OCD – Page 4 – Carrie Bock – By The Well Counseling

186. Recognizing and Recovering From All or Nothing Thinking

Written by Carrie Bock on August 12, 2025. Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie explores how to identify and overcome all-or-nothing thinking, a common challenge for those with OCD. She offers practical strategies for developing flexible thinking to foster peace and recovery.

Episode Highlights:

How to recognize all-or-nothing thinking in yourself.
Mindfulness exercises to help detach from obsessive thoughts.
The importance of taking different perspectives to break rigid thinking.
How asking “What if it went well?” can shift your mindset.
The power of embracing imperfection through trying new things.
Creative problem-solving techniques to help expand your thinking options.

Episode Summary:

Do you ever catch yourself thinking in extremes, like it’s all good or all bad—no in-between? That’s the all-or-nothing thinking I’m talking about today, and if you’ve got OCD, it’s something that can really keep you stuck.

When your mind gets stuck in these black-and-white patterns, it makes life feel a lot more overwhelming than it has to be. But you can break free from that cycle and train your brain to think more flexibly.

In this episode, I’m sharing how you can stop letting all-or-nothing thinking control your life. This type of thinking—where things feel like they’re either completely right or totally wrong.

Little by little, you can start developing more balanced thinking that brings more peace and clarity to your life.

I’ll guide you through some practical tools to help you observe your thoughts without judgment. I’ll also share five actionable strategies for developing more flexible thinking.

You’ll learn how taking a different perspective, practicing creative risk-taking, and simply rethinking how you approach life’s challenges can help loosen the grip of that all-or-nothing mindset. The idea is to help you embrace a mindset that’s not about perfection, but about growth, flexibility, and acceptance.

If you’re ready to break free from the cycle of rigid thinking and take control of your mental space, listen to the full episode now!

Transcript

Today on the podcast we’re talking about recognizing and recovering from all or nothing thinking. This is very common in OCD, and so I want you to learn how to think more flexibly.

With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.

So let’s dive right into today’s episode. If you’re gonna learn to think more flexibly, first of all, you have to recognize when you’re in all or nothing thinking. Oftentimes, people who struggle with OCD will think in terms of extremes. There’s only one way I can think about this and everything else is wrong, or it just feels like this is true, even though I know it’s not.

It’s something that’s really, really stuck in your mind. So if we can practice different ways of being with your thoughts and different ways of approaching various life circumstances and problem solving. That will help your thinking to become more flexible over time. This will allow you to take different perspectives.

Mindfulness is a really great way to become an observer of your own thought process. You can practice mindfulness in many different ways, and it might be helpful to practice it in a way that doesn’t have to do with your thoughts specifically, such as going outside, taking a couple minutes and just counting the different sounds that you hear.

Maybe just noticing the colors that you see outside and the variation in all of those different colors. If you don’t have breathing obsessions or don’t get really weirded out by focusing on body sensations, you can do things like count your breaths or noticing the air coming in and out of your body.

Mindfulness just means that you’re focusing on the present moment with a sense of intention. In order to build awareness and acceptance. When it comes to mindfully noticing your thoughts, you can do something called a thought diffusion exercise. This allows you to just slow down and notice some of the thoughts as they come.

You can utilize visualization exercises such as noticing each thought go by on a cloud in the sky, or noticing each thought individually on like the leaves on a stream. And as you notice those thoughts, what you’re trying to do in this exercise. Is to not judge it and not really latch onto it, but more of a stream of kind of letting the thoughts go in and out of your mind, resisting that immediate urge that we have to judge a thought as good or bad, like it’s just a thought and you get to decide if you want to entertain it further or just let it pass by.

So that’s a piece that’s within your control. We don’t control every thought that just pops into our head as you notice that in the ability for you to detach from that thought to let it go, understand. That’s not something that comes easily to us, especially if we’re used to managing thoughts differently.

If we’re used to just latching onto them or judging them or doing something about them, really taking this detached approach is very different, and it will take a lot of practice and intentionality. But the idea behind mindfulness is that it lets us know more about what’s happening so that when you’re in a space of clear headedness, you can make positive change instead of.

Trying to do so much when you’re in a frantic state or a non calm state. That’s usually what gets us into trouble, right, is when we start making all of these decisions, when we’re in a heightened emotional place or a place of mental stress. I’ve incorporated a little bit of mindfulness into Christians learning ICBT, because so much of what we’re doing is just teaching you to slow down and to really notice the process of how you’re getting latched into the story that OCD is telling you and the demands that it’s making on your time and energy.

Now I’m going to give you a list of ways to practice flexible thinking. Number one is take a different perspective. You can do this in several different ways, such as when you watch a movie or a TV show, you may find one character that you really like or really identify with. It’s easy to think through what their perspective on the situation, but maybe you can take a minor character or a different character such as a villain and try to think through what is their process, what is their perspective on this situation in this movie or TV show.

What’s interesting is that when I was younger, I used to really like the movie Sleepless in Seattle, and I watched it from the perspective of somebody who is looking for love. It’s a story about two people who are looking for love, but the man in the story is coming from a place of having lost his wife.

When I was younger, I had always identified with Meg Ryan’s character who was. Young and looking for love. But now that I was older and had experienced grief and loss, there was something really touching about Tom Hank’s character and watching that movie, again, almost through his eyes of grief and loss.

It was just a very different experience. So I encourage you, maybe you wanna even watch something that you haven’t watched in a little while and see if you have a different perspective or different reaction to it. So that’s number one. Take a different perspective. You can also do this when you’re reading the Bible.

You can look at the lens of different Bible characters views on a particular event that happened. What was John’s view of the last Supper? Versus Judas View versus Peter’s view. Three completely different perspectives on the same story, and I think they all have something to teach us, right? When you’re looking at your own experience and trying to take a different perspective on it, you might ask yourself, is there only one way to think about this issue?

Would someone of the opposite sex think the same way that I’m thinking about this issue? What would an older person say, or what would a younger person’s perspective be? What would the perspective of someone outside of my family be? I wanna say that what we’re talking about here is not about moral issues, not about right or wrong, clear moral issues, or things that we don’t agree with what we’re talking about are those more gray areas that may feel right or feel wrong because that’s the way the family’s always done it, or that’s what we’ve always been told is correct, even though it’s not a moral issue.

The importance of taking different perspectives too is that it really enhances our problem solving ability. Typically, when we have a problem, whether that be an interpersonal relationship problem or a financial problem, there’s often more than one solution that will get us to where we need to go, and our job is to think through the options, pray about it, and use wisdom to find the best solution for us.

The second tip on developing more flexible thinking is to ask yourself the question, what if it went well? Typically, we often think in worst case scenarios, if you’re dealing with any type of anxiety or OCD, you are convinced that a certain situation or outcome is going to be bad. But by asking yourself, what if it went well, you’re actually tuning your mind to a different perspective to say.

A, maybe it could go well, and maybe that’s a new thought to your brain, and B, what would I want that to look like? So if I want to have a calm, interpersonal interaction with somebody that I might be in conflict with, what would it look like if it went well? Well, I got enough sleep the night before. I didn’t have too much caffeine.

I was feeling optimistic going into it. I was able to remain calm, regardless of if the other person remained calm. And that also allows you to notice those different things. That are in your control that might be able to help you set up for success on a particular interaction or situation with someone else because we can only control the variables that have to do with us, right?

We can’t control how that other person is gonna respond. Or react. Oftentimes when things don’t go well, we go into a situation already anxious that it’s not gonna go well, and so then our brain is already shifted in that particular direction of something not going well. So it will play out that scenario that it’s already told itself.

It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes we think very negatively about something and we get surprised and it’s better. Oftentimes people will say, oh, I don’t wanna be blindsided. So I don’t wanna think super positive about the situation if it’s not gonna be positive. But we have to recognize like what we’re telling ourselves.

That story that you’re saying within your own thought process is really, really important. Something that we do in EMDR therapy is called like a future template, and what we do is we basically train your brain of how we want you to be able to respond to the situation. So it may be that you have a person that you need to have a confrontational conversation with and we might run through.

Okay. How would you like that to go? People will say, well, I’d like that person to not raise their voice, or I would like that person to not argue with me. And we say, well, we can’t really control that here or when you’re actually there, but would you like to be able to be calm if they do start to raise their voice?

Or would you like to be able to set a boundary if they start to raise their voice and ask them to lower it? Those are things that we can actually work on and sit with and imagine those positive things happening and kind of train your brain in that direction. So it really helps you be able to find those situations that are in your control and priming your brain to move towards the positive of what if this did go well?

The third way to increase flexible thinking is to intentionally do something that you’re not good at. This is really, really great for perfectionist, finding some type of creative outlet or new activity that you haven’t done before, and allowing yourself to struggle through that. Not to beat yourself up, but to let your brain and your body know, Hey, we can try new things.

They can be different. We don’t have to be perfect at it the first time. It is going to be very uncomfortable. I had a client a long time ago that decided to pick up a particular creative project in order to work on some of this flexible thinking and comfort with trying new things. It was hard. It was uncomfortable, but also this client found out that helped them overall in the grand scheme of things.

Trying new things may be something as small as writing with a different color pen or trying something new on a restaurant menu that you’ve never had before that you aren’t sure if you would like. Taking these small risk may help you take bigger risk in the future. Which might be really healthy for your OCD recovery.

Number four is to list all the solutions to a problem, even the ridiculous ones. Now, this one, you’ll need your sense of humor for and it make you laugh along the way, but what it does is it helps you find creative solutions to a problem. So for example, you could look at what are all of the different ways that I could use in order to get to work?

I could ride a unicycle, of course, that’s really silly because A, I don’t own a unicycle BI don’t know how to ride a unicycle, but theoretically I could ride one to work. I’m not exactly sure the logistics of that, how long it would take, et cetera. But that’s the point. You see how initially when we have a thought, we often limit ourselves.

We’re like, no, that’s ridiculous. Whereas if we write down some of these other things, like probably more common options would be, I can get in my car and drive. That’s how I normally get to work. What if my car broke down? I could catch a ride with someone else. I could use Uber. I could ride my bike theoretically.

I could check to see if there’s a bus route near me. I don’t think that’s logistically feasible in my particular city, but maybe I could put it on the list and just make just a gigantic brain dump of everything. Then you can always reevaluate the things as you go, right? Oh, okay. Unicycle wouldn’t work very well, not practical, and I don’t own one and I don’t know how to ride one.

So that’s off the list. And by marking off some of like the silly options that may create some thinking flexibility. Creativity in your brain. You might even think of a way to solve the problem that’s different than you had originally thought. Maybe you only thought there were two to three reasonable ways to make this decision, but maybe you open up your mind and find other ones.

Number five is choose your own ending. This would be really great if you’re watching a show. And you know how sometimes on the season finale they’ll really leave you at a cliffhanger or something will be unresolved or unfinished. Take one of those type of episodes or maybe you pause a show halfway through and just write down.

Three different ways that it could end. Okay, this person and this person could fall in love and run off and get married, or this person and this person discover that this big secret comes out. The main character decides he wants to quit his job and move to Bora Bora. There are actually books that do this, I think they’re called Choose Your Own Adventure and they’ll give you different forks in the road and you can kind of skip to different pages depending on where you want characters to go or what you want them to do.

There might be different options. I’m sure the internet has probably added even more opportunities to choose your own adventure. This will probably really help you if you ever do ICBT, because essentially we’re looking at what is the story OCD is telling you, and then what if some potential alternative stories that you could write surrounding this.

I hope this episode has helped you really work on all or nothing thinking and creating thinking, flexibility. It’s a really important skill to develop. Stay tuned. Next week we’re gonna be talking about is it time to get a new therapist? See you then. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Christian faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

185. What Does It Mean to Take This Thought Captive? What About Intrusive Thoughts?

Written by Carrie Bock on August 4, 2025. Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie unpacks what it really means to take a thought captive and why that verse can feel confusing for Christians navigating OCD. She brings biblical clarity, challenges common misconceptions, and shares a more grace-filled way to respond to intrusive thoughts.

Episode Highlights:

What that “take every thought captive” verse actually means in context—and why it’s not about perfect thought control
How spiritual armor like the helmet of salvation helps protect your mind in OCD struggles
Why trying to squash every thought can keep you stuck in compulsions
The difference between intrusive thoughts and sin—and how to respond with grace instead of fear
How to let go of the pressure to manage every thought and trust God’s work in your healing

Episode Summary:

If you’ve struggled with OCD as a Christian, you’ve probably been told to “take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.” And if you’re like many of the clients I’ve walked with, you may have felt confused, overwhelmed, or even discouraged by that verse—like you’re failing spiritually because you can’t seem to control your thoughts.

In this episode, I want to take you deeper. We’re opening up Scripture, looking at what Paul really meant when he wrote those words, and how context can completely change the way we understand them.

I’m breaking down the difference between intrusive thoughts and sin, why OCD loves to latch onto spiritual language, and how well-intentioned advice can sometimes feed the compulsive cycle. We’ll talk about spiritual armor, and how these gifts protect our minds in ways that don’t rely on striving, but on God’s grace.

You’ll hear why managing your thoughts doesn’t mean trying to control everything that pops into your head, and how to begin responding to unwanted thoughts without panic, shame, or spiritual pressure.

As a licensed counselor and follower of Jesus, I’m passionate about helping Christians move past fear-based faith and into a fuller understanding of God’s love—even when OCD is loud.

Tune in to the full episode to discover a healthier, more biblical approach to your thought life, find freedom from compulsive spiritual habits, and learn how to walk in the truth that you already have the mind of Christ.

Transcript

If you struggled with OCD as a Christian, you’ve probably heard people talk about taking your thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ. I wanna take a deep dive into the scripture today.

With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.

So let’s dive right into today’s episode. I’m gonna start by reading Second Corinthians 10, three through five in the ESV. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Whenever we’re looking at scripture and we’re trying to pick apart, what is God saying to me here? What does it actually mean? First of all, we need to look at the context of who’s writing, who are they writing to?

What’s going on in this section of scripture? So let’s just take a broad overview. Paul is writing to the Corinthian church. This is his second letter to them. I’ve said it before that if there was a reality TV show about Christians that were a hot mess express, the Corinthians would’ve been on it.

Remember they were new believers coming from a Pagan culture, trying to figure out how to live as Christians. Now, how do we do this Christianity thing that Paul has told us about When we look at the chapter before, it doesn’t really give us a whole lot of context clues. Paul is talking in chapter nine about how he’s taking up this collection for Jerusalem and is talking about giving generously.

I like to look at the chapter before, because we have to remember the chapter and verse markers were put in later so that we could all find our spot. But it was originally just one long letter. Right? But in early in chapter 10, we see that Paul is responding to a couple different things that were said about them.

I’m assuming that these were said by people within the Corinthians community or even within the Corinthians Church in verse one, he’s saying, Paul, who am timid, timid when face-to-face with you, but quote, bold towards you when you are away. This leads us to believe that people were saying, Hey Paul.

You’re kind of gentle and meek when you’re here, but when you write us letters, you’re really hard and harsh and just bold towards us. Then in verse two, Paul says, I beg you that when I come, I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be towards some people who think that we live by the standards of this world.

So that’s another accusation. People are saying, Paul, you’re not living by the spirit. You’re living according to the standards of this world. This leads him into verse three that I quoted before. Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. So he’s setting up the stage for talking about the difference between fleshly arguments, fleshly wars that people have, versus spiritual battles and spiritual arguments that come up.

If we wanna look at a parallel passage, you can go to Ephesians six where it talks about the armor of God. And in verse 12, it says, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of the dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

So we know that as Christians, these verses are telling us that our biggest battles are going to be in the spiritual realm, and that in order to fight those spiritual battles, we have to be, as Ephesians six says, armored with the armor of God. So let’s talk about that for just a microsecond, because we could spend a ton of time talking about the armor of God.

But when we’re talking specifically about our thought process, you need to remember that we have the helmet of salvation in battle. Your head is a very important aspect to. Our head and our heart. Obviously, if one of those things gets knocked out, we’re not going to survive. In the armor of God. We have the helmet of salvation to protect our head, and for a offensive weapon, we have the sword of the spirit, which is a word of God.

For a defensive weapon, we have the shield of faith, which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Verse 16, being really secure in your salvation, protects your head, protects your mind knowing I am the Lord. He loves me. He died for me. I am saved. I am his. That is amazing. And then this shield of faith of knowing that there are gonna be many things that come at us.

Sometimes our own thought process of things that aren’t true and aren’t in line with the Lord and what he is told us in his word. And that shield of faith, that belief and rest and trust in Christ is gonna extinguish the flaming arrows of evil. Both of these things that I just talked about that are in Ephesians six, there are gifts, guys like these spiritual weapons and spiritual armor.

These are gifts from God. Salvation is a gift we can’t produce. Salvation. Faith is a gift from God. We can exercise our faith after God gives it to us, but it’s God who draws us into this love story is God who has rescued us. It’s God who has caused us to be able to believe in him in the first place.

There’s so much effort that I see Christians with OCD trying to exert in an effort to live out their faith, and I would just encourage you to remind yourself that there’s so much that doesn’t depend on you. We can’t forget that our part is obedience to what God has already done for us. We are not working our way towards God.

That’s religion. That’s not the gospel. We are abiding and responding to the finished work on the cross, and we are surrendering our lives one day at a time, taking up our cross to follow Jesus every day. Okay, so let’s flip back to second Corinthians 10. I know maybe seem like I’m jumping around, but sometimes this is what you need to do when you study scripture is to look for other places that similar things are mentioned, and I’m gonna jump to another scripture later.

But when we look at this idea of. Taking thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ, demolishing arguments. I think that when we look at this, we think, okay, so a thought comes into my mind. It’s a thought that’s not godly. It’s a sinful thought. It’s something that God doesn’t want me to think about or focus on.

And I immediately have to hop on it and squash it like a bug. Like it’s just gotta go. I’ve got to rebuke that thought in the name of Jesus. And these are the things that OCD really latches into and they become very compulsive. And as a Christian, you’re trying to figure out, how do I follow my faith while at the same time not giving into the OCD compulsive behavior of this praying repeated prayers or rebuking thoughts or shaking your head to get them outta your mind.

There’s so many different avenues that this can go towards, but those are the things that we’re trying to prevent while also staying aligned with our faith. I really would encourage you to search the scriptures for a verse that says that we choose everything that pops into our head. I can promise you that it’s not there.

So while we have guidance in the scriptures about dealing with our thought process. Obviously that’s important because sometimes our thoughts do turn into actions. However, there are many, many times that we think about things that we don’t ever do because we check ourselves or we pray about it and we say, oh, no, that is not a good idea.

That’s not a good decision. We talk about it with someone else. I mean, there may be times where you want to eat 10 chocolate chip cookies, but then you think through the consequences of that and you go, I am gonna feel so sick afterwards, and that is not gonna be honoring to my body. So I am not going to do that.

How about one to two cookies? So nowhere in scripture does it say that we have complete thought control as a Christian and that we can control everything that comes into our minds. However, I have spoken to many Christians with OCD who are struggling because they really genuine believe that they should be able to control everything that comes into their mind.

That is not truth, that is a lie. It may have been taught to you somewhere along the lines of Christian teaching. Or you may have inferred it or implied it from some things that you’ve been taught, such as take every thought captive. You cannot control every thought that comes into your mind. In the case of Paul, it’s interesting because he is talking about things that people are actually saying against him.

These are not just thoughts that are coming into his mind about his ministry, but he’s saying, Hey, some of you are saying this about me. Some of you are saying these things about me, that I am bold when I’m away, but I’m not bold when I’m there. In verse seven, he says, you are judging by appearances here and in other places.

Paul is telling us that people were actively trying to discredit his ministry. Why? Because he was preaching the gospel. Who would stand against preaching the gospel? Evil is the short answer, or these spiritual battles that we face in the heavenly places. It’s interesting that Paul brings in the word thoughts here because he’s talking about people who were making verbal arguments against him.

However, I’m wondering if the significance there is that sometimes when people are saying things to us externally that we can and do at times have a tendency to internalize them. There may be things that you have been told throughout your life that you believe that might be completely false or untrue.

You might have all kinds of contrary evidence towards those thoughts. Just like Paul, we can’t believe everything that other people say about us, and we need to remember that in Paul’s case, because he was in ministry and people were trying to discredit him, and he was in a position of leadership. It was really important for him to address these statements or these thoughts.

Now, what does that mean for you as you’re trying to navigate OCD? What does it mean to take a thought captive? The best way that you might be able to do that is simply to leave it alone. And I know that seems really, really hard because it’s against maybe everything that you’ve been taught about your thought process.

And I think it helps if you’re able to not just immediately judge a thought as, this is a good thought, this is a bad thought, but more as something a little bit more neutral of just, this is a thought that I didn’t control. It popped into my mind, and now I have a decision to make. I can either entertain this thought or I can ignore this thought and move on.

If I entertain this thought, even in the sense of rebuking it or praying it away or shaking my head or doing something other kind of mental compulsion, trying to think about a positive thought to replace it, that is much more likely to make the thought hang around longer or to make the thought come back.

So if I can let that thought go, let it pass by, not engage with it. That is a much better way for it to be taken captive and made obedient to Christ versus jumping in and doing something about it. I do realize that some of this stuff may be completely contrary to everything that you’ve heard or been taught by other people.

We also have to remember there’s a difference in dealing with intrusive thoughts and someone else who’s not dealing with intrusive thoughts and how you might respond to certain things. I want to share with you another scripture that I think might help you as you’re going through and discerning how to handle your thought process, and this is really beautiful, I think, for people with OCD who have so much questioning going on.

This is from one Corinthians two, and I’m gonna start in verse 10 and go through the end of the chapter. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God for who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in Him.

So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

What this is saying is that we have the ability to understand spiritual things because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Speaking those spiritual truths to us. Continuing in verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The spiritual person judges all things but is himself to be judged by no one for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. This is a really beautiful truth that we have that we can hold onto, is that God has given us the ability to understand spiritual things by putting the Holy Spirit in us, by giving us the mind of Christ.

Once again, this is a gift that you have as a believer in Jesus Christ. And I want you to know that you can walk in that authority and in that freedom, and as you’re working through your OCD journey to let go of the pressure maybe that you’re putting on yourself spiritually to try to control your thought process, the pressure that you’re putting on yourself to have like the perfect thought life because no one has that.

The pressure that you might be putting on yourself to. Suppress these thoughts or handle these thoughts or manage these thoughts and all those things often just feeds the OCD monster and makes everything worse. So every thought that you feel like you’re continuing to have to manage and suppress, and.

It even gets to the point where people get concerned that they’re going to have a thought and they haven’t even had the thought yet. So it’s like we’re not even dealing with the thought. We’re dealing with. The thought of the thought when ICBT calls that thought, thought. Fusion, which is a lot of words, but it’s definitely something that I see a lot in Christians who are struggling with OCD.

I just wanna end this episode in a prayer for you. Maybe you’re just really struggling with your thoughts right now. Dear Jesus, I know that people who are listening to this episode are really desiring to have a healthy relationship with you, a healthy relationship with their thought process. When we ask that you would free them from OCD from. Help them to get the exact treatment that they need so that they can live the abundant life that you’ve promised us in Jesus Christ. Also, always clinging to who that you say that we are loved, chosen, forgiven. When we struggle, remind us that your Holy Spirit is in. Remind everyone listening that we have the mind of Christ.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. I thank you so much for tuning in today. I send out a weekly email newsletter that gives you a little bit of behind the scenes of what’s going on here at the podcast, and I really just design it to be a little extra dose of encouragement. When I send out notices of episodes that are coming out, and so I hope that you’ll join us.

Hop onto carriebock.com and sign up for that email list. Keep going, OCD Warriors. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

184. From Questioning God’s Will to Embracing Grace: A Personal Story with Michael Kheir

Written by Carrie Bock on July 29, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In today’s episode, we’re wrapping up our Personal Story Summer Series with Michael Kier, author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach. Michael shares his honest journey through scrupulosity, intrusive thoughts, and how grace—not striving—transformed his view of God and mental health.

Episode Highlights:

What it’s like to live with scrupulosity (religious OCD) from childhood into adulthood
How to tell the difference between conviction from God and intrusive OCD thoughts
Why legalism, fear, and shame often get tangled with our view of God
How becoming a parent deepened Michael’s understanding of grace
What it really means to walk by faith—not fear-driven compulsions

Episode Summary:

This week marks the final episode in our Personal Story Summer Series, and I can’t think of a better conversation to close it out than this one with Michael Kier, author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach. If you’ve ever felt like your relationship with God was more about fear than faith—or if you’ve ever wondered, “Is this conviction from the Holy Spirit or just OCD?”—then Michael’s story will resonate deeply with you.

In this episode, Michael shares what it was like to grow up with scrupulosity, a form of OCD that turns faith into something fear-based and obsessive. He opens up about the intrusive thoughts that shaped his childhood, the spiral of guilt and compulsions he faced as a young adult, and the pressure he felt to constantly “get it right” with God. For years, his view of God was clouded by fear, shame, and a rigid idea of what it meant to be holy. But through Scripture, therapy, and ultimately becoming a parent, Michael began to experience something radically different: the steady, unshakable grace of God.

Our conversation dives into the real-life tension between legalism and grace, and how OCD can mimic spirituality in ways that are hard to untangle. His honesty is refreshing, and his story is a beautiful reminder that God’s love isn’t performance-based. It’s consistent. It’s gentle. And it meets us in our mess.

I hope it reminds you that healing is possible, even if the symptoms don’t disappear overnight. You can live a life of peace, presence, and deep trust in God—even with OCD in the mix.

So go ahead and hit play on this one. I think it might be exactly what your heart needs today.

Transcript

Today, here I have Michael, author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach, and Mike was kind enough to send me a copy of his book so I could read it. People don’t always do that—sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. That’s the secret to being a podcast interviewer. I feel like it goes much better when I understand the book and have read it.

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Carrie: Welcome to the show, Mike.

Michael: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: This is your personal story, really, of OCD and the things that you found that helped you. And I saw, as you were writing it, that you had referenced a lot of other books that you read on OCD—books that were Christian, books that were secular. But it sounds like you’ve done your research over the years.

