A R O B B I N s.com.

Thank you, Carrie, for the opportunity to connect with your important work and with all of your listeners. God bless you all.

Lindsey Castlemen

Carrie: You may remember Lindsey Castleman from episode 22 welcoming parts. We don’t like where she introduced us to ifs therapy and told us a sweet story of hope about adopting her son.

Lindsey would like everyone to know that she is doing well. She’s currently the director at the Counseling Center at Fellowship. She supervises marriage and family therapist and has a group practice. She says she’s very proud of the team that she gets to work with and is thankful for all of the opportunities that God has brought her way.

Aron Strong

Lindsey introduced me to Aron Strong of Pathways Counseling in Murphysboro, Tennessee, who brought us episode 29 on God, Feelings and Theology. This was a great episode where we discussed how God has feelings and created us in his image to have feelings as well. Pathways Counseling in Murphysboro has grown adding three additional full-time therapists for a total of nine therapists and graduate interns.

They’re also beginning the process of launching a new location in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. Lindsay and Aron both have an organization called In Relationship and they would like you to know that they have, in addition to their marriage intensives, In Relationship has also created a day and a-half marriage workshop for churches and organizations called Being With. They also have online courses for therapists and Christian counselor member groups. In Relationship has its own podcast.

And they’re excited to announce that they’ve been working with Bridgestone on writing a series of four trainings on empathy and relational engagement to help create work environments in their Firestone stores that employees won’t want to leave. So that’s very exciting for them. Now I’m going to share some updates from organizations and individuals who support people with anxiety in some way.

Dr. Katie Aitken

Carrie: In episode 45, Dr. Katie Aiken joined us for improving nutrition to help anxiety.

Dr, Katie: Hi, Carrie, and the Hope for Anxiety and OCD community. Congratulations on 80 episodes. I’m sure these conversations have helped so many Christians with anxiety and OCD find more connections. Since we’ve spoken, I’ve released the audiobook version of my book, Create, Calm, The Professionals Guide to Overcoming Anxiety from the inside Out. it’s on Audible.

I know how much you love listening to practical guidance on managing anxiety at home. And this resource has all my best tips. The section on connection, where I share how my faith cultivated my self worth might be something that you would enjoy. It’s been great to connect with you, Carrie. Best wishes for your next 80 episodes

Cat Sharp

Carrie: On episode 46, cat sharp brought us Combating Emotional Eating with scripture.

Cat: What an honor, it is to be a part of this special episode. Carrie, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to update you and your listeners on how the Lord is working in my life. Over the last few years, my business has been primarily focused on helping Christian women overcome the traps of emotional eating and binging.

But recently the Lord has been calling me to teach more about what discipleship means and what it looks like in different areas of our lives. So I’ve been partnering with other Christian teachers to create the everyday disciple virtual summit together. We’re tackling topics of parenthood, forgiveness, finances, work, and, and so many more.

And we’re taking a look at what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in our everyday normal lives. The summit and working with these teachers has been such a blessing for me personally. And of course, as our heavenly father does, he has been challenging me in some new ways. So I’m really excited to share the summit with you and your listeners.

If you would like to learn more, please go to cat sharp.com/summit. The summit is free of course. And if you happen to miss this one, don’t worry. We’re gonna be doing another one. I just don’t have the dates for that yet. Again, thank you, Carrie, for allowing me to be a part of your amazing podcast in the way that you serve others.

Alexa Hulsey and Trey Brackman of Encircle Acupuncture

Carrie: We covered the topic of acupuncture on Episode 23 with Encircle acupuncture. I really wish that they were closer to me. It was near my old office and I miss going to acupuncture. It is so relaxing. Trey and Alexa have an update for us.

Alexa: Hi, this is Alexa Hulsey from Encircle acupuncture.

Trey: And this is Trey Brackman from Encircle acupuncture

Alexa: So Trey, what have you been up to?

Trey: Well, I have surpassed my 10-year mark here at Encircle Acupuncture, continuing to help my wife raise three great kids and continuing to do community acupuncture that I love. How about you? What have you been up to Alexa?

