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Relationship Obsessions Combined with Scrupulosity Pierre's Story - Carrie Bock

131. Relationship Obsessions Combined with Scrupulosity: Pierre’s Story

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

In this episode, Carrie shares Pierre’s courageous journey with OCD, exploring how childhood fears and religious teachings shaped his mental health struggles and eventual path to healing through counseling and faith.

Episode Highlights:

  • Pierre’s journey through OCD and the compulsion to replay past events.
  • The role of forgiveness in freeing Pierre from resentment and anger.
  • Pierre’s discovery of peace through trusting in God’s promises during anxious moments.
  • The power of grace in liberating from perfectionism and fear.
  • Insights into how faith and forgiveness can lead to personal and spiritual growth.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I’m honored to share the powerful testimony of Pierre, who has experienced both relationship obsessions and scrupulosity. Pierre’s journey began in childhood, with an early fear of sin and losing his salvation, which later developed into intense OCD symptoms. His story is one of struggle but also of profound spiritual growth and healing.

Pierre discusses how his fears initially took root when a family friend read a Bible passage about the sin against the Holy Spirit. As a child, this deeply impacted him, leading to a persistent fear of blasphemy and the loss of his salvation. These fears followed him into adulthood, manifesting as relationship obsessions and religious scrupulosity, including a deep anxiety about remarriage after his first marriage ended in divorce.

Throughout the episode, Pierre shares how his OCD journey intertwined with his faith, leading to a complex struggle between spiritual concerns and mental health challenges. His turning point came when he began to understand that his obsessions were not sins but rather a mental health issue. With the support of counseling, his wife, and a discipleship program, Pierre learned to renew his mind and reject the lies that OCD fed him.

Pierre’s story highlights the importance of understanding OCD from both a spiritual and mental health perspective. It’s a reminder that God’s love is constant, even in the midst of our deepest fears. If you’re struggling with similar issues, know that you’re not alone and that healing is possible.

Thank you for listening to this episode. If you found Pierre’s story encouraging, please consider leaving a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps others find this show and begin their journey toward peace and healing. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Explore Related Episode:

118. How Do I know if this Thought is an OCD Obsession? with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript:

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 131. I am your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. On today’s show, we have a personal story of OCD from someone named Pierre. We’re not saying his full name on the podcast or sharing any images of him. For ministry reasons, I wanted to bring you this powerful testimony.

Pierre emailed me a while back about his story, and I thought, this is just It’s so powerful. People need to hear what God has done in his life.

Carrie: Pierre, tell me a little bit about your childhood experience and how OCD showed up for you. What did that look like? How did it all start?

Pierre: I don’t know where to start. I wasn’t a fearful child. I wasn’t really somebody who hid in the bed. I was a bit adventurous and I loved the outdoors and I wanted to play every kind of game, but where is when it started really as a child, we had a nanny, a family friend who just came when my parents were out and she would babysit. My brother and I, for bedtime, she would read the Bible to us, and I didn’t even know that it was not the same to do to read the adult Bible to kids.

She would read out of the page, and one night she just read along, and it came to the story of the sin against the Holy Spirit, which at the time, maybe I was eight or nine, I didn’t understand what was it about I just realized that something was off with those stories. Something I didn’t understand. 

I remember when the next day I left by my schoolmates going to school before me. A few seconds in the corridor before the teacher realized, and she grabbed me. I gave my life to Jesus just in case because having heard a story like this, that you can be in danger of hell, even as a child.

Carrie: So you were scared of God after hearing that story?

Pierre: I didn’t understand. What it was about, I just know it was bad. If I found myself in that situation, it was bad. So I wanted to be safe. I had the sense that I could potentially sleep or fall or lose my salvation or something like that, even at that age. I think that was something I carried with me. I had no idea that I could go to my parents and talk about it.

Carrie: Why was that? Were you afraid you’d get in trouble or you weren’t sure that they would understand what you were afraid of?

Pierre: They would not understand. They would not realize it was serious for me. And I had no idea that it would be just a thing to do. When you’re scared, you go to your parents because they’re important people in your life.

They would reassure you. They would explain things. That’s what I do with my own children now. Anything that scares them, I want to talk it over and make sure we’re on the same page. We understand exactly what’s going on and I don’t let it happen again.

Carrie: But there was some teaching in your church that you had told me, like, about emotions and therapy. So maybe there wasn’t this freedom to be anxious or be depressed or have other certain emotions.

Pierre: I grew up in a Christian family, so that’s absolutely fantastic. I even had the privilege of having my parents, my dad is a pastor, and his dad before him was a pastor, so that’s very good. And the flip side is also, I think, the sense that I had very young that I had to be very careful about my behavior in church and elsewhere.

I wasn’t really allowed to be rough and to keep the honor of the family. I would say, something like that. I was very serious about things I heard in church. That was always my belief that He’s a God and we need to be careful not to offend Him. So we don’t sin, we don’t do bad stuff, we don’t use bad language.

Things I discovered later on in life that I never knew, but that’s things you don’t do either. I would say my church has a Pentecostal background. I grew up in the older generation. When I was a kid, these people were still around. I understand now that they came out of the Great Depression and the Second World War period of time, when maybe there was an upbringing of not showing up emotions.

The phrase I heard a lot was put up a smile on your face. Whenever there is some problem in your life, you don’t talk about it, at least openly. You don’t share your struggles.

Carrie: So that makes sense, probably why you wouldn’t share things with your parents if you felt like it.

Pierre: Yes. I can’t really translate that in English, but something I heard is that a sad Christian is a liability to the church. You’re not sad. If you’re a Christian, you have to be joyful. You have to be crazy about God and everything goes well for you. Because the faithful are blessed or something like that.

Carrie: I think a lot of people still believe that today. Like if I’m a Christian, I’m supposed to have joy, I’m not supposed to be angry, that’s another one.

I’m not supposed to be mad, and I’m not supposed to be sad, just supposed to be happy, joy, joy, joy all the time, and that’s just not reality. Thankfully, we have a lot of Christians in the Bible who weren’t happy all the time and who did cry and who did express emotions and thinking, just thinking about David and the Psalms.

I don’t know how people justify those types of beliefs with scripture. When you shifted some of your beliefs on this later in life, I imagine, was that comforting to you to find those places in scripture where Elijah was depressed and David was really sad? I mean, was that kind of comforting like, Oh, you can be sad and be a believer?

Pierre: Now I know, but there was a time when maybe I was starting to develop what later became a full-blown depression. When I was reading the Bible, only the bad bits would jump at me from the page. I would read condemning verses or things that I wasn’t really expecting. And because I would read the Bible as if God is speaking to me, while he’s speaking bad stuff to me.

Apparently, something must be wrong, I must sin somehow and still have that background of, I can lose my salvation, I can fall from grace, you know, I must be very careful. So if I read something in the pages of the Bible that speaks negatively. Therefore, there is a chance that I need to check my track record of going to church, especially being on time.

That was a big thing. At the time, it was all about what you wear. You are a man, you have a suit and a tie. And if you’re a woman for some time, it would be head covering. A lot has changed in my church for the better, but until maybe 20 years ago, I still remember those things being strongly imposed.

Carrie: Did it feel like there were just when it came to God, there were just a lot of rules? Maybe you’re going to mess something up.

Pierre: One thing I also want to emphasize, it’s me, it’s my own understanding of things. Other people might have not viewed the same Bible. Versus the same way. And I changed my views over time also. And then I remember, and when it all started for me, I wasn’t even sure if I was allowed to go to therapy if it was not an extra scene on top of all the others.

So my dad was the pastor. He was very. Open for therapy. So I learned later on to really go to him and speak. That was a process.

Carrie: Sure. How old were you at that time where your dad encouraged you to go to therapy?

Pierre: I was 30 years old, nearly. If you remember from the beginning of my story, about 20 years, I had carried that basically fear in me.

Maybe going back that we can change that little timing there. I remember because in the church where you talk a lot about Jesus, about the return of Jesus, that’s what you expect in the church. I was taught about the rapture. So as a consequence, even very in my teenage years, if I could not sleep at night, I would go down and check on my parents to see if there was in their rooms. If I hear them snore, that’s okay. The rapture has not opened. I’m okay. I can go back to bed. But nearly every night I would do that. It became sort of a ritual for me.

Carrie: Yes. A lot of checking.

Pierre: I needed to be sure that Jesus had not left me out. That’s one little episode also. What happened to me was about 22 years old. I got married very early and this marriage didn’t turn out well at all. My wife just left me after one year. I came home to my parents a bit like a prodigal son. I’m thankful to them that they didn’t shame me at all, or they didn’t really blame me for anything that happened, as it was before. And so on top of everything else, I would carry that as a label on me that, you know, I’m done again.

I would read everything I can get my hands on about those two things. The big subject would be the Holy Spirit that Jesus talks about, and divorce and remarriage, that is ever a thing that we talk about in church. I’ve gone through every bit of literature in French, in English, in everything, really.

Carrie: Just trying to seek that reassurance that it would be okay for you to get remarried.

Pierre: Every visiting pastor, you know, about his opinion, one got really fed up and told me to just stop. Oh, man. It was too much. That’s the setting because when God allowed me to meet this girl, she is a British lady, and now we’ve been married for about 12 years.

We have two children together and she’s fantastic. I hope she hears that, but when I was considering talking about my feelings about what I really, I wanted to invite her out and we went to McDonald’s the very first thing. So what about me? I’m divorced. I’m the son of a pastor, and I’m not that poster child of a pastor child.

Thankfully, someone in the youth group got her first, and she was away somehow. She told me, I know your story. That was out of the way, and we could just start talking, and we decided that we liked each other. We started to have tea. She came to France to be an English language assistant, and she wouldn’t find a house.

A mom just suggested that she would write the church, the nearest church to her job. They knew someone who could provide accommodation. The email landed at the pastor’s desk and he said, I have two grown-up sons and they’re out. The bedroom is available. Just come. She ended up in my bedroom.

We find out that we have some of the way to work and back in common, we would share that length of a journey on a Tuesday evening and get to know each other a little bit. When I was considering whether we could go further, get engaged, because I was serious about these things, the thought was ever can I, should I, is that something that’s allowed at all?

I would go back and forth. Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. I think that broke my brain over it.

Carrie: This whole time you didn’t know that. I mean, this is kind of classic relationship, OCD mixed with scrupulosity, it sounds like. You didn’t know you had OCD at all?

Pierre: No. It’s actually my wife who found out several years later because when she has a question. She Google’s everything and she found OCD scrupulosity symptoms be like this and this and that. And she said, “Oh, that sounds like Pierre”, but I’m ahead of myself. What happened was that I started to have those thoughts in my head and it was an actualization of my fear that I would blaspheme the spirits.

Just as the Bible describes really a flaming arrow, like a shooting star in my head.  I just couldn’t or I didn’t know what to do with that and they became even more present. I think it lasted about two weeks and on the 31st of May 2010.

I remember the day.  I remember the moment it just broke out. It was just us as a damn. A dam had broken in my head and I was in that panic attack that just could not stop. I was in my own flat. I was grown up. I was independent. I was having my life. I ran back to my parents and eat under the bed. I just couldn’t say anything because I just thought, you know, if I speak it, it will become true.

It would become a true blasphemy. So it was unspeakable. In the real sense of the word, I was feeling like I was burning inside of me. My chest was so tight and I was completely shocked. That’s something I wanted to avoid by all means. Something I’m not something I just wouldn’t dream of and it was all happening again.

I’m describing it from the perspective of somebody who’s read every single verse about it. I just couldn’t sleep at night and I just wouldn’t be awake during the day. So to me, that’s a description of hell.

Carrie: That was anxious all

Pierre: The time for no particular reason and I wasn’t about to blame God because the thing just happened in my head.

The very first reaction of my father was to get an appointment with a Christian counselor. I learned that these guys exist. He gave me something to sleep, and we started talking about my story and everything I shared my fears and I shared everything I could remember about my difficult moments, the divorce, the different hurts that I lived as a teenager or young adult, the difficulty about working in the workplace. I had some difficulty keeping a job.

I think everything feeds the anxiety. Every little rejection, whether it’s true or just perceived, it’s all added. And then when it’s completely, when the hole is full, it explodes and,

Carrie: So how did you come to like that realization that this was a mental health issue versus a spiritual issue?

I think that’s something that a lot of people dealing with OCD wrestle with. Is this a spiritual issue? Is this a mental health issue? Is this both?

Pierre: To me, if it’s a spiritual issue, it needs a spiritual answer. In my case, because I thought the sin was too big to be even forgiven. Just read about what Jesus says himself. If truly this is the case, there is no forgiveness, so there’s no need to go to a spiritual answer. 

Carrie: Makes sense.

Pierre: I had to go around the short circuit, the anxiety to be able to deal with it, to really understand what it is all about. When I realized that it’s not a sin issue because I haven’t actually proceeded to blaspheme the spirit because that’s not what I wanted to do in the first place.

That’s through the reading of all the material that I came across. I realized what Jesus is really talking about. I’m able to initiate my own understanding of what’s happening. I receive a lot of help. Other people’s point of view. But that’s particularly important that people just speak into your life at this very moment, then bring hope and bring comfort that no, you’re not actually seeing the problem, whether it’s mental, whether it’s a disturbance in the brain.

I have no idea. I just know that something happened. And so therefore. There must be a problem, but it has others, and God is not angry at you for thinking whatever comes through the brain.

Carrie: You found counseling really helpful, kind of getting that objective point of view on everything and some clarification?

Pierre: What really kept the balance when I got married to my wife, we moved to the UK and someone in the church just grabbed me and took me to a discipleship program called Freedom in Christ, which really helped me a lot.

It takes really the fundamentals of the Bible in a way that engages the person to see themselves as really, they are saved. They are redeemed, they are new, and they can renew their mind, they can change what they believe about God and other people, especially themselves. They can fight those thoughts that come into their heads, and just not believe them as if they were themselves thinking these things.

It might be the enemy just poisoning their minds, and they can just stand up and say, “No, I don’t want to think these things. They’re not me. They’re not what God wants me to think about renewing your mind.”

I remember one of the sessions was about forgiveness. What they ask you to do is to take a piece of paper and on the column, you write the name of a person and next to it, what they did or what they said to you.

The very fact, and next to it, what you felt about it and what it made you believe about yourself, about God or something like that. And when you decide to forgive this person, you realize that you’re not holding what they did against them at all anymore. 

I have a story about this, if I may. I was working for an old Christian lady. She has a big house, plenty of rooms. She needed a cleaner, but it was a particular kind of lady because she had very strong ideas about how she wanted the cleaning done. We always found ourselves at odds about my hoovering the whole thing at once versus her wanting one room at a time.

I grew very stressed and intense, even as far as spraying every morning that would be okay and that we don’t have that sort of, an argument over how the dusting is done or how the beds are made or something like that, which I find ridiculous. 

One time I was working for her and it all became very, just too much. In my head, I kept just thinking about the past. A lot of things just came up from very long ago. What I used to do to deal with these things was to replay the whole story in my head and try to get myself in a different outcome or be able to say, finally, 10 years after the fact, what I should have said or what I wanted to say to that person who’s now dead, maybe, or gone. I didn’t realize that it had no effect. It just feeds the problem.

Carrie: Yes. It’s a compulsion essentially to replay things in your mind.

Pierre: Basically in the same week, I went through this session on forgiveness. This lady’s name was on the list. The next week, I went back to work and the same story again, and she was not happy about the way I cleaned the room.

I remember just looking at her and thinking, what’s going on? I should be in tears now. I should be completely overwhelmed. And it’s just as if, It’s okay. He’s just speaking what she wants to say. I’m here and we can start talking about these things. I said, “You know what? You’re my employer. Yes, but I’m also your brother in Christ, and you have no right to speak to me like that.”  That was one element, one story when I was really at that moment, taking things. Biblically, I could handle things that I was never able to do before.

Carrie: That forgiveness piece is really powerful. Then almost like it freed you up to be assertive and communicate healthily instead of just holding all of that anger inside.

Pierre: I realized that a lot of what I was afraid of were lies. Lies that I pick up very early about not sharing my problems, about being a good boy, not making a mess, not making a fuss about anything. Things that I picked up wrongly from church. I’m sure that nobody ever taught these things from the pulpit, but that was what I received.

Carrie: You just felt like you had to be perfect. That was part of your conscientiousness.

Pierre: I realized also that I can trust God when he says that he loves me.

Carrie: That’s huge. How did you get to that point? Like, you can trust God when he says he loves me.

Pierre: Well, I want to say I’ve come a long way. I was reading the book of Exodus, the Ten Commandments. When I was in that state of really being fearful about being very anxious. So it’s, it’s a long time ago, but I remember I read it in French. I don’t know exactly how you read it in English. It jumped at me that this phrase is not written as a commandment is written as a promise. So in English, it’s, it does say, you shall not insert the comment, you shall not have other gods, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not, in my French Bible, it’s written as a future tense, and it changed everything, saying that, by the grace of God, I shall not do these things. 

Of course not. Why on earth would I go and murder somebody? Why would I even dream about cheating on my wife or something like that? Of course, it’s not me, my own self that’s able to do these things. It’s the power of God in me. But the way you read the Bible also informs the way you live.

I remember and, I’m still able to share it with people that came to free us from the rules and to give us life. It’s not about being perfect and checking all the marks so we can actually have a true relationship with God, brothers.

Carrie: I think that’s awesome. What would you want to say to somebody who feels like they’ve been going through this for a long time and they don’t feel like they have a lot of hope or that things can get better or maybe they feel like they’re beyond help? What would you say to that person?

Pierre: I’d be very careful saying, it’s okay, you’ll get over it. You know, I’ve been there before. I know what you feel. Those things are very dangerous to say. But just encourage people to talk about it, to open up, not to keep things inside as a prison. In my notes, I’ve written, uh, OCD is slavery.

It’s like, we chain ourselves with different fears that we have, the lies that we believe. We give the devil an opportunity to keep us down, but in fact, Jesus wants us to be free and to free others. So I love the song, “I’m No Longer a Slave to Fear.”

Carrie: Yes. that’s a good one.

Pierre: Every time I sing it, I change the chorus a little bit. I’m no longer a slave to anger. I’m no longer a slave to lust. No longer a slave to procrastination, anything. I have found those things about myself. Every time I think, every time I worship, every time I meet other people and we start talking about these things, I just jump on the opportunity.

I was those emotions, I was anxiety, and I was in bondage. I’m not perfect. I’m still on the way. I have moments where my wife reminds me that I’m going on a rant and it’s not healthy, but I’m definitely better than I was even a year ago.

Carrie: Yes. That’s awesome.

Pierre: Jesus loves you and he went all the way to die on the cross so that the fear and the anxiety would be dealt with. 

Carrie: The love of God is so powerful for us to focus on in terms of talking about being free, and you’re not the first person that said OCD is like a prison, I’ve definitely heard that from many people, or it’s like slavery, and when we truly understand and can rest and trust in the love of God, that changes things just dramatically in our lives, I’ve seen that in my life, just knowing like, okay, I’m going through suffering, I’m going through a hard time, there’s difficulties, but I know God loves me, and I know that I can rest in that, and if he loves me, and he’s my father, then he knows what’s best for me, and I can trust him that this isn’t the end of the story yet.

I think your story has so many redemptive pieces, even just talking about your wife, there’s probably somebody listening to this thinking, oh I’m never going to be able to get remarried again. I definitely went through that when I felt like I had the scarlet letter of divorce all over me after I got divorced from my first husband.

I just kind of wanted to say I didn’t want this. This wasn’t even something that I wanted. It happened. God brought you another spouse and God brought me another spouse. There’s hope out there too, for people who are struggling to find love and to find compassionate people that understand struggles. That piece is beautiful in itself as well. Your wife’s being patient with you and walking you through some of those challenges that you were struggling with. 

Do you still have some of the thoughts about the obsessions about blasphemy coming back and are those easier to shake off now?

Pierre: I think that this is dismantled right now. I’m not thinking in any shape or form at all about actually blaspheming. That would be a different story if I did. But anything else that really comes and scares me, any thought about finances, for example, anything that Price to tell me that I’m not going to make it I can’t handle the same way why God would let me down is rescued me from so much can take my little person and carry it to something I never dreamt about I would never have known that I would be married and have two beautiful children and if you’ve told me when it happened.

When we got married, we had nothing no money in the bank that itself is a story that I could also share. how God provided everything and also the fact that we are two in the boat so we can remind each other when one of us has a down moment. We can help each other and pray for each other. So it’s not always my wife who shakes me up. Sometimes it’s me. It’s my turn to say, I’ve been sad before. I’ve been there. I know what you feel, but it’s not the end of the story.

Carrie: Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I think it’s going to be encouraging to some other people who are struggling. I know it can be challenging sometimes speaking in your non-native language.

I appreciate you working through the English with us. We have people who listen all over the world, so I know that we have people that listen in the UK and Australia and other places. It’s always nice to hear from people outside the US too, and their stories.

__________________________________

 Are you struggling in your OCD journey right now? Are you tired of that endless cycle of obsessions and compulsions? I know some of you are dealing with mental compulsions like rumination that just seem so hard to get out of. Please come join me for the Freedom from Mental Compulsions Challenge. It’s a free webinar that I’m putting on. August the 5th at noon central time.

You can sign up at hopeforanxietyandocd.com/challenge. I’m going to be talking with you about how inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy may be able to help you. I’m Super excited to bring the 12 modules of ICBT to you in mid-August. 

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

126. What if I Abuse My Child? Postpartum OCD Story with Sarah Brown

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

In this episode, Carrie interviews Sarah Brown about her experience with postpartum OCD. Sarah shares her struggles with intrusive thoughts and compulsions after childbirth and how she found ways to cope and heal.

  • How Sarah identified early symptoms of OCD throughout her life, even as a child.
  • Sarah’s initial experiences with therapy and the challenges of finding appropriate treatment.
  • The impact of postpartum OCD on daily life and motherhood.
  • Practical advice for family members on how to support someone dealing with OCD, including managing reassurance-seeking behaviors.
  • Practical advice for new mothers who may be experiencing similar challenges.

Related Links and Resources:

Home

Explore related episodes:

https://hopeforanxietyandocd.com/92-harm-ocd-in-pregnancy-sent-me-to-the-er-with-author-amber-williams-van-zuyen

Transcript:

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 126. I’ve been slowly starting to tell you about our rebranding process that we’re going through on the podcast. I’m super excited to tell you that I’m in the process of interviewing different web developers who are going to help bring part of this new branding vision online.