Michael: Yes. I think I started reading about the subject a lot when I was about 24 or 25 years old. The first one that I read was Grace of Bounty by John Bunyan. I think my mom actually found it somewhere and gave it to me, and I remember I started crying when I was reading it because it was immediately relatable to me, and I thought it was so cool that somebody that was used that mightily by God had a very similar struggle. I kind of felt like God probably used that struggle to use him in big ways. That was really encouraging to me, and then from there, it was 2007, so we had iPhones, and the internet was very accessible, so I just started googling and researching a lot and found some stuff, but not enough that made me feel like everything that needed to be said on the subject had been said. That’s sort of what motivated me to move forward and start writing.

Carrie: In the book, you tell many relatable stories of how OCD affected you, starting in childhood and then going through adolescence, and adulthood. Would you mind sharing one or two of those?

Michael: Sure. I’m going to bring one up because we might come back to it.

There was one that happened in college, a bunch of kids from our church. I went on a spring break trip, and we were all sort of sharing living spaces. The guys had like an apartment, the girls had an apartment, and I remember I was in our apartment and there’s like a living area and I was talking to some of my roommates and then a guy and his girlfriend walked in and at some point, I remember thinking, my shirt untucked I need to tuck it in and I think I like unzipped my pants just a little bit, tucked it in and then zipped it back up. No one would think anything about it because we were in a living area. It was a very laid-back environment. I don’t even think I was close to any of the girls, but that one girl was there. I just remember obsessing on that and thinking, if she saw me do that, that would be horrifyingly inappropriate as a Christian man to do something like that, and I just obsessed on that idea not immediately, but probably a week after we got back from the trip. I just started obsessing on that, thinking I was in the wrong.

Every time I would try to read the Bible or pray, I would think, I believe it’s Matthew 5:23 that says, if anyone has an offense against you, leave your gift at the altar or your sacrifice at the altar, go make it right, and then come back. Every time I would sit down to pray or read my Bible, I would think, it’s like all OCD.

There’s a 1 percent chance or a one in a million chance that this girl’s offended because she might’ve seen it and she might’ve interpreted it wrong. This went on for, I think, a couple of weeks and I eventually was like, the only way I can get rid of this fear, the one in a million chance I offended her is to apologize, which, in part of my mind, I knew was completely insane, inappropriate, and like, she would be like, what on earth are you talking about? So, I knew that in part of my brain, but I just couldn’t get rid of the fear that I was in sin. I think I emailed her boyfriend and said, if she saw this, I’m really sorry.

My heart is pounding as I’m doing it because I know how crazy it’s going to come across, but I did it and the moment I did it, it was a very powerful moment in my life. I realized what I had just done was not at all, like, relieving in the sense of, okay, I’ve done the will of God. It was more like that was not right.

Something about that was off and that helped me, that was kind of a pivotal moment in my journey of realizing that giving in to every compulsion to remove the one-in-a-million chance of something happening was not the right approach. That’s the big one that sticks with me a lot.

Carrie: Were there any stories that your parents or others close to you didn’t know about until you started writing these things down?

I guess I was thinking that there was a story about you being concerned about suffocating your stuffed animals and they had to be tucked in just a certain way and you’d lay there in bed at night and like losing sleep. Like, did your parents know any of that was going on in your mind?

Michael: I would say that one they may have known, but there were so many that they did not know.

I can’t think of the ones offhand, but I would say most of them, they did not know until I was an adult. I remember sitting in a parking lot, talking to my brother in my 20s, and I was explaining some of the thoughts I was having, and they were all OCD thoughts, and they were overwhelming me, and I remember he goes, you have thoughts like that?

He knew I had OCD, but I don’t think he had any idea of what the toll it took, and how it looked in the brain, and that’s sort of what I really tried to convey when I told my story, is like, when I’m sitting in that moment, these are the thoughts going through my head, and even my mom, as she’s read it after it’s been published in the last couple weeks, has said, man, I’m learning a lot, and I think she knew most of it, but she probably didn’t know how to deal with it and ended up either suppressing it or just kind of putting it in its own little compartment in her head because it was Something she didn’t know how to deal with to help her child.

Carrie: That’s so great one of the reasons I love this show is because we’re able to break the stigma and talk about some of these things when you’re in your own mind having those obsessions There’s this element of feeling so alone and disconnected and nobody else understands what it’s like to live in this mental gymnasium.

Michael: Absolutely. I think part of the stigma is that mental health issues make you less than or less intelligent and I almost look at it like LeBron James, the best basketball player in the world right now, if he had an injury, we wouldn’t say, that guy is such a terrible basketball player. We’d be like, he has an injury and he has to recover from it or he has to compensate for it.

I see mental health the same way. It’s like, I have OCD. That doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent or I can’t function in society. I went to college. I got a master’s degree. I have a decent career. It’s just viewed. Incorrectly by a lot of people in society and in the church, of course, to which we will probably get to, I hope.

Carrie: I’ve met many people with OCD that I would consider incredibly smart, thoughtful, intelligent, and that ability to solve problems in their head that works well in other scenarios, like whether it’s people that work in software or computers or engineering that they can’t use that same type of logic and problem-solving and solving these obsessions and compulsions, which is frustrating because they’re good problem solvers, typically in other areas of their life.

Michael: Absolutely.

Carrie: One of the things that stood out to me in your book was the weighing the 99.99 percent versus the 0.01 percent.

Michael: Right. I want to touch on another story. I believe it’s chapter two where I go through my life story and it’s about another basketball player. Keep coming back to basketball. I was taking pictures of Michael Jordan, not as a professional photographer, but from the stands.

Me and my friend had gone to watch him. This was after he had Unretired the second time. I think it was 2002. He was playing for the Washington Wizards. So, we got these high-up nosebleed seats as the game wore on, and a lot of people left. I think it was a weeknight. So, the crowd just thinned out, and we kind of snuck down to some really good seats.

I think we were 10 rows back, right behind the side where Michael Jordan was scoring. So, he goes up for a dunk. I get a really good picture of it. I’m super excited. I go home. I develop the negatives. They’re really good and then I realize, what have I done? And I go through this long list of condemning thoughts.

Number one, I’m cheering for a team with a mascot, the Wizards, and again, these are all in my mind. I know these are all one in a trillion chance of being wrong, but it doesn’t matter that it’s one in a trillion, it’s still a chance, and I’m obsessing on the chance. So by cheering for a team with a mascot called the Wizards, there is a one-in-a-trillion chance I’m supporting witchcraft.

I snuck down to the cheaper seats during the game, so now I’ve cheated Ticketmaster. Whoever deserves that money, I’ve now cheated them. It goes back to a very similar situation with that spring break trip that I had had several years earlier. I’m trying to read the Bible, I’m trying to pray, and I’m immediately thinking, I’m a thief, I stole from Ticketmaster or the Washington Wizards organization. I am just a terrible Christian, essentially, for promoting such an evil mascot. Again, I just want to reiterate that these ideas sound crazy, and I knew they were crazy in the intellectual part of my brain or mind, but I could not separate the fear from it. The one in a million chance that it was wrong is kind of what drives OCD and drives the compulsions and the obsessions.

Similar to what I did with the spring break trip, I decided I needed to repent of this before I could continue in my relationship with God for a couple of reasons. One, if I am promoting this witchcraft, then I’m possibly deceived. I’m sitting here reading the Bible, but I may or may not be interpreting it correctly in my mind.

I may be thinking, that God is promising something in this verse, but it doesn’t apply to me because I’m deceived. I’m under this cloud of deception because I’m promoting witchcraft. So I decided to make a list of things to do to repent. I’m going to call Ticketmaster, find out the prices of the cheaper seats we went down to, and pay the difference between what we paid and what we did down there and where we had sat.

I was going to stop cheering for the Wizards. Could I promote a team that’s involved in witchcraft? I was going to, the hardest part was to destroy the negatives. This was back when we had film and negatives, and destroy the photos, and then I’d have fully repented. And then when I go and read my Bible and pray now, I know that I’m not under some influence of deception or in sin against God.

After I had gone through that whole process for probably four weeks, I read something in Galatians that caught my eye. That said, “Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you,” which means who has deceived you, that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified.

This is the only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? And I was completely caught off guard by that because I immediately realized all the things I had just listed out that I was going to do to be made right with God again were works.

I was going to pay more money, I was going to destroy negatives, I was going to stop cheering for a team. Those were the actual threats to being deceived, and I realized in that moment, it probably wasn’t a moment. It probably took a few days, but I realized that doing all of that work was not a risk-free situation. Meaning I was not going to do all of those things to become undeceived, which would then take the chance of being deceived down from one in a billion or one in a trillion down to zero. I was actually doing these things and the chances of being deceived were going up. They weren’t going all the way down to zero from one in a trillion.

Over time, I’ve realized there are so many things where we think we’re doing a compulsion to remove the one in a billion chance of something bad happening and we’re increasing the risk of the bad thing happening. I know this initially sounds like complete hell to somebody with OCD because you’re thinking, great, now you’ve just given me more scenarios to worry about, and more scenarios that I’m just going to become compulsive about. What I realized is that as Christians, our walk with God is all by grace and when I can acknowledge I’m not exactly sure what to do, I should maybe go destroy all these negatives and stop cheering for the Wizards, or maybe I should just walk by faith and not worry about that because that’s what the Bible says. Once I can sit in a place of having to trust God because I don’t know exactly what to do, then I’m in a place where I’m walking correctly with God, and that is so freeing. Because it’s saying, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, and now I can be at rest and not think that I have all these hoops to jump through to be made right with God again.

Carrie: I would normalize that as a human experience of not always knowing what to do.

Michael: Absolutely.

Carrie: Some things are very clear, defined in scripture, don’t do this, yes, do this, but there are many other things that may be personal decisions about, “Do I move this year? Do I move next year? Do I not move? Does God want me to stay here?” Those types of things that we really have to wrestle through that maybe don’t have just one right answer right now, or we’re unsure of, and that’s okay. It’s hard to sit with that discomfort or the unknown piece, though.

Michael: And I think this goes back to a general issue that a lot of people with OCD have is an obsession with what is God’s will. This hit me a lot, sometimes even now. I remember in college, there were just limitless choices about everything. Should I go eat at this dining hall or that dining hall? Well, what if I go to dining hall A, and I was supposed to go to dining hall B, and I was going to bump into someone that I led to Christ, who became the next Billy Graham? By not doing God’s will, 500 million people are going to go to hell in the next generation because I didn’t go to Dining Hall B, which sounds very arrogant and presumptuous, but again, it’s all based on a fear of I might be causing all this harm, not necessarily I’m so capable I can impact things in that way.

I think another part of the freedom that I’ve come to that I talk about in chapter eight and in chapter nine, God’s grace is what frees us from that. We’re only at the bottom of all of those fears. “God is harsh, God is judgmental, and God is not for me. If I mess up just a little bit, he’s going to whack me over the head as hard as he can.” But once we realize that he’s kind and loving and gentle with us, then the fear of should I go to dining hall A or dining hall B becomes almost irrelevant. It’s like God loves me if I have a child now. If my child made a tiny error like that, she went to my bedroom instead of her bedroom to look for something.

I’m not going to be angry if she went to the wrong bedroom she’s my kid I love her and there’s just so much grace and understanding in that relationship and I think that’s what ultimately leads to long-term freedom.

Carrie: Tell us about how having a child helped you have a greater understanding of God’s grace and I resonate with that as well with my daughter. There’s just something that you feel as a parent of just that sense of, I love you and I’m for you on your best days when you’re so well-behaved and on your worst days, when all you can do is scream at me, I’m still here for you and I still love you.

Michael: I feel like it’s almost supernatural and it’s part of being created in God’s image. He loves us so much, and God the Father loves his son so much, and you just see it all through society. Even the worst of the worst people love their kids, it’s just totally ingrained in us, and I think that’s totally because we were created in his image and the same was true for me when she was born. It was just this overwhelming sense of, I love this person unconditionally. It was more than emotion. It’s more than just the will. It’s just, almost supernatural, I would say. She’s now six and a half years old. As that relationship has grown, I’m starting to see so many areas where I’m like, that’s totally how God sees me.

She’s just had a rotten day. I love her just as I did yesterday when she had a great day. She’s just so pleasing to me, and she brings joy whenever I get to see her, and whenever she walks in the room, whenever I pick her up from school, and I think we get that intellectually in church. We know God is gracious, God is good, God loves us and it’s in our head. Very successfully, it gets to our head. Getting to our heart is much harder and I think having a child made it get to the heart a lot, a lot faster than it would have.

Carrie: My daughter teaches me stuff all the time. I was telling one of my clients and we were talking about sin and grace and God’s love for us and I was saying my daughter started walking roughly around 12 months and I think she was 18 months at the time. I was like, she’s been walking for a little while, but she falls down a lot and I’m not talking about a slight stumble. I’m talking about how your face is about to hit the floor and your hands just barely caught you from face-planting.

It made me realize that in our walk with Christ, we see that when we fall God is saying, “Can’t you get it together?” Whereas it’s more like, “Okay, get up, you fell, get up, let’s move forward. Let’s keep going.” It doesn’t mean that you have to get out of the race or stop running. Just kind of dust it off and move on.

Michael: Absolutely. That is such a good picture and so much closer to reality. I feel I think as we become adults, we think there’s so much in our control and our capabilities are so high, and we’re probably a lot closer, at least our spiritual capability, like that. We just fall and fall and fall, and God’s trying to show us that it’s His grace that keeps picking us up and moving us forward.

Carrie: When you were able to examine your own OCD, did you kind of define it as legalism, or this is kind of like the legalist part of my brain? Did that have anything to do with strict church upbringing or not?

Michael: I would say yes, and I don’t want to knock on my parents or my grandfather who was a spiritual giant in a way. He grew up in Egypt and came to Christ at 17 and started a church at 22 and just had an amazing, amazing ministry in Egypt and then also when he came to the U.S. My mom obviously was heavily influenced by him and he was a huge impact on my life. I would say that there was definitely the culture difference. Number one, because they were from Egypt and formalities are a big thing there and also just our parents trying to protect us because they were so culturally different when they got to the U.S., they basically had the mindset of anything we don’t fully understand we’re going to protect them from. Even watching certain kids’ shows, like on TGI Friday, I don’t know if you remember TGIF Full House, and like there were some of those shows that were a little bit too much, we couldn’t watch those, and rock and roll was bad, tattoos were bad, long hair on men was bad, just a lot of things that they decided, let’s just cut these things off, so definitely, I would say my upbringing led to or fueled some of that legalism and OCD getting mixed.

Carrie: A lot of times I find there’s a rigidity sometimes that people are raised in, and it doesn’t always have to do spiritually sometimes it has to do with kind of things that you’re saying, just like the household rules.

You have to load the dishwasher this way, or if you did something different, it’s wrong. Don’t hang out with anybody that’s doing that thing over there. I’m curious though, a lot of your stuff was scrupulosity-related. How did you come to decipher, okay, this is God speaking to me, or I know this is something God wants and, or this is OCD because this is a question I probably get asked all the time. How do I know if I’m coming under the conviction of the Holy Spirit or if it’s OCD telling me, you need to repent, you need to confess, you need to do this, that?

Michael: One thing that really led me to not give up trying to figure out that issue was how many times in the Bible God tells us basically to test ideas. I wanted to just mention a few of them 2 Corinthians 10:5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. He’s basically saying you’re having thoughts and you can acknowledge them as being of God or not of God.

One of the biggest ones I liked was, for the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart and I thought, well, sounds like the word of God is the answer to this question. Where can we get a level of discernment like this? and Division of Soul and Spirit? I read some theology, and it seems like that issue in and of itself is very complicated, but it’s almost like a promise from God, like, He’s saying you can actually understand this, and parse these thoughts from each other, using my word.

Another one is 1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things, hold fast to what is good. 1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world and that’s talking more about, obviously, actual people saying things that they maybe shouldn’t, and testing what they’re saying versus the word of God, but it also applies to our minds. That led me to think, where is it in the Bible? He says that in the Word of God, or you’ll be able to use the Word of God to decipher all this and I really came down to three passages that I thought did it for me. Galatians 5:22 and 23 say that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such things there is no law.

I thought to myself, If I’m listening to thoughts, and they’re eventually leading to actions, go evangelize to that person over there, they’re gonna go straight to hell. Well, is that thought from a God that’s producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in me?

I kind of start breaking it down and I say, well, is that a gentle thought? Not really. It’s more of like a demanding, do this right now, do this right now. Which is then catalyzing really in a compulsion to go evangelize right this minute. So now I’m throwing self-control out the window. Was it brought to me in kindness? Not really. I think back to a time when I felt God called me to move. I did five years at Virginia Tech, and in my fourth year, I was in this nice, like, air-conditioned, upper-class dorm room and I just remember thinking one day, I should probably move to this all-freshman. It was this gross, non air-conditioned, freshman dorm. It kind of hit me for a couple of days, and I was feeling the same things, like, kind of guilt, is this really God? Confusion and I remember just looking up one day, I was praying, and I was facing it, it was probably a couple hundred yards away, and I could see it out of a window, and God’s peace just really came over me.

I was like, “I actually want to move there, that actually sounds like a good idea.” I was motivated, and it really sounded like the Spirit of God. I would describe experiencing the Spirit of God. There was joy. I was wanting to do it. I had peace about it. It was a very kind thought in the sense of like if you don’t do this, everyone in that building is going to go to hell.

That was not at all part of that thought. So it was gentle therefore, I was making the decision with self-control and it’s funny, right after that happened, I went back to my dorm room and a couple of hours later, my roommate came back. He’s like, “Hey, do you remember Steve? It was actually my roommate in freshman year. He wants to move into that freshman dorm across the way, and he’s looking for a roommate.” That’s funny because I just decided to move there about two hours ago, so we became roommates again, and it was pretty cool. Just starting to see how the fruits of our actions are pretty obviously indicative of us listening to God or not listening to God. So that was the first passage, and I go into way more detail in the book. Shameless plug for my book there.

Carrie: Why did you choose to write this book and share your story?

Michael: I alluded to it a little bit in the beginning. I think there were so many issues that if I had had this exact book back when I was growing up, it would have been so helpful. There’s a lot out there more now than there was when I was really in the worst parts of this, but a lot of it was just, I felt God was teaching me things, and I was reading and reading about this, and a lot of it was from the medical standpoint and the psychiatric standpoint. And there was a big gap between that and the church.

I felt like the church was, at least the churches I was involved in, leaned towards, “You are having anxiety and OCD. Well, it could be multiple things. You need to pray more. If you prayed more, you’d have the peace of God more. There’s a hidden sin in your life, and that’s why you’re struggling.”

You need to dig, which is the worst thing in the world to say to someone with OCD because now they’re fishing for something that doesn’t even exist, and they’re obsessing even more than they were, trying to find a sin that likely does not exist. They likely just have a chemical imbalance in their brain. There was that aspect of it, completely ignoring the medical aspect of it, and then there were all these brilliant medical doctors who were psychiatrists and then also the PhDs that were psychologists coming up with the truth of the medical side of it with no connection to the fact that there is a God and a Satan and there is spiritual warfare sometimes. I just felt like both sides were completely ignoring the other side and nothing was bringing more truth together.

Carrie: There’s nothing to bridge that gap between that theology and really good therapy and medical help.

Michael: Exactly.

Carrie: Usually towards the end, I ask people a couple of different questions, like, tell us a story of hope or something to your younger self, but I’m curious for you, If you will talk with us about what OCD is like now, does it still show up? It’s just you notice it and you’re more able to recognize it as OCD? I think a lot of people that I talk to, they’re just so focused on, “I want this to go away and I don’t want to deal with this long term.” I want to kind of give them some hope that just because they’re in the midst of the struggle right now, it doesn’t mean it’s always going to look that bad.”

Michael: I don’t want to embellish. I definitely still have OCD, but I would say I’ve gone from having crippling OCD back from ages 14 to 18 was really bad, and then in my early 20s right after college was really bad.

I’ve gone from that to much, much better. It’s much more manageable, and like you said, I can acknowledge what it is when I see it, as opposed to, it really took me so many years to even realize that the thoughts were completely irrational. I don’t know how many years I struggled with all of these thoughts until I realized, there’s a way to look at this and realize that some of my thoughts are totally normal and some of my thoughts make absolutely no sense at all.

I feel like once we get to that point, we’re definitely on the right track. I feel like that was a huge breakthrough. The second breakthrough for me was when, for some reason, the grace of God and the concept of grace just hit home. I listened to Dr. Tony Evans quite a bit, and he had I think it was a 10 or 11-part series on the magnificent grace of God. A few years ago, I was driving like crazy for many hours a week, and I just listened to those sermons over and over again and the crux of what he says is that the grace of God is unmerited favor, so it’s something we don’t deserve, which is great to an OCD person, because we think, “It’s my responsibility to fix the situation. That’s why we end up in these compulsive cycles, but grace eliminates that.

It’s for grace to exist, there has to be no payment for it. That’s a very freeing thing and he talks about it as an environment that is so foreign to us that it takes a long time to get used to and that was true for me. Like, I listened to them and I’m like, “The grace of God is real. It’s profound.”

This is the key to victory, but that doesn’t stop the engine still going in your brain right away. It took a long time. I listened to those sermons. I probably listened to each one at least five times, right? So that’s, what, 45 minutes each, 40 hours of just listening to “God is full of grace.” It’s hard to believe that in your heart and experience it.

He even talks about how if you move from America straight into a foreign country, everything is unnatural to you. Even going out to a meal is different. Making a phone call is probably not as easy as it is now just on your phone, you probably have to dial in some country code. Just everything. The clothing is different.

The culture’s different and he said, “That’s what grace is like.” When we realize, that it’s true, and we want to step into it, it takes a lot of getting used to. One, because it’s almost too good to be true, because the world never treats us with grace, right? Even just normal jobs, you perform and you get a raise.

If you’re off a little bit, well, we’re gonna ding you and we’re gonna notice that and relationships are the same way. Just to experience it with God takes a lot of telling yourself over and over again, essentially. You can definitely find victory and I think realizing how much God loves you, how much favor he has towards you, completely independent of your actions, is the number one thing.

It’s therapeutic to remind yourself, even just saying it right this minute. It’s just one more layer of reminding myself and experiencing that is a truth that I can speak to myself and to other people. I think that has been the most powerful thing. Essentially having a correct view of God just makes it so much easier to deal with.

Carrie: Oftentimes we project onto God, whether it’s been family members or past church leaders that may have had a little bit more of a strict view of God or harsher upbringing of God, or how we even see ourselves. I think sometimes if we don’t like ourselves and we struggle with shame and we can project that onto God, well God must not feel this way about me or that way about me. Really coming back to the true character of God and I appreciate you sharing that for so many people who are struggling today that victory doesn’t necessarily mean the elimination of all symptoms. It means that I know how to deal with these things now when they come up. I have somebody that I work with who will tell me, “This obsession came and I was like, here you are.I know who you are you’re back again,” and now is able to joke about it versus it being completely debilitating because she’s able to recognize that this is OCD. This is one of my themes that comes back around. I don’t have to totally freak out about this obsession like it wants me to. I’m just gonna like, I’m gonna move on with my life and keep doing the things that I love and want to do and are important to me.

Michael: That was very true in my life. I had a pretty harsh father, and he had a lot of great qualities, but he was definitely harsh with me specifically and I was never popular in school. I was bullied a lot. There were a lot of ways that seeing God incorrectly could show up in my developmental years for sure through those two major things. Also, having OCD probably exacerbated all of those problems, I would say, that’s why I think getting to see God correctly. We just have to constantly remind ourselves that that’s true. He is gentle and kind and loving and for us and not against us and full of favor towards us because we don’t feel that with OCD.

Carrie: I appreciate you sharing your story with us and also through your book, we’re going to put a link to that in the show notes and I’ve recommended it to some of my clients because I just feel like it’s very relatable and there’s some helpful information in there on just really examining your thought process. So thank you for coming on the show today.

Michael: Thanks so much.

183. Deciding to Take OCD Medication During Pregnancy: A Personal Story with Amber Williams Van Zuyen

Written by Carrie Bock on July 23, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

As part of the Personal Story Summer Series, we’re bringing back Carrie’s powerful conversation with Amber Williams Van Zuyen, who shares her journey through harm OCD, intrusive thoughts, and the difficult decision to take medication during pregnancy. Amber’s story is relatable, faith-filled, and a reminder that you’re not alone in the struggle.

Plus, don’t miss Carrie’s upcoming live webinar Calming the Inner Chaos: Tips for Christians Seeking OCD Treatment on August 11 at 4PM CT—replay available!

Episode Highlights:

What harm OCD really looks like behind closed doors
The guilt and confusion that often swirl around faith and medication
The impact of dismissive or misinformed “Christian” counseling
Why finding the right diagnosis and treatment made all the difference
How Amber leaned into Scripture, community, and honesty to reclaim her peace

Episode Summary:

Welcome back to the Christian Faith and OCD: Personal Story Summer Series! Today, I’m re-airing one of the most unforgettable conversations I’ve had—Episode 91 with Amber Williams Van Zuyen, author of Pregnant and Drowning. Amber’s story is vulnerable, faith-filled, and painfully relatable, especially for anyone who has faced the intense tug-of-war between mental health struggles and pregnancy.

Amber was diagnosed with OCD early in her pregnancy after being hit with terrifying intrusive thoughts—what we now know as harm OCD. She faced the difficult decision so many moms wrestle with: Should I take medication while pregnant? Will this hurt my baby? Will this make me a “bad” mom… or a “bad” Christian?

We talked through her childhood symptoms, her family’s history of mental health, and the spiritual confusion that can come when intrusive thoughts get tangled up with guilt and faith. Amber shares how shame nearly silenced her, how misinformed “Christian” counsel did more harm than good, and how God, good resources, and the right support brought her to a place of healing. Her honesty gives voice to a struggle many are too scared to name—and her story reminds us that you are not your thoughts.

If you’re pregnant, hoping to be, or just navigating OCD and anxiety with a side of spiritual questioning—please tune in to this one. It’s real, it’s raw, and it just might be what your heart needs today.

Tune in to the full episode now and hear Amber’s full journey.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Personal Story summer series. Today I’m re airing an episode that came out back on episode 91 with Amber Williams Van Zuyen. Amber got diagnosed early on in her pregnancy and had to make the difficult decision about whether or not to take medication. I know that this is probably something that others of you have struggled with if you are planning to become pregnant or you are pregnant and experiencing an intensity of OCD symptoms, so I thought that this would provide some great insight.

She also talks about symptoms that she had earlier on as a child and how that factored into her family tree. So even if you’re not a mom, you still may really find this story of harm. OCD. Very relatable to you. If you haven’t heard already, I am hosting a live webinar on Monday, August 11th, 4:00 PM Central Time.

