I had the privilege of interviewing Brooke Randolph, a licensed mental health counselor and a Brainspotting trainer. Brooke shares with us her insights and knowledge on Brainspotting. She also gives some advice for those who are considering adoption based on her experience as a single adoptive mom and as a Brainspotting consultant specializing in adoption.
What is Brainspotting? How does it work?
How was Brainspotting developed? Who discovered it?
How can Brainspotting help with anxiety and OCD?
What happens during and after a Brainspotting session
Can Brainspotting be used with all ages?
Brainspotting training
Comparison between Branspotting and other forms of therapy.
Hope for anxiety and OCD, episode 36. On today’s episode, I have an interview with Brooke Randolph who is a brainspotting trainer and therapist. Brainspotting has some similarities to EMDR in that they’re both seeking to work at a brain level to help people heal from internal disturbance. So it was neat to have that conversation and look at some of the similarities and differences.
If you caught our episode with Peyton Garland, which was a personal story where she talks about her experience with OCD and her experience with brainspotting. I know you’re going to want to check out this episode as a follow-up.
Carrie: Brooke, welcome to the show.
Brooke: Thank you.
Carrie: And tell us a little bit about yourself.
Brooke: Well, I am a licensed mental health counselor. So I’m a therapist who lives in Indiana, but I also in licensed in Massachusetts and I run a group practice here in Indianapolis. So we are currently up to 10 clinicians. I am also a single adoptive mom to a 14-year-old boy. So that makes me rugby mom those days of the week.
Carrie: Wow. Okay. I know very well about rugby.
Brooke: I very much enjoy rugby. I like showing it to people. So maybe you can come to a game and I can keep you past that.
Carrie: That would be interesting. How old was your son when you adopted him?
Brooke: He was six.
Carrie: Oh, okay. Awesome. Let me tell you about how this show actually came about. So we had a guest on our show Peyton Garland, and she came out with a book called Not So By Myself about her experience with OCD. And she was sharing about the book and how she went through brainspotting with her therapist, or was still in the process of going through those sessions. And I said, oh wow. I haven’t had anybody on about brainspotting. That would be really fun. So then I found you on Facebook and we got connected. And so we’re here to learn all about brainspotting today, how it can be helpful for anxiety and OCD. I’m super excited about that. So maybe we can just start by, just tell us a little bit about brainspotting even like how you would explain it to a client maybe that was coming in for the first time.
Brooke: Yeah, brainspotting is really exciting. It would be what I call a power therapy that helps us get deeper into the neural networks of the brain. And really what it does is it’s going to allow the brain to heal itself. And as we tune into what’s going on in the brain and what’s going on in the body, the brain is able to lead the processing in a way that’s so much more efficient than when we try to talk through something. Because when we’re talking, we’re really only going towards that neocortex, that front part of the brain. And the neocortex is not involved in regulation, which means it can’t make you feel better. And so when we’re feeling anxious or upset about something, it’s going to be much more effective If we can utilize the parts of the brain that are involved with regulation to help us process those things so that we’re not only doing the processing but also calming the brain and the body at the same time.
Carrie: That’s really good. I like that a lot. We can really get in there. I don’t know if you want to call it defenses in our thinking part of our brain, right? There’s all these layers that protect us maybe from our emotions and keep us from really going there, but when you’re able to find therapies that tap into that like the limbic system response, then that’s a whole different ball game.
Brooke: When I also explained to people, I worked from everything from children who were adopted internationally at young ages to really five functioning achievers. And if these high functioning achievers could have thought their way out of the problem, thought their way out of how they’re feeling, they would have done that. Many of them are much more educated than I am. If they could have thought their way out of it, they would have done it, but they can’t. So we need to go in deeper into the brain.
And then for these other, these kids who may have memories that are not stored in the English language, because they were in another language at that time, or maybe they’re implicit memories that are pre-verbal and you can’t process those things from the neocortex. That requires language. So we need to be able to get more into the body and deeper in the brain.
Carrie: Right. I’m curious for you because I think therapists find different therapies to be trained in. I have a theory on this. I’ve never done any research, but my theory is that we find things either that have helped us. We’ve seen these things, help our clients, or it’s just kind of aligns with our personality.
How did you get involved in training and brainspotting like becoming trained on that?
Brooke: Well, I’ll tell you the story, but it’s probably goes to that part where it aligns with my personality and the deeper I get into brainspotting, the more I recognized that the principal tenants are just right along with my theory of counseling. But for me, I work primarily in adoption and I have these very early trauma, early parental separation kinds of cases. And I knew that there were like our therapies like EMDR that were really effective like we have plenty of research to show that, but also knowing the potential for overwhelm. And I’m very protective of my adoptee clients, especially my young adoptee clients. And so knowing that potential for overwhelm, I was just kind of dragging my feet really on that.
And then someone came and told me about brainspotting and I heard about it from somebody I trusted. And then I went and did a bunch of reading and I immediately started referring my clients to “okay. I think you also need to go do this.” And so here’s somebody locally. We had a few people locally who were already trained. And so why don’t you go do that? And then meet with me every other week and meet with them. And a couple of my clients did try it and one of them just put his foot down and he said, “I’m going to go see anybody else. You need to get trained now.” You know what I said? “I’m going to get trained in this.” I’m definitely like I really believe in it. And he was like “you need to get trained now.”
And what are the DVDs and started from there and did the training at home. And then very quickly helped to bring a trainer to Indianapolis so that we could have a training here and did that. And then just continued from there until the point that now I’m a brain spotting specialist trainer.
Carrie: Wow. So you’re actually training other therapists to do this as well and supervising people that are in that process. That’s pretty awesome. Yeah. It just seemed to fit and it was really helping your clients and then you decided to get trained in that. How exactly does it work? I know that’s a hard question.
Brooke: Yeah. So, I mean, Most people want to compare it to EMDR. Brainspotting was kind of discovered and developed by David Grant who was a master EMDR trainer. So he was very influenced by EMDR, but he was also very influenced by somatic experiencing and insight-oriented relational therapy and some other kinds of things.
And so they all kind of play a role. We get from somatic experiencing is really being aware of the activation in the body. We’re talking about OCD here. And so if we have someone who has some compulsion to pull a hair or to touch something or to turn right, but asking them to really locate where in the body is that starting and turning them into making that brain-body connection.
When you make the comparison with EMDR where they’re using rapid eye movement, brainspotting is actually a fixed eye position. And so one of the ways that I explain to people about this is that a fixed eye position is going to be less activating. And you really just think about it. If you were staring down like this tiger who’s just staring at you, that’s really intense. But if you start to imagine that tiger pacing back and forth in front of you and your eyes have to fall, like suddenly the anxiety starts going up a little bit and people can feel that when I’m presenting at a conference or something then I just demonstrate like walking across the stage like they can feel it like a fixed eye position is less activating than eye movements. And so that’s just part of how we are able to make it. More flexible, less activating. If necessary for people, we can really make adjustments in the moment, which is what I like about it. That we can be very attuned to the specific client and what they need and help them have the processing that they need, whether that’s helping them turn up the activation. For people like me with chronic pain, who’s learned to ignore my body or turning down the activation for people who have just had too much trauma and can’t go all the way into.
Carrie: Yeah. I’m glad that you went into that because when you started explaining it, it sounds like it’s really good for people who have these app reactions with EMDR, where they’re just sobbing uncontrollably and they’re feeling just really intense sensations in their body and have a tendency maybe to want to get out of that. But you’re saying it also works for people that have difficulty accessing maybe body sensations or emotions. It can help them develop that process.
So there are some similar components in terms of it’s a mind, you say it’s a mind, body emotion therapy like you’re making those connections.
Brooke: Yeah. They say it’s a brain-body, mindfulness-based therapy. I’ll check the website to make sure I got all the words that are in.
Carrie: Do you usually start with some mindfulness activities? Is that part of the preparation before you go in and do the more traumatic work?
Brooke: It completely depends on the client. So one of the principles of brainspotting that I really love is there is no protocol. Because we’re very focused on the client, then a relational attunement and being attuned to the client. Therapy can’t be attunement based if there’s a protocol, if there’s steps that are involved.
And if we’ve decided that these steps are these steps for everyone, then it’s going to miss some people who that might not be because some people are going to need in-between steps and some people are going to need to skip the steps like I was that high achiever or in school and was always frustrated that they were teaching to kind of the lowest common denominator, which is what they have to do.
But for me, It missed things for me. My education wasn’t attuned to me, but I want therapy to always be attuned to my class. So we don’t necessarily have a protocol. And so for some clients, we may be doing mindfulness activities ahead of time. We may be introducing other things. Some people may come in and just start telling us about the presenting problem.
And we already noticed that they’re on a fixed eye position. And so we may just invite them to stay on that spot, whatever it is that they’re looking at it way. And let it go from there. And so that may not be the full set-up necessarily, but they’re getting into it. And so we can kind of work. It’s very flexible. We follow our clients and what they need.
Carrie: It’s very interesting because I think my personality goes to like a “that’s too unstructured for me” like having a little internal moment. I think I really like structured therapies.
Brooke: Do you like it as the therapist or r do you like it as the client?
Carrie: I think I like it both because I think if I’m the client, I want to know where we’re going and what we’re doing. And I want it to kind of have a logical sequence to it and feel like there’s a good beginning, middle and end. And I think even with therapies like EMDR that have protocols, your therapist really has to know how to tailor that to you as the client. Kind of what you’re saying in terms of attunement. I think that you can have attunement with some of those structured therapies, but you just have to be very careful if you find like your therapist that you’re working with is like too rigid. And they’re like, we have to do this now like you said, we have to do this next step. And that next step, you may not be ready for.
Just for the people listening out there, I think you have to communicate and advocate for yourself as well to say “I don’t know something about this. This just doesn’t feel right.” Or maybe I’m just not quite ready for that deeper level of processing things yet. I’ve in my own work over the last probably couple years now, I’ve been incorporating ego state therapy, which has made the EMDR process more tolerable and a lot less in terms of reactions, more attachment, needs getting met.
That’s a whole another story, but this is interesting to me because different people are going to respond to different types of therapies in different ways. And one of the reasons I like to talk about so many different types of therapy on the show is not so we can have a discussion about, oh, this one’s better.
That one’s better, but more like to give people options like here’s your menu because I think a lot of people go into therapy and they’re like, yeah, I tried therapy. I’m like, Yeah but what did you do, like tell me more about that because there are a zillion different therapy techniques out there.
There’s a zillion different therapists personality styles. And it’s very hard to say like, oh, I’ve tried therapy. Like I’ve tried green peas and I don’t like him, you know, there’s just so many options out there. So this is, this was really interesting. I think you’ve kind of, you’ve talked about how.
This is a little bit different form of trauma therapy in a sense you’re kind of combining, like after they find the fixed eye movement, are you combining a little bit of talk therapy like if they want to tell that story or if they’re wanting to talk about the experience or what they’re noticing in their body?
Brooke: Oh, absolutely. I always say to clients, you can talk as much or as little as you want to. And what it looks like is different for each individual based on what they mean. I think as a client myself, I initially was much quieter and would have to say things out loud when I felt like I was like a broken record like you kept coming back to the same thought, but I found that I continue, I’m much more verbal that it kind of keeps pushing me forward. So I think it’s going to be different for people even in different stages.
Carrie: Right. For part of your training or certification process, did you have to have this done to you basically? Did you have a practicum where you practiced on each other?
Brooke: Yeah that’s built into all the trainings. All the phase training and all the speciality trainings all have kind of demos and practicums and debrief from there s we have that opportunity to experience it. And we really do encourage therapists to do their own work and to continue to do their own work. And so finding whether that’s a practice partner or a peer support group, or just finding your own brainspotting therapist and sticking with that.
Carrie: Yeah. That’s definitely so valuable and something that really helps us grow as therapists is to be the client for a period, for a season and come back around to it when we need to, as things come up in our personal lives or our professional life. Probably one of the biggest variables that’s made me a better clinician. I’d say getting my own therapy.
So, can you talk with us a little bit more specifically about how you’ve seen maybe this be helpful, brainspotting for anxiety and OCD?
Brooke: Yeah, I mean, in general, it’s just going to help lower that activation and we can see that pretty immediately. OCD, there are setups and discussions around that particularly. And what we’re doing allowing the brain to process, but also giving the brain something new. The brain is holding on to that obsession or that compulsion because it feels good in some way.
And so until we get something that’s better, it’s going to have a hard time letting go of that. You can think of that similarly to like any kind of addiction. If I really like eating Stroop waffles, my son really likes eating Stroop waffles. And to just say, I’m never going to do this again is hard, but when you say like, I have this thing, that’s better but I’m going to have this really sweet mango and not only does it taste good, but then I feel better and I have more energy. And once your brain can recognize that, it’s a lot easier to let go of what might be overly sugary or something that may be beneficial for you. I mean, that’s a fluff example.
Carrie: Sure. Well, I think it’s important for people to understand that our brains do change, can change and do change over time. And that we may be kind of stuck in this well-worn neural pathway that’s not working for us, a maladaptive neural network. And we can make changes to that and forge a new path in our brain. It’s not easy. It takes some time and practice just kind of like walking through a new path in the woods takes time and practice and intentionality, but it can happen. So that’s part of this process.
Brooke: We know neuroplasticity. And this just seems to be a faster way to get to it, but even then when we can’t always explain it to see the changes that come about and how it seems so much easier to do something different suddenly after doing brain spotting.
Carrie: Do you find that people pursue this after having received some talk therapy at times and feeling like, yeah, I’ve kind of talked maybe through some of my traumas, but I don’t really feel like they’re fully processed or I’m still having the effects of some of them.
Brooke: Yeah. I think if the people who are looking for brainspotting, it’s either because they’ve tried something and it’s not answering everything for them or someone else’s recommending it to them. Generally, although I do have people who are just doing an internet search and come up and they’re like, oh, so I read this thing on your website.
Yeah. And that sounds really interesting. Let’s can we do that? Yes, of course. You know, so I think there’s probably lots of ways, but it’s not as well known at this point. Most people are going to come at it after they’ve tried other things.
Carrie: Great. Do you know, like when brainspotting was developed?
Brooke: in 2003.
Carrie: Okay. So it’s a newer form of therapy maybe that hasn’t had as much research as other things.
Brooke: Right. I mean, research takes a lot of time and a lot of money, the library of researches is smaller. This, you know, it’s much more experiential colloquially, all kinds of spreading kind of that way. Grassroots at this point.
Carrie: Okay. And you said the brainspotting can be used with all ages.
Brooke: In fact, Monica Bauman from Austria recently wrote a book. She wrote it in English, Brainspotting with Children and Adolescents. And in that book, she tells this amazing story about working with an infant.
Carrie: Wow.
Brooke: And it’s an amazing, beautiful story.
Carrie: So towards the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.
Brooke: That’s a great question. I think I have moments of hope most days. I think, you know, looking at the possibility. Some recent ones would just be conversations.
I’m having with people who are for me, the National Association of Adoptees and Parents. And they’re wanting to get me as part of their committee. And like, these are all the different ways that you can make a difference like that to me has a lot of hope in that. We’re looking at that, looking at the vaccine, coming out for adolescents next. For my family, that’s really helpful. My son is really looking forward to that. It will probably be the first time he’s gotten a shot that I won’t have to have held him down because he believes in that. So that’s hope. And for us, that’s hope that we may be able to travel again. And just all the things that we are looking forward to.
Carrie: Do you have any advice for people that might be looking into adoption as an option?
Brooke: Yeah, start your therapy. Now my recommendation, and really explore that and explore what is bringing you to adoption and get lots of different perspectives, because I think there are some messages out there. And if we are in a silo, you may not realize how very different other perspectives can be.
Carrie: That’s good. That’s good to have just kind of a well-rounded perspective on adoption. Do you say that and, sorry, this is an interest of mine only because I’ve been a former foster parent. So would you say start your therapy now because these kids are dealing with so much emotional baggage or they’re bringing that with them and that’s really going to trigger up your own emotional baggage.
Brooke: Yes, absolutely. So you, as a parent, whether that’s an adoptive parent or a foster parent. I’d probably say any parents, but you need to be working through things so that you can best show up for your kids. You can’t lead them to any kind of healing that you haven’t been able to find for yourself, that if you are struggling with being impatient. I mean how you’re what were you going to teach your kids patience. Finding those things and also absolutely. You said it wonderfully like they’re going to stir up anything that’s unprocessed in you. And I would say anything in everything. Kids and partners are really great at helping us reveal our areas in need of growth.
But just also, you know, adaptive parenting and foster parenting is really advance, It’s therapeutic parenting. It is hard and you need support and they have additional layers and additional issues that continue throughout their development and for you to be able to show up and help them with those things. You’ve gotta be able to take yourself out of that equation. You can’t be taking it personally. In one of my presentations, I talk about how, whenever my son in early ages would say like, you’re not my real mom, but I never took that personally because it wasn’t about me. I was literally about how he was feeling in that moment.
But now when he tells me you’re the best mommy ever. I don’t take that personally either because I also need to look and see that, where is this coming from. And is this actually a sentiment, or maybe he’s saying it because he has a need to connect and can I meet him where he needs to connect and again hearing the needs behind everything.
Carrie: Or he’s trying to butter you up really well for something.
Brooke: For Sure. That may also be it. He is amazing at like getting that voice to change when he needs something. And in some ways that’s really effective. And so just kind of rewarding that, wow, I see that you can use such a kind respectful voice when you want this and helping them see that, Hey, you can do this.
Carrie: Awesome. Well, we will put links in the show notes to your practice and where people can contact you and find out a little bit more about you. So since you’re licensed in two states, I assume you’re doing some online therapy as well.
Brooke: Yes right now, I am completely virtual, so I’m doing all of my work on telehealth.
Okay. For now. And for the foreseeable future, we’ll just kind of take it step by step and see what the future brings.
Carrie: Gotcha. As so many therapists are doing right now. So it makes sense. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom and insight with us on brainspotting. And it was a good learning experience for me as well, to just see how things compare to what I’m doing and who knows, you never know, I may end up getting trained in that too one day.
Brooke: Yeah, of course. I think having an awareness of lots of different tools and theories is always beneficial. And then also finding those things that you really connect with that you guys have into and know really, really well is really important.
I feel like in this short amount of time that I’ve had this podcast, we’ve been able to cover several different forms of therapy, which has been really neat because I love letting people know that there are treatment options. That’s part of increasing.
I am working on making our website a great resource, not just for our podcast to host the show notes, but also to have blogs and other articles that are helpful for individuals on there.
If there is a topic that we haven’t covered on the podcast, or you don’t see on the blog anywhere, feel free to reach out. I would love to hear your show suggestions or article suggestions. You can do that through the contact page of our website www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com anytime. While you’re there, feel free to subscribe to our email lists to keep up with what’s going on with the podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing was completed by Benjamin Bynam.
Until next time it may be comforted by God’s great love for you.
I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge, a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), Certified Integrative Medicine Mental Health Provider (CMHIMP), and a Board Certified Neurofeedback Provider (BCN). She is also the founder and director of The Global Institute of Children’s Mental Health and Dr. Roseann and Associates.
Dr. Rosean shares with us her knowledge and clinical experience in treating PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) and PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcus).
What should parents know about PANS/PANDAS? What are its signs and symptoms?
How are PANS/PANDAS diagnosed? Is there a test for PANS/PANDAS?
Dr. Roseann: Wow, I’m so excited to be here, Carrie, and have this conversation.
Carrie: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Dr. Roseann: My name is Dr. Roseanne Alanna Hodge, and this is my 30th year in mental health in supporting kids, their families and adults using only proven holistic therapies like neurofeedback, biofeedback, and of course, psychotherapy.
Carrie: Awesome. What type of training does it take to become a certified integrative medicine, mental health provider? That’s a long title.
Dr. Roseann: Well, you know, here’s the deal. Since I literally have only been an integrative mental health provider my entire career, there was no certification. There was nothing years ago.
I started out with going to the basement in a library and looking at microfiche and doing my research that way. And then I bought literally hundreds of books about integrative care, everything from nutrition to exercise, supplements, genetics, and did a lot of that training. So when these certifications became available because if you’re a licensed mental health provider, depending on what state you’re in and in my state, Connecticut, my license allows me to do work as long as I’ve had training. And so I always try to do highest and best and get certification. So I have certification to be an integrative mental health provider. I also have the Amon certification. I’m also a certified neurofeedback provider. It really just means you’ve done extensive training in a certain area in order to guide your clients, your patients, whatever you call them to that area.
Carrie: Okay. And your specialty is working with children and adolescentsts
Dr. Roseann: Yeah. And families.
Carrie: Okay, awesome. So why did you want to come on the show today and talk with us about PANS or PANDAS?
Dr. Roseann: Yeah. So I am somebody who specializes in PANS and PANDAS, and it is something that is dramatically on the rise.
And what is it? Is that they’re separate disorders that have the same infectious or toxic trigger. And there’s also another one in there, autoimmune encephalopathy, but PANS and PANDAS is a sudden onset of a mental health issue because the body has a misdirected immune response starts attacking itself and has an inflammatory effect, which then can produce a wide variety of psychiatric, neurocognitive and physical issues. And autoimmune encephalopathy is the same, except it’s not a sudden onset and why I want to talk about it. Like I said, it’s on the rise and infectious disease triggers are a very common source of mental health problems in the time of COVID. You know, we’re all seeing people with long holler symptoms affecting their cognition, right? Whether they’re calling a brain fog or they’re having psychiatric problems, I’ve had more than one person with psychosis as a result of COVID but there’s more than that. Right? So we have depression. Yeah, right. And, and there’s, it’s a very, very common source of anxiety, depression, EDD like- symptoms.
And I want therapists and people out there in the world to know about it. And, you know, we specialize in OCD in our center because we specialize in PANS and PANDAS. And other than one or two people who have OCD that come to us, all have a primary diagnosis of pans and pandas. So people are just not making this connection in my mission.
I’m on a mission to change the way we view and treat children’s mental health. I mean, that really is my mission, but I want people to know about this because not only am I somebody who treats and started working with people with Lyme disease almost 24, Is it 25 years ago? Somewhere, a long time ago, Carrie
And then I of course get my own child who gets Lyme disease at 22 months and develops PANS, but It is a horrible journey for any person, a child or an adult that has, you know, PANS and PANDAS, Lyme disease, because what happens is the first people that they see medical people, miss it. Then they get slopped into mental health providers who then say, “Oh, this is a mental health problem”.
They don’t understand the physical components. And you asked about like I do integrative work. I mean, What does that mean? It means that I really am studying about mind and body. And I don’t want to get the spirit out of there, but I’m really working on mind and body connections. And we are not educated enough as therapists, but parents are not educated.
They’re not getting educated that their kid could have a mental health problem. That results from something that could be medically treated, not with an anti-anxiety or antipsychotic, but with anti-inflammatory antimicrobial drugs to address what’s causing that root cause of that mental health problem.
