Personal Testimony – Page 4 – Carrie Bock

27. Sending Hope and Love to the Not Yet Mothers

Written by Carrie Bock on May 5, 2021. Posted in Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 27. Sending Hope and Love to the Not Yet Mothers

This episode is for all the women out there who are hoping and praying for a child, for couples who are experiencing fertility issues and for those who are healing from heartbreak over childlessness.

This is a compilation of stories of hope of my friends and different amazing women whom I interviewed on the podcast.

Episode Highlights:

My best friend, Christin Jasmin Wilson, shares her heartfelt journey—navigating dating, giving her heart to the wrong person, and feeling distant from God before finding her way back to Him. She opens up about receiving God’s kindness, meeting her God-chosen partner, and welcoming her precious baby, Ellis.

We also reflect on inspiring testimonies from previous episodes:

(20:32) Summer McKinney finds joy in her blended family while waiting for God’s perfect plan.
(24:12) Holley Gerth and her husband celebrate grandparenthood through their adoptive daughter’s children.
(25:03) After experiencing multiple pregnancy losses, God blessed Dr. Kraegel with a beautiful child.
(25:30) My dear friend Michelle shares her emotional journey through infertility, foster care, and adoption—walking through deep depression after years of unsuccessful fertility treatments before witnessing God’s faithfulness.
(30:48) My own personal testimony and the powerful statement God gave me about having children.
(35:40) Lindsey Castleman and her husband’s incredible adoption story.

Episode Summary:

This episode is a little different—it’s not a solo episode, and it’s not exactly an interview either. Instead, I’ve compiled powerful stories of hope from women who have walked the journey of waiting, praying, and longing for motherhood. Some of these stories may be familiar, while others are new, but they all reflect the beauty of God’s timing and faithfulness.

For those who have followed my journey, you know that while I was once a foster parent with the hope of adopting, I am not a mother myself. Over time, I found myself repeatedly interviewing women who shared their own paths to becoming a family—whether through biological children, adoption, or other means. It made me wonder: Were these stories meant for me, or for my listeners? The answer, I believe, is both.

This episode is dedicated to every woman who is still waiting—who is praying, hoping, and trusting in God’s plan. You are not alone. You are seen, loved, and part of a greater story.

Before we dive into these inspiring testimonies, I want to take a moment to thank two incredible moms—my own mother and my mother-in-law, “Mom Bock”—for their unwavering support. Their encouragement has helped this podcast reach more people, and I’m endlessly grateful.

If you’ve ever struggled with the timing of God’s plan for your life, this episode is for you.

Transcript

This episode is going to be a little bit different because it’s not a solo episode and it’s not exactly an interview episode. It’s really a compilation of some different stories of hope. Some that we’ve heard before and some that we haven’t yet. For those who have been following along with my story or listened to our first episode know that while I have a history of being a foster parent and had hoped to adopt, I myself am not a mother. As I started to do these podcasts interviews, there was a string of a period of time where we were getting a lot of stories about people’s process in terms of becoming a family, whether that was praying, and then having a biological child, whether that was adding to their family through adoption or other means there was a lot of discussion about timing. And it really got me to thinking God are those stories for me or are those stories for my listeners? As so many times, I believe it’s both that as we minister to other people that God finds a way to turn around and minister back to us.

In this episode, I want to send love to the other women out there who may be are waiting or praying or hoping for a family who are not yet mothers. So I compiled some stories of hope from different women that have been on the podcast and discussed this journey. I also compiled some stories from just other women in my personal life who I know who God brought them on that similar journey.

Before we get into those stories of hope though, there are two moms that I do want to take time to say thank you to. One of those is my mom who’s a big supporter of the podcast. I know that she listens every week. She looks for the episodes to come out and she’ll send me emails if she sees Christian articles or hears of people who are talking about mental health and she’ll say, “Hey, have you heard of this person? It might be somebody that’s good for you to interview.” My mom was flying a couple of weeks ago. She asked a woman on the plane, “Hey, do you listen to a podcast?” And a woman said, “Yes, I do. So then my mom says, “Hey, would you be interested in a podcast about anxiety and OCD?” And the woman says, “Yes, I would.” My mom gives her a little podcast promo card that I had made up. That’s some amazing grassroots marketing right there. And so, thank you mom for all of your love and support in this podcasting journey. And the other mom, I want to think is who I call mom Bock, which is my mother-in-law. Mom Bock is also a supporter of the podcast and she listens to the episodes and oftentimes God will put people on her heart who need that encouragement or support from a particular episode.

And she will send it to them and has received some positive feedback about episodes that she’s shared. So I appreciate her supporting and sharing the podcast with other people as well. I joke with Steve that our moms are brand ambassadors for the show.

And now you know why our first story of hope for the not yet mothers comes from my best friend, Kristin.

How did I become a mother? That’s a loaded question. Hi, my name is Kristin Jasmine Wilson. And this is my story to motherhood. I am 39 years old. This is important because maybe like some of you, I wasn’t sure I would ever become a mother. I can remember from the earliest time always loving and being around kids around babies.

I grew up babysitting started at a very young age, probably too young if you asked me, but I started babysitting as early as 11 for my next-door neighbor. She had two beautiful kids that I used to watch on occasion. And I can even remember Connie and my mother serving with me at the nursery during the second service at church just because I loved kids that much.

You can say that this might be a God-given desire. I would say that I had this idea in my mind that I would always be a mom, but in my mind, by age 25, I have met the love of my life in college, fallen madly deeply in love, become a psychologist. I even found a letter that I wrote to Ms. Love in high school. I wanted to be a psychologist and have three kids of my own by 2011 or something crazy like that. However, sometimes life just takes you on a journey and that’s not necessarily how things go for me. I went to high school and had two boyfriends maybe, and all of which lasted two weeks. My singleness was a really, really hard thing.

I struggled being single for a very long time. I went to college. While I was in college, I decided to get involved in the church that was right across the street from our school. I again loved kids so much that I started volunteering as a college student in the middle school ministry. Yes, working with middle schoolers.

I know I’m a rare breed but I loved the naivety and the gullibility and just the welcoming nature of that age. In working in the middle school ministry though, remember college, I always thought I would meet the love of my life in college. I never did. And in fact, after college I started working for a ministry and for a nonprofit that really just worked with middle school kids all the while, knowing that I wanted kids of my own all the while, really wanting to be married and not ever wanting to have kids without a partner in life. I know I have had a lot of friends that have adopted or wanting to foster, and they’ve done that single handedly and by themselves and my hat goes off to them. However, I knew for me, this was not a journey I wanted to enter alone. Just knowing my own personality. I knew I would need a partner and a friend.

And so I prayed to God many nights that he would bring me not only a man of God but somebody who I could have children with and that we could raise children together. And I will say that came, but it came not without tears and not without many, many years of doubting God of asking hard questions of crying out to the Lord have yet one more guy who I was attracted to and had feelings for.

Not return those feelings, not return that love. I can remember during college and a little after I spent some years, are those college times in west Palm beach. And one of my places that I would really kind of have heart-to-heart conversations with Jesus was on the beach. And I can remember there was this one guy, and I really just had fallen head over heels in love with him. And he had no clue and I was good friends with his sister and I knew she could tell that. I just remember like really asking the Lord. Why just, why, why? I just remember asking, am I oblivious to guys? What is it that allowed me to not be seen by guys?

And really, I look back now and I see that had those guys looked at me and seen me, I would have fallen head over heels with the wrong guy. And really my heart is so honestly flip it and I fall in love at the drop of a hat. So it’s only the Lord’s grace and mercy that has allowed me in this that really kept me for my husband of today.

So, again, college thought I would be married by 25. That was my cutoff date in my head, that did not happen. In fact, I remember at 25 I actually freaked out and was like, “Oh my gosh” I remember my mom had me at 25 and I’m really like far behind the timeline here because I wanted to have kids and I thought by that time I would have them.

However, that was not always in the cards for me. And in fact, it took me a long time to even work through what it looked like to actually be in a relationship and what it looked like to actually start to date, which then led to motherhood. All the while though, working with kids, all the while though, taking care of other people’s kids. All the while, knowing that I wanted to be a mother. I remember turning 30 and still being single.

Actually, 29 going almost 30, grieving that year of the journey of being single and turning 30. And I almost wish that whole year of 30 away, I think it was 32 or 33. When I was 32 or 33, I finally was like, if I ever want to have kids, that I need to actually seriously start dating, started dating some guys on, through a few apps.

And at first, had really a hard time even wrapping my mind around if that was acceptable, how would I believe? And so, again, just really challenged my own thinking, but kind of came to the conclusion that if I was ever going to get married, I needed to be around guys and talk to them and have conversations.

And so I went on a journey of just having dates and chronically and all of those dates, some were really fun and some are really, really bad. And I could probably tell you stories, but I don’t want to embarrass any of the guys that I went on dates with, but let’s just say there’s a few that really still have me kind of chuckling today.

Fast forward to 2016, I was talking to a guy who happened to live in California and actually had a daughter. I knew that was going to be a little tricky, but I had been laid off from the organization I was working for. It closed down and I didn’t have anything keeping me at my current location.

So I decided to move to California and see if things would work out. I honestly remember really just sacrificing a lot of my ethics and a lot of my morals for something that was only temporary and somebody that wasn’t real on something, and for somebody that wasn’t authentic. And I really think in some of those, in that particular instance, I had really become so sick of being single and just was trying to do things my own way and in my own timing. Honestly, at 35, I was feeling like I was the only 35-year-old woman who had never been married. I was feeling it was the only 35-year-old woman who didn’t have kids. By this time I had high school friends that have had babies.

I’ve had college friends get married and have babies. I had friends adopting babies. And I was just for a long time, felt like my life was on this pause track, where I just had no control. And so many people kept saying, well, why aren’t you married? Or you’re a catch, why are you still single? When are you going to start having babies of your own?

And I really hated those questions because I felt like it was my own fault that I was unable to be a mother at that time. So at 35, I got in this relationship and I just decided to try to make things happen of my own accord and was completely devastated when this guy really only wanted to use me for certain things and then spit me back out. So with that, I packed up my bags and I moved back to my home in Chicago and kind of worded off dating for a while. Actually, it was like, I’m done. This guy is stupid. And really my heart was broken into a million pieces and it was really partially my own fault for giving it to him without putting up boundaries to really safeguard my own heart.

And of course, during that time, my relationship with the Lord was non-existent because at that point, I felt like I didn’t trust him and I was angry. I didn’t want anything to do with it. That he didn’t love me enough to give me a husband and children. By the time I was 35, knowing that most women go through menopause and are unable to bear children in their forties.

So, that was hard. Sometimes, the life that I’ve lived is great. I’ve gotten to do so many things as a single woman. I’ve gotten to explore. I had gotten to travel and have had so many different experiences that I would not have had if I had been married and had kids. Maybe I would have, I don’t know. But at that point, I was just done with being a good girl and following the rules and thinking that, you know, God blesses you and honors you. I think if I were to put it into different words, I was trying to make myself follow this God in order to get the blessing. And so, in other words, it wasn’t really about knowing God or trusting him.

It was about I’m going to do this. So in the end I get this and ultimately that work. So for a small little time, I said I’m not dating anyone else. At the time I did have a dating coach, just because I was like, if I’m going to be dating and dating on an app, I might need some extra advice.

I was actually visiting her at the time and staying with her that weekend and this guy popped up on my app and I was super wary and super kind of, not even sure I wanted to talk to him. She encouraged me. I showed him, you showed him, showed her like our conversation and, and she encouraged me just to start a conversation.

And so we did, and he was actually from Chicago. I was already planning to move back there after having my heartbroken. Wasn’t about to stay in California. And from there fell in love and met my husband, my current husband. We dated, that was in 2017. We dated for a couple of years, got engaged February 22nd, 2019.

We’re married by June 22nd, 2019. I have also had a lot of friends that have gotten late married later on in life as well. So I’ve had a lot of friends, but like some of the ones that have gotten married, like late in their late thirties, they really struggled with infertility and struggled with having babies.

And I was not even sure that I would be able to conceive right away without some sort of help. And so we decided that when we got married and went on our honeymoon, we would not prevent, but not also not like put a lot of pressure, not try. And behold, we got pregnant within the first couple of months without even trying.

And I remember laying in bed after finding out and after like looking at the pregnancy test and really coming to terms with it and just hearing the song In Christ Alone play through my head. As like my song of coming really back to Christ and back to a relationship with Jesus like that was what had sealed and kind of redeemed and, you know, kind of brought me back and brought forgiveness to who’ve had was I think. I was slowly coming back there with just the introduction of meeting my husband. And there’s a lot of emotions and hurt that had happened. Because of my own decisions and my own choices that I think with me becoming pregnant.

That was my aha moment. It’s been a journey too. I’ll tell you that. Becoming a mom, especially at this age was not easy, at 38. When I got pregnant with him at 38. It was probably a lot harder than most people. I dunno. I can’t say I was never married at 25. But I did have a cousin who got pregnant around the same time and she was in her twenties.

And there’s a drastic difference of energy between a 20-year-old mom and an almost 40-year-old soon-to-be mom, but the gratefulness and the humility that I feel like the Lord offered actually allowed us to name our son Ellis Jason, which just means the kindness of God.

Ellis means kindness. I just really felt the Lord was kind and allowing me after all these years of struggling, I wanted to become a mom and just to have his kindness and giving us a son is truly a gift. So if you were like me, maybe you have dreams of becoming a mom and having children. I would say it’s not too late.

I would say that the Lord is good. He is kind. He gives life and brings us through things that only teach us lessons to then share and bring hope to others that might be in those same situations. We are not without hope. We are not without life.

Carrie: It was really sweet to have Kristin share because I’ve seen her through this whole journey and the spiritual growth process that she’s been on.

I know her story is going to be encouraging for those of you maybe who are still single or have been through a long period of singleness.

Summer McKinney story from episode 15 also ties in with the same theme of waiting to be married.

Summer: I have to look at my own marriage. I was single until 28, got married at 29, I came from a very large family and always wanted many children.

And of course, the older I got, I mean, I could do the math in my head. Okay, Lord, you know, this is it. It’s going to happen. Of course, that was before like, you know, people in their forties started having kids and stuff, but there’s like, “Okay, wait.” My large families are going to happen, but God was in the details. My husband and I knew each other from way back but just went our own separate ways and whatnot but we reconnected and I inherited three amazing children in our marriage. And one of my deal breakers was I wanted a child. And so my husband, we’re going to get married and he would have to agree that we could have a child together.

And he said, “okay.” So again, “Okay, Lord.” I have three children and I want that comradery. I want them to grow up with a younger sibling. And so my timing was shortly after. Let’s settle into married life and blended family life, but few years were going by and it’s like, “Okay, Lord. Is this going to happen?”

You know, just a lot of questions. And my husband kinda gave up like, okay, it’s just not going to happen. And it took us a few years. God knew. Again, being in the details and perfect timing. The bonding that I was worried about. The boys were in high school whenever we had our son and through college, one of the boys stayed home and commuted, and then the bonding was just amazing.

And it was just all of those fears and all of those concerns or those questions. It wasn’t my timing but the timing was just perfect. You know, it wasn’t always my way but it was God, God knew what he was doing and just being in the details. And so that to me was just the hope of a large family, the hope of the bonding and that unity among the family. And God just blessed it. And so when those doubts or fears or things come into play, whether you’re single or whether you’re in an empty marriage, or divorced, and you still have that desire, I think that God is in the details and his timing is amazing. It’s not always our time. That’s kind of, when I think about, big thing in my life where desire and hope and blessing come together. I would say it’s definitely my family unit.

Carrie: Yeah, it’s amazing how God will give us those desires like for you, it was for to have a large family. And God totally filled that in a way that you couldn’t have imagined at that point in time like you were thinking that all of those children would be completely biologically yours and you ended up with a beautiful family picture and it’s amazing how God’s dreams are much better than things that we could dream on our own. And when we try to do it our ways or in our timing, it just never quite shakes out and we can become disappointed.

________

While Summer’s story didn’t look how she had envisioned, Holley Gerth’s story from episode 19 didn’t turn out how she anticipated either.

Holley: My story of hope is my family story. I went through about a decade of infertility. My husband and I couldn’t have our own kiddos. So we ended up adopting a 20-year old who basically aged out of the foster system. And so she’s now 27. She got married and we are nanna and poppy to Eula and Clement.

And so I literally wore a ring on my finger that said hope for all those years. And the ending to our story is not at all what I would have imagined.

__________________

Our last few stories are stories about infertility. On episode 16, Dr. Irene Kraegel shared about her pregnancy losses.

Dr. Kraegel: They were years for example where I had multiple pregnancy losses. I write about this in my book as well, too. And not really knowing how that would resolve and God brought us a child. And we have this beautiful nine-year-old boy that we love. And that’s something that brings me hope.

_________

The next story is from a dear friend of mine that I have known since about 2014.

Michelle: Hi guys. My name is Michelle. I’m here with you today to share my testimony as well as my infertility foster care and adoption journey.

So I was married and divorced at a young age to my first husband. We did not have children together. And that was not something we had really tried to do, but when I met what would eventually be my second husband, I knew that I did want to have children. We were a little bit older when we got married, my second husband and I. I was 35. And so immediately after we got married, we did start trying to have our own child. Unfortunately, that was not happening for us. So we went to a fertility doctor and over the course of I’d say about a three-year span, we had approximately non-procedures done and close to $12,000 spent. That did not bear any fruit at the end of that three years, I think we were both emotionally, I was physically spent and both somewhat spiritually spent as well because we both prayed and prayed over this journey. And really, desperately wanted to have our own child. And at that time, we could not understand why the Lord was not providing that for us.

The way I was looking at it is there are so many people that have children that don’t even want them, but God, why are you not providing us with a baby of our own? And it made me feel unworthy of having a child. I was looking at it is God, if you could let this person who is abusive to their child or neglectful or abandoned their child if you can let them have one, what does that say about me? What does that say about the parenting you think that I would do God? And I really went into a deep, dark depression at the end of that three years. I began to resent my husband because I felt that I was the only one going through the emotional struggle, the physical, especially the physical struggle because all these procedures were happening to me.

And some of them were very painful and I felt like he was doing a small fraction of the work. And over time through scripture and prayer, I did grow to see that that was very unfair of me to think that way, but I’m human. And I felt that I had been abandoned by the Lord during that period of time. I was also very resentful of other women who during this phase were discovering they were pregnant and having healthy pregnancies and having these beautiful children. And what makes it probably even worse is my career was in early childhood education. So my career was children and especially babies and toddlers and those early stages of life.

That was my career. So day in and day out, I was seeing and working with these babies. It really brought me to a low place. So my husband and I eventually decided that we would go through the foster care program through the path classes, but I told him that he would have to do all the legwork of getting a set up for the classes that basically he would just tell me the time and place and I would just show up. And so that’s what he did. We went through the path classes. In three of those classes, I met other women who were in a very similar situation who felt almost identical to how I felt. They felt worthless and useless. And the way I felt during that period of time during that dark period is that I basically had one job to do.

The Lord made me a female, which meant I was supposed to have children and I couldn’t do the one job that God had given me to do. And I just felt just so inadequate and so useless that some days I didn’t want to get out of bed. Luckily, through prayer, through scripture, through family and friends who rallied around me, around us, my husband and I both and supported us and a God who never gives up.

He never fails us. I began seeing how, even though those were the things that I wanted, I wanted to have my own child, my own biological child. I wanted to know the joys of being able to tell family and friends that were expecting a child, to feel a life growing inside of me and seeing this beautiful baby when it was first born and caressing them against my chest, having all those moments through time and through prayer God very gently showed me that he had a different plan for me. Even though I kept questioning God, what is this? What plan is this do you have for me? I don’t understand. I don’t see it yet, God. He was just really patient with me and just showed me that I need to stay the course. So we finished the path classes.

We sold our small house and bought a bigger house so that we could accommodate children. And we knew we probably wanted to have multiple. It was 2015, we got our first sibling set. It was a brother and a sister and we actually got them on my daughter’s sixth birthday and my son Larry, he was seven about to turn eight. So we went from zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds. We had no kids and then we had two kids and it was the youngest child’s sixth birthday. So we scrambled to throw a little party. And our lives changed from that day like we could have never imagined.

We have been blessed beyond measure. Even in the rough times, we have been blessed because the Lord has stretched us. He has grown us. My husband and I have grown closer together. We have grown closer to the Lord and God revealed to me pretty quickly into the foster care process that his plan for us was to adopt children who needed a family. It took us three and a half years to be able to legally adopt our children. Then finally on January 30th, 2019, we were able to legally adopt Kimberly and Larry. And now our journey has not always been an easy one. There has been days where I have wanted to pull my hair out and say, God, what have I done? And then immediately I’m filled with all the love and joy that the Lord has put into our heart when he brought us these kids. They are amazing and we knew pretty instantly that we were meant to be their parents, that these kids were going to be with us forever. And it has been such a journey. It is such a blessing.

And my husband and I both feel that we just stayed the course with the Lord. He’s always sovereign. He’s always faithful to us. He never leaves a season. He never abandons us. He shows us what we need eventually in his time and not our own. So I just hope this fills you with some peace and some hope and knowing you’re not alone.