We’re also gonna have a replay if you aren’t able to make it live. It’s gonna be calming the inner chaos tips for Christians seeking OCD treatment. I hope that you will join us. We are getting ready to kick off. Another round of Christians learning OCD on August the 18th, and this would be a great introduction if you’re really thinking about joining us for that course this fall.

Love to see you on the 11th. You can get all your questions answered. We’ll put the link in the show notes for you to sign up. Here is my interview with the author of Pregnant and Drowning Van Zuyen

Amber, welcome to the show. It’s good to have you today.

Amber: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Carrie: You have a really unique personal story about anxiety and OCD and how that’s impacted you and your life, especially in terms of being pregnant and having your son. Take us back a little bit earlier to when you first started experiencing anxiety or OCD symptoms.

Amber: Well, looking back, I can pinpoint when I was 24 when it heightened and got to its worst point, but in early childhood, I would do things like, I’d be in the grocery store with my mom and I didn’t want to step on the lines on the squares because I believe something bad was going to happen or I just had to make sure that I did that so nothing would happen to me, or there was a little girl who had lice in class next to me and I obsessed about constantly having lice and I would go home and have my mom check constantly and it never stopped. It was always just, check again, check again maybe that’s kind of where I noticed my OCD in my earlier days. And then when I was in high school, I got obsessed with makeup and I always felt ugly, I had to cover that up during that time in my life, I would go to the bathroom during lunch periods and take it all off and then re-put it all back on just because I didn’t want anyone to see me. Looking back, those were things where my obsessive compulsive was kind of taking over. But when I was about 24, I had this really scary thing happen with my vision.

I ended up having something called ocular migraines which affected only one eye. I thought I was having a stroke, and my grandmother also suffered from MS terribly early on in my life, I saw her in a bad state, and that was also another concern of mine. So I was kind of always having obsessive thoughts about getting diagnosed with something, constantly reading things, self-diagnosing that triggered health anxiety for me.

I went to the doctor and he told me it was ocular migraines, that there’s nothing to worry about, but I also was concerned about MS too because my grandmother had it, and I was just so terrified and it just played over and over in my head that I was basically already living with a disease that I didn’t even have to the point where I didn’t wanna go out of the house.

I was obsessing with medical books, reading symptoms over and over again, and actually convincing my body that I was having those symptom. This went on for about a month, and I went to the doctor and they prescribed me medication, and I refused to take it for about a month, but I eventually did, and I slowly got better I never completely got over it, but I learned how to deal with it differently.

Carrie: Did they recognize the OCD at that time?

Amber: No, they told me I had anxiety, but looking back, I definitely in the mind it’s repeat, repeat, repeat. It was really destroying my life because I obsessed about it so much as I was living at 24 7 but I eventually got on medication and it got better. And then it was one of those things where I’ve always felt guilty about it because it’s like a lack of faith I feel in a sense, but I do feel like it’s an imbalance that I’ve struggled with and that I truly need medication for it. There have been points in my life where I’ve been off of it and then on it again, and then, Recently I’ve had a trigger because I got off a medication and I was triggered again with medical stuff because of stories Christina Applegate just came out with MS and it triggered that time in my life again but with that said about MS, I see a lot of people doing wonderful with it.

My grandma just got diagnosed at such a weird time she didn’t get diagnosed for with it for 10 years people said she was crazy. She went to doctors and they told my grandpa, you know, your wife’s crazy you need to lock her up in a mental institution but really she was really sick with MS they just didn’t recognize it at that time. She got so debilitated and basically, there was nothing that they could do for her she was too deteriorated at that point to help her. A part of me feel so guilty because I see all these people doing so wonderful with it or just having a good attitude with it and that has been a struggle for me, I feel guilt.

Carrie: Going back to the piece about faith, because I think a lot of people have that wrestling that struggles with anxiety or OCD, well, maybe this is a faith issue, “I don’t have enough faith in God kind of flesh that out a little bit more for you was, I don’t have enough faith, if I do get MS, that God’s going to take care of me and I’m going to be okay.”

Amber: Yes to me, I felt so bad because here I am creating these things in my own head when there are people out there suffering with it and doing good with it because the most courageous people that I know, my brother-in-law’s a paraplegic and he’s just a testimony.

Just such an attitude and I just think God, what is wrong with me? Why am I like this? Is it a lack of faith, but really it’s anxiety and OCD, and it’s truly a disorder? And I had to come to terms with accepting that because I know now going through several years, I’m almost 40 and dealing with it, that it is an actual disorder.

When I’m on medication, I can control it and I can think clearly, it’s almost a bunch of trash jumbled up in your head and then it gets cleared away and you could see clearly without the medication I couldn’t see clearly.

Carrie: I think it’s really hard for anybody to accept that they have an issue, whether it’s physical or emotional. There is a sense of grief and loss of saying, okay yes, I am struggling with OCD because it wasn’t something that you wanted, it wasn’t something that you brought upon yourself it just, it happens, and there’s probably genetic and environmental factors that contribute to all of that most mental health conditions. So that piece of just learning the acceptance is hard.

Amber: It is, and a lot of people are just, oh, get over it they don’t understand so there’s just this stigma that anxiety isn’t real, your OCD is just something that you are making up. You get a lot of that from people that don’t understand it, and I think that’s where a lot of the guilt comes in is people just throw it to the wayside.

This isn’t a real problem, this is just a you problem, but anxiety has a face just like diabetes or anything else does, and it’s an actual disorder some people need medication for it, some don’t, I tend to relapse when I’m not on medication.

Carrie: Tell us about that in terms of maybe responses from people in your faith community when they found out that you were struggling.

Amber: Well, I had a really interesting experience while I was pregnant, I was really struggling with really dark, violent thoughts, and I was thinking these thoughts were my thoughts and I was struggling so much my mom didn’t know what to do. She made an appointment with a Christian counselor at her church, and I went, I sat down with her. She was an older woman, and I began to tell her, I’m struggling with these thoughts I’m getting really depressed, I don’t know what to do. And she looked at me in the face and said, you don’t have real problems, my daughter has real problems, my daughter almost died giving birth, you don’t have real problems. And I just couldn’t even believe that she had gone there and said that, because I’m already so fragile she could have pushed me to, I don’t wanna say suicide, but there were moments during my pregnancy that I questioned those things. Without my family I could have done that, which is her saying that, and it was just so shocking coming from a Christian counselor.

Carrie: That’s really unfortunate that happened it sounds sometimes counselors can have an internal reaction to things that people tell them, and if we’re not in check with those experiences that happen within ourselves, we can do damage. And so it sounds she had some kind of, we call it counter transference reaction towards you as a pregnant woman and dealing with things. And clearly it sounds like she was not up to speed on OCD or what those symptoms are.

Amber: Yes. She definitely was not qualified for at least someone with my condition going on.

Carrie: When did you get that diagnosis of OCD? Was it when you were pregnant? Did someone tell you like, “Hey, this is harm OCD, these are some classic things and these are intrusions it’s not really you?”

Amber: Probably I was 12 weeks pregnant, these obsessive thoughts started five days after I found out I was pregnant. I’ve always had that health anxiety and I’ve always worried, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to have children at the time, and I was still married. My mom’s like, oh, when are you gonna have kids?

Everyone’s like, “When are you going to have kids?” I don’t know. I was 33 and I’m like, okay, I guess we’ll try and I got pregnant really fast. It scared me and I was laying on the couch one day, a few days after I found out I was pregnant and I was petting my dog and I had this thought in my head where she trusts me so much, I could just snap her neck and she wouldn’t even know it and it scared me.

I had no want or desire to do that, but I started to think, am I starting to go crazy? Am I going to get postpartum? And then I let this repeat, repeat and it turned into a big monster, and it got to the point where I called my OBGYN, and I said, these are the things that are going on in my head and I don’t know what to do, I’m scared that they could happen, not that I want them to happen, but they could and she told me, well, thoughts turn into plans, and then things happen.

Carrie: Oh my goodness. Thanks.

Amber: That triggered me so bad that now the thoughts went from my animals to my mother, to my husband to everyone around me is not safe anymore. Any object around the house, I took all the knives out of the house, put them away, I was scared of the knife drawer, I was scared of the cord that goes through your iPod I thought anything could be a weapon. I was talking to my good friend, she’s a nurse, and she was just walking me through all this, and then one night I was lying in bed and I thought I heard a voice say, just do it already but it was really my thoughts but my friend got freaked out and she said, it’s time for you to go get evaluated. I went to the hospital the next day I was so incredibly terrified I thought everyone’s gonna find out, but at least they will shackle me down and I can’t hurt myself, I can’t hurt anyone else, and this baby can have a chance, so I’m gonna go, but I really thought they were going to 50150 me, they didn’t.

Carrie: In terms of involuntarily hospitalize you, that kinda thing?

Amber: Yes they told me that I was suffering from horrible OCD and anxiety, extreme levels of it. I was like O C D interesting, I didn’t really think about that ever being a thing, because you know, when I think of OCD, it’s like locking the door five times or checking. I didn’t do that, but my mom did that I don’t know if it was hereditary. I ended up going to a therapist through my insurance company and I ended up getting on medication while pregnant, and that was a whole other ordeal as well, because I had one doctor tell me he was, I just switched carriers, so I’d gone to a new carrier while I got pregnant.

This is a whole new doctor, and he told me that because I told him I was suffering from anxiety and this was prior to me going to go get evaluated. And I was just kind of seeing what I could do, I tried acupuncture and I was going to try to get a referral cause it was really expensive to go out of pocket every day because I was suffering so bad, because I said antidepressants while pregnant, what do you think about it? And he said it’s equivalent to a mother drinking every day pregnant. And I’m like, what?

I was just shocked well, okay, this isn’t an avenue I can go down this isn’t going to work. I guess I ended up getting put on medication and I had another doctor, a different one after going through the evaluation process, she put me on something, a roll of doses and it turns out that it’s not the stigma that’s attached with taking antidepressants while pregnant. There’s some that are more harmful and then there are others that don’t travel through the placenta quite the others do. And I’ve asked several doctors and they say that it’s a very low-grade risk as far as the baby’s health goes certain ones and the one that I was on in particular, Prozac, was a friendly one for pregnancy.

Carrie: That’s interesting that your first doctor said that because there are all kinds of studies that have also been done on depressed mothers who are pregnant and that can actually cause harm, low birth weights and those types of things.

Depression in itself is not good for pregnancy, but taking an antidepressant sometimes can help, mitigate some of those risks from the depression.

Amber: Yes.

Carrie: Did your baby come out just fine?

Amber: He came out wonderful. I missed one little part of that story when I told my OBGYN my thoughts, she put me on a medication instantly and not a lot of high risk to it. I was terrified I was on that for six weeks, and then they switched me to Prozac, which is a lot better but he came out beautiful, perfect, good birth weight, he was seven pounds, eight ounces.

Carrie: That’s great. Do you feel like that changed the course of the rest of your pregnancy? How far along were you when you got on the medication?

Amber: 11 weeks.

Carrie: You had these symptoms really early and I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know a ton about this, I just know from anecdotal experience that individuals I’ve talked to have struggled with OCD. Some of them, I guess with all the hormones and different things that are going on in your body and pregnancy is somewhat stressful to your body in general, that can increase people’s OCD symptoms.

I don’t know if you’ve talked to other people who’ve had similar experiences or heard or read articles or things like that.

Amber: Actually, I had two girls reach out to me that kind of heard about my story. Their OCD was a little different. One girl was just terrified of throwing up she has this horrible fear of throwing up, and she was obsessively thinking about it during her pregnancy, and it was derailing her from her everyday life.

She couldn’t focus, she couldn’t go to work. I kind of tried to talk to her as much as I could through it, just knowing that she’s not alone, that we’re all in this together, and that we all have different little things, but they’re all kind of in common when it comes down to the core of it. And then there was another girl who suffered horribly with depression and my boss at my job kind of hooked us up and I kind of just texted with her and she ended up getting on medication while pregnant, and that was a big game changer for her too. She didn’t completely get through her OCD depression during pregnancy, but it helped tremendously.

Carrie: That’s great. I think it’s mental health it’s so important to talk about these things while pregnant too and this is kind of close to my heart because I had some mild depression when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I think I struggled so much with like the shoulds. Well, I should be happy because I got pregnant and I was older and had lots of friends and family that had dealt with infertility, and so I put all these kinds of like shoulds on myself. You should be happy and I had this expectation that I was going to still be able to be fit during pregnancy and dealt with some back pain and different things. It was hard I really had to read just things. I guess I say all that to say I want people to know pregnancy is a happy time, but people can still struggle with some pretty significant mental health issues through that experience.

Amber: Yes, I mean when I had my baby, I held him and I didn’t feel anything right after I had him and I’m just thinking, aren’t I supposed to feel all these things? I just felt numb. Before they make you go home they have you watch this video, don’t shake your baby, don’t do this, don’t do that and I just felt, or if you’re feeling these things, come back in it’s one of those postpartum videos. And they’re playing this because they know who I am you know, just like all of these fears and for the longest time after he was born, I would get these bouts of fear changing him. I’d feel I’d lose control over my hands and they would do something to hurt him not that I wanted to, just the fear of it. And I would have to take him to my mom’s and go, just take a breather for a minute, go for a walk, and kind of work through that.

Carrie: I think the things that you’re talking about, one of the reasons OCD goes undiagnosed is because people don’t know what a lot of the symptoms are and that the obsessions can take a variety of different forms.

It sounds like you’ve struggled with your share of harm, OCD obsessions, but also somatic obsessions in terms of your body, and maybe there’s something wrong with me and maybe I’m really ill. Tell us a little bit more about how you got through that dark part in your life spiritually, this is the lowest point I feel like I’m going crazy, I feel there’s something really wrong with me, I don’t know what it is God help me.

Amber: I meditated on the Bible so much, just verse after verse, great glory from harvest I would put him on every night about fear and worry and anxiety, and I just would fall asleep to his messages and it would give me peace and calmness.

That was the only place I found a place where I could take a deep breath and just be like, I’m going to be okay. Another book, which really helped me was Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer. That just really helped me put into perspective. I can have a thought come into my head, but I don’t have to let it make a home there.

Just that God got me through it I never felt so close to him, but yet so close to the enemy as well I just felt it was a battle for my life. I definitely feel, Yes, I have anxiety and OCD, but there was some massive spiritual warfare I’ve never felt anything like that ever and it’s only by the grace of God that I got through it.

Just prayer, prayer, prayer, talking, I talk to a lot of Christian friends and that’s one thing that I think is a strong suit in me. I don’t have money, but I’m an open book and I tell people I just spill my guts. I think a part of that was a big part of my healing process, just letting it out, letting people know I’m not ok.

Letting them pray for me and I got baptized when I was pregnant was a huge thing for me it was like a rededication. My faith is stronger now than it has ever been, and I’ve never felt closer to God during that time it was wild.

Carrie: Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. The harder circumstances and his sufferings lead us closer to God and we discover more about who he is through those really hard times in our life. Then you felt led to write this book titled Pregnant and Drowning. Can you tell us about that?

Amber: While I was pregnant and going through all these things, I so desperately wanted something to relate to. I could find little tidbits here and there about women that had suffered from postpartum. Some are a little bit similar to mine, but not a whole lot.

I didn’t find a whole lot on harm OCD when I was going through this, and I don’t know if I wasn’t navigating correctly or how I was searching, but it just seemed so taboo to talk about and I just wanted people to know that you are not your thoughts. One thing that I really struggle with, and this is just strictly my opinion.

When I see a horrible headline where a mother bills her children, I think that is not postpartum in my opinion, that is evil and from the enemy. The devil does all these things to make you think that you’re going crazy and that you’ve got to do these things I’ve never had that desire. When I see that and I see postpartum, I go, I don’t know if can postpartum go that far to where you could harm a child like that.

I don’t know I just wanted to tell my story because I would never do something like that, and I felt like a monster and I was ashamed of it, but I know now that wasn’t me those were just thoughts that I invited in and I just could not get them off of the OCD wheel in my head.

Carrie: I appreciate you being so vulnerable about some of those specific thoughts that you had, because I think a lot of people, even people who come to therapy that I see, it takes a little while before they can even open up and talk about some of the things that are going on in their head because they feel they’re so horrific.

And then if I start talking about it, I’m going to possibly start obsessing about it, it can be really tough for them and I think that other people will be listening to this and find it very relatable of some of the things that they’ve had. I appreciate what you said earlier too, about how you can have a thought come in and it doesn’t have to make its home there, like you don’t have to continue to dwell on it you can notice there’s a separation that we can create. I’m having this thought, but one that’s not a reflection of my character which is so important and then two, it’s a thought. I can separate myself from that and say it’s not the same thing as a desire that doesn’t mean that I want to engage in that.

That’s why we call them intrusive thoughts because they intrude when you think about something that kind of pushes its way in, that doesn’t need to be there. That’s something that a lot of people, especially when they’re first kind of getting to know themselves in OCD that they really struggle with.

They think, Oh because I had this thought about hurting myself, my animal, my kids, whatever that means, somehow there’s some deep-seated secret desire that I want to do that, and that’s not the case so it’s important for people listening to this to know that.

Amber: There’s such a difference and it took me forever to realize that because I thought I don’t want to do these things, but why are they in my head because I won’t let them go I’m giving them value. I’m creating this monster that’s under my bed, and I can’t get rid of it until I can figure out that there’s a difference between a thought and who I am as a person, and that doesn’t reflect me.

Carrie: Your book is about your personal story and some things that were helpful and beneficial to you during that process.

Amber: It starts off in my earlier anxiety and then it moves on to my pregnancy, and there was so much darkness in that time and just the struggle I went through to try to get me in this baby through that journey also, I ended up having another baby and I was on medication the whole time. It was a great pregnancy as far as mental health goes totally opposite.

Carrie: That’s so hopeful too for people to know that they can have a different experience than they did the first time, even if they had difficulty with their mental health.

So you just kind of knew going into the second pregnancy, okay, I know what I’m dealing with I know what thoughts could come up, I have some more tools, skills, or resources to be able to separate myself from those and distract myself and move on. Did you ever get any good therapy in this process to specifically deal with the OCD?

Amber: I went to a couple of meetings. It was kind of far away from where I lived and I should have done the group thing I think it’s helpful. I am interested in joining one now cause I think it’s so important to support each other and to realize you’re not alone and that we can all get through this together, just hearing each other’s testimony, each other’s stories, helping each other through struggles.

I know that for me, I don’t have a lot of friends that struggle with the same things I do. I have one friend that has pretty bad anxiety, so to be able to relate to her is medication and therapy. Just to be like, “Hey, oh gosh, you do that too oh, okay I understand how that feels.” Just knowing that you’re not alone is such a game-changer I think.

Carrie: Amber, you have such a powerful testimony and I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us, I hope that people will get your book if this is something that they’ve struggled with and so that they can kind of relate and relieve a sense of shame that they may be having over dealing with some of these thoughts.

Amber: Well, thank you so much for having me.

181. My Response to the Updated IOCF’s Treatment Recommendations

Written by Carrie Bock on July 9, 2025. Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie responds to the International OCD Foundation’s newly released 2024 treatment guidelines. She offers a therapist’s take on the updates, and what they mean for Christians navigating OCD.

Episode Highlights:

What the IOCDF’s updated 2024 treatment guidelines mean for OCD care, and why this shift matters.
How Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) compares to newer approaches like Inference-Based CBT (ICBT) and metacognitive therapy.
Why faith-based concerns and nervous system sensitivity can make ERP difficult for some Christians with OCD.
Which therapies the IOCDF considers “adjunct,” “second-line,” or “potentially harmful”—and Carrie’s take on that, especially when it comes to EMDR.
How to navigate your treatment choices with discernment, hope, and a plan that fits both your story and your values.

Episode Summary:

What if the treatment everyone says is “best” doesn’t work for you—or feels off with your faith? What if there are other options that deserve more attention?

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I’m offering my personal and clinical take on the IOCDF’s new 2024 treatment guidelines, and unpacking what they actually mean for Christians navigating OCD and seeking faith-aligned therapy.

These updates are getting a lot of attention—and for good reason. As a licensed professional counselor who supports Christians struggling with OCD, I wanted to offer my perspective on what these changes actually mean for those of us trying to find treatment that honors both our clinical needs and our faith.

We explore the IOCDF’s continued promotion of ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) as the gold standard, while also recognizing that for many—especially Christians—ERP can feel like too much, too soon, or just not a fit.

I highlight the growing visibility of ICBT (Inference-Based CBT) and metacognitive therapy, both of which are starting to gain traction as valid alternatives. I also share my thoughts on why labeling EMDR as “ineffective or harmful” can be misleading and hurtful to people who’ve found deep healing through trauma-informed approaches.

Whether you’re brand new to OCD treatment or have tried ERP and are still searching, this episode is meant to encourage, inform, and remind you that healing is possible—and there is more than one path forward.

👉 Listen to the full episode to get a clearer picture of what’s really changing in the OCD world, how to navigate these treatment options with wisdom and faith, and why you don’t have to settle for a one-size-fits-all approach.

Related Link:

OCD Treatment Guide: Best Evidence-Based Therapies, Medications, and New Advances

Transcript

This summer, we’ve been in a personal story series, and I’m taking a brief break from that Today. I had a guest that I was really excited to have come on the podcast and we tried two different occasions and it just didn’t happen and didn’t follow through. So I thought I would take some time to talk about my response to the International OCD Foundation’s new treatment guidelines and recommendations.

They just put these out at the beginning of June and it’s a big shift from what they had previously. So I wanted us to talk through that and just give you my response and my thoughts on it. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith, an OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.

When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you. With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith.

I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. When this episode comes out, I’ll actually be on my way to the international OCD Foundation Conference in Chicago for the first time, and I’m super excited because I.

My best friend lives in Chicago, so we will also be hanging after I’m done conferencing. Previous to this June, if you had looked up the I-O-C-D-F website, international OCD Foundation, we’re just gonna shorten it throughout this episode. If you had looked at their website, you would’ve seen that they were really promoting ERP saying it’s the gold standard.

It’s what we have as far as evidence-based care. That’s exposure and response prevention. If you’re new to OCD lingo or new to the show, we’ve definitely talked about that before. They had a section on their website about ICBT, but basically it said we really need further research and we still recommend that you do ERP.

They had sections about medication for OCD. It’s quite a comprehensive website. If you’ve never been on there, I definitely will link the treatment guidelines in the show notes so that you can go through and read them yourself. Before we dive in, I wanna just highlight why a website like this is so important when people are googling about OCD treatment or help for OCD.

Obviously, the IOCD F’S website is going to come up pretty high. There are a lot of people that are just finding out, they’ve been diagnosed with OCD, they’re going online, they’re searching, okay, well, what do I need to do now? Maybe my therapist has said, Hey, I think you have OCD, but that’s not something that I really treat or know much about.

Maybe their therapist is well-versed in OCD, but this individual is really savvy and wants to be educated. Hopefully we’re all like that. We wanna know and understand our treatment options and what’s available out there. We also have to look at this from a social, political standpoint and financial standpoint.

Let’s be savvy here and know that this is a nonprofit organization that is being sponsored by various business entities. As a result, if we have an organization that’s being majority funded by programs, treatment centers, et cetera, that are promoting exposure and response prevention therapy, of course.

The I-O-C-D-F is going to be promoting ERP. That just makes sense. And so we need to go in this with eyes wide open and understand that while they may be saying this is based on clear cut research, but we all know that can’t be the only driving force behind these treatment recommendations. Research on OCD in my opinion is imperfect at best.

Because these are very complex cases, often with multiple diagnoses. In addition to OCD and clinical presentations are going to depend on whether or not an individual is highly sensitive. We’ve talked about that on a previous episode. Whether or not a person has experienced certain attachment features in their upbringing, I’ve talked about rigid upbringings in a prior episode as well.

While we take research into consideration, we also have to, as a therapist, take into consideration the human being that is sitting in front of us and understanding their story so that we know how best to meet their needs. So let’s get into the guidelines. In the beginning, they talk about how OCD is treatable, and it says, while there is no one size fits all treatment plan for people living with OCD, that’s good that we admit that there are many first, second, and third line approaches that can get individuals on a treatment journey so they can thrive.

And I think that in terms of ICBT, that we might disagree with some of this first, second, and third line approaches because obviously there are first line approach that they outlined here is, as you guessed it, exposure and response prevention medication and combining ERP and medication treatment.

According to the I-O-C-D-F, exposure and response prevention is the most proven, effective first-line therapy for OCD in adults, children, and adolescents. It’s interesting they say this therapy fosters long-term relief from OCD symptoms and builds resilience against anxiety. Then why do I have so many people that are coming to my practice saying, yeah, I’ve done ERP, I’ve kind of gotten what I can out of it.

Or, yeah, I’ve done ERP, but the results didn’t last, and I’m slipping back into old behaviors. I. Or it just doesn’t seem to be fully effective for me, based on my own experience of treating people with OCD and the people that are walking through my front door. I think a lot of them would question that sentence about long-term relief from OCD symptoms.

Then they have a section, this is interesting to me on adjunctive treatments. It says you can add these to improve your response. So adjunctive treatments or other medications or therapies that are added onto first, second, or third line treatments, they can enhance outcomes, but are not meant to replace primary therapies because they have not been found to be effective as a standalone treatment for OCD.

I would agree with that. Under here they have acceptance and commitment therapy. I think there are definitely pieces that we can gain from acceptance and commitment therapy really talks about what does it look like to move towards your values. Very much the acceptance piece as mindfulness. Really allowing the thoughts to be there without having to do something about it and act on them.

They also have dialectical behavioral therapy or DBT. This can be particularly helpful for individuals who have intense emotions and have a hard time managing those emotional experiences. Usually that results from attachment disruption. In childhood or some type of anxious attachment that has developed mindfulness based therapy, which of course is gonna be super helpful for just becoming more aware of how OCD works so that you can catch it before you automatically give into a compulsion.

That’s where mindfulness can be really helpful. It’s just learning to kind of. B, with what’s already here. With a sense of awareness and acceptance. Like, Hey, this is the deck of cards that we are dealing with right now. Instead of, A lot of times what we do is try to ignore, shove things away, neutralize in OCD.

Under adjunctive medications, they explain basically that if you don’t respond well to an SSRI medication alone, you can add a typical anti-psychotic. These are obviously much stronger class of medications that you would want to talk with your doctor about and find out about side effects, et cetera.