So it’s something that’s incredibly common. One in 200 kids, the research says have it. And even though it’s called pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome, it can actually now be an adult-onset. So we’re no longer just making, you know, saying it has to occur.
Carrie: So kids who have PANS or PANDAS when they go to get mental health treatment and the parent brings them in, oftentimes I imagine they’ll be misdiagnosed as either having anxiety, OCD, ADHD. Is that right?
Dr. Roseann: Tic disorder, separation anxiety. Yeah, absolutely OCD. I know there’s a separate category in the DSM for oppositional defiant disorder. It’s not real. it’s a symptom of another issue, So, you know, whether things are your depression and OCD on that spectrum, you have internalizers and externalizers and odd kids, or externalizers. It’s really the behavioral manifestation.
People haven’t done their due diligence to figure out what it actually is that sourcing this anger and non-compliance. Sorry people that are listening. Parents, they’re refusals.
Carrie: Right. So how do people get diagnosed? How do they come to a place of a proper diagnosis? What does that testing process like?
Dr. Roseann: Yeah. So first I have to say whether it’s Lyme disease or PANS and PANDA, there is no single test of the diagnosis. And this is so critical because people will go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, after rabbit hole, looking for an official diagnosis. And particularly if the source is a tick-borne illness and there are hundreds of types of tick-borne illness.
We really often only hear about Lyme. Sometimes we hear about Bartonella or BBCA. They have very, very much impact to your mental health and some of your more severe psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar and there’s research to substantiate some of the things that I’m talking about.
They have a high rate of tick-borne infection. So. No single test. Okay. Are there tests civil? Of course. But as I mentioned with Lyme disease, Some people say it’s the most genetically evolved bacteria on the planet. And because it’s been around since prehistoric times they’re finding it.
They definitely found it coming over with Columbus in 1492, but people are saying prehistoric times, And so this bacteria can hide inside of a cell. So that means standard testing may not pick it up. And then there’s a whole controversy about what tests people are using and not, but in pans and pandas, there is a panel called the Cunningham panel.
It does not mean if your child is negative on that, that they don’t have PANS and PANDAS. So you have to look at clinical symptoms. And do they meet criteria, PANS and PANDAS? You know, there’s going to be a sudden onset of a problem or a deep acceleration of a preexisting condition. I like to talk about this because people really don’t understand this.
So you could have ADD. And then it’s literally off the charts, right. Or a low level of anxiety and then sudden onset of OCD. And that can be a confounding variable because people like, well, my kid always like saying chest, you know, but then literally overnight. So, and sometimes it’s really easy to see Carrie because.
People will come to me and say, oh, my kid got, the case of somebody who came to me recently, he got COVID and within 10 days he is psychosis.
Carrie: Wow.
Dr. Roseann: So pretty easy to make that connection.
Carrie: Sure. That was really fast.
Dr. Roseann: Yeah, with physicians still wanted to send them to the psych hospital and I was like, what is going on? We got to treat it. So we got him to where he needed to go. I think it’s really important that people find a provider- PANS and PANDAS trained provider. And you can do that by going, there’s a great national organization called Aspire Care where you can go to epidemic answers and they have providers listed there.
Carrie: Okay. That’s awesome. I think that that’s really great. This is a sudden onset of psychiatric symptoms, but it’s based on a physical medical problem and part of the problem that we have sometimes is we don’t always know, is something mental health-related or is something medically related. And we talked about in one of our very early episodes on the show, kind of ruling out medical conditions for mental health disorders.
What are some things that parents might see if they think that their kid might be struggling with this? what are some signs or symptoms to look out for?
Dr. Roseann: Yeah. I want to say that if you’ve had chronic anxiety or chronic stress or long-term any type of physical or mental health problem, you’re going to have physical effects on your body.
Your body is not designed to run on empty. And when your nervous system is hyper stress-activated, you’re going to start getting nutrient depletion. You’re going to get physical problems. You may have hair loss, your thyroid might go down. So whether that’s the actual source or something that’s worsening it. Really taking a functional approach through lab work is really important. So what are signs of PANS and PANDAS? We can only connect the dots looking forward. I mean, looking back not looking forward. And so these are things that people see. So when it’s really sudden, and sometimes people will come to me.
I know when they write down a date that it started. I’ve got to consider PANS. And it wasn’t like, oh, the grandmother died, or you know, they got bullied. Whatever it was, it isn’t something traumatic that happened often when it’s really sudden overnight, and you will hear stories of this, then all of a sudden they woke up.
And this is very common OCD, very, very severe to the point where they’re doing obsessions in compulsive thinking and behaviors. So they cannot function at all. Right? So these behaviors and intrusive thoughts may be going on for hours on it. And it wasn’t present there before, or was present at a very mild level.
So the level of how it destroys your functionality is a big red flag. You also can have regressive behaviors, so you can have a loss of bladder functioning. Right? Frequent urination is one of the hallmark signs. And this can occur in adults too. It’s not just kids, a loss of handwriting or coordination is another one or a loss of academic skills, math and reading, being the two most common.
And then, you know, you’re going to, you’re going to look for things like. Vocal or motor tics, a real extreme level of anxiety. And, and, you know, I mean, as somebody, a professional who spent so much time with OCD and anxiety, these are conditions that are misunderstood. You know, most people think about OCD as only compulsive behaviors, hand-washing and whatnot.
It always starts off as intrusive thoughts, right? And often the nexuses worry it’s anxiety. And then it’s, what we call a maladaptive way of coping with anxiety. So some people are like I’m going to go and work out. I’m going to go pray. I’m going to go to my spin class with my bestie, and we’re going to socialize when I’m feeling anxious and you find these healthy ways to cope. But OCD gets in there and there’s this habituation and it can really ignite like a wildfire due to the negative reinforcement cycle in the brain. And what happens with neuro-transmitters reinforcing us, but what it looks like. And these kinds of things. If there’s sort of a wax and weaning, all of a sudden your kid might need reassurance a lot and they weren’t a kid that needed reassurance, separation anxiety can all of a sudden show up.
One of my dearest friends, her daughter was totally typical and got bitten by a tick and within 30 minutes became a different human being. She developed severe separation anxiety within 30 minutes, her mom is a psychologist. She had to quit her job, and unfortunately, she didn’t really respond to a lot of treatments.
So she wound up getting tick-borne illness and then strep on top of it. So PANDAS, it’s strep only, but PANS is any infection or toxic trigger. And most of these individuals have layers of infection. So they could have scars. Like, my max had nine co-infections from ticks, Scarlet fever, a bunch of other things, you know, it was a lot of work to clean him up.
So a variety of symptoms can result that are mental health-related and they can be quite extreme behavior can be frightening. Not to speak in a way that’s saucy or inappropriate. Because I’m a PANS’ mom, parents will come to me and say, I literally thought my kid had a demonic possession. They just flipped out, you know, just can be very, very extreme, whether it’s an internalizing where they’re scared or extreme rage externalizers and then, you know, psychosis can happen in this as well. And it can be really, really frightening. And the most recent research, early, 2021, which is in my book, it’s going to be okay. Is saying what I knew. That these kids have paradoxical reactions to psych meds.
No surprise, because the issue is inflammatory response, infection and toxins, and every psych med has a toxin load. There isn’t a psych med that doesn’t have a toxic component. And so you add that into a system that’s already flooded and overwhelmed by infections and toxins. It actually worsens things.
Carrie: They can’t tolerate the medication cause their system’s already on overload.
Dr. Roseann: Overload. And, yes, they’re anxious. But the source is not neuro-transmitter genetics. That’s what everybody wants us to believe. So this is surprising to people. When I talk about this, most people, I hope people are listening, and this is why I do this.
You know, why am I doing this? I want you to think about it, right? So if you’re a therapist, you’ve got somebody on your caseload. This is who they are, who they are. And if you’re a parent or a friend to somebody, you might be like, holy moly. That’s what happened to Becky’s kid. And you want to say, this is an episode that I want you to listen to because I learned a lot.
And that information can just really change the trajectory of not only that individual, but their entire family. I mean, this is a devastating thing we knew within like six months that my 22 month-old had Lyme disease. I already was integrative. I already am in the Northeast with the top experts in the world.
He’s 16 and I’m telling you it took 14 years. And I won’t even tell you how much money, because it is not attainable for most people, because a lot of my friends have lost their homes and marriages. It is extraordinary what we did to get him better. And that is the norm and it’s rabbit hole after rabbit hole, after rabbit hole.
And I didn’t have the same issues as other people, because most people are forced to go in network where they’re challenged you belittled. I mean, when you hear some of these stories of what happens to people, it’s frightening. I mean, I, when I talk about cases, I. Give information that hides and protects there’s identity.
I mashed them up. I like to say I’ve had people who were tied down in psych hospitals, even though their titers were showing that they had off the charts. I had one client who had the highest strep titer that the hospital has ever seen and they refused to treat her for strep.
Carrie: So tell us a little bit about what the treatment is usually like for PANS and PANDAS.
Dr. Roseann: So there’s a treatment triangle and it involves antimicrobials really getting at that infection and then anti-inflammatory treatment and then mental health. Because even though this isn’t a biochemical problem, this is very traumatic. There are mental health components, parents need a lot of support.
They may have had a totally typical kid who now is hijacking the family, you know, financially behaviourally everything, and they’re not equipped to deal with this. And so they need a lot of support for themselves on how to really kind of get through this and, you know, really set these loving limits with their child and support them through this.
It’s very, very challenging.
Carrie: Absolutely. Parents that have children with mental health issues or physical issues need a lot of support and a lot of help. And unfortunately, a lot of times are judged is just, well, you’re a bad parent because your kid’s acting out and that’s not the case.
Dr. Roseann: And sometimes kids are called bad. I did a summit and my friend, JJ Virgin was on and Bob Hope’s granddaughter, Miranda hope is on and myself and we all have the same story. All three of our kids were kicked out of preschool.
Carrie: Wow.
Dr. Roseann: Yeah. And my kid was called a feral animal, by the teacher. Now what human being would tell a mother, your kids, a feral animal.
And each of us had horror stories. Right? JJ Virgin’s son was left outside in Palm Springs in September, outside the room locked out because they said he was a bad boy.
Carrie: Wow.
Dr. Roseann: Yeah, so we have to change that, that’s not okay. And one in two children in America has a physical or mental health problem. That’s ten-year-old data. That study is being updated. I can’t even imagine what it’s like right now. So we have to be way more tolerant and accepting and loving.
Carrie: So tell us a little bit about your book, Dr. Roseanne, It’s Going to be Okay, which I love that title. So tell us what it’s about.
Dr. Roseann: Well, thank you. I love this title. So I tell every person that I work with, it’s going to be okay. And that’s the first thing that I tell them because they need to hear that because you feel alone, you feel scared, you don’t know who to trust, and you definitely don’t know what to do. And you know, people find me in all these different ways. It’s unbelievable. And I work with people in person and remote and all different ways.
So this book is going to be okay. I lay out the eight pillars, what I call hope and healing. And I show people how to reduce mental health symptoms using only proven holistic therapies. And it is all there. All science-backed ways are over 40 pages of research citations. So I want people to know this stuff that made it and heard about.
But I can feel comfortable that they’re safe. I can try these out and as overwhelmed as we feel as parents in general, but when you have a kid who struggles, you feel even more overwhelmed, I encourage parents to get this book. Start with one thing. And when we do one small action consistently, it can create a lot of change.
And so I’m really, really excited. This is truly the 30 years worth my work in one book. And I really want parents to know it’s going to be okay and show them how to do it.
Carrie: Awesome. Awesome. So towards the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope. So a time where you’ve received hope from God or another person.
Dr. Roseann: Yeah. Well, you know, when you ask me this question, it’s actually hard for me to answer because I feel very connected to God. And so when I struggle in that moment and being a special needs, mom, times two, I have learned. That I have to be in the moment and really try to appreciate the moment. And so I think that I’m most connected when I’m with my kids and I am actually having fun and trying to laugh, not trying to laugh, laughing, just being there.
And so I have the blessing of having a million moments like that every day, being present and connected and having a lot of love around you.
Carrie: Okay. Okay. Hey, so every day, moments of hope for you, with your family.
Dr. Roseann: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I’m so lucky that I’m able to bring hope to people because at a time when I feel that people have the lowest level of hope and trust I’ve ever seen in these 30 years, it’s a conversation that I’m starting wherever I go, which is why I start off by saying it’s going to be okay, because people need to hear that like they’re feeling overwhelmed and out of hope. And I just think taking the moment to be extra kind to anybody who’s in your presence just goes a long way. And I know it sounds really hokey, but people are so lonely and disconnected and scared very much so. And I think they were before the pandemic and the pandemic has really thrown some fuel on this fire.
Carrie: Yes, I would definitely agree with that for sure. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom with us today.
Dr. Roseann: Thank you for having this conversation. And if you think that, you know, your child has PANS or PANDAS, find a provider. I say this wherever I am, nobody ever regrets getting help. The only regret is when they don’t.
Carrie: I knew a little bit about PANDAS from my previous work with children. However, I’ve found this interview to be very informative in terms of thinking about, we always have to look at the holistic picture of anyone’s health, whether that’s a child or adult, how are they impacted physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And if you’re looking at things from a holistic lens, instead of only being treating one or the other, usually something ends up missing in that picture. Unfortunately just with the way our current medical system is often doctors and counselors and psychiatrists aren’t always communicating together in the best possible way.
So it’s important for parents to really be the best advocate for their children in providing the linkage between some of those areas.
________________________________
I wanted to announce to you all that our next free webinar for hope for anxiety and OCD is going to be sometime, probably in mid-September. I would love topic suggestions for this webinar.
What would you like to dive into a little bit deeper? What would you like to have questions answered on about? So there’ll be a very short, you know, 30 or 45 minutes of teaching for the webinar. And then I want to leave time at the end for questions. So if there’s something that you would like to see some helpful teaching on and be able to ask some questions, feel free to contact me through our website, www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com.Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.
Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
“OCD has been the gateway to God and grace for me.” Peyton Garland author of Not So By Myself shares her story of OCD and her journey of going to therapy.
After seeing a therapist, her mother and grandmother followed after her and sought professional help for themselves.
Peyton’s experience of contamination OCD
What it was like to go to therapy for the first time
Getting help with brainspotting (type of therapy)
Growing up in a strict church culture and how her faith changed over the years as she grew to know God.
Growing up in home with a parent who has PTSD
Ripple effect on her family after she decided to seek help
How Peyton’s husband works with her on compulsions
God breaks into lonely places. He works best in the mess.
Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD. Episode 26. Our most popular episodes thus far have been personal experience stories. Peyton Garland shares her experience of struggling with OCD. How that’s impacted her faith, her journey of going to therapy. It’s really good stuff in here, guys. I hope that you enjoy the show today.
Carrie: Thank you for coming on the show, Peyton.
Peyton: Happy to be here.
Carrie: I’d love you to just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Peyton: Sure. I am Peyton Garland. My husband’s name is Josh. He and I live north of Atlanta in Alpharetta, Georgia. We have two of the most obnoxious but sweet puppies in the world, Alfie and Daisy. So we are dog parents and proud of it. My husband is a pilot and I’m an author. So we’re both finding the careers that we love and thriving in them.
Carrie: That’s awesome. Why did you want to be on the podcast and tell a little bit about your story today?
Peyton: I think mental health in this day and age is almost a buzzword. I think it’s something where people are finally willing to talk about it. They’re finally willing to listen, but I also think that the voices that need to be at the forefront of these conversations are people who do struggle with anxiety, who do struggle with OCD, who know what it’s like to be in a therapist’s office.
So this podcast just seemed to embody that ability to have real conversations with people who truly go through this stuff.
Carrie: At what point in your life did you start to notice like I’m starting to struggle here with my thought life?
Peyton: I had always been a worrier and I knew that, but the older I got the worst that got the more irrational the worrying became.
So like I said, my husband, is a pilot. When he first finished flight school, which was about two years ago, the only airport where he could get a job was in Indiana. So states away, hours away. He and I had just moved to a new town in Georgia for a new job for me. So new town, new job. I’m not near my family.
I’m not near my friends. Two weeks after we moved there, he moves to Indiana. I’m being by myself and being by yourself leaves lots of room for your headspace to just go crazy. And at that point, maybe two or three months into him being gone that’s when I said this worrying is not only irrational. It’s starting to impact me physically, too like I’m losing weight. I can’t put back on. I’m not sleeping. I eventually went to a therapist which in my small country town was not a welcomed thing. Therapy is almost seen as defeat like you couldn’t take it, you couldn’t handle it. Your faith in God wasn’t strong enough. I went to a therapist’s office, found out I have intrusive thought OCD.
And what I’ve learned with OCD is that often anxiety and depression are kind of buddies. They sit right beside OCD and they take turns. So I’m just on a big journey. Now I share a lot about that in my new book, Not So By Myself. Just how you’re not really by yourself in the quiet space, even when your brain is super loud.
Carrie: That’s so good. So it was a, you had a big stigma hurdle to even get in the therapy office coming from a small town, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Be the tough girl.
Peyton: Oh yeah. Well, I’m so glad you said that. In my book one of the chapters, I talk about how all three of my great uncles and my grandfather were drafted into the Vietnam war. All four gone at the same time and when they came home, they quickly learned that in order to not talk about everything they’d seen, they were just to keep quiet. That silence was strength. Those two just seem to parallel and they passed that idea down from generation to generation to generation.
So my generation about the third or fourth generation, we’re sitting in a culture now that saying, “Hey, it’s okay to say I’m not okay. It’s okay to go get help.” And I think I actually was the first person in my family to go to a therapist. And the beautiful thing is I had a parent to follow after that. [00:04:37] I had a grandmother follow after that, and that was a very beautiful thing to kind of see loved ones, say, “Hey, you know what? There’s some things I haven’t been okay with. I have a dad who has PTSD and traumatic brain injury from serving in the military. So lots of people now getting help for hard things they’ve been dealing with for decades.
Carrie: I love that ripple effect in your story. It’s like one person starts in the family starts to experience some relief and change and hope, and then other people say, “oh, hey, that sounds really good. I want to get on board with that and maybe I’ll try therapy out as well.”
Peyton: Absolutely.
Carrie: Do you remember that experience of just being so nerve-racked and were you super scared to start talking?
How was your therapist able to help you feel comfortable even sharing some of these things that you had? You’d really just rattled around in your head and maybe talked to your husband about.
Peyton: Sure. This is crazy. You’re literally outlining my book chapter by chapter.
Carrie: I haven’t read it either.
Peyton: One of the chapters is called green tea and therapy and it’s about my first time in a therapist’s office. Like I said I come from a good old country town. I walk in this therapist’s office and there’s like this spa music in the background. There’s bright but soft colors everywhere. I’m way out of my element.
I was not a yoga kind of girl. But my therapist just asks me a simple question. She’s like, “Hey, is there anything I can offer you to drink?” And I’m a green tea kind of girl. So I said, green tea, just give me some green tea. And I remember death gripping that green tea coffee the whole time.
I don’t even think I drank it. I just death gripped it because one thing I knew and this whole room of nothing I knew. My therapist started with the big question. She had to tell me about yourself like I got to know what goes on in your head. What’s going on in your heart and your spirit and your family.
When I left I had no mascara left on my face. I mean, I did, but it was like down to my chin on my neck. I still hadn’t touched the green tea. It was just an hour of me unearthing everything that had been there for over a decade, honestly. So it was a wild, uncomfortable, but relieving experience all at once. It was a whirlwind for sure.
Carrie: Was that when you got the diagnosis of OCD?
Peyton: Yes. So I have a dear friend, her name’s Wendy Nunnery. She’s an author too. She has it. And I had met her for coffee one day and we hadn’t been friends for long and she was just vulnerable enough to say, “Yeah, you know I struggle with intrusive thought OCD.
And she was telling me all the things she worries about. And I went, “oh my goodness.” Number one, I’m not by myself because I have been thinking some off-the-wall things and I can’t talk myself down from them. I’m always afraid of running people off the road. I overthink being near knives. I overthink changing a child’s diaper.
All of these things that I just thought I was literally psychotic, like there was some serious problem. This wonderful woman of faith is sitting in front of me, a mother, a thriving wife and she just lists everything that’s been rattling in my head for years. And so I sat back still wasn’t sure about therapy, but kind of a pin that had to be what I had. And once Josh left it was very, very unhealthy.
Like I was just in a place where I wasn’t functioning. I said we gotta get help and that’s exactly the diagnosis I received.
Carrie: So in some ways that was probably a little bit relieving to know what you were dealing with because when people don’t know what they’re dealing with, then they throw all kinds of vernacular labels on themselves.
Peyton: Right. My dad, you know, has PTSD and he had that when I was growing up. So I was around it. But PTSD almost stems from something very traumatic, which is what happened with him in the military in his line of work. But for me, nothing traumatic had actually happened to me and I couldn’t figure out why I was having a hard time.
As a good kid with good grades and a good family. I mean we had struggles with what my dad went through, but I must have been a bad person if I couldn’t control what was going on in my head. The level of relief and the pressure that just fell off me, that was a God thing. There was no way around that.
Carrie: Did you struggle spiritually during that time? Like why has God allowed me to struggle with this? And those kinds of questions, maybe that people with OCD face.
Peyton: Yeah, I’m just going to send you my book when this is over. My fourth chapter is called church games. And so again, I grew up and not hating by any means on denomination, on religion, but I went to a very small brick and mortar countryside church. Women were told not to speak. I was told it was King James, or it was literally not the Bible and how dare you touch it. Women cannot lead worship. I grew up in such a rigid church culture that when you combine that with OCD, you’re quite terrified of God.
I got a credit card in the mail or a debit card a few months ago and my security code, well, I guess I can’t say it, but it had lots of the apocalyptic kind of numbers going on and I literally almost sent that back in the mail. I was like, “no, we can’t use that like, I can’t touch that.” Wild, irrational thoughts OCD we’re paired with this very rigid church culture.
And I was afraid of God for years like he was just somebody that I was told to love, but I was scared of loving him because I was just scared of who he was or at least who he seemed to be. So yeah, I struggled spiritually for a long time.
Carrie: Like maybe tying into some of the obsessions, like is God mad at me or am I going to go to hell.
Peyton: Exactly. Very perfection-oriented. But like I said not just a perfectionist or perfectionist with OCD which can take on a completely different level of fear, anxiety, and all the like.
Carrie: So what you’re saying is that you have intrusive thoughts, but you don’t actually have any compulsions. Is that so?
Peyton: It’s funny. So there’s several different branches of OCD like intrusive thought OCD there’s harm OCD, contamination OCD. With me, I do have a form of contamination OCD. I always had. I washed my hands a lot as a child If I spilled anything on me like a chemical. Cleaning panics me. I was afraid to be near chemicals.