If you’ve been in a similar situation and that God does have a plan for you you may not see it at this moment, but he will reveal it to you. Just be faithful. I hope you have a wonderful day and I just push blessings upon you. God bless you all.

_______

Carrie: I really appreciated the vulnerability and the spiritual wrestling that Michelle shared in her story, because I believe that someone who’s listening is really going to be able to relate to those thoughts and questionings that she had and rustled with God.

On episode 22, Lindsey Castleman shared her amazing story of adoption with us.

Lindsey: During this time and being in this community group, my husband and I found out that we were not able to have children. And then there were six couples, four out of the six couples found out that they could not have children, which was crazy. I didn’t know it before we came. We weren’t like, “Hey, let’s do an infertility community group.” It just happened. And then we all discovered these things. Hopefully, it wasn’t something we all drank. So we were in this together. We started going through this adoption process for us, my husband and I. One day, one of the girls in the community group texted me and she was like, “Lindsey, my mom is in a Bible study with this woman who’s asking the whole Bible study to pray for an adoptive family for her nephew’s son like it’s kind of a big goal. And she was like, “My mom remembered you guys and community group, and would you be interested?” And I’m like, “What?!” It was kind of wild because I was actually at this church.

When I got the text message, I was literally in church and they were about to do this worship and they do this forever long worship. So I’m like, all right, some do I’m worshiping and I’m asking God, I’m like, God, is this our son? Is this what we’re supposed to do? And I heard a very clear yes.

And I don’t hear that kind of stuff all the time. A very clear yes. And so I said, all right, God, well, you’re going to have to tell my husband that you said yes. He’s a little bit more of my risk-averse kind of guy. I’m a little bit more of a risk-taker. So anyways, I called my husband because I was on a trip.

So he was back at home and I was in California and I called my husband and I said, “Hey, in our community group said that.. What do you think? And he was like, “I’m open.” And I was like, “oh my gosh.” That’s not usually the response I get. I usually get all the worry questions. And if you’re in the Enneagram world, he’s an Enneagram six.

So that makes a lot of sense. To make a long story short, even though I’ve already made it long we ended up meeting with that family. And then on a Tuesday, they told us that they chose us. And then we brought our son home that Saturday. We kind of look back and we go, “oh my goodness.”

Even just us being kind of obedient to want to serve, and not obedient and like little begrudging, but just like, “Hey, we really would like to serve.” Just how God placed us with all of these people that then placed us with our son who could not have been a better fit. And if I go into the emotion of it, I will cry right now but I’m not going to be staying in my head about it.

But just in that sense of we couldn’t imagine our lives without them. And so in this place of feeling so hopeless and infertility, God was already working behind the scenes and bringing us hope just through these things, we could have never orchestrated for us to be able to be parents to our son.

So that for us is like any time it’s like, “Oh, is God working on us? Heck, yes. He is. He is and he’s working today, like working today not just in biblical times. He’s working today. He is a God of hope and he is a relational God that loves us and wants to be so close to us. And that’s beautiful in that way.

_______

Carrie: I started out this episode by talking with you about how I am not yet a mother, either. I wanted to share with you where I am on my own personal journey in case that provides any extra support or encouragement to you. Steve and I pray about having a family. We’re very open to what does that look like for us since we are older. The most amazing thing though, is that one of the times I was praying about this, I feel like the Lord spoke to me, “Carrie, I’ve already given you many children.” I have to say I didn’t receive that in a sense of God’s not going to give me children. However, it made me actually so grateful and thankful because that statement is true.

I was looking back at some old pictures that I had under the bed before we were in the digital era. So they’re actual physical pictures that I have from times where I did VBS with children. Times where I worked at an afterschool program with children in the inner city. Times where I was involved in helping with youth ministry and middle school ministry.

Many of those kids obviously are not kids anymore. They’re grown up and some of them have children of their own. But when I received that word to my spirit and prayer, it gave me so much joy and encouragement that I’ve worked with children almost my whole life in some capacity. I know that God has used me to minister to the next generation even though that may not look like having children in a nuclear family.

So if that’s you, if you’re that person that’s maybe single and serving in the children’s ministry church, or you’re in college working at the afterschool program and investing in kids know that even though they’re not your kids they’re God’s kids and you are providing just a valuable service by loving on them, encouraging them, supporting them in their growth journey process, physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever that looks like for you.

Sometimes mother’s day can be a hard day or an emotional day for women who aren’t mothers. I’ve had people tell me that they don’t attend church on mother’s day due to this. If that’s you and you’re hurting on that day, I would encourage you to find something that you do enjoy doing and plan to do it on that day. Definitely take good care of yourself and you know what you can handle emotionally. Whenever your journey is whether you’re a mother, whether you’re not a mother, whether you’re not a mother yet, know that God loves you very much, that he has an amazing plan for your life, and things never work out exactly how we plan them out in our mind. However, we know that God is good. We know that God is loving. We know that God is pro-family and whatever that looks like for you. I just pray that this podcast encourages you in your journey wherever you are right now.

Some of you may have listened to this episode because you’re in this season. For those of you who listened to this episode, and you’re not in this season, maybe you already have children and you’re just a regular listener to the podcast, there’s a good chance that God has put someone in your circle who is either struggling with fertility or questioning how can they be single for so long and have children, or they can relate to some of these other stories. Will you please just share this episode and allow it to be a vehicle of encouragement to the people that you know who may need to hear this. And if this episode has impacted you positively, please let me know. You can always reach out at www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Head on over to the contact page as always.

Thank you so much for listening. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee.

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

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

Written by Carrie Bock on April 28, 2021. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 26. A Personal OCD Story of Experiencing God’s Presence and Grace with Peyton Garland

In this episode, Carrie sits down with Peyton Garland, an author and advocate, to discuss her powerful journey with OCD and how it has shaped her faith.

Episode Highlights:

The impact of growing up in a conservative environment and the stigma around seeking therapy.
How Peyton became the first in her family to seek therapy and break generational barriers.
The role therapy played in helping Peyton manage anxiety and intrusive thoughts.
How Peyton learned to separate OCD from God’s unconditional love and grace.
The power of embracing faith and therapy in overcoming mental health challenges.
How Peyton’s journey led her to write Not So By Myself, offering hope and encouragement to others facing similar struggles.

Episode Summary:

Some of our most impactful episodes feature personal stories, and today, we bring you an inspiring one. Peyton Garland joins us to share her journey with OCD—how it has shaped her faith, her experiences with therapy, and the challenges she has overcome.

Peyton, an author and wife from Alpharetta, Georgia, opens up about her struggles with anxiety and OCD, particularly when her husband was stationed away for work, leaving her to deal with overwhelming thoughts on her own.

Peyton’s journey was difficult, especially as she grew up in a small, conservative town where seeking therapy was seen as a weakness. Despite the stigma, she courageously sought help and became the first in her family to do so. Her decision not only changed her life but also inspired others in her family, including her father, to confront their own struggles.

A significant part of Peyton’s experience is her battle with religious OCD (scrupulosity). Raised in a legalistic church environment, she feared God and struggled with obsessive thoughts. Through therapy and faith, Peyton learned to separate her OCD from God’s grace, embracing a loving and compassionate understanding of Him.

Now, Peyton shares her story through her book, Not So By Myself, encouraging others that even in their loneliest, most anxious moments, God’s love remains constant. Her story is a reminder that seeking help is an act of strength and courage.

Listen to the full episode for an inspiring conversation. If Peyton’s journey resonates with you, remember you are not alone.

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD. Episode 26. Our most popular episodes thus far have been personal experience stories. Peyton Garland shares her experience of struggling with OCD. How that’s impacted her faith, her journey of going to therapy. It’s really good stuff in here, guys. I hope that you enjoy the show today.

Carrie: Thank you for coming on the show, Peyton.

Peyton: Happy to be here.

Carrie: I’d love you to just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Peyton: Sure. I am Peyton Garland. My husband’s name is Josh. He and I live north of Atlanta in Alpharetta, Georgia. We have two of the most obnoxious but sweet puppies in the world, Alfie and Daisy. So we are dog parents and proud of it. My husband is a pilot and I’m an author. So we’re both finding the careers that we love and thriving in them.

Carrie: That’s awesome. Why did you want to be on the podcast and tell a little bit about your story today?

Peyton: I think mental health in this day and age is almost a buzzword. I think it’s something where people are finally willing to talk about it. They’re finally willing to listen, but I also think that the voices that need to be at the forefront of these conversations are people who do struggle with anxiety, who do struggle with OCD, who know what it’s like to be in a therapist’s office.

So this podcast just seemed to embody that ability to have real conversations with people who truly go through this stuff.

Carrie: At what point in your life did you start to notice like I’m starting to struggle here with my thought life?

Peyton: I had always been a worrier and I knew that, but the older I got the worst that got the more irrational the worrying became.

So like I said, my husband, is a pilot. When he first finished flight school, which was about two years ago, the only airport where he could get a job was in Indiana. So states away, hours away. He and I had just moved to a new town in Georgia for a new job for me. So new town, new job. I’m not near my family.

I’m not near my friends. Two weeks after we moved there, he moves to Indiana. I’m being by myself and being by yourself leaves lots of room for your headspace to just go crazy. And at that point, maybe two or three months into him being gone that’s when I said this worrying is not only irrational. It’s starting to impact me physically, too like I’m losing weight. I can’t put back on. I’m not sleeping. I eventually went to a therapist which in my small country town was not a welcomed thing. Therapy is almost seen as defeat like you couldn’t take it, you couldn’t handle it. Your faith in God wasn’t strong enough. I went to a therapist’s office, found out I have intrusive thought OCD.

And what I’ve learned with OCD is that often anxiety and depression are kind of buddies. They sit right beside OCD and they take turns. So I’m just on a big journey. Now I share a lot about that in my new book, Not So By Myself. Just how you’re not really by yourself in the quiet space, even when your brain is super loud.

Carrie: That’s so good. So it was a, you had a big stigma hurdle to even get in the therapy office coming from a small town, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Be the tough girl.

Peyton: Oh yeah. Well, I’m so glad you said that. In my book one of the chapters, I talk about how all three of my great uncles and my grandfather were drafted into the Vietnam war. All four gone at the same time and when they came home, they quickly learned that in order to not talk about everything they’d seen, they were just to keep quiet. That silence was strength. Those two just seem to parallel and they passed that idea down from generation to generation to generation.

So my generation about the third or fourth generation, we’re sitting in a culture now that saying, “Hey, it’s okay to say I’m not okay. It’s okay to go get help.” And I think I actually was the first person in my family to go to a therapist. And the beautiful thing is I had a parent to follow after that. [00:04:37] I had a grandmother follow after that, and that was a very beautiful thing to kind of see loved ones, say, “Hey, you know what? There’s some things I haven’t been okay with. I have a dad who has PTSD and traumatic brain injury from serving in the military. So lots of people now getting help for hard things they’ve been dealing with for decades.

Carrie: I love that ripple effect in your story. It’s like one person starts in the family starts to experience some relief and change and hope, and then other people say, “oh, hey, that sounds really good. I want to get on board with that and maybe I’ll try therapy out as well.”

Peyton: Absolutely.

Carrie: Do you remember that experience of just being so nerve-racked and were you super scared to start talking?

How was your therapist able to help you feel comfortable even sharing some of these things that you had? You’d really just rattled around in your head and maybe talked to your husband about.

Peyton: Sure. This is crazy. You’re literally outlining my book chapter by chapter.

Carrie: I haven’t read it either.

Peyton: One of the chapters is called green tea and therapy and it’s about my first time in a therapist’s office. Like I said I come from a good old country town. I walk in this therapist’s office and there’s like this spa music in the background. There’s bright but soft colors everywhere. I’m way out of my element.

I was not a yoga kind of girl. But my therapist just asks me a simple question. She’s like, “Hey, is there anything I can offer you to drink?” And I’m a green tea kind of girl. So I said, green tea, just give me some green tea. And I remember death gripping that green tea coffee the whole time.

I don’t even think I drank it. I just death gripped it because one thing I knew and this whole room of nothing I knew. My therapist started with the big question. She had to tell me about yourself like I got to know what goes on in your head. What’s going on in your heart and your spirit and your family.

When I left I had no mascara left on my face. I mean, I did, but it was like down to my chin on my neck. I still hadn’t touched the green tea. It was just an hour of me unearthing everything that had been there for over a decade, honestly. So it was a wild, uncomfortable, but relieving experience all at once. It was a whirlwind for sure.

Carrie: Was that when you got the diagnosis of OCD?

Peyton: Yes. So I have a dear friend, her name’s Wendy Nunnery. She’s an author too. She has it. And I had met her for coffee one day and we hadn’t been friends for long and she was just vulnerable enough to say, “Yeah, you know I struggle with intrusive thought OCD.

And she was telling me all the things she worries about. And I went, “oh my goodness.” Number one, I’m not by myself because I have been thinking some off-the-wall things and I can’t talk myself down from them. I’m always afraid of running people off the road. I overthink being near knives. I overthink changing a child’s diaper.

All of these things that I just thought I was literally psychotic, like there was some serious problem. This wonderful woman of faith is sitting in front of me, a mother, a thriving wife and she just lists everything that’s been rattling in my head for years. And so I sat back still wasn’t sure about therapy, but kind of a pin that had to be what I had. And once Josh left it was very, very unhealthy.

Like I was just in a place where I wasn’t functioning. I said we gotta get help and that’s exactly the diagnosis I received.

Carrie: So in some ways that was probably a little bit relieving to know what you were dealing with because when people don’t know what they’re dealing with, then they throw all kinds of vernacular labels on themselves.

Peyton: Right. My dad, you know, has PTSD and he had that when I was growing up. So I was around it. But PTSD almost stems from something very traumatic, which is what happened with him in the military in his line of work. But for me, nothing traumatic had actually happened to me and I couldn’t figure out why I was having a hard time.

As a good kid with good grades and a good family. I mean we had struggles with what my dad went through, but I must have been a bad person if I couldn’t control what was going on in my head. The level of relief and the pressure that just fell off me, that was a God thing. There was no way around that.

Carrie: Did you struggle spiritually during that time? Like why has God allowed me to struggle with this? And those kinds of questions, maybe that people with OCD face.

Peyton: Yeah, I’m just going to send you my book when this is over. My fourth chapter is called church games. And so again, I grew up and not hating by any means on denomination, on religion, but I went to a very small brick and mortar countryside church. Women were told not to speak. I was told it was King James, or it was literally not the Bible and how dare you touch it. Women cannot lead worship. I grew up in such a rigid church culture that when you combine that with OCD, you’re quite terrified of God.

I got a credit card in the mail or a debit card a few months ago and my security code, well, I guess I can’t say it, but it had lots of the apocalyptic kind of numbers going on and I literally almost sent that back in the mail. I was like, “no, we can’t use that like, I can’t touch that.” Wild, irrational thoughts OCD we’re paired with this very rigid church culture.

And I was afraid of God for years like he was just somebody that I was told to love, but I was scared of loving him because I was just scared of who he was or at least who he seemed to be. So yeah, I struggled spiritually for a long time.

Carrie: Like maybe tying into some of the obsessions, like is God mad at me or am I going to go to hell.

Peyton: Exactly. Very perfection-oriented. But like I said not just a perfectionist or perfectionist with OCD which can take on a completely different level of fear, anxiety, and all the like.

Carrie: So what you’re saying is that you have intrusive thoughts, but you don’t actually have any compulsions. Is that so?

Peyton: It’s funny. So there’s several different branches of OCD like intrusive thought OCD there’s harm OCD, contamination OCD. With me, I do have a form of contamination OCD. I always had. I washed my hands a lot as a child If I spilled anything on me like a chemical. Cleaning panics me. I was afraid to be near chemicals.

So when COVID hit, my contamination OCD, the compulsion went through the roof like I had always been a hand washer. I’d always been a clean person. I started keeping a chart of how often I washed my hands. When the world shut down and we went home, I washed my hands an average of 57 times a day and I spent two-plus hours a day following through on compulsions with cleaning, with mopping, with wiping everything down with wiping my hands down my phone down. Just putting Josh in a Clorox fog as soon as he came through the door.

So there are definitely compulsions, but I see them most with the contamination OCD.

Carrie: How has that affected your, your marriage, and your relationship there? Have you had to kind of train him on how to help you at times?

Peyton: He is very gracious and I’ve been very blessed with someone who’s willing to listen.

He has been mentally a very strong man which is fantastic. Obviously, he worries about things. There’s hard things for him, but he is very mentally stable, which is what I need. I’ll be honest when we first got married is when it really started kicking up. I’ve learned change kind of messes with my OCD like getting married, buying a house.

I had just gotten a new job. Just all the things. And bless his heart he just thought it was birth control. He thought maybe it was him. I thought it might’ve been him. We didn’t know. Maybe only a few months later is when the piloting thing happened and he was gone and I got help. So for us it’s funny, but for him it was a breath of relief when I found out I had OCD. He went, “oh, okay. It’s not me. It’s something else.” Not that we can fix OCD but we now have something we can work with. We have a name and a face to it and he has been so good. What I love about him is he respects when I’m having anxiety.

He respects when there’s a compulsion where I’m just like, I have to follow through with it. There’s no way around it. But he also calls me to work through compulsions. He calls me to say, “Hey, let’s take a step back and rationally talk yourself down from this like we don’t have to wash your hands five times in a row. We can do four and walk away.

It’s okay. So there’s been a little bit of training on his part, but he’s really been gracious and I’ve been very thankful for that.

Carrie: That’s awesome. We talked about kind of how to support your anxious spouse on a previous episode. So I’m curious about your experience on that.

What was that process like of finding tools and strategies and things to help you in therapy?

Was that really hard and what kind of therapy did you utilize?

Peyton: Yeah, so my therapist and I, we do brain spotting. I don’t know who all knows, but literally, I find a spot in the room where my brain just kind of seems to be at peace and attune. I like natural light, my brain and my eyes always go to a window where there’s natural light and my therapist just says, “Hey, let’s just start walking through what you’re feeling. Why you’re feeling this way.”

And every time brainspotting walks me back to what started a trigger, what started a compulsion, what started the anxiety that’s just built up and is now bottling over. So I love brainspotting because often my compulsion or my thought has nothing to do with what’s really bothering me. OCD is just really good at twisting stuff.

So I love brainspotting. It earths my head. It just brings it back to earth. But also we just learned really healthy techniques. Even things like social media can spike my OCD. Just because OCD can thrive off of just about anything it wants. I do 45 minutes of social media a day. I have a timer on my phone. That’s something she and I worked through. 45 minutes was a healthy number for me. When the timer goes off, I’m done with social media. Josh and I have what we call a contamination zone in my house. If there’s something that I just feel is completely contaminated and I don’t want to touch it. He puts it in a corner, in a room and we let it air out because in my brain letting it air out is safe. Just little things like that have made a huge difference for us.

Carrie: That’s awesome. I’m going to get somebody on the show to talk about brainspotting now. I think that that would be an interesting episode, too.

Peyton: That would be fantastic. I love it. I love brainspotting.

Carrie: Yeah. We have talked a little bit about EMDR on the show and it’s similar.

There’s some similarities in terms of just kind of like really tapping into that brain level response and the nervous system. And like you said, when you trace OCD back, it doesn’t make sense. You’re like, “wait a minute, this goes back to that time when I was this age and this experience happened.”

I love that it really gets down deep underneath the presenting issue. Because it’s not actually about the stuff or the cleanliness. It’s about that piece underneath it, whether it’s a lot of times like dealing with uncertainty or loss of control or those types of triggers can be really prominent

Peyton: Well, that’s what wild is. Every time we brain spot and we work it back, it is either a very harsh church experience I had, or it’s just growing up in a household with a dad with PTSD that was undiagnosed for years. Every time, my brain has trillions of off-the-wall thoughts, but every one of them works its way back to one of those two things.

Carrie: Wow. Do you feel like you were a particularly sensitive kid growing up, more sensitive to people’s emotions or kind of absorbing everything?

Peyton: I’ve taken a bunch of Christian spiritual gift tests and discernment comes back every time no matter which one I take. But my mom did say as a child, I tended to know without actually knowing, like if there was a relative who was going through a hard divorce or someone just lost someone.

My mom said as a child, I gravitated to them. She said I’d walk up and sit in their lap. I would sit and talk to them. I mean, maybe that had to have been just God. Just knowing who needed some extra love. My mom swears as a child I could just walk in a room and I just knew who needed even just a “hey” or a hug.

Carrie: That’s good. We had Mitzi Van Cleave on the show before, and she talked really about how OCD was a part of her sanctification process. That there was this process of growth through affliction is what she talked about it. Can you talk about a little bit about that in terms of your spiritual journey?

Do you feel like you have some similarities there?

Peyton: Sure. I’m so glad you asked that question. It’s one of those things where I think Paul mentions in the new testament that he had a thorn in his side. I think that’s a favorite thing to debate is what was the thorn in the side. But I think regardless, the reality is we each have a thorn in the side. I think on this side of heaven, we will eternally fight or struggle over, wrestle with and I think OCD is mine. There’s no magic pill for OCD. I’m not going to wake up one day and my brain is just going to be super chill.