Alexa: Well, I am continuing to see patients here at Encircle. We’ve celebrated our 12 years of treating patients and I have also been blogging. My blog notes from your acupuncturist, which you can find on substack and write about all things related to acupuncture.

Trey: That sounds awesome. It is. And you have recently been on another podcast. I was on Sebastian’s finest hour and we talked all about acupuncture and community acupuncture.

It was really a lot of fun. I would do that again.

Alexa: Awesome. So check out Trey on Sebastian’s finest hour and notes from your acupuncturist on substack. Thanks.

Kelly Ehlert

Carrie: Kelly Ehlert is a pelvic floor physical therapist who joined us on episode 20 to discuss overcoming sexual anxiety and dysfunction for women. She’s also in middle Tennessee.

Kelly would like you to know that she’s collaborating with an acupuncturist and functional medicine provider to help women solve underlying issues for some of their physical symptoms and are offering a collaborative program with the three of them treating the individual. They’re currently calling this the purple duck pack, finding the right provider and creating overall health for mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing on her website.

Kelly has some free resources for returning to work postpartum and free screens for considering when to see a pelvic floor, a physical therapist, to determine if her niche is a good fit for them as someone who just had a baby. I really appreciate all that pelvic floor physical therapy has to offer. In helping women recover their bodies after birth.

Jeff Allen

Carrie: We had a few guests share their personal stories with us, fellow podcaster, Jeff Allen who’s also the host of Simple Mental Health shared with us his story about discovering he had anxiety on episode 32.

Jeff: Hi, Carrie, thank you so much for reaching out and giving me an opportunity to speak again on your podcast and congratulations on 80 episodes. That is quite an accomplishment, especially when you are coordinating all the interviews and giving people such valuable content.

Thanks for all that you do. I just wanted to update you and tell you a little bit about what’s going on with. I recently found out that it’s not just an anxiety disorder, but I have been diagnosed with something called cyclothymia, which is basically a really mild form of bipolar. Been treating it with medication and goodness. I can’t tell you what a difference that has made in my life.

I’m blessed to have found a psychiatrist that has worked with me so well. And given me the opportunities to treat what’s going on with me also, I have been promoted at my job recently. I’m the online site lead for the gathering, which is a church in St. Louis, Missouri recently wrapped up the third season of my podcast, Simple Mental Health. If anybody wants to check it. Simple mental health on all the podcast platforms. Check it out. Thank you so much for all that you do, Carrie. I can’t wait to continue to listen and ride along with you as you continue.

Jennifer Harshman

Carrie: This podcast journey. Have a great one last but not least.

We have an update from Jennifer Harshman who talked to us about her abuse story. Why did God Allow me to go Through That on episode 47.

Jennifer: In the time since I shared with you part of my journey, I achieved a lifelong dream of having a swimming pool.

I started a TikTok account in late June and all along. I’ve been busy serving others who wanna make a difference. You can hear all about all of the ways. If you go to harshmanservices.com, sign up for any of the free goodies you want while you’re there. There are two things that I’m doing right now that are the most exciting one is your book bakery, making it easy to write a book, which is a book I wrote, it’s coming out September 1st. And it goes with a program that I’ve been running for a few years, where I walk you through the process of writing a helpful nonfiction book. All you need is the right recipe, and you can do this. The other is editor’s school, where I teach you how to become a freelance editor and build a solid income.

I’ve been helping people since 1992, and I love helping people make dreams come true. You deserve it.

Carrie: Jennifer, congratulations on the pool. That is a great life goal. And who knows? Maybe I might get around to writing my book someday. It’s truly been a blessing and a privilege to interview all of these guests and provide this valuable information for you.

Podcast Updates

Carrie: Since I have updated you on our former guest, I also wanted to update you on what is going on with my counseling practice, By the Well Counseling. I have made the decision to keep my business online for the time being while my daughter is young. However, I have. Insured office space for intensives to focus on doing those on Fridays, I was trained in the flash technique for treating trauma this year.