Just because someone is prescribed an anti-psychotic medication or an anti-convulsant medication, which they also lift on here, obviously does not mean that they’re having psychotic symptoms. It is just used in a different way, just so we’re not scaring anybody out there or making you think that we’re saying that people with OCD are psychotic.

That is not what we are implying here. Now in the second line treatments they have, if first line options fail, if first line treatments don’t relieve symptoms or cannot be tolerated, second line therapies offer alternative approaches. And interestingly, they put acceptance and commitment therapy in here, which I find bizarre because they just listed it as an adjunct treatment.

So which is it? Is it an adjunct or is it a second line treatment? There are little tabs under each of these, so then if we click on inference based cognitive therapy, it says, inference based cognitive behavioral therapy. ICBT is a specialized treatment for OCD that focuses on identifying and resolving inferential confusion.

A reasoning process that fuels obsessional doubts through tailored sessions. ICBT helps you recognize and resolve the tricks OCD uses to make obsessional doubts feel real and reasonable. ICBT is evidence-based, bing, bing, bing. That means it’s been researched and found to be effective. Has shown significant success in reducing OCD symptoms.

Cbts body of evidence for OCD continues to grow, meaning just because it’s a newer treatment on the scene doesn’t mean it’s inferior to ERP. ICBT has not been studied for children and adolescents, so that is a key factor here. If you have a child or an adolescent that is dealing with OCD, I think it can be much more challenging for them to grasp onto some of these concepts.

I think if you had an older adolescent, they probably could grasp onto ICBT pretty quickly and understandably. That would depend a lot on their severity level that they’re dealing with, as well as their developmental level and emotional level. So each person has to be kind of looked at differently, obviously, but I think that this is possibly why they would put ICBT as a second line treatment option.

Due to, they’re looking at the range of OCD and a lot of people getting diagnosed as a child and adolescent. And obviously those people need treatment that is very relevant and so if that’s why they put it in the second line of therapy, I’m actually okay with that. But we do at least feel like that ICBT is getting looked at more now as an option because of how they put this in here.

Especially in terms of this line of cannot be tolerated if first line treatments don’t relieve symptoms or cannot be tolerated. We have a lot of people out there that just really are terrified of exposure and response prevention, or they feel like it will butt up against their Christian belief systems being required to do these imaginal exposures, and so it’s nice.

To have this listed here as a second line option for them saying, Hey, this is available to you. It doesn’t have to be exposure and response prevention or bust. And I’ve talked with other therapists who have been to the I-O-C-D-F conferences in the past many years ago, and they said it was almost a little cultish about how into ERP they were, and they said it was.

Kind of like almost to a, a bit of a creepy level. I think hopefully some things have shifted and changed since then, since that was many years ago. I also want to just point out and congratulate, applaud people that you guys don’t know. And who have been working so hard behind the scenes to really get the I-O-C-D-F to recognize ICBT as a valid treatment.

And so I am so thankful they are obviously much more research minded and valued. Than I am who are able to go in and say, Hey, we do have this research. It’s been done over and over. We can show that this treatment is effective. We have a large community of therapists now that are using this treatment and seeing success with their clients.

I. Will you please offer this to people as an option who are so desperate in such a high rate of suffering, who need help and need hope? And that’s what we’re here for. We’re not here to bash ERP. If it works for people and you feel comfortable doing it, and you’re at a place where you can do it and do it successfully with a trained clinician, then by all means, please go pursue your healing journey in any way that you need to.

And I’m a hundred percent on board with that. I’ve had people leave me to go do ERP and like I hope they soar and thrive. Like I’m not offended by that by any means. That’s okay. Everyone has to do between them and the Lord, what they feel like is right for them. Now, also, under the second line treatment options, they have metacognitive therapy, which I was really interested in seeing.

Now remember, this is an international foundation, which is really cool because it means that even things that aren’t very popular in the US but are working super well in other parts of the world are being recognized. And I would even put ICBT in that category because it’s relatively newer to the us.

This past year I participated in a two day training for metacognitive therapy, and it was an online training. I could be super wrong about this point, but I believe it was the first metacognitive therapy training for a therapist in the US and it was done by a psychologist named Pia Callison. Hopefully I’m saying her last name, right?

I can’t remember because they kept just referring to her as PIA in the training. She wrote a book for laypeople called Live More Think Less, overcoming Depression and Sadness. This is on my reading list. I would like to get a hold of this, but I wanted to give it to you in case you wanted to look more into metacognitive therapy.

There is also a treatment manual written by Dr. Adrian Wells. That I started and haven’t finished yet. It’s called metacognitive therapy for anxiety and Depression. If you have not heard of metacognitive therapy, I’ll give you the brief overview, but understand that this is coming from a novice. The therapy.

Essentially what metacognitive therapy says is that we all have these thoughts that come into our mind, but we all deal with them in different ways. And if we grab a hold of those thoughts and we really chew on them, ruminate on them, worry about them. Do some type of compulsion in response to the thought.

They call this the cognitive attention syndrome. Metacognitive therapy says that the problem is not really your thought. The problem is what you do with your thought. So they teach something called detached mindfulness, and they use an analogy like having trains that are coming and going, right, and you can choose which train.

You want to hop onto, if you’re at a train station now, you might have a train that’s going east and you really wanna go west. Well, if you hop on that East train, it’s gonna take you way out of the way of where you want to be. Metacognitive therapy has different activities that you do with clients where they will essentially just learn to detach from the thoughts that they’re having In my very novice practice of metacognitive therapy.

What I have seen it be most helpful for is for clients who are dealing with a secondary depression in addition to their OCD. I find it incredibly effective for depression because sometimes we go through things in our life and like it does stink, and cognitive behavioral therapy is like, Hey, let’s reframe that thought and make it better.

Okay, you’re lying in a hospital bed with a broken leg, but now you have more time to read that you’ve always wanted, I mean, whatever it is, you’re trying to constantly in cognitive therapy for depression, trying to look at your circumstance a different way. And metacognitive therapy would just say, okay, so you’re lying in a hospital bed.

You can detach from that thought. You don’t have to focus on it, or you don’t have to change it. You don’t have to make it better. You don’t have to ruminate about it. You can literally do nothing with that thought. And then the theory behind metacognitive therapy is that your brain will be responsible for the self-regulating process.

Essentially, if I get out of the way of having to quote deal with all of these thoughts, then my brain will be able to relax and regulate and be okay. It’s super hard. I’m just gonna say that for the clients that I’ve used it with, it takes a lot of practice. It does take intentionality to be able to let thoughts go because that’s not typically what we do, especially for Christians.

We often feel like we have to pounce on thoughts. I’m gonna do an episode about this in the future. About taking thoughts captive and like, what does that really mean for us? How do we apply that in a practical sense with OCD? Because that’s something that I hear a lot of Christian clients talk about. I will say that when I went through the training for metacognitive therapy, there was something in my life that I was really stuck on.

It was a thought that was true, but the thought was causing me to be really angry. And as I practiced some of the metacognitive techniques on myself and with like kind of a practice therapist, we were practicing on each other throughout the two days. I will say that something just release within me. It was incredible.

So I know that there are pieces of this. That can be helpful and work. But I also feel, uh, still very novice, almost like, kind of like I’ve run out of parlor tricks to use and I would love to pursue additional trainings in metacognitive therapy because I do think there are pieces of it that can be useful.

And as I’ve said, this is something that’s being used in Europe. I think it originated in Denmark. I’m not really sure. Just know that metacognitive is another therapy that is out there for you, but you may have a little bit of a challenge finding someone in the US who does it. If you are in Europe, you might have a little bit of an easier time under second line treatments, they also mention space, which we’ve had as a previous episode as well.

So supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions is what space stands for. It’s an acronym. The cool thing about space is that you as the parent can do this. Even if your child or adolescent is digging in their heels, they’re refusing to go to therapy, or maybe you take ’em to therapy and they’re like not talking to their therapist or they’re just saying, I’m not doing this.

You as the parent can get this training in space and really be supported on how to respond to reassurance seeking how to reduce accommodation, how to be really compassionate and empathetic, while also at the same time not doing things that are gonna feed the OCD in your child or adolescence. So I love that they put space on here because I think it’s a great option for parents.

So just moving down the treatment recommendations, we then get to third line treatments. So for severe or treatment resistant OCD. Third line treatments are advanced options for individuals who haven’t found success with first or second line treatments, including combinations of the various types of therapies.

And these are reserved for severe treatment-resistant cases and require close clinical oversight. So they have transcranial magnetic stimulation. TMS. By the way, we are still looking for a guest, so if you know a guest who’d like to come on and talk about TMS, that’s definitely something I wanna explore more on the show, as I believe more insurance companies are paying for TMS.

Now, TMS originally was used for treatment resistant depression. So if your depression is super, super bad as a result of OCD, and you’ve tried various medications, typically in order to do TMS, you have to quote, like fail out of so many medications. Next in line we get to emerging treatments, experimental.

Some treatments show early promise, but require much more research, psychedelics and IV ketamine therapy supplements, and pharmaco genomic testing. PGX. I personally disagree with PGX because I’ve seen in a couple different cases where it’s actually backfired and people have been taken off of medications that were helpful for them to be put on something.

Supposedly that’s better for their based off of their genetic testing. That’s just my personal experience. Take it with a grain of salt and then we get down to little section on pans. Pandas, I’m not gonna talk through that. Then treatments to avoid ineffective or potentially harmful. I mean, that’s a very strong wording.

I-O-C-D-F. It’s important to avoid treatments that lack scientific evidence. These therapies have not been proven effective and may delay access to evidence-based care. So they have ineffective psychosocial treatments. EMDR what? Hypnotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychodynamics, psychotherapy, et cetera. What’s interesting is that the EMDR has a link, and if you click on the link is actually a more balanced article.

One of the co-authors is someone I know from the ICBT community, Bronwyn Schroer, who uses EMDR and ICBT to treat co-occurring PTSD and OCD. If you click on the link, it does give you a much more balanced point of view to say. EMDR for OCD specifically doesn’t have a large body of research and most of that research being done in adults now I know because I have taken trainings from them that add dej.

Sorry if I mispronounced your last name, and Suzy Matheson have something called the Flash Forward technique that they use for OCD. I think the argument is that this is glorified exposure therapy because you are having people imagined their worst case scenarios and then processing that as a traumatic memory.

Now, I will say that odd and Suzy, who are researchers in the Netherlands. They’re super incredibly brilliant. I’ve taken a couple of their trainings and I probably honestly could go through them again and get something more out of them. They are also pioneers of what’s called EMDR 2.0, which focuses on working memory taxation versus just the bilateral stimulation.

Hopefully I’m not getting too nerdy for some of you I know we also have some therapists that listen to this podcast as well. Essentially, EMDR 2.0 just adds another layer and sometimes can help people process through things if they’re getting stuck. So it’s something that I have incorporated into my practice, and I do think that because people who struggle with OCD have so much going on in their brains.

Sometimes they benefit when they are processing trauma. They benefit from that EMDR 2.0 approach. So you could also argue odd and Suzy are seeing people in the Netherlands who are in intensive treatment therapy programs and probably have a pretty high level of distress that they’re dealing with. I think it might be hard to differentiate.

Are they benefiting from EMDR 2.0 or are they benefiting from really the flash forward technique? Is this just glorified exposure therapy? So flipping back to the I-O-C-D-F website where they’re talking about EMDR and they’re saying, okay, it’s not evidence-based for a standalone treatment. I would agree with that, but it still could be recommended as part of an overall treatment plan.

To treat trauma slash PTs in co-occurring OCD and PTs d. They also say that we could benefit from more research, so that webpage is much more balanced than saying ineffective or potentially harmful. I think that that’s very harsh and that that’s very unfair for people who might benefit from EMDR as part of their treatment process.

I have sat with many client who has processed the onset of their OCD because that was truly so traumatic for them. They did not know they were going through OCD. They did not know what was happening to them. They might have thought they were going crazy. They had an intense high level of. Fear. It was a very dark time in their life, and even just being able to go through EMDR surrounding that situation has been so healing for so many people, and I think that’s why it hurts my heart a little bit that I-O-C-D-F would deter people from getting EMDR therapy who might really benefit from it.

I’m not saying it’s going to solely cure your OCD. It’s super helpful in terms of dealing with childhood woundings in terms of dealing with traumatic events that may be exacerbating OCD symptoms. I see that all the time. So for someone who just lands on this website and sees potentially harmful and then right under it, EMDR, that’s really gonna deter quite a few people from getting it.

They also have brain spotting on here. And then they have ineffective medical treatments. The reality is that getting effective, helpful treatment for OCD is super challenging, and we have to rewind and say that back in the 1960s, which is not that long ago, this was considered an untreatable disorder. So we have come a long, long way, and I think we still have a long way to go.

There’s more research that can be done, more research that probably needs to be done. Even though for me, I am not the biggest fan of research. I would much rather have people come in. I kind of know who my ideal client is that I work well with, and I will try some things out with them. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.

If I consistently see something not work for people, I just pull it out of what I offer. I don’t even offer it anymore, and I’ve been doing that for years and it has worked super well for me and I’ve been able to help a lot of people. I’m thinking of somebody that I have right now that really had a long course of exposure therapy and medications.

A course of EMDR treatment for some early childhood trauma and woundings, and then I’m working with this person on ICBT right now, and it’s just been so interesting to see that this person has hope again. They have hope of getting better. They feel like this treatment really makes sense to them, and they’re like, okay, I’m getting it.

And I feel like I’m able to start seeing some progress and I’m putting some pieces together that I wasn’t able to put together before. And one of the reasons that exposure wasn’t helpful for this person was that they just weren’t able to tolerate it. So they would try to expose themselves, but then it was like they couldn’t move on the hierarchy ladder.

They got to a point where things just became too much and became like their nervous system was just getting super triggered. The whole reason that I’m here, that I’m speaking into this space and even talking about this stuff is because I want people to know that there’s hope. That no matter how low you feel like you are right now, no matter how badly you feel like you’re struggling, that there are these different treatment options.

And you know what? If you find a therapist and you guys just don’t jive, let’s keep it real. Sometimes that happens and I’m gonna do an upcoming episode at some point on terminating. In therapy, like kind of ending a therapy relationship. And it can really be challenging sometimes. And so I hear that, especially if you feel like, you know, this person just doesn’t get it because they don’t share my faith.

We’re now at a point where we have over 175 episodes for you guys to listen to. That can hopefully help you on your OCD journey if you’re interested in ICBT or think that might be a good fit for you. You can check out Christian’s Learning I ccbt over at care bach.com/training. I also do MDR and I ccbt intensives.

For those of you who really feel like you have trauma in the way of being able to. Get the help that you need with OCD and really just need a wraparound approach. OCD Warriors, you are amazing individuals, so tough and so strong, and continuing to fight even though you’ve had some really hard or really low points in this process.

I want you to know that I see you and want to continue to support you guys any way that I can. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

180. A Pastor’s Daughter Struggles with Scrupulosity: A Personal Story with Stephanie Smith, LPC

Written by Carrie Bock on June 30, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie speaks with Virginia-based therapist Stephanie Smith about her personal and professional journey with OCD, including how it intersected with her Christian faith. They explore the development of scrupulosity, the healing impact of ICBT, and the importance of separating OCD’s voice from the truth of God’s grace.

Episode Highlights:

Stephanie’s personal journey with OCD, beginning in childhood and evolving into scrupulosity during her teen years.
Why OCD often targets a person’s deepest values—such as faith—and how that complicates spiritual life.
The difference between fear-based religious behavior and grace-centered faith.
The role of perfectionism and guilt in religious OCD and the shift toward grace-based faith.
How Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) helps individuals stay grounded in reality and resist OCD’s imagined narratives.

Episode Summary:

What happens when your deepest spiritual values become the very thing your brain starts to fear? Therapist Stephanie Smith knows that struggle firsthand—not just as a clinician, but as someone who grew up with undiagnosed OCD that slowly evolved into scrupulosity.

Stephanie opens up about how her struggles with OCD began in early childhood, long before she had the language or support to understand what was happening. As she grew older, her symptoms shifted into scrupulosity—a form of OCD that latches onto one’s faith, twisting deeply held spiritual values into sources of fear, guilt, and confusion.

Stephanie’s story highlights just how overwhelming it can be to live with OCD in a Christian context. She shares how intrusive thoughts, purity culture, and black-and-white thinking made her feel distant from God and unsure of her salvation, even as she earnestly tried to follow all the “rules.” We talk about the critical moment when she finally received an accurate diagnosis in her late teens, the relief that came with understanding her mind, and how therapy—especially Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT)—helped her reconnect with her true self and rediscover the God of grace, not fear.

Stephanie and I also reflect on the connection between identity development and OCD recovery, how perfectionism and guilt play a role, and what it means to embrace a spiritual life rooted in love—not performance.

We don’t just talk theory—we talk healing. Stephanie’s story is filled with hope, insight, and tangible wisdom for anyone feeling stuck in fear, shame, or spiritual confusion. And if you’re someone who’s navigating OCD as a Christian or supporting someone who is, I want you to know: you’re not alone, and you don’t have to stay in that place of uncertainty forever.

🎧 Tune in to the full episode to hear Stephanie’s powerful journey and learn how you can begin trading fear for peace, and perfectionism for grace.

Explore Related Episode:

162. Hope for Scrupulosity with Dr. Constance Salhany

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower wife and mother. Licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing. And helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

Carrie: Another reason I like this interview is because it really shows you how scrupulosity often comes as a secondary OCD to an initial OCD theme that then gets latched into faith. That’s helpful for us to know because oftentimes we have to really look at tackling that initial OCD theme before we can unravel the spiritual pieces of it.

I know you’re gonna enjoy today’s episode, so let’s dive right in. Stephanie, if you can just go ahead and introduce yourself for us.

Stephanie: Yeah. My name is Stephanie Smith. I’m a psychotherapist, licensed professional counselor. Virginia located at a group practice in Richmond with lived experience with OCD.

Carrie: Awesome. And we met through the ICBT group, or was it through Instagram?

Stephanie: I think it was Instagram. I saw I was following some OCD accounts and had followed, stumbled across years. Why did you wanna share your story today? I think my diagnosis of OCD, just the intersection, I think of my faith and OCD and sort of how my own faith sort of.

I took hold of, or my OCD kind of had the theme of the scru moralistic, the religious OCD already as a Christian OCD really attacks your values. Just raising awareness, I think, of the forms that OCD can take and shedding some light on a sufferer of OCD, who’s also has navigated her faith. How that can kind of be complicated when OC D’S a liar and your faith is not.

And so trying to navigate what voice is what,

Carrie: Tell us a little bit about how OCD showed up for you, or when did you start to notice those obsessions coming on?

Stephanie: They really started. I think I was really young and we’re talking maybe like elementary school, and I would have really intrusive thoughts. They would just kind of, they were like violent or they were sexual or they were horrific and they would just be these images and I would just burst into tears.

I didn’t know where they were, what they were, how they came about. I. And I had a lot of separation anxiety, I think from my parents at the time, the separation anxiety. I was asking my parents, am I gonna be okay? Is everything okay? They didn’t have much knowledge about anxiety and OCD or there was not much mental health awareness in general in the early nineties.

I’m a millennial, so there wasn’t a lot, and my parents didn’t really know what to do except to reassure me. And we know with OCD sometimes reassurance. Can make it worse as a compulsions. There was a lot of reassurance seeking a lot of confessing that I had a thought or that I, and a lot of the confessing wasn’t even anything I was doing wrong, but I worried, what if I was doing something wrong?

And so compulsive praying a lot of that. So that’s kind of how it started when I was young. And I guess I can fast forward a little bit into middle school. With OCD, it tends to play whack-a-mole with themes. So at first it was kind of that harm OCD that worries that something bad was gonna happen to my family or me.

And this fixation in the nineties, around the time when I grew up and was a child and also a teenager in a lot of, I guess at that time I grew up in evangelical culture, so in youth group and stuff, where at that time there was a lot of talk about, I truly got hung up on obedience. I was like, oh, what if I go to hell?

What if I’m not pleasing? God? What if, what if? What if?

Carrie: Did you feel like you could share any of those concerns with your parents? Or were there certain ones that you would seek reassurance for and ask them about? And then other ones that you were like, oh no, that’s too scary to admit or tell anybody? I don’t think until later,

Stephanie: no.

A lot of what I was struggling with, I just remember lots of times I would cry to nowhere because I had an intrusive thought.

Carrie: Oh, but they

Stephanie: didn’t know why I was upset, why I was crying, and I couldn’t really articulate it. I did feel like I could come to my parents. My dad is a pastor and it was funny ’cause he was never really a hellfire and brimstone pastor, but I think in that culture there was just fixation on eternal damnation and I was like, oh no.

As a kid, when you have OCD, it just makes some things a lot harder to navigate

Carrie: and it just gives latched on to certain things and especially I think. OCD like structure, like, oh, well you’re telling me do A, B, C, and I’ll be obedient and I’ll be like the good Christian, so I’ve gotta like extra be sure that I’m doing A, B, C, so that I can go to heaven and please God, and he won’t be upset with me.

Stephanie: It was challenging to get to a place where I didn’t fixate on my face as much. I got to a place where I had figured out my beliefs for myself and things didn’t scare me. It was a journey, and there’s a lot of themes that sort of played Whack-a-Mole, but in sixth grade. There were rumors about me and a friend of mine that we were gay, and this is in like mid to late nineties where there wasn’t as much awareness or acceptance of the lgbtq plus community.

And so then it was like you were really ostracized. At the time, I didn’t think I was gay, but then I started to question it. What if I am gay and if I’m gay? What if I’m an abomination to God and I’m really going to hell? Yeah. Again, just this fixation and at the time I didn’t have a healthy understanding of, I don’t think, my faith and the concept of heaven.

Hell, as a child, you are very black and white with your categories of thinking. It’s either good or bad. Right or wrong. Yeah.

Carrie: Yes. Or. I think that whole period of sexual development too, back in that day, very much like purity culture. I don’t know if this was part of your story, but like not talking about sex and our only conversations surrounding it are no bad, don’t do it.

Wait till

Stephanie: you’re married. I had a really great youth group, leaders and things, but there were camps that we’d go to and so sometimes. Even if a youth pastor a leader was well-meaning if you’ve got somebody in the group that’s got OCD, you gonna latch onto something that you said and spin a story. And I tended to do that.

I did that a lot and just really thought that I was like too bad of a person for Jesus to love, which at the time really made me very depressed when I was, I wanna say in 10th grade or 11th grade, my dad had found a poem that I wrote. He thought was a suicide note. It wasn’t. It was just a really depressing sort of self-deprecating poem.

And he had taken me outta school to go to, I guess the hospital to look into counseling or medicine. And this is the first time I’m 17, so I have not gotten any help all these years for OCD or anxiety or any of it. And I got put on Paxil, which is SSRI, antidepressant, which really helped with my mood and I didn’t find out until later into my own career as a licensed therapist that.

Those types of medications also help a lot with OCD. And so when I got put on that, I was also given, uh, recommended or referred to a therapist who really spotted my OCD. I mean, it might have been the first session or something. She was like, this is what this is. So it was a huge relief to know, you mean this is a thing that I’m not wrong and bad.

I literally have a pulse condition, the psychoeducation piece, this is what OCD is. Your intrusive thoughts are actually the opposite of what you want. They’re not indicative of who you are as a person. That’s why you are so scared of them. ’cause you don’t like them. This is OCD and so that was instrumental in my career now as a therapist was having her.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s awesome that it was found so quickly and they didn’t just treat you for anxiety. Right. That sounds like you were having some pretty clear symptomology though, like just explaining the thoughts that were going through your head. And then did you stay with that same counselor for a while? I did.

Stephanie: She told me a little bit about ERP and gave me a book on it on exposure response prevention, which is a kind of golden standard therapy for OCD, but I found that just the knowledge of what OCD was significantly decreased. Not only my fear of my intrusive thoughts, but it dissipated the fear. So I wasn’t afraid of having them, and therefore it decreased the frequency because I wasn’t living in fear of having them ’cause I knew what they were.

So I could just, oh, that’s OCD. It was also interesting because when I told her about my fears of. At the time, oh, what if I’m gay? Or what if she goes, Stephanie, do you wanna ram your tongue down a girl’s throat? And I was like, no. Ew. She’s like, then you’re not gay. And I’m like, okay. So at the time, regardless of your thoughts on, as a Christian, as a believer and sexuality, it wasn’t like okay, like it wasn’t anywhere and was still wasn’t as much of acceptance or awareness really of the LGBT community.

And so I’ve since reconciled some of my thoughts on, and my faith and I. That just kind of was a growing process as I got older. But at the time in the culture in the nineties that I was in an evangelical culture, it was just this big no-no. And so after I kind of realized what OCD was, got the education from her, that sort of propelled me forward into.

Going into my career now.

Carrie: I mean, essentially what she did there in terms of I Ccbt was get you in touch with your true desires.

Stephanie: Yeah, I really like ICBT as a therapeutic modality for OCD because it resolves. It kind of at the root, tells you that your intrusive thoughts, like what you obsess about, is it random.

It’s actually a threat to kind of your true self. It scares you because it’s not how you see yourself. But OCD tends to be very strong in making you feel that the thought or the urge or the fear is true. And even if you know kind of deep down that something is not the case, OCD tries to convince you it is as it is the doubting disorder.

Carrie: I’m just realizing more and more how much of OCD treatment is about identity development, and I’m curious about. Your spiritual development from that point, of course, like OCD was trying to hijack that and distort really your view of God and distort like your beliefs about what it meant to be a Christian or workspace, salvation, however you wanna conceptualize that.

Yeah. But how did that shift? Over time for you, was it just kind of small ways of like reading the scriptures for yourself? Was it being around other forms of teaching? Like

Stephanie: after college? I think I had sort of, I’ve gone to your more conservative evangelical churches. I’ve gone to more progressive churches.

I’ve kind of like explored a lot to get to a point where I’m confident in my faith as I see it, I don’t fear it as much. And my grandmother. She had really bad anxiety and worry. My grandfather, her husband had OCD, which is where I get it from, which unfortunately, but both the OCD and the anxiety, one of my great aunt had told her one day, Jeanette, you read the Bible too much, it’ll drive you crazy.