The bittersweet thing that I love about this thorn in the side is it constantly calls me back to a place of grace. As a perfectionist with OCD, I’ve had to come to grips with the fact I cannot be perfect. The church is saying is you’re a human. You’re not perfect.

I always knew that, but that always wasn’t good enough. I was like, “no, I’m going to prove the church wrong. I’ve got this. I can do this.” OCD literally said “ha, no” like here’s something very irrational and very imperfect for you to imperfectly worry about. You know, go have fun, good luck. And so OCD quite forced me to accept that I’m not perfect. And because of that, growing up in a really harsh church culture and stepping away from it and wrestling with OCD, I can now look at God and say, “Hey, you know what not only am I not perfect, but you are.” And as churchy as that sounds, there’s so much grace in that because God has not put the standard of perfection on me.

And I know I can’t meet it, especially with the OCD. And so now it’s just grace and I had not lived under grace. I had not lived by grace. It was just a catchy phrase that at one point I thought would be a good tattoo on my wrist. But OCD has been the gateway to God and grace for me. And so for that I am always grateful.

Carrie: How did you make that perspective shift in terms of your view of God? Did that come through getting around like a healthier church environment?

Peyton: Sure. When I was about 16 or 17, I just told my family, I said look I’m out. Not out, like I’m not piecing Jesus out, but I’m not here. I finally started studying the Bible and the Bible and the guy behind the pulpit were not lining up.

[00:20:43] So I said, look, I can either believe a man who’s like everybody else or worse, or I can believe God. And so I’m just going to go with God. That sounds like a smart decision. That’s the Sunday school answer, but it’s one that I’m going to adopt for myself. And so I stepped away from that church. I found a much, much healthier church which made so much of a difference. Within that church, I found women my age who were also not afraid to mention that they struggled with mental health and that right there was probably the ultimate game-changer. I was being around women my age who had been perfectionists. I don’t know if you know the Enneagram, but I am in an Enneagram one on the personality chart.

We are reformers. We are the spearheads for all that is just and good and right. But I was blessed to find women just like that, who turned around and said that I’m not always good. And just and right. I do struggle with mental health. And even through all of that God still sees me as good because he loves me and because he’s good.

And so that was the revolution in my spiritual journey.

Carrie: I think finding the character of God. And I’m really connecting with the character of God who he says he is in the Bible and experiencing that in your life as absolutely a game-changer. I’m curious. This is a question for you from the trends of the podcast. Our podcast is for people with anxiety and OCD. But the most popular episodes that have been downloaded have been personal stories about people with OCD who have experienced that. Even more popular than our very first episode just like, Hey, this is the podcast. This is who Carrie is and all of that. What do you think? That’s because people just aren’t talking about OCD and the church.

Peyton: Oh, absolutely. When I wrote my book, not said by myself, my editor called me and she said, Hey, sweetheart, you got to lighten up on the church, just a smidge. You gotta pull back just a littlest. So I’ve talked about that with much more grace. Thanks to my editor. And my book, I think we talk about the soul in the church, but I also think if God created the soul, he created the body and he created the mind.

And we are called to honor all three of those. We are called to keep all three of those healthy to keep them in check. Iron sharpens iron, I think mind, body, and spirit. And I don’t know where the disconnect happened with the church and that aspect. I don’t have a clue, but nobody talks about your mind and your physical health either.

And if those two aren’t in check often the spirit’s not in check. And so we’re walking around almost wobbly like one-third of us is functioning like it’s supposed to in the church and we wonder why things still feel like they’re falling apart.

Carrie: And they’re not working. And this concept, which I’m still just wrapping my mind around is like the holy spirit lives in me like in my body that just really blows my mind.

So I’m like, does how I treat my body that has to interact with my spirit? I know it doesn’t change the holy spirit. I’m not saying that, but I mean how I interact with my body changes my spiritual health. It affects my spiritual health as well as my emotional health and physical health.

It’s just all interconnected. And I think you’re right, I think we do try to look at those things separately and don’t interact with each other. And if we want to be more healthy spiritually, we also have to be more healthy emotionally and physically. It just makes sense. I love that.

Talk with us about this concept in your book of not being alone that seems to be a big thing for you. Why did you title the book the way that you did and how does that incorporate with what you wrote about?

Peyton: I think OCD was probably one of the most isolating things in my life. Like I said, even growing up, I was a worrier. My friends called me the worrier.

I was the mom friend like I was always 45. I was always isolated because I was the mom. I was the worrying one. I was the one who can not just ever let loose and have fun now, not in the name of sinful pleasure, but I was just never relaxed. I can never breathe and that was one of the most isolating things for me.

And so as I got older, life got harder, stuff got more serious intrusive thoughts just have a field day with that. I mean, because there’s just so much more stake. Once I got married like sexual OCD stuff went through the roof because never had I ever had sex. And now I have, and my brain is like, “Oh, here’s 5 million things we can take and run with.”

So I continue to get lonelier and lonelier because all of these thoughts made me take a step back, take a step back. I was not like everyone else. Something was wrong with me. Should I call the sheriff on myself like what is going on? And so when Josh physically left and I was physically by myself, that was probably one of the darkest places in my life because I had always been mentally and even spiritually isolated just from the church I grew up in and struggling with OCD. And here I am not physically alone and it took therapy. It took God’s grace. It took two or three very dear friends that made you realize you literally cannot be alone. And it sounds so churchy. It sounds so cliche.

But like you said, if the holy spirit is truly embodying you then I am called to believe that he is embodying every lonely space I’m walking through. So he is quite literally paving the way and telling loneliness to just step aside like it doesn’t have a place here, not in my heart, not in my spirit, not in my physical body, not in my mind. And so that’s how I chose the title, Not So By Myself.

Carrie: So huge. I hope that as people hear this podcast and these stories that they recognize that within themselves too like I’m not alone. I’m not alone in my struggles and that God’s here with me and God can break into those lonely spaces. And I love that he just meets us where we’re at, you know, all of our mess.

Peyton: That’s what I say. He works best in the mess. That is where he thrives.

Carrie: So cool. Towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is the time where you received hope from God or another person.

Peyton: Oh, that is such a good one. OCD is just so wild. So harm OCD for me, I’m always afraid of running people off the road. I’m always turning my car around to make sure I haven’t run anybody off the road. There was one day I was in my little black Chevy car that I had gotten in high school and I was driving home and I just had one of those intrusive thoughts of I tried to pick up my phone because someone was calling me and I thought, “oh my gosh.”

[00:28:00] like for those five split seconds, you have no idea if you were looking at the road, what could have happened? So I just hit the brakes. It’s a quiet country town, but I still hit the brakes in the middle of the road. And I went to go whip my car around and somebody sideswipes me because I’m irrationally flipping my car in the middle of the street.

And I thought, “oh, my word. I have just caused a wreck. I have no clue if this person is okay. I don’t know how I’m gonna tell a cop I have intrusive thought OCD and that’s why I’ve had a wreck. So I pull off on the side of the road and this woman pulls off and I see her and she’s older and I think she’s 85.

I have partially killed her. She’s going to need a hip replacement. This woman gets out of her car. I’ve damaged her car like this was on me. She comes over and she grabs my hand and she looks at me and, and even in a small town, this was one of those random chances where I didn’t know who this was.

She said, “I just want you to know that this is God’s providential hand, that you’re safe and I’m safe.” And she prayed over me and just left. And I’m sitting here going, ”my insurance is going to go through the roof.” I definitely just clipped the back end of her car. So no insurance going up. I didn’t pay anything for this woman’s car.

I swear she was an angel. So that was just hope because that was a hard thing. Mentally, I was in a bad place. I made a bad decision as a driver and this woman just prays over me, gives me grace, and just drives off. And I will never forget that day. I will never forget her face, the street name, any of it as long as I live. That was some serious hope that I will not forget.

Carrie: Wow. What a testimony of God’s grace. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. I think this has been great to talk about all the different things that you talked about and I’m sure it’ll be an encouragement to somebody.

————-

I enjoy getting to have these guests on because it really reduces the stigma and shame surrounding being a Christian and struggling with OCD. Maybe you or someone you know have had an experience such as overcoming a phobia or working through social anxiety, I would love to feature some of those types of stories on the podcast.

If that’s you or someone you know, you don’t have to be an author to be on the show or a public speaker or a therapist. None of those are requirements. Just reach out to me via our contact form on the website. I look forward to hearing from you and being able to share more stories of hope with you in the future.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee.

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

eat love for you.

19. Thriving as an Introvert in an Extrovert World with Holley Gerth

Written by Carrie Bock on March 10, 2021. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 19. Thriving as an Introvert in an Extrovert World with Holley Gerth

On this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Holley Gerth, author of The Powerful Purpose of Introverts to discuss her own experience of burnout from trying to be an extrovert after becoming a published author.

Episode Highlights:

How the introvert brain processes information differently than the extrovert brain
Why introverts are more susceptible to anxiety and depression
How to communicate to an extrovert who is asking for your opinion on the spot
Why you should show up to a party if you are an introvert
What you might need as an introvert on vacation, during the holidays, or at a conference

Resources and Links:
Book: Quiet
Book: The Introvert Advantage

Episode Summary:

If you’ve ever felt drained after social gatherings, needed time to process conversations, or struggled with small talk, you’re not alone. In this episode, I sit down with author Holley Gerth to explore the deep connection between introversion, anxiety, and depression—and how to thrive as an introvert in a fast-paced, extrovert-centric world.

Holley shares eye-opening insights from her book, The Powerful Purpose of Introverts, explaining that introverts naturally have a more sensitive nervous system. This means we take in more stimuli, process conversations on a deeper level, and sometimes need extra time to recharge. While this sensitivity can make us more susceptible to anxiety and overthinking, it’s also the root of our greatest strengths—empathy, perceptiveness, and deep thinking.

Holley and I discuss practical strategies for introverts, from bringing a “designated extrovert” to social events to allowing ourselves time to process before responding in meetings. One key takeaway? It’s okay to say, “I need time to think about that,” rather than feeling pressured to answer on the spot. In fact, this thoughtful approach can lead to deeper insights and better decisions.

We talk about how embracing your natural wiring can actually reduce anxiety and improve your overall well-being. God designed both introverts and extroverts to complement each other, and when we stop fighting who we are, we can truly thrive.

Listen to the full episode for more insights!

Transcript

Today’s show is all about introversion. And if you’re wondering what in the world does that have to do with anxiety, we’re going to explain that in the show that there’s a connection between introverts being more likely to struggle with anxiety or depression.

Sometime back, I had picked up a book, The Powerful Purpose of Introverts and found this book to be so validating of my own experience and also provided some practical tips on how to thrive as an introvert. So I knew that I wanted to ask Holley to be on the show and she so graciously agreed. So here is my interview with author Holley Gerth.

Carrie: So Holley, I wanted to start by telling you a story that I think will help us dive into this conversation about introverts. I was sitting in my friend’s living room and I’ve known this couple for probably about 10 years now. And we were talking about theme parks and they said, “Oh, Hey, you know, what do you think about going to this theme park?” And I said, well, I said, do you know, that’s a lot of people to be around and it’s outdoors and it’s hot. And I said, if I have kids it might be a different story because I would suffer through it for the kids, but I said it as an introvert with all that activity going on around me, going to a theme park does not sound very fun. And my friend looks at me, the husband’s super serious and says, “You’re an introvert? “Yes, I’m an introvert” but it was just so funny to me because we have all these misconceptions about what it means to be an introvert. And here’s somebody that knew me for 10 years and wouldn’t have pegged me as an introvert.

Holley: Yeah, I think that’s a great story that happens so often. And the example you gave of a theme park is such a good illustration of the brain differences between introverts and extroverts. So they feel best when there’s a lot coming at them because it releases more dopamine in their system, which is their preferred neurotransmitter. And for us, it’s just a little too much sometimes.

Carrie: Right. The external stimulation of having to process everything that goes on around you and picking up even on little minute experiences, even conversations, sometimes really good conversations with friends that are maybe more rich and deep, I’ll go home and I’ll be thinking about that for a half an hour to an hour, whereas I think other people just kind of they’re like go home and go to sleep. And Carrie has to have like processing time, which is just different.

Holley: Yes, we do. Our nervous systems are more sensitive. And so we take in more. They’re like nuts with small holes and that’s why introverts reach, they’re done points pasture. And then we need to do that processing, like you described where we empty our net a little by thinking through things, and then we’re ready for more.

Carrie: Yeah. I know that in your book, you talk about how introverts are more prone towards anxiety and depression. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Holley: Yeah, it’s actually related. It seems they’re still studying it, but it seems related again to that more sensitive nervous system. So we’re just more impacted by the things that we experience and some of our brain wiring. It’s just a vulnerability and that’s part of my story. And for a long time, I wanted to get rid of that part of me completely. I was like, “God must have messed up” and I want to get rid of it completely. But over time I realized it’s actually tied to my strengths. So if you picture the core characteristics of who you are is like being on a continuum and in the middle would be that nervous system that introverts have. And on the left side of the continuum would be anxiety and that could be labeled struggle. But on the right side of the continuum, there would be a label that says strength. And that’s where things like you described that perceptiveness and empathy and ability to notice things is. So I think for introverts, when it comes to overcoming anxiety, depression, really saying this is tied to some of my strengths, and it’s not about changing who I am, but moving toward the strength sides of those core parts of who we are that can go in either direction.

Carrie: Yeah. Those strength parts a lot of times are often overlooked in a society maybe that caters a little bit more towards extroverts.

Holley: Yeah. I think so but it’s surprising that actually about half the population is made up of introverts. We’ve just learned to act like extroverts when we’re in public, because like you said, our culture is more extrovert centric, but I think that introverts and extroverts are actually an intentional, complimentary pairing on God’s part that he made both and we’re better together. So I think that when introverts dare to be who they are and extroverts do the same, then we’re all a lot better off.

Carrie: I love that because I have had similar experiences I think to what you just shared of I feel awkward in social settings, or maybe I don’t know what to say. I struggled at one period in my young adulthood, really of making conversations with people, not knowing how to do kind of the small talk thing. [00:06:03] I’d love the one-on-one deep conversations but I didn’t know how really to interact in a group of people. I actually went through a period where I made myself talk to strangers which sounds really funny, but it was my way of practicing small talk. And I knew that I wasn’t going to necessarily run into or see these people ever again. [00:06:28] So that made it a little bit easier to kind of like practice some of that stuff.

One of the things I liked that you said in the book was that you try to bring an extrovert with you to a party but they also appreciate having an introvert, which I thought was really cool too.

Holley: Yeah. I usually bring, I call them my designated extroverts.

[00:06:52] So if I’m at a conference or somewhere like that, then I look for an extrovert and it does work out well because they want to kind of flip from conversation to conversation and talk to as many people as possible a lot of this times. And then if there’s one person that wants to go really in depth and tell me a long story and talk, maybe and cry for an hour, then they’re like, “you got this one.”

[00:07:16] We both have our strong points. And again, those are stereotypes. Of course, introverts can learn to network, like you said, and extroverts are of course caring people too. I do think that when we come team up and help each other out that that can be really useful. And the reason why we prefer those conversation types for extroverts, they use a brain pathway for processing that shorter, faster, more focused on the present [00:07:46] So they really easily do that quick, small talk. It’s also why they like talking on the phone more than introverts and introverts use a pathway that’s longer, more complex. It takes into account the past, present and future. So we need a bit of time to respond, but often when we do, it adds depth and insight context to what we’re saying in that conversation [00:08:10] So again, it’s something that can be frustrating at times, but it’s also strength. It’s what makes you a great counselor that you have the ability to use that longer pathway and go to those deeper places with your clients.

Carrie: I absolutely believe that because there will be times where I’m outside of session and I’m thinking about a client and their situation in a little bit more depth, and I’m able to have some mental clarity. [00:08:37] And the nice part about my job is I don’t always have to think on the fly. I can come back and say, “Hey, I was thinking about this thing, and I think it might fall in this area, or I think it might be helpful if we shifted direction over here a little bit.” It’s super frustrating when you’re in a corporate environment or even sometimes in church, you’re in meetings and people are spitting out ideas and sometimes that processing speed is a lot faster.

[00:09:06] And so for the introverts to know, it’s okay I think to come back and say, “I thought about this a little bit more” and to not feel guilty for not being able to think on the fly, like maybe we see other people doing.

Holley: Yeah, that’s a great tip. One thing that I’ve learned through the process of writing this book is that extroverts just want a response. [00:09:30] They don’t necessarily need the response. And as an introvert, I tend to think I have to have my fully formed as close to perfect as possible response before I say anything at all. But actually extroverts just want to know that we’re engaged in listening. And so I’ve found It’s okay to say I need some time to think about it because it really matters to me [00:09:53] or I want you to know I’m listening to you and I hear you. I just need a little bit of time to work through that. And then let’s set up a time to get back together. And so that was freeing for me. I have a daughter who’s an extrovert. And so I’ve learned to say to her, things like that, “I hear you. I am listening.

[00:10:12] Let me have this a little bit, and then I will get back to you. I promise.” So that is one strategy. Also preparing ahead of time can help us. As little in the moment processing that we have to do that can be helpful. I’m sure you prepare for your sessions with clients. And then, like you said, you think about them afterwards. [00:10:33] That idea of saying especially in a meeting, “Hey, I’m going to get back to you by 8:00 AM tomorrow. I want to dig into this a little more.” So preparation, and then knowing you can just use a response. You don’t have to have the response and then asking for time for followup. Those are three good strategies to help with that.

Carrie: [00:10:51] That’s so good. I like having the practical things to say with other people, and that can help in a variety of different relationships that we’re talking about whether it’s your boss or your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend, your child like you named. This is just applicable in so many different areas.

[00:11:13] I’m curious for you what that process was of really embracing your introversion in a different way other than looking at it as a deficit, going from that to looking at it as a strength or as a God-given blessing.

Holley: Yeah. Well, I did it by pushing myself into burnout. [00:11:39] So, especially when I first started publishing books, I started getting a lot of speaking invitations and I literally told myself I just have to be more of an extrovert now like that’s the job. And I said yes to everything to everyone without being very strategic about it. And at the end of one year where I traveled like 20 times, I was a keynote at a conference and the next morning in the worship service, I just couldn’t stop crying. [00:12:05] And I felt like God saying, “Go home.” And I knew he meant like go home and taking a nap because you are tired, but also go home to who I created you to be. And I realized that each of us are perfectly designed for God’s purpose for our lives not for anyone else’s, but for ours, we have what we need. And so I went home and I went to counseling. [00:12:29] That was part of my healing journey. I told my close people, “Hey, I’m not okay. I need to make some changes. I spent time with God” and just asking, what have I taken on that you never asked me to. And started saying “no” more strategically and started saying “yes” more strategically and realized that I didn’t have to do all those things in order to fulfill God’s purpose for me that I could be an introvert and still make an impact. [00:12:59] It was more than okay to just say this is who I am and I’m going to build my life around that. So it was a long journey and I wouldn’t recommend anyone do it that way but that’s how it worked for me.

Carrie: I love that. I love that sense of, yes, I can fulfill God’s call on my life. Whoever’s hearing this, no matter what your personality is, no matter whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, you can still fulfill God’s calling and it’s going to look like

what he intends it to look like for your life instead of trying to follow the pattern of other people. It’s so tempting in the days of social media to look on a profile or a public figure and say that person has it together, or I want to be like them but really we should be striving to be who God created us to be unique and individual. And there’s just everyone, I believe has a gift that they give to the world, that God has given us things to be able to give out to others. And that was just really beautiful how you shared that.

Holley: Yeah, I agree. And even when we look at those around us, a lot of times we assume they’re extroverts and often they’re not. Some well-known introverts include Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld, Joanna Gaines, Abraham Lincoln, Max Lucado, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps. The list goes on and on. And because we live in a more extrovert centric culture, we do assume, “Oh, they’re in public. They must be an extrovert,” but there are actually a whole lot of introverts doing really remarkable things. And so I think that is something I’ve learned too, that when I see someone that I think, “Oh, they’re an extrovert” to pause and be like, “maybe not”. [00:14:59] Maybe they’re in their zone of what I call brilliance and belonging, where there’s this thing that they do that brings them into a different place but maybe they’re an introvert just like me.

Carrie: Do you feel at times, like God’s calling on, on you to do specific things has been totally scary?

Holley: Yeah.

Carrie: [00:15:27] I feel like that too. I wanted to ask you that because even like putting out this podcast, it’s terrifying. The only reason I continued doing it is because, well, one, I believe it’s got what God wants me to do. And two, I’m having enormous amounts of fun with it, talking to people and interviewing them, but it is scary to do new things or to put ourselves out there. [00:15:53] And I think sometimes as Christians, we may be have been fed this lie that if I’m doing something for the Lord or if I’m following God’s calling on my life somehow I’m supposed to have a hundred percent confidence in that, and I’m not going to experience anxiety and I’m not going to experience fear. [00:16:14] I just wanted to just dispel that myth because it’s a myth.