So when COVID hit, my contamination OCD, the compulsion went through the roof like I had always been a hand washer. I’d always been a clean person. I started keeping a chart of how often I washed my hands. When the world shut down and we went home, I washed my hands an average of 57 times a day and I spent two-plus hours a day following through on compulsions with cleaning, with mopping, with wiping everything down with wiping my hands down my phone down. Just putting Josh in a Clorox fog as soon as he came through the door.
So there are definitely compulsions, but I see them most with the contamination OCD.
Carrie: How has that affected your, your marriage, and your relationship there? Have you had to kind of train him on how to help you at times?
Peyton: He is very gracious and I’ve been very blessed with someone who’s willing to listen.
He has been mentally a very strong man which is fantastic. Obviously, he worries about things. There’s hard things for him, but he is very mentally stable, which is what I need. I’ll be honest when we first got married is when it really started kicking up. I’ve learned change kind of messes with my OCD like getting married, buying a house.
I had just gotten a new job. Just all the things. And bless his heart he just thought it was birth control. He thought maybe it was him. I thought it might’ve been him. We didn’t know. Maybe only a few months later is when the piloting thing happened and he was gone and I got help. So for us it’s funny, but for him it was a breath of relief when I found out I had OCD. He went, “oh, okay. It’s not me. It’s something else.” Not that we can fix OCD but we now have something we can work with. We have a name and a face to it and he has been so good. What I love about him is he respects when I’m having anxiety.
He respects when there’s a compulsion where I’m just like, I have to follow through with it. There’s no way around it. But he also calls me to work through compulsions. He calls me to say, “Hey, let’s take a step back and rationally talk yourself down from this like we don’t have to wash your hands five times in a row. We can do four and walk away.
It’s okay. So there’s been a little bit of training on his part, but he’s really been gracious and I’ve been very thankful for that.
Carrie: That’s awesome. We talked about kind of how to support your anxious spouse on a previous episode. So I’m curious about your experience on that.
What was that process like of finding tools and strategies and things to help you in therapy?
Was that really hard and what kind of therapy did you utilize?
Peyton: Yeah, so my therapist and I, we do brain spotting. I don’t know who all knows, but literally, I find a spot in the room where my brain just kind of seems to be at peace and attune. I like natural light, my brain and my eyes always go to a window where there’s natural light and my therapist just says, “Hey, let’s just start walking through what you’re feeling. Why you’re feeling this way.”
And every time brainspotting walks me back to what started a trigger, what started a compulsion, what started the anxiety that’s just built up and is now bottling over. So I love brainspotting because often my compulsion or my thought has nothing to do with what’s really bothering me. OCD is just really good at twisting stuff.
So I love brainspotting. It earths my head. It just brings it back to earth. But also we just learned really healthy techniques. Even things like social media can spike my OCD. Just because OCD can thrive off of just about anything it wants. I do 45 minutes of social media a day. I have a timer on my phone. That’s something she and I worked through. 45 minutes was a healthy number for me. When the timer goes off, I’m done with social media. Josh and I have what we call a contamination zone in my house. If there’s something that I just feel is completely contaminated and I don’t want to touch it. He puts it in a corner, in a room and we let it air out because in my brain letting it air out is safe. Just little things like that have made a huge difference for us.
Carrie: That’s awesome. I’m going to get somebody on the show to talk about brainspotting now. I think that that would be an interesting episode, too.
Peyton: That would be fantastic. I love it. I love brainspotting.
Carrie: Yeah. We have talked a little bit about EMDR on the show and it’s similar.
There’s some similarities in terms of just kind of like really tapping into that brain level response and the nervous system. And like you said, when you trace OCD back, it doesn’t make sense. You’re like, “wait a minute, this goes back to that time when I was this age and this experience happened.”
I love that it really gets down deep underneath the presenting issue. Because it’s not actually about the stuff or the cleanliness. It’s about that piece underneath it, whether it’s a lot of times like dealing with uncertainty or loss of control or those types of triggers can be really prominent
Peyton: Well, that’s what wild is. Every time we brain spot and we work it back, it is either a very harsh church experience I had, or it’s just growing up in a household with a dad with PTSD that was undiagnosed for years. Every time, my brain has trillions of off-the-wall thoughts, but every one of them works its way back to one of those two things.
Carrie: Wow. Do you feel like you were a particularly sensitive kid growing up, more sensitive to people’s emotions or kind of absorbing everything?
Peyton: I’ve taken a bunch of Christian spiritual gift tests and discernment comes back every time no matter which one I take. But my mom did say as a child, I tended to know without actually knowing, like if there was a relative who was going through a hard divorce or someone just lost someone.
My mom said as a child, I gravitated to them. She said I’d walk up and sit in their lap. I would sit and talk to them. I mean, maybe that had to have been just God. Just knowing who needed some extra love. My mom swears as a child I could just walk in a room and I just knew who needed even just a “hey” or a hug.
Carrie: That’s good. We had Mitzi Van Cleave on the show before, and she talked really about how OCD was a part of her sanctification process. That there was this process of growth through affliction is what she talked about it. Can you talk about a little bit about that in terms of your spiritual journey?
Do you feel like you have some similarities there?
Peyton: Sure. I’m so glad you asked that question. It’s one of those things where I think Paul mentions in the new testament that he had a thorn in his side. I think that’s a favorite thing to debate is what was the thorn in the side. But I think regardless, the reality is we each have a thorn in the side. I think on this side of heaven, we will eternally fight or struggle over, wrestle with and I think OCD is mine. There’s no magic pill for OCD. I’m not going to wake up one day and my brain is just going to be super chill.
The bittersweet thing that I love about this thorn in the side is it constantly calls me back to a place of grace. As a perfectionist with OCD, I’ve had to come to grips with the fact I cannot be perfect. The church is saying is you’re a human. You’re not perfect.
I always knew that, but that always wasn’t good enough. I was like, “no, I’m going to prove the church wrong. I’ve got this. I can do this.” OCD literally said “ha, no” like here’s something very irrational and very imperfect for you to imperfectly worry about. You know, go have fun, good luck. And so OCD quite forced me to accept that I’m not perfect. And because of that, growing up in a really harsh church culture and stepping away from it and wrestling with OCD, I can now look at God and say, “Hey, you know what not only am I not perfect, but you are.” And as churchy as that sounds, there’s so much grace in that because God has not put the standard of perfection on me.
And I know I can’t meet it, especially with the OCD. And so now it’s just grace and I had not lived under grace. I had not lived by grace. It was just a catchy phrase that at one point I thought would be a good tattoo on my wrist. But OCD has been the gateway to God and grace for me. And so for that I am always grateful.
Carrie: How did you make that perspective shift in terms of your view of God? Did that come through getting around like a healthier church environment?
Peyton: Sure. When I was about 16 or 17, I just told my family, I said look I’m out. Not out, like I’m not piecing Jesus out, but I’m not here. I finally started studying the Bible and the Bible and the guy behind the pulpit were not lining up.
[00:20:43] So I said, look, I can either believe a man who’s like everybody else or worse, or I can believe God. And so I’m just going to go with God. That sounds like a smart decision. That’s the Sunday school answer, but it’s one that I’m going to adopt for myself. And so I stepped away from that church. I found a much, much healthier church which made so much of a difference. Within that church, I found women my age who were also not afraid to mention that they struggled with mental health and that right there was probably the ultimate game-changer. I was being around women my age who had been perfectionists. I don’t know if you know the Enneagram, but I am in an Enneagram one on the personality chart.
We are reformers. We are the spearheads for all that is just and good and right. But I was blessed to find women just like that, who turned around and said that I’m not always good. And just and right. I do struggle with mental health. And even through all of that God still sees me as good because he loves me and because he’s good.
And so that was the revolution in my spiritual journey.
Carrie: I think finding the character of God. And I’m really connecting with the character of God who he says he is in the Bible and experiencing that in your life as absolutely a game-changer. I’m curious. This is a question for you from the trends of the podcast. Our podcast is for people with anxiety and OCD. But the most popular episodes that have been downloaded have been personal stories about people with OCD who have experienced that. Even more popular than our very first episode just like, Hey, this is the podcast. This is who Carrie is and all of that. What do you think? That’s because people just aren’t talking about OCD and the church.
Peyton: Oh, absolutely. When I wrote my book, not said by myself, my editor called me and she said, Hey, sweetheart, you got to lighten up on the church, just a smidge. You gotta pull back just a littlest. So I’ve talked about that with much more grace. Thanks to my editor. And my book, I think we talk about the soul in the church, but I also think if God created the soul, he created the body and he created the mind.
And we are called to honor all three of those. We are called to keep all three of those healthy to keep them in check. Iron sharpens iron, I think mind, body, and spirit. And I don’t know where the disconnect happened with the church and that aspect. I don’t have a clue, but nobody talks about your mind and your physical health either.
And if those two aren’t in check often the spirit’s not in check. And so we’re walking around almost wobbly like one-third of us is functioning like it’s supposed to in the church and we wonder why things still feel like they’re falling apart.
Carrie: And they’re not working. And this concept, which I’m still just wrapping my mind around is like the holy spirit lives in me like in my body that just really blows my mind.
So I’m like, does how I treat my body that has to interact with my spirit? I know it doesn’t change the holy spirit. I’m not saying that, but I mean how I interact with my body changes my spiritual health. It affects my spiritual health as well as my emotional health and physical health.
It’s just all interconnected. And I think you’re right, I think we do try to look at those things separately and don’t interact with each other. And if we want to be more healthy spiritually, we also have to be more healthy emotionally and physically. It just makes sense. I love that.
Talk with us about this concept in your book of not being alone that seems to be a big thing for you. Why did you title the book the way that you did and how does that incorporate with what you wrote about?
Peyton: I think OCD was probably one of the most isolating things in my life. Like I said, even growing up, I was a worrier. My friends called me the worrier.
I was the mom friend like I was always 45. I was always isolated because I was the mom. I was the worrying one. I was the one who can not just ever let loose and have fun now, not in the name of sinful pleasure, but I was just never relaxed. I can never breathe and that was one of the most isolating things for me.
And so as I got older, life got harder, stuff got more serious intrusive thoughts just have a field day with that. I mean, because there’s just so much more stake. Once I got married like sexual OCD stuff went through the roof because never had I ever had sex. And now I have, and my brain is like, “Oh, here’s 5 million things we can take and run with.”
So I continue to get lonelier and lonelier because all of these thoughts made me take a step back, take a step back. I was not like everyone else. Something was wrong with me. Should I call the sheriff on myself like what is going on? And so when Josh physically left and I was physically by myself, that was probably one of the darkest places in my life because I had always been mentally and even spiritually isolated just from the church I grew up in and struggling with OCD. And here I am not physically alone and it took therapy. It took God’s grace. It took two or three very dear friends that made you realize you literally cannot be alone. And it sounds so churchy. It sounds so cliche.
But like you said, if the holy spirit is truly embodying you then I am called to believe that he is embodying every lonely space I’m walking through. So he is quite literally paving the way and telling loneliness to just step aside like it doesn’t have a place here, not in my heart, not in my spirit, not in my physical body, not in my mind. And so that’s how I chose the title, Not So By Myself.
Carrie: So huge. I hope that as people hear this podcast and these stories that they recognize that within themselves too like I’m not alone. I’m not alone in my struggles and that God’s here with me and God can break into those lonely spaces. And I love that he just meets us where we’re at, you know, all of our mess.
Peyton: That’s what I say. He works best in the mess. That is where he thrives.
Carrie: So cool. Towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is the time where you received hope from God or another person.
Peyton: Oh, that is such a good one. OCD is just so wild. So harm OCD for me, I’m always afraid of running people off the road. I’m always turning my car around to make sure I haven’t run anybody off the road. There was one day I was in my little black Chevy car that I had gotten in high school and I was driving home and I just had one of those intrusive thoughts of I tried to pick up my phone because someone was calling me and I thought, “oh my gosh.”
[00:28:00] like for those five split seconds, you have no idea if you were looking at the road, what could have happened? So I just hit the brakes. It’s a quiet country town, but I still hit the brakes in the middle of the road. And I went to go whip my car around and somebody sideswipes me because I’m irrationally flipping my car in the middle of the street.
And I thought, “oh, my word. I have just caused a wreck. I have no clue if this person is okay. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell a cop I have intrusive thought OCD and that’s why I’ve had a wreck. So I pull off on the side of the road and this woman pulls off and I see her and she’s older and I think she’s 85.
I have partially killed her. She’s going to need a hip replacement. This woman gets out of her car. I’ve damaged her car like this was on me. She comes over and she grabs my hand and she looks at me and, and even in a small town, this was one of those random chances where I didn’t know who this was.
She said, “I just want you to know that this is God’s providential hand, that you’re safe and I’m safe.” And she prayed over me and just left. And I’m sitting here going, ”my insurance is going to go through the roof.” I definitely just clipped the back end of her car. So no insurance going up. I didn’t pay anything for this woman’s car.
I swear she was an angel. So that was just hope because that was a hard thing. Mentally, I was in a bad place. I made a bad decision as a driver and this woman just prays over me, gives me grace, and just drives off. And I will never forget that day. I will never forget her face, the street name, any of it as long as I live. That was some serious hope that I will not forget.
Carrie: Wow. What a testimony of God’s grace. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. I think this has been great to talk about all the different things that you talked about and I’m sure it’ll be an encouragement to somebody.
————-
I enjoy getting to have these guests on because it really reduces the stigma and shame surrounding being a Christian and struggling with OCD. Maybe you or someone you know have had an experience such as overcoming a phobia or working through social anxiety, I would love to feature some of those types of stories on the podcast.
If that’s you or someone you know, you don’t have to be an author to be on the show or a public speaker or a therapist. None of those are requirements. Just reach out to me via our contact form on the website at www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com I look forward to hearing from you and being able to share more stories of hope with you in the future.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing completed by Benjamin Bynam.
Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Steve Grcevich of Key Ministry. Dr. Steve is helping churches learn how to minister to people with disabilities including mental health.
He shares about what moved him to begin his mission of connecting churches with families of kids who have physical and mental disabilities.
Different scenarios and social interactions in church that trigger the anxiety in kids and families.
Barriers that make it more difficult for kids and families to be part of the church.
How to help kids and families with anxiety and other mental health issues feel welcomed and included in church.
Communication strategies and inclusion plan to help people feel more welcome in church.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 25. Today, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Steven Grcevich. I believe that’s how you say his last name. He also told me I could call him Dr. Steve. Dr. Steve is going to tell us about a ministry that God laid on his heart to start that helps churches know how to reach and effectively minister to people with a wide variety of disabilities including mental health. So without further ado, let’s get into the interview.
Carrie: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dr. Steve: Carrie, thanks so much for having me on your podcast. I wear a lot of different hats. So in my tentmaking job, I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist. So I’m with physicians. I went to medical school, actually, I got accepted into medical school when I was 17 years old. It’s a little bit of a Doogie Howser kind of thing through an accelerated program. I have a private practice in suburban Cleveland. I teach at a couple of different medical schools, the child psychiatry fellows. I helped teach evidence-based medicine to medical students. Again, maintain a practice. I do some training for Mental Health Professionals and some of the surrounding counties. And then the other thing that probably takes up about half of my time is that almost 20 years ago, I was involved with starting Key Ministry, which I think we’re going to talk a little bit about today.
Carrie: So, how did you get to that place of seeing a need for key ministries or a desire to start that?
Dr. Steve: This is probably about 25 years ago. I was on the elder board at my church. This is mid-1990s after the fall of the iron curtain. We had a whole cohort of families who went over to Russia and Bulgaria and adopted some kids with some really complex emotional behavioral, developmental issues, trauma out of orphanages in Russian Bulgaria after the fall of the iron curtain.
And I’m sitting at an elder board meeting and the person who at the time was our children’s ministry director ended up on our ministry board later on down the road. I came in to do a presentation to talk about some of the struggles that these families were having in terms of staying engaged with church. As you can imagine that these were folks who had been very devoted, highly committed. These are people who are volunteering. They’re serving in leadership roles.
And then kids with other mood disorders kind of in that order. And so not like anything that we would go ahead and submit to a journal or as some sort of formal study. Over the next three months, I just did a survey of families as they were coming through the office for routine follow-ups.
There was one question, “what impact did the challenges that brought you and your child to our practice have on your ability to participate at your church or place of worship?” And I was floored by some of the stories that we started to hear. One in particular that was really memorable was that there was a family that I was seeing where they had a couple of little boys with pretty severe ADHD.
They started describing to me sort of what their experience was like going out, trying to find a church for their family on the west side of Cleveland with these two boys in town. Interestingly enough, they ended up at our church. And we’re giving their testimony at one of the services, talking about the impact that the supports that our children’s ministry was able to offer it had on their family. And the comment that the mom made is the people in the church oftentimes think they can tell when a disability ends and bad parenting begins. And so we oftentimes find that when we have kids with different emotional behavioral issues, and in my practice, I see this a lot, where kids who are anxious oftentimes manifests in anger, moodiness, and irritability.
I’m sitting there, listen to this stuff became obvious that there was an issue. And as God would go about orchestrating things around that time, I had one of the three original research grants for Adderall, which became the most commonly used medicine in kids with ADHD.
I got asked to travel around the country, do a lot of lectures to different medical groups, physician groups. And in the introduction, wherever I went I would say something about the work that our church was starting to do with families who were having some of these kinds of struggles. And the church started getting inundated with requests for help. Basically, Key Ministry came about.
Our current mission statement is that our mission is to help connect churches and families of kids with disabilities, for the purpose of making disciples of Jesus Christ. At the core of that, and sort of our original focus on what we saw as the unmet need was that our focus was on helping churches welcome and include families of kids with quote, unquote hidden disabilities, emotional behavioral, developmental neurologic conditions where the disability wouldn’t be obvious, say in a still photograph of that child. Johnny is just an absolutely wonderful lady. She did great work in terms of helping folks with physical disabilities be part of that. Around that time, the early two-thousands, we began getting like more and more awareness of some of the challenges. For example, families face when they had kids on the autism spectrum as more and more kids got diagnosed.
So, the next wave of this is that churches became very proficient or many of them became proficient. There were good models for serving families where they had kids who quote-unquote special needs. Basically kids with more severe intellectual or developmental disabilities, but by far and away, like if you take a look at the child population in the United States, 75% of kids with disabilities have primary mental health disabilities.
And there’s some fascinating research that came out a couple of years ago. Andrew Whitehead, who was a sociologist at Clemson University, went through about a quarter-million interviews with parents from three waves of the National Children’s Health survey. It’s done every two to three years by the federal government.
This is where they get these statistics that like one in 46 kids has autism, stuff like that. And interestingly enough, one of the questions that they ask as part of this is, “has your family attended a church or a place of worship at any point in the last year?” And what they found was that families who had a kid on the autism spectrum were 84% less likely than other families unimpacted by disabilities to ever set foot in a church. But it was 72% for families where they had a child with depression, 55% for kids with a disruptive behavior disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and 45% when we’re talking about kids with anxiety disorders. There’s actually 19% for kids with ADHD. In comparison to that, when they looked at other disabilities, like for example, Tourette’s disorder, kids with intellectual disabilities that didn’t have much of an impact in terms of church attendance at all.
And so when you start talking about sheer numbers and so in the population we serve, children and teens, probably about one in 10 meets criteria for a significant anxiety disorder. The number of kids and families who are impacted by these mental health concerns is far, far larger than the number of families who struggle with what we have traditionally referred to in the church as special needs.
So within the context of what we do in our ministry, there’s a lot of stuff that we do that we put on an annual basis. We couldn’t do it last year because of COVID, but the largest disability ministry conference in the United States.
We have a group that we moderate for 2100 special needs and disability ministry leaders from around the country. So we do all kinds of training consultation, offer all kinds of free support to churches.
My role specifically had been to work on developing a model for churches that are interested in doing mental health inclusion. So we have other folks on our team who will consult and work with, again churches that are looking to serve kids with sort of the traditional intellectual developmental disabilities.
[00:10:44] My piece has been developing a mental health inclusion model that churches can follow if they want to serve this larger population of families. That is probably, and it’s interesting, there’s guy Lamar Hardwick who’s up. Fascinatingly, he’s an African-American pastor of a mixed-race church in Atlanta who was diagnosed with autism in his mid-thirties, wrote this book called Disability in the Church.
And one of the points that Lamar made is that the largest minority group in the United States are individuals and families affected by disability. With all the conversations that are going on in terms of talking about diversity and the need for our churches to become more diverse, one of the places we need to start is by thinking about folks who have this range of conditions. Where many of them, the presence of their mental health condition or the presence of a family with that condition has made it impossible for them to be part of church.
Carrie: Can you talk a little bit more about that as far as what specific things were they encountering that were keeping them from being able to go to church? Like lack of feeling welcome maybe because their child had a disability or just their child being too anxious to be in a group setting.
Dr. Steve: So what if we take a look at sort of mental health, if we think about sort of mental health collectively as a whole, in the model that we put together, part of what we train churches around is the idea of there being seven barriers. The first one is stigma. In that, for example, there was a study. This is maybe six or seven years old from Lifeway research, where when they interviewed quote-unquote unchurched adults, 55% of them endorsed the notion that people with mental illness aren’t welcome at church.
Carrie: That is so sad.
Dr Steve: And interestingly, in some of maybe the more theologically conservative denominations that are more focused on outreach and inclusion, like going back to theological devotee, sixties, seventies, and eighties tend to be the ones that have less insight and less understanding about the nature of mental illness. But no, this stuff is not necessarily a sin problem. There are things that people are born with. And as you know, in your practice, that there are ways in like the lives of individual people who wrestle with this so that there are ways that God uses this stuff in terms of drawing people into closer relationships and deeper relationships. So the churches that are most interested oftentimes in doing outreach and inclusion are the ones that in some instances are the places where maybe mental health concerns tend to be more stigmatized. So that’s the first one.
The second one is anxiety. And I would argue that that in and of itself. Of all these barriers that’s probably the most common one and the anxiety disorders out of all the different mental health disorders are the ones that are most likely to keep the most people out of church. But we’ll talk about that a little more in detail.
The third has to do with executive functioning and self-control. Pretty much every mental health condition that you think of ultimately, or to some degree will impact people’s capacity to self-regulate emotions, to modulate impulse control, to be able to plan to exercise self-discipline. And folks with conditions like ADHD would be sort of the prototype of this.
Again, there are many other mental health conditions, significantly impacted. If you’re a family and if you have a kid who has a hard time sitting still, or not shouting out in the middle of a worship service. I had a very memorable case. This was a family that came from out of State to see me.
This may be 15 or 20 years ago where the father was a Southern Baptist pastor in Appalachian, West Virginia, Virginia, somewhere like that, where he came up to see me. And actually, his family doc gave him the money to come on up to our practice where they had adopted a little boy who had pretty severe issues with ADHD and impulse control or aggressiveness.
Shortly after they adopted this five-year-old boy, he punched the son of the guy who was the chair of the elder board. And they fired the father for not having appropriate spiritual control over his family when it was obvious that they adopted this kid who had been through very traumatizing situations.