I hope to have all the pieces in place this fall to share with you, and I’m excited to talk with you about all that God is doing through this process of helping me refine it. the show to be focused on what I believe he wants me to go in the direction of. If you’ve been following along with the podcast, you know we love personal stories, you know we’ve talked quite a bit about postpartum, anxiety, depression, and OCD.

So if you’re experiencing any of those things, we definitely want you to know that there’s hope and that you’re not alone. You may feel alone inside your head with a lot of different thoughts that can be quite terrifying at times. Our guest today is Sarah Brown, and she is going to candidly tell us her personal story of dealing with postpartum OCD.

Welcome, Sarah. Tell us a little bit about your story. When did you start to notice yourself having symptoms of OCD?

Sarah: I would say actually growing up over the years I would have symptoms like as a child there’d be times where I’d really fixate on something and feel like I had to confess it and even through my teenage years and then into my marriage.

I mean, I remember dealing with this even over the last Winter Olympics, a situation where I just felt like I had to confess it and now I see that that’s probably definitely OCD starting to like seep through the cracks. So I guess throughout my life.

Carrie: Were there thoughts in your head that you were confessing to other people that you were having?

Was that how it was showing up? Or things that you had done and you were like, Hey, I did this and I just want to let you know, or want to apologize for it?

Sarah: Yes. Things like that. I would say as much as a Christian can say this insignificant lying, somebody asks you a question and you respond off the cuff because it’s, maybe it’s an embarrassing question and you say, Oh no, I never did that, or I never would have done that. Years later being like, “Oh, I have this unconfessed lie in my life when you probably don’t need to confess that to that person.”That’s how it would come up. I did have, I remember a few persistent thoughts, phrases that were shameful that would run in my head and I was like, “What is going on?” Maybe about other people’s children or things like that. I think my anxiety level was not high enough to cause me to fixate on it which would cause it to be a recurring issue.

Carrie: So it was a little bit easier to allow those to move through, it was strange or unusual, but then you didn’t get as stuck on them as you did later in life.

You said that the postpartum OCD really set in and peaked when you weaned your fifth child. Tell us about that experience.

Sarah: I had dealt with anxiety through my motherhood, but never really did much to treat it, but I think I can look back and see patterns now. So anyways, after weaning her, this was one of the first times within my motherhood that I was not pregnant with another baby.

She was my fifth baby, so we decided to take a break. I weaned her right before Christmas, and then my anxiety started to ramp up in February and in March. I think it was probably like a hormonal situation because later on, I found out that my progesterone was off and my periods were long. I had PMDD where I was just extremely anxious right before my period would start. I think it was all working together to bring on what I would know later as postpartum OCD.

Carrie: What you’re saying is you had your kids pretty close together and so almost your body was used to being pregnant and then when it wasn’t, it kind of messed with your hormones or things got out of whack.

Sarah: I think that it brought to light my hormones being out of whack.

Carrie: How did that show up for you? Were you having OCD thoughts about your children? 

Sarah: It started, the whole onset when it got just super bad was my husband and I were watching a TV show and there were subtitles on the screen because more than half of the show was in a different language. Some spy show.  Every time the words, thank you, would show up on the screen, I would see a different word. It wasn’t actually seeing it. It was the word like, was that there or not? Was that in my mind? Why was that there? Of course, it was this word associated with something that was shameful for me that we continued to watch this show over the next couple weeks. Every time somebody would say thank you, it would pop up. As my anxiety went up about it and my shame, I felt like I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because it was just shame inducing. It just made the whole situation worse and worse. And then it came to a head. One night, I had what I like to think was probably just a couple hour panic attack, where I started having one particular intrusive thought about molesting my son during a diaper change.

I could not get rid of it. It was just over and over and over and over. It felt real. I could see him laying on the rug. I could see the rug itself and the sunlight coming into the room and I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I couldn’t sleep, had high anxiety, and couldn’t eat, which is when I finally went to my first therapist to try to find some help.

I said I have no idea what’s going on. I promise I don’t want to do this, but I have this thought I can’t get out of my head. And with that were other thoughts right in that same time. Also, like, fear of, what if I’m homosexual? Where did that come from? It was just so out of the blue. I feared I would just be out of control of my body and that I would do something to hurt my family and I wouldn’t be in control of myself, like I would basically go insane. I had all of these kind of recurring things, but the molestation thought was the worst one. And it hit right, as OCD does, it hit right home with my only son. Of course, this very precious, all of my children being precious, but I only have one son. It would be on this particular child that my thoughts were centered.

Carrie: Okay, that makes a lot of sense, actually, just this in this terms of OCD being attached to things that you value. I imagine that you probably hadn’t heard maybe of other mothers having these types of really scary thoughts.

Was that something that you felt very isolated in or like, “Okay, I can’t tell anybody about this.It’s so horrible.”

Sarah: Extremely isolated. In fact, I only knew of one other person in my realm who I didn’t even know, knew of, an author’s child, who had grown up with OCD, and to be honest, the thought of a diagnosis of OCD was just, I couldn’t even carry that burden at the time.

I thought, well, maybe it is OCD, But I couldn’t even look it up because everything was so heavy. I thought I was going crazy and I really had fears that if I told somebody I was going to be locked up, taken away from my kids, those were like my core fears of being misunderstood in the whole thing. So very isolating.

Carrie: I think that is a common fear that I’ve heard from other mothers too is all of your worst fears seem like they’re going to come true. I’m going to be taken away from my kids or they’re going to be taken from me. I’m going to be determined to be somehow like an unfit mother because I have all these thoughts that I don’t even want that are just there out of nowhere.

That’s an interesting time period too After you’ve been married for however long and have five kids to all of a sudden have thoughts about what if i’m homosexual? That’s a pretty good indicator that’s an OCD thought just completely like out of the blue. Were that one any easier to dismiss or what did it just seem really bizarre? Why is this coming now?

Sarah: It was bizarre. It was easier to dismiss, I think because my brain was, look, the bigger threat here is obviously to your wonderful kids that you love. That was where it was. Even I would have other thoughts right around the same time, like, God isn’t real, I don’t believe in him.

This is coming from a person raised in a Christian home who never ever doubted the existence of God. And suddenly, I would pray, or I would read my Bible, and, which I could hardly do, everything was so raw. I would just have this thought, I don’t believe that. And that’s coming from somebody who had believed this, from a child.

I think because the very worst thoughts were about my kids, I think those ones hit home the worst and therefore the other ones kind of receded back and they weren’t so terrible. That makes sense.

Carrie: That does make sense. Tell me what that process was of getting help for you.

Sarah: I went to my first therapist for two sessions and she said, look, you’ve got to get a grip. I realized that this person was not for me. Six months later, after struggling so much, I mean, I was reassurance seeking all the time.

Carrie: Did that therapist not know about OCD? The therapist, was it kind of like a Christian based therapy?

Sarah: She was a therapist and she did do EMDR with me for the first session and maybe even that second session that I went to, but it definitely didn’t flag OCD for her right away.

Carrie: Interesting. Okay.

Sarah: Which I think is unfortunate. I know that there is a statistic out there that says takes like six years to get diagnosed.

Carrie: Sometimes longer, kind of depending on how long, what age people started at. It’s hopefully that number is getting less, but I mean, I’ve heard, yeah, even higher to get a diagnosis.

Sarah: Yes. I really hope that goes down for people because I can’t imagine suffering for six years with it, especially because your compulsions tie you into it. It just reinforces it if you’re doing those compulsions. I think because maybe my compulsions were invisible, which is trying to pick it apart, reason with it, make sure in my head.

Carrie:A lot of ruminating? 

Sarah: Yes, tons. I mean, that’s what feeds it for me. I think maybe because it’s not like I was walking in there and saying, “Hey, I feel like my child’s going to get sick and die if I don’t wash my hands 100 times a day.” Maybe it would have been easier for her to see that it was OCD. I suffered for the next six months with it, and finally it got to the point where I was having obsessions about suicide which, I would say, intrusive thoughts. I’d see my deck, we have an upper deck and a lower deck, and I would glance up at it while playing outside with my kids and I would see myself hanging from it. That is a very hard thought, but the worst one was just an intrusive thought of sitting in my car in my garage, turning on the car, and Going to sleep.

I think what made it hard to distance is because I was so measurable, but at the same time, very afraid that I would ruin my life in some respect or another. Either I would hurt my kids, I would leave my marriage, or I would just kill myself. There are so many avenues to ruin your life, but all the worst-case scenarios.

All of them, all of them, so many. I finally having a hard time with that thought. I don’t know how long I dealt with it, maybe two weeks. Finally I told my husband I’m having to start. He got mad at me. Not mad, but like a righteous indignation. He said, “I can’t read your mind. You have to tell me that you’re struggling.”

I said, “I know. That’s why I told you.” The next day, I decided I’m going to go to therapy again. I’m going to try it again and I’m going to take medication until I’m better. Coming from the background that I came from, it was very hard for me to accept. The idea of taking medication, but it did help tremendously. And then to come back around to your question, I didn’t get diagnosed with postpartum OCD until a year and three months later after the onset, when I finally found out, Oh, this is actually something that other moms struggled with on a regular basis. I found that out through a perinatal therapist and started EMDR and kind of talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy with her.

Carrie: Okay.Awesome. I’m curious, was there specific traumas that you were trying to process with the EMDR or just working on some skills to get to a more relaxed space in your body?

Sarah: The trauma that I was trying to work through definitely had to do with thinking that I had caused myself to have OCD. Like it was my fault. Oh yes, definitely. It’s still, even today, sometimes something that haunts me, and I just have to respond back. Maybe it is, maybe not. Just leave it there. But I found out about sex from a, another like five-year-old girl when I was about five. We were just playing in our neighborhood, and it was a conversation I happened to walk in on, and anyway, it kind of opened this curiosity about it over my childhood.

When I started having intrusive thoughts as an adult or even as a teenager, I always thought, well, it’s because I was so curious, or I wired my brain to want to think about this type of thing. It must be my fault type of thing. EMDR did really help me to work through how I couldn’t have helped being in that situation.

It was not, it was not, and I couldn’t have helped being curious, very natural for a child to be curious. There could have been different responses from my parents, but they just didn’t know how to help me work through these things. EMDR did help with that trauma processing.

Carrie: That’s great. And then at some point you did some work on the rumination piece. You did ERP therapy, exposure and response prevention.

Sarah: Yes, I did about three months with the perinatal therapist and then I felt a lot better for the next six months, seven months. I was doing great. I really could even process it. I would think about OCD here and there throughout my day and it wouldn’t bother me, it wouldn’t suck me in or drag me down.

It really started ahead of the month where it just surged back up again. And so I started doing some research and I had just heard all over, reassurance seeking is bad, and ERP is the gold standard. I just spent some time praying about it, really felt God leading me to find a a Christian therapist because my other therapist was not a Christian.  Well, she was Catholic, let me say that.

Carrie: There were some faith differences between you and your first therapist. 

Sarah: Yes. With my perinatal therapist, she and I had different viewpoints about some things. We had some differences in our faith. I really felt the Lord leading me to seek out a therapist that had a more similar viewpoint about Christianity and worldview because with OCD, you want to be sure about so much, right? I didn’t feel like God was leading me to find someone who had the same viewpoint as I did. So he graciously provided someone who was willing to do ERP with me. I actually did all my sessions virtually. I did that for two months and it was extremely helpful and has given me so many tools that I still use today.

Carrie: Awesome. Tell me about some of those things that you use kind of in the moment when those obsessions come up.

Sarah: The first thing would be to recognize what it looks like for me. I actually have a notebook where I write down when I realize I have a theme that’s coming up. Themes for me would be like hurting my children, ruining my life, ruining my marriage, disappointing my husband in a way that would like leave him as.

It’s in a place where he is at a complete loss as to what to do in despair. Other themes there would be bringing shame on God’s name, God not being who he says he is, God planning evil. I would really say like the first thing that I learned from ERP is to just know your enemy. So then when you have a new thought that’s coming in.

You can go back and say, “Oh, look, it falls under. I’m going to ruin my life. Look at that. Happens to be OCD. It’s very sneaky.”

Carrie: It’s very helpful to identify, even though it may be like a different obsession, like there may be different wording that OCD throws at you, like you said, it’s still under that theme of like, “Oh, I’m going to ruin my life.” That was one of the things that I had shared kind of in a recent episode about, is this thought OCD is like, well, does it fit in with your themes that you usually have? Now people can jump themes, but typically there falls in things that they’ve heard before.

Sarah: Yes. The second thing I would say would be Learning how to respond, learning how to not engage with an intrusive thought or, you know, an obsession.

You find a phrase that communicates to you, like, challenge. So mine is, bring it on. Whenever I have something that triggers me, I might be changing a diaper, I might be bathing my kids, I might be sitting in church, somebody’s talking about God’s sovereignty. And something will trigger it, and I’ll just say, bring it on.

Another one is, maybe, maybe not. I’ll be triggered by the same thing, and it’s like, well, maybe I will, maybe I won’t, maybe I will ruin my life. And then, another thing would be to kind of chase it back down the alley that it came from. Not just, maybe God is real, maybe He’s not, but it would be like, maybe He’s not real.

Maybe I’ll waste my whole life doing things and worshiping something that’s not even real. And then when I die, I’ll just be buried in the ground and my whole life will kind of have been a waste in that way. Which is not true at all. I don’t believe that. But I’m taking the fear and I’m ramping up the anxiety, choosing not to engage in the desire to pick it apart.

What that’s doing for my brain is saying, this is not a valid threat. She’s actually thinking about it and working through it. Well, I guess we don’t need to bring that back up anymore. Yes. Another thing, script writing has been so helpful. Script writing is, you know, Basically writing a short story about your own personal nightmare.

Again, I have a notebook I keep it tucked away so that it’s not accidentally discovered by my children, but it has several of worst fears and so it might look like this and I’m just going to give la try to give a more mild one But they can be very hard to write down and I think the harder they are to write The closer you’re getting to helping yourself because OCD doesn’t back down.

It gives you really hard, terrible thoughts. And so you have to get right back at it, but it might be like, I trusted God my whole life, but he’s actually not trustworthy. If he really was trustworthy, he wouldn’t let that things happen to children. I cannot trust God, he is a liar. Of course for a Christian that sounds extremely blasphemous, and it is, however, what you’re doing is you’re taking that intrusive thought that says, I can’t trust God, what if I can’t trust him?

Well, if you really could trust God, then he should be more trustworthy, like he should not let bad things happen. And instead of being sucked into the desire to pick it apart and theologically and every time this thing comes up. By reading this script several times and going back to it when I have this fear come up again that God isn’t trustworthy, it helps to shut that down in my brain.

Carrie: After reading it so many times, you feel internally calmer. Basically, your brain gets bored with it. It’s kind of like, Oh, yeah, I heard that story before. I don’t really believe it now. You feel like it becomes less real, like when you’re in the OCD zone, whatever you want to call it, bubble zone like mode.

Everything feels really real that’s not real, and so then I wonder if, as you’re reading that story, it becomes less real and more like a story?

Sarah: It does. It becomes more like a story. You do definitely get bored with it. That’s exactly what my therapist would say. And initially though, it does increase anxiety and you will have the itch to perform the compulsion.

So for me, I would write down my script and then it would be hard after a therapy session not to assure myself, Oh, but I can read the scriptures and it’ll say that you can trust God and that he’s perfect in all his ways. Instead, you choose not to do that. If it feels like a deep need, Then that’s like your OCD saying, okay, this is, you need to do that compulsion to feel better.

So choose not to engage with it. And over time reading that script, your brain gets bored with it. After many times of reading the script, you start to see, oh, look, there’s the core fear or look, there’s my theme or wow, I can totally tell that’s not true by just reading it over and over again.

Carrie: Yes.I think that’s the struggle Mitzi Van Cleave a long time ago talked about. She researched that and did a lot of those on her own kind of over and over. I’m researching imaginal script writing and I think that’s the hardest part for Christians is feeling like, okay, I’m putting in something that’s not true maybe for myself or, or reading that over and over again. I think it’s easier, I don’t know if easier is the right word, but maybe to take the kind of maybe, maybe not stance at times.

It’s like, okay, why is it that I’m needing like assurance or needing to ask somebody a reassurance on that right now? I’m curious how this has impacted your spiritual journey with God. I know you talked a lot about struggling with that commitment to take medication until you got better, the commitment to kind of, sounds like you had to work through a lot of shame related to even having OCD in the first place. How did all of this interact spiritually in your relationship with God?

Sarah: I would say first of all, God was so gracious to me. I did find myself, especially through the first six months, a lot of tears, a lot of wondering, like, God, when are you going to show me the way out? This is just so awful. But now I look back and see that he was doing, like, really deep healing work in so many ways that I would never have imagined. trade out. I’m just so thankful for the way that he’s healed me. I did spend a lot of time, especially in the first six months, wondering when God would heal me or help me to get better or lead me out of it.

Now I see that he was doing a lot of great, deep healing work in many facets of my life. I think the greatest thing that I’ve learned through it all is just the voice of the Holy Spirit being different from the voice of OCD, a calm and gentle spirit. There’s a podcast that you did, FAQs about OCD, that was very helpful for me in just remembering that God spoke in a still small voice and it wasn’t a driving force, you have to do this right now.

I think it’s easy for a Christian to get OCD mixed up with the Holy Spirit. Definitely helped me with that. And I would also say, just God is so faithful to bring me to the other side where I can mother my children and be around them all day long because I’m a homeschooled mom of six and know how to deal with my intrusions. I don’t have so many anymore now that I’ve done exposure therapy and there are seasons where I have to come back and do more just to kind of, sometimes I get out of practice, but I’ve just found God to be so faithful to me in taking just what was so shameful and turning that into glory for me. Just that whole beauty for ashes thing about how God redeems, he takes terrible, awful things and he makes them for good and then he’s using it to help me even, I’ve had a couple friends that. Since I’ve shared my story, they have said, I’ve had the same thing. I had no idea it had a name. I’m just like, so grateful that God would ever use my story to help somebody else, maybe not have to suffer as long as I did. God is faithful.

Carrie: I think it’s very redemptive too. If people feel like they’re in. An unmanageable place with OCD. It’s very hopeful and helpful for you to say, yeah, these thoughts come into my mind every once in a while, but you can get to a place where you’re still functional. You’re still able to raise your family.

You’re still able to do things that are important to you. You’re not where you were before. And I hope that that gives someone hope, maybe who is in that sad, dark time of am I ever going to get out of this hole? Are things ever going to get better? So I hope that people hear that today. There’s hope on the other side of what they’re facing and what they’re dealing with. I wanted to ask you one more question, because we do have some family members that listen to the show. We do have some friends and people that are trying to be helpful to a loved one who’s suffering. What was that conversation like with your husband when all of this was going on?

How did you help him help support you in terms of like reassurance seeking and things like that? Was that hard for him to know? What do I say or how do I respond?

Sarah: I would say, first of all, it was so hard for me initially to share that I was having these thoughts. I didn’t even know that these thoughts had a name, intrusive thoughts.

He was very gracious when I did tell him about it. He didn’t freak out like I expected him to. But, I would say, if a family member shares with you that they’re having some deep dark thoughts like this, and you know that this is not true of their character, Just listen with an open heart and mind, and I would say support them in their journey to find healing, whether that’s through therapy, which they probably will definitely need, or medication, which might be a really helpful way to support them.

Another thing I would say with the reassurance seeking, my husband is good at this, saying, well, Sounds like you need to just face your fears, but it can also translate into motherhood. I have a child who deals with some, a lot of anxiety over sickness. So whenever we have the stomach bug running through our house, she says, Oh, I hope I don’t get sick, mom.

And I can pray with her and reassure her all day, but that’s empty reassurance. And really what’s helpful for me to do is say, Well, Eden, maybe you’ll get sick and maybe you won’t. But we’re going to make it through it and I have actually seen it with my own eyes that it’s kind of helped to, it increases her anxiety, but that releases it later on.

It helps her brain to deal with it. I would say the family member is constantly coming to you for reassurance. Try your best to lovingly not give them that reassurance. Ask the Lord for wisdom as to how you can support them without giving them reassurance because it does feed OCD.

Carrie: It’s a hard balance to strike, right? Being supportive. 

Sarah: It’s so hard because I did tell my mom at one point. I said, the best thing that I can hear is just like, you’re a good mom, and you’re really doing a great job. And she’s the most supportive person in the world, so she will say that. But then my OCD says back, she doesn’t know these thoughts.

What if I really am a terrible mom? So it really doesn’t help. Or maybe you say it once. I really believe that you are a great mom. But you don’t need to say it 20 times to them. I would say, look, I’ve already told you that. I’m not gonna tell you again. It’s a hard balance. It’s really hard.

Carrie: Yeah. Kudos for all of you who are supporting your loved ones who have, are dealing with OCD.

Maybe if they need to hear it, they’re doing a good job. Sarah, I know that you told me that you went through a mentorship program as well that was helpful for you. Can you tell us about that?

Sarah: Yes. My perinatal therapist recommended Postpartum Support International, I think it’s psi.org, but they have a peer mentor program, which basically, if you want support, you can interview with them and tell them what you’re dealing with, which they recognize that there’s postpartum OCD and postpartum psychosis and all of these different diagnosis And they’ll basically hook you up in a relationship with another mom who has dealt with the same thing, who has decided that they want to mentor someone going through the same thing.

They’re not a Christian organization by any means. They have all kinds of support groups out there. Like I said, I’m a Christian. I would like somebody who has faith to be my mentor, and they hooked me up with somebody who had, like, faith. And that was helpful, obviously, because if you’re a Christian, you want to be careful who you get your support and your counsel from, but the great thing about that is that you can have somebody who’s gone through the same thing, if you don’t know anybody else, which chances are we all know somebody who’s been through it, but we’ve never shared our stories because they’re just so embarrassing, but it hooks you up with somebody else who’s been through the same thing that can be a support to you.

For the next three to four months, you either have phone calls or you text. You stay in communication and that person is just there to be a support. That was a helpful resource for me. Now I do mentor other women through that same program.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I think that that’s really great. Sometimes, you know, we need somebody to just come alongside us who understands and there’s things that they’re shared experience that we don’t have to explain. Yes. Thousand percent. All right. Thank you for sharing some of these really vulnerable thoughts that you had with us. I think that that helps people because there’s going to be other people who listen who go, Oh, I’ve had that thought too.