Holley: Yeah. It is. I once looked at all the verses that say, “do not fear” in scripture and there are almost always to someone who’s already afraid. So it’s not like a command don’t ever feel fear, it’s God saying to us in a reassuring way, you don’t have to stay in that fear because I’m with you. [00:16:40] I realized that we are afraid when something matters to us. We don’t get scared about things we don’t care about, you know? I don’t get scared that I’m never going to get to be an accountant or an engineer. And probably folks who love their jobs are like, they’re not scared.

[00:16:58] They’re never going to get to be a writer or a podcaster. It’s the things that matter most to us that scare us most. So in that sense, the fear is never going away or in a way we don’t want it to, because that probably means that the passion is also going away. And so just recognizing that fear as. As proof that we’re doing work that matters. [00:17:23] And then I would say the day I stopped being afraid is the day I should probably walk away because it’s the day I think I can do it on my own without God’s help like fear keeps us dependent and saying, “okay, God, this is bigger than me. I don’t think I can do it, but I’m going to trust you.” He and through me.

[00:17:41] And then we take the next step forward. But I think fear is just with us when we do things that are worth doing.

Carrie: Right. That connection between fear and passion is so huge because the passion is the thing that God gives you I believe to help you push through the fear. There’s something in your heart that you feel like you have to speak up about, or you have to share, or you have to do. Sometimes that anxiety is something that’s almost a confirmation for me of like, okay, like you said, this is something that God’s put on my heart and put in my life for a reason and a purpose, but I can also, with his help, move through that and move beyond that to the other side and do things that I couldn’t do on my own.

Holley: [00:18:42] Yeah. And it’s really interesting that from a brain perspective, fear and excitement use the same circuitry. It’s just about how we frame it to ourselves. Whether we tell ourselves like if we’re getting ready to speak. If we’re telling ourselves I’m scared out of my mind, or I’m excited. There’ve been studies that show, if you tell yourself I’m excited that it helps, even if you feel like you’re faking it, you may. You know what am I saying?

[00:19:11] I’m not excited, I’m terrified but if we just learn even to change some of that language and link it more to that passion and excitement, because it is the same kind of circuitry in our minds that can help also.

Carrie: I think some people should try that next time before going to a party, “I am so excited to be with my friends,” because that is true. [00:19:32] You’re excited to be with people, hopefully that you love and enjoy. Let’s talk about maybe some practical things that if people are struggling with anxiety in social settings or when they meet new people, those types of things. Are there any tips that you’ve found helpful for you or through your research?

Holley: [00:19:57] Susan Cain wrote a book called “Quiet” about introverts and also one for kids. And she uses the metaphor of extroverts are like helicopters. Introverts are like airplanes. And so extroverts in social settings kind of immediately lift off. They’re just jumped right in and introverts need a runway.

[00:20:17] So to ease into it a bit more and so if you’re an introvert, it can actually help to get to places a little bit early so that you have time to get familiar with your surroundings, to feel comfortable there. See people come in one at a time instead of walking into a crowded room because it’s tempting right as an introvert to come late because we think that will help. But that any kind of preparation you can do ahead of time even if it’s just researching online the restaurant or the venue, or looking at the people’s Facebook profiles not in a stalkery way. I’m getting familiar with these people then that is helping yourself have a runway. [00:21:03] And so I think that’s one thing or even doing research ahead of time, like saying,” okay, what are some questions I want to ask people tonight,” having some things. So when you’re put on the spot, there’s something in your toolkit for using, and then just honoring your done point. Knowing that because we process deeply and we take in a whole lot that it’s okay if we’re just done before other people that it’s okay If we’re just like “I’ve had enough, I’m ready to go home.” For socializing to be more about quality than quantity, I think is a helpful shift. And then finding ways to make bigger groups feel smaller.

[00:21:47] So in a group saying, how can I talk to one person at a time or taking on a role or responsibility, like at the holidays saying “I’m gonna wash dishes” because that means I get to stand by at the sink and catch my breath for a few minutes. Or I’m going to take the dog for a walk or I’ll be the one to run to the store often when introverts have a role or responsibility, social settings become more comfortable.

[00:22:15] It’s that unstructured time where it’s just about like the back and forth conversations that aren’t always our favorite, that can be challenging. So give yourself a runway or look for a role or responsibility when you’re in the setting.

Carrie: One of the things that you mentioned that I’ve found super helpful for me.

[00:22:37] And it seems really silly, but I will become overwhelmed if I don’t look at the menu beforehand. If I’m going to a new restaurant, it’s like there are too many choices and too many options. And I feel like I have to read this whole thing and investigate it. And maybe other people don’t look at menus that way, but when you’re highly sensitive and that’s how you process the information, it’s just easier for me to.

[00:23:05] almost decide before I go to the restaurant, what I’m going to eat, or at least narrow it down to a few choices versus just having to do that all at once. And then usually people are trying to communicate with you as well like “Oh, Hey, how are you doing?” It’s like, okay, I can’t talk and read and think and everything all at the same time.

[00:23:25] I’ve found it helpful at parties. I think I read this in a book a long time ago. I had read a book as part of my process called the Introvert Advantage. I don’t even know if that’s still out but that book really helped me understand myself. And I think one of the things they said was don’t be afraid to sit down and let people come talk to you.

[00:23:48] I had an interesting experience at a networking event one time where everyone was mixing and mingling, and I just needed a break from meeting new people. So I sat down on the sofa and this extrovert woman came over and she started talking to me and I was thinking, Oh gosh, I came over here. So I could like just sit down.

[00:24:08] And she interpreted that as like,” Oh, you’re not having a good time. You’re not mixing and mingling.” And somehow like, “It’s my role in this networking event to come over and rope you back in.” So that was just a little, kind of funny misunderstanding, but I think it’s okay too kind of take a break or observe for a little while. [00:24:30] And sometimes people don’t understand that that that’s what you’re doing. They just think that you’re disengaged or not having a good time.

Holley: Yeah, and I think that’s a common misconception. I think one reason why is that brain and nervous system wiring differences means that introverts and extroverts experience happiness differently. [00:24:52] And so for extroverts, happiness looks like enthusiasm and excitement and for introverts calm and contentment. And so that extrovert assumed because you were over there being calm and content that you must not be happy at the party. And so our loved ones can do the same. If you’re in an introvert expert, marriage or friendship, or kids and parents. And so understanding that difference can be helpful. And also as introverts communicating, saying, I’m really enjoying, just watching everyone or just making it overt that we’re in our happy place. It just looks different than it does for extroverts. But a lot of times that’s what’s going on and I love your strategy of menus. [00:25:38] I do the same thing, and I’d never thought about it as an introvert HSP thing, but that makes so much sense. And I think I’m going to do that in broader ways too. Like if I’m going to a conference, I’m going to say this conference is a menu. I don’t have to eat everything on it. What do I most want to consume while I’m here and what will be the right amount for me that I get what I need, but I don’t over indulge in a way that makes me not feel good by the time I’m going home.

[00:26:11] And I think you could do the same with a vacation, with a lot of different things. So I love that strategy.

Carrie: That’s so true of conferences because they will literally have like, okay, and here’s the breakfast for the new people. And then here’s all of your conference schedule and the special lunch. And then the dinner evening thing. [00:26:32] And I look at that and I’m like, “No, I don’t want to go all all to all of that.” It’s like when you’re having your evening 8:00 PM thing, I want to be in my PJ’s reading and decompressing because I’ve been around people all day long. What are you thinking?” So that’s really funny too, that you mentioned conferences because that’s been my experience of looking at them. [00:26:54] We have way too much stuff on this menu. I’m not going to go to all of that.

Holley: And so to saying, I’m going to pick and choose. What’s going to add the most value and not worry about the risks. Again, it’s that quality over quantity, such an important strategy, especially for introverts.

Carrie: I know that things like. [00:27:13] Trips or being around family for long periods, even people that you love and value my spouse. And we have introvert time. There’s times where we just kind of want to go to a separate space in the house and just read or relax. And we just kind of check in with each other about that. Like, “Hey, are you cool if I go here and read” :Oh yeah. That’s fine.”

[00:27:37] I just kind of need to decompress. And we don’t always have to be around each other all the time. And there’s a peace and a communication about that. I’ve had vacations with friends where like, I can think my best friend and we kind of had an understanding of just like, we need time alone at the end of the day, we’re going to be around each other all day, doing fun things, going places and seeing people.

[00:28:05] And then there needs to be some kind of decompression time at the end where we’re not having to be fully engaged or talking to each other or doing an activity every second of the day. I think that’s it. That’s important in terms of when introverts are planning things like vacations, to really take that time and be gentle with themselves. You don’t have to absorb every single moment. You can have some happiness in your peace and contentment and relaxation at the end of the day.

Holley: Yeah. And I think it can be helpful to ask each other, what will help you enjoy this vacation, the holidays? whatever it is that you’re going into with another person. [00:28:52] And so that gives introverts opportunity to say, “I’m going to need a nap, or I’m going to need an hour to read every day.” And the extroverts will say, “I’m going to need to have a little adventure every day,” whatever it is. And so a lot of times we just assume that other people are wired like us. And so we are afraid to ask for what we need or are we missing what someone else needs. [00:29:16] And so I think just having those conversations can be helpful.

Carrie: There’s so much about this, as you start to develop an awareness of yourself, your own body even how you feel physically and emotionally, when you’re around other people, how you feel physically and emotionally doing certain tasks. Some may feel more draining to you than others. How you rejuvenate that mental and emotional energy. And if you can develop some awareness over those things, then it allows you to know what you need. And if you know what you need, then you can advocate for what you need. And there’s so many pieces I think that go together with that.

[00:30:06] I hope that some of this conversation helps spark like self reflection in our listeners just of how do I really feel in these situations. With anxiety, there’s a tendency to just avoid and just say, “It makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m not doing it” Party with 20 people and I only know one person, “I’m not going.” And I would just encourage people really to say instead of tapping out and avoiding to say, how can I Set myself up for success in this situation instead like some of the tips that we talked about a little bit earlier. How can I engage socially in a way that’s going to be most comfortable for me understanding that it’s not, it may not necessarily be a hundred percent comfortable.

Holley: [00:31:00] Yeah, that was a big aha for me was my anxiety is realizing that avoidance actually reinforces anxiety because we never learned that will we actually can do it, that we can make it through the party or the speech or whatever it is that’s making us anxious. And so the more we go through things that trigger anxiety and come out, okay [00:31:23] On the other side, that’s what actually decreases it. And so that has been a big aha for me personally, it’s just saying, like he said, okay, this is making me anxious. But I’m going to get some strategies and call for backup if I need it and I’m going to live through it. Usually on the other side, I say “that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” What I come up with in my head is usually so much worse than what actually happens. I think that’s great insight for your listeners that you’re sharing that. Lean into it when it’s tempting to pull away.

Carrie: Are there things that you tell yourself or to get through some of those situations. What kind of like what the tipping point is? [00:32:12] How do I know that this is too going to be too much for my system or it’s something that I can manage and kind of get through with a little self encouragement?

Holley: Yeah, I think asking, “Am I making this decision out of fear? or out of intentionally taking care of who I am as an introvert?” because those are two different things. [00:32:38] If there’s an event that would probably be beneficial and I know that, but I’m just like, I’m scared. So I’m not going, then I try not to let myself off the hook, but if I’m saying, “I’m exhausted.” And I know the close people in my life need some things for me, and I’ve got to prioritize my energy and this event is just not making the cut because it’s a “want to” not a “need to” then that’s a different thing.

[00:33:09] And just saying it’s okay to prioritize what I spend my emotion and energy on especially as an introvert. And so just asking, where is this coming from? Is it from a fearful place or is it from a proactive place? I think can be helpful.

Carrie: That’s really, really good. So before we end here at the end of every podcast, I like to ask the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Holley: [00:33:41] Okay. So my story of hope is my family story. I went through about a decade of infertility, my husband and I couldn’t have her own kiddos. And so we ended up adopting a 20 year old who basically aged out of the foster system. And so she’s now 27. And so she got married and we are Nana and Papi to Ula and Clement. [00:34:10] And so I literally wore a ring on my finger that said hope for all those years. And the ending to our story is not at all what I would have imagined, but it is now one that I would not trade for anything. So I think about that still when I’m in a situation where I’m waiting or I’m uncertain of the outcome, just knowing that God’s working out something probably better than I could have imagined on my own.

Carrie: [00:34:38] That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. So Holley, tell us a little bit about your book.

Holley: It’s called the “Powerful Purpose of Introverts. Why The World Needs You to Be You.” I spent years doing the research behind it. It has tons of information, but I also did a survey of my blog subscribers about their biggest challenges as introverts.

[00:35:02] And I used that. I got thousands of responses. And so digging into that, I noticed patterns, patterns of struggles, but also patterns of strengths. And so the book really unpacks, what are the gifts and strengths the world has to receive from introverts and how can you individually recognize those strengths in yourself and maximize them and overcome the struggles that might get in your way. [00:35:30] And so I hope that it’s both encouraging but also very practical. There’s a lot of interactive tools in it. There’s questions for reflection. There’s all kinds of things like that. And if you’re an extrovert, I’ve heard from several extroverts now that reading it has helped their relationships with an introvert in their life. So if you’re married to an introvert or you’re parenting one, or if you just have a lot of friends that you love who are introverts, I think it can be beneficial for extroverts too. It has been a best seller and resonated more than I even imagined. So I hope everyone can get this message because I think it is something I wish I’d had 20 years ago. [00:36:14] It would have changed the trajectory of my life. It would have protected me from going to that place of burnout. And so I want everybody else to have it so that they do not have to go through what I did. You can let me be your warning.

Carrie: Absolutely. I’ve really enjoyed it. It felt so validating for me to read.

[00:36:38] And I knew some about introverts from reading that I had done in the past and kind of my own journey of self discovery, but reading the book this time with all of the interweaves that you talked about of the research that you did, and the brain science has been like, “Oh, yeah. That makes so much sense.” And there are little checklists and different things and it’s just been, it’s been a good read. So thank you for writing it and sharing that with us and thank you for being on the show today and just sharing your wisdom there.

Holley: Thanks for having me.

_____________________________________________________________

I hope you enjoy listening to this interview with Holly. If there’s nothing else that you take away, I hope that you know that you were created uniquely by God with a purpose and intention in mind. He did not make a mistake by making you an introvert. If you are an introvert and he did not make a mistake by making you an extrovert, if you’re an extrovert, so go and embrace and be all that God has called you to be.

[00:37:47] At hope for anxiety and OCD, we talk about how we are here to reduce shame, increase hope, and develop healthier connections with God and others. If you know somebody that needs this message, I would encourage you to share the show with them. You can also share your support for the show by writing us a review on iTunes.

Thanks so much for listening.

Hope For Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and Audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s grace.

13. Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

Written by Carrie Bock on January 27, 2021. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 13. Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

Author Mitzi VanCleve shares her own personal story of experiencing anxiety, panic attacks, and OCD and ultimately, how God has used these things for good in her own life.

Obsessions Mitzi experienced even as a young child
Experiences of mental health stigma from Christians
Learning about panic attacks from a magazine article
Mitzi’s experience with scrupulosity OCD
Acting as if
How she used used imaginal exposure to help treat her OCD
How she made the decision to take mental health medication as a Christian
Wrestling with God about having OCD
How church leaders can support individuals experiencing OCD

Verses discussed: Psalm 13, 2 Cor 1:4-5, 2 Cor 12

Resources and links:
Strivings Within- The OCD Christian
In Your Dreams
OCD Online
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention)
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

By The Well Counseling

More Podcast Episodes

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 13. Today, I’m sharing an interview with author Mitzi VanCleve. She shares her own personal journey of diagnosis, treatment and interactions with the church in regards to dealing with panic attacks, anxiety and OCD. I’ve found her story to be incredibly hopeful in terms of how we can grow closer to God through struggles in our lives. So let’s dive in.

Transcript Of Episode 13

Carrie: When did you start to have symptoms of OCD?

Mitzi: Well, that really started even as far back as when I was a toddler. I know that sounds surprising. The only thing I can say about that is in my childhood right up until I was quite old, I never understood a lot of what I was experiencing was actually OCD. The first thing that I can go back and look at is really long-held obsessional fears and themes. The very first one was it was sort of unusual as OCD things are. It was a fear of being flushed down the toilet and the sphere was so intense that I would not use the big toilet until I was five years old and I was forced to go to kindergarten.

Even as a small child, three years old, four years old, I could sit there and watch a toilet being flushed, look at the hole in the bath and the toilet and say, “well, I can’t fit through there,” but it didn’t make any difference. My brain had just decided this was the thing to be afraid of and from there, once I got past that one, there was health obsessions. I remember, a really long period of time where I heard about the idea of swallowing your tongue and that just drove me nuts. I worried about it, wondered how that can happen. I ask my parents about it. I would forget about it while I was playing then when I go to bed at night it would come back and that’s when I would really struggle like the times when I didn’t have anything to do. So there was a lot of weird themes and health obsessions.

By the age of 10 is when I first developed some obsessions related to self-harm. That just started with hearing about a form of not self-harm, but just a form of harm that could happen to a person. I don’t want to really go into the details. Sometimes it’s a little bit hard to explain specifically obsessions in details because it can get a little graphic and upsetting that people who don’t have OCD don’t really understand.

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

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

It became more debilitating after the birth of my children. After the birth of my second child, I developed panic disorder. Not knowing what that was I always struggled with social anxiety and just your basic kinds of anxiety disorders as a kid, but I didn’t know such a thing existed.

I never heard about OCD, anxiety disorders, panic disorder. Those words were foreign to me. I only heard about crazy people. There’s a thing where there’s a stigma and even as a child, the stigma was there. That idea that I might be crazy was terrifying to me and so when the panic attacks started, that felt like I was going crazy.

My first one was not nocturnal. I was falling asleep and I woke up with a panic attack and that happened to me a lot. It still does sometimes. I just know what it is now. That combined with that old harming obsession, the panic attack, the feeling of I’m losing my mind. I’m losing control. The derealization, that deep personal personalization that you feel at that moment makes you feel like you aren’t going to be able to control yourself. That combined with the harming themes. After the birth of my children, the harming thing switched from me, hurting me, going crazy, and possibly hurting one of my children in a really awful way and that was just so debilitating. I can’t even begin to describe how awful it was.

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

Mitzi: Oh, yes, it’s very true about OCD. That’s why it’s important to understand how the disorder operates, how to get on top of a theme before it gets on top of you.

And then it grows too big and large. It gets kind of stuck in your head. I do try to tell people that there’s physical symptoms with this too when you’re going through this. For me, some of the things I experienced during that really bad season, which was a very long season of unharmosity was an inability to eat.

I struggled to get calories down. I’m five foot eight. I dropped to 114 pounds. People thought I was anorexic. It had nothing to do with anorexia. I just was nauseous. The anxiety was so bad. I couldn’t sleep. And of course, if you have an anxiety disorder and you’re not eating and you’re not sleeping, that makes things even worse because that level of physical stress on your body is going to make a disorder worse. So that was what it was like and how it was like for me before I knew it was wrong.

Carrie: I’m curious about what your parents thought. Did your parents just think like, “Oh, she’s really nervous a lot, or she’s kind of an anxious child” or they had no idea everything that was going on in your head?

They didn’t. There were some people in my family, distant relatives who had struggles which caused them to even not want to leave their house and things like that. My mom would talk about that and she would say, “You know, you’re going to end up like that” but she didn’t really know what was going on.

I know my mom, there were like reassurances, which is a usual reaction for a parent to do that. A lot of times it manifested just as me being sickly. When I was struggling with certain health obsessions, I would get very, just like I described

sick to my stomach and I would lose weight. And so they were taking me to the doctor and try to figure out what was wrong but it was being approached like it was a physical issue. A lot of this just due to the fact that I didn’t verbalize a lot of the OCD themes, but even if I had, I’m not sure there would have been enough knowledge back then for my parents to know what was going on because that was in the 60’s when I was growing up. I think the information and knowledge and understanding about what OCD is and how it operates has come a long way since then.

Carrie: Right and hopefully also our physicians and pediatricians are also able to recognize a little bit better when they’re seeing some symptoms that potentially could be anxiety in a child, which often presents more as physical ailments.

Mitzi: I will share that when I got really, really bad with the harming OCD and the panic attacks, they were just relentless. I lost count. I have no idea how many I would have in a day or in the evening. At that point, I did open up to my mom. I began to know, “okay, this obviously is something to do with a mental health issue.” And so all I can think of was I probably need to see a psychiatrist and so I needed to share that with him, somebody. I had talked to my husband very little about it, just a little bit and I opened up with my mom. Growing up as a Christian and in a lot of Christians, there was that stigma [00:10:30] especially back then that Christians don’t have mental health issues. And so as I was sharing with her, I thought it might be a good idea for me to see a psychiatrist. She was really upset about it and she talked about faith and then she said something that was really hard, “that’s just for weak people.”

It was hard because it put the brakes on my pursuing that at the time, and I did pursue it still, but I didn’t get a diagnosis. The person I saw didn’t have any clue and he was relating things to stress and it, again, faith and, and it just I got nowhere.

Carrie: Okay. So you did see a psychiatrist, but they weren’t able to help you with that?