The idea was if you obsess and you were compulsively, urgently seeking the scriptures, you were reading out of fear and you were not reading in a way that is where you’re at peace and you’re interested, you are afraid. And so I took that to really mean that I. If you are looking at stuff and you were forgetting about the grace component or the fact that salvation is a journey, a process through which Paul says to work out your salvation, it’s a sanctification process, so right, it’s not gonna be, you’re gonna get everything right in this moment.

You’re gonna obey 100%. It’s just not realistic. Nor is it indicative of the great heroes of scripture

Carrie: who also made their share of mistakes and messed up and. I think people forget that Paul was on a track murdering Christians before he encountered Jesus. I think somehow we’ve missed that part of the story.

We’re like, let’s like just exclude that and pretend like that never happened. But OCD will have you getting stuck on like one small offense or some sin that you’ve committed. It could be something that you did a long, long time ago, and OCD keeps bringing that back up. Well see you’re this way or that way.

Okay. That was something I did 10 years ago and it’s not even relevant to my life today and who I am. Thank God I’m not the same person that I was that many years ago. I’ve just been processing, I think a little bit about what you’re talking about related to sin, forgiveness, grace related to scrupulosity, that those can be really challenging concepts for people to grasp understanding of.

It’s not about me doing all the things to be right with God. It’s very hard to shift out of that. I mean, do you wanna speak to that? Maybe a little bit?

Stephanie: Yeah. I think with, you had kind of mentioned earlier, like a workspace kind of, we can get into that mentality with OCD being a kind of black and white all or nothing, that it can really align with this idea that I have to earn, I have to do, I have to this workspace.

When the work has already been done. And that’s the beauty of it that I had to realize was that these are all things that I have been saved from and I don’t have to white knuckle it, grip my teeth and like push through and try to obey all these commands. It’s hard because I think sometimes why I used to look at Christ’s commands.

Christ can say some things that are pretty all or nothing pretty, like absolute obey. And he said, be perfect for your father in heaven is perfect. But if he said, be pretty okay, we’d all be patting ourselves on the back. We wouldn’t be motivated to grow and mature. So I think it was something to strive for because he knew that we weren’t perfect or he wouldn’t have had to die.

We just have to keep that in mind that this is what he came for. And I think OCD can really convince us. And keep us staying in this rut of self-loathing and things like that, that really is the opposite of what I think Christ came to do. We’re made in the image of God, and if we’re constantly self-loathing, we’re really just kind of showing that we don’t believe that, and I think it’s important to believe that we are made in God’s image and that we don’t have to let OCD be the

Carrie: judge.

I don’t have to keep like striving all so much and working so hard at something. I think it’s something that we’re meant to have like a natural abiding in Christ and connection to the Holy Spirit and making sure that our conscience is clear in the sense that we are connected to God, making sure that we are not actively repetitively sinning, that we’re allowing the Holy Spirit into nudge us.

To do that gentle transformation, that’s very kind for us. Like, Hey, you’re in the wrong here. Like do something different. And it’s a very big shift from feeling like we’ve gotta do all the roles or we’ve gotta complete all the tasks. And I think that so many people were raised in one system of thinking.

It can be very hard for them to experience God for themselves and to start to shift some of that thinking and looking at these things a little bit differently. Maybe there is grace for me too. It’s not just some kind of foreign concept out there, but I think accepting that we’re not going to be perfect, accepting our imperfections is just so huge part of this process.

Like striving for it, but then also understanding we’re gonna fail. It’s very strange, right? Right. It’s like a dance.

Stephanie: It’s like it’s, you do what’s in your power or what’s a response to God’s love and grace and he meets us where we are. He’s there first and we sort of take a step. I definitely feel like it would take pages and pages to kind of like really flesh out.

I think Cru velocity, OCD is a very challenging thing to have, especially when you are religious. You are a believer in work. It’s, yeah, it’s hard. Because there’s a book of rules, but I really think it takes the right disposition approach to scripture. When we read, are we reading out of fear or are we reading out of a willingness to be loved and understood and a response to the love that’s already there?

Carrie: I like the dance metaphor ’cause it’s very active, it’s very engaged. You can’t do it by yourself. I mean, I guess you can dance by yourself, but in this sense of having a relationship with God, I can’t do that by myself. God invites me into that process and into that relationship because he loves me and I’m gonna have some missteps in the dance and that’s okay.

Like God continue to lead me back to where I need to be. And so I think that that’s a beautiful, it just shifts your faith from, is this about rules? Just doing the quote right thing all the time, or is it essentially Jesus told the Pharisees like, you’re doing a lot of things, but like your heart’s not in the right place.

So it’s just, are we gonna look at, okay, where is our heart at and allowing God to continue to mold and shape that into who he wants us to be. Why else do you think that just from your clinical and like kind of professional glasses now, why do you think Scrupulosity is so challenging to treat?

Stephanie: I think probably because I think scrupulosity of cd, you are probably already very conscientious.

You probably have a very loud conscious and a sense of right and wrong and guilt and like, and you’ve got this constant condemner of OCD here and I think if anything, maybe there’s. Some hope in knowing that I’m probably doing the right thing more than someone who doesn’t have OCD and has a thing that’s really trying to, not that we should compare ourselves, but I think it’s totally challenging because there are people who maybe who have Cru philosophy OCD, that will fixate on past mistakes as evidence that they’re doing something wrong or that they shouldn’t do.

Because then with ICBT, we talk about what’s the evidence? Do we have any direct evidence for this? Someone might say, oh, well I’ve got this experience with it, or this past thing I did, which I guess partly we call real event ocd. Yeah. But if we have a OCDs, logical fallacies or the reasoning categories it uses to try to convince us of these.

Erroneous messages that does become challenging to navigate. Really say that, okay, this might have happened in the past, but I think is it your intention to be a terrible person? Do you even feel angry when you worry, oh, what if I harm this person? Are you even angry in the moment? Do you have an intention?

Because that matters too, just because you did something in the past. Or struggle with this or that doesn’t mean that you are actively intending to do these things versus an actual person that is doing bad things or is an actual, I guess, bad person isn’t concerned that they’re bad or isn’t concerned.

They don’t care. And so I think it’s important to realize that we’re not perfect. So again, it is a dance with the Holy Spirit. It’s a dance with God. We’re gonna mess up. It’s some perfectionism, I think, falls into that true velocity, OCD two.

Carrie: Absolutely, definitely. I see a lot of perfectionistic tendencies in the clients that I work with.

Is there anything else that you wanna share about like ICBT and how you’ve seen it be helpful? Would you say that’s primarily what you’re using or you use some ICBT, some ERP kind of depending on wanting or. I do more ICBT currently,

Stephanie: but I’ve done some ERP as well. I think that one of the most helpful things about ICBT others have found is that there is this space where we go from reality into our imagination and we kind of, there’s this bridge where we get triggered.

We walk past a doorknob and we think, what if it’s dirty? Or what if my hands are contaminated? And then we have this space where we can stay rooted in reality and say, with my five senses, do I see or smell dirt? My common sense says that I am clean. We have a choice to stay rooted in direct evidence. And the here and now.

Or we can choose to go over that bridge into the imagination and then start spinning a story which never gets resolved. OCD can say, well, you know, it might be dirty. You might not be able to see these germs. Or, what if you just thought you washed your hands earlier? What if you didn’t actually wash them enough?

What if there’s a spot on your hands that didn’t get washed? And then there’s like point of no return. Like you’re over the bridge at this point. And so I like ICBT ’cause it helps us to be mindful of when we’re going into Ooc D land. The bubble. Yeah. And how to stay rooted and grounded in the here and now.

And in reality,

Carrie: it really allows you to slow down. And I also like too that you talked about the shifting of themes and sometimes that can be so jarring work through one theme and then. For example, okay, I’ve kind of worked through this. I feel like I’m okay with it now, but then some new theme just seems to pop outta nowhere, and then they feel like they’re okay.

Now I’ve gotta expose myself to this. Make sure that I’m not avoiding, make sure that I’m not seeking reassurance, and it just can be very jarring. Versus with I ccbt, you’re really learning all of these skills that can help you across whatever theme that you’re gonna face or that’s gonna pop up for you.

You’re like, okay, let me go back to, like you said, kind of what’s in here and now let me look. How did I get carried over into this OCD land? What was the story or the reasoning behind it? I’m, I always like to tell people because they’re like, Carrie, I can only talk to you about this type of stuff. It makes zero sense to anybody else.

In OCD world, I understand your logic, like I understand how you got to this point. And so then we have to teach you to like retrain your brain to learn like all of the OCD, I don’t know, prosecutor arguments, how you can kind of be over here on the other side and go, that’s really not relevant to what you’re saying over here.

You’re bridging right there into something else. Yeah, that’s really good.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Carrie: I

Stephanie: think of OCD as, like you said, prosecutor like this, almost like a Pharisee saying, pointing its fingers, saying you didn’t do this, and just who could stand up under that sort? And Jesus condemned, he rebuked kind of the legalistic tendencies of you are putting people under the weight of burdens they can hardly carry.

I wonder if externalizing OCD kind of like that could also be helpful with scru velocity, OCD and that theme to be like, okay, what is the truth of. The gospel say to me versus this condemnation that OCD is, it’s like, no matter what way I spin it, I’m gonna be damned so to speak by OCD. It’s like it’s a lose lose and so better with ICBT not to get into that OCD bubble to begin with.

And ICBT teaches you how to do that, how to not get caught up in the story of OCD with the narrative.

Carrie: Yeah. It’s a complex therapy and really you have to kind of go through it layer by layer understanding. Okay. These are totally new concepts. Let me get my mind like kind of around the concepts. Let me maybe apply it to somebody else if I don’t feel like I can apply it fully to myself.

And then I feel like I can move forward and apply some of these things to myself and look at the reasoning AR arguments. But a lot of people who are just very logic based really enjoy it. They do. I found it the same. Yes, absolutely. I’ll put a link to your practice in the show notes and where people can find you.

If they’re in Virginia, then that’d be great. Thanks so much for sharing. Is there anything else that you wanted to share? There is hope for OCD is very

Stephanie: treatable with therapy, those two modalities. But also there’s medications that work to help that Part of the brain is in that obsessive loop. Sometimes a combination is helpful.

There definitely is hope

Carrie: if you have OCD. So if you’re in a really negative place right now and you get nothing else from this episode, that’s why we’re here on the podcast talking about these things and letting you know that there are other people that have gone through treatment. That’s what this whole like summer series is about is, hey, there were people that were in really rough places with their OCD and they’ve come to a much healthier level.

Let me ask you this, what does recovery for you.

Stephanie: I think recovery for me looks like I’m not as hung up on things as much anymore. I think that with recovery I have tendencies. I still have OCD. Mm-hmm. But it’s less sticky. The thoughts are less sticky. I am much more willing or able, I guess, to stay rooted in reality, to let go of a thought or a what if, or a maybe I’m, however, it, it can show up in images, urges, thoughts.

Whatever way OCD manifests in anyone. Like for me, it’s easier for me to kind of let go and be mindful of, okay, what’s in the here and now and what’s my common sense and my true self say about this? And it’s a lot easier to stay

Carrie: grounded. Well, thank you so much for sharing today. You’re welcome, Carrie.

Thanks for listening today. If you have any show suggestions, guest suggestions, or would love to share your story on the podcast, you can reach out to us at kiri bach.com/podcast.

Stephanie: Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith in OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

179. She Didn’t Give Up on Getting Help: Personal Story with Amber Vetitoe

Written by Carrie Bock on June 25, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

As part of our ongoing OCD Personal Story series, Carrie sits down with Amber Vetitoe who bravely shares her lifelong battle with undiagnosed OCD—from early childhood fears to the heavy weight of scrupulosity and health anxiety—and the healing journey that unfolded through faith, perseverance, and the right therapeutic support.

Episode Highlights:

How OCD can go undiagnosed for years, masquerading as panic attacks, anxiety, or spiritual crises
The impact of childhood fears and how they can evolve into OCD themes in adulthood
Amber’s experience with scrupulosity and the fear-based view of God she once held
What perseverance looks like when therapy is hard, messy, and triggering
How I-CBT helped Amber identify her feared self and reframe her identity
The importance of finding the right therapist who meets you with understanding and skill

Episode Summary:

As part of our OCD Personal Story series on the Christian Faith and OCD podcast, I am joined by Amber Vetitoe, who shares her powerful, honest journey of living with undiagnosed OCD for most of her life.

From early panic attacks and childhood insomnia to years of battling intrusive thoughts and deep spiritual fear, Amber opens up about the mental and emotional patterns she never knew were connected to OCD. Like many Christians, she struggled with scrupulosity—the obsessive fear that she had to prove her faith and earn God’s love through perfect behavior. Her OCD later evolved into severe health anxiety, constant self-monitoring, and the painful belief that she was a burden to everyone around her.

For years, Amber sought help but felt dismissed by therapists who didn’t understand the complexities of OCD, especially how it shows up in spiritual and emotional spaces. Her turning point came when she finally received a correct diagnosis and found a therapist who could meet her with compassion, clarity, and the right tools.

In our conversation, Amber shares how learning about Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) helped her name and challenge distorted thoughts, reconnect with her true self, and begin walking in emotional and spiritual freedom. We talk about the long journey of healing, the importance of finding the right support, and how God’s grace became personal and transformative after years of living in fear.

Amber’s story is one of perseverance, faith, and rediscovering identity beyond OCD. It’s a reminder to anyone who feels overwhelmed or unseen: there is hope, and you are not alone in this.

🎧 Tune in to hear Amber’s story—it’s a powerful reminder that you are not too much, you are not alone, and your healing matters.

Explore Related Episode:

177. Being Diagnosed with OCD Later in Life: A Personal Story wtih Heather Vignali

Transcript

Hello, OCD Warriors and welcome back to our summer series where we are sharing personal stories of people just like you that have wrestled immensely with OCD and are in a better place now Amber gets raw and vulnerable about her themes. It’s really a story about perseverance because it was not easy and she could have given up so many times, but really held onto hope and did not do that.

Amber, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being willing to share your story with everyone today.

Amber: Hi Carrie. So glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: What OCD symptoms seem to kind of first pop on your radar, or did you notice more so now? Obviously like when you look back at your childhood in adolescence

Amber: As a child, I did not recognize it as such. I had such a late life diagnosis. I’ve actually only been properly diagnosed for maybe the last three or four years. And part of that journey for me has been connecting that thread back through my entire life. And I actually noticed back my earliest memories of symptoms were in very early childhood. So anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia.

I didn’t realize that at the time. Obviously, I’m like a toddler in elementary age. Yeah. But looking back and with these healed eyes and seeing that child self, I’m like, oh, that was my first anxiety attack. Oh. That was my first panic attack. Oh. I was having an insomnia series going on. I wasn’t just a difficult child.

I wasn’t a sleep walker or hard to stay in bed, things like that. So enlightening to just look back on that now with these heeled eyes and having this awareness and seeing how that affected me and even carrying on into adolescence. That is where rumination set in and that led to depression and some suicidal ideation.

Things that I did not even realize were happening to me at the time that I look back on now, and I’m like, oh, kind of that realization. That’s what that was, and that’s why it was so disruptive to my life and my processes and my development and everything like that. So yeah, it started, I think my first memory, a vivid memory that I have of a anxiety, panic attack sort of situation.

I mean, I was probably early toddlerhood, like very, very early, three or four years old maybe. What

Carrie: OCD themes have you dealt with?

Amber: It’s kind of, uh, graduated a little bit, I think, but there have been some umbrella themes, I guess, that have their own strings. My umbrella themes, as I call them, have phased through a death phobia.

And that was in early childhood kind of preteen. I was very focused on like a fear of snakes. That was one of the earliest things that I remember. One of my earliest panic attacks that I remember was on a field trip in, I believe, kindergarten to the Nashville Zoo. I was getting ready to go into the little reptile house.

I now looking back on it with heed eyes, I realize I had an intrusive thought and the intrusive thought was, what if the glass is removed off of the rattlesnake cage and the rattlesnake jumps out and bites me and it kills me? Wow. That’s what caused my panic attack. I did not tap into that and realize that until I’m 35 years old receiving a proper diagnosis.

I’m like, oh, that’s what that was. That was an intrusive thought that I then made an obsession, which came with a compulsion, and I couldn’t control that. Having my tiny little kindergarten brain, and it resulted in a panic attack. I had similar situations with like storms. I was very, very terrified of not just thunderstorms, but tornadoes because I was convinced like we live in a mobile home and everybody tells you the worst place to be in a tornado is in a mobile home.

And if this tornado hits, you’re certainly gonna die if you’re in this mobile home. I’m like, oh, that fear makes sense. Now. That was some intrusive thoughts that I was then making a thought connection bridge and getting stuck in that bubble of, oh, this is gonna happen. I’m gonna die. My whole family’s gonna die.

And I carried those two, like specifically the fear of snakes and the fear of storms all the way through my childhood into my adulthood. I just now I’m starting to get a grip on them and deal with them. So then that graduated in my pretty early teens, probably early high school. I would say that I had a new theme, a new umbrella theme, develop scrupulosity.

Until I got into therapy, I did not even know scru was a thing. And to realize those religious themes of the intrusive thoughts and the obsessions and the compulsions. And it grew into something, looking back on it now, something that was kind of scary really, because I developed a fear of God. I saw God as this big bully with a magnifying glass sitting on that hill under the sun, and I was the aunt.

Wow. And that’s not healthy. That’s not what God, our God wants us to believe about him. But that was truly, that was my feeling and that was what my ruminations were centered around was I have to check these lists, I have to check these boxes. Did I read my Bible? Did I say my prayer today? Did I witness to someone?

I can remember specifically? One day I forgot to take my Bible with me to school and I could not focus in any of my classes. I mean, I had meltdowns throughout the day. When I think back on it, it ran so much deeper than that, and it’s hard for me to talk about now because being in a healed spiritual place and understanding that relationship, that it’s not transactional.

I. I get really sad when I think about that scared little girl who said the sin. Sure. Before she went to sleep every night, because what if I die while I’m sleeping and I wanna make sure that I’m saved and I have that salvation so that I’ll go to heaven. That became a compulsion, an obsessive compulsive flute, and I would have to do it every night before I could go to sleep to be assured that my salvation was intact just in case something happened through the night.

And another really weird thing, it may or may not be appropriate to talk about here, but I had this. Intrusive thought that I was somehow gonna fall pregnant, not sexually active at all. I actually had deemed that purity culture, I’m gonna save myself for my husband and not mess around. But there became this intrusive thought of, what if I somehow get contaminated in like swimming pool, a mixed sex swimming pool?

And some things get where they’re not supposed to be. And I mean, it was like, when I think back on it now, I’m like, there is no logic to that, but there is no logic.

Carrie: Right? Yeah.

Amber: You know, we talked about that a lot in my therapy. It’s like OCD doesn’t care about your logic. The logic didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that I was not sexually active.

It didn’t matter that. There’s really only one way to make a baby, and I wasn’t doing it. I was convinced in my brain that that was going to happen to me, and that could be the worst thing in my life that ever happened to me because God would be so ashamed of me because sex was for marriage, and babies were for families and marriage, and it was a whole thing.

That’s actually

Carrie: a really common obsession. I.

Males can be concerned that somehow, like they’re gonna accidentally get a girl pregnant and girls can be convinced like, oh my goodness, what if I sit down here where this guy sat down and maybe I’m gonna get pregnant? And like you said, it completely defies common sense and. Logic, but OC D doesn’t care.

It’s still gonna make you terrified. And like, I think that’s the theme here, like you’re seeing is how terrifying is it to think you’re gonna be like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and get sucked up in a tornado, or you’re gonna somehow end up pregnant or God’s really gonna get you, like, somehow smite you and somehow maybe you’re gonna die tonight and not go to heaven.

It’s all very, it’s very terrifying.

Amber: And I laugh when I look back on it. Now I can laugh and I should be very grateful for that. I don’t wanna lose sight of that, but I just have a chuckle when I see how much through my lifetime without being properly diagnosed and treated, I. My OCD just kept leveling up.

It wasn’t enough. Yeah, because I went on and graduated from Scrupulosity to health focused OCD. That has been my most recent umbrella theme. I dare say it has been the most challenging logic defining, stunting theme that I’ve dealt with, especially because it all centered around. One event and I was on a work trip and I was on a medication that I had no business being on, but neither here nor there, and it caused me to fall very ill on an airplane ride.

When I was traveling back from the work trip that I had taken and I passed out on the airplane, they had no idea what was wrong with me. At heck At the time, I had no idea what was wrong with me, uh, but the medication had caused a dangerous drop in my blood glucose level. I had a hypo emia attack and it bottomed out my blood pressure and my pulse rate to the point that my body could not keep me conscious.

And that became the string with which OCD spiraled for the next decade of my life because it wasn’t just my blood sugar. Then I became focused on my blood pressure, and then I became focused on my resting heart rate and then enter the COVID-19 pandemic.

Carrie: And isn’t it wonderful now that we have all these little watches and rings and tools that can give us all of that health information that we didn’t used to have access to?

Amber: And bless my husband, God love him. He grounded me from my Fitbit, has regulated me on my half a watch, and I am so thankful for that. Looking back now, because at the time I wasn’t diagnosed with OCD and we didn’t know what was happening. But he was loving and caring and interested enough to see that I was causing my own suffering.

Carrie: Right. Yeah. And

Amber: he’s like, you’re doing nothing for yourself. Checking these things on your watch. You’re just spinning up this anxiety and causing these panic attacks, and it doesn’t have to be this way. And of course, like I said, we didn’t know why. We just knew that that wasn’t the answer. So forcefully removing that, it was hard.

I mean, it’s never easy to stop a compulsion, but eventually it started to weigh in a little bit and I’m like, okay, this isn’t so bad. And being able to reintroduce. And that was before I’d learned anything about OCD or effective treatment and therapy methods and things like that. To be able to look back now with everything that I have gone through and all the healing that has taken place and connect to that, oh, that’s why that works.

Just those little nuggets and those little glimmers is really cool to see those and to finally be getting this victory over all of these umbrellas. They’re still there. They never go away. And I just wanna hold space for that. If I could take the time. I wanna hold that space for people who feel like, oh, I’m so frustrated ’cause I’m not healed yet.

I have this thought. We can’t help intrusive thoughts. That’s OCD, that’s the core of OCT. It doesn’t mean that’s who you are or that’s what you believe is true. And one nugget I took from therapy that I just love, it’s like it’s a cloud in the sky. Just let it pass. You can stand there and you can put your whole life on pause and you can stare at it and wonder if it’s gonna rain on you, or you can just let it pass you by.

I’m finding so much room for grace and compassion for that old self, and I want to speak that into people who are in the middle of that battle right now.

Carrie: Yeah.

Amber: You get the tools in your toolbox to help you say, oh mm, nope. That’s just an intrusive thought. That’s not me. It’s okay. I can just let it pass on.

I like a cloud in the sky that’s really helping me ’cause these things are still there. I still fear death. I still have some religious things that I gotta work out and remind myself that God is not a big, ugly, scary guy in the sky that wants me. I gotta tell myself, COVID-19 gonna be around you just gotta go out there and live your life.

But yeah, keeping it all in perspective and understanding OCDs mechanisms, that’s where the power lies.

Carrie: How did you get to this point? You had all this like anxiety and panic and there was some OCD, but you didn’t really see it as that. How did you get to this point to like initially reach out for help?

Like what was that experience like?

Amber: My husband, I mean, at the time he was not my husband, but I had gone through a very abusive relationship and had gotten a divorce, and I was just starting to put myself back out there and try the whole relationship game again. And when I met my now current husband, we’d hang out some, go out to eat, go out to the movies, whatever.

The more time we would spend together, the more opportunity there was for triggers I was getting. So triggered by to him, bizarre things. He just did not understand how something so benign could make me spiral so hard. And he just looked at me one day and he was like, look, I like you and I think that we could be good together, but you have got some stuff going on that I do not have the ability.

To even begin to touch to work on, and that is not gonna be my place. I cannot do that. But I care about you enough to say that I enjoy what we have and I want to continue with what we have. But until you figure stuff out, he literally said, until you figure your crap out. We just can’t, like we’re gonna have to spend some time apart.

I need some time back to myself. You gotta figure out what’s going on. You gotta figure out what’s making you this way. And at the same time, I was having some really big work failures I had. Okay. Gotten a big girl job. I had become a billing director for a medical group and was overseeing a very large department.

I think I had over 40 employees that were directly reporting to me. I was not doing well, and I remember our CFO looked at me one day and she said, I don’t know if I made the right choice. I don’t know if you belong here. I don’t. Don’t think you’re gonna succeed in this role because things that you need to do, I can tell you are not equipped to do and we’re gonna have to make some changes if you don’t make some changes.

And I was like, oh, kind of one two punch. Okay. Here we go. That started at least making me think of, oh, what feels normal to me is not normal, and it’s one of those you only know what you know. Right?

Carrie: Yeah.

Amber: And that brought with it some shame and some guilt and some sadness, which turned into depression, which brought some suicidal ideation.

I was like, this is not going to be my life. I know there has to be a better way. So I reached out to a therapist and it was one of those, you know, go big or go home things because I’m like, if this is really meant for me, I had already failed therapy and been fired by four therapists. Whoa. Four therapists fired you what?

Yep. So I was like, you know what? Okay, I’m gonna give this one more shot and this is my hail Mary and I’m going bigger. Going home. I literally sent an email to this therapist that I found on Facebook ad. And I was like, I want a therapist who is a Christian and who loves God, but will not use the Bible or prayer or anything spiritual to try to treat me and to help me because I have run the gamut and it’s not working.

I need to try something else for a little while, it was the most freeing and liberating thing for me to receive back. I got you. Let’s set up a time to me, basically. And I was like, surely somebody, and they’re gonna be like, Nope, not touching her with a 10 foot pole. But I finally, somebody met me where I was and understood what I needed and was willing to roll up their sleeves and get in there and get dirty with me.

Because my previous therapist, as soon as the Harry scary thing started coming out of the closet, oh, we’re not equipped to deal with this. Oh, I don’t think we can handle that. Oh, surely you’re not telling me the full story. I’m like, okay, then help me. How? How do I get there? But it was a no, I’m gonna have to refer you to somebody else, blah, blah, blah.

That was like my cycle. And I’m like, okay, great. But I finally found this person who met me where I was and. Understood that I needed some kid gloves for a little while, and I really needed to work on this layer by layer because it was so deep for me. I didn’t realize how complex my issues were. And in the therapy journey, I needed multiple avenues of therapy to help many, I mean EMDR, group therapy, top therapy, just so many different things to work through all of these different layers.