But when you think about like in the Bible and you think about scripture, like the book of James, self-control is very closely acquainted with sort of godliness and spiritual maturity. Ability to demonstrate that especially for kids becomes like really important. If they’re going to be able to fit into a lot of activities at church.
The fourth is sensory processing. Folks think about this as being an issue with folks on the autism spectrum, but it turns out that folks with pretty much every condition and DSM can experience issues with sensory stimulation. And it’s particularly common, in addition, autism among folks with anxiety disorders and ADHD.
And so that for some people like the bright lights, the very loud music, the very sort of stimulating worship environments. You see in a lot of the contemporary churches, for some folks becomes absolutely overwhelming to the point that it’s aversive.
The fifth is social communication. We think about churches by nature are intensely social places.
And so if you’re somebody where maybe you feel uncomfortable with self-disclosure with other people or you have a more difficult time picking up on tone of voice, inflection of voice, body language, facial expressions, you’re really going to struggle in terms of like the interpersonal stuff that goes with those being active at church.
The sixth is social isolation because as you know, think about folks with common mental health conditions, people with depression isolate, oftentimes as a symptom of that depression. Folks with social anxiety oftentimes they’re going to avoid situations where they’re going to come in contact with and meet a lot of people and make a lot of new friends. Families who have kids with mental health issues.
The kids are less likely to be involved with athletic activities are less likely to be involved in extracurricular activities. They are less likely to be in situations where they meet other families who will invite them to church. Not to mention the fact that for a lot of the kinds of families that like your practice serve and that we serve, mental health treatment can be fairly expensive.
And a lot of times, I mean that there are lots of treatment costs that these families are incurring either for themselves, for their children, and either finding babysitters or childcare is too expensive. Or when you have a kid where you just can’t let any 14 year old down the street come over and watch them. It was very hard to become part of the social fabric of your neighborhood or the community.
And then the seventh one is past experiences of church because I don’t know about you, but about 30 minutes into child psychiatry school, I think I figured out that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and that the kids who have these struggles oftentimes have parents who have these struggles.
And so part of the challenges is if the parent had an issue that kept them from being part of church, when they were younger, it’s highly unlikely that any of their children in particular kids who may have a similar mental health condition are going to be part of church. So those would be sort of the big ones that we ask churches to think about. Stigma, anxiety, executive functioning of self-control, sensory processing, social communication, social isolation, and past experiences at church.
Carrie: One thing I will say about that, that’s interesting is there’s this thing with church, it seems like with leadership and wanting to reach people where you either get one of two situations with a church.
You either walk in the door and it’s almost like everybody attacks you. Like you have the football like it’s “so we’re so excited to see you and, oh, it’s such a great day. Have a good Sunday. Here’s your bulletin.” You know that you either get that response or you kind of sneak in the door and then you sneak out the door and no one talks to you. But then maybe you go home and you go, “No one talked to me at church today” you know, I guess they really don’t care about me.” So how do churches like find this balance and this fine line between reaching people and letting them know that they’re loved and cared for in that environment without overwhelming them?
Dr. Steve: One of the first things that we try to help churches to do, because the level of understanding, again, from church to church, depending upon what kind of education the pastors have had, the people who are serving on staff at that church can vary so much. One of the places that we’ll start is by helping to kind of educate them about some of the things that they would anticipate being struggles in folks with common mental health issues and to kind of try to put them in their shoes here. I’ll give you an example of a little exercise that we would use as sort of like a little starter, like if we’re going in and if our team we’re doing a big training or if we were training an individual.
Let’s imagine that Samantha’s family lives down the street from your church. Samantha’s a single mom. She has a nine-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter. The nine-year-old son got invited to vacation Bible school loves it, wants to go church every week and is begging mom to take the family to church. The nine year old son has ADHD and dyslexia. His seven-year-old sister has a separation anxiety disorder and the mom has social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia.
Think about all of the potential places where something could go wrong and where they might encounter a problem the first time that they would go to attend a church. And so one of the ways I talk about this with families in our practice on the church leaders is that as you know from a lot of the research has been done in terms of neuroimaging. To try and understand what’s different in the brain in folks who struggle with anxiety disorders is that we know that they’re basically hardwired to overestimate or distort the level of risk involved with entering into new or unfamiliar situations.
And so think about what that’s like if you’re visiting a church for the first time. For their family, one of the places that’s going to start is I would bet that mom is going to be looking on that church’s website before she even thinks about putting her kids in the car and going, because the kinds of things she might be worried about would be, “Am I going to stand out?
Will I be dressed differently than everyone else? Will my kids be dressed differently than anyone else?” But there are enough sort of strange stories floating around. It’s interesting, my son-in-law and my daughter in medical school, down in Alabama. And I heard stories from my son-in-law when he first moved down there, it was like looking for a church and, “oh, he was a newcomer.”
And so everybody stood up in the church and came around him to lay hands on him, to welcome him. Yes. So again, if you’re a mom with social anxiety, even the most remote prospect of something like that, or having somebody walking around during prayer time, handing you a microphone, and asking you to introduce yourself, it would be terribly overwhelming.
So you get over that. You figure out how you’re going to dress and you get to church. How many social interactions does mom have to navigate the first time she goes before, she herself, is able to go into the worship center and sit down. So you have the greeter in the parking lot. You probably have like the greeter or the person at the main entrance or the entrance for children. Now because of there for the first time, she has to register both of her kids.
So that there’s like the children’s ministry volunteers who are at like the check-in and the worship center. And of course, they’re going to want to introduce them to the volunteer people who are teaching their Sunday school class. And maybe if the church isn’t too large, probably the guy, the children’s pastor or the student pastors probably going to come over and want to introduce themselves.
So by the way, when the daughter finds out that the expectation is that she will be hanging out with like other girls in the first or second grade Sunday school class, and not with mom on the other end of the building in the worship service, the daughter starts to have a meltdown because of her anxiety at the prospect of being apart from mom.
So by this time, they’re already like five minutes into the worship service, Mom gets to the worship center. And mom with agoraphobia finds there are only middle seats open in the front five rows in the worships.
And then is there some time during the service where people are expected, like pre-COVID to greet each other and people are shaking hands and hugging on your way out. You have people who are a lot of places have like a welcome center for like new visitors. If you fill out the card, somebody may go ahead and give you a phone call afterwards.
And what if you find out that like people who joined the church, one of the things that you’re expected to do is you’re expected to very shortly thereafter become part of a small group with a group of total strangers in which there’s an expectation for folks to disclose fairly personal things. That’s why you tend not to see so many anxious people oftentimes at church.
And so part of what we’re doing when we’re working with churches is that, in contrast, to something like special needs ministry or something that’s a standalone program. This is not a program. This is a mindset. And so that we’re trying to get pastors and folks on staff at churches to understand some of the things that are going to get in the way, because like the best inclusion strategies are going to be things that are going to help everybody.
And in particular, one of the reasons why the ways that we had traditionally done disability ministry didn’t work and don’t work for the folks that we’re talking about is it the last thing that my patients want to do is to be part of something that’s going to single them out as being different.
And in fact, my kids and teens, what they want more than anything else to be treated just like everybody else. So, you can’t put them in a special needs ministry or you can’t expect the folks who we’re working with kids with autism or developmental disabilities to have a good handle on what do you do with the kid with profound social anxiety or the kid on the autism spectrum with 147 IQ who has no social skills and is very awkward in terms of how they interact with other folks.
Carrie: Have you had churches that did certain things to help with kind of getting people through that front door. That’s probably the scariest part is kind of the whole process of entering the worship area for the first time, dropping off your kids, those types of things that you just mentioned. What does that look like in a more anxiety sensitive, I guess.
Dr. Steve: Okay. So coming back to like what we were talking about before. The more people with anxiety can visualize an experience, especially if they’re going to an unfamiliar place, the easier it may be for them to be able to get over that hurdle. So one of the things that we talk about when we’re working with churches and one of the components of what we have them think about doing is a communication strategy.
One component of that is to take a look at your website. And you want as many pictures, video. You want folks who are exploring the website to be able to have a good picture in their mind of what it is that they’re going to be able to experience. And so this is where this would be especially true is that I have kids in my practice where for example, they’re okay at going to church. And by the way, one of the ways that you figure out who the anxious kids are at church is walking into the worship center of the sanctuary, like when it’s time for the sermon and see who’s still sitting next to their parents. That’s probably like a pretty good bet. I have kids where maybe they can get to church and, you know, they can sit with mom or dad, but the prospect of going to like Sunday school would be overwhelming.
One really memorable kids. So there was in like third grade. This ADHD separation anxiety, some dyslexia kid ended up doing well with some cognitive behavioral therapy ended up in a private school that specializes in working with kids with learning differences. Didn’t hear anything from the family for three years.
Kid is in sixth grade and at the church where the family’s going, he’s not part of Sunday school, but he is going every Sunday with mom and dad. And the biggest event of the year for middle-school ministry was this weekend retreat. And the mom and dad were friends with the middle school pastor who put a great deal of pressure on them to have their child go.
Well, the kid was still struggling with lots of separation anxiety. And when the kid came home one day and considerably larger at this point, when mom informed them that they needed to go to the retreat, the kid became extremely agitated and aggressive. And if mom’s brother had to have just happened to drop by the house, this boy was so upset that she might’ve gotten seriously hurt.
So, the kid has separation anxiety. If we added the details that the middle school retreat is for a full weekend on an island in the middle of Lake Erie that you can only reach by ferry that only runs during the daytime. Can you imagine?
Carrie: There’s all these barriers.
Dr.Steve: Yeah. So for example when you’re asking people to do something, that’s like a little out of the ordinary.
So with a middle school retreat or a high school retreat, or like churches where people go on mission trips, the same thing applies that an anxious kid would want to know. What am I going to be doing? Where am I going to be eating? Where am I going to be sleeping? Or they’re going to, you know, are they cabins?
Are there going to be bugs around? What’s going to be happening all day long? So that, to the extent that you can go ahead and help folks to visualize that whether they’re serving in a soup kitchen or going on like a weekend or like a week-long retreat to like Appalachia, or whether it’s like two days with other kids from middle school and high school. The more you can envision of what you’re going to be experienced and the more you can prepare folks the better. So, the same thing when you think about this with, in terms of say kids who might be dealing with some degree of anxiety. Making sure that you have maybe other kids around who are greeters, who come from a number of different schools.
So the kids are likely to see familiar faces when they come in the same way. Like for example, I think about some of our kids with anxiety who have difficulty transitioning when they’re going to a new school. Giving them the ability to come and check the church out, maybe in the middle of the week, when there aren’t a lot of people around and either to like meet in person or maybe meet by video their Sunday school teacher so that, here’s where your room is at.
Here’s where you’re going to be going. Here’s what you’ll be doing. The more preparation you can do with someone, for example, who struggles with anxiety, the easier time they’re going to have with it.
Carrie: These are really good ideas. I think in terms of being able to visualize things I used to have before COVID and I went fully online.
I used to have all kinds of pictures on my website of the office. And I actually paid a professional photographer to come in and take pictures so that people could kind of see the journey from literally like the parking lot to the waiting area, to the hallway where my office was in the suite.
And it was really neat because the photographer actually told me that whenever his wife goes to a new restaurant, she looks up the pictures online just to kind of familiarize herself with the area. And I thought that that was really interesting. So, I think it’s a great idea for churches to use things like pictures or videos, which is a pretty simple solution.
To snap some different pictures and put it on the website to help people feel more welcome or they know what to expect when they’re walking in the door.
Dr Steve: Yeah, I would add, I mean, there’s some very simple things that churches can do in terms of implementing a communication strategy that are very helpful when you’re dealing with families that are impacted by anxiety, other mental health conditions. In an earlier Lifeway survey, when they asked family members of adults with serious mental illness what they most wanted from their churches was for their pastor to talk about mental health-related topics from the pulpit. It gives everybody else permission to talk about it.
There was a fairly large, interestingly enough, Southern Baptist church here in Northern Ohio that we worked with, who they ended up developing an inclusion plan, where they won the regional award for cultural competence from the National Alliance for Mental illness.
So like some of the things that they did speaking into this is that they did a five-week teaching series on what the Bible has to say about anxiety to address the issue of people feeling more comfortable about self-disclosing. I was there on a Sunday at their worship services because I was training about 75 of their children and student ministry volunteers about how, what they could be doing in terms of interacting, including kids in their ministry.
So I went to a worship service and they ended up renting a video about three minutes long that day with one of the guys who was in their worship band, who talked about his experience with panic attacks and how that impacted his faith for a period of time and how he worked through it. The guy who is a founding pastor of the church did this wonderful. It’s about five minutes long. It was a Facebook video that they produced specifically for folks in the congregation of the church to share with their friends and neighbors who might be struggling. And he started off, “Hi, I’m Rick Duncan. I’m the founding pastor of Kyla Belly Church. And I want you to know that those of you who are struggling with mental health concerns are welcome at our church.
My father was a pastor. He struggled with depression. We know what this is like.” So something as simple as that, that that’s. So de-stigmatizing put in the hands of the people of the church to share it with their friends and neighbors who they know are wrestling with this. I mean, they’ve done a fabulous job. So, in addition, they have, they actually have a licensed therapist
who’s on staff at the church to be able to see folks who have issues. They have a celebrate recovery group. They offered NAMI groups. We are seeing like churches in our area. There are a couple of wonderful ministries that we work with. One is called Fresh Hope and the other one’s called Mental Health Grace Alliance. Where there are now networks like hundreds of churches that are doing Christian-based mental health support groups for teens, college students, and adults with mental health issues and support for their families.
And so, I mean, it’s just wonderful to see the way that like the resources are exploding. And, and I think that it helps that there probably enough folks on staff at churches with personal experience of this firsthand. That they get how it can be an issue for other people.
Carrie: I love that. I love that because what you said about. Some things being said from the pulpit or from the stage, it gives permission for everyone else to talk about it. And if we don’t talk about these things in the church, it just makes us feel like, okay, well we just, we just don’t talk about that here. It’s kinda like parents when they don’t talk to their kids about sex.
It’s just kind of like, well, that’s a taboo subject, I guess that’s off the table. And we don’t realize a lot of times how impactful that is. And especially because too often, we put people in leadership on pedestal pedestals and think they don’t have any problems, but they have problems too just like everyone else.
They have struggle and sin and things that God’s working on in their life. It’s so powerful when we’re able to have authentic vulnerability in the church. And I hate that so many times there’s too many barriers to respite to be able to do that. But it’s life-changing when that happens in a positive and healthy way. Too many of these things that you listed and this, the seven things, really keep us from being able to connect in community with other believers, the way that God has designed us to be in community and to stay connected and to grow closer to God and grow closer to each other.
Tell us about a little bit about your book, the Mental Health and the Church.
Dr. Steve: Okay. So mental health of the church is basically sort of the detailed version of our inclusion model that we share with churches. The first part of that, we talk about that there are seven specific barriers that oftentimes make it more difficult for families and individuals impacted by mental health illness.
We also give them seven. We also give them seven specific strategies or ways that they can like, think about how they might think about like responding. And so that, so that some of the things that are like really essential would be like having the church commit.
That they’re going to do an inclusion plan and that there’d be some education of the leaders of the church. The second has to do with the little acronym is teacher. So the first is setting up an inclusion team. The second is looking at sort of the ministry environments or the nature of the physical spaces in which ministry takes place.
So are there ways of making them more sensory-friendly? Are there ways, for example, to design we’re involved with a church where we were like helping them redo their middle school and high school ministry area so that kids who have attention issues would take away more from the teaching and the experiences that they have?
A stands for focusing on activities that are most essential to spiritual growth. So that if you want folks to be in part in a small group, it’s very important to train the leaders of your small groups, in terms of like how you welcome someone who might have issues with anxiety or someone who might be withdrawn because they’re struggling a little at that point in time with the exacerbation of depression.
C has to do with the communication strategy we touched on. H has to do with offering practical helps that in the Lifeway study.
One of the largest disconnects between what pastors believed about their churches and what family said about their churches was that most pastors believed that their church had a current list of mental health facilities and professionals that they could refer people to. But 70% of families said that that wasn’t the case. One of the things that like the church that I go to does is that before COVID we had large respite events where we would have like 85 kids at the church on a Friday night. And probably the majority of them had a primary mental health issue, where again, the parents were able to get an evening out and then.
Our most popular blog post a couple of years ago was entitled, We had no casseroles. And it was about 60 minutes segment that was done, where they were talking about the struggles that parents in Virginia were having like the teens and young adults getting mental health service. And so the whoever from 60 minutes was interviewing the one mom and she goes, “You know, when our 13-year-old daughter broke her leg in a skiing accident and was in the hospital for a week for surgery every single night, somebody from our church brought us food. Six months later, when she overdosed and was on a psychiatric ward of the local hospital, we had no casseroles.” And so like, why do we, as the church think about like treating those things so differently.
So what are some practical things that we can do to help them? There is education and support, offering like a fresh hope group, offering like a grace group through Mental Health Grace Alliance, having NAMI doing their education and family support groups, making sure that the folks who are in leadership positions in the church get the training they need to understand.
And then our has to do with releasing your people for ministry. For this to work, folks on staff at churches have so much on their plate that they’re overwhelmed that the people need to take ownership of this because God has positioned all of us in terms of where we work, where we go to school in our neighborhoods. We all know people who struggle with.
And I actually think the best inclusion plan is having a trusted friend coming alongside you the first few times that you go to a church. Who can help to navigate the overly exuberant door greeters and some of the other challenges and help their friends and help their loved ones to be able to navigate some of the things that might make them a little more uncomfortable.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s good. That’s really good. I think all of this information is really helpful and I’m glad that you started this ministry and God put it on your heart because I’m sure it’s grown and there continues to be a need for it as more churches are becoming open to how can we include all people.
As we’re winding down towards the end here, at the end of every podcast I like our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.
Dr. Steve: Well, I think that the thing that brings me the most hope is seeing the way some of the churches that we serve and other like-minded ministry servers are embracing and understanding this cause. That when we started doing this, there, I mean, there’s literally nothing out there that we have a group that we moderate for mental health inclusion, ministry leaders that not as several hundred members. We’re seeing churches implement plans and we’re seeing them welcome more people.
We’re into the hundreds now in terms of churches that are hosting Grace groups and, and, and, and, and hosting fresh hope groups. And when we get invited to like different conferences and have the opportunity to train, there are more people signing up for this mental health stuff than for any of the other things on the program, but these conferences.
And so it’s really encouraging that after a very long time when we see churches get it. I was at a very large church, training over 200 volunteers, one weekend it’s a church people would be familiar with that was very interested in doing this. And so I stayed for worship on Sunday and it was interesting because the lead pastor wasn’t there, but he knew what was going on. At the beginning of the worship service, he starts it off by saying “I’d like to start by praying for anyone who’s with us today who might be struggling with depression.” He didn’t have to do a whole sermon on it, but simply by doing, just simply by saying something like that the folks who were there that day, who may have been wrestling with stuff knew that they would be welcome and knew that it was okay to talk about.
Carrie: That’s good. That is very hopeful. Thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom. And I’ll put all the links in the show notes to Key Ministries and the book and how people can get in contact with you.
Dr Steve: Well, yeah, that would be awesome. And you know, I’d like to get together and say, hello. My daughter goes to Belmont University in Nashville, and she’s hoping to become a psychologist.
We have issues with anxiety and depression and things like that. So, I do get a chance to be in your neck of the woods fairly often. Ms. Carrie.
Carrie: You’re welcome to sit down with me for lunch anytime. We’ll get together.
Dr Steve: I’ll look forward to it. Thank you.
_______________________________
My hope really for this episode is for people to share this type of information with their pastor or ministry leaders, small group leaders, children’s ministry leaders.
Your church really may not know that this help and support is available. And so this episode may be an open door for you to start to talk with the people in your congregation about some of your own mental health struggles. So, if it helps to share the episode with them and say, Hey, sometimes this is my experience at church.
I hope that this episode helps you do that as well. So I promised for our 25th episode that I would be giving something away and I am, I am giving a $25 Amazon gift card away to one of our email subscribers. So if you’re saying, “Carrie, how do I get on the email list?” It’s super easy. You go to www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com.
There’ll be a box up at the top where you can put in your name, and your email address, and then you will automatically get a free relaxation download. It’s something that I use with clients that people have found particularly helpful. You have two weeks to become a subscriber to qualify for the Amazon gift card.
And I will be letting the winner know by email and also posting about it on Facebook and Instagram as always. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed Benjamin Bynam. Until next time. May be comforted by God’s geat love for you.
Bailee is a local therapist who talks with us about using Equine Assisted Therapy to help with anxiety. We joke about how horses are HIPAA compliant, and I share my story of overcoming my fear of horses.
Bailee’s story about how she became an Equine Assisted Therapist without being a “horse person.”
What is Equine Assisted Therapy?
Different models of Equine Assisted Therapy.
How does equine therapy help with anxiety and other mental issues?
Human-animal emotional connection. God says take care of the animals.
Horses read and respond to human emotions like anxiety.
Stories about how equine therapy helps people with anxiety
Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 24. Today on the show, Bailee Teter comes on to discuss Equine Assisted Therapy. You even get to hear a little story about how I overcame my own horse phobia that I had developed from a bad horseback riding experience as an adolescent. Without further ado, here is our interview.
Carrie: : Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Bailee: I’m originally from Texas and moved to Nashville in 2014. I came here to go to Lipscomb to complete my master’s in clinical counseling and ended up meeting my husband here, and so I stayed. We really love where we are and our church community has been such a blessing to us. So we really love it.
Carrie: That’s awesome.
Bailee: Fun fact, aside from equine counseling or equine-assisted counseling, I also direct a Christian dance program. So when people ask me what my job is I’m like, “I work with horses and I teach dance classes.”
Carrie: Those were two pretty unique interests.
Bailee: Yeah. They’re not anything I would have ever planned for myself. If somebody would have told me like in 2016, in the future, you’ll be directing a dance program and doing equine-assisted counseling, I would have been really stressed out about how to make it happen and really confused because I’ve danced my whole life but I did not grow up with horses. And so before I started working as an equine assisted counselor, I didn’t really have much background with horses. So that’s been a really cool story in and of itself.
Carrie: Tell us how you got on that track because when people go to graduate school for counseling. Obviously, there’s a lot of different places that they can take that. And so how did you get into the equine-assisted route?
Bailee: Well, I didn’t go to school for equine. I actually have a really big heart for using creativity to help people heal and help people grow. Someday, a long-term dream of mine is to have my own organization that helps people connect to God through creative outlets. And through that comes healing. And so in the counseling program, I did my specialization in play therapy.
We did toys and sand tray and creative arts and music and all of these things were my electives in the counseling program. After school, I worked for a community mental health organization for a year and a half. I was really burned out. It was hard for me to be in an office. It was hard for me to be sitting still.
I felt really isolated. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of support just where I was. I was contracted into a school. And so I was at the school, but not part of the school. I learned a lot. I worked with a lot of different ages of kids and teens, and a lot of different things about case management too, but it was not the place for me.