Mitzi: No, he just and of course, some of the scary obsessional themes, I didn’t verbalize them. I talked about anxiety and I talked about the panic attacks. I didn’t hit that word though. Just this is what’s happening and tried to describe it. So it wasn’t a good experience and it didn’t help me, sadly.

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

So what was that process of getting the help that you needed?

Mitzie: The first help that I got was really for the panic disorder and that was interesting.

I, I believe that during the time of my praying through this and asking God for help and just feeling so desperate that God came through. At that time I was still struggling. I was pregnant again, that tells you how long I was still struggling tremendously and I had become pregnant again.

I was about four months pregnant. I was at my aunt and uncle’s cottage, my husband and my brothers, my family, and my aunts and uncles they were watching a TV show which I did not need to watch at that time. It was called “Alien” which you’ve heard of. It’s the perfect show if you’re struggling. I was trying to avoid watching it.

So I picked up a reader’s digest magazine and the words on the front of the magazine where they show the stories, one of them said panic disorder. It said it might not be what you think it is. Just the word panic struck a chord with me. I opened up this magazine and started reading the story of this woman who had panic disorder and it was me. I was reading about myself and they listed all the symptoms of a panic attack and I had all of them. I finally had an answer for that. And so at the time, I was pregnant and I really couldn’t implement meds and things like that. I just started working on things like breathing techniques.

After I delivered, I started doing really intensive aerobic exercise. I was jogging four and five miles a day, and I gradually getting healthier which eventually took me into a period where the disorder waned. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but that’s when I learned just about panic disorder. I didn’t have any idea about OCD and so that kind of wax and wane on and off throughout the rest of my life up until the age of 50.

Carrie: So I think your story is very similar to other people’s in terms of a lot of times there’s a big gap between when people start to have symptoms and when they even find out this is actually OCD they’re experiencing because they feel ashamed of the symptoms. They feel ashamed of the thoughts, or they feel like, “okay, this sounds really crazy and nobody’s going to understand it or believe it, or they’re going to lock me up somewhere if I tell someone that I’m having these thoughts especially related to harm.”

Mitzi: Yes. What you say about they’re gonna lock me up somewhere was a genuine fear of mine because I couldn’t understand why I was having the thoughts to start with. For me to share that with somebody, they’re going to be like, “You really are dangerous.” Sometimes I would think maybe that would be good because then my kids will be safe. That’s how awful it is. You feel like your brain is telling you this is something that you should be afraid of this thought. I say it’s almost like you have a phobic response to the thoughts that you’re having and you’re having to live with them in your head.

If it’s a spider or something, you can just run away from it. Once it’s a thought in your head, it’s there. All that you’re doing to try to get rid of it makes it worse. Of course it did with me because I didn’t know it was OCD and I didn’t know what to do about it. It was at the age of fifty.

Carrie: So at the age of 50, what happened?

Mitzi: I had already been struggling. I was going back through a flare of anxiety and panic attacks because there’d been a lot of stress in our life. I’m not going to go into all the details, there were a lot of changes, big life changes. One on disability moves, just lots of changes, lots of uncertainty.

And so I didn’t notice it for a while, but it was kind of too late by the time I did start to say, Oh no, you know, I’m going back through this again. I was having panic attacks. I was starting to have obsessions about my health again, related to stuff that normally I would just brush off.

That’s how OCD is It’s always looking for a target, something to be upset about. During that time, I was praying again, reading my Bible, doing all the things I normally do as a Christian to try to receive information from God about what I can do about this. How can I help myself, but also just gain comfort. And I got a lot of comfort from the songs, even back when I was in my twenties, because I saw in there things that described how I was feeling.

My son also gave me some sermons on tape and he said, “These are really good, Mom.” We always share things like this. So I put one of those sermons in. It was actually on it on a CD. I was doing dishes, I was trying to stay very busy and distracted. This particular pastor was talking about our struggles with sin. As Christians and I understood. It wasn’t new to me that as Christians, we will still be fighting sin our whole life. It’s not something that we’re cured of. It’s something we’re aware of. We’re made aware of when we become a Christian and we have a desire to please our Savior. So we work continually towards pleasing him through obedience. He finally says this one statement, which I don’t even know why he said it in the middle of the sermon. He says, “If you call yourself a Christian but you’re still all the time struggling and sinning as strongly with sin, you really might want to think, are you really a Christian? In the past I would have been like, “yeah, of course.” This time my brain just latched onto that. It was like, wait a minute. What if he’s right? What if all this time, all these years, I thought I was a Christian I’m not. And what if the reason I struggle with this thing, whatever it is is because of that. It just was like a dam broke open and the intrusive thoughts related to that, just pour it out just one after another.

I just began this war with it. It was a mental 24/7, every minute I was awake, I couldn’t sleep and that was the new OCD thing, but I didn’t know it was OCD.

Carrie: No one’s ever had that before. It was a new theme.

Mitzi: Yeah. Until I was engaging with my compulsion. So by then, at this point in my life, of course, we had the internet and I was doing what’s called research, lots of Googling, researching around the topic of, “Am I still saved?,” doubting your salvation. I was reading all these articles about how we can know we are Christians and I would read them. It didn’t help. It didn’t make it go away.Suddenly one day I stumbled across a Christian forum that said doubting salvation and then it said, OCD. I was like, ”what?” That’s what I’m going through. Out of curiosity, I opened it and I started reading the posts from the people in this group

and it was amazing. It was just like the Reader’s Digest thing. I was reading my story. They were telling exactly what I had been going through. I was stunned and as I read more and more in this forum, and then I started going further out about OCD, what it is, how it manifests, what causes it. I had it and I had it since I was a kid and I never knew, and that opened up the door for me to finally have a way to manage this beast called OCD.

From there I began learning and learning more about ERP, about medications, about therapies like ACT. All the ways that this thing that I called “it”, this ugly “it,” for all these years, it had a name. I get tearful sometimes talking about it because God did answer my prayer.

He just didn’t answer in the way I was wanting. The way I was wanting was just take this thing away, whatever it is. He was pointing me to, “This is what it is, and this is what you can do.” It was just astonishing to me that I could live my whole life, basically until I was 50 years old and never have been able to get help.

There were so many long seasons of just debilitating, crippling suffering, and it was hard for me to believe, but just the relief, so overwhelming.

Carrie: We talked about that in an earlier episode with someone about how diagnosis itself can be a relief when you get a proper diagnosis. And then you can say, “okay, now that we know what we’re dealing with, what can we do about it?” “What’s our next step forward?

Mitzi: Exactly. Even after you get a diagnosis because OCD is OCD, it’s going to make you doubt but as you begin to bravely risk working with things like Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) therapy for me, it was brave when I was told, I probably needed to try some medications, but that was hard for me. Some of that was pride. Some of it was just because I have never taken anything like that before. What will it do to me? All the fears and that was a big struggle, but it’s so worth it because the alternative is staying stuck and doing the same thing over and over and not getting better and feeling worse.

I was determined just like with a panic disorder, I was like, “What can I do about this?” And I found out these things are effective. It was hard. It’s not like you began ERP and the next day, I’m all better. It’s a process. The longer you’ve been struggling with the theme, I think it’s a longer process. Your brain’s got this practice cycle of intrusive thought, anxiety response, compulsion, more intrusive thoughts, more anxiety, more compulsions. It’s a habit that needs to be undone and that takes time.

Carrie: Right. Did you get into therapy at that point?

Mitzi: I started going to a therapist and I think this is the hardest thing about OCD is being able to find a competent therapist. My therapist was good for dealing with basic anxiety disorders, like panic disorder, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, but when it came to OCD, she was asking me to apply basic cognitive behavioral therapy like you would for depression which would be to challenge the thoughts, to counter the thoughts into right logical reassurances.

Carrie: Which is exactly what you don’t want to do with OCD.

Mitzi: I started doing that and I got worse and I was like you know what, but there was one thing she offered up that was great and I still say it today, it’s act as if, and that’s part of the choice

part of OCD. OCD thoughts may be telling me this and telling me that, but I’m going to act as if these things aren’t true. And in the realm of Christianity and scrupulosity, even though my brain was telling me, “I think you might becoming an atheist.” I could say I’m going to act as if I’m a Christ follower. I’m going to do all the things that a Christ follower does even if my emotions will not validate that choice. That is my choice. So that aspect helped, the other was worse. So I pretty much learned on my own, I did visit some really good websites like ocdonline.com. Dr. Philippson. A lot of his work was just phenomenal to help me understand.

I learned about imaginal scripting, imaginal exposures, and I wrote them and did them and recorded them. I was able to learn that on my own, but a lot of people really do need a competent therapist because it takes a lot of grit and determination and courage to do ERP. I just think having a competent psychologist who’s trained to do these things and understands the disorder is something, unfortunately there just aren’t that many and a lot of it has to do with network, with insurance too, which was one of my biggest hurdles. I could not afford the counselors and the therapists that I needed to see. I had to go to the ones in network and even later on when I was going through a bumpy time with my OCD, after I knew what it was, I was just going through a really bumpy time.

I thought I could sure use someone right now and my therapist had passed and I called around and I would ask, or I would write. I know I communicated through email. I would say, “what do you know about ERP and ACT as far as treating OCD?” And they would say,” I don’t know what that is but I can help you with your OCD.” I’d be like, “Probably not.” So that’s a hard thing. That’s a really hard thing.

Carrie: It is hard because really, therapists would have to pursue training after their degree to specialize in OCD. And a lot of people don’t do that unless they have some type of personal connection or in my situation, I was working with a lot of people who just thought they had anxiety and then I was starting to see more OCD as I was starting to hear more about what they were actually worried about and struggling with. So that’s kind of how I got branched off into it, but I think a lot of therapists have not received further training on it.

I want to get in with you on the spiritual aspects, really of struggling with OCD. I know a lot of people who are struggling out there probably are praying prayers just like you pray, “God, this is awful. I feel terrible. I’m all tore up inside. Will you please just like touch my body and touch my mind and take this all away.” How did you work through some of that wrestling with God?

Mitzi: When I didn’t know I had OCD, I did a lot of that and it was a wrestling time. I thought during that time, maybe this was due to pass. Maybe there was something I needed to confess. So I would pour over everything I could think of and current things and confess for the OCD and the anxiety I would go through. I knew these verses, every verse related to worry, anxiety, all of those things.

I had most of that memorized. Anyway, I did understand what those things meant. What I didn’t understand was the difference. The Bible talks a lot about anxiety and worry, but if you look at those passages of scripture, you will see these are situational.

Worries and concerns, they’re about real-life trials and afflictions. It isn’t this always there’s a free-floating sense of dread and physical symptoms and everything of anxiety that can even be there when you aren’t even worried about anything. It’s like panic attacks, for instance. So that was confusing to me, but there was also a feeling because God wasn’t taking it away just miraculously. Maybe he’d abandoned me.

There’s a particular Psalm, Psalm 13, I think it says “How long, Oh Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you keep hiding your face? Please answer me.”

Just the desperation there of the feeling when we’re going through painful suffering and trials of “where’s God in all of this?” It took a while for me to understand growth through affliction and that came gradually. There’s several aspects of this. There’s my own, not understanding the difference between commonplace, worry that everyone experiences, and a disorder like anxiety or a real mental health issue.

That was the biggest hurdle for me to get over was to learn. So when I learned that I had OCD and I learned I have panic disorder, I was able to shift over into, “well, maybe this is how God’s answering my prayer.” I was able to see just like if because I do have hypertension, the answer to that, God gave me wasn’t you just miraculously heal my hypertension, it was for me to go on medication, treat my hypertension. And so that helped me to understand that these are very real disorders and to learn about how they develop, why they develop, how they’re genetic. I see that in my family that’s definitely genetic and that it’s not a sin to treat a disorder and affliction and seek professional help for it.

That was something I had to work through, but when you try to talk about it to other Christians, actually, if you don’t know what’s going on, but you know it’s a mental health issue. You may not know, like we’ve talked about how you can have OCD and not know it. So you might be going to a pastor or Christian friend, and you might talk a little bit about your anxiety disorder.

They come at you with what I call “mini-sermons.” They start telling they start quoting you all the verses about anxiety as if you’d never heard them before. It was especially when they know you’re Christian. They know you study the Bible. They know that you followed Christ to the best of your ability.

It’s very condescending because they water it down too. “You just don’t know how to not worry because you don’t trust God.” This is a faith issue. If you had more faith, it’s even gone so far, and this is the one that drives me the most nuts is if you have a mental health issue or anxiety disorder, people will say things to you like you have a theme? That sort of thing. That’s bad. This is awful especially for a person with scrupulosity, religious OCD themes. I mean, that’s horrifying. It just makes it 10 times worse. There’s this lack of knowledge out there when it comes to understanding these disorders.

I really think anxiety disorders are probably the least understood because of Bible verses about worry being equated with an anxiety disorder and they’re not at all the same. And if you’re a sufferer you definitely know the difference, but people who don’t have experience or a loved one who they know and see going through this, they just automatically assume, unfortunately, that this is what it is.

Carrie: Right. It’s hard for pastors and ministry leaders to understand. They don’t necessarily have that type of training or clinical background. And sometimes they’re dipping toes in the water that they need to kind of stay out of and just say, “Definitely we will support you and love you and pray for you but we also want you to get professional help because that’s important and God can use those things in your life. God can use therapy and medication.” These negative experiences that you had with maybe pastors or other people in the church who were well-meaning, let’s say, and trying to help you, did that cause you to want to go public with your story and write a book?

Mizi: Yeah. Yes, it really did. It wasn’t just that though but that was a big part of it. What you just said about they really don’t have the training or the ability to recognize these disorders. Scrupulosity, for instance. If a person is struggling with doubts about their salvation and maybe this pastor has known this person for most of their life and they’re suddenly in their office and they’re going through all these thoughts with them, then the pastor gives them the reassurance from scripture and they’re like, “okay” and then they come back again.

They start saying the same thing over again and even the pastor there’s a level of frustration that can develop and they’re not equipped and they aren’t knowledgeable about OCD and how it manifests itself in a person who’s suffering. So I found that it was really important to share my story about living with anxiety disorders as a Christian and a Christ-follower, but in particular about OCD because it’s so misunderstood. And in particular about scrupulosity OCD because when you go that direction, people are even more inclined to think it’s a spiritual issue even the sufferers themselves really struggle.

They can even know they have OCD and they accepted about all the other kinds of themes and obsessions that they struggle with. For some reason, when it switches over to their relationship to Christ then it’s a spiritual issue. So the book explains why it’s not, and that OCD is OCD no matter what the theme, the treatment approach is the same. If there are things you don’t understand, which is very possible about your walk with God that you can learn through the Bible true, valid, real questions in OCD that can even happen because we’re all at different places in our walk with Christ. [00:37:05] You can still learn that thing, but you don’t have to learn it 50 times. That’s when you know, what’s OCD. It’s like if the answers don’t suffice, if the anxiety isn’t satiated, and laid to rest with answers that are logical reasoned arguments, it’s OCD. Especially if you have OCD, you can pretty much be sure. And so I wanted to lay that all out my own journey because I felt that there’s probably a lot of people with this struggle. If a Christian, a believer, a follower of Christ has OCD, there’s a good chance that it’s going to go that direction and they’re in their life at some point, because OCD always goes after what’s most precious to you.

And for the Christian, their walk with Christ is the most precious thing of their entire existence. So it’s going to go there and I wanted people to understand they weren’t alone, but I also knew there were a lot of people like me who got all the way to 50 or 25 or 30, 40, whatever and didn’t even know that that’s what it was. I thought by sharing my story they could discover that the way I did and, and get directed towards the help they needed and that was important to me. The other aspect of it is the growth in it through that. Before I go there, I did want to add to what you said about ways that the church can support people with these issues, these different kinds of anxiety, all mental health issues as far as that goes.

I think the number one thing they do is listen and then validate the experience as a real affliction not merely a spiritual issue that can be fixed by more prayer, more Bible study, more faith but to literally be willing to support people and say, “Hey, this is a real medical or mental health issue for which you can get help. We want to encourage you towards going to your doctor and starting that process. We want to encourage you that if they say you should see the specialist to go ahead and do that.

We want to encourage you that if they suggest medication might be helpful to you, by all means, please, please do that because it’s so harmful to say things, like it’s a lack of faith and taking medication, means that you aren’t trusting in God and all the things that you can.

And it’s so harmful and I don’t even know how to describe what I’m trying to say. It puts up such a roadblock.

Carrie: It just makes the problem worse.

Mitzi: Yeah and it hurts people. It’s important for churches to be able to be compassionate, pray for the person with a mental health issue, and the same exact way you pray for anybody who has any other type of health issue. Treat them the same, validate instead of turning it into a spiritual issue. I wanted to say that this is what the church needs to do.

Carrie: Yeah. I think that that’s so important and so helpful because we have this ability to rally around people who have just had a baby in the church. We’re really good at that. We can bring you a casserole and we’re really good at rallying around somebody that’s going through cancer or has lost a loved one but then when it comes to something that’s invisible, like an anxiety disorder or OCD, almost like people don’t know what to do with that.

Mitzi: Yes. They either don’t know what to do with it or they’ve kind of bought into the stigma and I’ve tried to kind of sort that out. I don’t know all the reasons people don’t believe in the validity of mental health issues but I suspect that part of the reason might be just a fear of my total health issues because of when I was really young and I was first starting to experience these mental health issues to the point where they were debilitating, all I could think of was I’m going to get locked up in asylum. So there’s these visions and pictures that people have of what it’s like or what people are who are crazy, that sort of thing.

So there’s fear around stigma of what it is to struggle with any kind of mental health issue and it said because there’s so much help out there. There’s so many people in the churches that are sitting in the pews who have mental health issues and you won’t even do that.

Carrie: Absolutely, that’s huge. So as we’re getting towards the end here at the end of every show, I like to ask the guests to share a story of hope since this is called Hope for Anxiety and OCD. So this is the time that you’ve received hope from God or another person.

Mitzi: Okay, there’s lots of stories I could tell. There’s been so many things and I get notes from people all the time about how the book has led to them for the first time discovering this is what’s wrong and finally getting the help they needed. So that’s how God’s used my experience where you comfort one another with the same comfort you yourself have received from God, which has been very humbling to me. For me, I don’t even remember how I knew to read this book, but I picked up a book by a person called John Bunyan that he wrote in 1666 and it’s called “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.” Mr. Bunyan’s story resonated with mine in ways I could not have believed. As I read this book about his experiences, really what he had was OCD scrupulosity. When you read this book, it is just absolutely eye-opening and the struggles that back and forth.

That’s how it debilitated him, how it crippled him, how he would be trying to even preach later on a sermon and the intrusive thoughts would just be blaring in his head and he was so terrified they were going to come out of his mouth right while he was preaching and it just crippled him. He tells this whole thing and it’s so interesting to read because it’s like that’s what it was like for me. At the end of his account, in this book, he says, he admits that this thing was an affliction that God had allowed in his life. It was an affliction. The very next thing he says is God, I’ll use his language, “God Duff order it for my good” and then he gives this list of all the ways God had used this to grow him and his faith. Even his account of how he learned to just accept the uncertainty of the thoughts and to press on in his choice to venture all for the sake of Jesus Christ was ACT basically.

This is amazing. I’m thinking God knew that I was going to read that book. He wrote it in 1666. God knew when I read that book, John Bunyan’s story was going to encourage me and it would show me something. It would show me that this affliction has a purpose. The last chapter of my book, I share the purpose in my own life.

That chapter is called Purposeful Affliction. One of the biggest ways I’ve changed in how I talk about my anxiety disorders and in my OCD in particular, as I used to kind of go along and say, “well, I have OCD, but God can still use me in spite of it.” That’s kind of how I worded it. Now I say, I have OCD and God is able to use me because of it. That’s because of the ways He’s grown me through this experience of affliction. That’s not uncommon. God, Paul talked about it, talked about a storm in the flesh. God said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. My strength is perfected in your weakness.

Paul ends up saying, I’m going to glory in this affliction because of this because when I’m weak, I’m depending on God’s strength and not my own. God uses these things in ways, perseverance, and empathy. The things that I learned through my OCD in particular, in my OCD scrupulosity is just amazing but reading that book that was just literally a godsend. And you think about it, they didn’t even know what OCD was back then, but God laid it on John Bunyan’s heart to write about it and so 1666, 150 years old. Here we are and I’m like reading this book and I’m like, “this is amazing.”

It just shows that OCD has been around for a really long time. It’s not a new thing. It’s just that we now understand you know what it is and there’s help and there’s hope, and everyone who is struggling with this, I just want them to have the chance to understand what it is and how to get help especially for my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Carrie: Right. Your story and what you’re doing and just being vocal and open about being a very strong Christian who has also had a struggle in an affliction, I think it’s so hopeful to other people. Hopefully, who will hear this podcast, but what we’re talking about with church leaders that such my passion and desire is that people would just get however they get it, whether they’re getting it through listening to a podcast or reading your blog or talking to somebody with a personal struggle. I just want people to be able to sit with people in pain and say, “We’re here for you.”