I also have an upcoming training on something called Blast and in November. I’ll receive additional training for working with OCD via EMDR. I’m excited about just continuing to learn and continuing to grow as a professional each and every year, I continue to be amazed and blown away at how many people are finding the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast.

I have been on several other podcasts to promote this one, which is a great way for people to find out about the show. Of course we also have our social media marketing that we work on just putting up posts on Instagram and Facebook for people who are following us there. According to Google, our website is showing up more and more in Google searches.
So that’s really exciting to me not because I want to have a podcast following. I don’t really care about that. I am excited because it means that more and more people are accessing just messages of hope and knowing that there’s a variety of treatment options available for them. And then if one doesn’t work that they don’t have to be pigeonholed into that treatment.

They can seek other treatments outside of that. That’s one thing I’m super passionate about especially for people who are struggling with OCD and have been told, there’s only one treatment for them. I have many hopes and dreams for the podcast that I thought I would go ahead and share with you. It feels actually like a little bit vulnerable to do this because I don’t know if any of these things are going to actually come true or not.

My big girl dream is to start a nonprofit organization that helps people get the mental health treatment that they need by matching them with an appropriate provider, making sure that financial barriers are removed if they’re not able to afford counseling or afford their copay. I know that there are a lot of great resources, great counselors out there.

And unfortunately seems like finances often get in the way of people getting the very specified. Specific help that they need, because there are so many different types of therapies and ways that therapists practice. It’s hard for people to find what it is that they actually need. So that’s my big girl dream that we’re miles and miles away from, and I don’t know if it will ever come true, but I just said it out loud to you.

Another passion of mine related to the podcast is I would love to get some self-help materials out into the hands of specifically Christians who are looking for help with anxiety and OCD. This could be a great precursor to people coming to counseling, or as a supplement for people who are already in counseling. I’m not exactly sure for me, if this looks like an online course, a workbook, audio, relaxation, or maybe a combination of all of things. I’m not really sure, but it’s something that I hope to be, have time and be able to take some time to work on between now and the end of the year. Doing every other week episodes has really been super helpful and much less stressful in this season of life.

So thank you for all of those of you who have kind of like held on with us this year, in that transition of going from weekly episodes to every other week episodes. Since there are so many new people finding this show, I think it’s actually a good thing in both ways because many people don’t listen every week or, you know, don’t have opportunity to do so. I absolutely love hearing from our listeners and I would love any support communication. If you want to be involved in a beta launch of a course or a workbook, definitely reach out to me via our website. Hope for anxiety and ocd.com. And I’ll kind of put all of those emails together.

I’m always writing about things like this first to our email audience. Anyway, if you’re not on our newsletter, be a good time to get on there and just keep up to date. If you’re interested in any of the self-help stuff, mostly I just let you know what’s going on with the podcast and things that I’m offering. I am going to keep on to the best of my ability, continuing to help Christians who are struggling with anxiety and OCD.

I’d like to ask If you would pray and consider supporting our podcast, you can do that via Patreon through monthly subscription, or one-time gifts can be sent through the website, Buy me a Coffee.

Those links will be in our show notes. There are a variety of expenses that go into producing a podcast, such as, you know, website hosting, editing. And I just really appreciate if you would consider supporting this because as I really view this as my ministry to reach people all over the world who are Christian and struggling, not everybody has access to counseling services where they’re at, unfortunately. People just need this positive support, hope and encouragement sometimes to keep going.

Thank you all for listening to the podcast today. I appreciate each and every one of you who take the time to tune in.

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.

Bonus Episode: EMDR Intensive Therapy Q&A with Steve Bock and Carie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on Bonus Episode: EMDR Intensive Therapy Q&A with Steve Bock and Carie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Carrie and her husband Steve are excited to bring you a bonus episode on EMDR Intensive Therapy. 

  • What is EMDR Intensive Therapy and what are the issues it can help with?
  • What happens in an EMDR Intensive Therapy session?  
  • How long does the session usually last?
  • How to receive EMDR Intensive Therapy?