I am not an office person, which you can see that now by the jobs that I have. So I had contact with a professor from Lipscomb and he knew for probably about six months that I was just really unhappy and I was searching and I was praying a lot like, “Lord, what are my options? Where do I go from here?”
I don’t even know if I like counseling. I just did this degree and now I’m confused and really burned out. And after about six months, one day, he was just like, “You know what? You need to go meet my friend. She’s interested in art and she does something with horses.” I was like, “okay.” So I went out to Unbridle Changes is where we are in Goodlettsville.
And I observed two sessions, two days of sessions. And she, at the end, Don, who’s the other therapist out there was like, “well, if your professor trusts you. I’m really good friends with him. I trust you. You want to join us?” That was that.
Carrie: That’s amazing networking right there. I love it when that works out.
Bailee: Yeah. And I feel like I’m not a good networker. So that was all God.
Carrie: Yeah. I know for me, like when I’ve been in certain environments, whether it’s counseling or other things. Maybe you’re not this intuitive, but was there a feeling or a sense like when you went to Unbridled Changes, you’re like “Oh almost like I can breathe. This is where my soul is meant to be.”
Bailee: Yeah. Definitely. Every time I drive over the hill, when you get there, we’re at the end of a hill, we’re not long off of long hollow pike, but every time I drive over that hill and you just see, we think there’s about 50 acres of fields and horses. it’s just like I’m here. It’s a peaceful place. All of the staff members are believers. And so there’s just this connection. We all have that fundamental similarity. Even though we’ll see clients that are not necessarily Christian and we respect where they’re coming from and their stories, but just having that as the core. There’s peace for sure on the property and the horses add a big part to that for sure.
Carrie: That’s awesome. So tell us for, those who don’t know, which is probably a lot of our listeners haven’t had interactions with equine-assisted therapy. What does that look like?
Bailee: Part of the story where I got involved too. I did not have to be a horse person to do this type of therapy. There’s different models. I am trained in EAGALA, which is Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association. There are a few different models. I think one is called Path where they do therapeutic riding or the people ride the horses. And there’s some just different versions out there, but through EAGALA you have an equine specialist and you have a mental health person. And I am the mental health certified person. I did my training with another girl who is an equine specialist. And to do that she had to have over 6,000 hours of working with horses and the horse background and all. Knowing their personalities and their behavior. We worked together and all of our sessions and clients keep their feet on the ground.
And very rarely do we teach them any kind of horsemanship. Sometimes in our program or for me, we’ll step outside of the EAGALA model and teach us a little bit of horsemanship so the kids or the adults will feel a bit more comfortable. But usually, we keep our feet on the ground and let the horses have free rein to interact with the clients, whoever they want to.
There’s actually some research that has come out, I think probably in the last 10 years. The most recent article I saw was 2017. There’s some preliminary research about something called coupling where horse heart rates and human heart rates will start to mirror each other when they’re in close proximity.
And so there was one research that had three different scenarios in this situation where the horse’s heart rate was closest to the human was when the horse had free reign in this situation. They weren’t being restrained. They weren’t behind the bar. They had free rein and they could choose to come and interact with the person.
So that’s kind of how a lot of our situations go. We’ll bring a horse into the arena. We’ll have a client create something out of props or toys. Kind of a very common one early on, it shows me what it feels like to be you. So they’ll build something out of toys or props or different things. And then we’ll kind of watch the horse.
And a lot of times that horse will approach like as they’re building and show curiosity and show like their sensitivity to what’s going on with the person. The reason horses are so effective is because they’re naturally prey animals in the wild. So like a dog, if it gets scared or if it gets hurt, it’ll fight back.
A horse usually won’t. It’ll run. They are so sensitive to their environment. They’re so sensitive to whatever is going on that when they look at a human they expect the human to kind of be quote unquote, “the predator.” And so they’re sensitive to what’s going on with people. And so if you come in showing a lot of anxiety, you’re carrying a lot of anxiety.
Even if another person could look at you and not tell, the horse can tell, and the horse will respond to you differently whether you’ve got anxiety, depression, trauma, they can pick up on some of those things.
Carrie: That creeps me out a little bit. So if you go in there and you’re anxious, the horse runs from you, or is the horse kind of like a little more empathetic than that?
Bailee: I would say it depends on the horse. It wouldn’t necessarily run. Usually what we’ve noticed is it will kind of put its head up or it’ll be on alert a little bit. But in coordination with the counseling, we’ll say, “can you go help that horse be calm?” And so as the person is trying to help the horse calm down, they essentially calm themselves down as well.
And just that connection with the horse to the human. It’s like an externalization of whatever’s going on inside your heart. The horse will kind of act on it. Some of them are just really empathetic and can tell, especially the ones we’ve used a long time for therapy though, they’ll be gentle.
Carrie: I’m sure there’s a selection process that goes into which horses would be good therapeutic leave versus not that’s already been done by the organization.
Bailee: Yes. EAGALA’s model is that any kind of horse could be used for therapy. The horses that we use most of them are all-natural Tennessee walking horses because the farm is also like a breeding farm. We have 25 to 30 horses, but also the equine specialist, that’s kind of their job to be able to know horse personality. Which ones are sensitive to the weather. Which ones are sensitive to kids versus adults. We choose which one we think would work best.
Carrie: Do people usually work with the same horse over time, or do they work with different horses? Kind of, depending on what their needs are?
Bailee: That depends on the person too, and the situation. I have one client, she is really, really connected with a specific horse. Every time she comes, she at least has a little bit of time to spend with that horse. She just feels really comforted by this horse, really safe with this horse. So even if we have her doing something, and it didn’t feel do we have her doing something in the arena, she’ll always at least get a few minutes with this one particular horse.
And a few weeks ago she came and that horse, I actually got a little nervous cause the horse was just like laying on the ground. And I was like, “oh no, was the horse okay?” But it was just kind of a calm day. And usually if you approach a horse that’s laying down, it’ll get up. Kind of that prey instinct as well.
But this woman was having kind of a rough week. She was feeling overwhelmed. She was feeling like there was a lot going on, but she’s so connected to this horse. She walked over there. The horse looked at her and then laid its head back down. And so she crouched down next to the horse and it was heading it and stroking it. And when she came back she was like, “oh, I feel so much better. I feel so much calmer here.”
Carrie: Wow. That’s awesome. I think what’s interesting too because I’ve looked into other kinds of therapy that use animals like animal-assisted therapy with dogs or things of that nature. And sometimes people talk to their animals and I have cats and I talk to my cat.
Sometimes I like to think we have little conversations. But there’s something about this sense of being in the presence of an animal. And now that I’m doing more telehealth therapy, there’s something about people having their animals in session too. [00:13:08] That’s really powerful. That certain level of comfort or draw that they can get from that. And I wonder if that’s a part of this equation too. A lot of times people who have challenges in their relationships, they feel like they can connect to animals more easily than the other people around them.
Bailee: Yeah. I can definitely see that. Because animals don’t judge us and they hold secrets very well. We’ve told clients multiple times if you feel like you can’t tell us something, you can go tell the horse cause they keep secrets really well. I definitely think there’s something to that relationship between human and animals. I mean, God created it that way. Even in the beginning, he said, take care of the animals. There’s a special connection there.
Carrie: Your horses are fully HIPAA compliant.
Baillee: Yes, definitely. They don’t tell the secrets. They keep them.
Carrie: What are some of the issues that you see people coming in with? Obviously this is a show focused on anxiety and OCD, so feel free to speak to that, but I’m sure there are a variety of issues that people seek equine-assisted therapy for.
Bailee: Anxiety is a big one for sure. Just the nature of being outside in creation without the constant barrage of information and technology and in a new environment. I think the environment in itself helps reduce anxiety and then along with the horses. So we do get quite a bit of anxiety, trauma, depression.
I’ve been there for about two years. In the past two years, we’ve had kids that come with sensory issues that are also just looking for ways to cope with a lot of that and getting to touch the horses and feel the ground and smell the smells. That is just really beneficial for them.
Relationship things, family conflict, adjustment, a big variety, anything you would see a regular therapist for equine would work for as well.
Carrie: I’ve always thought for myself that I should, at some point or another, pursue equine therapy because I don’t have a positive relationship with horses.
And I thought maybe I should try to improve my horse relationships at some level. I was scared. Absolutely somewhat terrified of horses for many years. Not that I had to be around them. It didn’t cause problems in my life enough to go to therapy over it, but I had a traumatic horseback riding experience when I was 16 years old and basically was just kind of thrown on a horse.
And it was like, “Hey, pull the reins this way to go right, pull this way to go left, pull back and say whoa if you need to stop.” And that was pretty much my horse instruction. There was no, let’s walk around the corral a little bit or anything of that nature. And the horse took off just running because there was a break in between us and the next trail horse.
And they were kind of trained to fill in the gaps. So that’s what the horse was doing. Just filling in the gap. And I was so nervous. I was of course very anxious and screaming because that was the only thing I was taught. And I’m bouncing on the horse and I get off of there and I was like, “I don’t like this. I’m never riding a horse again. This was an awful experience, blah, blah, blah.” And so I wish tried to push myself a little bit to do things because I feel like I’m always asking my clients to be brave and to try new things and to step outside of their comfort zone.
About a couple of years ago, I was taking a day off and I decided to go to Land Between the Lakes. Have you ever been to Land Between the Lakes? It is a big area to fall. So for those who don’t know is this just this big like park area on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. And they have all kinds of things. They have a place where you can drive through and see buffalo. And that was super cool. And they have a planetarium and tons of hiking trails.
I saw that they had this little sign that said horseback riding, and I had absolutely no plans to go horseback riding, but I thought, here’s your opportunity to get over your fear horses. And you should just go in here. Don’t give yourself time to talk out of it. Just get over there and, and talk to the people.
So I explained to them, I said, “Look, this was my experience. I had a very traumatic horse experience but I’d like to go horseback riding.” And they said, “This horse is so old. It will not run. It’s not even going to down upon you.” It just walks through the woods. It’s very relaxing. And I was the only person, I guess because it was a weekday and I was the only person on the trail ride with the trail guide. And so I worked through. I made friends with the horse before I got on and I worked through my fear of horses. So now I guess I don’t need to go.
I’ve always had a curiosity or an interest in it. And I think a lot of people don’t really realize that this is an opportunity for them. I would say, especially if someone has been through a lot of talk therapy where they have a hard time maybe articulating or opening up about things. Do you feel like pursuing these more creative approaches to therapy like a good avenue or a good route to try?
Bailee: Yeah, absolutely. I remember in grad school, I don’t even remember exactly which project it was. It was in research class and as a dancer, I’ve always been interested in the way that creativity impacts our brains and our emotional wellbeing. And I feel like we are more like God when we are creating than any other time. And so I did some research on just research articles and looking up things. And there were some studies, I think they came out of somewhere in Europe that said our brains connection when we are doing experiential therapy is so different than when we do talk therapy. Especially because we have learned how to build up barriers and convince ourselves how to answer and respond to things in very structured and safe ways when we use our words. But when we use art, when we use toys, when you do sand tray, when we’re moving, even being active, like with the horses, experientially, our bodies are processing things. Our minds are processing things that bypass the language part of our brain.
And so I definitely think that any kind of experiential therapy is helpful when people kind of get to a stuck place in therapy, or if they just want to try something different. I think that equine therapy is really helpful in combination with talk therapy. I kind of do a mix of both in my sessions, and I know that we’ve had therapists bring their clients out to the farm to do one or two off sessions with us just to gather more information or to gain more awareness for the client.
Carrie: That’s an interesting route too. I hadn’t really thought of that. So, if someone is looking for equine-assisted therapy, what do they need to look for? What kind of training would you recommend that they searched for?
Bailee: I think I mentioned earlier, I know of at least two different types of equine-assisted therapy. One is EAGALA, which is what I’m trained in. The other one is Path. They’re both therapeutic. Path is therapeutic riding, so you get on the horse. You’re engaging the horse a little bit, probably what you did when you went to land between the lakes, building that bond, that relationship with the horse.
There’s a really cool book that I read a couple of years ago. I think it’s called Hope Rising. And it’s just stories about kids somewhere in the Northwest who came out of a traumatic situation and they were paired with a horse who came out of a traumatic situation. And they learned and they became friends with each other and they grew and it was horsemanship.
So that was a very unique thing in that situation. There’s a lot of benefit to therapeutic horsemanship I think, like learning how to walk a horse, how to ride a horse, how to train a horse. But what I do is not horsemanship. Like I said earlier, we let the horses just be free and interact on their own accord.
So I think you would want to determine what you’re looking for in equine-assisted therapy. Primarily, if you’re looking for counseling, you want to make sure that you have a credentialed counselor. Somebody that knows what they’re doing and what they’re talking about. I would say somebody that aligns with your beliefs.
If you want a Christian therapist, you can find Christian equine therapists. You can find people that are marriage specific. There’s a variety around Nashville. There’s really quite a few. But then make sure that the people that you’re working with are also credentialed or trained with a specific program because you wouldn’t want to just show up to somebody’s house and they brush their horse and they call it therapy.
And it’s not really therapy. So you want to just check their background, their resources. And I would say too, making sure that the horses are treated ethically. Because if you’ve got a location, that’s got one or two horses and they’re seeing 20 clients a week, that’s not going to be good for the horse’s wellbeing.
They get burned out too. They give a lot in a session. We have quite a few that they have been so involved deeply in sessions that when we are finished with them, we have to tell the other therapists. “This horse needs a break. They’re done for the day.” So having like a variety of horses or just a plan in place for the horses get burned out. That’s part of the equine specialist job is to look out for the wellbeing of the horses.
Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s really neat. It’s cool that they have that emotional connection and they get worn out as well. And then they need a rest.
Bailee: They sure do. We’ve had some really, really cool sessions of just the horses feeling so much of what’s going on inside these people. I’m thinking of one specific incident.
We had a kid whose family was going through a lot of changes, a lot of chaos. There was some addiction involved and the kid kept telling me, “I’m fine. I’m fine.” And we were just like, “There’s no way you’re fine” like to that language, setting up that barrier. And we brought in the specific course, and typically we don’t tell clients the horse’s names because we don’t want them to have preconceived notions, we let them pick names themselves.
But I’ll tell you the horse’s name to make this story easier to understand. We brought in John Henry. It’s because if you have a best friend it’s named something and then we tell you that that horse has your best friend’s name it might change the way you view the horse.
And we want them to be as blank of a canvas as they can be, at least in the beginning, so that we can put our own expectations and our own projections onto the horse and deal with it that way. We’ve had people call a horse, that horse has called math. That one is English. That one is social studies. It worked out that way because they’re struggling in one of those subjects.
So there’s so many different ways that you can do it. This specific incident, this kid kept telling us he was fine and his mom was like, “I’m just not sure he’s fine like there’s so much going on.” And we brought John Henry into the arena and something happened, but John Henry started running circles. Running in circles, he started bucking, throwing his head around, just huffing and puffing and snorting. And this is a big horse, when he stands up on his hind legs he is tall. After he kind of calmed down and we looked at that kid and then we said, “well, what do you think about that?”And he was like, he had his arms crossed and he kind of had his brow frown and he was like, “Nothing. I don’t feel anything.”
And we’re like, but you reacted like your body reacted. We can see that you reacted and so that was a place where we were able to start getting some of those. We specifically noticed this happened, or he reacted this way even though his words didn’t want to tell us something was going on in his heart. And eventually it came to that. The way that horse was acting, represented how he felt inside.
Carrie: Wow. That’s so neat. That’s really cool. Yeah. It’s almost like the horse gave him a language that he didn’t have,
Bailee: Yeah. That’s definitely a big part of it, for sure.
Carrie: Are there any other stories or things that you wanted to share about how you’ve seen equine-assisted therapy be helpful for people with anxiety?
Bailee: I had a couple that kind of came to mind when I thought of this question. Another John Henry story is he’s a really good therapy horse. He’s actually had some traumatic experiences, so he is very in tune with people. I think they say that horses will either go to the extreme where they’re really not interested in people, not interested in anything, or they will become really gentle and really sensitive. He’s a really sensitive horse.
So one of my very first sessions was actually with the kid who was experiencing a lot of anxiety and irritability, but he was non-verbal. And so his parents brought him. They were just hoping that something more hands-on and something more natural would be helpful for him. And so my equine specialist at the time, she gets John Henry because we know he’s a pretty good horse, like with kids. And she had him on a rope because she was a little nervous about how the kid would respond. So usually we let them go free, but she kind of had him. She was sort of controlling the situation and we were trying to get the kid, “Hey, come pet the horse.”
The horse can see that like no response from him at all. He completely ignored us, sat down on the ground, and started building piles of dirt. And we were like, “okay, this is not going how we expected it to go.” And John Henry is pulling at the rope and acting kind of irritable, kind of crazy.
There was like a few cats around and they were just like meowing like there was just a lot of chaos in the situation. And I told my equine specialist, I said, how about just let him off the rope and see what happens. She was like, well, are you sure? I’m like, yeah, let’s just let them off. And so she let him off and he made a beeline for the kid kind of quick.
And then he slowed down until he got to a really gentle last step right up behind the kid and put his mouth down to the kid’s head. And when he touched a kid on the head the little kid turned around and looked right at John Henry. And that was the first interaction of anything in his environment
we had seen him do besides the dirt. So for the rest of the session, that kid would play in the dirt a little bit and then turn around and look at the horse. And if he moved, John Henry would move and he would stay right there with him. And at one point the kid became really fascinated with this horse, his feet, which most horse professionals be like, “Don’t get near the feet. Don’t get near the feet.”
So my equine specialist got a little nervous, but then she noticed that horse wasn’t moving a single muscle. He was so aware that this kid was by his feet. He was so aware of what was going on with the kid that he was totally still. Just after that, the kids started opening up more, started interacting with us more. We got more eye contact. His parents said he realized he was less anxious at home. So that was a really sweet one just because it’s kind of unique in that he wasn’t verbal. He couldn’t do talk therapy.
And so using the horses and using the environment was really cool. And then I had another.. These are a little shorter. That first one was a little long. So I know, remember one, this client, she was in her mid twenties. She came from a really chaotic home environment, had a lot of trauma, anxiety, and depression including some suicidal ideation and she had tried talk therapy. She really didn’t connect with her therapist. It was not a good situation. So she came out to see us. And so we invited her to spend a few minutes outside with the horses.
Just a lot of times we’ll say, go make friends with the horses or go, just figure out what it means to be still with horses. Depending on what the people bring we’ll give them a prompt and send them out into the field with horses. And this time we just said, “What does it mean for you for your heart to be at rest? “What does it mean for that anxiety to come down and that depression to release?” And she stayed out there for, I don’t know, 10 to 15 minutes. She came back and her face looked completely different. And she had spent a lot of time with a specific horse. And I was like, “so what did you learn?” She was like, “Well, you know, I realized I don’t have to work so hard. I don’t have to fight all the time. These horses, I enjoy their company just because they’re here and they enjoy mine just because I’m here. I have value because I exist.” And that was just like such a light bulb moment for her and just totally shifted her perspective of herself and of her value in the world.
And then another one was a woman who is about 40 and she had walked through a season with miscarriage and just had a lot going on grief, anxiety in relation to like what would happen in the future. Just a lot of baggage that comes with that as well. And so we gave her the prompt to just go see where she feels like she can actually connect, which horse she feels connected to. And she ended up really spending a lot of time with one of my favorites and her name is Gypsy. The woman came back and she was telling us about why she felt like she connected with Gypsy. And she just felt so much calmer when she was with her like the horse could really understand her. And she spent some time talking to the horse. We don’t know what she said but you know, Gypsy HIPAA compliant, she keeps her secrets that she was just out there for a while. And she was telling us all these things and telling us about her season of the miscarriage.
And I was actually able to share in that moment that Gypsy had also had a miscarriage. And it’s that, like the client, she just started crying and she was like, “I just knew. I knew there was something she understands me.” So after that, each time she came back, she would just feel really connected to Gypsy and did a lot of work with that horse.
Carrie: That’s so cool. Towards the end of every podcast, I like to ask the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time that you received hope from God or another person.
Bailee: We could talk about this all day.
Carrie: It’s a good topic.
Bailee: It really is. And especially for the time that we’re in right now, we feel like hope is elusive to some people.
For me, I feel like it has been such an anchor. And I hope it’s definitely in the Lord, but in the dance program, I teach, I get to write a spiritual curriculum each year. And I felt like this year, the Lord put on my heart the theme to be the promises of God and just took that scripture from Hebrews 6 where God makes a promise to Abraham and he’s like, “I will bless you and I’ll give you many descendants.”
And it says that God had nothing bigger to swear by. So he made an oath on his own name and it says, when God makes a promise, he cannot break it. He cannot lie. And because of that, it gives us strength because we can trust that he is who he says he is. That hope is an anchor for our soul. I picture that as like putting my heart on something that’s stable rather than on like the world around me. I felt like that was so important for me in this past year because it’s the story of everything in 2020. Everything has shown to be shakable. The world has been completely shaken. Everything has been ripped out from underneath us.
Things have changed. People have died. There’s so much I want my students to know. I want my students to know that God is so firm. And that’s where I’ve really found my hope. When he says he will bring all things under his rule and he will renew heaven and earth.
He’s not joking. He’s not playing games. His word is secured. I’ve seen God do many things, transform lives, speak identity, serve on a prayer team at my church too, and just seeing him work in that. As I was thinking about this, I thought of just this cool concept. I had my first garden this past year.
And it was a total experiment. I was like, I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t think I have enough sunshine, but here we go. And it was abundant. I had so many cucumbers that I didn’t even eat them. It was amazing. And so I’m planning for my next year. And last week I was doing some garden prep. So, do you know what one of the best fertilizers for a garden is?
Carrie: Is it horse manure?
Bailee: It is. It is because they eat so well. All the grass. So last a couple of weekends ago, I got it from a place in town in Nashville, and I went over and got buckets full of manure. Buckets full of manure to transport in my car.
I don’t have a truck. And I came and I was like spreading it out all over my garden and just in preparation for this next season. And then it was just, God was just teaching me more through this. I work with horses all the time and we get the good parts of them. We see the way that they interact, we see their hearts, we see their compassion, but the manure is kind of gross. The poop is gross. The clients don’t like to walk around like, “Oh, it’s horse poop.” And I’m like, “well, it’s part of having a horse.” There’s some gross parts. And then planting my garden, what I wanted was those gross parts because that’s what eventually will break down and out of that becomes beautiful things.
And so just like the Lord takes our broken stuff and he brings redemption and beauty out of broken things is just the way the garden works. Come this fall or come this spring and summer out of that horsemen, there will be grown seeds of nourishment and beauty and that’s just been really hopeful for me.
If nothing, I feel like God is a God of redemption. He brings beauty out of brokenness. So just thinking like using horseman manure to bring beauty and a garden, that’s just given me some hope recently.