Mitzi: Yes. It’s so huge. It is so important and it’s important to understand that it’s painful. Like you called it invisible and it is. I would still get up every day, go through the motions like a robot. Sometimes I would fix my hair. I would put on my makeup. It was difficult to go out when I was really, really sick, but I still did it. I would sit in church and be tortured because of my OCD, but I would sit there and sometimes I’d want to run out, but you can’t see it. It is really debilitating.

The only way you could see it on me was I would get really skinny. I would get quieter. I would withdraw. I probably didn’t smile and laugh much. Those kinds of things but it’s very painful. For me definitely has been the thing that caused the most pain in my life and the most long-lasting because it can just hang on and hang on. I went through one whole pregnancy with it and then in between, and then another whole pregnancy. I still had the same thing going on. That’s how long it can hang up.

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

Mitzi: Sure. The name of the book is “Strivings Within-The OCD Christian” and you can find it on Amazon. If you just write that in and even my name, you can look at my name, it’s VAnCleve. That’s the main book I have out there. I do have another book. We’ve talked about as far as OCD today necessarily, but it’s a direction, another direction up and going, and it’s a fictional book with a little bit of my experience mixed in as a teen. That was about what it was like to have social anxiety and it’s written in a fictional form and that one’s called, “That’s in Your Dreams. That’s the name of that one. That’s all also on Amazon, but it’s kind of a nice book for teens who struggle with that type of anxiety, social anxiety. It might be relatable to them in a story form. It’s just a story about a girl trying to go to high school and trying to fit in, be normal and the social anxiety is always shoving her back down. And so I want to try to work on those kinds of things too for teens, but I haven’t been very dedicated with that.

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

Mitzi: Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the opportunity, anytime. I can share not because of what it does for me, but what I hope it might do for someone else who’s looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for someone who can relate to what they’re going through. And also like you said, for the church and for pastors and people in leadership positions to understand better what these disorders are, what they’re like, and how they can help. So thank you.

Carrie: Ever since I did this interview with Mitzi, I have been really pondering this idea of growth through affliction in our lives. I hope that you chew on that one for a little bit too because there are so many different things that God uses that are hard to go through and yet they grow us closer to him. They grow us closer to other people and they shape our character in ways that we might never have received had we not gone through those difficulties.

I hope that this podcast has encouraged you. If it has, will you do me a big favor and tell a friend. There’s probably someone in your circle of influence who needs messages that will help them reduce shame and increase hope and that’s what we’re all about on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing completed by Benjamin Bynam. Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

12. 10 Ways to Have a Calmer Mind and Body in 5 Minutes or Less

Written by Carrie Bock on January 20, 2021. Posted in Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 12. 10 Ways to Have a Calmer Mind and Body in 5 Minutes or Less

Are you looking for simple ways to relax and calm down? Often people use things like taking a bath to relax. That’s great, but you don’t always have that much time. Here are some go to strategies that you can use no matter where you are. No extra items or props needed!

Acknowledge the presence of God or Jesus
Gratitude
Spend time with an animal or at least think about them
Connect with your breath
Sing a song- For more info, see episode 6 with Tim Ringold.
Think about the most loving and supportive person in your life right now
Think about the absolute worst case scenario
Find the calmest part of your body
Connect with the present moment
Find your happy place

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 12

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety And OCD Episode 12. We are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others.

I am so glad that you are listening today. We’re going to be talking about 10 ways to have a calmer mind and body in five minutes or less. Yes, this is possible. Sometimes people feel like they need a long time in order to calm down like I need to go take an hour bubble bath. That’s awesome. Sometimes you’re able to do things like that, but sometimes you have five minutes before you walk into your dentist appointment and you’re super nervous about your tooth extraction.

You don’t always have a lot of time to relax. So I want to teach you some quick, relatively easy-to-implement ideas also that you can do anywhere.

You don’t need any special equipment for these. I also know that these exercises work. They’ve been tested, they’re tried, and true. I use them with clients on a regular basis. What I will say is that all of these may not resonate with you, and that’s totally okay. If you can find one or two that you really resonate with and feel confident in being able to utilize, practice those. The more that you’re able to utilize these strategies when you don’t need them the more likely you’re able to have that in mind or online when you actually do need them. You’re going to want to connect with these exercises in a whole-body experience type of way. What I mean by that is mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Too many times, we just try to change how we think about something. We do this in the church all the time and it drives me a little bit batty because people are like, “okay, well you believe God doesn’t love you.” I mean, the scripture says he does. So just change that in your brain and move forward. It’s a lot more complicated than that. We’re not just one-dimensional. If we just try to change our thinking, we haven’t tapped into the other God-given aspects of our self. Occasionally one of these activities may take you to a negative place. So if for any reason it does, just tap out and use a different one.

The 10 ways to have a calmer mind and body in five minutes or less.

Number one. Acknowledging the presence of God or Jesus.

This may or may not be helpful for you depending on your view of God right now, and how you feel about him, or you may be experiencing obsessions that get in the way with this activity.

Oftentimes, if people have a hard time connecting to God, they can connect to Jesus. I believe the reason for this is because we know that Jesus experienced the same struggles on earth in relationships that we experience, things like rejection, betrayal, temptation.

He had all access and authority in the spiritual realm. At the same time, He fully understood what it was like to be human. We know from a logical place that God is always with us in Matthew 28, 20 Jesus said, “And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” What does that mean for you right now? As you’re getting ready in the morning, driving to work, or sitting in the pickup line at your kid’s school.

What does it feel like to notice that you’re not alone and that God, Jesus is with you? Right now, is there a positive feeling or a physical sensation that you would connect with that? Just sit with that and notice that for a moment.

Number two. Gratitude. What are you thankful for today? I want you to stay away from generics. Don’t just say I’m thankful for my spouse or I’m thankful for my parents or my kids. See if you can make that specific.

So today I’m thankful that my spouse jumps in and helps around the house as needed. You might say I’m thankful that I get to watch my kids excel in a particular area like music or sports.

What is something that you’re thankful for that happened today?

Maybe you’d say I’m thankful that I didn’t get stuck in traffic when I had to make a long drive or I’m thankful that I got to have a conversation with a good friend.

Developing a regular gratitude practice will change your life even if you take a few minutes a day to jot on a calendar something very specific that you’re thankful for that day. I did this during a very sad and dark period of my life, and it really helped me get a different perspective.

Number three. Spending time with an animal or if you can’t do that, at least thinking about them. Of course, if you have an animal at home, you can interact with them.

I talk to my cats all the time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If you don’t have animals, you can watch baby animal videos on YouTube or funny animal videos, and that can get you in a different headspace as well.

I’ve found that even when clients don’t have an animal in session, they can bring up how their animal makes them feel. So think about what it’s like when your dog is right next to you.

What does it feel to stroke his fur? What kind of funny things does your dog do that really make you laugh? And as you think about your dog, how do you feel, and how does that make your body feel?

Number four. Connect with your breath. This may cause some distress if you have a hard time tuning in internally to yourself. Just start by noticing your breath without feeling any pressure to change it. After a little bit of time, see if you can make a shift in how you’re breathing. Maybe breathing out a little bit longer on your exhales, kind of slowly releasing the air. Trying to breathe from your diaphragm and not your chest.

Some people find it helps them to count every inhale or exhale so they have something to focus their mind on while they’re breathing.

Number five. Sing a song. Notice I said, sing a song, not passively put music on in the background.

As we learned from Tim Ringgold in episode 6, he talked about using music to help manage anxiety.

It’s better if you engage with the music in some way, such as singing along, tapping to the beat, or even singing in your head works as well. So if you’re in a crowd, you could just sing the lyrics in your head instead of out loud. This brings you into the present moment as you’re focusing and engaging with that music.

Find a favorite song that puts you in a good mood every time that you listen to it.

Number six. Think about the most loving and supportive person in your life.

You want to pick someone that you’re not in conflict with currently. Think about something they’ve done recently to show you that they loved you.

How do they make you feel when you’re around them? What is it like to be in their presence?

Just see if you can receive some love from them as you bring them to mind.

Number seven. Think about the absolute worst-case scenario.

I know this sounds counterintuitive because you may think that you think about the worst-case scenario all the time. But now I want you to play it all the way out to the end.

Let me give you an example. I’ve had several people be concerned about losing their job. So I will say something like, “okay, so if you lose your job, then what?” “Well, then I’d be unemployed.” “Okay. And then what? “Well, I’d have to go out and send out a lot of resumes and look for another job.” “And what if I don’t get a job right away?” “I might not be able to pay my bills.”

“Okay. And what would happen if you couldn’t pay your bills?” “Well, I would end up moving in with my mother who I have a hard time getting along with.”

“And then what?” “Well, mom would just drive me absolutely insane, and I couldn’t live with her anymore. And I don’t know. I might end up on the streets.”

As that scenario gets played out, either one of two things will happen. Either it will start to sound really ridiculous, like something that may have a very low likelihood of happening, or you may get to the end and say, “well, if that did happen, it’s pretty rough. I wouldn’t like it at all, but I think I could make it. I could manage it and get through.”

Number eight. Find the calmest part of your body.

Usually, when I ask people to do this, they look at me really strangely because people aren’t used to finding the calmest part of their body. They’re used to finding the most distressed part of their body. So it may take you a little bit longer to figure out where that is, but it’s a good exercise for your brain.

The calmest part of your body does not have to be a large area. It can be as small as your pinky toe. As you start to focus on that calm area, sometimes it will reduce the distress in the other areas of your body that don’t feel as calm.

Number nine. Connect with the present moment. Oftentimes the present moment is not actually where the distress is. Distress with anxiety often comes from an imagined future outcome that’s negative. Therefore, when you’re anxious, you may be living in the future.

When you bring yourself back to what’s actually happening right now, you’re typically okay.

Let me give you an example, going back to the job example, let’s say that you’re anxious because you have a meeting with your boss in two days, and you are absolutely convinced that this meeting is where your boss is going to tell you that you’re being reprimanded or that you’re going to be fired. When you bring yourself back to the present moment, you notice that you’re sitting in your living room with your cat and everything is actually okay.

Oftentimes, living in the future creates anxiety whereas living in the past creates shame or sadness, or other uncomfortable emotions. By learning to be in the present, this can reduce your overall distress.

You may also look at “what do I know” and now you know that you’re employed now. You know that you’re doing the best that you can at your job. You know that God is going to take care of you and provide for your needs. You know that if you did get fired, it may take you a little while, but you’re going to eventually be able to get another job.

You can only control your behavior in this present moment. You can’t go back and change anything you did in the past, and you can’t control the future.

You can’t control other people’s behavior or what they’re going to do. Sometimes acknowledging that in itself can bring a certain level of relief.

Number 10. Find your happy place.

This can be a place that you go to all the time or can be a place that you enjoyed on vacation. The place itself doesn’t really matter as long as you can connect positive sensory experiences to it.

I’m going to tell you about my happy place and describe it based on my senses as I experience it. My happy place is a park that’s in Nashville. There are beautiful trees along this wooded area. There’s a beautiful lake trail. You can go out on a pier and see the lake. It’s very quiet and peaceful out there. You may see birds flying. It smells like trees, grass, fresh air. There’s a cool breeze coming off the Lake and I think about walking with Steve there. Just enjoying his company.

When you get really good at going to this place in your mind and bringing up the positive body sensations that you have associated with it, you can actually attach what we would call a cue word to it. This word is going to help prompt you to think of this place. The cue word could be anything associated with that place or how it makes you feel. I may decide that because the park causes me to feel peaceful when I’m there, then the word I’m associating with it is peace.

I hope that you’ve found the 10 ways to have a calmer mind and body in five minutes or less helpful to you.

I wanted to give you a secret on how you can get number 11. If you go to hopeforanxietyandocd.com and subscribe to our newsletter, I try to send out about one email a week, so it will not bombard you. I have a free relaxation audio that you can connect with. It’s another activity that I’ve used with clients that they’ve really enjoyed. I’ve even had people tell me that this relaxation activity helps them calm down when they started to experience a panic attack. You can also find other free and paid resources on our website to help you with anxiety and OCD.

I want to tell you about some of our future episodes that I am so excited about. We are going to be talking with a marriage and family therapist about how to help your anxious spouse.

I’m also going to be interviewing an author who’s a Christian to talk with her about her book on mindfulness. I have another solo episode which talks about how to find a therapist who is the right fit for you.

I hope that you will hang in there with us and tune in for these episodes. Thank you so much for listening.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of well counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

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

11. Vulnerability, Grace, and The Power of Church Community with Randy Draughon

Written by Carrie Bock on January 13, 2021. Posted in Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 11. Vulnerability, Grace, and The Power of Church Community with Randy Draughon

What happens when pastors are isolated
How pain can be a good thing
Vulnerability as a gift we give each other
How to build a Christian Community

Verses discussed: Ephesians 1, Tim 1:15, James 5:16

Resources and Links:
Midtown Fellowship, Nashville

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 11

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 11. Today’s show is on the incredible power of Christian community and how that can impact mental health in a positive way. I wanted to make a very special dedication of this episode on Christian community to BJ Howard. In the process of putting this recording together, I’ve found out that he passed away.

This was someone that was very connected and involved in church, connected to encouraging and mentoring people that were younger than him. He was someone who was able to give me a lot of hope in my life when I needed it the most to keep going and to keep following the Lord and keep trusting his plan for my life.

Thank you so much BJ for your influence. I hope that in some small way this episode and not just this episode, but this podcast is a way to move forward and can carry the torch of the light and the love that you showed to me, to be able to show that to other people.

I got the opportunity on this episode to interview one of the local pastors in Nashville, Randy Draughon. He is the Pastor of Midtown Fellowship, and we were able to get into some great dialogue about being a Christian and living in the Christian community and what that looks like.

Let’s dive right in.

Carrie: For those that don’t know, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Pastor Randy: I’ve been in Nashville for almost 30 years now, married have three kids. I started Midtown Fellowship around 2001. Our passion then was to go into the heart of the city and to start a church for people that had given up on church.

So we were from a very traditional style church and we shed the skin of all that and started a church and a skate park. Most of the folks that were coming to Midtown were musicians or college students. Back then the city had really not gone through any kind of transformation. This was pre-Titans.

Nobody really lived down there unless they had to, which meant that they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Downtown was the cheap place to live.

Carrie: Wow, not anymore.

Pastor Randy: It’s true. We’ve seen a lot of change over the years and we partnered with a ministry called Rocket Town and they built a skate park and a big music venue down in the city.

When we got to a point where we needed a bigger space, they opened their doors and they were incredibly generous to us and we needed that because everybody coming to our church was so poor. None of them had any money. We had a philosophy early on never to take an offering because we were shedding the skin of the idea that when you come to church, the church wants so much from you. We’re operating from the philosophy of we just really believe that God has so much to give to you. So God just took care of us.

Carrie: How in the world, like, did you get paid? You didn’t take up an offering. This is incredible.

Pastor Randy: We just prayed and people just gave. I really can’t tell you that we ever spent much time around the budget, trying to figure out how to make it happen. We just were so busy just doing the work of ministry, meeting with a lot of people. We really had a simple philosophy and that was, we really believe that when God impacts one person, the ripple effect of that to their community and their family actually ripples out into the city.

And so we spend a lot of time trying to keep bongo, Java, and business and Fidos and all the coffee shops. You’ll appreciate this, our first offices were on 12 South because it was the cheapest place to get an office. It was just a rolling crime scene over there and obviously, it’s all changed since then.

Carrie: A lot has changed in Nashville. I’m sure over the years that you’ve been there and in terms of like ministry that has shifted somewhat, the population that you’re ministering to, is it more diverse as Nashville becomes more diverse?

Pastor Randy: You can tell me how much you want to get into this. I’m happy to talk about what we’ve done over the years. Midtown, about the first 18 months, was a slow crawl. We had maybe 10 people coming to church and then it began to build and we started to see the Lord really doing some really cool stuff in people’s lives. When we moved to Rocket Town we literally bought a hundred used folding chairs and we called it the purchase of faith.

We believe that the Lord was going to fill these hundred seats and within a year we had close to a thousand people that were coming to services at Rocket Town, and it was insane. We couldn’t get everybody in. In fact, the stage was full of chairs and the floor, and the balcony.

We really had a dilemma because we realized that the bigger that we were getting the least effective we were at reaching our mission, which was creating a safe place for people that had given up on church, that we were really good at attracting Christians from other churches because we’re a huge artist community. So our bands were killer. Like you can imagine coming to church and looking up in the band area because we wouldn’t put our band on the stage.

We actually moved them off to the side where you couldn’t see them because none of our artists wanted to perform on Sunday morning so it was about the Lord. It wasn’t about them and all of them were professional musicians. So the big dilemma that we had is, do we go to multiple services and see how big we can get this?

I didn’t feel led to do that. So we went to San Diego and we met with a group of people that helped start a Tim Keller’s church up in New York. They were doing something very unique out in California that we brought it back to Nashville. We customized it and then adopted it for ourselves, which was to, instead of going to multiple services, why don’t we take a big chunk of these people and send them back to their slice of Nashville and let them be the church in their community.

Carrie: A lot of churches are doing that now having kind of multi-site campuses.

Pastor Randy: The uniqueness of our model is really based on a couple of ideas. One is then this will interest you as a counselor, is that we really believe that pastors can sometimes be the most dangerous person in the church. They get isolated and isolated men that have power are very dangerous people when they’re isolated emotionally or they’re isolated relationally. There’s some expectation that a whole community of people are putting on them, but they know internally they don’t live up to. That can be a really dangerous scenario for him and If he’s dangerous, then he’s dangerous to the people he’s shepherding too. So we came up with this model of grading campuses. We’re one church, but we have multiple campuses and every campus has its own pastor, but that pastor is in a fellowship with other pastors and we take serious responsibility for one another’s emotional journey, spiritual journey, the whole heart. So we’re kind of a support group for one another.

Carrie: How did you, your church get to that point where you realized we really need to invest in that, not just the spiritual health of our pastors, but the emotional health and the other aspects?

Pastor Randy: Great question about how we got there. The easy answer is I think the Lord just reviewed this so many times through all our failures that he drove us there.

I think maybe the more detailed answer is before coming to Nashville, I’ve worked for some really large churches. I was in youth ministry for 15 years and I got to witness firsthand like national ministries and the men that led them and realized that they were isolated and that the trickle-down effect of that, wasn’t always a pretty story.

When you peek behind the curtain and we began to dream about what would it be like for a pastor to actually open the curtain? And that he ministers out of that place where he’s first in line, as the one who needs grace, He’s kind of the chief repenter and his community that he’s the most vulnerable of anybody.

We realized that the only way that’s going to happen is if we began to mature emotionally and began to mature spiritually at the same time. I’ve seen spiritually mature people that can quote the Bible from the beginning to the end and have these huge prayer lives but they’re not emotionally mature and as a result, a lot of times they’re just hurtful people and they’re not very safe to be around.

Carrie: They don’t know how to have healthy relationships and form healthy connections.

Pastor Randy: Yeah and you know, that’s fair because a lot of times, pastors, men that are called into ministry and women are called into ministry too.

A lot of times they’re intellectuals. They love to study. They love teaching. They love books more than they love people. So a lot of times they’re disconnected from their own heart and therefore they’re disconnected from the people around them because I don’t believe you can be disconnected from yourself and actually connected with other people. I also believe it hinders your connection with the Lord. But if you’re not self-aware enough to know how you need the Lord and where you’re at, I think it’s very difficult to have a meaningful, profound relationship with him.

Carrie: Right. I was thinking about that versus you were talking how

Paul was a big spiritual hero in a lot of ways, but he said himself, like, “I’m the chief of sinners” and such a puzzling verse because you’re like, how can you be the chief of sinners? But he just had that understanding and that awareness of like, “I need all of the grace too.”

I think that’s really cool what you’re talking about to this overlay of like where Christians meant to live in community and so that’s not healthy with pastors being isolated. Also this sense of our relationships with other people and those connections, a lot of times maybe mirroring our connections with God. Would you agree with that?

Pastor Randy: Yeah. Say that again and say it a little differently.

Carrie: Okay. I think that a lot of times we place on God like our ability to connect with him. We place on him things that we’ve received from other relationships in our life, often parents, fathers. And so if our fathers were disconnected or neglectful, then we receive this sense from God that we feel like God’s just kind of distant.

He’s not really there. Sometimes being able to connect healthily with people can help us heal some of that, like Christians. I don’t know the God in you maybe healing that piece of being able to love someone in Christ may help them connect more with God. I don’t know if that’s making sense.

Pastor Randy: That’s so good and you’re really the expert here. I’m just dabbling in your world when I talk about counseling here. We all have trauma in our lives and some of us have pretty severe trauma and it’s trauma that’s either been produced through parents or through relatives. Some of us have trauma that we produced ourselves and that trauma often I’ve seen, it digs these trenches in our lives that it seems like whenever we enter into any situation that triggers that trauma, which could be relational, we tend to go back to that ditch. So if our father was harsh with us, the only way we ever experienced God is as a harsh God. That’s why one of my mentors always tells me if something is hysterical, it’s probably historical that if we don’t understand ourselves enough to know that we have that trauma, then we’re not aware enough to know that I need healing in that trauma so that I can rewrite the script in a fresh healed way. Maybe it’s more than a healed way. Maybe it’s a healthy way.