If you want to find out more about intensive therapy, go to https://www.bythewellcounseling.com/intensivetherapy/

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to a very special episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD. This is a bonus episode that I wanted to get out to you earlier than putting it kind of in the lineup. Since we have several episodes that are already planned out for the next couple of months. And I have my amazing husband, Steve here with me. Say Hi Steve.

Steve: Hey

Carrie: Glad to have you here. You interviewed me once before on the show for episode 33 of What it’s like to be a Counselor. And I thought it would be good for you to interview me on our today’s topic, which is EMDR intensive therapy. Since it’s something that you’re not familiar with. When I get in the zone and tend to talk about therapy things, I don’t tend to always explain them for the lay audience to understand and break it down very well. So I thought it would be good. And you can ask little filler questions here and there that people might be wondering about, or you might be wondering about.

What is EMDR Intensive Therapy

Steve: Okay. My first question is what is an EMDR intensive therapy session?

Carrie: This is a session that is longer than a typical therapy session. It occurs either for a half day of three hours or a whole day, which is six hours with a lunch break and some small breaks in between it’s for a very specific purpose.

So someone that’s trying to achieve a very specific counseling. It may be that they know, for example, that they’ve experienced some sexual abuse that is getting in the way of their relationship with their spouse. Now it may be a situation where they’re trying to overcome a phobia or a situation where maybe they just know they have a lot of trauma.

They’re going to need to process in a sense, kinda wanna get a kickstart to that process. Another way we use an intensive therapy session for say anxiety or even possibly OCD is to work on some day-to-day level coping skills that people could use as maybe a baseline for them. So it doesn’t have to be used to process trauma.

The idea behind it is to have dedicated time and dedicated space to work on a very specific issue.

Steve: A long therapy session that seems like it might be kind of exhausting.

Carrie: It can be tiring, but it just depends on how you break up the day. Usually what we’ll do is we’ll have kind of a introductory period.

So to explain a little bit deeper, these are situations where I may have been working with someone for. Session a few sessions and they make a decision to do an intensive, or it could be that somebody wants to travel in from out of state and do even multiple days with me, which I would just have to make sure that I had all of the office space available during those days and times.

If people are traveling in and I haven’t met them before the structure, obviously of the day is gonna be a little bit different because there’s going to be a chunk where we’ll have to do a little bit of more history taking kind of getting a clear picture of the problem. Then we can go in and make an EMDR treatment plan.

Basically identifying what memories we need to target that are contributing to their present-day issues. When we go back and we reprocess those memories. In EMDR, we look at the past and then we look at how that’s affecting and present, and then how that person would like to respond in the future.

Typically, with a more condensed intensive session, we would probably process the worst memory that came up on that treatment plan. And the first memory that came up on that treatment plan, sometimes those end up being the same memory. If it’s a more recent traumatic event, we would structure it so that we would really just be focused on that recent traumatic event.

There’s restricted protocols with EMDR to help you process more like within the past month type of trauma. If we were able to get someone in that quickly, So there’s lots of different ways that we can structure it with, uh, phobia, for example, we can structure, you know, starting with, when did the phobia first occur process?

You know, usually like if, if somebody was bit by a dog, for example, when they were a child, they’re afraid of dogs, now we could go back and we could target that memory where they bit by the dog. Then we can look at potentially exposures and desensitizing the present triggers. So we could show them a picture of a dog.

How to stressing is that to you do some EMDR surrounding that as a present issue, we could, you know, show them a video of a dog. There’s different things that we could kind of target. I probably wouldn’t have a live dog, but, you know, I would encourage at some point or another, eventually, them working up to that process as kind of gradual exposure.

It’s kind of a little bit hard to get a live dog in a counseling office sometimes, but you understand where I’m coming from. There’s so many different ways that we can approach things depending on what the person’s presenting issue is. For example, panic attacks. If someone had a history of panic attacks that they would like to focus on resolving, we can often process their first panic attack and their worst panic attack, their most recent get that done in one day. And that will show significant symptom relief for them, preventing them from having future panic attacks.