Maybe I’m not a horrible person because I’ve had that thought. Maybe this is OCD talking. So thanks for sharing.

Sarah: You’re welcome. I do hope that it brings somebody so much hope, even if it brings one person steps forward to getting help, that will be God getting the glory for that.

Carrie: Hey, if you want to be in the know here on the podcast, you’ve got to get on our email list, okay? These are the people who know about the latest happenings even before they hit the airwaves. It’s super easy. You can go to hopeforanxietyandocd.com/free. Put your email in to receive any of the free downloads. You do actually have to click the download in your email when you receive it, otherwise you won’t be subscribed.

So that’s an important tip that you need to know. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. 

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

Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

121. Suicide Prevention: One Life Box at a Time with Heather Palacios of Wondherful

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie delves into the challenges of facing uncertainty amidst significant life transitions. Drawing from her own experiences, she offers helpful tips for coping with uncertainty and finding peace amid the unknown.

Episode Highlights:

  • The importance of trusting in God’s plan and finding peace amidst unknown circumstances.
  • Insights into dealing with uncertainty from a faith-based perspective.
  • Ways to find comfort and strength in your personal journey through uncertain times.
  • Tips for maintaining confidence and hopefulness despite facing unknowns in life.

Episode Summary:

I’m excited to share a deeply moving conversation with Heather Palacios, the founder of Wondherful. Heather discusses the intense shame and isolation she felt, particularly as a pastor’s wife, battling suicidal thoughts and actions while feeling trapped by societal and religious expectations.

Through years of therapy, medication, and unwavering faith, Heather has not only survived but has thrived, turning her pain into purpose. She founded Wondherful, a nonprofit that has sent nearly 15,000 life boxes to people struggling with mental health issues across the country and around the world. These boxes, filled with items that have helped Heather stay alive, are a lifeline for so many.

Her testimony is a powerful reminder of the importance of mental health support within the church and the healing that can come from sharing our struggles openly.

Tune in and explore how God’s love and the power of community can transform our deepest pain into a powerful testimony of hope.

Check out related episode:

104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD. My name is Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee and the host of this podcast. Today, I have an interview with Heather Palacios, who is the founder of Wondherful. We’re going to hear about her story of her own mental health struggles and what led her to start and continue. It’s just grown and grown and grown. 

Carrie: We’re glad that you’re here today.

Heather: Thank you for having me, Carrie. You’re amazing.

Carrie: Thank you. I wanted to hear a little bit about your own journey with mental health. When did that start for you? How did that show up? What did it look like?

Heather: Great question. It started when I was eight. That was a minute ago because I’m 50. It started in 1981, and at eight years old, I started having thoughts of suicide, but then I actually penned it in a letter and mailed it to my grandparents. You’re the first to know this. My mom and dad found that letter recently and mailed it to me.

I’ll be using that as a prop, especially when I speak to students, but yes, it started when I was eight and has been a struggle for me up till today.

Carrie: What caused you to get to that point where they’re challenging social relationships you were dealing with in elementary school or things going on at home?

Heather: I’ve struggled with suicide for the entire timeline of my life from eight to the current, but I haven’t been in the same season, obviously, this entire time. As an eight, nine, ten-year-old, it was moving schools all the time and brutal bullying. I have a wild imagination that remembers very traumatic details. That’s always corroborated by all the journals that I’ve kept all these years. The bullying was intense and would drive anybody to want to take their life.

Carrie: Kids can be so mean and cruel and they don’t realize how that affects other kids and students. Were you bullied in elementary school and did that continue in middle school?

Heather: It started when I was eight and went through high school, but I think it was only being bullied that made me want to take my life as a child. I think as I moved into my teen years, it was being bullied, but it was also compounded by just didn’t love myself and didn’t see other options. My brain has never been able to compute other options. Other than just take your life when there’s any kind of crisis or trauma, but it was pretty purely bullying as a kid.

Carrie: As you got older, how did this constant suicidal thoughts affect you as a young adult? And, uh, did you have suicide attempts during those periods?

Heather: Yes, great question. I have attempted suicide three times and had the plan countless times.

I have been Baker acted, which in Florida’s mandatory 72 hour confinement in a psychiatric ward and was hospitalized.

Carrie: I was just wondering how things affected you as a young adult. What were some things that were going on there?

Heather: As I said, I’ve battled with suicide over every season of a person’s life, barring elderly senior citizens, because I’m not there yet.

As a child, as an adolescent, as a high school student, as a college student, as a young career, as a wife, as a mom in a pandemic and with unexpected grief, those are pretty much the mile markers in my life where I have attempted suicide or wanted to. The young adult season was a lot around relationships. Dating and being with a guy for five years and him saying, after five years, “I’ll never marry you. You’re not the kind that I would want to marry.” And that just set me off.  I took a bottle of pills and tried to take my life. I saw that as the only way out of that.

Carrie: There would be these big stressful events and whenever we have stress in our life, that tends to increase our symptoms so that makes a lot of sense. What would you say was your lowest point rock bottom? You know, the only place to go is up from here.

Heather: The lowest point would have been July 30th, 2000. That was when I had been married for one year to a pastor, which made me a pastor’s wife. I just couldn’t, after a year into the marriage, reconcile kind of being the crazy lady, but being married to a pastor. A new divorce wasn’t an option for a pastor. Again, my brain only saw suicide as my way out, and that would be a gruesome attempt where my husband showed up to the scene and was unable to stop me. The 911 first responders surrounded my car and were unable to stop me. I had become manic to the point of supernatural strength, almost like a rabid animal, unstoppable.

They were forced to tranquilize me and knock me out so that they could strap me down on a gurney and rush me to the hospital where they treated my injuries, and then they shipped me off to a psychiatric ward. It was mandatory. I didn’t have a say in the matter. I was put in isolation in the psych ward on July 30th, 2000.

When you’re in isolation in a psych ward, I had vomit on me. I had blood on me. They didn’t feed me. They didn’t clean me up. It was deplorable conditions. This was 24 years ago. It was the lowest point because not only was I locked in isolation as a pastor’s wife, but as a failed suicide attempting pastor’s wife.

That was such a low, low that I didn’t even think there would be an up and had actually pretty much determined that once they released me from the psych ward, I would do it again. And I would succeed this time because in my mind, there was nowhere else to go with the coming together of being a pastor’s wife and failing at killing yourself.

Carrie: This sounds like an immense amount of shame that you were carrying for having mental health issues in the church as a Christian. Also, lso interestingly, like shame that you weren’t successful at what you set out to do.

Heather: Yes and you don’t have this Facebook group or women’s golf club society of people like me.

There was nobody, not only just in my circle, but in, to my knowledge, the country that understood what it was like to perpetually want to die, but not be able to because you’re married to a pastor. So it was a lonely existence and shameful.

Carrie: How did you go from that to starting Wondherful?

Heather: Obviously, God keeps me alive despite my efforts. Finally, once I was able to get medication, get into a regular psychologist, and maintain that to today. I identify that I have a chronic weakness in my brain, which I don’t distinguish from any other chronic weakness in any other organ in the body, so I embrace that and I take care of it. I would, if I had been in an accident, rendered to a wheelchair.

That has opened up a lot of doors—just my candidness about that, willing to talk about it—and that launched a lot of opportunities to go and speak, share the story. But it was during COVID, during 2020; I was cut off from being able to go to people. You know, our country was in a shutdown.

Carrie: Right.

Heather: By this time, I’m 20 years into using my weakness to help others, but I couldn’t go to people and they were reaching out to me. They were dying by the dozens by suicide and overdose.

Carrie: Yes. COVID was huge. 

Heather: Yes. Huge and I’m not hearing about people are reaching out to me because of COVID and them dying of it. They’re reaching out to me because of the pandemic and they didn’t want to live anymore.

In my dining room here, where I am right now, some friends and I started just shipping what I would normally take in person when I get asked to go visit people in psychiatric wards, detoxes, sober living homes, hospitals, ICU units, funerals. I would always take what I call a “life box,” which is all the things I’ve needed to still be here. Instead of taking them, we just started shipping them. It became a nonprofit and we’re three years in now. We’ve had to move offices twice. I think in three years since its inception, we’ve done almost 15, 000 life boxes to every state and 15 countries.

Carrie: Talk to us about that process of moving from being so ashamed because I work with a lot of people who really struggle over having mental health issues.

As a Christian in the church community, going from that to being able to be open and allowing God to use your story, was that like a process that God really worked with you on? Or as you started sharing it, you saw the benefits of sharing it?

Heather: It was so instantaneous that the leadership was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s have you heal a little bit.

I remember getting out of the psych ward and I had kind of made a deal with God in the psych ward. That’s all I had to talk to. I mean, I was in isolation. I was a threat to other people so they wouldn’t put me in a room with other people. I just lied there and it was like, talk to my demons or talk to God.

I was like, “God, if you could just get me out of here because it was deplorable.” It was everything you’d think of in a horror movie for a psych ward. But I was like, “If you could get me out of here, I’ll dedicate the rest of my life to help people not end up here. “ 

I was able to be discharged a little bit earlier than I was slated to be. I took that as a sign from God and I wanted to own up to my end of the commitment. I just wrote out my story from that experience, got on medicine, got under the supervision of a psychologist, and then went to the church leadership and said, I want to share my story. They were like,”Okay, not yet. Let’s have you get a little bit better.”

I waited a year and proved myself worthy of being able to share my story because I really wanted to. They put me up on stage and I shared my story about a year after getting out of the cyborg.

Carrie: What are some things that you do on a day-to-day basis that just really help and supports your mental health moving forward?

You said, this is a chronic issue. It’s not something that has just gone away. It’s something that you’ve struggled with for a long time. What are some of your strategies or things that you do to stay healthy?

Heather: I love it that you asked that because my formula is unique, but it’s working because I’m still alive and I’m so glad you asked it.

It has seven parts. It’s medication, which “certain Baptist circles love it when I say that.” it’s medication, it’s Christian counseling, it’s journaling. I even have my journal here to show you.

Carrie: Awesome.

Heather: Reading my Bible, regular church attendance. Church regularly is a free full fill up on an empty tank for me, outdoor activity, knowing my worth and having boundaries.

Carrie: Wow. So good. I’m sure you could write a book on all of those principles because I think that they’re each important. I like what you said about valuing church attendance. You feel like there is something that that does for your spirit and the sense of being in Christian community. 

Have you found some strong community through the church that’s been supportive for you?

Heather: Yes. I mean, we underestimate what the church can do for our minds and God teed it up pretty well. He said, Love me with all of your body, heart, mind, and strength.” Where do we love him tangibly? Where do we love him audibly and visually in church? 

I feel like it’s never returned void for me. If I show up and love God in his house for an hour on Sunday, he fills my cup to the overflow, which gives me the fuel to go the next week.

Carrie: I love that you have boundaries in there too because that’s something that a lot of Christians struggle with. We think that we have to be all things to all people, to bend over backwards, to constantly be volunteering for every single thing that has a need, and we can get burnout and not be in a healthy place mentally and emotionally from not setting good boundaries.

We’re allowing other people to speak into your life that really have no business and no need to be speaking into your life. It’s like, I don’t really need to take that from you.

Heather: Right? I mean, I take my cues from Jesus for a lot of these parts of my formula that I follow. There were thousands of people that needed him critically. They were mentally psychotic. They were spiritually lost. They were medically incurable. I mean, these are thousands of people who he loves that needed him. Yes, he did walk away from them after a certain point to go alone and be with the Father. I take him at his word literally and I understand that the harvest is plenty of people that might need you or me or the church or the pastor or the therapist, but the workers are few.

The Bible says Jesus doesn’t say pray for the harvest. He says, pray for the workers. He modeled that by showing that boundary that there are still thousands more that need me today, but I’ve reached my limit. I’ve done what I can for today. Now I need to go refresh.

Carrie: You talked about sending out life boxes.

What different kinds of life boxes do you send out to individuals?

Heather: Good question. Okay. I actually have one here. Now this is a mini life box and we use the mini life boxes for traveling and events and bulk orders because it costs less. We’ve shrank everything that we would normally send to an individual down into a mini size, but we do life boxes for anything, for anybody, anywhere.

We curate it to their plight. Plus, I’ve discovered suicide is not in a vacuum, it is not in a book. Anybody, anywhere can give up over anything. I know that personally. I didn’t try to take my life because of bullying as a married woman. There’s always different reasons. At Wondherful, we receive these requests through our website.

We not only all the options that people can have a curated life box for, but we have a big comment section because if we don’t have it listed, they can put in the comment what their plight is, what their pain is, what their despair is, and we’ll curate it for them. Specifically, the ones that are listed in the most popular are anxiety way up there. Trauma, loneliness, addiction, suicide attempt, grief ans depression would be the ones that are the most requested.

Carrie: That’s incredible that you’re able to personally tailor those to each individual and what you feel like their needs are. What’s in the box that you have there?

Heather: In a life box, the presentation is very important to me. Our team is awesome because they know my heart that I see the value of every single person, even if they don’t just now driving home. I saw the guy begging for money at the intersection and I prayed for him. I saw him because I saw him as someone that God created. This guy begging for money. He wasn’t aborted.

He wasn’t a miscarriage. God wanted him here. And so he has value in and of itself with that. So the box’s presentation has to show value to that person. We take it seriously. Like we don’t just throw crap in a box. The girls know like this, this would drive the team nuts that this tissue is wrinkled here.  Take out the tissue, put a different piece in because the person opening this Carrie, this might be the only time someone somewhere has expressed their value. They open it up. This specific one is for loneliness. 

After the surgeon general came out with a report saying loneliness in our country is an epidemic. We decided to add loneliness to the drop down options for a life box. The first thing that they see when they open it up is, What the heck is this that I just got? Because a lot of these are requested by other people. 

Carrie: Right. They’re like, “Oh, I got a box.”

Heather: “What the heck? Who’s stalking me?

It’s got a QR code and it goes right to a video of me and I share my story and explain why they received this and then if they don’t want to, they can’t do QR codes. It says it in text right here. That’s the first thing they see, but the second thing they see is a handwritten card. 

Somebody on our team wrote them a card. We’ve had people actually frame this and send us a picture that they framed it. We always include the 988 because I am assuming that whatever this person’s going through, I need to hook them up with resources that I am not qualified to give them.

This came inspired by a male executive, he said, I had your list of some life versus that I could keep in my wallet. I would. So I was like, that’s it. So we have wonderful with life versus that guys can keep then a notepad, a devotion on loneliness and Rick Warren. What on earth am I here for? This really is covers every reason for suicide. This goes in every box. A refrigerator magnet with 988. These are the staples because I spoke into this, I said, these are the things I’ve needed when I’m struggling with wanting to give up. I need a stress ball.

Carrie: Yes.

Heather: I need practical things. I cry a lot, so I need tissue. My lips get dry because I cry a lot, so I need chapstick so these go in. I have mints because I am crying. I do have probably bad breath. I also just need to suck on something that’s savory or sweet to get the starkness in my mind at least freshened up with some mint, right? They’re also called life savers. So let’s play on words. There you go. A Bible and a journal and a pen.

Those are essential. Those are non negotiable. They go in every box. This devotion says, “I just want to die.” It’s a faith based devotion and then I put like an herbal mask because this is a female box. Okay. We want her to feel comfort and then a staple that every single one gets is a never-give up wristband, inspired by my youngest brother who died last year and struggled with suicide like I did and finally got him.

I remember one conversation I had with Chris, he was so ashamed of his scars on his wrists from years of attempting suicide. Then we get a lot of, Sober Living Homes. I speak to a lot of addicts. They have so many track scars on their wrists. There’s a lot of shame with that, Carrie. Whether it’s a suicide attempt or a track scar, your wrist can be a point of shame.

I was like, “Not anymore.” They have a wristband that says never give up, that is going to be able to go over their wrists. Hopefully they’ll see that and not be shamed of their scars.

Carrie: Yes, it’s a positive reminder to keep going. Man, that must have hit you really hard your brother dying from suicide.

Heather: Yes. Very painful. It’s been my most recent biggest test for not wanting to give up myself, which is a whole nother podcast, but grief is a beast.

Carrie: Well, what do you do when you have suicidal thoughts come up now?  Beause a lot of people that are listening to this podcast, whether it’s suicidal thoughts or they have obsessions that pop it in their mind that they don’t want to have there.

How do you handle those? I think there’s a lot of different directions we can take our mind and in our body and our spirit when those happen.

Heather: Well, I have to make sure that I’m doing my seven things- the formula. I have to make sure I’m doing those, but in a moment I can shift gears and a moment I can go from wanting to live to wanting to die.

The first thing that I do and the first thing that I tell everybody to do, whether they’re children, adults, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, or anything is you get to call someone. I mean, that’s backed up with research, but that’s also backed up with Jesus. Again, I take my cues from him in his darkest mental hour, where he was in such hopelessness and despair that his body was reacting by bleeding sweat.

He called somebody. Now he had followers in the thousands. He had a tribe of 12, but in his darkest hour, he called someone and the text says in the gospels that he called three, Peter, James, and John. I take my cues from him and I call someone and I actually have three in case one doesn’t answer.  That’s good. That’s helpful. My first thing is I need to call somebody.

Carrie: That’s good. It’s Definitely a good advice for everyone. 

I wanted to ask you one more question before we got into some stories about how life boxes have impacted people. I know a lot of people struggle with journaling. What types of things do you journal about?

Do you journal about thoughts and feelings or do you journal prayers? What kind of things do you journal about?

Heather: I don’t follow a guide. I follow my head. I have journals from when I was eight up until today. I’ve kept them all. Yeah. So I got a lot of journals. There’s never a pattern, but my brain doesn’t operate in a pattern.

Like I said, I could be wearing a smiley sweatshirt, doing this podcast, beautiful South Florida weather. And by tonight something can happen and I can want to die because I don’t have routine in my head. I don’t have routine in my journaling. What is important is that I journal simply because I can wake up or I can go to bed with all this stuff in my head, or I can put it on paper and just get it out. That’s why I’m always advocating journaling.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s good. Tell us about some stories of hope because this is hope for anxiety and OCD. What are some stories of hope of how life boxes have impacted different people that you’ve heard of?

Heather: Oh man, anxiety. We get so many for anxiety and I’ve had that. My pendulum swings between depression and anxiety. That’s a real thing and it really is a struggle beause it manifests in your mind and your body in such an intense way. There’s 15, 000 light boxes we’ve done. There’s so many stories, but one in particular is during COVID a friend of mine, she’s a homosexual Jewish addict, just had so much anxiety during COVID that she became suicidal.

Now she’s got so many issues, but reached out for a life box. We sent her an anxiety, suicide prevention, life box. She asked her coworker to record her opening up the life box. I can’t put it into words what it was like to see this homosexual Jewish addict open up this life box with anxiety resources and a Bible and a journal and all these things, and she was weeping, but more importantly, she was living and still to this day.

Not only did she continue to live and I don’t take the credit for that. That’s God and her and things that I’ll never know on earth, but she still lives to this day and is a catalyst between us and our life boxes and all the addicts. that she does life with. She’s continued to live and she’s continued to use these life boxes as ways of helping people that are struggling just like her.

Carrie: That’s awesome. If somebody’s listening to this and they want to request a life box for somebody or if they feel like, hey, I need that myself. Like I’m on the edge here. I’m really, really struggling. How do they do that?

Heather: Well, it’s easy. You just go to wondherful.com.

Carrie: Yeah. We’ll put that link in there too. We’ll put the link in our show notes if anybody’s just listening on the audio here.

Heather: You click on Lifebox and you can request it for yourself or you can request it for someone you’re concerned about and we will curate it and priority ship it. If you’re a really rich person, feel free to make a donation for your Lifebox request. We do send them out for free to everybody.

Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s really incredible. Well, thank you so much for being vulnerable, sharing your story and talking to us about this organization. I think it’s so important that we talk about the hard subjects that we talk about. things like suicide that people are struggling with and letting them know there is hope and there is help and there are people that care about you and want to let you know that you are valuable and you are important and we want you here.

Heather: Yes, we do. No matter who you are, no matter how hard it is, No matter how many people don’t understand, if you wake up breathing, that’s your proof to keep going. There’s a reason you’re still breathing. That should be enough encouragement for all of us. 

119. ICBT as an Alternative to ERP from the Client’s Perspective with Crystal Propes

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

In this week’s episode, Carrie interviews Crystal Propes about her journey with ERP therapy and her transition to Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT), highlighting its effectiveness from the client’s perspective.

Episode Highlights:

  • Insights into Crystal Propes’ personal journey with OCD, including her experiences with various treatment approaches.
  • The principles and techniques of ICBT.
  • How ICBT differs from ERP therapy in addressing mental compulsions and providing functional certainty without distress.
  • Personal examples of applying ICBT techniques in real-life situations

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 119! I’m Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor from Tennessee, and today I’m thrilled to have Crystal Propes with us. Crystal and I connected on Instagram, and I’m excited to share her story with you.

In this episode, Crystal dives deep into her personal journey with OCD and her experience with inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT). We often feature professionals discussing therapy techniques, but it’s equally valuable to hear personal stories. Crystal’s experiences underscore that if one treatment doesn’t work for you, it’s okay—there are other options out there.

Crystal’s journey with OCD began in childhood, with symptoms manifesting as early as age three. From emetophobia to severe anxiety during her school years, her story is a powerful reminder that OCD can evolve and change over time. Despite her struggles, Crystal persevered and eventually sought therapy. She initially tried exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy but found it overwhelming and not suited to her needs. Thankfully, Crystal later discovered ICBT, which resonated more with her and helped her focus on managing mental compulsions and staying present.

Tune in to hear Crystal’s full story and insights. Remember, if one treatment doesn’t work, it’s not the end of the road. There’s always hope and help available. Don’t give up!

Related Links and Resources:

www.instagram.com/functionallyocd/

What is I-CBT?

Explore Related episode:

18. ERP is Not the Only Option for OCD

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 119. I’m here today with another personal story of anxiety. I am your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee, and here I have Crystal Propes. We actually met on Instagram, which was really fun, and I just had reached out to her and she agreed to be on the show.