Carrie: What was that journey for you of your journey of self-evaluation?

Pastor Randy: Well, for me personally, I’ve always sought out older men that would invest themselves in me. I’ve been fortunate I’ve had some amazing men that have the gift of listening and they also have the gift of wisdom. So they let me talk myself out and then they speak wisdom into those places. And if it’s true that our thoughts are really a bad neighborhood and we should never go there by ourselves then the men in my life have gone there with me. They’ve helped me fight the shame stories and we all have shame stories. But probably the most, I would say maybe one of the most impacted things was about six years ago. Our oldest son at 25 died unexpectedly. That story of grief for me and my wife and our family was so traumatic for me that it caused me to start to question everything. In fact, to get a little vulnerable here, I couldn’t let go of the thought that it was my fault and I felt deeply responsible for that. And as I began to unpack, why is that? I began to realize there were a lot of my own issues of codependency that I have not dealt with growing up. I grew up in a home where addiction was a part of our home. And so I just jumped into a whole community of people that had shared experiences like that and began to unpack my own lenses that I’ve put on to how I process my life and how I’ve processed the Lord and how I process other people. So it’s been an amazing journey over the last six years of embracing the joy of grief and the healing power of community and the Lord.

Carrie: I think a lot of times it’s the tragedy points that brings us closer to God and closer to other people, but it can really challenge your theology in the best way and wonder if that happened for you.

Pastor Randy: I think that pain is so misunderstood because I think that many of us live and I don’t want to, maybe I should use an “I” statement here. I lived thinking that if something is painful that means something is wrong, that we didn’t get something right because the right life is not a painful life, but the reality of every relationship is there’s pain. And that’s a part of relational health is realizing that if you’re going to love somebody you’re going to hurt and if you’re going to let somebody love you, it’s going to hurt. That pain is a part of the relationship.

It took a real season to realize that pain doesn’t have the ability to change what is true, but pain does have the ability to change what I believe is true. For me to bring my pain to my community and for me to bring the pain narrative to my community and whether that was through counselors or whether that was through just mentors or friends or people that were fighting for me, letting them fight for me so that my narrative of truth [00:16:12] can come alongside my pain and really call it good, which may sound strange to people that are in pain, that your pain is good, but it can be because the Lord uses that to bring healing in her life.

Carrie: Just as a connecting point to him and to other people.

Pastor Randy: And I mean, that’s what I’m saying, I’m swimming in your waters right now. You’re the pro in this area, but I’m just sharing my own personal experiences. Not necessarily an ocean of therapeutic knowledge.

Carrie: I think it’s really great though, to hear these kinds of messages from pastors, because depending on people’s backgrounds, they may not have had a pastor that has ever been this vulnerable about difficult things in their life like you were talking about the isolation. Maybe there’s the sense that I have to present as the most spiritual person in the room and therefore, somehow that means I present with no problems or no pain. Anyway, I have the Lord. The Lord is good, nothing wrong here.

Pastor Randy: You think about it that if the only time I can preach is when I’ve mastered what I’m preaching and I want to preach with vulnerability. I really don’t have any sermons because who can do that unless you put up a facade and you’re a counselor. What happens when people put on mask and they spend their lives to manage an image and they manage this facade so they can keep their jobs, which is their income.

They can keep people’s respect, which is, they believe my reputation is that if everybody was like me, then we would all be so much like Jesus. It takes a lot of energy and effort to do that so what would it be like for the joy of preaching from a place of, “Hey, I really need this more than any of you need it.”

I’m preaching from a place where I feasted on the Lord this week and I’m just sharing with you what he served up for me. If you have a community that would allow you to do that it’s a beautiful place to be.

Carrie: I love that. I think there’s something really about authenticity that’s attractive to people [00:18:25] and unfortunately, the church has gotten a bad rap for being fake. A lot of times, or Christians have gotten a bad rap for being hypocritical.

Pastor Randy: Because we are, but some of it’s a good rap.

Carrie: Some of it’s true. I used to become frustrated when people would talk about Christians becoming hypocritical and then I realized that Jesus was most frustrated with religious people in the Bible. And so I was like, “Oh, it bothered Jesus too.” There’s a relate-ability there. So if you’re frustrated with the church or people who appear religious, then you know, Jesus understands that.

Pastor Randy: Right and so true. I think that there’s such a gravitational pull to unhealthiness. I mean, you’re a counselor. There are a lot of people that don’t come to see you, people that their whole world of dysfunction and they live in it until they go to their grave.

There’s a huge pull to having a world that you completely control and that it’s not dangerous and you’ve minimized pain by medicating or avoidance or distraction. I think that that pull is so attractive when you realize that vulnerability and openness and willing to admit that your imperfect is so scary.

I love what Bernay Brown talks about is that courage is the ability to let yourself be seen and it really is true. That takes a lot of courage to let your true heart live itself on the outside.

I don’t think that any of us can do that by ourselves. Maybe some can, but I think it takes a community of people that are jumping into that water with us to give us the courage to keep jumping into it.

Carrie: I’ve been processing this verse in James that talks about how you confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you will be healed. I just find that so powerful because we’re told Jesus is our high priest. So he’s the one that has to absolve us, so to speak of our sin, who we go to for forgiveness. But yet we’re told to confess to other people for this level of healing. That I believe is emotional of just saying, “look, I’m struggling and I need your support and love and prayers.”

Pastor Randy: I’ve never been involved in AA, alcoholics anonymous. I have been involved with adult children of alcoholics ACA, and there’s a fundamental belief in those communities is that when I get vulnerable, when I speak out loud, what I have on the inside of me, there’s something that gets healed in me when I’m sharing that in a community that’s accepting me and go on me too. When I get vulnerable and also I believe it heals something in you, it’s a gift that we give to one another that knits us, not just together, but gives us strength and courage to live our hearts on the outside.

Carrie: Right. Do you believe that kind of going back to isolation? So for people who don’t have these communities, maybe where they feel like they can be safe and vulnerable and open up, whether that’s a church, small group or support group, or something of that nature. Do you feel like that isolation just kind of continues to feed the dysfunction you were talking about?

Pastor Randy: It’s strange that the things that we begin to accept in our lives and even the routines that we began to allow to exist in our lives. And I think that for a lot of people that experience things like we’ve talked about pain, but also like loneliness that they receive loneliness as a curse rather than the emotion of loneliness is actually a blessing and understanding what that blessing, that inviting emotion is actually inviting you to.

They use that loneliness as a means by which they stir in shame into their story and then stepped back from community because they don’t feel like they’re worthy of community and then when you pour resentment on top of that shame and that loneliness, it leads to a real isolated place. But if we understand that loneliness is a gift from the Lord it’s a part of our hearts that’s crying out for, longing and for community and whether I’m lonely for myself or I’m longing a friend or for Jesus. It’s inviting me to something and that’s why we need community because that takes a lot of courage and loneliness to call somebody and go, “I need you, could we go out to dinner or can we go grab coffee?” or “Would you consider meeting with me once every Wednesday morning and let us just encourage each other.” That takes a lot of courage because that person may say “no”.

I think it’s, sometimes it feels easier just to isolate and medicate which is a tragedy. It’s really why we do what we do with our pastors because in ministry, who do you call and say, “I need you” when you’re the pastor of a church, you’re the person everybody calls for, you’re the need meeter. You’re the one that helps everybody else out and the tragedy of that is, imagine a pastor who is very healthy in his need for his community.

I’m not talking about being over needy in the sense of inappropriate but really needing the strength of the community to be spiritually healthy.

Carrie: Don’t most pastors have connections to other pastors though? I’m just thinking about this from the therapeutic lens. If I have a really difficult day or really hard session, I could name for you three or four people that I could call and in a confidential manner and say, “this is what happened to me today” or “this was a really hard session I’m having a hard time dealing with it personally.”

Do you feel like most pastors have that? Or some do and some don’t.

Pastor Randy: My experience is that most pastors don’t have that. My experience is that most pastors would say that they have friends who are pastors, but that their relationship with them is not on the level that you just described, where I can call that guy if I have to four times a week and connect with them, or even once a week. I think I don’t have them in front of me, but you can google search stats on how pastors are doing and it’s not a pretty picture.

Carrie: Just in terms of a lot of people dropping out of ministry or moral failings.

Pastor Randy: Yeah and even surveys about, do men feel fulfilled in their calling? Would they continue to do with what they’re doing if they could get another job?

It’s just ministry doesn’t have to be this miserable place of isolation. It’s miserable in the sense that you’re suffering as you’re caring for sheep, which is a hard, hard job. But you can do it in such a way that if you’re self-aware enough to take care of yourself so that you’re healthy and taking care of other people.

Carrie: That’s really huge. Being able to make sure that your needs are getting met and as Christians, yes, that’s from the Lord, but it’s also from Christian community. I don’t think we can just say, “I go to Jesus and he fills me up.” That’s great but our faith is so communal that we need that interaction and we need the accountability and the people to call out our blind spots, the things that we’re not seeing.

Pastor Randy: Yeah, we were born into a family. I love worship music, but I always chuckle when I hear songs that “All I need is Jesus” and as a pastor, I’m like, “Okay, that’s good” but that’s not what Jesus says. Even God in the garden said to Adam, it’s not good that you’re alone. Adam had God, he’s walking in the garden with God and God said, yeah, you need community. So we’re gonna create community right here. So I need people in my life and it’s how I often see Jesus is the community that God puts around me or the community I help build around me. And that’s the thing I see a lot is that people say, “Man, where do I go and find that community?” You probably aren’t going to go out and find that community, but you can start by you building that community, by finding one other person that you practice vulnerability with and then see who God adds to your number because I don’t think that there’s a whole community of people somewhere out there that are just waiting for us to join them. I think the Lord invites us to go and build that.

Carrie: It’s hard because we live in such an individualistic society or we’re taught possibly from a young age to be very independent and to not have needs and to make sure that we take care of our own business or don’t talk about things outside of the family a lot of times. So it can be a challenge to start engaging in that process. But like you said, if it’s just one person, if you find one safe person that you can be vulnerable with and start to develop that community, I think it will be attractive to the people that need it.

Pastor Randy: How do you help your clients do that?

Carrie: It’s tough. It really is tough. I think it depends on what their background is, faith-wise. Some of my clients, they don’t feel like they can go to people in their church and say, “Hey, I’m struggling with anxiety” or, “Hey, I have OCD.” That would be absolutely terrifying to them because unfortunately, church does not feel like a safe place, or they may have received different messages in the past like the Bible says, be anxious for nothing and you need to go pray about it some more. So there’s all kinds of different Christian communities and their responses to mental health obviously.

It’s so therapeutic for me that we’re having this conversation because I know for me personally, even pastors that I’ve dealt with in the past, I don’t think I could have had this kind of conversation with them.

And it’s always been very passionate for me to figure out how I can support the church as a mental health worker. Sometimes it’s received, sometimes it’s kind of like, “yeah, we want you here in this space” and other times it’s not received very well. So that’s been just an interesting personal journey amongst working with pastors. [00:29:14]

But now I’m in a very supportive place where my pastor is very open about mental health issues, and we’re able to talk about those things and how can I support the church and what does that look like. I’m in a good space with that now. Not all churches are open to counseling or those types of things, or it’s very taboo like “what’s really going on there? Is that really Christian? Is that Godly?”

I interviewed a woman and asked her about her experience in terms of mental health in the church. She literally said that pastors have their heads in the sand, like an ostrich. I was shocked by that but I was glad that she was honest and she just said, “that’s been my experience”. And I said, “Why do you think that is? And she said, “Well, because they would have to look at themselves first.” She said because we all at some level have some anxiety or some depression, or like you talked about trauma childhood wounds that maybe haven’t been healed yet and if we don’t do that internal process, how are we going to be able to support someone else that’s on that journey?

Pastor Randy: Yeah. That’s why when I was growing up, I went to a very traditional Southern church I grew up believing that joy was the bully of all the other emotions. That if you’re in pain, “Hey, just rejoice.” This is the day the Lord has made rejoice and be glad. It said joy comes in and beats up everywhere, whether it’s sadness or grief. You’re not a “good Christian” if you’re not rejoicing all the time and just happy, happy, happy, happy.

We get stuck with these crazy messages that mess with our heads which keeps us from navigating our hearts and so my experience, and even here at Midtown, we really celebrate the gift of counseling.

We really believe it’s a gift that the Lord has given to our community to help our people really do an internal journey because a lot of us need master navigators like you to guide us through this jungle called our heart and help us to put language to some of the things that we’re experiencing that our family never taught us how to talk about.

The gap that I often see that makes me sad is the gap between what’s happening in a counseling office to that person’s community. Ideally, I would love just to see a community of people from the church that are journeying with that person as they go to counseling. Out of counseling, that community is supporting them and carrying them, and listening to them. So that counseling with community or helping that person really becomes a full-hearted person. He was really maturing deeply in their life, but often even with very healthy people, what happens in the counseling office stays in the counseling office and what happens in community is often the tip of the iceberg or real surface kind of stuff.

I think that the work has to really be done on our side of this fence that the church needs to realize that AA group that’s meeting in the basement is experiencing vulnerability we need to take that out of the basement and bring it up into the sanctuary, and it’s going to start with the pastor. The only way his community can go on that journey if he’s not gone on that journey is if they go around him and if they go around them, it’s going to hurt him, the church.

Carrie: Wow. That’s so good. I know that I’ve been in group counseling situations and walked away from it and said, “that’s what church is supposed to be like.” This sense of unconditional acceptance for where people are at.

I see you. I see your struggle. I accept you and “Hey, I’m struggling on this journey too” and a lot of times, unfortunately, that isn’t people’s experience in church, but I think that things are shifting and changing. The more that we have these conversations, I hope that this podcast and these types of conversation, I hope it like provokes the church in the best possible way to start looking at this integration of our spiritual life and our mental health and how we can grow together. That those things for many years were believed to be in opposition of each other. “Don’t seek out that secular counseling stuff, that’s not in the Bible” and now we’re realizing that everything that we know about the brain and childhood trauma and all of these things, nothing is against what’s in the Bible in terms of our knowledge of psychology.

When we look at studies about forgiveness, we’re like, “We already knew that as Christians. We already knew that that freed you up” like it’s right there. So it’s just a passion for me to really integrate those two pieces really well.

Pastor Randy: I think It’s really crazy how we as human beings and you probably know more about this than I do, but how we as human beings love to label everything black and white. We love to put things in the categories that we accept and the categories we don’t accept. So there are people that would look at counseling and go, “all counseling is bad and they would give anecdotal stories where Aunt Betsy went crazy after seeing a counselor or whatever. People can say that about the church too. That there are churches that are crazy. They’re just crazy, but that’s not the entire Christian community. So I say that finding a really healthy counselor that really has a good idea of how to guide and care for their people I think is really an essential part of our lives, especially when we’re going through seasons of our lives that we can’t navigate or to understand ourselves even better or joining a support group just to grow emotionally. I would say to people, I would really encourage you to find a group of people in your faith community that can go on that journey with you as well. That it’s a partnership.

I just hate the thought that people go to counseling and they have to leave their faith community when I think that the faith community can actually go with them and support them and care for them and actually grow with them. That’s really a dream of mine.

Carrie: Yeah. I think I have had situations where when people healed from the shame. They were able to go back into their Christian community and talk more openly about their struggles once they were able to work through some of the trauma or the shame pieces, they were able to go back and say, “Hey, these are the things that I struggle with.” And then that opens up other people to say, “Oh, I’ve had some of those struggles too”, or “yes, I’m struggling, what are you doing about that?”

I think just this sense of when people are in therapy if they have support, that therapy process is so much easier than if they don’t have support. If we’re really like straining and stressing to find the sense of who are you connected with [00:36:41] that’s positive and healthy. That just takes a lot longer. Sometimes it ends up being the therapist. The therapist ends up being the positive relationship in their life until they can develop a healthy, positive relationship outside of therapy, but it works so much better if they have even just some kind of support people that they feel like they can call or talk to, or be open with.

So I wanted to ask you if you have any specific encouragement, maybe for people who are struggling with anxiety or OCD,

Pastor Randy: I’m not an expert on either one of those, but I’ve experienced both of those in my life and in the lives of people I care about. I would say that if anything to take the shroud of shame off of those things and to really get aggressive at seeing yourself as someone you’re willing to invest in and not being content with just trying to manage either one of those, but in that state, jump into counseling and find somebody that can help you understand what’s going on inside of you. Help you get some tools to really build and live a healthier you.

I’d also encourage you to find a church that would speak the gospel to you, and really speak the truth of God’s grace in your life. Find a community of people in that church that are willing to go on that faith journey with you that you can be vulnerable with and bring out of counseling into the open.

What’s happening here you might discover that people don’t run and hide from you when you share those vulnerable moments in your own life. You may actually find other people that are going, “me too.” That’s the journey together. You begin to see that what’s happening to you is not as unusual as you might think it is. That normalcy of our own struggles, I think let’s just take a deep breath and remove all the stuff from it that shouldn’t be on it anyway, which is just shame and embarrassment and the kind of things that we don’t want other people to see.

Carrie: That’s so good. I feel like it’s somewhat of a summary of the things that we’ve already been talking about.

Pastor Randy: What I’ve experienced in all the years that we’ve done in Midtown is nobody here has a hard time understanding that their centers, that relates to that’s a message that preaches itself, but you know what? Everybody has a hard time believing is that I’m Holy, but what Jesus did for me is he made me his beloved. That in Ephesians 1, it says that he chose me before the creation of the world and he has lavished grace on me and he did it because that’s his pleasure. That the pleasure of God is to pour on me a new name and love and wisdom and understanding. Sin, I have no need to convince me of that, but my shame is so loud sometimes believing that I am beloved, that my father in heaven is for me and he’s not against me.

Those are the things that I find unbelievable and there are things that are in the way for me to find that unbelievable. Sometimes there are barriers and sometimes there’s trauma and sometimes it’s addiction and sometimes it’s relationships and marriage that are hurting me. I feel belittled by my spouse or my children don’t respect me, or maybe I don’t love my kids

and I feel ashamed about that. All the things that we dare not even whisper in the shadows. And I would say to people, men, you need to pull all those things out and put them in the light of day. And a counselor is a great way to start but a community is a great place to trust. And then maybe you can start to believe the unbelievable story of what Christ came to do for us and what he’s done for us.

Carrie: Yeah. So good. At the end of every podcast, I ask our guests on the show to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Pastor Randy: So you sent me this question, what was this like 5 days ago and I thought about it. I could give you such great platitudes right now, Carrie, and talk about hope in Africa or all that kind of stuff and I thought that would be so unfair after this conversation. So I’m going to give you the real story. Okay, so in my garage, like I’m a motorcycle guy. It’s been something I’ve done since I was 15 and I love motorcycles in my garage. I have a couple of motorcycles and one is a project bike that’s been sitting in my garage, unmoved for almost a year and a half.

Sunday afternoon, one of my old friends called me and he said, “Hey, what are you doing this afternoon? Let’s get in your garage and play with that motorcycle.” I said, “okay, come on over.” And he’s one of those guys that we never get together and just talk small, talk like football, sports. He’s very open. He’s very vulnerable. He runs a prison ministry, he’s a musician and he plays to guys on death row. He’s just a very interesting guy. We played with that motorcycle for three hours and after it was done, that motorcycle started and I drove that thing up and down my street to the irritation of my neighbors because it has no muffler on it.

When he left, I realized there are things in our lives that sit dormant and we just avoid them. And I’m with that motorcycle for a year and a half, it’s in my garage and it wasn’t started, and sometimes it just takes a friend that calls and says, “Hey, I’m coming over and we’re going to open your garage.”

I just want to talk about that thing you have in your garage that should be running and it’s not, and it didn’t take a Herculean effort to get it started. It just took a Herculean friend who was willing to come over and when he left it just birthed hope in me that that’s what community is, is someone who’s willing to pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I’m coming over.”

And I would speak to the people in your audience who says, I don’t have a friend like that. And I would say, go be a friend like that. Go and be that friend and you’ll be surprised at how quick those kinds of people will gather around you and then come over to your garage.

Carrie: That’s really good and it only took three hours.

Pastor Randy: I know now they’re all my friends and they crack up that I still like riding motorcycles. Their kids love my motorcycles though. They’re very excited about that.

Carrie: They wave to you as you’re going down the street.

Pastor Randy: They want to get on the motorcycle with me.

Carrie: Very cool. Thank you so much for sharing this wisdom about vulnerability and community and connection with God and others. It’s been really great conversation and I think it’s really going to benefit people.

Pastor Randy: It’s a real joy to be with you, Carrie. Thank you so much.

I really think there are some great takeaways from this interview of just being there for other people, being the kinds of friends, and loving people that we want other people to be towards us. There’s a saying that if you’re able to be a friend, you’re able to make a friend.