Steve: Why did you decide to start offering intensive therapy?

Carrie: That’s a really great question. I was actually encouraged by two of my mentors. One of them was Laura Mullis who we had on the show on episode 21, Healing from Childhood Wounds: The key to Unlocking Anxiety. Laura, as well as one of my other EMDR mentors, Alice Strickland had really asked me, first of all, was I doing intensive therapy? And then if I wasn’t interested in doing it because sometimes they have cases they may not be able to take on or might not be the best fit for them that they may want to refer to me. So that was part of it. And the other reason was after doing a few with my clients, kind of during the COVID period online, I did some three-hour sessions with clients where we took kind of a 15-minute break in the middle to target very specific EMDR memories that they wanted to work on.

There’s a few problems that can come up, like in terms of weekly therapy, someone comes in and they may really wanna work through certain issues in their life. But then as we know, like life just happens, you know, then they come in next week and something’s happened with one of their kids or their coworker was really mean to them. Or, you know, somebody went off on them as they were driving their car. I don’t know. And they just feel like, okay, I need to really process what was going on in the present.

A lot of times we can tie that back into how that was a trauma trigger and sometimes work through some of those things. And that can be very helpful. Oftentimes, what I see is that we end up delaying the EMDR treatment process because a lot of times we’re having to go back and forth between working on these present issues and then working on past issues.

If we can devote specific time to working on the past issues. A lot of the present issues will be resolved because they won’t continuously be getting triggered by the same stuff over and over again, in these challenging relationships or situations. So much of therapy too is spent on helping people develop skills to manage their day-to-day present.

And like I said, if we can go back and just kind of clear out some of the junk, there will be less that they have to manage in the present, not to say that they won’t have anything. Going on, but at least it’ll get the symptoms maybe more to a manageable level. Once the trauma is resolved. So it’s really a combination of a couple of different things.

Sometimes another issue that we have in terms of processing memories with EMDR is that we will take some time at the beginning of the session to get the client into the memory to say, okay, now, as you bring up that memory right now, how distressing is it? Where do you feel it in your body? Even before we do that, the client will come in. They’ll say, “Well, you know, I had, after last session I had a nightmare” or they may be updating me on symptoms. Either of the symptom got better or symptoms got worse. That’s helpful for me to kind of know and guide the process as to where we need to go to next. That takes a little bit of a chunk of time, say that takes 10 to 15 minutes. And then at the end of the session, we really wanna make sure that people have time to calm down that they have time to contain, especially if they didn’t finish processing the memory. So then we’re taking another, you know, let’s say 10 minutes to say, “okay, like, you know, kind of ground, put your feet on the floor, take a deep breath, contain the memory.”

No, it doesn’t have to leave you here. When you walk out the door today, go to your safe place, whatever. There’s a lot of different ways we can do that. But the point is, is that we’re taking that chunk of time in the beginning of the session. And we’re taking that chunk of time at the end of the session, whereas in an intensive, you don’t have to do that because you’re not having those times in between sessions.

You’re actually saving time and energy and not interrupt that trauma work because the brain doesn’t know, “oh, wow. I only have about, you know, 30 minutes to work through this.” Your brain doesn’t know that. So it’s gonna kind of continue to be working on things even after that session is over, which can sometimes be distressing for people.

What are the Issues EMDR Intensive Therapy Can Help with?

Steve: Okay. What are some of the issues that you’ve seen be helped by intensive therapy.

Carrie: I talked about some of them previously, things like phobias, panic attacks, very specific recent trauma, definitely anything that we would consider to be a single incident trauma, not like, you know, I’ve had a whole lifetime of childhood, but Hey, my childhood was pretty stable and things were going well.