Carrie: I love that. That’s really what the show’s all about is giving people hope and seeing that God can take the hard parts of our story and the painful things and make something beautiful out of it. Thank you for coming on and sharing all that. This has been Inspirational but also so informative. There were so many just different little nuggets that you got to share with us.
Bailee: Thank you for having me. It’s so fun to get to talk about it. I love what I do, and I know a lot of people don’t really understand it. So it’s fun to get to explain a little bit more in detail.
Carrie: Awesome.
____________________
I love having these types of interviews on the show because we’re all about increasing hope here. And if you’ve found that one particular type of counseling didn’t work for you, or you feel like I don’t know that I could do the whole talking thing, or that’s not a good fit for my child, this might be something to look into as an option.
We have some exciting interviews coming up on the podcast, as well as a very special mother’s day edition. Next week, I will be discussing a giveaway in honor of our 25th episode. So make sure that you stay tuned for that as well. I’m also asking you to save the date of May 15th. We are going to have our very first webinar on reducing shame. So what I’m hoping to do through these webinars is have a little bit more of a time for me to present some information, as well as have follow-up questions and answers. Or if you have questions about shame that you would like me to address during the webinar, I certainly can do that.
Please feel free to send those questions through our website contact form wwwdothopeforanxietyandocd.com. And we will see you on the webinar at 10:00 AM central time on May 15th. As always, thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing completed by Benjamin Bynam. Until next time it may be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Today, I had the privilege of having not one, but two guests on the show! Alexa Hulsey and Trey Brackman, both licensed acupuncturists came on to talk to us all about acupuncture and how it can be helpful for anxiety among other things.
What is acupuncture and how does it work?
What happens during an acupuncture session?
Modalities acupuncturist use for patients who feel anxious about acupuncture needles.
Some theories about how acupuncture helps with anxiety
Hope For Anxiety and OCD, episode 23. Today on the show we are talking all about acupuncture. I was able to interview Alexa Hulsey and Trey Brackman from in circle acupuncture. They are both a licensed acupuncturist and they talk to us about what an acupuncture session looks like and how acupuncture can benefit anxiety.
So let’s dive right in.
Alexa: My name is Alexa Hulsey. I’m a licensed acupuncturist. I have been practicing since 2005. And I am the owner of Encircle Acupuncture here in Nashville. We have two locations in Nashville. I like to say that I became an acupuncturist because I wanted to help people. And then I became a community acupuncturist because I wanted to help a lot of people. Community acupuncture is set up in a way to make acupuncture affordable and accessible to really anyone who needs it because we offer our services in an affordable way.
Carrie: Awesome and Trey?
Trey: How did I get into acupuncture. That’s almost 30 years ago. I got my first acupuncture treatment right out of high school and decided that that’s what I wanted to do after my own experience. I’ve been practicing now for 18 years in a community-based setting. And I did private room acupuncture for a long time and was really hard for me because I couldn’t do it with enough people and it wasn’t affordable enough for them to get it enough to be beneficial to them. And when I found Alexa, nine years ago, I actually went into one of her clinics to get acupuncture and I was like, this is what I want to do and how I want to do it. I’ve been with Alexa full-time for nine years this year.
Carrie: So tell us a little bit about the difference between what you just said there about maybe a private acupuncture versus a community acupuncture clinic.
Trey: So private room acupuncture is one person in one room, typically on a massage table and community acupuncture, we have a big room and pre-COVID, 21 or two chairs in east Nashville. And in Bellevue, 13, 14 chairs recliners, and you’ll have a patient every 10 minutes and in a community acupuncture setting. Typically in private room, you’ll have a patient every 30 or 45 minutes. So you can treat a lot more people in a day than you can do in community acupuncture than you can in private room.
Carie: Awesome.
Alexa: Community acupuncture really gets back to the root of how acupuncture has been traditionally practiced for thousands of years in China and in other Asian countries. Acupuncture was typically done in groups. In some areas, an acupuncturist would travel to a village and just treat people in somebody’s house. And so our set-up, it kind of feels like a living room. Everybody’s in a comfortable chair and it makes it so that we can see more people and that way we can charge less.
Carrie: Awesome. I really liked that concept in terms of receiving care and receiving health in a community setting. Whereas a lot of times in America, our healthcare is so individualized and isolated at times too, because of that. That’s really neat. A lot of the listeners probably have never had an acupuncture session so we just want to talk with them a little bit about what does that even look like?
Alexa: Sure. I’ll walk you through what a typical acupuncture session is like. We start like pretty much any medical appointment with you, filling out some paperwork, we’ll ask about your medical history and then we’ll do a brief intake with a new patient.
The goal of our intake is really to just figure out why are you here? What can we help you with? What’s really bothering you. And we try to really focus in on a patient’s chief complaint and what is going to be the thing that we really want to focus on. What patients will find often is that if we focus on one or two things for their first few treatments, then all of these other things that they might not have even mentioned to us also start to feel better because everything is connected. So it’s kind of fun when that happens. We really focus on a patient’s chief complaint.
We will recommend a treatment plan based on what they’re seeking help for and what our experience is in treating that condition. A treatment plan varies, but generally people need a course of treatment and not just one acupuncture treatment. So it’s like taking vitamins. You can’t just take one vitamin, you got to take a lot. So you’ll need a course of treatment. Usually, sometimes we have people come in once a week. Sometimes we want them to come in every day if their pain is so severe that they can barely walk. So we talk about a treatment plan.
And then we’ll have a patient, they’ll be in a recliner in our clinic we use points on the extremities. Patients will just roll up their sleeves and pant legs. They don’t have to change clothes or anything like that. And we will needle a few points on the head, arms, and legs. Usually, we’ll use somewhere between 10 and 20 needles during a treatment. Once the needles are in, we cover up the patient with a blanket and walk away. And then that’s when the real magic happens is when a patient is resting with the needles in. We typically let them rest for about an hour and then we’ll take the needles out and, and the treatment is done. So really most of the acupuncture treatment is the patient lying there, relaxing, doing nothing.
Carrie: That sounds like a good time to me, just relaxing and doing nothing. I have had acupuncture and I did find it to be super relaxing. And that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to have you both on the show because we’re talking a lot about anxiety.
It’s interesting. The point that you brought up there, Alexa, about how when you work on one issue, you don’t always realize the domino effect that’s going to happen If you’re working with someone in terms of pain and then all of a sudden their pain is relieved. They notice they start sleeping better and then they notice it’s like a ripple that happens and that’s really neat. Or then maybe they come up with some other things like therapy, they come up with some other things that they want to work on once one thing is relieved. It’s like, “well, maybe can you help me with this too?”
Alexa: Yeah, that definitely has,
Trey: I would say 90% of the time. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. In terms of anxiety and pain and other physical issues, sometimes when you have physical issues the anxiety surrounding dealing with those issues can be so great and almost worse than the actual medical problem that you’re having right now.
I know that happened to me a couple of years ago, I was dealing with some digestive issues and someone said, “Well, maybe you’re just stressed about it.” And I said, or “maybe you’re just stressed in general and that’s causing these digestive issues. And I said, “I don’t think you understand my stress is from the digestive issues” because I can’t figure out what’s going on and how to fix it. This is not a psychosomatic complaint.
Alexa: Anxiety and depression are huge components especially of pain conditions. Dealing with pain for a long time that does become depressing. You start to think my life is never going to be the same again.
You become anxious about what the future holds. And then those anxiety and depressive feelings can compound the pain that you’re feeling and taking a pain medication can help the pain, but it’s not going to do anything for your depression and anxiety. Whereas what we do with acupuncture is a much more holistic approach.
Carrie: Can you explain a little bit of from maybe what’s been studied about how does this actually work?
Trey: Well, there have been a lot of modern-day studies that through MRIs and thermal imaging, that show that it reduces inflammation, improves blood flow, can stimulate hormone releases, balance your hormones, but how the body actually knows to do that when we take the needles and put them in these specific points, there is no definitive answer as to how the body knows to do that when we’re doing acupuncture, but it works. It’s been working for thousands of years and just in the 18 years I’ve practiced, just observing people come in and get better and reduce their pain or help their anxiety or their OCD or their arthritis in their knees, whatever it is, how it’s doing that, I’m not sure anyone has really discovered the real true one answer to that.
Carrie: I’d love a good mystery and intrigue, but I’m also very intuitive. So I’m kind of in that camp of like, well, if it works let’s use it. You know, I don’t need you to always explain everything to me on a scientific study level.
Testimonials are very valuable. Do you think that this is a little bit of an offshoot of a question, but things like acupuncture and chiropractic and holistic wellness, a lot of times aren’t valued or paid for by insurance companies. Do you think that we’ll get to a point where we shift from a disease model to a health model at all? Do you think that we’re making any strides towards that?
Alexa: I do think that we’re making some strides. Acupuncture is being used by the military and is being paid for by the military. There is talk of acupuncture being used by medicare to treat acupuncture specifically for treating lower back pain is going to be covered by medicare one of these days. Trey probably has been hearing the same line too, since he went to acupuncture school. I’ve since I enrolled in acupuncture school, I’ve heard insurance reimbursement for acupuncture universally is just around the corner. It still hasn’t happened.
So our work around has been just, well, let’s not even worry about insurance. Just charge a price that everyone can afford. Our prices are less than a copay and now we don’t even have to worry about insurance. We don’t have to fill out insurance forms and that gives people a lot more flexibility because insurance will usually limit, some insurance does pay for acupuncture.
We will usually limit the number of treatments a person can get or what it can be used for. The way that we approach it is, let’s just let the patient decide what they need and just make it available to them.
Carrie: And the community based acupuncture model, I just wanted to point that out that that’s not just in the Nashville area that people can actually go online and find community-based acupuncture in their area.
Trey: Yeah, worldwide.
Carrie: Oh, worldwide. That’s awesome.
Alexa: Worldwide, absolutely. There are clinics everywhere. If you do an internet search for community acupuncture, type in the name of your city. Not every town has a community acupuncture clinic, unfortunately, but it becomes more and more prevalent.
Carrie: Whenever you guys want to come to Rutherford county, you’re welcome. It’s open invitation.
What about if people are anxious surrounding needles, if people say, “I don’t really know if I can do that acupuncture thing, because she just said she was going to stick a lot of needles in me.”
Trey: We actually see that quite a bit and my personal approach to that is I’ll use four needles on somebody who’s typically a little bit anxious.
You can do a really good treatment with just four needles, especially for someone who has anxiety surrounding needles. And that first one or two treatments for them is about them getting used to the idea and feeling acupuncture needles go in and realizing that it doesn’t hurt. I have several patients that are still needle-phobic, but they come anyway because it really helps them, but they just put in their earbuds, turn on their meditation or whatever, their music, and they close their eyes and they just don’t watch and then they’re fine. Usually, I start very slow with them and just do four, maybe four, sometimes six needles, and go from there.
Carrie: It could be a really good exposure for some people that have that specific phobia, it might help them have a more positive experience. But also the needle size that you’re talking about is a lot smaller than a typical needle.
Trey: Yeah. Two of your hairs together. They’re like 36 gauge. They’re tiny.
Carrie: Yeah. So maybe that helps relieve some people’s anxiety here thinking about trying acupuncture. It’s not as bad.
Alexa: It’s truly not as bad as you think. A lot of patients report that they don’t even feel the needles. Which if you’ve never had it, it seems impossible, how can I not feel the needle going in me, but it is because they are so, so thin and fine. We did this more before the pandemic, but if someone wanted to bring in a friend or a family member who was anxious about the acupuncture, we would invite them to come in, just like say, “Hey, come sit next to your friend and watch what happens and just relax. See what it’s like.” It’s more difficult to do that now during the pandemic obviously because we have a lot more restraints on how many people we can have, but our model does allow for friends and family to come in together. So if somebody wants to try it and they want to bring a friend for moral support and the two of you get treatment at the same time, we can do that.
Trey: And we’ve had lots of children over the years and teenagers who have come in to get it and their parents will come and sit with them and hold their hand while they get their first few needles. We’ve done that as well for four kids.
Carrie: Yeah, I think that’s really helpful for people to know that this is a good option for children and adolescents too. A lot of times people are looking for more natural remedies because they don’t necessarily want to put their child or teenager on medication right away, and this might be a good alternative option for them to look into.
Alexa: Definitely.
Carrie: Anything else that you wanted to say in terms of how you’ve seen acupuncture be helpful for anxiety?
Alexa: I think we could probably both speak to a lot of cases where we’ve seen acupuncture be helpful for anxiety. I would say that, that is probably the number two thing that brings people into our clinic. The first being pain. We do treat a lot of pain and the second is probably anxiety. We see so many people with anxiety. People don’t always have great results with some of the pharmaceutical options that are out there to treat anxiety.
They might have side effects, or they just don’t want to be taking that and they’re needing solutions. I don’t know how much we want to get into sort of the theory of how it helps anxiety.
Trey mentioned that there’ve been some studies showing that acupuncture reduces inflammation, increases circulation. The way that we look at it is that acupuncture is going to basically remove blockages in your body. So we look at the body as a system of energetic flow and we call that energy Qi in Chinese medicine. Qi reaches every part of your body and it’s really what makes us alive. Qi gets blocked easily by lots of different factors.
And so we’re really using the needles just to remove those blockages and restore balance, and then the body does. The work on its own that it needs to do to be into a balanced and harmonious state with something like anxiety, a lot of times we’re working on the heart system and that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone with anxiety has heart disease, their blood pressure might be fine.
Their blood flow might be fine, but there’s an imbalance there in that system. The heart is the center of the emotions in traditional Chinese medicine and it gets out of balance easily when there’s a lot of external stressors. And so a lot of times we’re working on restoring balance to that system.
The heart system also is related to sleep. So people with anxiety often experience a lot of problems with sleep. So we can work on those things in tanem. Sleep is one of those things that we’ll often get better without someone expecting when they’re coming in for acupuncture. And then they’ll come back, like you said, after a few treatments and say, “oh, I’m sleeping better. And I wasn’t expecting that.”
Carrie: That makes a lot of sense to me in terms of what you were saying about the heart because a lot of people who experience anxiety have a more rapid heart rate and their stress system is getting over-activated in times where it doesn’t need to be activated. It’s also connected to pain because the pain pathway in our brain also runs through that limbic system controlling the fight, flight or freeze response. It’s interesting how all of those things are interconnected and then when we’re out of balance, as you said, and something gets stuck, if you can release that it’s like the body already knows what to do to heal itself, which is very similar to a type of therapy I do called EMDR, which works at the brain level. And it’s kind of from the same premise like your body and your brain already know what to do to reach that point of healing. It’s just a matter of getting you unstuck. So that’s really neat.
Alexa: Yes, absolutely.
Trey: I always referred to it as getting out of your own way and letting your body do what it already knows how to do.
Carrie: That’s good. Let’s talk about maybe people who are coming from a Christian faith perspective. I did a previous show on mindfulness, which was super fun and we talked about origins of mindfulness and how that can integrate with Christian faith. I think when things come out of Eastern origin, some Christians are like, “Oh, that’s not Christian.[00:20:46] That’s more rooted in Buddhism and we have to watch out for that. It could be a spiritual practice that goes against our faith.” Would you mind speaking to that concern a little bit?
Alexa: Sure, absolutely. Our approach, first of all with acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, spirituality is a huge part of health. And so it’s important that a person feels that their whatever practices they’re doing are aligned with their spirituality because that’s going to promote healing. Traditional Chinese medicine comes from a tradition of Daoism. It’s really rooted in Daoism and Daosim isn’t a religion, it’s a philosophy.
And it’s a way of looking at the world and the body and health based on observation of nature. So we take those observations of nature and then apply them to the body. So for example, we talk about the pathways of chief low in the body. We relate those to bodies of water, and some points are described as being like springs or like rivers or like wells because those points behave the way that those bodies of water would, it would behave in nature.
So Daoism can really be in alignment with any religious beliefs. And for that reason, a person of any religious faith can get acupuncture, can be treated by an acupuncturist, and still rest assured that the treatment is going to support their spirituality. It’s going to support their religion. It’s not going to be in conflict with anything that they believe.
Carrie: Do you find that some people have spiritual experiences, like when they’re receiving acupuncture like having a sense of spiritual connectedness?
Trey: Yes, and that was one of the things I was actually just going to touch on in all the years I’ve practiced. I’ve worked on a lot of people who have come in and are Christian and a great many of them over the years have told me one of the things that they love about coming to acupuncture is that it allows them time to pray and when they get their needles because it clears out all the rest of the chatter that goes on in our heads. They turn their phone off. They take their smartwatch off and they truly just rest and it allows them to really actually be clearer about what they’re praying for, or who they’re praying for. And I have seen and heard that a lot over the years that it just clears out the clutter of the brain and it allows them just to focus on that one thing and in that way.
Carrie: That’s awesome because I think I have had that experience in terms of receiving acupuncture. I don’t remember why, but I remember that I ended up crying one of my first few sessions and it was just this, I can’t really explain it other than there was a sense of spiritual connectedness to God in that moment through prayer. And just that sense of being able to just be and just rest and be present is really powerful. Something that we don’t do enough in our society is just allow ourselves to be and to rest and to give our bodies space and openness to heal or to connect with something outside ourselves.
Alexa: It’s so powerful and it’s so healing when you can get into that state where you’re feeling connected to the divine and you’re feeling really in alignment with your own spirituality. It’s a huge part of healing and also when people are going through a difficult time with their health, they really rely on their faith to get them through that.
I love what Trey was saying about people using that time to pray because faith is what gets many of our patients through their most difficult challenges.
Trey: And when there’s a lot of people in the clinic when the clinic is full and everybody’s in there, and they have their needles in and they’re all in their space, you can feel the hum of the energy in the room where all the people in here are doing the exact same thing.
They’re there, they’re resting, they’re healing. They’re letting go of their stress, their anxiety and you can feel that hum when there’s two, three, four, five, six, seven, 10, or 12 people in the room, all doing the same thing. If you’re paying attention, you can feel that hum of all of them trying to heal and whatever level they’re trying to get it to.
Carrie: Does that feel like a lot of energy or does that feel like a release of energy? I’m just curious.
Trey: It depends on the people. Sometimes it’s really heavy and strong and it’s like you’re parting it to get to the people and sometimes it’s light and airy. It depends, I think on who’s in the clinic and why they’re here and what they’re praying about or meditating about or focusing on while they’re here. So the feel of it actually changes.
Carrie: That’s very interesting.
Alexa: And it’s cool because in that way, each patient in there is contributing to the healing of the other patients as well. You’re creating this collective healing space. So we’re all helping each other, which is not a typical approach in healthcare.
Like you said, it’s usually very individualized, very isolated, but our approach is we all have something to offer. We can all give and receive in the process of healing. So it’s beautiful to be able to be a part of that. And Carrie, you mentioned about having an emotional release and that is not unusual at all for someone to have an emotional release during a treatment or after treatment crying. Sometimes people laugh.
And I noticed that especially with patients who are dealing with anxiety because anxiety can be so much work to manage just in your daily life. Just trying to navigate situations that people without anxiety wouldn’t find difficult when you have anxiety. It is difficult whether it’s going to the grocery store or having a conversation with a coworker.
So it’s so much harder to do some of those things that when you finally do get the chance to rest and relax, you don’t realize how much emotion you’ve been holding on to and then that release feels great and it’s an important part of healing.
Carrie: That makes a lot of sense to me because it does take a lot of energy when you have anxiety, too, whether it’s to get through the day or sometimes that energy is used to suppress other painful emotions and that makes sense to me.
So we’re kind of winding down to the end of our interview, but I do want to say that I’m going to put some links in the show notes for those who are local to look up Encircle Acupuncture and for those who are not local to look up community acupuncture near them so that people can join in on this experience.
Since the show is called Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope at a time that you received hope from God or another person.
Alexa: I’ll go first. I feel so lucky because I get to hear stories of hope pretty much on a daily basis from our patients. It is very inspiring to be around. One patient in particular, who has really inspired me as a patient who a couple of years ago received a very scary cancer diagnosis. She had been coming to the clinic for a long time, just for various ailments, and then she received this diagnosis and it was so scary but she was determined to do what she had to do and she followed her doctor’s advice to the letter.
She did all of her chemo. She does all of her radiation. She did all of that. She put a lot of trust in what her doctor was recommending and at the same time, she also said, “I’ve got to do more. This is the fight of my life and so I have to be all in.” She did more research and homework than I’ve seen most patients do.
And she really became an expert on healing her cancer and she did, she beat it, and she’s more than a year cancer-free now. Even some of her nurses have made comments to her, like, “wow, you are really doing so much to heal.” And her response has kind of been like, “well, you know, I have to.” She’s a very spiritual person and really relied on her faith to get her through
the scariest time in her life. And I still see her every week and she’s doing great. She’s just to me, an example of courage in the face of something really scary and using that as an opportunity to learn. She’s come out of this even healthier than she was before. She’s a huge inspiration.
Carrie: That’s awesome.
Trey: I have several. I could probably filter through but mine is oddly more personal, which is normally not what I would share. Nine years ago, Alexa and I hashed out an agreement on a little over nine years ago, hashed out an agreement on a napkin actually. And I lost the job that I had and I called Alexa that same Friday at like noon.
She called me back at two o’clock and I started the following week and it really has allowed me to do something I was ready to walk away from because it wasn’t fulfilling for me. And that totally changed in the nine years I’ve worked for you. We’ve treated hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s brought a lot of joy to me personally, and by extension to my wife and kids.
Carrie: That’s awesome.
Alexa: And Trey I just love that we’ve been working together for so long, but I think everybody can relate to that feeling of just being in a place where it’s just not right and you want to change and it’s scary to make a change, but you can do it. It can transform into something that you love. [00:32:00] So that’s an inspiration to me too, I’m glad you shared that.
Carrie: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing with us, your wisdom and your experience with acupuncture and kind of letting all the newbies know what it’s like, and hopefully, it’ll encourage people to try it out sometime.
Alexa: I hope it does. Thank you for having us.
Carrie: You’re welcome.
_______________________
I know I talked on this episode a little bit about my own experience with acupuncture. I wanted to do that because initially going into it. I was really nervous like is this going to be something that’s not in alignment with my Christian faith? And I did a lot of research, read everything on the website, as well as some other information on the internet about acupuncture and how it works and what the process was. And I said you know what, I don’t see anything for me personally that goes against the Bible or goes against the major tenants of Christian faith. I believe that acupuncture is one of the tools that God has given us to help heal our bodies and lead us towards a place of greater health.
And for you, it may or may not be for you and that’s okay. Hopefully, I won’t get any hateful emails on this issue. If I do, I’ll just ignore them and pay attention to the people that are enjoying the show.
Speaking of people who are enjoying the show, did you know that we have people who are listening all over the place, including Mt. Juliet, Tennessee? Which is not too far from here. All the way to West Lake Stevens, Washington, and Paradise, Nevada. I know that we have some people who are listening in Europe, Africa, and Australia as well. So, where are you listening from? Let us know by messaging me on Instagram or Facebook, I would love to hear from you. And if you aren’t following us there, please do.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.
Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Today I am flying solo to discuss my own experience of learning about Exposure and Response Prevention Prevention and why I ultimately went back to using EMDR to treat OCD.
The reason ERP is so widely recommended for OCD treatment
The problem with psychological studies: People are complex
Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 18. On today’s show, it’s a solo episode. So you just get me and I want to continue this conversation that I started with Sarah about EMDR as a treatment option for OCD. I’m really excited to share this with you because I feel like when people start talking about OCD, that the very next thing they start talking about is exposure and response prevention (ERP)
I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with exposure and response prevention, or as we’re going to call it ERP for this episode. What I am saying is that there are more options than just ERP for treating OCD. ERP has helped a lot of people. And so if it’s helped you then more power to you, that’s awesome.
I’m so thankful and glad but if you feel like you’ve struggled with ERP or you feel like you want to learn about a potential different option then this show is for you.
The reason that ERP is so most often recommended for OCD is because this treatment option has been researched more than others treatment options. And let me tell you about psychological studies and how those typically work. When someone is studying a condition such as OCD, they’re typically trying to only study OCD. And a lot of times we’ll rule out people who have what we would call dual diagnosis. They have more than one diagnosis on record. [00:02:10] I had a hospital reach out via email several years ago saying, “Hey, we saw that you see people with OCD and we are trying to do this research study. Would you let people know?” And I emailed them right back. And I said, “well, would my clients be ruled out if they also had PTSD.” And they said, “yes, they absolutely would be rolled out.”
At that point, I realized that whatever they were studying ceased to be relevant to the actual clients that I see in my practice. I often see people who are not only dealing with OCD, but they also have a history of childhood trauma. The other thing I want to bring up about psychological studies is that there’s a lot that we don’t know. Psychology is a relatively young science. While we’ve learned many things over the years about how the brain works and how different methods of therapies work and how some therapies are better for certain diagnosis, there’s still a lot that we don’t know. And the types of people that we see in counseling, they don’t fit. Just say standard one size fits all profile. Something that often happens. Whenever I go to a new training, you will learn about something like, “Oh, we have this really great method,” and they’ll show you the success stories. They may even show you video of it working well with a client that they worked with with permission. Obviously, we don’t just videotape people. We ask for their permission for learning and education purposes. But they may have these great examples. And then inevitably you will take that back and you’ll say, “Hey, can I try this new technique with you that I learned?” And it may work on the first person that you try it with and you may try it with a few other people. [00:04:18] And inevitably it doesn’t matter what the psychological technique is, you will run into someone that it just doesn’t work for that you have to revamp or adapt it differently or use something else entirely. And that’s one of the reasons that I want to expose you listeners on the show to a wide variety of mental health treatment options for anxiety and OCD because I don’t think that there is a one size fits all. And a lot of times when people look at counseling. They lump it as one big thing. I tried counseling and then, you know, that didn’t really work for me but there are many different types of counseling and I hope this show is kind of helping you and exposing you to some of that.
So let’s talk about my background with ERP that I wanted to share with you. I had an experience where I went to a two-day training on exposure and response prevention. The reason that I sought out that training in the first place was because I was seeing a lot of clients with anxiety that was really starting to become a niche of my practice. [00:05:40] So seeing people with trauma and people with anxiety, And I started to see that when certain clients would have peak levels of stress, they would start to engage in some OCD compulsions. And it made me realize that if I was going to see people with anxiety, I was really going to have to understand more about OCD, how it’s approached and try to figure out how to help these people who were experiencing OCD symptoms in peak stress points.
So I went to this training. It was very professional training, excellent information on OCD, excellent information on exposure and response prevention, how to start utilizing it in your practice. It certainly didn’t make me an expert on it or anything, but it was enough to get me started, to start working with some people that, had a diagnosis of OCD, not just had a few symptoms here or there. That point. I started seeing some people who were coming out of inpatient treatment, where they had received treatment for OCD and they needed some follow-up with their ERP. There were some patterns that I was starting to notice and particular patterns that I wasn’t comfortable with. One pattern I noticed with these individuals was that they seem to be carrying a lot of shame. It was either shame related to past trauma, self-esteem issues or even just having the OCD diagnosis in general and having to deal with that on a day-to-day basis. So that was a level of concern for me because I don’t want people to be stuck in shame. I had to ask myself, is it a win if people stop engaging in compulsion? if they’re still carrying around a baggage of shame. That just didn’t seem to jive with me or, or feel good in my practice. I also worried about whether or not ERP could be contributing to some of that shame because part of the process of ERP at times is to track certain behaviors, such as times where you engaged in a compulsion and times where you didn’t. I noticed these clients also had an untreated trauma history as well, which since I was a trauma therapist, that concerned me.
The main issue I had with ERP though seem to be what I call a glorified whack-a-mole process. Really targeting symptoms instead of getting to the root of the issue. This seemed horribly inefficient because one you would target one theme or one compulsive behavior then another obsessional theme with another compulsion would pop up right behind it.
What I’ve learned from trauma therapy is that you can treat symptoms all day long, but if you don’t treat the issue underneath that’s driving the behavioral symptoms, you’re not going to get very far. It’s going to be a lot harder. It’s going to be a struggle like swimming upstream.
I had one experience where a very skilled and trained ERP therapist told me that she banned prayer for a client that was dealing with scrupulosity. That bothered me as well because I’m not going to ban a behavior that’s crucial and critical to someone’s faith practice. The idea of exposure and response prevention, which we’ve talked a little bit about in previous episodes is that, ultimately your goal is to have a client be able to sit with the obsession without acting on the compulsion. Doing this inside of session with the therapist, as well as outside of the session for practice, for homework. And the ideas to be able to sit with that until the anxiety level drops. That can be really challenging and very distressing for clients. If they’re able to get through it, then there is a certain level of success and accomplishment that they feel. But sometimes the difficulty level of ERP contributes to the dropout rate.
One study that I read that I will put in the show notes for you is that ERP has a 20 to 30% dropout rate and ERP has a 50% success rate in terms of symptom remission. So here we have a lot of people promoting ERP as a treatment option for OCD, and there’s a 50% success rate.
I want you to just think about that for a minute. There’s few things that we would recommend that had a 50% success rate. If you’re dealing with obsessions and compulsions that are wrecking your life, 50% sounds like a pretty good gamble of something to bet on that it may work for you. The problem that I have is hearing from other professionals that this is an automatic go-to treatment and this is what’s been studied and you really shouldn’t look into anything else. Sometimes other treatment options are discouraged and I have a problem with that because I think that we all should remain humble as professionals and recognize that different people need different things or different approaches.
I want to tell you a little bit about what I’ve been able to do with EMDR therapy with clients who have OCD. Ultimately, I decided to go back to what I knew and to adapt EMDR for the treatment of OCD. One of the things that I like about it is that it helps reduce the body level internal distress that people experience. A lot of times what I’ve seen is that individuals with OCD are able to go in their head. They’re able to solve problems. They’re able to kind of mentally escape from emotions and difficult distressing physical sensations. So by utilizing EMDR we’re able to work at a body level on reducing that physiological distress that people experience.
In the initial preparation phases, I’m working with people on things like mindfulness, distress tolerance skills to be able to sit with difficult emotional experiences. And often as they’re able to do that, they start to feel a little bit better. We definitely target the shame piece with education about OCD. Sometimes, that’s the first EMDR target is dealing with that shame versus trying to deal with the OCD. What I’ve found is that if people can release the shame first, then that helps them be able to engage in the next part of therapy, dealing with the obsessions and compulsions. EMDR starts with what’s going on in the present and then looks at what past memories may be contributing to the present experience because it approaches things that way. You’re really able to get down to the root of what’s going on instead of just working on various symptoms.
Sometimes the root has to do with control, either dealing with things that are outside of one’s control or feeling this need to be in control or be perfect in some way. Sometimes it has to do with vulnerability. There can be all kinds of different things underneath that layer.
So this is a process. There’s a process of dealing with the shame piece and developing self-compassion. There’s a process in learning some skills to manage day-to-day when the OCD arises. And then there’s this deeper layer of really getting to the root of what experiences contributed to this development in the first place. And what I’ve found is when you’re able to do those things with that process, people feel a lot better about themselves and they may still have some OCD symptoms, but it’s more like, “okay, I’m noticing that that’s there and it’s in the background and I’m a lot better able to ignore it than when I started therapy.” And that’s huge. That’s absolutely huge for people.
Anytime that you can get to a place where you’re managing the obsessions and compulsions and noticing that they’re there but not getting roped into them, that’s an absolute huge win. And however you get there, whether you use ERP or whether you use some people are using ACT, Acceptance and commitment therapy for OCD, or whether you’re using EMDR or another method, just know that there are different options for you. You don’t have to be locked into one treatment option because of your diagnosis, regardless of what that diagnosis is. I’m going to include some information for you in the show notes about exposure and response prevention and the article that I read regarding that, which was a review of the research and then some studies on EMDR and OCD. And you can look for yourself and evaluate. It’s often helpful to incorporate more than one therapeutic technique together.
I believe this is where people, especially who have complex presentations, are able to see the best results. So you certainly could incorporate EMDR with ERP. I’ve done that for clients before, especially more so in phobia situations where they needed kind of like a gradual way to ease into getting over a certain fear.
Today’s story of hope starts with me crying in a parking lot in Target because I couldn’t build a website in 2017. I was in the process of building my business By The Well Counseling, trying to get everything off the ground. There’s a lot that goes into starting a business and I was running on fumes. I was working full time, seeing clients. And then in the evenings, I would be working on stuff to start the business. One of the things I believed I needed to get going was a website. Someone had recommended a certain site for me to build my own website. And I could not figure it out on my own, hence the crying in the Target parking lot. Everything had just reached a boiling point. I was overwhelmed and in tears and just thought I cannot do this anymore. Fast forward, Now I’ve built several websites. I had a former blog website that I’m not using anymore that I built. I built a completely brand new website for my counseling practice on a different platform about a year ago and I partially built the Hope for Anxiety and OCD website. I did get some help from a professional on that one to make it look more snazzy. But what I learned that I thought I couldn’t do, which was build a website, I could actually do. I just didn’t know it yet. So maybe there’s something in your life right now that you feel like, “I can’t do it. There’s no way,” but you may be looking back a few years later and say, “Wow! That very thing that I thought I couldn’t do, I can do it now.”
That’s my story. Do you want to share your story of hope with me? I would love to hear it. You can contact me through our website anytime at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.
Hope for Anxiety And OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing was completed by Benjamin Bynam.
Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Understanding the difference between anxiety and OCD can be challenging. After all, both disorders affect the mind and body. Those with anxiety or OCD can experience physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual distress. Let’s start by looking at the symptoms of each disorder.
Common Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety:
body tension
increased heart rate
frequent worry
difficulty concentrating
feeling edgy
difficulty sleeping
At a basic level, anxiety occurs when your internal fear response kicks in when it’s not needed. Our fear response is a good thing, given to us by God to keep us safe. The problem is that our brains and bodies are imperfect. Thus, the fear response can get turned on in response to something that is not actually going to hurt us. As an example, let’s say that you have generalized anxiety and get nervous when put in new situations. Your brain has made a connection somewhere along the way that new situations are potentially dangerous and must be avoided or engaged in with extreme caution.
Today, you are meeting your new male coworker. You may have worrisome thoughts. What if he’s mean or rude? What if he doesn’t like me? I’m always so awkward in these types of situations. What should I say? Your body starts to get hot and a little sweaty. You notice your heart has started beating a little faster. You take a few deep breaths, wipe your sweaty palms, and tell yourself everything is probably going to be fine with the coworker. You’re still a little edgy, but have calmed yourself down enough to meet him. Meeting a new coworker is not a life or death situation, but your body may be so worked up that it feels like it is.
Understanding OCD:
OCD involves the presence of both obsessions and compulsions. An obsession is an intrusive thought that feels real, doesn’t respond to logical reasoning, and often creates internal doubt. While obsessions are a thought process, they are accompanied by distressing emotions and body sensations that are similar to what a person with anxiety experiences. This is the part that is confusing and often leaves the OCD undiagnosed for years. Compulsions are a behavior that someone feels compelled to engage in as a way to satisfy the obsession. Like scratching an itch, there is temporary relief, but in the long term, engaging in a compulsion strengthens the obsession, starting the whole obsession/compulsion cycle over again. Obsessions and compulsions can vary widely, but I have listed some common examples here:
Examples of common obsessions:
Offense: I must have hit someone with my car while driving. I offended my coworker. I have sinned or offended God.
Cleanliness: I have touched something that caused me to be contaminated. I’m dirty. This surface is dirty. I’m going to throw up.
Harm: You may picture yourself harming yourself or someone else. You may be concerned about harming yourself, spouse/loved one, or child.
Relationships: Am I destined to be with my boyfriend/girlfriend? Maybe I married the wrong person.
Just so: Something doesn’t feel right, so I have to keep focusing on this aspect until it feels “just so.”
Examples of common compulsions:
Checking: Checking the appliances multiple times before you leave the house or turning your car around to see if you hit someone
Counting: completing actions according to a certain number such as flipping the light switch 3 times, avoiding certain numbers
Repeating: re-doing schoolwork because you didn’t like your handwriting, repeating certain words in prayer or repeating a prayer a certain number of times
Reassurance seeking: Asking your boyfriend multiple times if everything is OK between the two of you, asking your boss if you have done the right thing, asking for permission to do something you don’t need to ask permission for, asking someone questions a different way until they give you a desired response.
Let’s circle back to the example of meeting the new coworker, looking at it from an OCD lens. You have obsessive thoughts you can’t seem to get out of your mind about potentially harming the coworker. You picture yourself spilling coffee on him or accidentally tripping him. You put your coffee cup back on your desk. Your body starts to get hot and a little sweaty. Your heart has started beating a little faster, but you’re too consumed with your thought process to notice. Please don’t let me be awkward, you pray internally. It doesn’t feel right, so you say it two more times. Please don’t let me be awkward. Please don’t let me be awkward. You feel a small sense of relief, but then wonder if you should find the boss to get more information about the coworker in order to make sure you don’t offend him or harm him in some way.
The importance of determining if you have anxiety or OCD:
Why does it matter anyway? The key to effective treatment is proper diagnosis. If you see a therapist who practices Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety, they may teach you to challenge the anxious thoughts like you are in a court of law, looking at contradictory evidence. This would only seek to strengthen OCD, causing more distress. You may see a kind therapist who misses the OCD and provides reassurance that everything is going to be OK. You see the therapist every week, feeling a little better, but after six months of therapy, you’re not any better than when you started. You still have tremendous struggles outside of session. OCD treatment involves increasing one’s ability to tolerate distress. This can be done through several different therapies: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
In my experience, EMDR is a great treatment for both anxiety and OCD. Unlike other forms of talk therapy, EMDR works at a brain and body level to help reduce uncomfortable body sensations. Clients defeat the avoidance that anxiety and OCD bring by learning mindfulness and distress tolerance skills. Present behavior is traced back to past learned experiences. After processing, clients may notice some obsessive thoughts, but they are now in the background instead of the foreground. Clients are able to experience the obsession without engaging in the compulsion. If you are in TN and interested in EMDR therapy, click here.
Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP of By The Well Counseling is a Licensed Professional Counselor who specializes in helping clients with trauma, anxiety, and OCD get to a deeper level of healing through EMDR via in person and online counseling across Tennessee and EMDR intensive therapy sessions. Carrie is the host of the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast, which is a welcome place for struggling Christians to reduce shame, increase hope, and develop healthier connections with God and others.
Author Mitzi VanCleve shares her own personal story of experiencing anxiety, panic attacks, and OCD and ultimately, how God has used these things for good in her own life.
Obsessions Mitzi experienced even as a young child
Experiences of mental health stigma from Christians
Learning about panic attacks from a magazine article
Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 13. Today, I’m sharing an interview with author Mitzi VanCleve. She shares her own personal journey of diagnosis, treatment and interactions with the church in regards to dealing with panic attacks, anxiety and OCD. I’ve found her story to be incredibly hopeful in terms of how we can grow closer to God through struggles in our lives. So let’s dive in.
Transcript Of Episode 13
Carrie: When did you start to have symptoms of OCD?
Mitzi: Well, that really started even as far back as when I was a toddler. I know that sounds surprising. The only thing I can say about that is in my childhood right up until I was quite old, I never understood a lot of what I was experiencing was actually OCD. The first thing that I can go back and look at is really long-held obsessional fears and themes. The very first one was it was sort of unusual as OCD things are. It was a fear of being flushed down the toilet and the sphere was so intense that I would not use the big toilet until I was five years old and I was forced to go to kindergarten.
Even as a small child, three years old, four years old, I could sit there and watch a toilet being flushed, look at the hole in the bath and the toilet and say, “well, I can’t fit through there,” but it didn’t make any difference. My brain had just decided this was the thing to be afraid of and from there, once I got past that one, there was health obsessions. I remember, a really long period of time where I heard about the idea of swallowing your tongue and that just drove me nuts. I worried about it, wondered how that can happen. I ask my parents about it. I would forget about it while I was playing then when I go to bed at night it would come back and that’s when I would really struggle like the times when I didn’t have anything to do. So there was a lot of weird themes and health obsessions.
By the age of 10 is when I first developed some obsessions related to self-harm. That just started with hearing about a form of not self-harm, but just a form of harm that could happen to a person. I don’t want to really go into the details. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to explain specifically obsessions in details because it can get a little graphic and upsetting that people who don’t have OCD don’t really understand.
Why would you think that? And so this morphed from my fear of this thing happening to me to actually doing it to myself, like losing control and harming myself. That just went on and on and on for the longest time. There was something in me that knew these things weren’t at all logical and so they scared me so much.
I wouldn’t really tell my parents. I would exhibit symptoms of anxiety. I would have nausea. I would get up in the night shaking and feeling like I needed to vomit and things like that. I was afraid to, especially about the harming thing, I was afraid to verbalize that as a kid, but that’s where it started.
It became more debilitating after the birth of my children. After the birth of my second child, I developed panic disorder. Not knowing what that was I always struggled with social anxiety and just your basic kinds of anxiety disorders as a kid, but I didn’t know such a thing existed.
I never heard about OCD, anxiety disorders, panic disorder. Those words were foreign to me. I only heard about crazy people. There’s a thing where there’s a stigma and even as a child, the stigma was there. That idea that I might be crazy was terrifying to me and so when the panic attacks started, that felt like I was going crazy.
My first one was not nocturnal. I was falling asleep and I woke up with a panic attack and that happened to me a lot. It still does sometimes. I just know what it is now. That combined with that old harming obsession, the panic attack, the feeling of I’m losing my mind. I’m losing control. The derealization, that deep personal personalization that you feel at that moment makes you feel like you aren’t going to be able to control yourself. That combined with the harming themes. After the birth of my children, the harming thing switched from me, hurting me, going crazy, and possibly hurting one of my children in a really awful way and that was just so debilitating. I can’t even begin to describe how awful it was.
Carrie: The hard thing about OCD thing is that the themes do shift. As you get older or go through different developmental stages in life. It seems like once you have a handle on one theme, sometimes another theme will then pop up.
Mitzi: Oh, yes, it’s very true about OCD. That’s why it’s important to understand how the disorder operates, how to get on top of a theme before it gets on top of you.
And then it grows too big and large. It gets kind of stuck in your head. I do try to tell people that there’s physical symptoms with this too when you’re going through this. For me, some of the things I experienced during that really bad season, which was a very long season of unharmosity was an inability to eat.
I struggled to get calories down. I’m five foot eight. I dropped to 114 pounds. People thought I was anorexic. It had nothing to do with anorexia. I just was nauseous. The anxiety was so bad. I couldn’t sleep. And of course, if you have an anxiety disorder and you’re not eating and you’re not sleeping, that makes things even worse because that level of physical stress on your body is going to make a disorder worse. So that was what it was like and how it was like for me before I knew it was wrong.
Carrie: I’m curious about what your parents thought. Did your parents just think like, “Oh, she’s really nervous a lot, or she’s kind of an anxious child” or they had no idea everything that was going on in your head?
They didn’t. There were some people in my family, distant relatives who had struggles which caused them to even not want to leave their house and things like that. My mom would talk about that and she would say, “You know, you’re going to end up like that” but she didn’t really know what was going on.
I know my mom, there were like reassurances, which is a usual reaction for a parent to do that. A lot of times it manifested just as me being sickly. When I was struggling with certain health obsessions, I would get very, just like I described
sick to my stomach and I would lose weight. And so they were taking me to the doctor and try to figure out what was wrong but it was being approached like it was a physical issue. A lot of this just due to the fact that I didn’t verbalize a lot of the OCD themes, but even if I had, I’m not sure there would have been enough knowledge back then for my parents to know what was going on because that was in the 60’s when I was growing up. I think the information and knowledge and understanding about what OCD is and how it operates has come a long way since then.
Carrie: Right and hopefully also our physicians and pediatricians are also able to recognize a little bit better when they’re seeing some symptoms that potentially could be anxiety in a child, which often presents more as physical ailments.
Mitzi: I will share that when I got really, really bad with the harming OCD and the panic attacks, they were just relentless. I lost count. I have no idea how many I would have in a day or in the evening. At that point, I did open up to my mom. I began to know, “okay, this obviously is something to do with a mental health issue.” And so all I can think of was I probably need to see a psychiatrist and so I needed to share that with him, somebody. I had talked to my husband very little about it, just a little bit and I opened up with my mom. Growing up as a Christian and in a lot of Christians, there was that stigma [00:10:30] especially back then that Christians don’t have mental health issues. And so as I was sharing with her, I thought it might be a good idea for me to see a psychiatrist. She was really upset about it and she talked about faith and then she said something that was really hard, “that’s just for weak people.”
It was hard because it put the brakes on my pursuing that at the time, and I did pursue it still, but I didn’t get a diagnosis. The person I saw didn’t have any clue and he was relating things to stress and it, again, faith and, and it just I got nowhere.
Carrie: Okay. So you did see a psychiatrist, but they weren’t able to help you with that?
Mitzi: No, he just and of course, some of the scary obsessional themes, I didn’t verbalize them. I talked about anxiety and I talked about the panic attacks. I didn’t hit that word though. Just this is what’s happening and tried to describe it. So it wasn’t a good experience and it didn’t help me, sadly.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s unfortunate when people do reach out for help and then they find somebody that isn’t familiar maybe with OCD, or doesn’t quite know how to help them navigate through that process.
So what was that process of getting the help that you needed?
Mitzie: The first help that I got was really for the panic disorder and that was interesting.
I, I believe that during the time of my praying through this and asking God for help and just feeling so desperate that God came through. At that time I was still struggling. I was pregnant again, that tells you how long I was still struggling tremendously and I had become pregnant again.