And I’ll just pause there ’cause I mean, yeah, it’s really to think about that journey and that was the impetus behind the biggest change in my whole life is just somebody loving me enough to say you’re not okay. You need to get help and then reaching out to somebody to get help and they’re like, yep, I got you.

Carrie: changed my whole life. I hope that gives somebody hope, because I know that I’ve talked to people who have said, Hey, I’ve tried therapy before, or I went to this therapist and I just didn’t really feel like they got, like they understood what I was trying to say and or. They didn’t know how to help my OCD.

You know, I hear that a lot. Like I had a really nice therapist, but they were just kind of clueless on how to help me and ended up kind of like your story. Well, you’ve gotta really go see somebody for the OCD. And then I think for the client’s perspective, it’s gotta feel a little rejecting because you’re like, oh no, I’m too much for somebody, or I’m overwhelming these people.

For somebody to say, you’re not telling me the whole story. I mean, that’s really hurtful. It’s like, wait a minute, I’m burying my soul. Like trying to be truthful here. What’s going on? You didn’t give up on that journey, and I think that that’s important for somebody here today that’s listening is like, if you don’t find the right fit on the first, second, third, try, keep going.

’cause there’s somebody, God has somebody out there for you. So that’s awesome. I think

Amber: that’s where my perseverance came from is. I knew at my core I was made for more than this. Yeah. I knew I was living a very dimmed life and until I got inspired by those people who love me enough to call me out on my.

Yes. I don’t wanna be emotional, but I believe that tiny little voice in the back of my mind that said, you are a burden. So that kind of unearthed something when you said that earlier is like feeling that from a therapist of, oh, I’m too much for you. I felt too much for everybody in my whole life, for my parents, for my prior relationships, for my friends, I felt like I was too much and too loud and too big, and I took up too much space, and to have that all seemingly validated, that was really hard, and I was at my lowest of low points.

But I just felt so deeply that I wanted to be a vessel for good that could leave a positive ripple effect. I’m not gonna do that. Living a deluded life. Yeah. And I can remember reading a quote somewhere and it said, if I’m too much for you, go find less. Mm-hmm. I’m not going to dilute myself or water myself down to make myself more digestible for you.

You can choke. And I didn’t feel that. There was no part of me that felt either of those things. But they were tools in my perseverance toolbox of I can get there. Like that’s a goal. I wanna care so little about what other people think of me, that I am living my favorite life as my favorite self. And so I kept showing up every time I was like.

Oh, my therapist gutted me today. Oh, therapy was so hard today. Oh, I can’t get over this concept in therapy. I just kept going back, even treating symptoms for years and years and years. I mean, we were treating the anxiety, the depression, the rumination, the suicidal ideation, the panic attacks, the PTSD flashbacks.

We were treating all of those things. For years and years and years with an unknown root cause. Yeah, like we had no idea that OCD was just chilling in the background, puppeteering pulling all his string. But I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on me, that my husband didn’t give up on me and that my therapist didn’t give up on me.

Because I was ready to throw in the towel over and over. I don’t want anybody who’s hearing this to be validated, that feeling, oh my gosh, it is legitimate and it is hard to push past that discomfort.

Carrie: Yeah. But

Amber: just keep casting a vote every day for yourself because nobody else is gonna cast it for you.

You have to want to cast that vote for yourself, and you have to want to get better. And nobody can do that for you. Nobody can make you do that.

Carrie: Yeah. I think sometimes people have this perception like, oh, I’m gonna go to therapy. I’m gonna unload my burden and I’m gonna walk out feeling better. And like there’s times where you do that and then there’s times where you just cry the whole entire session and you still feel bad when you leave and you’re like, well, crap, what do I do now?

I got a whole. And like if something else gets triggered up and you’re like, oh, I was dealing with this problem and I was doing better and now this other thing came up, or this other life stressor happened. Yeah, it does. It takes a lot of perseverance to keep going, like when things get hard. But what I’m hearing you say too is like I knew, like I think there was something God put inside of you to say like, Hey, there’s more like.

There’s abundance, there’s a plan for you, like there’s love for you. And it also sounds too like you had a good support system. You had the guy that became your husband being like, Hey, I’m rooting for you and I’m rooting for our relationship, and so like, let’s walk this journey together. If you’re willing to dig in.

I mean, that’s incredible. I think it is important for everybody to have. Not just their professional supports, but their personal supports. That helps us as therapists so much better when people have those. If we’re working with somebody and they have a really low social support system, it’s always like an encouragement like, Hey, I can’t be the only supportive person in your life.

You know? You gotta connect with people somewhere like in your community and your church and your job somewhere, or you can get some support. You ended up joining the first round that I ever did of Christians learning ICBT. And influence based cognitive behavioral therapy. If y’all haven’t heard us talk about that, how was ICB T helpful for you?

What was that process like? Learning those skills?

Amber: Yeah. I joined because I was so tired. Just like you said, I was so tired of getting stuck in the loops and I’m like, oh, I thought I dealt with this in therapy already. And I’m dealing with the same issues over and over and over again, and I’m tired of these obsessions becoming compulsions and leveling up and getting out of control.

And it was kind of that lifeline like, okay, I finally have this diagnosis. I have been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. I can look back over my life. I can see that it has been present in my whole life. And I cannot keep my brain out of the past. It was, I should have, I got in this loop of, I should have done that.

I should have done that. Yeah, looking back with very healed eyes on it, very broken self. Not fair at all. And I saw the ICBT course as a lifeline. I think that was the first feeling that I had. It’s like, okay, here’s this thing. It’s like this monster that has been living in my head my whole life, that I have been unwittingly feeding and strengthening and just building him up into this big, scary, hairy thing.

I need some tools to. A this big monster down in this lily little teddy bear because I mean, we know OCD is not gonna go away. And I mention too because feel like I choose now to live my life unmedicated. But I want to advocate for anyone right here right now who’s struggling with deciding to get on medication.

Medication played a huge role as a tool in my life. For a period of time, everything was so loud in my mind that I needed to mute it. Yeah, to be able to survive. I knew at the time and was very resistant about getting on medications because. An addiction gene kind of runs in my family. Sure. I’ve watched that go through and negatively affect me and people that I love.

I lost my sister to a drug addiction a few years back and I didn’t wanna become that statistic. I did not want to get addicted and dependent on something. But my gosh, I am so glad for the few years that I did spend on medications to aid me. Because I would not have been brave enough to jump into something like the ICBT course without it.

Carrie: Yeah,

Amber: because that helped me see that it is possible to slow down the thoughts, to calm them down, to mute them. It is possible. And now in my more healed state, I choose to be unmedicated, but I’m still really struggling and really suffering, and I found myself desiring getting back to that therapeutic medicated state.

Yeah. ’cause sometimes I just needed the noise to be quiet and I didn’t have the ability to do that because of how big some of the things had gotten and how loud the monster was sometimes. So I kind of saw that ICBT course as a lifeline with the way that it was presented of, we’re gonna teach you about the OCD bubble and learning these themes and learning about your true self and your feared self, and calming that down.

And I’m like, oh my gosh, yes, yes, yes. Point check, check, check. That’s exactly what I need. Just to be completely frank with you, I attended the weekly sessions and I downloaded the materials. I didn’t do much of the homework because I was so overwhelmed by it at the time, like being live in person with the events, I didn’t wanna miss that opportunity, but I knew my brain wasn’t in a state to receive the teaching.

Yeah, and to really apply the therapy concepts. So I did the course after it was already over. I kind of circled back and went through like the workbook things myself, and revisited the modules and the videos and everything when my brain was in a state to digest it because I knew at the time I enrolled in the course.

I was outside of my window of tolerance, like more than I even care to admit, but I knew how helpful it would be, and it was kind of that lifeline to keep me from getting back on medication because I didn’t desire that for myself. But I knew if I couldn’t find another way around, there was no choice, because my life was very, very hindered by how loud the OCD had gotten again.

So to be able to slow those processes down so that I could take that outside looking in approach and find the roots of things to deal with them. One of my favorite things that I brought out of that course was popping the bubble. I literally will physically like pop a bubble.

Carrie: The imaginary bubble. Yeah.

Amber: Yes. I’m like, oh, nope. That’s an OCD bubble. I’m gonna pop that now so that my brain understands I’m not gonna cross over that bridge and go down that spiral with you. We are not doing this. It has helped so much more than anything I could have ever thought or imagined because it’s allowed me to release the guilt and shame that I had about all of those.

I should have. I should have, well, I would have done this. I’ve been able to let go of all that because it was just me looking back at a broken girl and judging her with healed eyes. That was not fair. I

Carrie: did

Amber: the best that I could with what I had at the time, and one level up from that. Again, getting a little emotional here, but it helped me to extend forgiveness where it was needed.

Carrie: Yeah, because

Amber: I harbored a lot of hurt in my heart for some like childhood traumas that happened and some mother father wounds, some sibling wounds, some past relationship wounds. Things that became these big T traumas for me. And here I was, a 36-year-old grown woman stalling my healing journey because I hadn’t received an apology from these people.

I’m not gonna heal until so and so apologizes to me for such and such ’cause that was so traumatic. No. If I can forgive myself and release myself from the guilt and shame for doing the best that I could with what I had at the time, why can I not extend that same grace to them? Yeah. ’cause I guarantee they were doing the very best they could with what they had at the time.

’cause they had their own traumas, coloring their own lives. Nobody knew I had obsessive compulsive disorder. Nobody knew how to help it. I was just this atomic bomb getting triggered and blowing up all the time, and then having to go and clean up all the messes, and I just look back on that child and that teen and that wife, and I’m like, oh, okay.

Yeah. I was not always the victim. Sometimes I was the aggressor and I didn’t realize it. Yeah, so that course really helped me when I was ready to receive it. That ICBT course really helped me to level up my healing. We had talked a lot through my therapy journey about how it’s like an onion and you just peel away layer by layer.

Mm-hmm. And it’s not necessarily that you’re circling back and doing the same thing again. You’re experiencing a deeper level of healing on the same themes. And that I, CCBT course really helped me to hammer for that point home is, oh, here’s this thing. And I feel like I keep circling back to it, but the ICBT course helped me find the root and dig it out.

That’s great. And that piece. And to find that feared self to put a label on that feared self, which I alluded to earlier, it was my earliest formed core memory that I was a burden on people. Mm-hmm. So my death phobia OCD theme was, I’m gonna be a bourbon if I die and everybody has to come to my funeral.

My scrupulosity burden was, oh, God’s having to wrangle me around again. I’m just such an inconvenient little Christian child. Oh, how dare I The hell thing, oh, these hospitals are already overrun and I’m gonna be irresponsible and go out here and get COVID and overwhelm them even more, and call these doctors to go into burnout.

I would’ve never, ever been able to backtrack into that feared self of being a burden without something like that ICBT course and putting a label on that. It doesn’t make it easy. Obviously, I’ve teared up a few times talking about it doesn’t make it easy. That wound is still raw and fresh when I scratch on it, but it is just another signal.

It is informational. And it’s like, oh, this situation right now is probably being colored because of that feared self. Yeah. That wound that you have really deeply. And who’s the

Carrie: real amber?

Amber: Yeah. I am exploring and building that right now because I get up every morning and I tell myself who the real me is.

I go outside and I stand in the trees and I let the sun shine on my face. I tell myself every day that I am content, and I am happy, and I am strong, and I am brave, and I am confident, and I am competent, and I am capable of doing extraordinary things. And I also have to tell myself that I deserve good things in this life because I’m giving and generous, and loving, and loyal, and kind and caring, and compassionate, and charitable, and faithful, and patient, and thoughtful and trustworthy.

And I asked every day to be used as a vessel for good and to leave a positive ripple effect. I spent 36 years of my life believing I was the antithesis of that, believing I was a burden, believing that I was stupid and worthless and good for nothing. And. Didn’t deserve anything because I hadn’t put anything good into this world.

But that of course helped me see, like I built my mindfulness and meditation script out of that course and what I wanted to believe about myself.

Carrie: Yeah,

Amber: and it’s kind of like self-fulfilling prophecy now. My brain has that confirmation bias gene, and it’s gonna believe what I tell it. Mm-hmm. So instead of continuing to tell it, oh, I’m this, oh, I’m that.

Oh, okay, I’m gonna feed you some positive things. Now we’re gonna build some new neural pathways because we’re gonna believe that we’re awesome because I truly believe, like I said earlier, I was made for more than this. And I am a good person and I am not a sum of my traumas. I am a sum of my triumphs.

And just being able to get to that place of peace and release still have very, very hard days. Mm-hmm. And I’m kind of a comorbid neurodivergent. I don’t just have obsessive compulsive disorder. I also struggle with A DHD, and I do swing back into like the anxious episodes sometimes when my OCD isn’t well controlled.

So I have to kind of handle myself with kid gloves every now and again, especially trying to be a productive member of society and be out in the community and helping and being involved with my family and my friends and everything like that. But learning how to hold that space for the bad days.

Carrie: Yeah.

Amber: Because they’re going to come and I shamed myself and I had a lot of guilt a lot of times because I’m like, oh, I’m ruminating so much today. Or, oh, I have. Insomnia and I was just beating myself up because what’s all that therapy for? What’s all this reading for that you’ve done? But the answer is just today.

You don’t have to let this one moment in time ruin the future. Just let it be today. Hold this face forward today, release it, and move on.

Carrie: I’ve thought about recovery from some of these mental health issues. I think about it differently now than I used to because I would have people come and say, well, I don’t wanna have anxiety anymore.

I don’t wanna have PTSD anymore. I don’t wanna have OCD anymore. And I’m like, okay, that’s cool. I realized over time, and especially doing this OCD work has been so huge for me and realizing it’s like we all have this proverbial flower garden and people come into therapy and it’s just like overrun with weeds and there’s no flowers in there.

And they say, pull out the weeds for me. But if you pull out just the weeds of the flower garden, you’re gonna have just empty soil. And then what happens? The weeds are gonna come back up. But it’s like we have to actually get in there and not just pull up the weeds. We have to plant the flowers. We have to help people find an identity outside of just like, oh, I have this diagnosis, I have this, and that’s really like, what’s going on with me?

It’s like, well, no, that’s not a totality of who you are. You are a human being. Created by God very loved. And he has a purpose and a plan for your life, regardless of what you’re struggling with. And so if we’re able to get in there and dig up around that soil and it’s a messy process, and get out some weeds and plant some flowers and then continue, like we’re all in process of still kind of pulling out those weeds because none of us are perfect, they come back, they sprout back up a little bit and we sw the soil, you know, pull ’em out.

Okay, lemme plant another flower here. But eventually the goal is that you have more flowers in the flower bed than weeds. I think your story is so inspiring to see just like how far you’ve come in your process. In that you had a, you used a variety of different things to help you get here. It wasn’t just a one thing, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. Oh, just go do this and you’ll be fine. You had to do a lot of different things. Take medication, go to therapy, do groups, do this and that. But you’ve made it. You’re here and you’re just living proof that it’s possible for so many people listening to this. So I think that’s awesome, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share your story today.

Amber: Of course, yeah. And I love that analogy you just used about the flowerbed ’cause of another thing that I saw, it was a quote that I saw. You don’t plant a seed. And then dig it up every day and ask it why it’s not growing. Plant the seed. You water it, you give it sunlight, you feed it, you nourish it, and then it grows.

I couldn’t just go to therapy. I couldn’t just take my meds. Like you said, it was like this combination of things and when something wouldn’t work, we tried something else.

Carrie: Right. Yeah, and

Amber: I appreciate so much being allowed to have the space today to share my journey because that’s part of the positive ripple effect I want to leave is I don’t want to just take my story with me when I go.

Because I almost died in silence. So I’m choosing to heal out loud and I talk when my voice shakes and I stand up for the people that I feel like have no voice because I wanna show them that just like me. I started out silent and alone and afraid, and I just surrounded myself with people who met me where I was, and loved me enough to help me find my voice and help me keep talking and help me keep fighting.

And here I am today, just an absolute poster child for don’t stop until you get to the root. And then when you find that route, keep going. It’s not over just because you discover the route, keep going, keep growing, and just appreciate being given that space. I love the work that you’re doing with this podcast and bringing the awareness to such a silent disease.

I think so many people suffer from this OCD mental illness that they don’t even realize there is another way. There are supports and tools that. You just gotta know. You just gotta reach out and take them. I’m living proof of that.

Carrie: I was definitely encouraged hearing Amber’s story, and I hope that you were as well.

I’m not recording any interviews this summer to really just soak in and spend a little extra time with my daughter. But if you are interested in sharing your story, you can always contact me via carey bach.com and would love to just chat with you about what that might look like. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Christian faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling opinions given by our guest are their own and do not necessarily. Reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

177. Being Diagnosed with OCD Later in Life: A Personal Story with Heather Vignali

Written by Carrie Bock on June 11, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie welcomes fellow therapist Heather Vignali to share her personal journey with OCD, including how symptoms emerged during a major life transition—and how ICBT, EMDR, and her Christian faith played a role in her healing.

Episode Highlights:

The ways OCD impacted Heather’s life, including obsessive safety concerns and compulsive monitoring of her daughter.
What “anxiety tongue” is and how somatic symptoms can signal deeper mental health struggles.
How Inference-Based CBT (I-CBT) helped Heather understand the root of her intrusive thoughts through concepts like the Feared Possible Self.
Ways EMDR and other integrative therapies can support healing when trauma and OCD intersect.
How OCD can impact faith, and how to navigate scrupulosity while reconnecting with spiritual truth.

Episode Summary:

Today’s episode is part of our series sharing real and personal experiences with OCD, and I’m so excited to introduce you to Heather Vignali—a licensed professional counselor serving New Jersey and New York. Heather works primarily with adult women navigating anxiety, OCD, self-esteem challenges, and relationship stress. And for clients who want to bring their Christian faith into the counseling process, she offers that too.

Heather shares her own journey of recognizing and getting diagnosed with OCD—something that didn’t fully surface until a major life transition: her daughter’s senior year of high school. As she prepared to launch her daughter into the world, Heather started noticing signs that went beyond everyday anxiety. Physical symptoms, compulsive checking behaviors, and relentless fears about her daughter’s safety became daily struggles. Like many, she initially didn’t realize these were signs of OCD.

Through this conversation, we talk about what it looked like for her to begin questioning her own thoughts, how she discovered Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT), and what it’s been like to walk through the ups and downs of treatment. She gets real about what it felt like to live in the “OCD bubble,” and the shift that happened when she understood her feared possible self—this internal fear of being negligent or careless—and how it was driving so many of her compulsions.

We also dive into how OCD started to impact her faith, bringing in scrupulosity and intrusive doubts about salvation. If you’ve ever wrestled with thoughts that feel out of alignment with what you know to be true about God, this part of her story will really resonate. Heather shares how she found grounding again, how remembering God’s faithfulness helped her re-anchor her faith, and how both therapy and truth-telling community played a key role in her healing.

Tune into the full episode to hear more of Heather’s story, how ICBT helped her reframe the way she relates to her thoughts, and how she’s now using her experience to support others.

Related Links and Resources:

www.facebook.com/HeatherVignaliLPC

IG: @heathervignalilpc

Transcript

All right, welcome to the show. Everyone. We are doing a series on personal experience with OCD, and I’m very excited about this because I know that it’s a popular topic that a lot of you look for. You’re just really wanting to hear from other people who have been in the trenches where you are, who have made the struggle to get the proper diagnosis and help for their OCD,

Hello and welcome to Christian faith and OCD with Carrie Bock, I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD, get to a deeper level of healing when I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode today on the show I have Heather Vignelli. She is a licensed professional counselor in serving New Jersey and New York, primarily working with adult women who are struggling with anxiety, OCD, low self esteem, relationship stress. And she’s able to offer a Christian perspective for clients who are desiring that as part of their counseling process. And she is going to share about her story today. Welcome to the show, Heather.

Heather: Thank you. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: Tell us a little bit about your process of noticing OCD symptoms. Or did it start more as general anxiety? What was that like for you? Yeah,

Heather: Super funny. Kind of how it came about. I always have had sort of an underlying current of anxiety in my life. I don’t think I ever didn’t I definitely noticed that as a trend throughout my life, even as a young girl, and it wasn’t until probably I was just about a year ago. And keep in mind also, I recognize now that there were things before last year that certainly contributed to the diagnosis, but at the time, what kind of triggered it was? My daughter was in her senior year of high school, my one and only and just definitely noticing triggers kind of coming up one after another, and the end of an era I have been, of course, very close with my daughter. When she was born, I was a single mom, she was like my pride and joy. That

Carrie really speaks to OCD symptoms showing up in a time of stress and transition. So you’re preparing for launching her out into the world after you’ve spent all of these years raising her.

Heather 3:03

Oh, yeah, and I’ve had help. Of course, my mother has definitely been so helpful to me, and I actually met my husband when she was four, so he kind of came into the picture a little bit later, but for all intents and purposes, until we were married and then living together, I was very much the primary caregiver, and kind of doing it, a lot of it on my own, let’s say, when she got into her senior year, it was like, Oh my gosh, right, I’m losing my baby. There were a lot of different things that kind of came up throughout the tail end of the year, September of 2023 I noticed a little bit of an uptick in the anxiety, and I was wondering, Hmm, that’s weird. But then it wasn’t until the beginning of 2024 that I started noticing not just my stress levels going up and my anxiety going up, but also like different symptoms that I hadn’t really necessarily noticed before. One of the things that I noticed was this weird thing that my tongue would do, Huh, interesting. Okay, yeah, super weird tension in my tongue and in my jaw like a tick, not so much like a tick. It felt like my tongue was swollen and almost like it hurt, very weird. So I was doing a lot of biting on my tongue and like, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Like, maybe I need to go to the doctor. And I knew also that my anxiety was like, kind of ticking up. And so I thought, Geez, I wonder. I’d never thought about it before, even being in the clinical world, I’m like, I wonder if this could be just a somatic symptom of anxiety. So on a whim, I just looked up anxiety and tongue issues or something like that. And it was like, anxiety tongue.

Carrie 4:38

There’s something called anxiety tongue. You’re educated now. Who

Heather 4:42

would have thought, right? And so I thought, Okay, this could be related to the anxiety I’m feeling. I certainly have a lot of triggers going on. This is kind of making sense, but it started to get very uncomfortable. Like, really uncomfortable. I felt like, anytime I was talking, I was tripping over my own phone. Felt like, oh, can people. Even understand me. Even though they could, they could totally understand me. But it was just constant as the year progressed again, triggers keep continuing to come up events, while the senior stuff comes up senior sunrise. And, you know, she was a competitive dancer. She’s still doing that, but didn’t know she was gonna continue doing that. We thought it was like her last competitions ever. So we’re like, this is the end of everything. So everything’s kind of coming in, prom, graduation, all these things are coming up. I started examining some of the thoughts that I was having. I feel like the only way that I can explain it is not so much with words, but more like gesture in my face. Like, Huh, wait, these thoughts are weird. Some

Carrie: Some of these thoughts are a little off. How did it show up? Like, what kind of things were you thinking?

Heather: I was always like, I said, very connected with my daughter, but I was noticing that I was extra worried about her safety. Some of the thoughts that I have and still do struggle with, I would not say that I am, like, fully recovered. I definitely still have some polls. I mean, it’s only been a year now since the diagnosis, but once I started recognizing the thoughts that came up. They were more about her safety and just having this feeling of impending doom anytime she left right, she started driving. Her she got her license right. She’s driving, she’s applying to college, all these things that made me feel like she was unsafe in the world. I’m thinking terrible, awful things. I mean, the worst of the worst. Do you think the worst thing? That’s what I thought. And it was constantly riddled with thoughts that something terrible was gonna happen to her, completely unwarranted.

Carrie: Did that cause you to check in on her extra often, or you’re like checking the app to see where she is or not.

Heather: Just one app, three apps, three apps. Okay, three apps. I got very creative and wound up with three apps on my phone. And my kid is great. She understands because she actually had been diagnosed with OCD at a young age. So she does understand the struggle to a degree. Of course, our themes are different, but she does understand the struggle. And so she’s very kind to me, very gracious with me. But yeah, so there were definitely things that I was noticing, not just in my thoughts, but in, like you’re saying, with what I was doing. So for years and years, I’d been checking her window every single night, without fail, like to make sure or locked, or to make sure it was locked, and we live on the ground floor of an apartment building, okay, and so I don’t think it’s out of pocket to be thinking, Oh, well, gee, probably a good thing to lock your doors. But I mean, I have bars on the doors, and it started to occur to me, it is interesting that the only window that I check at night is hers. I trust that the other windows and doors are perfectly secure, but I don’t trust even if it looks exactly the same way that I left it, I know I left it the night before, I still felt compelled to go over and check make sure there was a ritual to it, the way that my hand felt on the blinds as I peeked through to look at a certain area on the other side of the just certain things that I was like, Wow, this seems super selective and super specific. And I thought, well, that’s odd.

Carrie: Did you find yourself devoting the sensory information like icbt talks about, that’s part of the inferential confusion is that distrust to the senses. And so I’m wondering, maybe that’s why you needed three apps on your phone, because it’s like, well, what if this one app is wrong and she’s not really where the app is saying that she’s at was that kind of what it was like, like, I don’t know if I believe this one. I’ll have to pull up another one and just

Heather: Aabsolutely so yeah, with the apps, I have three different ones that check three different things. One is on her phone. One is on her car, the other one is also on her phone, but it allows me to listen to the environment. Opens up her microphone so that I can hear on my end, what’s going on. I know it makes me sound a little cuckoo, I know, but it definitely was something that I felt like I needed to have. There was an urgency to know what was going on around her, even if I knew, for all other reasons, that she was perfectly fine, that if something terrible was happening, that I would somehow know, I would somehow find out. You would hear

Carrie 9:09

the scary, mad guy on through her phone, and be able to call the police and say, I know where she’s right. She’s right over here. Sure,

Heather 9:16

even if I had just texted with her 30 minutes prior, that couldn’t just be enough for me to believe that she was okay. Yeah, I started kind of thinking, Gee, I think I need to look into this a little bit more. And it wasn’t until that point that I started really understanding what OCD was and getting a better. Started taking credits in OCD treatment or just understanding it, because I didn’t realize how very different it is from just regular run of the mill anxiety I had no idea, just did not recognize that. Now, a year later, I’ve basically redefined everything that I do, because I definitely feel called to help other people who are struggling in the same ways with OC. D. So it wasn’t until that time, though, that I started getting my own treatment, learning about OCD for myself, because I started recognizing these things in my clients, and I got the diagnosis, which later on would become meta OCD and starts to become OCD. About OCD,

Carrie 10:18

right? Yeah. Do you really have OCD? And oh gosh, are you sure you’re not just, like, faking it or making it up?