And then this thing kind of just completely shifted me off track, near-death experience or illness, injury, car accident, things like that. I know that you and I had talked about, even my experience in episode 10 of really building up the confidence again, to be able to go out dating after my divorce, I had had quite a bit of therapy and there were just kind of some lingering remaining things that I needed to process through. And I really needed to do that from a somatic body sense, rather than just talking about it because I had already talked nausea about it. So that’s another area. Theoretically, I could have done an intensive on for myself. I didn’t, but I went at probably 10 sessions had I had an intensive opportunity.

I might have been able to get that, that work done and say probably two days, you know, instead of 10 sessions over, I was probably going every other week. So you think about that if you’re going every other week to therapy too, that’s about say five months that it took me to get through that process. I know.

A lot of times, people are very interested in today’s day and age of getting better, and faster. We have such a microwave generation. This can be good and bad. Sometimes these situations work and you can find relief faster. It’s not for every person or every situation, but as you can see, there are lots of different ways that we can apply the intensive therapy model to help people get relief. Another example would be for someone who’s having difficulties setting boundaries. Oftentimes this relates back to either like very strong authoritative personalities in their childhood or just people were straight up abusive and crossed their boundaries.

So if we can go back to those places, help them process through that realize like, you know, you’re not a child in this dynamic anymore. This is an adult-to-adult dynamic. You have a right, like your needs are important, whereas they weren’t important. Then your values and your desires are important. And you have that takes a certain level of self-confidence to set a boundary, right. To be firm with. So that is something that we could target in an intensive, really like creating a treatment plan surrounding the difficulty with setting boundaries. A lot of times I see people who have emotional trauma that is feeding into disordered type eating, even though I don’t work with eating disorders.

So I kind of wanna make that clarification if you have serious eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia that I’m not saying that this type of intensive therapy is for you, but for people who, for example, would say, “Hey, I’m an emotional eater. I really want to eat healthy. I’m trying, I may have been on every diet under the sun. But just the way that I grew up, there was a lot of shame surrounding food, or there was even abuse situations involving food resolving.” Some of that trauma will shift the way that people approach food in the present. That’s one, depending on how much is back there, they may need a little bit more than one day. It just kind of depends. And we have to create a plan together. I think that’s, what’s really important. Intensives is having a very specific plan and intention that the client and I are both on the same page about what they’re wanting to accomplish so that there’s no confusion and that we stay very focused and targeted for that limited amount of time.

Steve: So who would not be appropriate for intensive therapy?

Carrie: If someone has a serious problem where they may need a higher level of treatment, such as a serious addiction, addictions are typically not something that I worked with. I’ve worked with a lot of people who had an addiction in their past, say a few years ago, and they’re trying to resolve the trauma that led to the initial addiction.

I do work with several clients that have experienced that, but we really want people who are clean and sober to be engaging in this work. I mentioned eating disorders. If somebody has a really serious eating disorder and where they need to be in some kind of hospital or treatment program, if someone finds that they’re dissociating a lot, they’re disconnecting from reality due to their trauma.

They’re losing a lot of periods of time or they don’t have any connection to their body or their emotional experience. Now I will say that if there’s a client that’s really having difficulty connecting to their body or to their emotional experience if they wanted to do an intensive, what we would really focus on is not processing the trauma, but we would more focus on developing that body awareness, developing that emotional awareness. Doing a lot of what we would call resourcing activities, which would be trauma preparation that may be incredibly valuable for that person to do that, and may help them really cope better in the present with that. But I wouldn’t say that they need to come in and, and just start processing trauma because they’re not gonna be able to do that.

You really have to be connected to your mind, your body and your emotions in order to benefit from EMDR, having. I’ve worked with a ton of clients that don’t have all of those things online. And so our first step in therapy is really building those up before they can go through and process trauma. If somebody has a personality disorder or something just very serious going on, then they’re probably not appropriate for intensive therapy.

Steve: And my last question is, are these covered by insurance?

Carrie: They are not. We don’t have a code for this type of intensive therapy session that we could code for insurance. I actually even asked Cigna the insurance that I work with and they, you know, I’m sure if we were sitting face to face, the lady would’ve looked at me, like I had four eyes.