I was about four months pregnant. I was at my aunt and uncle’s cottage, my husband and my brothers, my family, and my aunts and uncles they were watching a TV show which I did not need to watch at that time. It was called “Alien” which you’ve heard of. It’s the perfect show if you’re struggling. I was trying to avoid watching it.
So I picked up a reader’s digest magazine and the words on the front of the magazine where they show the stories, one of them said panic disorder. It said it might not be what you think it is. Just the word panic struck a chord with me. I opened up this magazine and started reading the story of this woman who had panic disorder and it was me. I was reading about myself and they listed all the symptoms of a panic attack and I had all of them. I finally had an answer for that. And so at the time, I was pregnant and I really couldn’t implement meds and things like that. I just started working on things like breathing techniques.
After I delivered, I started doing really intensive aerobic exercise. I was jogging four and five miles a day, and I gradually getting healthier which eventually took me into a period where the disorder waned. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but that’s when I learned just about panic disorder. I didn’t have any idea about OCD and so that kind of wax and wane on and off throughout the rest of my life up until the age of 50.
Carrie: So I think your story is very similar to other people’s in terms of a lot of times there’s a big gap between when people start to have symptoms and when they even find out this is actually OCD they’re experiencing because they feel ashamed of the symptoms. They feel ashamed of the thoughts, or they feel like, “okay, this sounds really crazy and nobody’s going to understand it or believe it, or they’re going to lock me up somewhere if I tell someone that I’m having these thoughts especially related to harm.”
Mitzi: Yes. What you say about they’re gonna lock me up somewhere was a genuine fear of mine because I couldn’t understand why I was having the thoughts to start with. For me to share that with somebody, they’re going to be like, “You really are dangerous.” Sometimes I would think maybe that would be good because then my kids will be safe. That’s how awful it is. You feel like your brain is telling you this is something that you should be afraid of this thought. I say it’s almost like you have a phobic response to the thoughts that you’re having and you’re having to live with them in your head.
If it’s a spider or something, you can just run away from it. Once it’s a thought in your head, it’s there. All that you’re doing to try to get rid of it makes it worse. Of course it did with me because I didn’t know it was OCD and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was at the age of fifty.
Carrie: So at the age of 50, what happened?
Mitzi: I had already been struggling. I was going back through a flare of anxiety and panic attacks because there’d been a lot of stress in our life. I’m not going to go into all the details, there were a lot of changes, big life changes. One on disability moves, just lots of changes, lots of uncertainty.
And so I didn’t notice it for a while, but it was kind of too late by the time I did start to say, Oh no, you know, I’m going back through this again. I was having panic attacks. I was starting to have obsessions about my health again, related to stuff that normally I would just brush off.
That’s how OCD is It’s always looking for a target, something to be upset about. During that time, I was praying again, reading my Bible, doing all the things I normally do as a Christian to try to receive information from God about what I can do about this. How can I help myself, but also just gain comfort. And I got a lot of comfort from the songs, even back when I was in my twenties, because I saw in there things that described how I was feeling.
My son also gave me some sermons on tape and he said, “These are really good, Mom.” We always share things like this. So I put one of those sermons in. It was actually on it on a CD. I was doing dishes, I was trying to stay very busy and distracted. This particular pastor was talking about our struggles with sin. As Christians and I understood. It wasn’t new to me that as Christians, we will still be fighting sin our whole life. It’s not something that we’re cured of. It’s something we’re aware of. We’re made aware of when we become a Christian and we have a desire to please our Savior. So we work continually towards pleasing him through obedience. He finally says this one statement, which I don’t even know why he said it in the middle of the sermon. He says, “If you call yourself a Christian but you’re still all the time struggling and sinning as strongly with sin, you really might want to think, are you really a Christian? In the past I would have been like, “yeah, of course.” This time my brain just latched onto that. It was like, wait a minute. What if he’s right? What if all this time, all these years, I thought I was a Christian I’m not. And what if the reason I struggle with this thing, whatever it is is because of that. It just was like a dam broke open and the intrusive thoughts related to that, just pour it out just one after another.
I just began this war with it. It was a mental 24/7, every minute I was awake, I couldn’t sleep and that was the new OCD thing, but I didn’t know it was OCD.
Carrie: No one’s ever had that before. It was a new theme.
Mitzi: Yeah. Until I was engaging with my compulsion. So by then, at this point in my life, of course, we had the internet and I was doing what’s called research, lots of Googling, researching around the topic of, “Am I still saved?,” doubting your salvation. I was reading all these articles about how we can know we are Christians and I would read them. It didn’t help. It didn’t make it go away.Suddenly one day I stumbled across a Christian forum that said doubting salvation and then it said, OCD. I was like, ”what?” That’s what I’m going through. Out of curiosity, I opened it and I started reading the posts from the people in this group
and it was amazing. It was just like the Reader’s Digest thing. I was reading my story. They were telling exactly what I had been going through. I was stunned and as I read more and more in this forum, and then I started going further out about OCD, what it is, how it manifests, what causes it. I had it and I had it since I was a kid and I never knew, and that opened up the door for me to finally have a way to manage this beast called OCD.
From there I began learning and learning more about ERP, about medications, about therapies like ACT. All the ways that this thing that I called “it”, this ugly “it,” for all these years, it had a name. I get tearful sometimes talking about it because God did answer my prayer.
He just didn’t answer in the way I was wanting. The way I was wanting was just take this thing away, whatever it is. He was pointing me to, “This is what it is, and this is what you can do.” It was just astonishing to me that I could live my whole life, basically until I was 50 years old and never have been able to get help.
There were so many long seasons of just debilitating, crippling suffering, and it was hard for me to believe, but just the relief, so overwhelming.
Carrie: We talked about that in an earlier episode with someone about how diagnosis itself can be a relief when you get a proper diagnosis. And then you can say, “okay, now that we know what we’re dealing with, what can we do about it?” “What’s our next step forward?
Mitzi: Exactly. Even after you get a diagnosis because OCD is OCD, it’s going to make you doubt but as you begin to bravely risk working with things like Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) therapy for me, it was brave when I was told, I probably needed to try some medications, but that was hard for me. Some of that was pride. Some of it was just because I have never taken anything like that before. What will it do to me? All the fears and that was a big struggle, but it’s so worth it because the alternative is staying stuck and doing the same thing over and over and not getting better and feeling worse.
I was determined just like with a panic disorder, I was like, “What can I do about this?” And I found out these things are effective. It was hard. It’s not like you began ERP and the next day, I’m all better. It’s a process. The longer you’ve been struggling with the theme, I think it’s a longer process. Your brain’s got this practice cycle of intrusive thought, anxiety response, compulsion, more intrusive thoughts, more anxiety, more compulsions. It’s a habit that needs to be undone and that takes time.
Carrie: Right. Did you get into therapy at that point?
Mitzi: I started going to a therapist and I think this is the hardest thing about OCD is being able to find a competent therapist. My therapist was good for dealing with basic anxiety disorders, like panic disorder, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, but when it came to OCD, she was asking me to apply basic cognitive behavioral therapy like you would for depression which would be to challenge the thoughts, to counter the thoughts into right logical reassurances.
Carrie: Which is exactly what you don’t want to do with OCD.
Mitzi: I started doing that and I got worse and I was like you know what, but there was one thing she offered up that was great and I still say it today, it’s act as if, and that’s part of the choice
part of OCD. OCD thoughts may be telling me this and telling me that, but I’m going to act as if these things aren’t true. And in the realm of Christianity and scrupulosity, even though my brain was telling me, “I think you might becoming an atheist.” I could say I’m going to act as if I’m a Christ follower. I’m going to do all the things that a Christ follower does even if my emotions will not validate that choice. That is my choice. So that aspect helped, the other was worse. So I pretty much learned on my own, I did visit some really good websites like ocdonline.com. Dr. Philippson. A lot of his work was just phenomenal to help me understand.
I learned about imaginal scripting, imaginal exposures, and I wrote them and did them and recorded them. I was able to learn that on my own, but a lot of people really do need a competent therapist because it takes a lot of grit and determination and courage to do ERP. I just think having a competent psychologist who’s trained to do these things and understands the disorder is something, unfortunately there just aren’t that many and a lot of it has to do with network, with insurance too, which was one of my biggest hurdles. I could not afford the counselors and the therapists that I needed to see. I had to go to the ones in network and even later on when I was going through a bumpy time with my OCD, after I knew what it was, I was just going through a really bumpy time.
I thought I could sure use someone right now and my therapist had passed and I called around and I would ask, or I would write. I know I communicated through email. I would say, “what do you know about ERP and ACT as far as treating OCD?” And they would say,” I don’t know what that is but I can help you with your OCD.” I’d be like, “Probably not.” So that’s a hard thing. That’s a really hard thing.
Carrie: It is hard because really, therapists would have to pursue training after their degree to specialize in OCD. And a lot of people don’t do that unless they have some type of personal connection or in my situation, I was working with a lot of people who just thought they had anxiety and then I was starting to see more OCD as I was starting to hear more about what they were actually worried about and struggling with. So that’s kind of how I got branched off into it, but I think a lot of therapists have not received further training on it.
I want to get in with you on the spiritual aspects, really of struggling with OCD. I know a lot of people who are struggling out there probably are praying prayers just like you pray, “God, this is awful. I feel terrible. I’m all tore up inside. Will you please just like touch my body and touch my mind and take this all away.” How did you work through some of that wrestling with God?
Mitzi: When I didn’t know I had OCD, I did a lot of that and it was a wrestling time. I thought during that time, maybe this was due to pass. Maybe there was something I needed to confess. So I would pour over everything I could think of and current things and confess for the OCD and the anxiety I would go through. I knew these verses, every verse related to worry, anxiety, all of those things.
I had most of that memorized. Anyway, I did understand what those things meant. What I didn’t understand was the difference. The Bible talks a lot about anxiety and worry, but if you look at those passages of scripture, you will see these are situational.
Worries and concerns, they’re about real-life trials and afflictions. It isn’t this always there’s a free-floating sense of dread and physical symptoms and everything of anxiety that can even be there when you aren’t even worried about anything. It’s like panic attacks, for instance. So that was confusing to me, but there was also a feeling because God wasn’t taking it away just miraculously. Maybe he’d abandoned me.
There’s a particular Psalm, Psalm 13, I think it says “How long, Oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you keep hiding your face? Please answer me.”
Just the desperation there of the feeling when we’re going through painful suffering and trials of “where’s God in all of this?” It took a while for me to understand growth through affliction and that came gradually. There’s several aspects of this. There’s my own, not understanding the difference between commonplace, worry that everyone experiences, and a disorder like anxiety or a real mental health issue.
That was the biggest hurdle for me to get over was to learn. So when I learned that I had OCD and I learned I have panic disorder, I was able to shift over into, “well, maybe this is how God’s answering my prayer.” I was able to see just like if because I do have hypertension, the answer to that, God gave me wasn’t you just miraculously heal my hypertension, it was for me to go on medication, treat my hypertension. And so that helped me to understand that these are very real disorders and to learn about how they develop, why they develop, how they’re genetic. I see that in my family that’s definitely genetic and that it’s not a sin to treat a disorder and affliction and seek professional help for it.
That was something I had to work through, but when you try to talk about it to other Christians, actually, if you don’t know what’s going on, but you know it’s a mental health issue. You may not know, like we’ve talked about how you can have OCD and not know it. So you might be going to a pastor or Christian friend, and you might talk a little bit about your anxiety disorder.
They come at you with what I call “mini-sermons.” They start telling they start quoting you all the verses about anxiety as if you’d never heard them before. It was especially when they know you’re Christian. They know you study the Bible. They know that you followed Christ to the best of your ability.
It’s very condescending because they water it down too. “You just don’t know how to not worry because you don’t trust God.” This is a faith issue. If you had more faith, it’s even gone so far, and this is the one that drives me the most nuts is if you have a mental health issue or anxiety disorder, people will say things to you like you have a theme? That sort of thing. That’s bad. This is awful especially for a person with scrupulosity, religious OCD themes. I mean, that’s horrifying. It just makes it 10 times worse. There’s this lack of knowledge out there when it comes to understanding these disorders.
I really think anxiety disorders are probably the least understood because of Bible verses about worry being equated with an anxiety disorder and they’re not at all the same. And if you’re a sufferer you definitely know the difference, but people who don’t have experience or a loved one who they know and see going through this, they just automatically assume, unfortunately, that this is what it is.
Carrie: Right. It’s hard for pastors and ministry leaders to understand. They don’t necessarily have that type of training or clinical background. And sometimes they’re dipping toes in the water that they need to kind of stay out of and just say, “Definitely we will support you and love you and pray for you but we also want you to get professional help because that’s important and God can use those things in your life. God can use therapy and medication.” These negative experiences that you had with maybe pastors or other people in the church who were well-meaning, let’s say, and trying to help you, did that cause you to want to go public with your story and write a book?
Mizi: Yeah. Yes, it really did. It wasn’t just that though but that was a big part of it. What you just said about they really don’t have the training or the ability to recognize these disorders. Scrupulosity, for instance. If a person is struggling with doubts about their salvation and maybe this pastor has known this person for most of their life and they’re suddenly in their office and they’re going through all these thoughts with them, then the pastor gives them the reassurance from scripture and they’re like, “okay” and then they come back again.
They start saying the same thing over again and even the pastor there’s a level of frustration that can develop and they’re not equipped and they aren’t knowledgeable about OCD and how it manifests itself in a person who’s suffering. So I found that it was really important to share my story about living with anxiety disorders as a Christian and a Christ-follower, but in particular about OCD because it’s so misunderstood. And in particular about scrupulosity OCD because when you go that direction, people are even more inclined to think it’s a spiritual issue even the sufferers themselves really struggle.
They can even know they have OCD and they accepted about all the other kinds of themes and obsessions that they struggle with. For some reason, when it switches over to their relationship to Christ then it’s a spiritual issue. So the book explains why it’s not, and that OCD is OCD no matter what the theme, the treatment approach is the same. If there are things you don’t understand, which is very possible about your walk with God that you can learn through the Bible true, valid, real questions in OCD that can even happen because we’re all at different places in our walk with Christ. [00:37:05] You can still learn that thing, but you don’t have to learn it 50 times. That’s when you know, what’s OCD. It’s like if the answers don’t suffice, if the anxiety isn’t satiated, and laid to rest with answers that are logical reasoned arguments, it’s OCD. Especially if you have OCD, you can pretty much be sure. And so I wanted to lay that all out my own journey because I felt that there’s probably a lot of people with this struggle. If a Christian, a believer, a follower of Christ has OCD, there’s a good chance that it’s going to go that direction and they’re in their life at some point, because OCD always goes after what’s most precious to you.
And for the Christian, their walk with Christ is the most precious thing of their entire existence. So it’s going to go there and I wanted people to understand they weren’t alone, but I also knew there were a lot of people like me who got all the way to 50 or 25 or 30, 40, whatever and didn’t even know that that’s what it was. I thought by sharing my story they could discover that the way I did and, and get directed towards the help they needed and that was important to me. The other aspect of it is the growth in it through that. Before I go there, I did want to add to what you said about ways that the church can support people with these issues, these different kinds of anxiety, all mental health issues as far as that goes.
I think the number one thing they do is listen and then validate the experience as a real affliction not merely a spiritual issue that can be fixed by more prayer, more Bible study, more faith but to literally be willing to support people and say, “Hey, this is a real medical or mental health issue for which you can get help. We want to encourage you towards going to your doctor and starting that process. We want to encourage you that if they say you should see the specialist to go ahead and do that.
We want to encourage you that if they suggest medication might be helpful to you, by all means, please, please do that because it’s so harmful to say things, like it’s a lack of faith and taking medication, means that you aren’t trusting in God and all the things that you can.
And it’s so harmful and I don’t even know how to describe what I’m trying to say. It puts up such a roadblock.
Carrie: It just makes the problem worse.
Mitzi: Yeah and it hurts people. It’s important for churches to be able to be compassionate, pray for the person with a mental health issue, and the same exact way you pray for anybody who has any other type of health issue. Treat them the same, validate instead of turning it into a spiritual issue. I wanted to say that this is what the church needs to do.
Carrie: Yeah. I think that that’s so important and so helpful because we have this ability to rally around people who have just had a baby in the church. We’re really good at that. We can bring you a casserole and we’re really good at rallying around somebody that’s going through cancer or has lost a loved one but then when it comes to something that’s invisible, like an anxiety disorder or OCD, almost like people don’t know what to do with that.
Mitzi: Yes. They either don’t know what to do with it or they’ve kind of bought into the stigma and I’ve tried to kind of sort that out. I don’t know all the reasons people don’t believe in the validity of mental health issues but I suspect that part of the reason might be just a fear of my total health issues because of when I was really young and I was first starting to experience these mental health issues to the point where they were debilitating, all I could think of was I’m going to get locked up in asylum. So there’s these visions and pictures that people have of what it’s like or what people are who are crazy, that sort of thing.
So there’s fear around stigma of what it is to struggle with any kind of mental health issue and it said because there’s so much help out there. There’s so many people in the churches that are sitting in the pews who have mental health issues and you won’t even do that.
Carrie: Absolutely, that’s huge. So as we’re getting towards the end here at the end of every show, I like to ask the guests to share a story of hope since this is called Hope for Anxiety and OCD. So this is the time that you’ve received hope from God or another person.
Mitzi: Okay, there’s lots of stories I could tell. There’s been so many things and I get notes from people all the time about how the book has led to them for the first time discovering this is what’s wrong and finally getting the help they needed. So that’s how God’s used my experience where you comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received from God, which has been very humbling to me. For me, I don’t even remember how I knew to read this book, but I picked up a book by a person called John Bunyan that he wrote in 1666 and it’s called “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.” Mr. Bunyan’s story resonated with mine in ways I could not have believed. As I read this book about his experiences, really what he had was OCD scrupulosity. When you read this book, it is just absolutely eye-opening and the struggles that back and forth.
That’s how it debilitated him, how it crippled him, how he would be trying to even preach later on a sermon and the intrusive thoughts would just be blaring in his head and he was so terrified they were going to come out of his mouth right while he was preaching and it just crippled him. He tells this whole thing and it’s so interesting to read because it’s like that’s what it was like for me. At the end of his account, in this book, he says, he admits that this thing was an affliction that God had allowed in his life. It was an affliction. The very next thing he says is God, I’ll use his language, “God Duff order it for my good” and then he gives this list of all the ways God had used this to grow him and his faith. Even his account of how he learned to just accept the uncertainty of the thoughts and to press on in his choice to venture all for the sake of Jesus Christ was ACT basically.
This is amazing. I’m thinking God knew that I was going to read that book. He wrote it in 1666. God knew when I read that book, John Bunyan’s story was going to encourage me and it would show me something. It would show me that this affliction has a purpose. The last chapter of my book, I share the purpose in my own life.
That chapter is called Purposeful Affliction. One of the biggest ways I’ve changed in how I talk about my anxiety disorders and in my OCD in particular, as I used to kind of go along and say, “well, I have OCD, but God can still use me in spite of it.” That’s kind of how I worded it. Now I say, I have OCD and God is able to use me because of it. That’s because of the ways He’s grown me through this experience of affliction. That’s not uncommon. God, Paul talked about it, talked about a storm in the flesh. God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is perfected in your weakness.
Paul ends up saying, I’m going to glory in this affliction because of this because when I’m weak, I’m depending on God’s strength and not my own. God uses these things in ways, perseverance, and empathy. The things that I learned through my OCD in particular, in my OCD scrupulosity is just amazing but reading that book that was just literally a godsend. And you think about it, they didn’t even know what OCD was back then, but God laid it on John Bunyan’s heart to write about it and so 1666, 150 years old. Here we are and I’m like reading this book and I’m like, “this is amazing.”
It just shows that OCD has been around for a really long time. It’s not a new thing. It’s just that we now understand you know what it is and there’s help and there’s hope, and everyone who is struggling with this, I just want them to have the chance to understand what it is and how to get help especially for my brothers and sisters in Christ.
Carrie: Right. Your story and what you’re doing and just being vocal and open about being a very strong Christian who has also had a struggle in an affliction, I think it’s so hopeful to other people. Hopefully, who will hear this podcast, but what we’re talking about with church leaders that such my passion and desire is that people would just get however they get it, whether they’re getting it through listening to a podcast or reading your blog or talking to somebody with a personal struggle. I just want people to be able to sit with people in pain and say, “We’re here for you.”
Mitzi: Yes. It’s so huge. It is so important and it’s important to understand that it’s painful. Like you called it invisible and it is. I would still get up every day, go through the motions like a robot. Sometimes I would fix my hair. I would put on my makeup. It was difficult to go out when I was really, really sick, but I still did it. I would sit in church and be tortured because of my OCD, but I would sit there and sometimes I’d want to run out, but you can’t see it. It is really debilitating.
The only way you could see it on me was I would get really skinny. I would get quieter. I would withdraw. I probably didn’t smile and laugh much. Those kinds of things but it’s very painful. For me definitely has been the thing that caused the most pain in my life and the most long-lasting because it can just hang on and hang on. I went through one whole pregnancy with it and then in between, and then another whole pregnancy. I still had the same thing going on. That’s how long it can hang up.
Carrie: If people want to dive in and read your whole story, will you tell us the name of the book? I will put a link to it in the show notes as well.
Mitzi: Sure. The name of the book is “Strivings Within-The OCD Christian” and you can find it on Amazon. If you just write that in and even my name, you can look at my name, it’s VAnCleve. That’s the main book I have out there. I do have another book. We’ve talked about as far as OCD today necessarily, but it’s a direction, another direction up and going, and it’s a fictional book with a little bit of my experience mixed in as a teen. That was about what it was like to have social anxiety and it’s written in a fictional form and that one’s called, “That’s in Your Dreams. That’s the name of that one. That’s all also on Amazon, but it’s kind of a nice book for teens who struggle with that type of anxiety, social anxiety. It might be relatable to them in a story form. It’s just a story about a girl trying to go to high school and trying to fit in, be normal and the social anxiety is always shoving her back down. And so I want to try to work on those kinds of things too for teens, but I haven’t been very dedicated with that.
Carrie: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.
Mitzi: Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity, anytime. I can share not because of what it does for me, but what I hope it might do for someone else who’s looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for someone who can relate to what they’re going through. And also like you said, for the church and for pastors and people in leadership positions to understand better what these disorders are, what they’re like, and how they can help. So thank you.
Carrie: Ever since I did this interview with Mitzi, I have been really pondering this idea of growth through affliction in our lives. I hope that you chew on that one for a little bit too because there are so many different things that God uses that are hard to go through and yet they grow us closer to him. They grow us closer to other people and they shape our character in ways that we might never have received had we not gone through those difficulties.
I hope that this podcast has encouraged you. If it has, will you do me a big favor and tell a friend. There’s probably someone in your circle of influence who needs messages that will help them reduce shame and increase hope and that’s what we’re all about on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing completed by Benjamin Bynam. Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