Crystal has been posting a lot of information about ICBT, which is inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy, and just her perspective of it from the client that I feel is very helpful. Sometimes we have different types of shows. Sometimes we have shows with different professionals who tell us about the nitty gritty details of specific therapy, but we always find it’s helpful to share personal stories on the podcast of people who have actually been through the struggles and the trials that so many of you have gone through with OCD, and it encourages other people to continue to seek help because we want people to know that there’s hope and there’s help and with our story today, if one treatment in particular doesn’t work for you, that it’s okay to know that there are other treatment options out there for you.

You don’t have to be stuck in a rut. I think a lot of times people feel like I’m the exception to the rule and I’m the one that this therapy is not going to work for and I can’t get help. And then they stop and we just don’t want anybody to stop today. If you hear nothing else from this episode, that’s what I would want you to know from the therapist’s point of view.

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Carrie: Welcome, Crystal. Tell us a little bit about your story with OCD. How did that start? And when did you notice it showing up? And then when did you realize like, Oh, that’s what this is?

Crystal: My story is a long one. Now that I think back about it, I mean, I didn’t think this hard about it until recently, but now that I think back about it, I knew, like, that it had showed up in childhood, but I wasn’t sure how young.

I think I was three, so, which is very young, right? I’ve lived with this my entire life, but yes, I think I was three. I started my first manifestation of OCD with emetophobia. But I had a lot of other issues with it. I was overwhelmed with big situations. I remember having so much DPDR, like, going, “What’s next?”

The kids are supposed to be excited, but I’m sitting there in silence. My mom’s like, “Are you okay? What’s wrong with you?” And it’s like, “I don’t really know. I just feel overwhelmed.”

I would get really particular about the order of my toys and, like, my toys being played with a certain way and it would give me, like, extreme anxiety to, like, let people borrow books, just all kinds of little things that shouldn’t have caused anxiety that it did now that I look back on it.

I think what really, I would say, like, when my brain broke, even though I definitely had OCD before then, I was 12. I was in 7th grade and I was a teacher’s assistant. for my teacher and so I spent a lot of time alone in her room as one of my electives and I was like grading papers and stuff.

Obviously, being quiet alone gives you so much room for your imagination to run wild and I just remember having this thought, what if you’re terminally ill? What if you have cancer? And then that just latched right on. It’s like, why did I think that? Is God trying to tell me that I have cancer? Is there something wrong with me?

I spent like a long time after that, like terrified and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought I was going crazy and I didn’t want to say anything about it. My mom because I really didn’t know what was going on and I just remember like kind of dealing with that on and off all throughout high school.

I remember seeking reassurance from my mom, like, I’m not going crazy. I’m not crazy. Am I? There’s nothing wrong with me. Just like Googling stuff to make sure I was okay. Lots of rumination, lots of body checking. That’s kind of my experience with like my early OCD and how it started.

Carrie: Those thoughts, you’re just sitting there and then all of a sudden the thought pops in and OCD gets going and you get really latched into that thought and into the meaning of “What does this mean that I’m even having this thought?

What is this saying about me?” Emetophobia, for those who don’t know that are listening, maybe they don’t experience that, is fear of throwing up.

Crystal: It has existed largely in the background for the most of my life. Like, as long as I wasn’t directly exposed to it, I was okay. It didn’t live my life around it.

My OCD has worn many hats over my 30 years with it, and most of them were not aminophobia. Even though I’ve always been aminophobic, again, like, unless directly faced with it, it really didn’t bother me until I had kids, and they’re in school, and they’ve brought home germs, and I’ve been traumatized by it.

But yes before that, it really was mostly other themes that popped up, but now it’s the opposite. Now, all my other themes extremely well, and the am phobia has dug its calls in,

Carrie: It’s interesting how symptoms like this wax and wane over a lifetime. Like you said, sometimes things are really upfront and then, “Okay, I am not as worried about those things,” and then those fall into the background, and because of other life stressors raising young children and bringing home all of the germs, obviously that’s stressful.  There’s more fears about getting sick or people in the household throwing up and then you getting sick and throwing up.

Can you walk us through that process a little more? Becaus those were the pieces that caused you to seek out ERP therapy initially.

Crystal: Right. Before I get into that, I wanted to say like, I didn’t realize it was OCD and not generalized anxiety until I was about 18. There’s a gap there though from the time I realized it was OCD at 18, but I didn’t get an official diagnosis until last year at 32, even though I knew what it was.

I didn’t seek out therapy until then because I dealt with it on my own fairly well, even though it was so hard. severe when I was in college, extremely severe, but I ended up seeking out therapy because about two years ago, my kids started bringing home stomach bugs. I was blessed with the fact that my daughter, my oldest never had one until she was five and in public school in kindergarten.

That was the first one we ever had to deal with. Nobody caught it that time. So like, it was traumatizing for like about two weeks until I was sure like, okay, everything’s probably dead. And then I was okay, but then we got another one five months later, and then we got another one five months later. We had like four, and I had two or three of them, back to back to back.

By the time I would get over one, we would get another one, and it was just back to, and the one that took our whole family down, it was extremely traumatic for me. And I think people who don’t have a phobia, It’s hard to explain the level of fear you experience in relation to a true phobia.

Some people never feel that type of fear ever in their life, but if you’ve ever been terrified of something, you have to think of the most scared you’ve ever been in your entire life. Like the scariest possible thing you can think of and being faced with that and having to take care of your kid through that and then having to deal with it yourself.

I’m literally shaking while taking care of my kid. And then I get sick. It’s like the worst I’ve ever felt in my life. All my fears are realized. It’s just as bad as I thought it would be. I am traumatized, truly traumatized from this. I haven’t been officially diagnosed with PTSD, but only because I haven’t been evaluated for it.

We decided to treat the PTSD first, but I’ll get into that a little later on. I was super traumatized. I found that my kids, we started school and my kids, I was just watching them, their every move, hyper-villagently watching them, afraid they were going to fall ill at any second, just anticipating the next bug that I was going to have to deal with.

I was spending every second home with them. It stuck in my own head, ruminating, hypervigilance, my hands crack and bleed, I wash them so much, just like so miserable, even though I was technically functional.  I was still taking care of my family, I was still taking care of my kids, I was still sending them to school, they had everything they need, they were fed, they’re happy, but then I’m sitting there playing with them and I’m not present, my brain is miles away.

Carrie: Sure. Did you have a lot of cleaning rituals related to that that got ramped up?

Crystal: I have some. My therapist is big on not telling me what’s a compulsion. He wants me to decide what I think is compulsive. We’ll get into that talking about ICBT therapy a little bit because I distinction between it and ERP that I like.

I’m a compulsive hand washer. I will admit that right away. I feel like if I’m going to touch something that’s going to go into somebody’s mouth, I can’t have touched anything in between. If I wash my hands and then go touch something that’s not food, I have to wash my hands again before I touch food. That’s probably excessive. My hands bleed. I also do some things that may or may not be compulsive. My kids shower when they get home from school, but to be fair, they roll all over the floor at school and floors are gross. And I can’t change their hair. I can change their clothes, but I can’t change their hair.

I also have a tendency to llysol” all their shoes and “lysol” all my car after they get out from school. I have a three year old that like licks everything and puts everything in his mouth. If I didn’t have a three year old that was a germ collector, I wouldn’t be this intense about it. I do have some cleaning things that may or may not be compulsions. The mental compulsions that I have, the hypervigilance, the mental review, the ruminating, they far outweigh the physical ones in, like, time and, like, distress level that they cause.

Carrie: That’s the hard thing that I see a lot of my clients dealing with is okay, you can put the Lysol down and walk away. That may be really hard for some people.

I don’t want to minimize that, or you can tell somebody, “Okay, touch this and then don’t wash your hands,” but you’re always going to have your brain with you and so you have opportunities to ruminate all the time throughout the day. Those are, I think the hardest compulsions to deal with are the mental ones, like you were saying, that makes a lot of sense to me just from talking with my clients, and it makes sense that after seeing your kids be sick so many times, that it became stuck in your brain that am I ever going to get out of this? Is this going to happen again? And then this was terrible, horrible, awful and I’m trying to prevent these types of experiences from happening.  It rose to this level of where you decided I need to go to therapy and you had done some research.

I’m assuming like other people have on what type of therapy should you get? If you have OCD. And you found exposure and response prevention. This is the therapy that’s recommended.

Crystal: I knew about ERP for a long time. I have never wanted to try ERP. I have never thought that it would work for my phobia, but I was desperate. I knew about both ICBT and ERP going in. I was struggling to find an ICVT therapist and I was desperate. So I was like, okay, let me try. this therapist that says that they do ERP and CBT and is trauma-informed and see if they can work with me, but I don’t want to do exposure therapy directly related to my phobia.

I went in thinking maybe he can work with me, and he really seemed like he might. He was really nice, good Christian guy from my state. I thought this was going to be a good experience. He had a lot of experience with trauma and stuff and honestly, if he hadn’t been where he was working, I think that he may have been a really good therapist for me, but I felt like being treated as just like a number on a assembly line. “You have OCD, you have ERP. This is exactly how we treat this.” There was no room for my personal experience. We started with it and I just felt like any time he brought up, “okay, this is what we’re going to do.” Make this an exposure or okay, now we’re going to work on a hierarchy. It gave me so much anxiety.

I never felt better after therapy. I always felt immeasurably worse thought of like having therapy was giving me anxiety and it just felt like a bunch of extra work on top of what I was already dealing with. I was like, okay, look, I’m already so exposed to this. I don’t need extra exposure. I’m already so traumatized by this.

I don’t need extra trauma. I don’t want to create a hierarchy of my fears and then you make me work through them because I already faced my worst fear all the time. Like I deal with this all the time. I have three young children in public. It really wasn’t a good fit. So I talked to my friend and was like, Hey, can you find me an ICBT therapist? And she came through for me big time. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. How long did you stay with the ERP therapist?

Crystal: There was one or two weeks where I did two sessions in a week and then others where I just did one. Of course, we get a stomach bug right in the middle of the day. It’s been like one or two weeks that I decided to start therapy and my kids have a stomach bug.

It was awful. Not only am I like trying to start therapy, I’m also dealing with my worst nightmare at the same time. Of course only like five months after we had the last one we had. It’s again, I had just gotten started to feel better and then this happens again. So I think I did four or five weeks of ERP in total.

Carrie: Okay. So there were enough sessions to really determine, like, “This doesn’t seem to be jiving with what I’m intuitively wanting to do, and I don’t feel maybe fully heard or understood how traumatizing this is for me.”

Crystal: Right. I felt like I was having to spend so much time explaining what I meant and what was really bothering me and what I really hoped to get out of it.

None of that was coming through. I don’t know, like maybe he didn’t have a lot of experience with aminophobia in general. It just seemed like he could only do exposures and plan exposures. That’s not what I wanted. I already have exposures. What I primarily wanted to get out of therapy was to learn how to stop the mental compulsions, to stay in the present moment, to redirect my attention to reality and be able to be present with my kids. I don’t think I’m ever not going to be immunophobic. I can’t imagine a day where if there is a stomach bug in my house it’s not going to terrify me. I absolutely can imagine a day where I am not worried about it unless it is directly in my house. You know what I mean?I didn’t think ERP did a good job of making me more present. It’s like, “Okay, well, you’re not present, but you just got to function anyways.” But I’m already extremely functional. I don’t need help functioning. I need help being present, and that’s where I CBT spoke to me. 

Carrie:  I will tell people too, it matters where you put the I on CBT. If you put it at the end and you say CBT I, it’s CBT for insomnia. If you put it at the beginning and say I CBT, I know we’re therapists. are confusing than it’s inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy. 

Tell us a little bit about what you’ve learned about ICBT. I know you’ve done a variety of reading on it in addition to going to therapy with someone who’s trained in ICBT.

Crystal:  Let me preface this by saying this is not an ERP hate. Like I know it helps so many people. I don’t want people to think that I’m hating on the therapy that got them functional. I do realize the value in it. I just want to say that. Now let me dive into the therapy that I love. I knew a little bit about it from a friend who had gone through it and now is a fledgling therapist herself providing ICBT therapy in her clinical rotation.

I didn’t dig too, too much. I understood the concept. I understood how it worked. I didn’t dig too much because I wanted my therapist to guide me through it. And he’s done an incredible job of that. This is a good time to get me because I’m almost done. I just finished module 11. There’s only one module left.

Inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy is based off the concept of something called inferential confusion, which basically means that you have a trigger and then your brain has an obsessional doubt about it. What if there’s a germ on this doorknob? But you have no evidence that there’s physical evidence that there’s a germ on that doorknob. It looks clean. You didn’t see anybody sneeze on it. No one’s sick in your house. You have no reason to think that doorknob is dirty, but then OCD comes in and says “Well, what if somebody touched it and if you had a microscope, you could see it? What if the person who delivered your mail yesterday had a cold and he accidentally touched your doorknob while he was delivering it?”

Your brain thinks of all these faulty reasoning methods as to why your doorknob could be contaminated, but none of that is real, right? You don’t have evidence of any of that. All you have is your imagination thinking of all the ways it could be. That’s like really where ICBT lives. It teaches you that you’ve created a story based on faulty inferences that you have gained from all these reasoning methods that seem logical in your OCD brain, but they’re just a little off.

Past experience matters, but does this matter to this situation? No, you’re probably applying it and the situation’s different, or yes, germs technically do exist, but do you have any evidence that are dangerous germs that could actually hurt you on the door? It’s just all about teaching your brain how to recognize the obsessional doubt and the faulty reasoning behind it that goes into weaving this story and then redirect yourself to actual reality, the here and now. You Dismiss your doubts because you realize that they’re based on your imagination, so they’re not relevant to your present life.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I started reading the ICBT manual. I found it very interesting going back to what we were talking about, about mental compulsions versus physical compulsions. What ERP does is it focuses a lot more on the compulsions. ICBT focuses more on stopping because there’s a loop of sessions and compulsions.  ICBT is focusing more on stopping the loop at the obsessional part rather than stopping it at the compulsive part. I think that makes a difference when you’re talking about mental compulsions, being able to say, “Okay, right now, it has kind of taken over my imagination and now I’m imagining the worst case scenario where everyone in the family is sick in the hospital, dying because of the stomach bug that I caught off the doorknob”

Crystal: I think with ICBT, it’s a metacognitive therapy. It resolves the obsession. The thing I love about ICBT is that when it works when you finally get it. I’m not perfect at it yet/ Don’t get me wrong, but the more you practice the better you get and it’s like a slow burn First, you just start recognizing,” Crap! that is so outlandish.” Yes, that’s a faulty reasoning method, but you can’t stop. You’re still compelled to do it, but it could be possible, but as you recognize more and more of your obsessional doubts and what is actually drawing you into the OCD bubble, you get better and better and better at not getting into that rumination cycle, right?

It’s like, wait, no, this is an obsessional doubt. I don’t need to take it further, but he greatest thing about it is when it works, you don’t have to sit with uncertainty.  We get to have functional certainty in ICBT and I love that because you can be certain according to your senses, right? You can be certain enough.

The greatest part about it is that you never get to the distress part because you get to sit in that functional certainty and say, okay, this is enough for right now for the present moment. Possibility doesn’t matter because it’s not relevant right now. I went through an experience recently that like could have been really triggering for me, and I used my ICBP techniques.

I went to a funeral and I’ve had some death religious OCD in the past and obviously, I was around a bunch of people. I went in a public bathroom, lots of triggering things and I feel like with the ERP would say, all right, do it anyway and just sit with the discomfort, but with ICBT, I did it anyway, but I was never distressed because we resolved the obsession. We never got to the anxiety part of the sequence. We never got to the compulsion part of the sequence because we never got to the anxiety part. It’s like, yes, I did all of this. Yes, it would have been triggering in the past, but because I was able to stay rooted in reality, and I didn’t even get into the OCD bubble at all, like, No, I didn’t have to tolerate discomfort. No, I didn’t have to tolerate uncertainty because I had functional certainty, and I just operated it as I would as any normal person in a normal, non-obsessive circumstance would have. It was really cool to like be able to explain that to people. Yes I face triggers, but I didn’t even have to face discomfort.

Carrie: Did you prep yourself ahead of time or work with your therapist ahead of time on that experience in order to be able to do that?

Crystal: Not specifically. The death was a family friend and was not unexpected, but obviously, we didn’t know exactly when it was going to happen, but if I had done this back when I was like, not as far into the modules, I would not have had as good of an experience with this.

ICBT does a lot of background buildup before you get into the real skill building because you have to learn the metacognitive part. You have to learn exactly. where your obsessions come from, why the reasoning methods are faulty, and you have to learn so much of the beginning of ICBT is learning to recognize your obsessional sequence without changing it, because at that point you don’t have the skills to change your, like, your obsessional sequence.

You just realize, “Okay, this is where my obsessional doubt is, this is what my feared consequence is, this is giving me anxiety and dread and that is why I’m going to do a compulsion. But it’s hard to just stop the compulsion with like no guidance, right? Once you realize that you can notice all of that, then you get to the later modules that teach you about reality sensing and the OCD bubble and the alternative story.

It teaches you how to stay grounded in reality and create a story that is based in reality. And then it’s not compulsive because you don’t. argue with your OCD, right? ICBT is not arguing logic with OCD. It’s saying, okay, reality says this, and I’m going to believe it. And that’s where you leave it. So it teaches you those skills.

So I had just gone through module eight and module nine and module 10, which talk about all the tricks OCD uses to pull you in and why they’re tricks. Module eight is a reality fencing and it tells you about how to stay grounded in reality and not like give in to the OCD bubble. Module nine, the alternative story, which I absolutely love because it’s like you’re choosing to create a story, but you can create any story, so why not make a reality-based story and then stick with it? That helped me so much because I had just done all of that work. I was able to use that.  I walked into the public bathroom. I was like, no one’s sick in here. The bathroom’s really clean. I’m not going to dig into it anymore. No what if, no hunting for reasons that it could be dirty or contaminated. 

I hugged a bunch of random people and there was no like, what if they’ve been sick? It’s like, well, they look healthy. They seem healthy. Nobody looks like they feel ill or anything. So, I mean, I’m just going to believe the reality based story.

Everybody here is healthy and I’m not, it’s not dangerous to hug them. And you learn those techniques and you don’t have to dig into it. It’s so helpful. I will say like, it took me months, it took me probably four months of just noticing before I was able to employ and it helps a little bit. Noticing does help. I noticed that I was able to get out of my OCD cycle so much faster, even early on, even when after module two, it didn’t really start getting to the point where I wasn’t like even creating an obsessional story to begin with until I had gotten into the later modules. So it just builds on it, but once you get it, it all happens fast.

Carrie: This is something that feels very congruent with the types of things that I teach- mindfulness, which is learning to be in the present moment. The level of awareness and acceptance, what you’re talking about, even noticing your own thought process. A lot of people in the early stages of treatment, they have a hard time even noticing that what they’re thinking is an obsessional thought.

You may have worked on that some prior to this and probably elaborated on that in ICBT, but that’s really the first step is for people to notice. Even when they’re having an obsession before it just seems like, but this just people will say, well, it feels like my thought process and it feels really true when somebody walks into that bathroom, they may feel like it’s contaminated, but what you’re saying is look for the logical evidence that says that it’s not contaminated or that it is maybe it is really dirty.  Anybody without OCD would find it disgusting.

Crystal:  ICBT spins, I’m not kidding, six modules teaching you exactly how to do that. The first six modules teach you how to slow down your thought process. That’s like the biggest thing with ICBT. You have to slow down. It’s so not intuitive for people with OCD because our thoughts race. It gets your OCD bubble too to slow down your thinking. Instead of ruminating and being like, “Oh my gosh, this is so scary. This is so scary,” It redirects you. It almost pulls you a little bit outside of it to say, “Okay, wait, how did I get here? You spend the first six modules learning how to recognize your obsessional sequence, how you weaved this obsessional story, why it feels so real and the ways OCD pulls you in.” 

Literally six modules before it even ever tells you here’s how you get out, and as you learn to slow down the process and work on the whole, do I have direct evidence of this doubt? And that was like one of the earliest things. I think we were in module two when my therapist taught me this. He said, “Just ask yourself, what direct evidence would I have to have right now for my doubt to be true?” By direct evidence, he said he means it will hold up in a court of law. We live by this principle now.  I need direct evidence that would hold up in a court of law that my doubt is reasonable. And that was one of the earliest things before I even got to the skill building part of ICBT that started to pull me out of that bubble, that started to help me with my OCD.

What is the direct evidence I would have to have that one of my kids has a stomach bug? And in a court of law, evidence, it would have to be that they are physically sick. I would have to have seen one of them have gotten sick. Because I can’t tell you how many times I was like, my stomach hurts, and there’s nothing wrong with them. That’s not direct evidence, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of times the bar for direct evidence is way higher than we realize that it would have to be. Our OCD has tricks warp us into thinking we have direct evidence, but really, we don’t have direct evidence of that. That was the earliest thing that I learned to do to help pull me out of the OCD bubble was say, “Okay, wait, slow down.” You’re creating a story. What direct evidence would you have to have for the story to be true? That was like an early, early skill technique that my therapist taught me that really helped me when my OCD was really bad before I even got into the skill-building part.

Carrie: You said there are 12 modules that you have to go through and learn. As you go through those modules, is there homework involved? 

Crystal: ICBT is like a course, literally, I would say like a college course. The way my therapist approaches it, he goes over a module with me, and he doesn’t like read to me, and I do not have the module, he doesn’t send me any of the stuff until after.

He always has some sort of analogy or thought experiment or exercise to do with me in session, and they’re always excellent. I was relating my OCD to parallel, but not exact, situations. So like, I have a lot of anticipatory OCD issues. I’m afraid of the next time we’re going to have a stomach bug.

He would parallel that with the client that was worried about, he worried about noticing shapes, and he would notice a shape, and then he would see it everywhere and get really distracted by it, and it would make him miserable. He would always be worried about the next time he might notice a shape and it would stick in his brain. He would parallel my story to that, and he would parallel, maybe my worry about stomach bugs to someone who was equally as afraid of COVID. These parallel examples, but that took me a little bit to think rationally when it’s specifically about your theme. He would go over that with me and then it would always relate to the module we were on for that week and then he would send me the homework and the homework is always a lot of it is like some writing and then there’s some exercise like thought experiments that we do throughout the week.

We would meet back the next session and go over what I wrote. First go over the quiz and then we would go over the work I did and then any questions I had about it, one to two weeks per module, typically.