Heather 10:27

Oh, gosh, yeah. What if you’re lying to people? How awful would you be if you were lying to people? It’s been interesting, because since a year ago when I got the diagnosis, I feel like I’ve actually gone through ebbs and flows. It’s like, kind of like, there have been peaks and valleys with the experience of like, now knowing that that’s what it is, I feel like I definitely get sucked into the bubble from time to time, and it can be pretty troubling when you’re in the bubble.

Carrie 10:53

Did you find an icbt therapist? Was that something that, as you had kind of done your research, that you were wanting to do or wanting to pursue, like, how did you get to the treatment phase and kind of connect with somebody?

Heather 11:06

I had started to ponder whether this OCD, I should probably know more about what OCD is, and I took a workshop fundamentals type, okay, yeah. OCD, 101, yeah. OCD, 101, and I’m like, I need to figure out, because I think I might not only just be seeing this in myself, but I think I’m seeing it in other clients. I knew ERP was a gold standard for treatment, but literally, I think on Facebook looking for OCD providers, and I stumbled across the icbt Facebook group, and I started asking questions, and I started seeking out people that might be able to help me figure out if that’s what I’m dealing with. I had a woman reach out to me on Facebook messenger who was so gracious with me and so lovely. She’s like, everything you’re describing sounds like it’s probably an OCD type thing. You’re going to want to get yourself connected with OCD therapist. And since I was already in that group, and for anybody who is a clinician and wanting to know icbt Like that is the group to be in. It’s a wonderful group. Just amazing resource. Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Facebook group with other therapists that’s been so positive, unbelievable support. And so I put up a post and I said, Hey, I think I have OCD. I don’t know, but I would really love to meet with someone who might be able to assess and treat and so I heard back from a couple of therapists who were also in network with my insurance. Oh, that’s great, praise God. And I started work right away, did the assessments and started with icbt. And icbt really clicks for me. It’s like, really super logical, and it just kind of aligns with the way I already think,

Carrie 12:44

yeah. That’s super interesting is, I just heard that feedback from a client this week. This makes so much logical sense to me as I’m learning it, it’s like, yeah, and I’m a very logical person, and so I like that this makes logical sense. So I appreciate you saying that, because I do think that it’s connects and resonates with certain people, definitely.

Heather 13:04

So that’s how I wound up finding my icbt therapist. Unfortunately, I had to move from her to another one, because then she no longer took my insurance, but still with an icbt therapist, there

Carrie 13:16

are resources online for people to find an icbt therapist. Icbt dot online, if that’s something they’re interested in. I’m in Tennessee, and so as you’re processing that for yourself, and I think before you teach it to somebody else, you kind of have to understand it yourself. So those kind of grade that you were able to, like, kind of integrate and work without on yourself. Was there a particular like point in the process where you were like, something clicked, and you were like, oh, or it felt like this is a game changer. Because I think in the beginning, people go into the process and they’re kind of like, okay, this is nice. I’m kind of sort of getting some of this, but they’re like, how do I apply it? And there’s this, I said, okay, just hold on. Just hang in there. You got to build the foundation of the house. First you got to know and understand the concepts. You got to wrap your mind around it, then you will know how to intervene. And as you get into the later modules, of course, it gives you what to do, the intervention modules, but initial ones, you’re just assessing, and you’re building awareness. Was there a particular module or somewhere in the process, or something clicked, and you were like, oh, oh, yeah, okay.

Heather 14:16

I think it was feared possible. Self module four, okay, yeah, I was pretty early on. Everything up to that point made total sense to me. Again, this was a modality that was like, it fit right into the way that I already thought. So it was like, oh, like, That makes so much sense. Sometimes, with other modalities, it can be like, Wait, what are we doing and why? What’s the purpose? Again, where does this How does this work with icbt? I didn’t feel that way. It felt very straightforward. It felt very like easy to grasp. And I think by module four, when we really started to break down the feared possible self, that’s when I started to be like, Whoa. I definitely connect with that feared possible self that we kind of which was carelessness. This negligence. And actually, even going further, my therapist is pretty firm on it just being like bad, because carelessness is bad, negligence is bad, but this theme of carelessness and negligence definitely resonated for me. So I started, I think, at that point, looking through the lens of, oh gosh, is this like me behaving out of my real self, or my feared possible self, which we didn’t get to the real self at that point yet, but the feared self, I started to kind of examine a little bit Oh gosh. Is this coming out of this fear that I could be somebody that’s careless or negligent? And so I think it was from there that it just clicked. It was like, Oh my gosh. This has been the thing. This is why I’ve been so worried about my daughter. What if I miss something? That was always the question, what if I miss that she got into an accident? Or, what if I miss and I’m just gonna say, one of my thoughts was human trafficking. What if there’s a school shooting? Or what if, basically, what if she’s taken away? Yeah, what if I miss that, though? What if I miss something? And if I’m not on top of it and checking all the time, all the time, then I might miss it? Yeah. So that was kind of where I started to

Carrie 16:10

kind of boils down to, like, bad mom, which is, I think really fits in with that feared possible self of it’s the opposite of who you actually are like you’ve been very attentive and involved in your daughter’s life, it sounds like through school and extracurriculars and all those types of things the whole time. So it’s completely the opposite of what your actual behavior is showing you, right? So in some sense, I don’t know, it’s like this transition. There was this fear of, like, losing her forever, that maybe was a distorted from losing her to, like, launching to college or something like that, like, it’s a loss at a smaller level,

Heather 16:50

absolutely, yeah, my brain was definitely glitching out, for sure. Wasn’t the way that I was making sense of things, which is so unusual, instead of, like, if she’s not answering me, automatically, she’s dead. Yeah, automatically she must be dead. That was just the thought. I know that sounds terrible. I know that that’s probably maybe shocking for some ears, but

Carrie 17:10

that’s so OCD, right? Like, not just like, this is a possibility, but this is going to happen. Like, you know, this is the probability of what this means. It couldn’t

Heather 17:21

be that she was just busy doing a project, or that she was talking to a friend, or like it couldn’t be her phone’s on silent or something, nothing like that. Nothing normal, no normal reasoning with that. It was like

Carrie 17:33

totally obsessional. Were you able to get through all the 12 modules?

Heather 17:37

I am working through eight, and still working through them little by little. Done some 10. My therapist now does them a little bit out of order, so that’s okay with me. She also integrates a little bit of the metacognitive treatment too, which is kind of probably good for me considering the presentations. Yeah, yeah. So that’s another thing that she kind of integrates as well.

Carrie 18:02

Just started doing some metacognitive therapy with clients. It’s been an interesting side note. I’ll update people on the podcast at some point how that is, but it’s very, very different in a lot of ways from other types of therapy that I mean, there’s some integration of different things, but it really just teaches you that, hey, if you can learn to leave your thoughts alone, kind of like a dog that’s going after something and you just say, leave it. Just leave it there. Don’t engage with it, don’t try to solve it, don’t chew on it, don’t ruminate on it, don’t worry about it, let it go. And that is hard to do. And there are different exercises in metacognitive that trains you to really, like, learn how to do that and to they call it lazy mindfulness, which is interesting, but that’s hard for people with OCD, because you’re not used to being lazy, right? You’re like, no, I need to get on this hot right now. I gotta do something that’s urgent. Yeah, it’s urgent. Probably my clients that have had the most success with that, I think, have had some secondary depression along with the OCD. And so if they’re able to let some of those hopeless, worthless, negative self talk cognitions like if they’re able to let some of those go, then it helps them be able to move into more of the icbt process. So everything all if you have a good therapist, they know how to integrate these different things into it. We have people in the icbt community that use ifs parts work, some that use EMDR for trauma when appropriate. That’s another thing I think I love about this therapy, is that it integrates well with other therapies. It’s not like you can only do this one thing. It’s kind of like if somebody’s able to go in and assess and say, Hey, you might need some a little bit of this, or let’s try that and see if this can go as well. So I think that

Heather 19:45

having that ability to sort of like bob and weave in between modalities, I think if you can do it, great. I’m not trained in all of them. I’m trained in EMDR, and so that’s something that for my clients has been super beneficial, and I haven’t felt as. As inclined to use EMDR with my clients in general, probably because of the OCD that I have right as far as negligence goes, and that’s like, you know, I just want to make sure I’m doing it right. You don’t want to give my clients the best care. But once OCD kind of came onto the scene with icbd treatment, I thought, oh my gosh, this is a great way to interweave EMDR, because I have seen so many clients, myself included, who have the trauma in history that is being used. It’s like OCD hijacking that trauma and then using it as personal experience, right? Like you remember that time. Don’t forget about that time. Be negligent. Now, keep yourself safe, right? Being able to, kind of like, pause in the icbt treatment and then go to clear some memory that is being hijacked by the OCD is super cool to be able to do that with the EMDR. I think

Carrie 20:58

sometimes, once you get into modules three and four, where you’re talking about the obsessional story and really working on, okay, how do we even get to this particular theme, obsessional sequence? What consequences are we afraid of? And then when you get into that feared possible self, you’re like, Okay, now you can start to see some of that trauma bubbling up potentially, and are able to address it with EMDR. So yeah, like I said, that integration is really helpful, and EMDR is a little bit of a wild card. People have different experiences with it, and I don’t know, sometimes when people have OCD, they have a hard time really like dropping in down into their emotional experience and their body sensations, because they’re so used to problem solving and thinking things in their head, and that can be a barrier sometimes to people doing EMDR, it may take them longer, or the processing may look a little bit different. So if you tried EMDR and you’re like, it failed, for me, there’s probably you didn’t fail. It’s not a pass or fail thing, just maybe that your therapist didn’t know how to kind of tailor things towards you and finding somebody that can help you get there. I’ve had many people who feel like they’ve had failed EMDR experiences be able to process through trauma. That’s why we have other things too, parts work and all kinds of stuff, because sometimes that’s super helpful in those experiences, or helps process through those memories and time periods. I think what you’re saying, and I would echo, is really, you have to look at this holistically in terms of OCD treatment. People are not cookie cutter. They’re very different. I will never get bored specializing in OCD like never, because each person has different nuances. You could have 10 people who are compulsively washing their hands, and they will be compulsively washing their hands for 10 different reasons, and you really have to get in there and figure out what’s going on and what’s the story, and how did we get to this point, in order to figure out how to tailor their treatment plan in such a way that, unfortunately, we have these therapeutic tools and modules to help us be able to have some structure surrounding that. Because I do believe structure is helpful and important, while also knowing how to utilize that for the individual. I think in the past, in my earlier days of therapy, I was much more of like, oh, okay, step one of the therapy says this, like, we need to do step one. And now that I’ve been doing therapy a lot longer, I’m like, okay, and this is what the therapy is saying, and this person’s step one is gonna look like this, and this person’s step one might look a little bit different, and that’s okay, yep, we’re just gonna go with it, kind of depending on what they bring in and how the flow happens, might

Speaker 1 23:41

have to go back to something else. How would you say this

Carrie 23:45

has impacted your faith? Or have you struggled with, why can’t I seem to just let go, or why can’t I seem to trust God with this? So did any of those things come up for you?

Heather 23:55

So funny, once I got the diagnosis, I think again, there was definitely obsessions over obsessions. It wound up starting to attack things that it had never attacked before. One of them was my faith. So there was a scrupulosity piece that definitely showed up on the scene. There was a lot of like, wow, what if you’re not saved? How do you know you’re saved? All these questions of true faith. I mean, right, as Christians, like, I mean, that’s what we stand on. It’s like salvation. The fact that the OECD, again was hijacking something super important to me, was cause for concern and felt really urgent. And I think as Christians, we can all agree that salvation is urgent and important. Yeah, super important. I think that it did kind of cause a little bit of like a toggling back and forth between, like, knowing and then questioning, right? Knowing the truth like you’ve never doubted this before. You’ve been a believer for how many years, and now, all of a sudden, it’s being hijacked. That’s odd, right? Yeah, there was a lot of scrupulosity that started to kind of play in, which then, yeah. It kind of broke down a little bit of my natural ability to sort of just lean into the Lord and trust that he has me don’t have to be overthinking this. It did kind of break that down a little bit right. Since then, I’ve done some work to kind of get out of that bubble, to kind of like bring myself back to reality, on it, and to not be ruminating on it, because I

Carrie 25:25

think that’s vague for people. Like, how do I sink into the reality of my faith? Because it is unseen. I always say faith requires faith. What does the reality of your faith look like? Like? Did you pinpoint certain times in your life? Like, Oh, I know God was at that time point. Or

Heather 25:40

I definitely was doing a look back on those kinds of moments when it was like, okay, clearly I don’t have to worry about this, because even at that time, I wasn’t even thinking about how God had me and was securing me, but he did. So those moments definitely helped, and I did lean into my pastor, which my therapist gave me permission to do that. She was like, one time you can go the one conversation you may have. And so I did that was very helpful to me, to just get some reassurance that that I already knew what I knew. So that’s the tricky part about OCD, I feel like, is we forget that we know what we know. We forget to keep our eyes on the things that we know for sure because we’ve seen it. I think that a lot of people that I speak to have had experiences or encounters with the Lord, right? People that are Christians, that are believers, right? They’ve had those experiences or encounters with the Lord, and I think that when they look back at those moments, it’s like it’s undeniable. So we have to remember to look at that as truth. I think there’s

Carrie 26:42

so much power, and that’s why the Bible talks to us about remembering so much, even in the Old Testament where it went through, I’m the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You remember these people? Remember these guys, remember these heroes of the faith. You’re a part of that lineage. And I am still here, like I am, still I am, yeah,

Heather 27:00

so definitely keeping those things in mind, remembering those things, and then, of course, having that conversation with my pastor was certainly help to me. And also just recognizing that God isn’t the author of confusion. I wouldn’t be sitting here confused if this was something that was God ordained, right? Like, that’s not God. So knowing to kind of pull away from that, because I already know that this could not be from God, yeah.

Carrie 27:25

And so that helped you, almost like, disengage from some of those thoughts, thought processes,

Heather 27:29

correct, I would say, if anything, though, the one thing that wound up kind of coming from it is that it did strengthen my relationship with the Lord in a big way, just kind of feeling the closeness like he’s like, I’m a year like, I got you. I’m right here. So I think that out of all the nightmarish parts of sort of wrestling with OCD, the one thing that I can say that’s been kind of a blessing out of the muck OCD is just that the relationship with God has been strengthened as

Carrie 28:01

we kind of wrap things up. Is there anything else that you would want to say to people just who are struggling and they’re Christians with OCD and they just feel like maybe they’re at a really low point or a really bad point, like, what would you want them to know or to take away from this conversation? It

Heather 28:16

doesn’t have to look like this. Okay? Stay this way, right? You don’t have to be trapped in the OCD bubble all the time. There can be relief from it. And for me, I think that’s always gonna be best with God. So yes, there’s gonna be a mental health component. In my personal opinion, I feel very strongly that, yes, we have spiritual components to who we are. We’re living in a spiritual world, yes, but there’s also a mental health component. Especially when it comes to OCD, there’s a mental health component. And so I would caution anyone like you, don’t have to handle it on your own. This isn’t something that you have to pray about. It absolutely lean into the Lord for help with it, yes, but you can get treatment from a therapist that will help you to actually deal with what is happening in your brain. It is a glitch in the brain. I really do strongly feel like there can be help for that. You know, not just spiritual, but mental health wise.

Carrie 29:11

Yeah, that’s right, beautiful. Thank you for sharing with us today. I know that this is going to be encouraging and a hopeful story to share with people.

176. OCD From a Young Age: Personal story with Mitzi VanCleve Episode

Written by Carrie Bock on June 4, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In Episode 176 of Christian Faith and OCD, Carrie kicks off a new series of personal stories from individuals who have struggled with OCD by revisiting an early and powerful interview with Mitzi VanCleve. Mitzi shares her decades-long journey with OCD, including early symptoms, spiritual struggles, and finally finding hope through proper diagnosis.

Episode Highlights:

How OCD can begin in early childhood and evolve into different themes throughout life.
Why many people with OCD—especially those of faith—struggle in silence due to stigma, shame, and misunderstanding.
The impact of receiving a proper OCD diagnosis after years of mislabeling symptoms as general anxiety or spiritual weakness.
How faith, therapy, and even medication can work together in the healing journey.
The importance of compassionate support from churches and faith communities in addressing mental health struggles like OCD.

Episode Summary:

I’m kicking off a brand-new series where we share powerful personal stories from Christians who’ve walked through the depths of OCD—and found healing. These episodes are always some of the most listened to and loved, and I think it’s because they help people feel truly seen. If you’ve ever felt alone in your struggle, unsure how your faith fits into your mental health journey, or just needed to hear someone say, “You’re not crazy, and you’re not alone,” this series is for you.

To start us off, I’m bringing back one of the very first conversations I ever recorded for the podcast—with Mitzi Van Cleve. Mitzi was one of the only Christians I could find online back then who was openly sharing her experience with OCD. I reached out when this podcast was just getting started (back when it was called Hope for Anxiety and OCD), and she graciously agreed to share her story.

In this episode, Mitzi opens up about how OCD first showed up in her life as a young child, how the themes shifted over time, and how spiritual confusion and panic attacks made everything even harder. Like so many, she went undiagnosed for years—decades, actually—and didn’t discover it was OCD until age 50. Her journey is raw, honest, and so incredibly encouraging.

We talk about what it’s like to wrestle with thoughts you’re terrified to say out loud, how OCD targets what’s most precious to you (like your faith), and what it means to find hope—not just in healing, but in knowing you’re not alone. One of the most powerful things Mitzi said was, “God didn’t take it away—but He showed me what it was. And that changed everything.”

If you’ve been praying for answers, if you’ve ever wondered whether your struggles are “just spiritual,” or if you’ve longed to hear from someone who gets it, I invite you to tune in.

Childhood OCD, Faith Struggles, OCD Diagnosis, Church Support, Mental Health

Related Links and Resources:

Mitzi VanCleve

Mitzi VanCleve’s Book

Transcript

Carrie: I am so excited because today we are kicking off an entire series of personal stories of people who struggled with OCD. These tend to be our most popular episodes because you guys just feel so seen and understood, and often you don’t hear other people of faith talking about how they have struggled with OCD.

So I’m happy to bring these episodes to you, and I thought we would kick it off by actually airing portions of a very early episode that I did with the Mitzi Van Cleve. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Kerry Bach. I’m a Christ follower. Wife and mother licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.

When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith.

I’m here to help you. Let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. For those of you that know the history, when I started this show five years ago, it was called Hope for Anxiety and OCD. When I was Googling around looking for guests, to be honest with you guys, there just wasn’t much out there related to Christianity and OCD.

I’m happy to say that there are people besides me that are speaking into this space now, but Mitzi was one of the few people that I found that was. Kinda sharing her story online. I reached out to Mitzi to see if she would be on the show, and I barely had a podcast at that point. She ended up being episode 13 and we had a conversation and she just wanted to make sure that things were aligned.

And what we were gonna be talking about, where we were gonna be taking it, and I was just really appreciative of her agreeing to do that interview. One because, hello. I was a nobody at that point, barely had a podcast. And also just because of her heart of willingness to be so vulnerable and so open about some of the themes that she struggled with from just a very young age and how that progressed in her life.

So if you haven’t ever heard this interview or you’ve been around for a long time, and you’ve probably forgotten it by now, I know you’re gonna be blessed by it today. When did you start to have symptoms of OCD?

Mitzi: Well, that really started even as far back as when I was a toddler. I know that sounds surprising.

The only thing I can say about that is in my childhood. Right up until I was quite old actually, I never understood a lot of what I was experiencing was actually, so like the first things that I can go back and look at is really long held obsessional fears and themes. The very first one, it was sort of unusual as OCD things are.

Sure. Was a fear of being flushed down the toilet. Hmm. And this fear was so intense that I would not use the big toilet until I was five years old and I was forced to go to kindergarten. Wow. And even Vanessa, a small child, you know, you’re three years old, four years old. I could sit there and watch a toilet being flushed.

Look at the hole in the bottom of the toilet and say, well, I can’t fit through there. Mm-hmm. But it didn’t make a difference. My brain had just decided this was a thing to be afraid of. And from there, once I got past that one, a lot of those kind of weird themes and health obsessions. But by the age of 10 is when I first developed.

Some obsessions related to self-harm, and that just started with hearing about a form of harm that could happen to a person. And you know, I don’t wanna really go into the details. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to explain specific obsessions and details because it can get a little graphic and upsetting that people who don’t have OCD don’t really understand.

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

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

And then it became more debilitating after birth of my and birth of my second child. I developed panic disorder, not knowing what that was. Wow. Okay. I mean, I’d, I’d always struggled with like social anxiety and just your basic kinds of anxiety disorders as a kid, but I didn’t know such a thing existed.

Right. I never heard about. C. D, anxiety disorders, panic disorder. Those words were foreign to me. I only heard about crazy people.

Carrie: Yeah.

Mitzi: And there’s a thing where there’s a stigma after birth of my children, the thing switched from me hurting me. To me going crazy and possibly hurting one of my children in a really awful way.

And that was just so debilitating. I can’t even begin to describe how awful it was.

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

Mitzi: Oh, yes, it, it’s very true about OCD and, and that’s why it’s important to understand how the disorder operates, how to get on top of a theme before it gets on top of you and, and it gets, grows too big and right large, it gets kind of stuck in your head. I do try to tell people that there’s physical symptoms with this too, when you’re going through this.

And for me, some of the things I experienced. During that really bad season, which was a very long season mm-hmm. Of harm, OCD was an inability to eat. I struggled to get calories down. I’m five eight. I dropped 114 pounds. Wow. People thought I was anorexic. It had nothing to do with anorexia. I just was nauseous.

The anxiety was so, so bad

Carrie: I couldn’t sleep. I’m curious about what your parents thought. Did your parents just think like, oh, she’s really nervous a lot, or she’s kind of an anxious child? They had no idea of everything that was going on in your head. Right. They didn’t. And you know,

Mitzi: there were some people in my family, distant relatives who had struggled.

Which caused them to even like not wanna leave their house and things like that. My mom would talk about that and she would say, you know, you’re gonna end up like that. But she didn’t really know what was going on. There was a lot of with, I know my mom, there was like reassurances, which is a knee jerk reaction for a parent to do that, and a lot of times it manifested just as me being sickly when I was struggling with.

Certain health obsessions, I would get very, just like I described, sick to my stomach and I would lose weight and, and so they were taking me to the doctor and trying to figure out what was wrong, but it was being approached like it was a physical issue. And at that point I did open up to my mom. I began to know, okay, this obviously is something to do with like a.

I talked to my husband very little about it, just a little bit, and I opened up with my mom as I was sharing to her, I thought it might be a good idea for me to see a psychiatrist. She was really upset about

Carrie: it. Mm.

Mitzi: And And she talked about faith and then she said something that was really hard, you know about, well, that’s just for weak people.

I did pursue it still, but I didn’t get a diagnosis. The person I saw didn’t have any clue. Okay. That’s, and he was relating things to stress and then again, faith and, and it just, I got nowhere.

Carrie: Okay. So you did see a psychiatrist, but they weren’t able to help you at that point? No.

Mitzi: And of course some of the scary obsessional themes, I didn’t verbalize them.

I talked about anxiety and I talked about the panic attacks. I didn’t have that word though. Just this is what’s happening. Right. I tried to describe it. It wasn’t a good experience and it didn’t help me, sadly.

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

What was that process of getting the help that you needed? The

Mitzi: first help that I got was really for the panic disorder, and that was interesting. I believe that during the time of my praying through this and asking God for help and just feeling so desperate. That God came through. At that time, I was still struggling.

I was pregnant again. Mm-hmm. That tells you how long it was. I was still struggling tremendously, and I had become pregnant again. I was about four months pregnant. I was at my aunt and uncle’s cottage, my husband and my brothers, my family, and my aunts and uncles. They were watching TV show, which I did not need to watch.

At that time, it was called Alien. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the perfect show if you’re struggling. So I was trying to avoid watching it. So I picked up a Reader’s Digest magazine and the words on the front of the magazine where they show the stories, one of them said panic, and then it said. It might not be what you think it’s mm-hmm.

Uh, just the word panic struck a chord with me. So I, you know, I opened up this magazine and started reading the story of this woman who had panic disorder, and it was me. Wow. I mean, I was reading it about myself and, and they listed all the symptoms of panic attack and I was, I had all of them,

Carrie: right.

Mitzi: And so I finally had an answer for that.

At the time I was pregnant and I really couldn’t implement, you know, Mets and things like that, right? And so I just started working on things like breathing techniques. And after I delivered, I started doing really intensive aerobic exercise. I was jogging four and five miles a day and I gradually getting healthier, which kind of eventually kind of took.

You know, it wasn’t as mm-hmm. As bad as it as it had been, but that’s when I learned just about panic disorder. I didn’t have any idea about ocd. And so that kind of waxed and waned on and off, you know, throughout the rest of my life up until the age of 50.

Carrie: I think your story is very similar to other people’s in terms of, a lot of times there’s a big gap between when people start to have symptoms and when they even find out, this is actually OCD that I’m experiencing, because they feel ashamed of the symptoms.

They feel ashamed of the thoughts, or they feel like, okay, this sounds really crazy and nobody’s gonna understand it or believe it, or they’re gonna lock me up somewhere if I. Tell someone that I’m having these thoughts, especially related to harm.

Mitzi: Yes. What you say about they’re gonna lock me up somewhere was a genuine fear of mine because I couldn’t understand why I was having the thoughts to start with.

And then for me to share that with somebody, you know, I was, I could think was, well, they’re gonna be like, okay, you really are dangerous. Mm. And then sometimes I would think, well maybe then will be how.

Like your brain is telling you this is something that you should be afraid of. This thought I say, it’s almost like you have a phobic response to the thoughts that you’re having. It’s a thought in your head. It’s there, you know? Right. And, and all that you’re doing to try to get rid of it makes it worse.