I was trying to explain it to her, but she was just kind of like, “No.” They are used to typical things like individual therapy, group therapy and things that there are codes for. This is not something we can code and charge insurance for. It’s really more for someone who is looking to make an investment in their mental health and they, they know kind of what they want.

And they realize that this pathway is going to save them, you know, time, energy, and money. It’s hard for people to. Sometimes to coming to weekly therapy, they may get started with it, or they may start coming every other week and then childcare becomes a problem or work is adding on more responsibilities.

I can’t get off in time. There’s all kinds of barriers that can happen in terms of people getting the therapy that they need on a consistent ongoing basis. Sometimes there’s certain time limited situations where someone will say. I know I’m going to be moving or going out of the country. And I know this is some, or I’m getting married.

This is just something that I know I wanna resolve before. Maybe a major life event happens as well. And so these people are kinda willing to take that leap and invest in this process. And so also just really great for people who have had a lot of therapy, haven’t been able to get their goals achieved that they wanted to, but feel like this would be something that would help them just as a different approach.

Thank you, Steve, for helping me out by asking some of these questions and allowing me to explain intensive EMDR therapy.

Steve: Yeah. You’re welcome. And glad to be here once again. And it’s actually really good for me to hear that I got to learn something, so it’s good.

How to Receive EMDR Intensive Therapy

Carrie: Yeah. And if people would like to find out more about intensive therapy, they can go to www.bythewellcounseling.com./intensive therapy. If you get to the homepage By the Well Counseling, there’s also a button that you can click on for intensive therapy. There’s a form on the webpage that I’ll ask that you fill out in order to be able to, for us to have a, hopefully, a short video chat, where we can have a consultation, where we can talk about what you’re hoping to get out of the intensive, and I can share whether or not I think that that would be appropriate for you.

It’s really important that we’re able to make sure that you’re gonna be getting what you need from this modality if you’re investing the time and money in it. So I want to take a little time to make sure that that you’re appropriate and that this is appropriate for you kind of, as we talk through some of those things.

One thing that I’m really excited about with this intensive therapy opportunity is that I get a lot of inquiries from the people who listen to the podcast and they say, “Hey, I know that you do online therapy. Can you see me?” But they live out of State. They may live in Kentucky or Connecticut or wherever, and I can’t see them online due to licensure laws and limitations. I’m only licensed in Tennessee right now to see people there. So this will allow people to be able to travel if that’s something that they’re interested in and receive therapy from me. So that was kind of another contribution of why I wanted to do this, that I didn’t mention. Earlier, thank you so much to everyone who is listening to this podcast right now, I will tell you the very first people who heard about the intensive opportunity were our email subscribers.

And Steve, why should you get on our email list for the hope for anxiety and OCD podcast?

Steve: We’re giving away. T-shirts

Carrie: Yeah, Steve, it was actually your idea to start giving away t-shirts to encourage people to subscribe to the podcast newsletter. So since we have currently, as we’re recording 73 email subscribers, I want you to help me pick our first t-shirt winner by people who’ve already subscribed to the newsletter.

So pick a number between 1 and 70.

Steve: I’m gonna go with 14. It looks like Lisa D is our winner. Congratulations, Lisa!

Carrie: She is our 14th email subscriber. I will be emailing Lisa to let her know that she has won a t-shirt and once I get her size and address back, we will go ahead and ship that out.

You also get to pick which color shirt that you want. And if you are not a t-shirt winner this time, because you are not subscribed to our email list, then hop on the email list. We don’t have that far to get from 73 to a hundred. Right Steve?

Steve: That’s right.

Carrie: So once we get to a hundred, I will be giving out another t-shirt for somebody in between the 50 and 100 mark and maybe about every 50 subscribers or so we will give away a t-shirt.

I would love to have 500 subscribers on the email list. That would be amazing. So it’s a great way for you to know firsthand what’s going on with me and what’s going on with the Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast. You can subscribe by going to our website, hopeforanxietyandocd.com. You are certainly welcome to go through our website and buy one, If you are really itching for some podcast merchandise. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. And I hope to hear from some of you soon.

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