Carrie: I think this is really important, Crystal, for people to know what they’re getting into when they’re looking at doing different therapies because it doesn’t really matter which therapy you choose. If you’re not willing to show up and do the work, it’s not going to help you get better in different modules, different types of therapy work for different people. That’s why we’re talking about this to let people know, maybe you have tried ERP and you’re looking for a different option. Maybe you haven’t tried ERP because the idea of it just totally terrifies you and you don’t feel like you can do that. Or maybe people say, I don’t know how to expose myself to certain things that are in my imagination, like being afraid of going to hell, there are different things that they do and exposure and response prevention to expose people to that, but it doesn’t necessarily sit well.

Sometimes Christians struggle with doing some of those exposures and having to find somebody that we will do religiously sensitive exposure sometimes can be a challenge from what I’ve heard from various people that have contacted me through the podcast. So I’m glad that we’re talking about this, but it does, whatever you’re going to do, it does take practice.

It does take intentionality and it does take work be called it the OCD bubble. You’ve spent so much time going through that over and over and over again, like it’s really patterned in your brain. So whenever we’re trying to make these new brain connections, it takes our brain a while to pick up on something new like that, that you’re feeding it. You have to do it over and over and over, just like any other habit we create in our life. We can’t go out and exercise one day and say, Hey, like I’m in fit and in shape.

Crystal: You have to exercise that brain. I will say that was the biggest thing. I would get so frustrated at the beginning of ICBT therapy because I’ll be like, “Yes, you taught me to notice all this and I can notice it. I don’t know how to stop.: That was my biggest thing and then I realized the more I practice, all of a sudden I was just doing it. I can do this now. I cannot put too much emphasis on it, even if it feels you’re just noticing and it’s frustrating that you’re noticing and there’s nothing you can do.

The more you practice, the faster you get and the earlier you notice your obsessional story, the less anxious that you will make yourself. You’re torturing yourself by weaving this terrifying story. You’re scaring yourself. Once I realized that, it’s like, “Wait, why am I doing this? I’m literally just sitting here terrifying myself. Why am I doing this?”  

I was already so far in before I realized I was doing it. It was hard to stop, but when you catch it, then you’re not quite as anxious. You haven’t woven as good of a story at that point. It’s way easier to stop. Noticing is, I would say 85 percent of the work. Once you’ve noticed it, once you figure out how to notice it and slow yourself down, that’s like 85 percent of the work. The skill-building part is only 15%. 

I spent weeks doing it, he had me doing thought chains. At first, it was retrospective and then eventually I got so good at it, I can do it in real-time.

But it’s like, “Okay, I noticed I was in the bubble. Where did I go wrong? What initial thought took me into my imagination and away from reality? That was so helpful. I think I did them for three weeks. Now I do not have to write them down. I do not have to go back and go through it at all.

I can do them in real-time. Like I said, I’m not perfect. Sometimes they’re harder than ever. For instance, if there was a stomach bug going around at my kid’s school and I knew it, it would be much harder for me to deal with that, right? Or if one of my friend’s kids had a bug, when I get faced with an online, like the other day, the weather channel decided, well, not the other day, this was like a month ago, but norovirus is going around.

I was like, no, I don’t want to know that. I spent the whole day freaked out because of that. Again, I’m not perfect at it, but I will say the beauty of ICBT is that a lot of times you hear you can’t get better without exposures, but I think we need to think about that differently. You don’t have to do exposures to do ICBT if exposures terrify you and you are not going to do therapy for your OCD because you don’t want to do exposures, you do not have to do exposures with ICBT.

You will be triggered because you’re going to have to talk about your fears to be able to do the therapy, but you do not have to do exposures. And the thing about ICBT is that you obviously eventually you’re going to stop doing compulsions and live your life. But it’s not about doing exposures for the sake of exposures.

It’s about I can do this triggery thing because I have no direct evidence that it requires a compulsion. I have no direct evidence that my obsessional doubt requires me to do anything but live to do what I want to do according to my values. That’s the greatest part about it. My therapist, he does ERP with other clients.

Sometimes he’ll be like, “Well, that’s a great exposure” But it isn’t an exposure, right? It’s just something I wanted to do to live my life. We’re just like kind of joking about it being like that. But it’s great, right? Because I didn’t have to plan an exposure, plan response prevention. I just, for instance, we’re going to go to an Easter egg hunt at church on Saturday.

That gives me anxiety, having to take my three-year-old and let him hang out with other kids. Do I need to avoid that situation? No, because no one’s ill. I have no evidence that anything bad is going around at the church. It’s outdoors in the sunlight, and we’ve gone to many things at the church before, and my kids have been fine.

My daughter goes there. All the time with her friends, and she comes back fine. Reality tells me that we can go and it’ll be great. And it’s something I want to do. It’s something that’s values-based. And so it’s not an exposure, right? It’s just me living according to my values and not having to do an avoidant compulsion because reality says that it’s unnecessary.

Carrie: Unless you’re doing massive amounts of avoiding, which there are people that do that, that avoid all types of different situations. In order to live your life, you’re going to face triggering situations, I think is what you’re saying. So you’re going to expose yourself. It’s just not a, Oh, this is a planned exposure to work through my OCD.

It’s just like you said, living your life, which feels really freeing and beautiful that you’re able to go out and do those things.

Crystal: I like to think of it as not an extra exposure, you know what I mean? With ERP, it’s all about extra exposure on top of your triggers to teach your brain how to not respond to it and don’t do a compulsion when you do this trigger,

but with ICBT, you’re remaining in reality, and your obsessional doubt is irrelevant in the here and now. That’s like the biggest thing in ICBT, like, Your OCD is irrelevant. OCD is imaginary. It is a story you have created solely in your imagination, and it doesn’t matter if it’s technically possible.

It doesn’t matter if it’s happened before because it’s not happening right now. And because it’s not happening right now, the only way that OCD could have conceivably come up with this doubt is for you to have imagined it, I love that. OCD is in your imagination, but you need to be in the present. That’s the biggest thing it has taught me is that even though I feel like my fear is a very difficult one, my fear is more probable than not, right? There are lots of people who are scared of things with OCD that will never happen. I am going to be exposed again. I am going to be terrified, and I might even be traumatized by it, but it’s not happening right now, so it doesn’t require my attention right now. That has been the biggest thing for me is learning to let go of the what if and that it’s possible and this could happen in a week because it’s not serving me any purpose.

Carrie: Through that process, you’ve found that you’ve been able to be more present with your children than instead of just in these thought processes.

What if my child gets sick or what if they brought something home or what if this or what if that?

Crystal: Constantly, hypervigilantly monitoring their every move for evidence that they might be ill, you know, I used to spend so much time doing that and I still do it occasionally, but it’s much quicker.

I’ll look at them. I’m like, “Oh, it looks fine and I’ll just move on.” Whereas before I would have stared and I would have asked how they felt and I would have dug, but digging is bad.

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. Tell us where people can find you on Instagram and we’ll put some links where they can learn more about ICBT from a professional perspective, but tell us where they can find you on Instagram.

Crystal: Functionally OCD. They can find me there. You can message me there. Awesome.

Carrie: Awesome. Thank you again for being on the show. 

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

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

117. Demonic Oppression or OCD? A Personal Story with Jessica Ray

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

Carrie interviews Jessica Ray about her experiences with OCD and faith. They discuss how OCD developed alongside Jessica’s newfound faith after childhood trauma.

Episode Highlights:

  • The challenges of navigating OCD within Christian community.
  • The importance of recognizing the difference between demonic oppression and mental illness.
  • Jessica’s journey of finding relief through diagnosis and treatment.
  • The supportive role of Christian community even at times they didn’t understand mental health struggles.
  • Specific things that helped her along her journey of healing. 

Related Links and Resources:

Jessica Ray’s YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@JessicaJoy34

Instagram: www.instagram.com/joynicole_34/

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 117 of Christian Faith and OCD. For the past three years, I’ve seen firsthand how sharing personal journeys can deeply resonate with our community. Many of us facing anxiety and OCD may feel isolated, but connecting through shared experiences and faith can be incredibly uplifting.

In this episode, I’m honored to speak with Jessica Rae, who opens up about her personal battle with OCD. Jessica’s story is remarkable as her symptoms began in her late teens, right after a profound conversion to Christianity. She describes how her OCD manifested through relentless obsessive thoughts and paralyzing panic attacks, particularly around her role in evangelism and her personal relationships.

Jessica’s path to healing has been both challenging and inspiring. Initially, she encountered some misconceptions about mental health within her church community, which complicated her journey. However, Jessica’s perseverance led her to seek professional help and receive an accurate OCD diagnosis. This pivotal step marked the beginning of her significant progress in managing her symptoms.

Jessica’s experience highlights the critical role of recognizing mental health issues and finding the right support. It also emphasizes the power of faith and community in the healing process.

Explore Related episode:

108. OCD personal story with Michael Kheir

Transcript

One thing that I’ve learned over the course of three years doing these podcast episodes is that you guys love personal stories. You find them very relatable because so many people dealing with anxiety and OCD feel isolated They feel like I’m the only one that’s going through these things.

So it really helps you to hear from other Christians who are also struggling and how they’ve seen God in their redemptive story. They’re still in process of working through some things. You know, we’re all on a journey to become more like Christ and in pursuit of healing from him. Today on the show, I have with me Jessica Rae and Jessica had emailed me when I was looking for guests and just offered to share her story. If you would like to be a part of our email list, definitely go on www.hopeforanxietyandocd/free. Hit up any of our downloads and then you can kind of be in the know and get random questions thrown at you sometimes.

Carrie: Jessica, I appreciate you responding to that and welcome to the show. 

Jessica: Thank you for having me. Excited to be on. 

Carrie: Tell me a little bit about how OCD showed up for you when you were younger.

Jessica: Whenever I was very tiny, under the age of two years old, I was a victim of sexual abuse. And I can remember having anxiety attacks, probably starting around four or five years old.

I also had an issue with food at a super young age. As a whole, I wouldn’t say that anyone ever recognized that I was an anxious child, but I definitely remember having things pop up like anxiety attacks if I was away from my parents or in a place that I wasn’t comfortable in. Anxiety really didn’t pop up for me until I was around 19 years old.

So my story’s probably a little bit different from other people. I didn’t really have any OCD type symptoms manifest until a little bit later on, until around 19, 20 years old.

Carrie: Okay. Do you feel like the people in your life just kind of saw some of these maybe as Age appropriate behaviors, like it’s somewhat normal for children to go through separation anxiety, and maybe they didn’t realize internally how much that was affecting you or how troubling that was for you?

Jessica: I would say so. I can remember having a very black and white bend in my thinking. And a shame oriented type thinking, especially if it had to do with getting in trouble or rules, or if I’d done something wrong, I could only hold it for so long and I had to go and confess it. I can remember going to church off and on as a kid and somehow I only heard hell.

I didn’t hear the gospel. My brain focused in on the idea of hell and I just thought I was going there. I can recognize internally that I had some issues. Very black and white thinking and some shame based thinking, but outwardly, I would say I appear pretty, if you want to call it, normal. Right. So it would make sense that my parents didn’t think to take me to a professional or anything like that.

Carrie: Yeah. What showed up when you were 19? What happened there?

Jessica: 19 is when I was born again. 19 is whenever I began my relationship with Jesus. I had a very, very radical conversion for lack of a better way to put it. Things changed for me overnight. God really just changed my heart and I was truly born again.

I was all in 100 percent and that is when the obsessive thinking, the panic, the anxiety started to manifest. I would say the first, after two or three months in going to church regularly. Being in the scriptures, starting to be discipled, I started to have some behaviors and some ways of thinking, looking back on it, that I’m like, there’s OCD.

Some examples that I could share would be, a few months in, I had a thought that I needed to end a relationship that, a friendship that I’d had from childhood. And this person wasn’t a believer, but she wasn’t bringing any sort of that influence into my life. And I just had this thought that I needed to end this friendship.

Even after talking to my youth pastor and them encouraging me not to do that, the anxiety, the obsessive thinking that what if that was God’s voice and I’m being disobedient, that sort of thing. Just was so intense that I ended the friendship. That was kind of the beginning of it. After that OCD latched on to evangelism.

I was a baby, baby Christian. I’m introverted by nature. I’m not somebody that just walks up to strangers and let me tell you about Jesus. It usually happens in a relational form for me, but it seemed that anytime I would hear a teaching. And it seemed that I was deficient and are not doing things that I should be doing, quote unquote, not doing things the right way my brain would latch on to it.

So very early on, I had an evangelism obsession. The anxiety of walking up to a stranger probably outweighed the anxiety of OCD in most points, but I remember going and knocking on doors at my grandma’s apartment complex in absolute torment. Praying for people having a pure heart wanting to honor God, but just not knowing what was going on And having thoughts and every thought that I have, I think it might be God.

I was in quite a bit of torment the first year of my walk with God because of undiagnosed OCD.

Carrie: Wow. The people that were discipling you, did they pick up like something just doesn’t seem quite right here? Like, were you asking for a lot of reassurance or, but maybe they couldn’t put their finger on it of what was going on?

Jessica:  Yes. About three or four months in, the evangelism compulsions hit. I was living in Northeast Texas, which is not where I’m from. I’m from Houston area. And I started going to this church. I went to church by myself. My dad would drop me off and I would just go because nobody in my family was really following the Lord.

On my journey, God’s really put people in my life really to protect me. People that were very kind, but were also very patient and would kind of deal with the reassurance that I needed. I had a pastor that I would call at seven o’clock in the morning. He was so kind and patient, but yes, I had the wife of my associate pastor and then the pastor of the church that I was going to, my best friend, I would call her at three o’clock in the morning because I couldn’t sleep, I was just absolutely tormented and they would try to direct me and give me reassurance.

You have to be led by the Holy Spirit. All these things, I was so new in the faith and I’m dealing with this anxiety disorder and. It was like dropping a quarter into a bottomless pit. It just, it would come back. I don’t think anyone around me knew what OCD was. I don’t think anyone around me even thought, Oh, this is a mental illness, which kind of tells you the lack of awareness that we have in the church.

Definitely, I think maybe what was going on with me at first was branded as like legalism. I come from more of a charismatic background and so maybe more of like thinking it was demonic oppression or things like that. No one really even thought, Oh, this could be something that maybe she needs a doctor. That conversation never happened.

Carrie: I really wish that we could put out more educational materials to the church to let them know some of these warning signs of scrupulosity. So that if they have someone who seems quite distressed and is coming and asking a lot of questions, instead of saying like, okay, this person is really trying to figure everything out, or they’re dedicated to their faith, or, and like, it could look a lot of different ways.

That they really have some information to point that person in the right direction to say, Hey, this is potentially what it’s called. Go to a mental health professional and see if you can get assessed and get some help so that you’re not living in such a high state of distress. I wonder if when you got saved and then there was all this psychological torment, was there a part of you that sensed there’s some kind of peace in here?

I know God’s with me. Like even in the midst of all of that that was going on because you kept following Christ, like you didn’t give up on your faith.

Jessica: I think that I had such, for lack of a better way of putting it, I had such a supernatural experience. My conversion experience was very much, I knew nothing about Jesus and I just came to God in absolute surrender and I was changed.

Literally overnight, I fell in love with Jesus. But in a sense, I fell in love with the God that I didn’t really know yet. I know I was absolutely convinced that Jesus was it for me. I didn’t want anything else. But honestly, the first couple years, I didn’t have that peace. It was several years down the line of the Lord really intervening in these places where I was super tormented.

There are some pretty wonderful stories that I have in ways that God just supernaturally would just drop things in my life to be like, hey, this isn’t who I am. This isn’t me. But it was rough. It was rough for quite a while. That’s that piece, that anchor didn’t come until a little while down the road.

Carrie: It seemed like you held on to your salvation experience though. I find that even in the midst of like all of the OCD distress, usually, people can name a time or two out of their life where they really saw, whether it was their conversion experience or whether it was experiences after that as well, like, okay, I know that God is real and I have encountered him in this experience in a positive way.

It’s almost like the Israelites when they picked up stones from the river, it’s like kind of remember that you crossed the Jordan and you each get a stone so that you can remember that God did this miracle for you. And I feel like we need those markers in our own lives as Christians. To say, hey, things are really rough right now, and I don’t have stable footing, but I know God did this back here, and so I know that he’s going to be able to do, lead me through the next part of life that feels scary or uncertain or troubling.

Jessica: Yes. I would say at the beginning stages of my walk with God, he really showed up for me through people. I had wonderful people around me who loved me really well, and who were very patient. It’s kind of mind-boggling the way that looking back, I can see how God protected me. It was almost like I was in this little bubble, but he did it through people.

That was one way that I definitely look back and go, “wow.” There are a few other just short moments that I could share. One, I was in Northeast Texas and my best friend was around Houston area where we lived and she knew what was going on with me, what I was experiencing because I was calling her at three o’clock in the morning, which she was really in it with me, which I’m so grateful for her.

We’re still best friends. She was driving home from work, and she said the only way she could describe it is she felt internally like God yelled at her. Hell, Jessica, this. And what she felt was, stop trying to answer all of your questions. Give me all of your questions. Look at what this does to you. Look at the fruit of this.

If it tears you up, it’s not for me. When she told me that that was like, okay, I held on to that for about like 10 years. I held on to those concepts. And so anytime I would have these looping thoughts or I would have this. Anxiety that I felt like I couldn’t manage. I would literally just be like, God, I have no idea.

I don’t have the answer to this. I would just say, you have it. He just carried me that way. I live pretty normally for about 10 years. Okay. Using those few things, and of course, if you look at scripture, scripture backs that those concepts up. And the way that you traditionally treat OCD, in a sense, kind of lines up with, you know, surrendering things to God, the Ian Osborne, Catholic Christianity Cure OCD, I think he calls it something along the lines of, I can’t think of the word, but the whole concept is just surrendering these.

Formenting thoughts and doubts up to God and letting him be big enough to carry them. So I was really applying these principles before I knew I had OCD, which is a testament to the faithfulness of God. That’s one thing. One other story that’s really close to my heart is I was cleaning a room one day in my mom’s house.

This was about five or six years into my walk with God. I’m still wrestling with these tormenting doubts about certain theological issues and there’s a Bible on the floor and the room was a wreck and I was cleaning it and I opened up the Bible and it opened up to a scripture that God had highlighted to me and Isaiah about a year before.

He’s speaking to the Israelites. And he says, “Oppression will be far from you for you shall not fear.” And it’s all these promises of God establishing them in righteousness and them being free from fear. And he had used that scripture before to show me like, your life is not going to be what you’re experiencing right now.

This is not going to be your life. And that day when I was just in the muck and the mire of anxiety and obsessive thoughts. And we all have those moments when we’re dealing with that kind of anxiety, where we think we’re not going to make it. And when I opened up the Bible and it was right there to that passage, I was like, okay, I mean, how could that not be God?

I’ve had a lot of those stories on my journey, but that’s one that I can really highlight is that was just maybe a small but a supernatural act of God to keep me going really.

Carrie: You talked about having a period where OCD didn’t bother you. It bothered you really intensely and then you were able to surrender some of those doubts and having to figure it out to God and you kind of had a more peaceful period there and then things came back and that happens with OCD sometimes.

The symptoms kind of wax and wane. It depends on life change and stress and other issues. Tell us about when that came back. What happened? Was that closer to you getting a diagnosis?

Jessica: Yes. I had had some pockets off and on in my twenties where I would have those looping thoughts and that anxiety. But every time that that would happen, I would eventually just say, you know what?

The way that I was taught was it was just demonic oppression. And so I’d be like, Oh, this is the spirit of fear. And I’m going to choose not to listen to this. And then I would come back up for air and kind of go on about my way. When I was 30, I got into my first serious relationship as a Christian adult.

That’s when OCD was triggered, and really, that’s when everything came to a head. So one of the major themes that I wrestled with is relationship OCD. Relationship OCD and scrupulosity have been the two, a little bit of body image issues, body dysmorphic disorder type issues, but those are the two main themes that I’ve struggled with so I got into this relationship.

It was not a bad relationship. It was not abusive We were both believers. It was good. It wasn’t we were young and whatever but I began to obsess over Every little thing everything he did everything. He said I was terrified that I had to break up with him I was terrified that he was crazy, that there was just something horribly wrong with him, with his character.

At that time, I was living in a house with some ladies from the church I went to. The woman who owned the house, she was like a mom to me. There was a good two month period where I was in just an absolute panic and torment constantly, almost every single day, and it got to the point where I was sleeping in bed with her because I didn’t want to be alone.

I wasn’t eating very much. I wasn’t sleeping very much. I probably lost 20 pounds. Kind of one of the parts, I think, that kept me from getting help a little bit sooner was that the church culture that I was involved in at the time really believed that any sort of mental illness was demonic. Not that the person was doing anything wrong, but that this was demonic oppression or however you want to say that.

There was no awareness of, hey, mental illnesses are actually demonic. Medical and biological. This could actually be something that needs medication or a doctor. There was no grid for that. I started having panic attacks multiple times a day at work because I’m single, never been married. I didn’t have a lot to fall back on financially.

I had to get up every day and go to work. There’s no option there. So I’m having panic attacks. I started having really horrifying, intrusive thoughts. The worst thoughts that you could imagine. Blasphemous, violent, those kinds of things. That was really the breaking point where I thought that my life was over.

I literally thought that my life was over. I don’t know how, I didn’t know what I thought was going to happen to me, but I just thought one night after getting one hour of sleep, I called my pastor. Everybody loved me really well through this, even though they weren’t, but they still love me very well. I called my pastor.

I had gotten one hour of sleep and he just said, sweetie, I think it’s time for you to go to the doctor. I had been involved in a ministry that referred me to this psychiatry practice in my area that was Christian, that they kind of worked in tandem with. I called, I set up an appointment. On my way to work, I dragged myself out of bed and went to work, and on my way to work, a friend sent me an article on harm OCD.

She had been kind of Googling, praise the Lord for Google sometimes, unless you’re using it for a compulsion. Yeah. She googled my symptoms and she found an article on Harm OCD. And I got to work and I read it and I was like, Oh my gosh, not just the thoughts, but the OCD cycle, the obsessions, the looping thoughts, the reassurance and the anxiety coming back.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is what’s happening to me.” I have this article in hand, and I show up to the psychiatry practice that I still go to, and met my psychiatrist for the first time, such a wonderful man, I’m just so thankful for him, and he confirmed this is textbook OCD, and so I got the diagnosis.