And of course it did with me. ’cause I didn’t know it was OCD and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was at the age of 50. Okay. Okay, so, so at the age of 50, what happened? I had already been struggling. I was going back through a flare of anxiety and panic attacks because there’d been a lot of stress in our life.

Big life changes. My husband went on disability moves just. Lots of changes. Lots of uncertainty. I didn’t notice it for a while, but it was kind of too late. By the time I did start to say, oh no, you know, I’m going back through this again. I was having panic attacks. I was starting to have obsessions about my health again.

Mm-hmm. Related to stuff that normally I would just brush off. But that’s how OCD is. It’s always looking for a target. Something to be upset about. And so during that time, I was praying, again, reading my Bible, doing all the things I normally do as a Christian to try to receive information from God about what can I do about this?

You know, how can I help myself? But also just to gain comfort. And I got a lot of comfort from the Psalms, even back when I was in my twenties. Mm-hmm. Because I saw in there things that described how I was feeling. My son also gave me some sermons on tape and he said, these are really good, mom. You know, I want you.

We always share things like this. You ought to listen. So I put one of those sermons in. It was actually on a CD and I was doing dishes. I was trying to stay very busy and distracted. And so this particular pastor was talking about our struggles with sin. As Christians, and I understood it wasn’t new to me that as Christians, we will still be fighting sin our whole life.

It’s not something that we’re cured of. It’s something we’re aware of, right? We’re made aware of when we become a Christian and we have a desire to please our saviors, so we work continually towards pleasing him through obedience. But he says this one statement, which I don’t even know why he said it. In the middle of the sermon, he says, so if you call yourself a Christian, but you’re still all the time struggling and sinning, you really might wanna think, are you really a Christian?

In the past, I would’ve been like, yeah, of course.

Carrie: Mm-hmm.

Mitzi: This time. My brain just latched onto that. It was like, wait a minute, what if he’s right? What if all this time, all these years, I’ve thought I was a Christian? I’m not. And what if the reason I struggle with this thing, whatever it is, is because of that.

And it just was like a damn broke open. And the intrusive thoughts related to that just poured out just one after another. And it, I just began this war with it, right? Just, it was a mental 24 7. Every minute I was awake, I couldn’t sleep. And that was the new OCD thing, but I didn’t know it was OCD. ’cause you hadn’t ever had that before.

It was a new theme. Yeah. Until I was engaging with my compulsions. So by then, at this point in my life, of course we had the internet and I was doing what’s called researching. Lots of Googling, lots of researching around the topic of, am I still saying? Doubting your salvation. And I was reading all these articles about how we can know we’re really Christians and I would read.

It didn’t make it go away, and suddenly one day I stumbled across a Christian forum that said, doubting your salvation that it said OCD. I was like, what does that have to do with what I’m going through? But outta curiosity, I opened it and I got into this forum and it was like I started reading the posts from the people in this group.

And it was amazing. It was just like the Reader’s Digest thing. I was reading my story,

Carrie: right? They were

Mitzi: telling exactly what I had been going through. I was stunned. And as I read more and more in this forum, and then I started going further out about OCD, what it is, how it manifests, what causes it. I had it.

Mm-hmm. And I’d had it since I was a kid and I never knew. Wow. And that opened up the door for me to finally have a way to manage this beast called OCD. And from there I began learning and learning more about ERP, about medications, about therapies like a CT, just. All the ways that this thing that I called it, this ugly it for all these years, it had a name.

I get truthful sometimes talking about it because God just did answer my prayer, right. He just didn’t answer in the way I was wanting. The way I was wanting was just take this thing away, whatever it’s, mm-hmm. He was pointing me to, this is what it is and this is what you can do. Right. You know, and it was just astonishing to me that I could live my whole life basically until I was 50 years old and never have been able to get help.

And there was so many long seasons of just. Debilitating crippling suffering. It was hard for me to believe, but just the relief Right.

Carrie: Was

Mitzi: so overwhelming.

Carrie: Yeah. I mean, we talked about that in an earlier episode with someone about how diagnosis itself can be a relief when you get a proper diagnosis. Yes.

And then you can say, okay, now that we know what we’re dealing with, what can we do about it? What’s our next step forward? Exactly even

Mitzi: after you get a diagnosis. ’cause OCD is OCD, it’s gonna to make you doubt that. But as you begin to bravely risk, working with like things like exposure, response, prevention, therapy, for me it was brave.

When I was told I probably needed to try some medications.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. But

Mitzi: that was hard for me. Sure. Some of that was pride. Some of it was just because I didn’t have never taken anything like that before. What will it do to me? All the fears, and that was a big struggle. But it’s so worth it because the alternative is staying stuck.

Right. I mean, and doing the same thing over and over. And not getting better and feeling worse. And it was hard. It’s not like, oh, you began ERP and the next day it’s like, I’m all better. Right?

Carrie: Right. It’s a process. So

Mitzi: it’s a process. And the longer you’ve been struggling with the theme, I think it’s a longer process.

You know, your brain’s got this practice cycle of intrusive thought, anxiety response, compulsion. Intru, more anxiety, more compulsions, and so it’s a habit that needs to be, and that takes time. Right. Did you get into therapy at that point? I started going to a therapist, and I think this is the hardest thing about OCD and people with a diagnosis is being able to find a competent therapist is hard.

A lot of people really do need a competent therapist because it takes a lot of grit and determination and courage to do ERP, and I just think having a competent psychologist. To do these things and understands the disorder is something. Unfortunately, there just aren’t that many, and a lot of it has to do with your network, with your insurance too, which was one of my biggest hurdles.

I could not afford the counselors and the therapists that I needed to see.

Carrie: It is hard because really therapists would have to pursue training after their degree. To specialize in OCD, and a lot of people don’t do that unless they have some type of personal connection. Or in my situation, I was working with a lot of people who just thought they had anxiety, and then I was starting to see more OCD as I was starting to hear more about what they were actually worried about and struggling with.

So that’s kind of how I got branched off into it. But I think a lot of therapists have not received further training on it. I wanna get in with you on the spiritual aspects really of struggling. Sure. With OCD, and I know a lot of people who are struggling out there probably are praying prayers just like you pray.

But God, yes, this is awful. I feel terrible. I’m all tore up inside. Will you please just like touch my body and touch my mind and take this all away? How did you work through some of that wrestling with God

Mitzi: when I didn’t OCD? I did a lot of that, and it was a wrestling time. I thought during that time, maybe this was due to past sin, maybe there was something I needed to confess, and so I would pour over everything I could think of and current things and confess.

There was also a feeling because God wasn’t taking it away, just miraculously, right. Maybe he’d abandoned me. Mm. And that’s why I. There’s particular Psalms, Psalm 13 I think, says, how long, Lord, will you forgive me forever? How long will you keep hiding in your face? Please answer me. And just the desperation there of the feeling when we’re going through painful, painful suffering and trials of.

Where’s God in all of this? And it took a while for me to understand growth through affliction. So when I learned that I had OCD and I learned I have panic disorder, I was able to shift over into, well, maybe this is how God’s answering my prayer, right? And so that helped me to understand that these are very real disorders.

To learn about how they develop, why they develop, how their genetic. It’s not a sin to treat a disorder and affliction right, and to seek professional help for it. Though CD always goes after what’s most precious to you. And for the Christian, their walk with Christ is the most precious thing of their entire existence.

So it’s gonna go there. And I wanted people to understand they weren’t alone, but I also knew there were a lot of people like me who got all the way to 50 or 25 or 30, 40, whatever, and didn’t even know that’s what it was. And I thought by sharing my story, they could discover that that’s the way I did and get directed towards the help they needed.

And the other aspect of it is just growth in it through that. Before I go there, I did wanna add to what you said about ways that the church can support people with these issues. I think the number one thing they do is listen and then validate the experience as a real affliction,

Carrie: right?

Mitzi: And not merely a spiritual issue.

That can be by more prayer, more bible study, more faith. To literally be willing to support people and say, Hey, this is a real medical or mental health issue for which you can get help. We wanna encourage you that if they say you should see the specialist to go ahead and do that, and we wanna encourage you that if they suggest medication might be helpful to you, by all means, please, please do that.

Because it’s so harmful to say things like, well, it’s a lack of faith, and taking medication means that you aren’t trusting in God and all the things that you can hear. It puts up such a roadblock.

Carrie: Right. It just makes the problem worse. Yeah.

Mitzi: It hurts people. Mm-hmm. And it’s important for churches to be able to be compassionate and pray for the person with a mental health issue.

And the same exact way you pray for anybody who has any other type of health issue.

Carrie: Yeah. I think that that’s so important and so helpful because we have this ability to rally around people who have just had a baby in the church. We’re really good at that. We can bring you a casserole and we’re really good at rallying around somebody that’s going through cancer or has lost a loved one.

But then when it comes to something that’s. Invisible, like an anxiety disorder or OCD, it’s like almost like people don’t know what to do with that.

Mitzi: One of the biggest ways I’ve changed in how I talk about my anxiety disorders and in my OCD in particular is I used to kind of go along and say, well, I have OCD, but God still used me in spite of it.

And that’s kind of how I worded it right now. I say I have OCD and God is able to use me because of it, and that’s because of the ways he’s grown me through this experience of affliction. That’s not uncommon. God, Paul talked about it, right? Talked about a thorn in the flesh. He said, God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you.

My strength is perfected in your weakness. Paul ends up saying, I’m gonna glory in this affliction because of this, because when I’m weak, I’m depending on God’s strength and not my own.

Carrie: Your story and just what you’re doing and just being vocal and open about being a very strong Christian who has also had a struggle and an affliction, I think is so hopeful to other people, hopefully who will hear this podcast.

I just want people to be able to sit with people in pain and say, we’re here for you.

Mitzi: Yes. And it’s important to understand. That is painful. I would still get up every day, go through the motions like a robot. Sometimes I would fix my hair, I would. Put on my makeup. It was difficult to go out when I was really, really sick, but I still did it.

I would sit in church and be tortured because of my OCD, but I would sit there. Yeah, it’s very, very painful. It for me, definitely has been the thing that caused most pain in my life and the most long lasting. Because it can just hang on

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

Mitzi: The name of the book is Strivings within the OCD Christian, and you can find it on Amazon.

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

Mitzi: Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity. Anytime I can share, not because of what it does for me, but what I hope it might do for someone else who’s looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for someone who can relate to what they’re going through.

Carrie: Whether you’re struggling in a really hard season or wanna come on and share your story. Or have any suggestions for things that you’d like for us to talk about on the podcast, you can find me@kerrybach.com. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of by the Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guest are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

175. Why Combining ICBT and EMDR Is So Powerful for OCD Treatment

Written by Carrie Bock on May 28, 2025. Posted in OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie shares how integrating ICBT and EMDR creates a powerful, personalized approach to treating OCD. She explains how these therapies work together to address both the cognitive and nervous system components of healing through a Christ-centered lens.

Episode Highlight:

Why EMDR is more than just trauma treatment and how it targets the nervous system for healing
How ICBT helps identify and restructure obsessional reasoning in OCD
The benefits of combining EMDR and ICBT for complex, co-occurring symptoms
How to approach therapy with questions and curiosity about your treatment plan

Episode Summary:

What if your OCD treatment didn’t have to be either/or—but could actually be both/and? In today’s episode, I’m sharing why combining ICBT (Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can offer a deeply effective and faith-integrated approach for Christians navigating OCD and trauma.

So many of the clients I work with come in thinking they’re just dealing with OCD—but as we explore their story, we often uncover layers of past trauma, spiritual wounds, or deep emotional patterns that haven’t yet been healed. OCD rarely exists in isolation, and the healing journey is often more layered than we expect.

ICBT helps us address the faulty reasoning and doubt loops that OCD relies on, giving us tools to challenge its grip. EMDR, meanwhile, works with the nervous system to gently process unresolved memories and emotional pain that may be fueling those thoughts in the background. When we use these two approaches together, we’re able to care for the mind, body, and spirit—bringing restoration at every level.

You are a whole person, and your healing deserves a whole-person approach. If you’ve ever felt like therapy was missing a piece—or like your faith wasn’t part of the process—this episode will help you understand how we can combine effective tools with deep spiritual truth to move toward freedom.

Tune in to the full episode to hear how these two therapies can work hand-in-hand to support your healing, calm your nervous system, and help you walk more fully in the peace and purpose God has for you.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you. With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.

So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

Oftentimes people will say. If you have OCD that you need to do either exposure and response prevention, also known as ERP, and that’s how we’ll refer to it in this episode, or inference based cognitive behavioral therapy or ICBT, which is how we’ll refer to that one. And one thing I know from working with thousands of clients at this point is that people are very complex and we’re dealing with more than one thing at a time. Often I will hear different counseling professionals talking about combining different treatments, but that information isn’t typically shared with the masses.

So I wanted to talk with you about that today in a way that you can understand it. So why combine ICBT and EMDR? Why do we need two different therapies? Well, you may not need both, so let’s just throw that out there. There are some people who are dealing with more milder forms of OCD or OCD just seems to really shoot up when they’re under stress and then it kind of dies back down to a more manageable level. Each person is different and you may just really benefit from just the OCD treatment. Maybe that’s all that you have going on in your life and you’re not having a lot of other challenges. When people come into therapy, I’m really looking at what are the strengths here?

What kinds of supports do they have? Do they feel really solid in one or two aspects of their life? Maybe they feel like the family stuff is going really well, but maybe work is a huge stressor or challenge. Maybe they feel vice versa. Like, Hey, I’m confident at work. I kind of know what I’m doing there.

But then when I come into these more intimate relationships, I’m really struggling. Maybe they’re feeling like they’re in a good place spiritually with their relationship with God, and that’s a big strength. But then they’re also having these other type struggles in their life with OCD, like contamination, for example.

So every person’s situation is different, and I think when you go into therapy. You want to find someone that’s really gonna help you customize your treatment plan and your goals to get the most maximum benefit that you’re gonna have with that time together. And I think a lot of times we as therapists maybe have this in our head where we’re going and oftentimes struggle to really verbalize it out.

That’s something that I know as a therapist, I’ve challenged myself to say, Hey. You need to share what’s going on in your head as far as the pathway to treatment. And so if your therapist doesn’t share that with you, or I’ve often heard people say, Hey, I went to go do EMDR, but they didn’t really do the EMDR with me yet.

Well, they were probably taking some history and they were probably doing some type of preparation. Or determining what type of preparation needed to be done before you could jump into reprocessing, because EMDR is an eight phase treatment approach, and those initial phases are about preparation. Super important.

If you skip those, you will be in trouble. I promise. So that’s just a side note to know that, hey, you can always ask about your treatment process at any point in time and say, Hey, I know we’re doing this, but how is that leading up towards my goals or what I originally came in with? We’re not gonna be offended by that.

We want you to understand this process. If you know my background and my story, I really started from a trauma therapy approach and then added ICBT into that. Now, how I’ve utilized these therapies has changed over time. I. Experience of working with people. What I’ll tell you about EMDR and that stands for eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing.

It’s actually, I tell people the worst named therapy because you don’t necessarily need eye movements. The founder said that if she hadn’t already named the therapy and it wasn’t already out there, she would’ve just called it reprocessing therapy. Essentially, what you’re doing, for those of you who aren’t familiar with EMDR, is that it’s helping you reprocess specific memories.

These memories could be things that are causing acute PTSD symptoms. So if you see EMDR, for example, on someone who’s been through like a car accident, they might be having nightmares about the car accident, flashbacks, memory intrusions. They might just have these intense body sensations whenever they go to ride in a car or drive.

We would do the preparation phases with the client to help them be able to shift from a. Heightened state to a more relaxed state when people have had prior forms of therapy, this doesn’t usually take too long unless they have not had any type of somatic therapy or connection with their body.

Sometimes people do not have a connection to their emotional experience or what is happening in their body. If that is the case, you’re gonna need to do a lot of preparation work prior to being able to reprocess memories. When you get into the reprocessing phases of treatment, your therapist is asking you a set of specific questions that helps you kind of get back into that memory.

You may have physical feelings of what it was like to be in that memory, emotional experiences of what it was like. You may be seeing pictures of what happened at the time. Or have negative beliefs about self, like I’m bad or it was my fault. And all of these different pieces are connected to the memory and you’re using either eye movements or there’s other machines that will like called a tapper machine that’ll vibrate in one hand or the other.

Sometimes we have people online do self-tapping. There’s different ways to accomplish the bilateral stimulation. All that means is that you are getting stimulation on one side of your body and then the other side, sometimes in EMDR literature, it’s called dual attention stimulation. The reason for that is because you are supposed to be kind of have one foot in the memory and one foot in the present.

We don’t want people to be completely connected to the memory because then they’re dissociating if they’re not present with us, and we don’t want you to be fully present. Because if you are fully present, then you’re not able to access the parts of your nervous system that you need to access. So essentially, we are letting your brain and your body do all the work.

And that’s the Christian integration piece. We believe as Christians, God created the brain. God created pathways to healing. And I believe when we’re using something like EMDR, we’re just tapping into what God’s already created and has given us the wisdom and allowed us. To be able to tap into that. The idea is that if you get a cut on your finger, for example, and it’s just a, like a normal paper cut, something that you might encounter in every day.

But then your body knows exactly what it needs to do. It knows what cells need to activate, what cells need to multiply to be able to close that wound. It becomes a problem though, if you get an infection. I. Or if you have a large wound that might need stitches, your body isn’t able to bring that skin back together and be able to fully go through the healing process.

Thank God for modern medicine that we are able to utilize things like bandages and stitches and. Now they have the glue. Sometimes they don’t even have to use the stitches. Essentially, EMDR provides that opportunity for those wounds that our brain wasn’t able to process and fully heal on our own. Some of that is done in REM sleep, that like deeper level of sleep where you actually do move your eyes back and forth.

You may have seen this with, if you’ve ever had a dog that you’ve watched go to sleep, and then sometimes they’ll move their eyes back and forth as well. I bring up PTSD because 25% of people who meet criteria for an OCD diagnosis also meet criteria for A-P-T-S-D diagnosis. So really looking at those individuals who are duly diagnosed, we wanna make sure that we’re addressing both issues, that we’re addressing the PTSD, and we’re also addressing the OCD, but EMDR is not just for people with PTSD, and I think that is a big misnomer.

EMDR is also for individuals who feel stuck in some area of their life. They may come in and say, Hey, every relationship follows a similar pattern, or, I can’t seem to ever be vulnerable and open up in relationships. I’ve had a level of church hurt. It’s not a fear for my life type of situation, but it’s got me stuck in my relationship with God and I need to be able to move through.

The church hurt situation in order to come back to a healthy relationship with Jesus. Maybe you freeze physically and emotionally. Every time there’s conflict in which you need to address something or need to lovingly confront someone, maybe your body just gets frozen. What I hear from people is they know all the right answers.

Maybe you’ve read the book on conflict resolution. Maybe you’ve read some Brene Brown books about being vulnerable, but you just can’t seem to implement these things in your life. Part of the EMDR training process is that you work on practicing with each other, and I remember processing this toxic work experience and it was very, very strange for me because.

I was not nauseous. I wouldn’t say that that’s the right way to explain it, but almost like I felt this physical sensation like I was throwing up or something was coming out of my body and I had to actually open my mouth during the processing. Very strange. I had no idea at the time what was going on.

But like everybody said, I was just kind of trusting the process and going with it. For some reason, it just didn’t click in my brain, or I didn’t make this association that after I had had the toxic work environment situation happen, I. I actually threw up. It was either from the stress of everything had nothing to do with what I ate.

I knew it was completely stress induced, and I don’t remember if it was that night that I threw up or the next day that I threw up, but there was that connection to that memory and my body was essentially working that out because trauma is not just stored in our brain, it’s stored in our body. I’ve worked with a lot of clients who have fears surrounding throwing up where we have actually processed times where they’ve thrown up maybe times where they’ve witnessed someone else in their family throwing up, and that can be really helpful for.

Amid phobia diagnosis or for individuals who maybe have some contamination concerns, maybe they’ve had a really bad experience where they got super, super sick, and understand that, I’m not saying that that’s going to cure your OCD, but I am saying that it can calm down your nervous system. Which is experiencing a lot of anxiety due to the OCD.

So typically, if someone is coming to see me for an MDR intensive, there’s two different pathways that we go down. Some people will come in and say, Hey, I know that I wanna target these three memories. I know that they’re really holding me back. I can’t get them off my mind. It just seems stuck. They’re overwhelming to me.

And I’ll say, okay, we’ll look at that together. And I’ll obviously look at the whole picture to assess and make sure they’re gonna be able to do that. And then the other people that I have come to see me are not sure maybe what the specific memories are that have affected them. And that’s okay because there’s a whole process to being able to assess and get back to some of those memories, and they may be things that you find insignificant when they come up, or maybe you say, oh, I haven’t thought about that in a long time.

If that’s what your brain and body is telling us that’s holding on to the trauma or the negative core belief that you’re believing about yourself, then that’s what we can target. EMDR is a past, present, and future therapy. We’re starting with the present, what’s getting triggered up in the present and then floating that back to the past.

Where did that originate? Where did that come from? And then looking forward to how do you wanna handle those situations in the future? It’s a very powerful therapy and works really well when it’s done well. Do you have to understand if you’re looking for an EMDR therapist, you wanna ask a lot of questions.

How often they’re using EMDR. Some people get trained in it and really don’t use it that often. You wanna find out about their level of training and experience. You can be EMDR trained after you’ve gone through two weekends of training. There’s EMDR certification, which is a higher level of training, and then the last level is EMDR consultant, so that’s what I am, have done lots and lots of hours and lots and lots of trainings and have to, as a result of the certification and consultant status, you have to have ongoing continuing education in EMDR as well.

To summarize, EMDR works at a brain body nervous system level to help you get to a place where you feel what you believe and know to be true. It’s often that we believe and know certain things about ourselves in our relationship with God and who we are. We know those at a cognitive level, but we don’t feel them.

They don’t feel true to us, and I think that’s the biggest gift that I’ve received as part of going through this process, is really being able to feel loved, to feel valued, to embrace who God has created me to be. Now let’s talk a little bit about ICBT. I’ll shorten this because we spend a lot of time on it, on the show.

I Ccbt is much more cognitive where you’re looking at the obsessional reasoning process, the tricks and cheats of OCD, like living the fear out of context facts, all these reasoning processes that OCD is using to kind of solidify what we call the obsessional doubt, that there’s reasons for the obsessional doubt.

There’s an obsessional story, an alternative story. We’re talking about things like the feared self who OCD says you’re gonna become and the real self, but it doesn’t really address that nervous system component like I was talking about before. It’s very logical, it’s very cognitive, but doesn’t really get into like nervous system regulation.

So how do I combine EMDR and ICBT? I will usually collaborate with the client depending on what they’re bringing in, and also might give some direction if I have a strong feeling one way or the other. The beautiful thing is that it’s fluid that we can start with either, that we can flow in and out of one into another.

Like I said, I’ll get the clients input on it. Sometimes they will come in, like I said before, and have specific memories that are troublesome to them and so we, that they believe is contributing to their OCD. Even so they may also identify, yes, I have these memories, but the OCD is really troublesome and so I need some skills, tools.

How do I deal with it when it’s coming up? So we’ll do some obviously basic OCD education surrounding that. I’ll usually start with ICBT, and then as we get into modules three and four where we start talking about the obsessional story and we start talking about the feared self, then it’s usually clear at that point.

There’s personal experience in that obsessional story that comes up. There’s personal experience that’s tied to that feared possible self. And usually it’s pretty clear if there’s some evident trauma that comes out in one of those modules, I’ll say, Hey, is it okay if we take some sessions and try to really process through some of these pieces after we process the trauma?

Then we can head back into pick up at module five and move forward that direction. There also may be some challenges that people have getting in touch with their real self. And as we explore that, some of those negative beliefs that they might be holding onto about themselves, there might be some things that we can target there and identify.

Okay, so how did you come to have that negative belief about yourself that seems really stuck and seems really pervasive throughout all areas of your life. As we explore that some things might come up that we can process. The bottom line is that to go back to where we started with, people are complex.

You’re a complex individual. It does happen, but very rarely do I get people that just have OCD going on. There’s usually other types of like identity work that they’re trying to accomplish, or they have relationship challenges. Maybe they’re having trouble dealing with stress in their life. You want to find someone who’s going to help you look at the whole picture, look at yourself holistically, and kind of help you make some determinations of what you might need.

One of the things that I love about the ICBT community is that I’ve found a lot more therapists in there who are trauma informed or who are used to working with highly sensitive clients. We’ve had a episode on the highly sensitive person that I would encourage you to go back and listen to if you think that might apply to you.

What we know about highly sensitive people is that certain things are going to register on their radar as traumatic, more than people who aren’t highly sensitive. And in light of that OCD treatment needs to be informed and adjusted to meet the needs of those highly sensitive people. I love that ICBT is able to do that without causing a high level of anxiety.

Even if people have struggles with talking about their own theme with ICBT, you can utilize other stories where you can practice the skills in an off theme manner is what we would call it. So we would find an OCD theme that you don’t struggle with and walk you through some of the skills with that theme.

This is particularly helpful if people have a lot of anxiety surrounding their OCD theme to the point where they have struggles even talking or communicating about it, which of course can cause struggles in therapy. Who by combining these two OCD treatments. I’m able to deliver therapy to people in a way that’s understanding of their trauma, that’s respectful of their nervous system.

That’s not overwhelming to them. Not to say that it’s gonna be completely comfortable or not at all uncomfortable, that’s not what I’m saying. I just find it to be a good fit and a good connection between the two therapies and all in the interest of people receiving the healing that they need. That is what’s most important, and it is most important that you don’t give up on yourself, that you keep going through this process and keep allowing God to refine you through it.

I love that there’s nothing inherently Christian about either of these therapies that I’ve talked to you about, but they can integrate really well with our faith that as you trust God to provide you the wisdom and trust God to connect you with the right types of people that are able to help you along on this journey.

And what I’ve seen over the years of therapy is that if we can get some of this gunk, weirded out of our lives, whether that’s just past trauma that’s stuck in our body or brain or faulty ways of thinking that we can identify and point to as, Hey, that’s OCD. I don’t have to listen to that. Then it allows you and frees you up to have a healthier relationship with God, to have a healthier relationship with others.

And that’s what we wanna do. We wanna love God with everything that we have and love other people out of that love that we have received by God. Thank you so much for listening and allowing me to share this with you today. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling.

This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.