Carrie: Where you more shocked or relieved, or how did you feel at that point?

Jessica: I was relieved to know what was happening to me.

Carrie: To have an answer finally. 

Jessica: Yes. I’m very much a solution-focused person, and so I’m like, okay, this is what’s happening. All right, give me the tools. What do I do? I texted my pastor and said, “Okay, this is what’s going on.”

He was really supportive, and I just started devouring anything and everything I could surrounding OCD and how to treat it. I remember that night coming home after being diagnosed and finally sleeping, finally having a good night’s sleep. That’s where my recovery journey started was right then.

Carrie: It’s hard to have mental health issues, but I find it more terrifying to think Evil is constantly oppressing me on a daily basis.

Jessica: Yes, and having an anxiety disorder, and having this thought in your head that this is a demon, well, I mean that, in and of itself, that just runs them up internally. I remember being afraid that my sanity was going to be stolen from me because panic attacks, a genuine panic attack is from what I understand is your fight or flight response, just going crazy.

You feel like you’re going to die. You feel like you’re going to go crazy. I was experiencing derealization. I felt like I was coming out of my skin, like it was horrifying. And so to not know my body’s doing this. I’m not being taken over by some demonic entity and having a panic attack to not know that in that moment. That’s even more terrifying, I would say.

Carrie: How did your theology, I guess, shift after that point? Or did you end up like switching churches or changing things at some point? Like, what was that process like? Because I think that we have different experiences and not that your experience is the litmus test of God. That’s the scriptures, but God works in our lives through experience, sometimes to teach us about him. I do believe that’s biblical. So what was that process like? 

Jessica: All of the above. I do go to a different church now. The house that I was living in, the woman who owned it, wonderful, godly woman, loved me so well, was so patient with me.

I guess my church community didn’t have, like I said, a grid for mental illness. I guess. I’m a truth person, I’m a justice person, and if I know something to be true, then I’m not going to say that something else is going on. I’m a very open book. I jumped into recovery headfirst and embraced that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This is a thing. I started to learn, well, naturally, if somebody asked me how I’m doing, or if I’m having a conversation, I’m going to share. I just got this diagnosis, or whatever. I stayed at my church for a couple years, but these things that I had learned just started not to line up anymore, and the more I understood mental illness, not just OCD, but schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a brain disease. I just started to realize these things that I’ve been taught, they don’t work, they’re not helpful, they’re not necessarily 100 percent scriptural, and I felt such a peace on the inside of me from God. I just started. That hey, this is what’s going on. This is your avenue of healing.

This is where I’m leading you Is to understand these things I slowly but surely just really started to feel like I couldn’t fully be myself anymore in this beautiful church family that I had been in because there was this part of me that was seen as, well, I experienced it to be seen as she’s oppressed demonically.

Carrie: The primary problem is spiritual, not the problem is medical, mental health, emotional And so many of those things overlap, right?

So it’s hard for us to sit here and tease out and determine sometimes, what’s medical? What’s mental health? What’s spiritual? What’s going on? I personally do not believe that we need to be afraid of demons because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

There may be times where we are tempted and thrown off track or discouragement comes our way. And we know certain things are clearly not from God. So those pieces are hard to tease out, but I think it removes kind of like what we were talking about before. It removes some of the fear if you’re able to say, “Hey, I know at least that I do have this medical mental health diagnosis, and  I don’t need to be afraid of that,  I can actually, like you said, embrace it as, okay, this is what I’m dealing with now that I know, now that I can do something different about it. What is that recovery process been for you like, and just kind of share with us where you are now.

Jessica: Like I said, I began to really just devour any and all resources that I could get my hands on.

I found a book by a local pastor named Jeff Wells. It’s called breaking free of OCD and it’s about his 30-year-long battle with OCD and how knowing God as a father and applying scriptural principles and he had a lot of recovery. I read that book and I found Jamie Eckert. She has scrupulosity.com. She has a coaching group. I joined that. I really started to get some tools in my tool belt and really apply the standard OCD tools, like how we treat it with acceptance and commitment therapy, some ERP exposure-response and prevention tools, Jamie Eckert, her materials helped me probably more than any of them.

Things like, I’m going to put this on ice for two days or for a week. I’m having this obsessive thought, you know what? Put it on ice. It’s going to be okay. You know, that kind of thing. So I would just say workbooks, online resources. I do have therapists, but I never sought classical OCD treatment. There are so many resources that are free. 

I’m an advocate for therapy, 100%. If you have that, and if you can afford it, and if it’s accessible, 100 percent go for it, but there’s just a lot of online resources. I refuse to be debilitated, and there’s so much hope in the OCD recovery community. No OCD doesn’t get to run your life.

I just really started applying tools. I got to a good place. I was diagnosed in June of 2020. It took me probably about nine months to a year to get it back to like, I would say more normal everyday living. In 2022, I had this reemergence of evangelism, compulsions, and scrupulosity that took me out for a couple of months. During that time, I had been feeling the Lord. He just orchestrated some circumstances that kind of booted me out of my church. I started going to a local church, and Jeff Wells is the pastor of that local church, that book that I referenced before.

So he understood OCD. It’s called Woods Edge Community Church. They offer a recovery group called Regeneration, or for short, Regen. In that place of crisis, I started attending that church, and that first week after I had left my church, I went to a Regen meeting, I signed up, I was like, I need something, I need help.

I don’t even know fully what I’m doing, but I need help. It’s a 12-step program. It’s very biblically based and the basis of it is we are powerless to overcome these things in our own strength with the power of the Holy Spirit. God can transform anything that we might be going through. And so the recovery group was different from other 12 step programs.

It wasn’t just about addiction. It could be codependency, mental illness. I went through the program, and God really confronted unbelief in my life. I had this lie that I lived in for all of these years that I’ve been walking with Jesus that He expected me to fix. My own issues that he expected me to solve my own problems.

I finally got to probably the end of myself realizing I cannot fix this. There are parts of me that just feel utterly broken. There are parts of me that feel disabled, the way that my brain works. When you have OCD, your brain tends to be so black and white that you genuinely at times, at least for me, still can’t discern certain things.

This foundation, the first three steps are admit, believe, and trust. Admit that you’re powerless. Believe that God is all powerful and can change and transform anything that you’re going through and trust that he actually wants to and that he will and that the believe and trust. I was like, “Oh, man, I don’t trust God at all.”

It pushed me into the scripture in a way that nothing else ever had. And if you really look at scripture, there is this ongoing theme of as humans, one, we can’t fix ourselves apart from me. You can do nothing. We don’t have the power to overcome these things. God doesn’t expect us to, and his willingness to help come alongside and heal those that simply look to him and trust.

I mean, it’s everywhere in the scripture. I just came to this point of, are you going to believe what this book says about me? Are you going to believe your circumstances? Your circumstances look really dire to you. They look really big and really hopeless, but is that what my book says? He really started to heal this view that I had of him.

Slowly but surely, I’ve come to a place of, John 15, 4 through 5 is one of my favorite scriptures and it says, “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” And it goes on to say, for apart from me you can do nothing.

God has really just brought me to this place of rest. Where the situation comes in my life. I don’t have an answer for I go to him and I invite him into the situation and I’ve seen him just do amazing and just mind blowing things with these situations that I just give over to him and I simply make space. I make space for the Holy Spirit to do his work.

Carrie: That trust piece is, it’s so hard and it’s so huge. I know it’s something that God has really worked with me on in my own life. In our culture, there’s so much striving and so much working and so much self-improvement. Even, you know, we’re kind of self improvement junkies.

Sometimes, like you said, what God wants us to do is like, be still and know that he’s God, and take the step back and say, okay, I surrender, I give up trying to do it on my own, and I need you to enter in. But sometimes God has to get us to the end of ourselves. He’s like, okay, you’re ready now. You’re ready now for me to step in and to do that work because you came to the end of you.

Our pastor shared this quote recently by Jackie Hill Perry about trust. And it said this is because God is holy. He cannot sin, and if he cannot sin, that means he must be the most trustworthy being on the planet. It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around that because we’ve been so hurt and wounded by other people in our life, just from living life.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how old you are, you’ve been hurt and wounded by somebody or something that’s happened to you. Just recognizing that character of God is so different that we can trust him, we can rest, we can let go. But sometimes it means that we have to do the hard work of surrendering and letting go and trusting and embracing that God is here and is with us in the midst of this.

Jessica: Yes, I realized along this journey that I couldn’t actually surrender. I couldn’t even surrender in my own strength because you have these faulty beliefs. It could be because of trauma, like with me experiencing sexual abuse, especially being so young. I was under two. I mean, that shaped your worldview like nothing else does.

And I realized I genuinely don’t know how to trust you. I don’t know how to let this go. And he’s so beautiful and so kind. He gave me the power and the strength that I needed to even do that. That’s why I love to encourage and try and share this hope that you can do any of it on your own. And that’s actually wonderful.

We don’t have to, he doesn’t expect this to you. The other day I was reading, I can’t remember what book in the scripture it is. You hear about the Holy Spirit being our advocate. Well, the scripture also references Jesus as being an advocate as well. And I looked up the definition of an advocate, and one of the definitions was one who comes alongside.

That’s good. That just, it just gave me so much more hope, and it was so much more confirmation that I don’t have to do this life by myself. Paul said that I will boast all the more in my weaknesses, my sufferings, when I’m weak, He’s strong. His power has made perfect in weakness. I don’t wish mental illness on anybody or physical illness or any suffering.

I do believe, though, that when we come face to face with our weakness as humans, it’s beautiful because that’s when we really experience God in a sweeter, in a deeper way. I believe at least. That’s been my experience.

Carrie:  Awesome. Thank you, Jessica, for being so willing and open to sharing your story, and I’m glad that you have gotten a variety of different support along the way, whether it was people just loving you, even when they didn’t understand everything, to getting more specific help medically and discipleship help through the church.

It sounds like God has really used a variety of different things in your life to bring you. to where God wants you to be. So thank you for being here and sharing all of that. 

Jessica: Yes, thank you for having me.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling.

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

113. From Suicidal to Thriving, a Personal Story with Sara Nicole Tynan

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In this week’s episode, Carrie interviews Sara Tynan, author and wellness educator, about her journey from mental health struggles to wellness, and how her experiences inspired her to help others.

Episode Highlights:

  • Sara’s transformation from battling mental health issues to finding wellness with God’s help.
  • How spiritual, physical, and mental health contributed to Sara’s recovery.
  • The role of scripture affirmations in Sara’s life and how she teaches others to use them for mental wellness and overcoming insecurities.
  • The inspiration behind Sara’s book “So That” and her role as a wellness educator.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to episode 113 of Christian Faith and OCD! I’m thrilled to feature Sara Tynan, the author of So That and a dedicated wellness educator. Sara’s inspiring journey from struggling with mental health and substance abuse to finding fulfillment and healing is a testament to the power of faith and perseverance.

Sara’s path to wellness wasn’t immediate; it involved overcoming significant challenges, including mental health issues and substance abuse. Her turning point came during a college crisis, where she hit rock bottom, prompting a decision to make drastic life changes. With the support of loved ones and a commitment to healthier habits, Sara moved away from medications and substance use, eventually finding peace and stability.

Her latest project, the podcast “Fulfilled,” is a continuation of her mission to share tools and insights for a fulfilling life, grounded in spiritual growth and God’s promises. Sara emphasizes the importance of scriptural affirmations, like Philippians 4:13, in transforming negative thought patterns and aligning one’s mindset with Biblical truth.

Sara’s story is a powerful reminder of the strength that faith and practical changes can bring in overcoming life’s challenges.

Related Links and Resources:

Sara’s Book, So That: A Story of God’s Glory

Sara’s website: saranicoletynan.com

Her Podcast: Fulfilled

Click for another inspiring story:

79. Personal Story of Anxiety with Dr. Sherri Yoder

Summary

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 113. Today on the show I have with me Sara Tynan. She is the author of the book “So That” and a wellness educator. Her passion for teaching comes from her own personal experience with her mental health struggles. We’re going to talk today about her story, some things that she has picked up along the way, as well as things that she teaches to individuals that she works with now.

________________

Carrie: Sara, welcome to the show.

Sara: Hi, thanks for having me.

Carrie: What kind of led you on this journey to become a wellness educator and author and just tell your story?

Sara: My own journey to where I am today, which is, I’d like to think I’m pretty well mentally, physically, and spiritually, but that didn’t happen overnight. It happened over a course of years and I went through a lot of twists and turns.

I got to a point where I feel like I’m doing really good, and  I don’t think that I’m on the other side of this for no reason. I think everything God does has a purpose. I felt like God was saying, “Okay, well, if you feel like you’re well, then use what happened to you to help other people.”  I just wrote it all out. I wrote down everything that happened to me and through me, and that turned into a book. After a couple of years of that book just kind of being there, I was like, there’s still more, so then I created a mental health conference. And even after that, I just kept feeling that phrase.

There’s still more. There’s still more. I redid my book and added a devotional to the back of it because a devotional was one of the big tools that helped me in my journey. That’s where I am today. I just launched my podcast in January, which is just another resource for people to go to find free tools. Some of the tools that I’ve learned along my journey. 

Carrie: What is your podcast called?

Sara:  It’s called “Fulfilled” and it’s all about living this fulfilled life and clinging to the promises that God has yet to fulfill.

Carrie: Yes. That’s so good. So many of us are in the waiting on the journey where we desire to be where God desires us to be, and really that’s a lifelong process of sanctification, which is really just a big word for becoming more like Christ. We’re all on the journey somewhere. I really do believe that the Bible has direction for us that if we are even slightly farther along than a brother or sister in the journey, it’s our responsibility to help lift them up to where they need to be.

What do you feel like was a rock bottom moment for you as you were going through this?

Sara: The chapter in my life and the chapter in my book that’s literally titled “Rock Bottom.” I won’t give away too many details because obviously you’ve got to read the book, but I’m literally an open book. I mean, I love sharing my story, so I’ll share what I can.

The rock bottom happened when I was at college. I had been drinking a lot. I had been dabbling in a bunch of different marijuanas and marijuana types, even some of the synthetic stuff. I was also heavily medicated. I was on medications for bipolar and insomnia. I was on another one that kind of helped with the anxiety that came with bipolar.

All these medications should not be mixed with anything, especially alcohol, especially synthetic marijuana. All of those things led me to get to this place where I was suicidal. I was cutting my wrists. I was ready to end it. I tried to take a bottle of pills, and  somebody walked in. That somebody was a friend and she said, “All right, I see what you’re doing. If you don’t get your mom on the phone, I’m going to call her.”

My mom came and got me. I checked into a mental institution that’s no longer around. I don’t even remember the name of it, but I know that they shut down a couple of years ago. They had both inpatient and outpatient. I think we live close enough that I was able to do the outpatient.

I would go into this facility and I forget how long the program was supposed to be, but a couple of days in, I was like, “This is not for me. This is not the life God wants me to live.”  I was sitting in a circle. We had group therapy, something that happens frequently in the mental institutions. We’re sitting in this group therapy session and it was women older than me and they were all talking about their problems.

I remember just sitting there thinking, I don’t fit in with these people. I don’t have a hard life. Nothing bad happened to me. I think I just need to get my act together. It was just this moment where I was like, “This is it. I can’t ever do this again. I do not want to feel this way. I don’t want to live this way.”

I went home and I kind of looked at all the things that I had been doing in my life and not doing. Even my dad was like, “Sara, you’re not really active like you used to be in dance and you’re not moving your body at all. All the alcohol you were drinking, you’re consuming a lot of junk food.”

We looked at my physical situation. I was very unhealthy. I wasn’t eating nourishing foods. I wasn’t moving my body, and then I looked at my spiritual situation. I wasn’t reading my Bible. I would go to church every now and then because my parents made me when I came home from college. I just kind of reevaluated where I was mentally, physically, and spiritually.

I implemented tools. Those tools took me to this place where my doctor said, “Sara, you no longer need to be medicated for your mental illnesses.”

That was 12 years ago, and I haven’t had medication for mental health since.

Carrie: That’s huge. I think that was a wake up call for you in terms of I’m sitting in this circle with these women who are older than I am, and if I don’t change something about what I’m doing, if I don’t live my life, that’s where I’m going to be in 10 years, 20 years. 

Talk to us about the marijuana, the synthetic marijuana. There’s a lot of that stuff going around now and people just see it as [fine], there are some Christians that will even tell you, “It’s a plant. God gave it to us. We should use it in the ways that we see fit.”

I’ve known a lot of clients who have struggled with things like sleep. Like you had said, insomnia was a big deal for you at one time, and they’ve just said, “Hey, this is the only way I can wind down at night. This is the only way that I can go to sleep.” What was your awareness or thought process on going from using to not using?

Sara: Actually, I’m glad you said that because all of those thoughts that you said, that’s the thought that I had.

I’ve been a believer my whole life. When I was really at my rock bottom where I was drinking and smoking, it was all like party usage. It was all just like, “Let’s get blackout. Just forget all our problems, so let’s have fun.”

That was my use in college. But then even after I was, this was actually a couple of years ago.

I got back into using marijuana, but I was using it for wellness purposes as is talked about. I did think, it’s natural. I bet Jesus would have smoked pot when he was here on earth. Those are the things I said and believed for two years until I was baptized by the Holy Spirit and had true conviction.

You talked about sanctification. That’s I believe when I finally had this conviction where God was like, “I want more for you and I want you to live the way that Jesus lived, so let’s change some things.”  What took me from using marijuana to not using marijuana was what God said to me was, “You trusted me to heal your mind before. Can you do that again with this?” 

When God originally healed me, when I got off of my medication, my struggles were bipolar and insomnia, but a couple of years ago, I started developing really, really bad anxiety. My son got really sick and I was planning this mental health conference, and it took a toll on my mental health.

My anxiety was through the roof. My heart was racing. If my phone buzzed, I would literally jump because I was so anxious about everything, so I started using marijuana. I would take tinctures. I would smoke. I would get edibles. I would go to the Delta eight, Delta nine, whatever it took to take me from this very hyper anxious person.

Where it took me was sunken into my couch, not being present with my family. Eventually, after that conviction came into my life, I felt like God said, “You don’t need this to heal. You need to rely on me and the things that you’ve done in your past to heal.” 

Even though I felt that conviction, I want to be totally honest. I continued using marijuana up until last December. It took me realizing that I was completely disappearing from my family because I thought that was right. It took me going, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how far I had gone with this stuff.”

I went and got some of the legal stuff. It’s called Delta 8 or Delta 9. I justified it in my head by saying, “This is legal. It’s not wrong. I’m not breaking the law. This is natural. It’s what God would have wanted me to do. I believe those lies.

It’s legal. I took it. I became so paranoid, which is very common. I was worse off with my anxiety than I was before, and the purpose I was taking it was to help with my anxiety. That was a wake-up call for me. I was like, “What am I doing?” I’m so desperate to get well, to not have anxiety that I’m doing something that’s taking me in the opposite direction.

That was one of my bigger wake-up calls when I was like,” Oh God, you really are trying to get my attention here.” 

In January of last year, our church did this series called “A Year From Now.” It was really, really cool. My pastor brought out our baptismal, the trough that we baptize people in. It was empty and he had everyone write down on a piece of paper some things that they wanted to surrender to the Lord: Habits, addictions, whatever. I wrote down marijuana and we put it in the baptismal and then he threw dirt on it. It was a symbol of you have to die to yourself if you want to follow Christ. Right?  I decided to give up marijuana and trust that God would continue healing my anxiety. It’s so cool because he absolutely did.

We wrote letters to ourselves and sealed it, addressed it, and our church sent it out. You guys, I got the letter last week and it was like the things that you wanted to be where you wanted to be a year from now and it was just amazing to see [that] I went a whole year without relying on marijuana for my anxiety, and I haven’t had anxiety.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I feel like the things that you were doing like sleeping well and eating well and moving your body, exercise can be really great for us in terms of making us be ready to wind down at the end of the day and to de-stress definitely helps a lot. It’s truly like a God thing that we’re having this conversation because I made a decision at the end of last year to make some health changes this year.

I just had let my health go by the wayside physically and was just eating whatever was convenient and in front of me instead of really taking the time to plan and be intentional about what I was eating. I had kind of fallen away from exercise routines. I’ve just noticed how much better I feel making those changes when I eat well and when I exercise and how that has had truly a ripple effect in other areas of my life.

It’s had ripple effects that I can see in my business in terms of planning and intentionality. It’s had ripple effects in my spiritual life and other places. I think a lot of times we know what we need to do. Taking that first step really is the hardest or sticking with it once we’ve taken that first step is amazing, but you have to kind of set that intentionality and to say, I’m going to take away all of the excuses that I have in my life. I need this.” 

One of the things I processed was when I’m really stressed, it seems like I’m running to sugar or caffeine. In the process of shifting my diet and having a lot less sugar in there now and less instead of just being so carb-laden, like the average American diet is, it really has helped me realize, “Oh, I don’t need to depend on it.”

Whether we like it or not, sugar or caffeine can become our substance that we rely on instead of saying like, “Okay, God, I’m stressed. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do about the situation. How do I move forward?” Instead of engaging in some of those healthy habits, we turn towards what’s comfortable and familiar with us.

Sara: Whether that’s sugar or weed or alcohol.

Carrie: Yes. It’s also common for a lot of people to just say, “Well, I just have a glass of wine at night to wind down,” but then they don’t realize the accumulation of that over time. 

When we had talked before, you told me about using scriptural affirmation with clients. Would you share with us, how you utilize some of those? I think a lot of times people use affirmations that aren’t Christian and they’re just like, “I am strong and I am powerful and I can do anything I set my mind to.” Some of them are just completely bogus and not true and kind of like we’re trying to inflate ourselves in some way or even could give into pride.

How do you utilize the scriptural affirmation with the people you work with?

Sara: I love affirmations. I used to teach a class. It was a yoga class. We would get into a stretch and then while we were in the stretch, we would say, “I am”, and then you fill in the blank, whatever the theme of the day was. I created this. It’s like a curriculum because we met every single Tuesday for like a year and a half.

Every Tuesday, I would have to come up with my plan for what I was going to teach, what the affirmations were going to be.  I got to this place where I ran out of affirmations. I was just pulling them from Pinterest, and then I was like, “What about grabbing the Bible?” I literally just grabbed my Bible.

I opened it up, and I just hold a random scripture, and I was like, “What does this say about me about who I am in Christ?” An example I like to use is most Christians know: Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. 

You can break that up into multiple affirmations, and one of the affirmations was, “I am strong.” That’s a true affirmation. My question is, where do you get the strength? The Bible, Philippians 4:13 tells us we get it from Christ, so when you say your affirmation, you’re thinking I am strong. You can keep it going by saying Christ strengthens me or I am strong because Christ strengthens me. And so you take what’s in the Bible and you say it as if it’s your words because you’re believing that what the Bible is, is truth. That’s part of being a Christian. You believe that that word is breathed out by God and it’s true. What the Bible says about you is true. And a lot of the struggles I had when I was harming myself was what I call stinking thinking. It’s where I start to tell myself I’m not good enough. I’m not pretty enough.

I’m not strong enough. I can’t handle this. Those are lies. And I don’t serve the father of lies. I’ve served the Lord. And the Lord says that I am strong. That’s what the Bible says. That’s one of my biggest tools is scripture-based positive affirmations. I’ll write them on my mirror. It changes from season to season. For example, there are seasons where I struggle with feeling pretty enough, or there are seasons where I struggle with feeling smart enough. That’s when I lean into what the Bible is saying about me. Another one I like to use is Proverbs 31, all about being the wife that God’s called me to be, being the mother God’s called me to be.

Carrie: I was going to ask you about kind of insecurities about physical appearance, like, are there certain ones that you use when you don’t feel pretty enough? Do you focus on just being beautiful internally?

Sara: Yes. Is that another part of Proverbs 31 where it talks about like the words of your mouth? What makes you pretty is your heart. I know there’s a verse, I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but it does speak to that. It does say that your appearance is worthless if what’s in your heart is hate. The words of your mouth make up what you look like. I cannot think of the scripture, but I know that that’s there and that’s one that I will lean into.

It’s like, I may have a breakout today, but that does not define who I am in Christ because my heart is still beautiful.

Carrie: Usually, towards the end of our episode and our time together, I like to ask people a couple of different questions. One is, what would you tell your younger self that was just kind of like living the typical college life, if you want to call it that, just living for the moment, partying, junk food, staying up late, not getting enough sleep, all of those things. What would you want her to know?

Sara: The thing that I was told when I was struggling a couple years ago, which is there’s still more. There’s still more goodness for you. God has a plan for you, which was spoken over my life when I was really young, Jeremiah 29:11, that he has plans for good and there’s a future for hope for me.

I heard that growing up, and I ignored it when I was in college, I thought this is all God has for me. This is my life. I am bipolar. I can’t sleep. I can’t do anything right. I’m not good enough. I believed all those lies. So if I could just speak that into myself, there is still more for you, Sarah, God has so much in store for you.

You just have to get through this short season. You will be strengthened by it. When you’re on the other side of it, God is going to use this storm and he’s going to turn it into the most beautiful rainbow you can ever imagine. I was actually just thinking about this because we didn’t talk much about my struggles a couple of years ago, but my son was really sick. I didn’t think I was going to get through it. I was starting to feel very anxious. That’s why I turned to the marijuana, but there was a phrase that someone said to me that I just want anybody out there who’s struggling to kind of hold onto this. It’s just two words. It’s for now. This trial that you are facing right now, this storm, it’s only for now. It will strengthen you and God will use this pain for your purpose.

Carrie: I think one of the hardest questions and struggles that people have is, “Am I always going to feel this way? We can get really stuck in that. It feels so terrible, horrible, awful. I can’t stand one more moment. Am I always going to feel this way?”

I think one of the things that we want to promote on the show is hope. That now you feel this way and you know what? Tomorrow you may feel this way or two weeks. You might, but over time, that doesn’t mean you’re going to feel this way forever. There is hope. There is help for our physical bodies.

There’s help for our emotional health and there’s healing from past trauma. There’s so many things that I would absolutely agree with you and stand on and say there’s more for people out there now than what they’re facing. That God wants believers to be empowered and to be his light in the world. If we’re kind of just covering in a corner saying, “I can’t do this” then it’s hard for us to be able to shine that light. That’s part of my passion is helping people, you know, see that confidence in Christ. I think it’s so important.

Sara: I love that. I’m really glad I found your podcast because that’s everything I stand for.

Carrie: Yes. I want to check out yours too since it’s new and kind of see how it’s flowing and listening to your story.

We’re going to put Sarah’s website in the show notes and we’ll find your podcast too. That way people can connect with you.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, really from a place of being at rock bottom and suicidal to now just thriving by the Holy Spirit. Thank you for sharing that.

——–

Thank you everyone else for listening. 

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

108. OCD Personal Story with Michael Kheir

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

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Michael Kheir, the author of “Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach.” Michael shares his personal experience with OCD, shedding light on the challenges he faced. He delves into how faith and a deep understanding of God’s grace were pivotal in his journey towards healing and recovery.

Episode Summary:

  • The importance of reducing stigma around mental health, particularly OCD and anxiety.
  • How OCD can lead to obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, even over seemingly insignificant matters.
  • The impact of strict religious upbringing on OCD and the concept of legalism.
  • The power of understanding and embracing God’s grace in dealing with mental health challenges.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 108! I’m Carrie Bock, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Michael, the author of Waging War Against OCD: A Christian Approach. Michael was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, which has been incredibly insightful for our discussion.

In this episode, we dive deep into Michael’s personal battle with OCD. He shares how his journey began in childhood and has evolved through adulthood. Michael has extensively researched OCD from both Christian and secular perspectives, and his book reflects this thorough exploration. He recounts a poignant story from his college days, where a seemingly small incident triggered a flood of obsessive thoughts and compulsions.

Michael also opens up about the stories he revealed for the first time in his book—stories he hadn’t shared with his family before. His openness underscores a crucial point: mental health struggles do not define our worth or intelligence. Instead, they are a part of our journey, and understanding this can help reduce stigma.

Michael’s reflections on his experiences highlight the importance of embracing God’s grace rather than being trapped by rituals and compulsions. This conversation is a powerful reminder that faith and understanding can guide us through the complexities of OCD.

Join us as we explore these themes and more. If you find this episode helpful, please subscribe and leave a review to support our mission of breaking the stigma surrounding mental health.

Related links and resources:

www.wagingwaragainstocd.com

More to listen to:

26. A Personal OCD Story of Experiencing God’s Presence and Grace with Peyton Garland

Transcript

101. A Secret Life (OCD) with Jim Juliana

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 101. A Secret Life (OCD) with Jim Juliana

Join Carrie as she sits down with Jim Juliana, an author, former high school teacher and an athletic coach, who opens up about his journey of enduring and overcoming OCD. He candidly reveals the obstacles, triumphs, and the profound impact of combining faith and therapy in his recovery.

Episode Highlights:

  • The intensity of Jim’s OCD episodes and how they affected his daily life.
  • The impact of OCD on Jim’s academic and professional pursuits.
  • The familial nature of OCD and its genetic implication
  • Jim’s struggle to reconcile treatment approaches with religious beliefs.
  • Jim’s book, “A Secret Life: Enduring and Triumphing Over OCD

Carrie also offers her insights on Jim’s treatment, providing additional context and highlighting the importance of individualized therapy plans for OCD.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 101 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host. In today’s episode, I’m thrilled to introduce Jim Juliana, author of “A Secret Life.” Jim shares his deeply personal journey with OCD, detailing his experiences and treatment.

Jim first noticed something was wrong during elementary school in the 1950s. He recalls an incident where he fixated on an inappropriate image, leading him to fear eternal damnation. Despite being a top student and devout altar boy, he struggled with feelings of guilt and scrupulosity, intensified by his religious upbringing.

As a teenager in the 1960s, Jim faced increasing OCD symptoms, including tics and obsessive thoughts. He recalls an event where he ran away before returning to high school, seeking refuge in a tree house. This marked the beginning of his journey toward professional help, although he did not receive an official OCD diagnosis until 1980.

Jim emphasizes the importance of recognizing OCD in children, noting how it can affect well-behaved students who may internalize their struggles. He shares insights from his own experiences and from conversations with educators and parents about the prevalence of OCD in younger populations.

Join us as Jim delves into his past, the challenges he faced, and how he ultimately found healing. Tune in to hear his full story and gain valuable insights into living with and overcoming OCD.

Related Links and Resources:

Jim Juliana

Jim Juliana’s Book: A Secret Life: Enduring and Triumphing Over OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

International OCD Foundation

More Episodes to Listen to:

74. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and NOCD with Stacy Quick, LPC

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 101. I am your host, Carrie Bock. On today’s episode, we have a personal story of someone who’s dealt with OCD and has gone through treatment and has written a book about it. So I’m very excited to have Jim Juliana on the show talking about his book, “A Secret Life.”

Welcome to the show.

Jim: Thank you, Carrie, for having me.

Carrie: When did you really first start to show signs of OCD and like, what were those? Even if you didn’t have a diagnosis or you didn’t know that that’s what it was.

Jim: I first knew something was wrong when I was in elementary school, we’re going back now to the mid 1950s, I’m showing my age, and I can remember and relate in the book, an incident where we had a plumber or electrician at the house working.

For my mom and I was snooping around the truck outside and there was a picture in the truck of a partially naked woman and of course I fixated on it. And then after the gentleman left, I started having very serious feelings that I had done something wrong. I was the oldest of eight children. I don’t think we had eight at this time, but went to Catholic school through 12th grade.

Was very religious. I was an altar boy. I was at the top of my class academically, and I thought I was a pretty good person. And then this event occurred and it took my mother and me. The rest of the afternoon for me to realize or come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to go to hell for having looked at this picture.

Wow. And I remember it very, very vividly. My mother was my best friend all through my teenage years, and I worshipped her and loved her very much, and it was, uh, mutual. And she sat me down, I remember, in the kitchen and tried to explain to me what had transpired, and it wasn’t a mortal sin, and I wasn’t going to hell, and eventually I felt better about it later in the afternoon, and we’re talking several hours where she consoled me and talked to me, and so that was the very first incident where I knew there was something unusual going on.

Back then, the word scrupulosity came into play because of my religious background and upbringing. The other event that took place, which was really probably the most important event in my adolescent years, I had completed the first semester of Catholic high school. In an all boys Jesuit high school, it was Christmas vacation and I was scheduled to go back to school the next day to start the second semester in January.

Now we’re talking 1964 and as I had mentioned, I was a straight A student did very, very well. I like school, enjoyed school, but I had been having a lot of problems. My first semester at PrEP, Georgetown PrEP, was headaches, and I had developed some facial and bodily tics. And it was all trying to get rid of thoughts or ideas that I thought were sexually wrong or inappropriate.

And my grades had reflected this interruption, so to speak. And I was just afraid to go back to school, so the night before I was supposed to return, I ran away. And basically what I did was I went into the park. We lived near Rock Creek park and my friends had a tree for tree house. So I spent the night there freezing my butt off and got back to the house about eight or eight 30 in the morning.

And of course my folks were beside themselves. And that was the first time that I ever received any professional medical help for what was going on. I had just turned 15 years old then.

Carrie: Did they know that you were struggling with this thought process? Was there a lot of confessing that was going on to them?

Jim: No.

Carrie: Or assurance seeking? Okay.

Jim: It was my secret only at that point. And I was very timid. Even though I was a good athlete and a good student, I was behind the eight ball a little bit socially. I was very quiet and introverted. Even with my parents, they would have to pull things out of me, so to speak. You can imagine having a house full of children, all ages, all in school.

We had a nice middle class family and I was pretty happy most of the time, but this was an offshoot of what had happened in grade school and it just kept getting worse and worse and more invasive in everything that I did to the point where. I knew I needed help. I didn’t quite know how to ask for help.

So this was my way of speaking up and getting my parents involved.

I think it’s important to note for parents and others that sometimes like the kid that’s well behaved, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have the internal struggles going on. Because a lot of times we see situations where. A child can be very well behaved and they’re good in school, but then they’re holding on to this anxiety inside and unless it manifests in some way externally, a lot of times people don’t know.

Yeah, and I think I’ve mentioned to you, we have 4 children and 3 of our girls are school teachers. It’s amazing today just how many youngsters suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. It would shock a lot of parents and… Through discussions with my girls and in the last few years I taught, it was just startling how many children are affected adversely in school and in their activities and at how young it happens.

My wife and I spoke to a lady who was a secretary work for our financial planner and Betsy started talking one day to her and she had twins, seven years old, and one of the twins was having nightmares. and all kinds of problems, and had been diagnosed with OCD. And this was just a couple years ago.

Carrie: Yeah, fortunately, like, they’re catching it a lot earlier, so that there can be earlier intervention.

Yes. Whereas, you know, many years ago, they did not catch these types of things earlier. When you got help at 15, did you get a diagnosis of OCD then, or no?

Jim: I’m laughing at remembering. We went to a doctor, psychiatrist that was a good friend of the family, Dr. Fitzgerald. He had a couple of sons attending prep with me.

He was a good friend of the family. And my parents and I never received or heard the word OCD until 1980, if you can believe that. I was married, had four children and into my career as a teacher and coach. Before OCD was ever mentioned.

Did you label yourself with something random, like I’m weird or quirky, or I feel crazy inside because I think a lot of times people with OCD do feel internally crazy until they get a diagnosis.

Yeah, you’re right about that. A lot of people I’ve met, they don’t want to talk about it. They’re embarrassed. Yeah. I think would be the word I would use, or they feel they’re lesser human beings.

Carrie: How did you explain this to yourself?

Jim: To this day, I think of what happened to me freshman year in high school, for lack of better words, is I had a nervous breakdown of some sort.

I had an emotional… breakdown. I had a mental disorder of some nature that I had no idea what was going on. In fact, just within the last couple of years, when I was meeting with my present Dr. Jim Gallagher, who inspired me to write my book, he talked about the fact that I was a 15 year old, going through puberty, going through all kinds of Emotional, physical changes at that time.

And a lot of that was part of what produced the headaches. The headaches were real. A lot of my teachers thought that I was faking it. I remember that. It was much, much more complicated than anyone thought back in 1964. And it encompassed everything I did, every day, every minute, something was going on and I knew it.

I knew I was different. In fact, later on in my adolescence, when I dropped out of college, I was drafted. It was during Vietnam and our pediatrician was able to write a letter and explain what was going on with me. And I really wasn’t trying to dodge the draft. In fact, I was thinking about going into the service.

They wouldn’t take me because I was, I think the phrase they used was mentally unstable or mentally incompetent. I was four F and didn’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.

Carrie: Wow. Well, you said it took until 1980 for you to get a diagnosis and hear the words O c D. While you were going through this in high school and beyond, was it always mainly themes of scrupulosity, like worried about offending God or going to hell or other things?

Jim: Yes, my wife and I were high school sweethearts and started dating. Oh, I first met her when I was 14. So right around, so she knows all about this and lived with this more than anybody else now that my parents are gone. And it was always a scrupulosity problem. It always, because of my deep religious Christian faith, my Catholicism, my love of God, but it always was, had sexual overtones.

And it was never talked about that. I had something going wrong with the chemicals in my brain. There were pathways that I had developed forcing me to go sideways in different areas. Even when the O C D was used in 80, I was seeing a doctor here in Denver and he actually was trying drugs, prescription drugs to use some of the effects of the OCD.

They hadn’t been accepted yet by the FDA, so my doctor had to get him from Canada. That’s the point where I was in the 70s and 80s where I’m trying every different prescription drug for anxiety, for depression, for whatever they thought it might work. And I probably went through half a dozen to a dozen different types of drugs.

And drugs have never really been a great assistance to my problem. Never. In fact, Dr. Gallagher says it’s normally about only 30% of people that have OCD find any kind of relief from prescription. Antidepressants, those kind of things.

Do you remember what some of the things you were on? Were you on like, because this was before the standard treatment now is SSRIs.

Were you on like a tricyclic antidepressants? Or do you remember? I was

on Prozac at one time. I know my brother. I can’t remember the drug that he used because he’s OCD as well. And I mentioned it to my doctor and we tried and it did have some side effects, but it helped a little bit, but it was never more than just mellowing me out.

Carrie: Okay.

Jim: Kind of controlling my temper and frustration and anger and anxiety in my case anyway.

Carrie: But it never helped like lessen the intrusions for you?

Jim: No, never.

Carrie: That’s hard to deal with. So I imagine that it was probably hard trying to navigate a sense of like healthy sexuality. It’s normal for teenagers to think about sex or be curious about sex or have questions about them.

But those things weren’t talked about. People weren’t having open conversations. Was that hard for you to navigate? Try to figure out like, I don’t know what’s normal versus like what’s OCD related.

Jim: Yeah, what was normal for me was what I had been taught in 12 years of Catholic school, nuns for eight years, Sisters of Charity, which I loved them, they were great teachers, but they were strict, and it was all by the book, the Catholic Church, the doctrines of the church, so I, being the person I was, That was kind of how I acted and reacted.

And if I thought it was a mortal sin to look at a girl walking away from me who had nice legs and a nice butt and swayed. And if that was a mortal sin, then that was a mortal sin. I had to go and confess that, go to church for that. I think like a lot of kids in the fifties and sixties, there wasn’t a lot of, uh, sex education or discourse on sex.

It’s what I learned in school, and it seemed like, as I look back now, just about everything was bad, was wrong. That was my approach, gotta be careful, and I never dated much. I never kissed a girl until my wife to be kissed me when I was probably 16. I was way behind the curve. A lot of it had to do with the OCD and worrying about sin and having to go back to church, confess my sins, talk to the priest, that kind of thing.

Carrie: Did that cause you to engage in confession maybe more than the average Catholic? I don’t know exactly how that works, but did you find yourself going back a lot and confessing impulsively?

Jim: Yes, absolutely. It’s like hitting your head on the brick wall, like, okay, this is going to help. And then you walk out of the confession. Confession works where you can go anytime you want. Okay. It’s up to the individual and it’s a sacrament, just like receiving the Eucharist or marriage. So it’s supposed to receive help from God and grace from God by going to confession, supposed to be helpful. And I turned it upside down on its head and it became drudgery and something that I avoided more than took advantage of.

Carrie: Okay. Did you have a lot of compulsive praying during this time? Like you’d have a certain thought and say a certain prayer or feel like you were repeating certain prayers over and over?

Jim: Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ve thought about that. Yes, most definitely. I used to, in grade school, during Easter, during Lent, Advent, Christmas time, I tried to go to church every day before school. And then in high school, we had mass, daily mass. Optional. And I went a lot. In fact, half of the kids that went to prep were boarding students. So about 200 day, we were called day hops and then 200 boarding students from all over the United States. And we would go back in early August for football camp to start practice.

And I was one of the captains my senior year. And the tradition had always been go to church, go to mass every morning before we start practicing the day. And a lot of kids were rebelling against that. And I remember along with the other co captain, we had a team meeting and I was the one that said, Hey, we’re going to go to church every morning.

We’re going to keep this tradition. And a lot of guys were upset with me. As I recall, that was an example of how. Impulsive I was about the religious. I even carried it into my responsibility as captain of the football team, making the rest of the guys go to church every morning, just because I thought that’s what I wanted to do.

It wasn’t anything I was hurting him, but I’m sure there’s some guys to this day that are still resentful why Juliana made us go to church on, uh, every single day during camp.

Carrie: I think that’s a good point though, where sometimes when people struggle with OCD, they can rope other people into their compulsive behaviors. And this especially happens for spouses, children, others that are closest to you. I’m curious, what was the impact on your wife and children? Because you had told me when we met a little bit before that they actually wrote parts of your book, right? Or you included parts from them in the book.

Jim: Each of the four children, they’re all adults now in their 40s. And then my wife, Betsy, wrote probably half a chapter. And what I wanted people to see is how my OCD affected them. I knew as a father with them growing up and trying to be a good dad, but I knew a lot of times they had no idea what was going on and what my actions, why I was doing what I was doing. I wanted them to have an opportunity to relate people who read the book, what it was like for them , especially for my son, he spent a lot of time with me in the fall. He was always the manager of the football team, and he was around me a lot during football practices and that kind of thing. Both my youngest daughter and Jimmy, our son, I taught both of them at the Catholic school they attended for, I taught them two years, which they talk about a lot of it was fun and it was a good experience, but there were some tough times for them. And then of course, Betsy’s perspective is probably the most intuitive and the most real because she knew me as the boy next door. Literally, her family moved next door to my grandparents at the beach.

She told her father the first summer that we knew each other that she was going to marry me. Now, how she knew that, I still don’t know. She said, Dad, I’m going to marry that guy. But she had an awful lot of insights and I give her a lot of credit because I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her. She got me through a lot of tough times, especially in college.

When things got really bad, the thoughts got really bad, I called them episodes or sessions in the book, I think, where I would have a thought and it would kind of take control of my brain. When I went to see Gallagher in 2015. Those sessions amounted to 60, 70 times a day. I was interrupted in my mind related to something having to do with OCD and oftentimes sexual nature, 65 to 70 times.

Carrie: That’s a lot.

Jim: It’s terrible. In graduate school, I got my master’s because of my OCD. I couldn’t read my textbooks because I was interrupted so often. And I loved to read. There were times before that where, and I said, I think I mentioned I developed tics, shaking my head and trying to get rid of these thoughts and the children and Betsy offered, I think, excellent perspective to the book.

The other point that people should realize is OCD is familial. It’s genetic. Everybody, all my children have some form of OCD. My dad had it. My uncle had it. In fact, in 15 or 20 years ago, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland was doing a study trying to isolate the familial gene that causes OCD.

And about eight people in our family, my family, participated in the study to isolate that gene. Now that I’m better, and we can joke about it, but back then it wasn’t, like my dad was super OCD and perfectionist, and, but he would never admit that he had OCD or suffered from any kind of, It’s actually, I think, technically referred to as a phobia, OCD.

And yesterday, for the first time in several years, I went to see my doctor, just to kind of, he calls it a tune up. We talked for an hour and just got caught up, and he mentioned that I’m losing my train of thought, he, I can’t remember what the point I was trying to make, but anyway.

Carrie: What was that process of treatment like for you? So when you went in 2015, you feel like that was when you got some really good therapeutic help.

Jim: Yeah, it’s capital E, capital R, capital P, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. And I could spend 20 minutes describing it exactly. I’m not a doctor. I don’t want to do that, but it’s very controversial. My doctor, Dr. Gallagher, is the expert in the western part of the United States. People come from all over. In fact, the waiting list in 2015 to see him was a couple of years when he found out my age and what I had been through, I was getting close to 70 then, and it had to do with sex and religion. He knew he could treat me and help me.

So he saw me right away and within weeks and then months of seeing him, I experienced a change. Basically what he does is, for example, he went to my daughter Stephanie’s house. Stephanie has a mild case of O C D and it’s the cleanliness O C D. Okay? You wash your hands and organizational, everything has to be perfect, that kind of thing.

And some of those attributes are good, especially if you are a teacher. She teaches the little one second, third grade. So he went over to her house and he’s walking around our house and he would see a picture and he’d make the picture crooked and he’d move the furniture and play games with her head. We have fun talking about that.

And my uncle Charles, he had all his clothes organized. He showed me one time later in life. Perfectly white shirts, colored shirts, striped shirts, Hawaiian shirts. It’s amazing the way people will react to the OCD, and I was in the process of writing the book in the 2018, I guess, and there were two sisters that happened to live in Colorado, and they were in their 20s.

And they had suffered their entire life from clemennitis OCD to the point where they hardly ever left their home.

Carrie: Yeah, it can get really severe with the avoidance.

Jim: Yeah, and at one point, I mean, they were taking showers five and six times. Anyway. They moved out of their home and were living together, and during the course of my writing the book, they committed suicide. And Dr. Gallagher had never treated them, but he had been in a seminar where they were present, and he talked about some of the things that he might have done to treat them, but that was a really sad story. There are a lot of people that attempt suicide or commit suicide because of OCD.

Carrie: Tell us about, do you remember some of the exposures that you had to do that were really hard, like, I don’t know if I can do that, and not, like, give into a compulsion, because essentially that’s what they’re asking you to do, is kind of expose yourself to certain things and then, or have an intrusion and not give into the compulsive, whether it’s the tick or the prayer or the thing that you usually do, to kind of resolve that angst.

Jim: I had a doctor, a psychiatrist, MD, treated me for over 20 years, and he was the one that recommended Gallagher. We had talked about Gallagher before, but he knew of my strict Catholic faith and my religious background and everything, and he never thought I was ready for the exposure and response therapy because of what it asks you to do sometime.

Betsy and I saw Gallagher first time. He said, I’m never going to ask you to do anything that’s illegal or hurtful or harmful or against the law or anything like that. What I ask you to do may go against what you’ve been taught in your religious background. And I was to the point Betsy didn’t think I was going to do.

He said, if you do what I tell you to do, I can cure you. That’s how confident he was. And I was all in. I was surprised Betsy thought I was going to get up and walk out. Which a lot of people do. He told me that. And to answer your question directly, what did he have me do? He had me stop going to church.

Stop praying. I had never purchased any kind of a pornographic book or a Playboy or any of that kind of stuff. Second visit, we went on a field trip. He took me to a Barnes and Noble and told me to, and bought me three or four Playboy magazines, told me to look at the pictures, read the articles, that kind of thing. Gave me a couple websites on the internet, pornographic websites. The idea is to totally overwhelm you with what you don’t want to do. Like I said, within weeks and then months, Betsy could tell immediately that just by doing what he told me to do. And then initially I was seeing him a couple times a week. And then it was once a week, and then it was once a month, but it was pretty intensive.

Carrie: So you went weekly at first, or did you go more than?

Jim: I went weekly at first, yes. In fact, I think the first month I went twice a week. And then I went once a week for maybe another month or two, and then we got to the point where I went once a month and for an hour.

Oh, I know what else he did. He made tapes that I had to listen to. Anti prayer tapes. You don’t need to go to church. There is no hell. And a lot of people look at it as being very controversial, but I do too. I mean, pornography and those kinds of things are sickening to me, but it works.

Carrie: So that cut down after engaging in those activities, that cut down on the intrusive thoughts that you were having?

Jim: Absolutely. So what it did was, the pathways in my brain were destroyed by my having done those activities.

Carrie: Hey, Carrie, interrupting this interview just for a moment. Wanted to say that it sounds like what our guest went through was flooding. There’s a difference between in behavioral exposure therapy.

There’s a difference between flooding and gradual exposure. Flooding is kind of what it sounds like where you’re immersed in something very quickly. Gradual exposure is where you bite things off into smaller steps and you have a hierarchy and you move through that exposure hierarchy starting with things that are lower on the exposure level and then moving upward.

It’s quite possible that flooding was chosen in this situation for treatment due to the severity of the level of the issues, but I’m not familiar with many therapists today who are still using flooding techniques. There may certainly be some. I also want to point out that the International OCD Foundation, which is not a faith based organization, has principles of effective and religiously sensitive exposures for ERP.

We will copy that website and put it in the show notes for you so you can read those. They talk about not asking a client to do something that they knowingly would violate their safety or supported beliefs and being able to do the activities that other people from their faith community can do as a part of normal practice and identifying working with the faith community and the therapist.

We talk a lot on the show about various types of treatment, and so just to know that I just want people who are listening to this for the first time or maybe this is their first exposure to exposure and response prevention. I don’t want anyone to get scared or overwhelmed or think that this is going to be the absolute way Treatment plan for them.

Your own therapist has to assess what’s going to be best for you and your situation. So just keep that in mind.

Jim: Like I said, I went from 65 to 70 sessions a day to the peak of where I was feeling my best, maybe one.

Carrie: Okay. Wow. That’s a huge difference.

Jim: I was to the point where suicide was always in the back of my mind. The only thing that kept me from committing suicide was my family and crazy as it sounds, my religion. Because of course it’s suicide is mortal sin is a grievous act. I would assume most Christian churches. And yeah, it was startling revelation. I was a totally different person.

Carrie: How did you reconcile this concept of almost like, I have to sin in order to get better for my OCD. Like, I have to stop doing things that God wants me to do and start doing things that are against my faith system in order to, like, I think that’s a piece that a lot of people would really, like, wrestle with. liike, how can I be asked to do these things in order to get better?

Jim: That’s why the first doctor didn’t recommend Gallagher all those years, because he knew how religious I was. And to answer your question, and the way Gallagher explains it, he’s not Catholic, but he’s Christian. He was raised Christian. I think he’s married to a Catholic woman.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion that no loving God wants any human being to live the way I was living. To suffer at that level. Anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. If you’re a good teacher, it makes you tired because you put a lot of effort into it. My girls were always telling me how tired they are, and I said, I can relate.

So if you put on top of that, all this other, these thoughts and gyrations that I was going through to not sin, and I would come home at night, totally exhausted. That makes sense. Would sometimes lash out and get negative and be angry. Especially to my children when they were smaller, and to Betsy, because that wasn’t me, that’s not the kind of person I was, but this overwhelming guilt and anxiety and depression was just like a pall that surrounded my whole life.

So when Gallagher and I talked, and it was like, This is not what God wants. God’s a loving God, a forgiving God. If you make a mistake and you’re sorry, it’s over, done with. You don’t have to carry it for the next 25 years. So that’s the way I looked at the pornography and stuff. It was not sinning. It was allowing me to live the life that Christ really wants everyone to live, a happy life.

I have a God given talent to work with kids. And I always knew that, always considered myself, this is not a profession, it’s my vocation. I was meant to be a school teacher and I could motivate kids and help kids. And why would God allow me to lose that attribute because of OCD? That’s not what he wanted.

He wants me to be a good teacher, good father, good person, so in a perverted way, it’s not perverted, it’s not the right word, but in a strange way, doing what would be normally wrong was really making me a much better person, much better individual, able to live the life that I’m supposed to live. That’s why I’m talking to you today.

I feel this is my responsibility. I’m not teaching anymore. Dr. Gallagher told me yesterday, by the way, he said, I gotta tell you, there are three people that have read your book, and they’ve all been my patients, and they’ve all been kids. He said, and I’ve cured them all. That’s positive. And I couldn’t have done that had I not listened to him and done what he told me to do.

Carrie: Why did you decide to write the book? I know he encouraged you to write about your experience, but obviously, like, some of these things are personal, you know, that you’re opening up about. Why did you decide to kind of put yourself out there like that?

Jim: Because I thought it was my responsibility, my worst enemy, to have to live with OCD the way I did, and others do, like those two sisters that the only way out for them was suicide.

That’s not the way life’s supposed to be. The children were a little hesitant when I asked them to write something for the book, and I said, Hey, you could be helping some other people. You could be doing some good. Sure. And Betsy’s always been supportive. That’s her M. O. She’s a good, caring, empathetic individual.

It was kind of a team effort, and when I hear stories like Gallagher told me yesterday, makes it all worthwhile.

Carrie: So can people find your book on Amazon and other places?

Jim: Amazon is the best place, Jim Juiliana, author, is my Facebook, and it has a lot of pictures of the children and a lot of reviews from people who have read the book.

If they think they have it, they need to find out, determine if it is OCD. Especially with children, because so much going on with little children. I remember middle school children getting up out of their desk and falling down for whatever reason. They’re just all over the place, and you never know what they’re thinking and doing, and I hate the thought of teenagers and young children having to suffer OCD and not have any help from parents professionally.

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story.

Jim: It’s been great. And I appreciate your putting the word out. Pay it forward.

Carrie: I’m really glad that we had Jim Juliana on the show to share with us about his experience with exposure and response prevention. It was tough for him, but it worked. We are very much about increasing hope on the show and wanting people to know that wherever you are on your OCD or anxiety journey, you can get better.

Never give up. And as always, thank you for listening. May God be with you on your next step towards treatment and greater mental health. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or by the wealth counseling.

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

98. Stories of Hope (Part 2)

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

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

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

Episode Highlights:

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

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

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

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

97. Stories of Hope (Part 1)

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 97. Stories of Hope (Part 1)

In this episode, we compile and share stories of hope from previous guests of the podcast. These stories offer inspiration and encouragement, even if they don’t directly relate to anxiety or OCD.

Episode Highlights:

  • (Episode 7) Anika Mullen – Overcoming a rare condition during pregnancy. Anika finds hope in her family’s resilience.
  • (Episode 28): Brittany Dyer – Inspired by her school counselor after losing her parents, Brittany becomes a counselor herself, offering hope to others.
  • (Episode 21): Laura Mullis – Through prayer, Laura discovers the importance of self-healing in helping others on their journey to recovery.
  • (Episode 57): Aaron Huey – Aaron’s encounter with Christ and the love from strangers transform his life and inspire his commitment to addiction recovery.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to episode 97 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m your host, Carrie Bock, and today I’m thrilled to bring you “Stories of Hope, Volume One.” This episode features inspiring personal journeys shared by our guests over the past two and a half years. Initially, I launched the podcast with the idea of asking guests to share stories of hope, not necessarily tied to anxiety or OCD, but simply about resilience and faith.

These stories have enriched my life, and I wanted to compile them to give you the same sense of encouragement. Plus, it’s helping me process my own grief after the loss of my parents, which I spoke about in episode 94.

In this episode, you’ll hear from incredible people like Anika Mullen, who bravely navigated a rare pregnancy condition, Brittany Dyer, whose childhood loss inspired her career in counseling, Laura Mullis, who shares how God helped her through addiction recovery, and Aaron Huey, whose powerful testimony of overcoming drug addiction left me in tears.

Each of these stories reflects the power of faith, community, and God’s unrelenting grace, offering hope and healing. Tune in for these transformative testimonies, and may you find hope wherever you are in your journey.

Explore related episode:

98. Stories of Hope (Part 2)

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 97. This episode is going to be Stories of Hope, volume one, and I am your host, Carrie Bock. If you don’t know me, Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast, when I started listening to podcasts, there was one that I would listen to where she would ask some of the same questions at the end of every show.

I thought, well, for this podcast, why don’t we ask people to share with us a story of hope because it’s called Hope for Anxiety and OCD and we made it so that the story didn’t have to be about anxiety or OCD in particular. Some of our guests didn’t have personal experience with that. Their story of hope we knew was gonna be a little bit different.

I’ve been so enriched by these stories through the last two and a half years that I thought, why don’t we do a compilation episode of them? And this is also giving me some time and bandwidth to work through the grief and loss of my parent’s death. If you listen to our episode 94 podcast, we kind of know what’s going on with me there.

Anika Mullen’s Story of Hope 

Our first couple of stories of hope to review, I want to say, are things I didn’t know about my friends. Now, I had spent a lot of time with Anika Mullen, but had no idea that she had her story of Hope. Now, Annika shared this before I ever became pregnant, but I would remember what she said through my pregnancy when I had a lot of various complications that came up. So I’m so glad that she shared this on episode seven because. It really meant a lot to me and encouraged me later when I had my daughter. 

Anika: The most challenging times of my life was when I was pregnant with my child and I had a condition. It started five weeks before my child was born and my body broke out in hives and blisters from my ribcage all the way down to my toes.

It was very hard to sleep. It just felt like I was constantly burning, especially my fingers and toes because there are so many nerve endings there. It was just very hard to cope with. It’s a pretty rare condition and for the majority of the women that have it, it fades away after the baby’s born. In my case, I was one of the very few that it continued after my child was born for about five more weeks.

After my child was born, and it did not go away, I no longer had an end date. Up until that point, I was like, all I have to do is make it until the baby’s born. All I have to do is make it the baby’s born. And then it was still there and I had an infant to feed and take care of, and it got to the point where I couldn’t even sleep.

I would be getting through the nights with ice packs on my fingers and my toes, and taking three or four hot cold showers to reduce. The level of burning sensation that I was experiencing, and I think it would’ve been really easily to become hopeless at that time. I was not getting enough sleep and already a stressful time of life.

Also, it’s a very idealized time. You should enjoy every moment of it. They’re only going to be little one. It could have been really easy to go down the why me, why did this happen to me. And one thing that gave me hope and really helped me through that time was remembering family members who had walked with a child through open heart surgery, and eventually the death of their child.

Just their courage and strength walking through that time gave me hope that I could get through whatever I was experiencing. It just really helped put it in perspective and remind me that people have gone through such difficult things and have come out of it as such beautiful, wonderful people that there is another side to this, and I can get through this however long it’s gonna last.

Brittany Dyer’s Story of Hope 

On episode 28, my friend Brittany Dyer came to talk about play therapy and I had no idea that her story of hope was part of her life as well. And that one stood out to me. So here it is. 

Brittany: My story actually kind of relates to what we’ve been talking about today and why I wanted to become a counselor. So I lost my parents when I was in elementary school.

They died suddenly, and I had a school counselor who was amazing. Her name’s Janna Chambers and I thankfully can still be in contact with her. My husband and her son are really good friends, so I still get to see her sometimes, which is amazing. But she was my hope during that time. She really helped me. I don’t remember anything that we did, to be honest.

I remember we played, but I don’t remember anything specific. The only thing I remember is one time we had puppets out, and that’s all I remember, but just going to see her and having that space where I felt comfortable. And she was just such a comforting person and caring and listening. I just remember feeling so light when I would come back from her office.

That’s the only way I know how to put it. It’s just I felt light. She helped me so much and gave me so much hope for my future and such a hard time for me. I am just so thankful for her and all the children that she influenced and helped throughout the years. I’m thankful that she inspired me to be a counselor and that I just get to pass along that hope to many other kids too.

Laura Mullis’ Story of Hope

My amazing mentor, Laura Mullis, was on episode 21 called Is Healing from Childhood Wounds The Key to Unlocking Anxiety. I really appreciated Laura’s story of hope, and it stands out to me today because God is so good to be honest with us and to speak to us directly sometimes when we really need it. 

Laura: I guess I would say that one of my transformative shifts in my life was when I was in treatment for recovery from addiction, and I was praying for everybody else in my life, oh God, I want you to do this, but I want you to make sure this person remembers me and I want you to do this. And I was telling God exactly what I wanted him to do. It was like audibly, I heard God say, all right, listen up. First, you work on your relationship with me. Then you work on your relationship with yourself. Then you can work on your relationship with your family, and then I will add who I want into your life.

That moment changed everything for me because I realized that was the order. That was the order for healing, and I was trying to go top down rather than bottom up. I’ve lived my life that way for the past 19 years, and every bit of it has come true. It changed everything for me when I realized that, and I also feel like it also shapes how I help people on their process.

It helped me see a clearer path for not only how I got the healing I needed, but how people can get the healing they need. 

Aaron Huey’s Story of Hope

Aaron Huey literally brought me to tears on his Story of Hope, episode 57: Parenting Teens in Crisis.

Aaron: On May 21st, 1998, I stopped using drugs and alcohol for good. On May 20th, 1998, I hit my knees and I asked for a miracle.

I had been a minister since 1996. I’ve had a very colorful spiritual life, but despite my promises to God, despite my promises to my daughter, despite my promises to who became my ex-wife, I loved drugs more to the point where the shame and the guilt forced me to my knees. And I said, “I can’t stop. You have to stop me. I’m not gonna quit. You have to make me quit.” And I’m asking for a miracle. I’m asking to be shown that there’s something outside of this cause otherwise this is gonna kill me and I’m slowly dying. You have to bring me back to life. The next morning I got up and I went to work and I got in my truck and I got high as I was driving to work and my truck died. And my parents lived out in the country outside of Long Mountain, Colorado. And so I had to walk about a mile and a half to get to a phone so I could call my dad to come pick me up. So I got my drugs and I got my paraphernalia, and I started walking, leaving my truck on the side of the road and up ahead on my left as I was walking down this road was this small, it’s the quintessential picture in your brain of an old country church, little white buildings, single room steeple and cross in the front, quintessential Norman Rockwell painting that you could imagine. And so I’m walking towards it. 

I hear this noise and I know what’s coming, and my heart starts pounding. I know that I’m about to get what I asked for, which was the end. It was my personal Babylon was showing up, and as I’m walking, I’m getting closer.

I’m staring at this church trying not to look at it, and it’s just, and it’s getting louder and louder as I’m walking toward it, and I’m terrified. All I did was say, stop me. Now I knew that I was about to get stopped. I’m standing across the street from the driveway to this church and the noise is now the worst scratching TV fuzz, and it was so loud.

I turned and looked and Christ was standing there and he said, you can put down the drugs now for the rest of your life and never look back. Wow. And the feeling of love and forgiveness that I experienced in that moment, the overwhelm of pure, unconditional love, the thing that I had always been searching for and had never found.

It just washed me and I threw, took my drugs outta my pocket and carry, I swear on everything. I, that bag hit the ground and a wind went and blew it out, and I threw my pipe in a ditch and I burst into tears, and the noise was gone. The experience was over, and I walked. And if that was the end of the miracle, then this would be a nice short story, but I’m going to have to take you deeper into what happened next.

I go and I hit the phone. My dad comes and picks me up. I get home, I call to tell him I’m not coming in. They’re not surprised. I’m absent all the time because I’m always high. I go up to my room and I call the Triangle Club, the 12-step group there in Longmont, Colorado on Main Street. I had called him two weeks prior and the line was busy, and I promise you that I took that as a sign from God that I was overreacting and that drugs weren’t that bad.

I had lost my home custody of my daughter, and my marriage. I was living either in my parents’ house at 28 years old, or I was living in the back of my truck, and drugs weren’t that bad. That’s how insane this thing is. But this time when I called that the night of that first experience, May 21st, I called the 12 steps and somebody answered on the first ring and said, “Triangle club.”

I said, “When’s your next NA meeting? I think I’m an addict.” And the guy said, “Where are you? I’ll come get you.” And I said, “Don’t do this. And he goes, “It’s okay man. And I said, “Don’t you say it. I’m not ready to hear it.”  And it got all quiet. And he said, “I love you, it’s okay.” I said I can’t do this right now. He said, “Every hour we have a meeting. If you need a ride, someone will get you. ” I hung up the phone on him.

There was that love of a stranger, somebody who didn’t know me didn’t know my past, and he was willing to say, I love you. So then the next morning I wake up and I go downstairs and I’ve decided I have the day off. so I’m going to a meeting and I go downstairs and my parents are watching TV and I kid you not, they’re watching Clean and Sober with Michael Keaton and I sit down on the couch and I’m like, I can’t believe this. I’m like, it’s this sustained miracle, and I’m exhausted. And I sit down and I turn off the TV and my mom goes, she has this funny way of saying it.

It’s very dear, “Excuse me” and she was being goofy, and I look at her and about to break her heart. And I say, “I’m not going to a meeting at work. I’m going to a 12-step meeting. I’m an addict.” And my mom goes pale. And my dad, the man who raised me, not my father, but the man who gave me everything, who had lied to, who had stolen from and hurt his younger biological children, he looked at me and he goes, “Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it because I love you.”

It was those three experiences of unconditional love that I just said. That’s it. That’s what this is about. I don’t love me, but everybody else does, and this thing. That I’ve always been seeking for has been seeking me, and I just have to let it in now. And that’s what I say to families and to teenagers is, a, I love you, and B, what you are seeking is seeking you.

That was the miracle I got on May 21st, 1998. Then on the 22nd, the miracles continue. A biker who yanked me back into my chair at the 12-step meeting who told me to. Sit down and shut up for once in my life and maybe I’ll learn something who became my sponsor and the police officer that pulled me over after my first meeting and said, you know who?

I told him it was my first meeting. It was the first time I didn’t have drugs in my vehicle in seven years, and I didn’t have to lie. I. And he looked at me and he saw the big stack of 12-step books in my truck, and he goes, keep going back. It works if you work it and you’re worth it, which is what we say at the end of every 12-step meeting, which told me he was a member.

He understood and 23 years later, the miracle still continues. And that’s been my life for 23 years. I was born 23 years ago. And the sadness, these are tears of joy folks, because I have such a beautiful, blessed life. I have my daughter, I have a son, my ex-wife and I are friends. I love my parents and they did so well.

My brothers and I get along. My business is successful and all I do is the 12th step. I bring the message of hope to people who still suffer.

Carrie: I hope you’ve enjoyed revisiting these stories of hope with me for additional encouragement. There may be some that you missed because you weren’t particularly interested in the topic of that episode, and that’s fine.

So this is another great reason for us to be replaying some of these. It’s always encouraging to hear from you guys when you send us messages through the website at hopeforanxietyandocd.com. We have a contact form at the bottom of the page that you can fill out, and I do read those and either myself or my assistant responded to them.

We received an encouraging note recently from a listener who had just been going through a lot of struggles and needed some hope and found the podcast just randomly one night and just really benefited from it. So, I’m so glad that people are able to get the love, support, and encouragement from this show.

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