I encourage you to find ways to make deeper connections. If you haven’t stopped by yet, I hope that you will visit our website, which is hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

Let me know what you would like to see on the website. I’m trying to compile some resources on there for you that I hope will be helpful.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

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

Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast – One Therapist's Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

8. One Therapist’s Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

Written by Carrie Bock on January 7, 2021. Posted in Counseling, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 8. One Therapist’s Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

What is Scrupulosity OCD?
How Rachel discovered she had been struggling with it
How to determine if this is a normal level of spiritual concern or could be OCD
Exposure and Response Prevention
Learning how to sit with discomfort and ambiguity
Getting to know the character of God and filtering information through that lens

Verses discussed: Phil 4:6, 2 Cor 10:5

Resources and links:
Rachel Hammons
More information on ERP and OCD

By The Well Counseling

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 8

Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 8

Hello, if you are new to the show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others.

Today on the show. I am interviewing Rachel Hammons. I did not know Rachel until I started doing some research for this podcast.

I wanted to talk with people who were struggling with anxiety or OCD and were Christian and also listen to podcasts. So I did probably almost 10 interviews with people and Rachel happened to be one of those people. I was able to glean so much valuable information that helped me in knowing what to put in the show. I ended up following up with Rachel a while later and just saying, “Hey, would you be willing to share your story on the podcast?” She graciously said yes.

Rachel Hammons is a counselor in the Nashville Metro area. She specializes in working with people who are struggling with OCD. She also struggles with OCD herself. [00:01:36] She is going to talk with us a little bit more about scrupulosity OCD, how it’s affected her life and how she came to find out that she had it, which is a very interesting story.

Without further ado, here is my interview with Rachel Hammons.

Carrie: So Rachel, tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you’re doing.

Rachel: I’m in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m licensed in the state of Tennessee. I’ve been working with a lot of individuals with OCD over the past year or so. As I’ve started to do more private practice work, I started off thinking I was going to go more like the trauma route. As I started to learn more about what OCD was I also started to actually see that in myself. I really found a passion for it. So doing my practice work with OCD.

Carrie: So you really didn’t recognize OCD traits within yourself until you were in school, studying OCD?

Rachel: Well, yes and no. I know we’re going to get a little bit into some of my story but I definitely recognized that there were what I would have called more type-A tendencies.

Even though I never really wanted to be a type-A person I always saw myself kind of “I want to go with the flow. Everything’s fine but then I had these really strong needs for structure, black and white thinking things that I would misunderstand, and a really big obsession with making sure that I was doing the absolute best and the absolute right thing.

I just always attributed that to, “I was very type A” or in the more nonchalant way like, “Oh, I’m so OCD.” Even though that phrase is not super helpful, but then after I do more of my professional life and after I graduated even in grad school, we covered OCD but it was more just their obsessions and compulsions, and usually related to like cleaning or going back and checking to make sure you didn’t hit someone with your car.

As I started to do more research and finding my niche with counseling, I’m learning more about what OCD was, especially the subtypes of OCD. This whole subtype called scrupulosity that had to do with moral and religious OCD. As I started to learn more about the symptoms and signs of that, I was like, “Oh my gosh. That’s me.”

Carrie: A lot of people don’t know that that exists. I’m glad that we’re talking about it today. A lot of times people do associate OCD with people that have an organized closet or that clean a bunch or are obsessed with germs. There are these different subtypes. We’re talking about scrupulosity, OCD. How would you kind of define that a little bit?

Rachel: First of all when it comes to OCD, there are several different subtypes that you can experience. There tends to be overlap between lots of them and any one person. I mean, typically you had kind of one or two that’s like those are your struggles, but it can vary over your lifespan. Each of them has kind of unique facets.

OCD in general is going to be comprised of obsessions and then usually followed by compulsion. So if you take that same model and you apply it to what we call scrupulosity, it’s going to be obsessions and then usually followed by compulsions all-around religious and moral issues.

What I think is interesting is you don’t have to be of a religious faith to have scrupulosity. Personally, I am and I would identify myself as a Christian, but there are lots of people who will still experience the obsessions. Again, usually followed by compulsion, but not always around these moral issues.

So in a nutshell, that’s what it is. There are a lot of specific symptoms and things that I’m sure we’re going to get into.

Carrie: How has this affected you personally?

Rachel: I’m actually really excited to share just a little bit about my story because as a counselor I don’t use a lot of self-disclosure, so I’m not sharing my story with all my clients. It’s a piece that I’ve learned about me within the past couple of years, a lot of people don’t know the whole story. So I kind of looked back in preparation for this, just at several different things that I noticed, like from my past, as well as some of the things that I’m still struggling with.

I’ll kind of start with looking back. As I said, there was a lot of black and white thinking. There was a lot of doubt and OCD is sometimes termed like the doubting disease. So I was definitely doubting like, “Is this right? Is this the best thing? Is this true?” I definitely liked some aspects about that, about myself because I like being able to really seek truth, but then OCD twists that, especially with scrupulosity and having it be so much of a mental obsession. It twists what is good and what is truth and what’s most important to you and turns that into this obsession. I know we’re going to get into a little bit later, what does support look like from other people.

Specifically, right now with the church and the environment I grew up in when you see a very studious, responsible kid that’s reading their scripture, that’s asking questions a lot of times, the initial thought is, “Oh wow. This kid is really on fire for God.”

There was a huge mental health component to that where I was like wrecked with anxiety over making sure I got the right answer. Some of the things that I look back on and some of them I kind of laugh about. The first one I’ll just tell you is I think the most obvious obsession and compulsion that I ever experienced. When we were younger, my mom had specific TV shows that we were allowed to watch and that we weren’t allowed to watch. There was never any really comparison like this one’s really bad or this one’s really good. It was just like, “these are the ones you can’t watch.” So one of those that I wasn’t allowed to watch was SpongeBob, but for some reason, in my head, SpongeBob became like the epitome of evil. My mind was just like SpongeBob is bad.

So initially you can start to see that black and white thinking, but where that would come up for me is at the time a lot of people had those SpongeBob flush toys in their car or the dice that you would hang from your rearview mirror. I remember specifically walking past cars as we’d get out to go to the grocery store and seeing those [00:08:43] and I had to say “I hate you” a certain number of times to SpongeBob to get rid of the evil. I thought it wasn’t necessarily super distressing unless there was a lot of SpongeBob or like SpongeBob was on at the doctor’s office. I felt so guilty and this evil was next to me. I had to keep saying, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Sometimes out loud, sometimes in my head.

Carrie: Sometimes I think people don’t realize that the compulsions can be internal. Their child may be struggling with something and they say, “I don’t think they’re really struggling with that” but they don’t realize what’s going on necessarily in that child’s head at those times.

Rachel: That’s I think is one of the reasons that OCD in general, but particularly scrupulosity tends to go really under noticed or underdiagnosed because what you see is this kid that’s working really hard to follow God or to follow even their schoolwork or obey their parents, but what you don’t see is the internal distress that kid is going through. Especially in my case, if you don’t know that that internal distress isn’t necessarily normal or doesn’t have to be that way, you just assume that that’s like what you’re supposed to be doing or that you’re more on fire for God than other people are. Not like in a judgment way, like I’m holier than now, but just in a way of like I’m really, really trying hard to know who God is and what he expects of me.

Carrie: It was just the water you swam in basically. You didn’t necessarily know anything different.

Rachel: Right. One of the ones that developed as I got a little bit older and one that I think is still fairly difficult for me is, I don’t know if you remember the verse it’s like the classic worry verse where it says, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication, present your request to the Lord.” [00:10:48] I think this is an example of where OCD twists what is really good, and makes it very confusing. As I read that, I always read it as a command like my biggest fear just as a heads up was sinning. So my obsessions revolved around making sure that I didn’t cross whatever this random black and white line was, and making sure that I didn’t sin.

Other people with their scrupulosity can have things like “this is going to send me to hell, that’s my biggest fear,” “I have blasphemy.” Mine was specifically “did I sin or not?”

When I would read that verse, it was comforting in the sense that I knew God didn’t want me to worry, but I read it as don’t worry and this is the command. If you’re worrying, you’re sinning. The thing that I always struggled with was I couldn’t control my worry. I knew especially as I got older I can’t control my emotions. I can control what I do with my emotions, but my thoughts and my emotions are going to come into my head and yet still in the church, they talk about like, “if you’re worrying, give that over to God and then your worries go away.”

Carrie: “Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ”, which I imagine is super challenging.

Rachel: Right. So I was trying to find and I am still trying to find this balance of God comforting me by saying, “Hey, you don’t have to worry because I’m here or is God saying “don’t worry.” I think that’s one of the ones where OCD is still like, “I don’t know. It might be a command.” And so if it’s a command, you better make sure you’re not worrying at the same time. I’m also like, “That doesn’t make any sense because I can’t control my worry. I’m doing my best.” So there’s still this struggle or I guess this fight of “am I sinning or not.”

Even though you know in your head what you feel is probably accurate, OCD still brings in that doubt and that tiny bit of doubt or that tiny bit of uncertainty is where the individual OCD tends to struggle the most because OCD says, “it’s better to be safe than to take that risk” and that risk is really big. So in my head, I’m like if I take that risk of don’t worry being kind or gentle or like you are okay instead of a command, then what if I start to just let myself worry and then I’m sinning. So it’s better just to not worry, which doesn’t exactly work.

Carrie: Right. I think another thing that’s important to point out is the compulsions provide some temporary relief, which makes it super hard not to engage in them. So it’s like, there’s this temporary relief but then the kind of feeding that cycle just ends up increasing the whole picture and making it worse. It’s hard because you want that momentary peace, I guess.

Rachel: Exactly. Which is what you see. I think the contamination aspect of OCD is where you see it most clearly. If I’m afraid that I’m contaminated by germs then my compulsion is to wash my hands. Washing my hands initially makes me feel like I’m clean from the germs, but then the OCD brings in doubt. That probably contaminated me so I have to wash my hands then and that probably contaminated me. So I have to wash my hands then. You see this cycle start to develop and actually changes in your brain start to develop where your fire alarm sense of anxiety is heightened.

If you look at the physiology of what’s going on in the brain in individuals with OCD and anxiety, that amygdala, that emotion center of the brain is actually hyperactive and it’s more active, more sensitive to things going wrong in our environment.

The way that I like to describe it is like it’s a broken fire alarm. [00:15:05] If my fire alarm is really great if there’s an actual fire, but if I’m cooking some steak and some steam gets up to the fire alarm and it goes off, that’s really annoying. So OCD is basically turning that fire alarm into something that is much more sensitive than it needs to be. Then as you follow that pathway of these obsessions and compulsions that pathway gets stronger and stronger and that fire alarm continues to be heightened and heightened.

If you apply that to scrupulosity individuals with OCD, their brains are going to get more and more sensitive to this potential, like times that I might be sinning or fears that I did something that angered God. If you aren’t able to resist those compulsion’s or practice ERP in a way that is helpful, not overwhelming, but helpful, those portions and that connection between the two is just going to get stronger and stronger.

ERP basically just says we’re going to restructure that so that the pathway isn’t as strong, but that ultimately means you’re not doing the compulsion, which is what calms you in the first place.

Carrie: Right. ERP stands for exposure and response prevention. So how does that work?

Rachel: ERP in general, like you said is exposure and response prevention. Basically, there’s two aspects to it. There’s the exposure piece. The part of exposing myself systematically in a way that’s not overwhelming to my system, but systematically exposing myself to what I’m afraid of in my case, potentially sinning.

The response-prevention is basically asking you to stop doing the compulsion. So you expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of. You also take away the safety net of the compulsions and you do those simultaneously again in a systematic way so that eventually you learn one anxiety isn’t dangerous.

Anxiety is going to go up and it’s eventually going to come back down or at least I’m going to be able to tolerate the distress of the anxiety and that whatever my OCD said was actually so fearful is probably not as fearful as OCD made it up to be in my head. That being said, I think there’s one really important piece when it comes to scrupulosity, for example, contamination OCD. If I’m really afraid of mud getting on me and I think mud is contaminated in any environment, touching mud is going to be something that brings up anxiety.

When you talk about scrupulosity, you’re not only dealing with these obsessions and compulsions, but you’re dealing with something that’s so central to what this person believes is right and wrong. You’re dealing with this core value. If I asked somebody to do something that’s against their core value, which is not what ERP promotes, but if you misunderstand it and I asked them to do what I might think is a sin, I’m essentially creating this moral injury. That’s not treating the OCD, but instead eliciting this potential sense of shame and going down this I just have to do what’s wrong.

ERP instead promotes sitting with that uncertainty piece. So the obsessions where I’m really concerned, “is this a sin?” “Is it not?” “I’m not sure where’s the line”. We’re kind of coming up to that line and playing around with it a little bit, to sit with that uncertainty to recognize there’s probably not a line at all, but again, in a way that’s not violating this person’s sense of right and wrong. I feel like that was a little confusing.

Carrie: It is. For example, if you’re having a fear and uncertainty about sinning, does that look like going a couple miles over the speed limit? Does it look like sitting with the sense of, “what is this right or wrong” or just sitting with that anxiety for a little bit and not trying to avoid it?

Rachel: Yes and no. Everyone experiences their scrupulosity or their OCD a little bit differently. For some people, if they also have the core fear of not sinning, that OCD tends to fixate on certain aspects of not sinning. So there may be certain aspects in your life that you’re totally okay with uncertainty, but then OCD is going to take certain ones and be like, “this is the one you’re going to focus on.”

I think where you can start to differentiate, is this OCD, or is this a legit thing I need to kind of explore.

Stepping back just a little bit, one thing I like to talk about with my clients is this difference between information seeking and reassurance seeking, meaning when I’m looking at if I sin or not, am I going through that scenario in a way that’s not anxiety-provoking like I’m just thinking, “Okay, is this a sin? I’m not sure. I think I need to do some more research. I think I want to reread that passage in the Bible. I think I just want to understand” and that’s not an anxiety-driven cycle. That’s just like, “I want to understand and I want to grow closer to God in the way that I’m acting” and that’s good.

When it becomes reassurance-seeking, it’s usually this anxiety-fueled like, “I’ve got to see if I did it wrong. I’m not sure I might’ve. Let me read the passage. Let me read the passage again. Let me double-check.” Holding those two is one way you can assess if it’s OCD or just an issue that needs to do a little bit more research on, [00:21:07] or is it a little bit of both.

Carrie: So often they have a tendency to seek reassurance from the people that are closest to them. That could look like a parent or a spouse or with some of these types of things that may be even a pastor or a church leader. I think that’s why I’m so excited that we’re doing this to open up that conversation.

[00:21:27] There maybe somebody listening to this who’s been providing a lot of reassurance and not realizing that that person may have OCD.

Rachel: Right. So like you said if that looks like you going to a pastor to check like, “Hey, is this a sin? Did I mess up?” or going to your parents, “Hey, was this wrong? Is this okay?” Those are good questions, but OCD is going to bring in not only are you asking that question the one time, but it’s going to bring up this doubt and this doubt it tends to also be followed along with, for me personally, like “where is that exact line between this is right and this is wrong? By asking that question over and over again, maybe I’ll get a certain total response. Maybe I’ll get a certain phrase and response and that lets me know everything is okay. Whereas when I’m information seeking, I’m not looking for a specific response, I’m just wanting to learn more.

Carrie: I think it’s good to normalize. There is a normal level of doubt within group identity. “Am I saved?” I hope we all ask that of ourselves once or twice in our lives. Is there evidence in my life? Is this situation right or wrong? Are they moral things? Does God love me or not? Those types of things are normal doubts, but then what you’re talking about is something that’s repetitive and it’s very anxiety-provoking and ongoing.

Rachel: Right. In some ways I wish that there was like a list of this is what scrupulosity is and this is exactly how you treat it. Like you were saying earlier some people are obsessing over like, “Did I go a couple of miles over the speed limit?” Scrupulosity shows up and OCD shows up very differently for different people. The way that you treat it while ERP tends to be fairly foundational for every person, that’s going to look a little bit different. For me, when I challenged myself with recognizing the signs that come up, it’s usually like am I analyzing for doubt? Is there a lot of doubt going on? How long have I been thinking about whether or not I’m sinning? Because usually If you sin, you’re able to look back and probably within five minutes, you’re able to assess like, “Yeah, that wasn’t good” or “that wasn’t right.”

I find going back and forth and back and forth. I’m starting to obsess. [00:24:06] I’m like, “Am I thinking about this really, really black and white? Am I looking for the line between what was right and what was wrong” How anxious am I? Am I anxious to find the answer right now?”

One thing I talk about with my clients a lot is when our anxiety goes up, our judgment or our ability to make rational decisions naturally comes back down. So if I’m feeling really, really anxious, it’s going to be really hard to think about rationally and systematically what I need to do about that anxiety. So if I’m really, really anxious about finding the answer to whether or not I sin it’s going to be really hard to even systematically look at. So instead, I need to maybe take a break and let that anxiety naturally come down. If I’m still worried about it after the fact, maybe I can come back and revisit it, but if it kind of went away, that was probably an indication that it was OCD.

Carrie: I think that’s a good first step obviously with making any behavior change. We have to recognize what we’re dealing with. [00:25:14]

I’m sure you’ve seen this in your practice and I’ve seen it in my practice as well. It’s very common for people to believe that they have generalized anxiety disorder or they may have been to other counselors who have diagnosed them with an anxiety disorder. As we start to dig and ask more questions like, “Hey, do you seek out reassurance from other people in your life?” Or “Do you tend to get stuck on these certain things?” Some of the people recognize, like, “Oh wait, this is not anxiety. This is OCD.” At some level that can be overwhelming, but at some level, it can be freeing.

Rachel: When I read through some of the signs and symptoms of what scrupulosity, what OCD was, there was so much relief in that. Just knowing that you’re not crazy. You’re not totally out there. You’re not dealing with something in isolation. It’s normal in the sense that it’s OCD normal and there’s treatment for it. I don’t have to consistently live with this overwhelming anxiety over whether I’m doing the absolute best thing or the absolute right thing. [00:26:37] That’s going to involve some anxiety in the process.

Going back to what you said, I think what’s really tricky sometimes in the counseling world is assessing, is this anxiety or is it OCD? And while the two have a lot of similarities, obviously each case is different, but with anxiety, you can provide coping skills. Something that’s going to help bring my anxiety back down. “I’m really anxious.” “I’m going to practice deep breathing.” “I’m going to practice grounding skills.” If I do that with OCD, I’m actually not exposing myself to the fear. That’s probably not realistic.

I’m never actually sitting with the uncertainty because I’m just trying to reduce the anxiety cost from the uncertainty. So you kind of get caught again in a loop of, you can almost ride the line between either you’re doing your compulsion to bring the anxiety down, or you’re doing your new coping skill to bring the anxiety down. Then you never actually face and fight and deal with the anxiety that isn’t even necessarily over something realistic. Meaning my anxiety over is this right? Is this wrong? Where’s the line? Am I sitting right now? If I don’t sit with that uncertainty of, I don’t know, I’m not sure I might’ve sinned. Instead, if I try to beat that with coping skills and try to calm that anxiety down, that anxiety is just going to get stirred up the next day, because that’s what OCD does. It brings in that doubt. It brings in that “what if.”

While there are a lot of similarities and while coping skills are even helpful with OCD at times, to know that difference is really important and really crucial because your treatment is going to be a little bit different.

Carrie: Absolutely. With the ERP, there’s an exposure hierarchy, and you’re not going to expose somebody to their worst fear in the beginning. You’re kind of building up to some of those things because I think some people may be listening to this and going like, “Oh gosh, that feels too big to sit with that anxiety.”

Obviously, if there are counselors who are trained in this, who know how to walk you step-by-step through that process to get there. It’s also working sometimes in tandem with other people or providing guidance to the clients of how their parents, spouses, or whoever might be able to respond to them in a helpful way.

[00:29:13] Sometimes that means holding off on the reassurance seeking that’s part of the response prevention.

Rachel: Right. I think that a lot of times we think If I just calm this person down if I reassure them if I tell them everything’s okay. Naturally, that’s what we want to do, to comfort somebody, but in reality, there’s a level of uncomfortableness that is so crucial to sitting with to be able to recognize that my OCD was way over exaggerating this fear. There are times where my fear is really legitimate and I’m still obsessing over it in a way that’s taking over my life. So again, sitting with a certain level of uncomfortableness is huge in learning how to treat and sit with OCD.

I guess I’ll use a contamination example cause I think it’s a little simpler. If my biggest fear is sitting in the room with the dog, like maybe I had a bad experience, I’m not going to ask my client to go sit in the room with the dog and play with it for an hour. Instead, I might have them sit, look at a picture of a dog and practice that over and over again. I might have them listen to a dog barking and practice that over and over again because exposures don’t have to be this huge and overwhelming. Not to say that the anxiety itself is dangerous because even if you do get overwhelmed by an exposure, that’s okay.

The anxiety isn’t dangerous. It’s just flooding your system like that. It’s probably not going to be super helpful. So finding systematic ways to work up to getting the life that you want to get is really what you’re going for. If you have a scale of zero to seven, seven is like the fullest anxiety I can have. Zero is fine. You want to find with exposure that starts around a level three or four. So something hard but manageable.

If I was to give you one more example, like in my own life, one of the things that I dealt with a lot as a kid, and it kind of died down for a while and it’s recently come back over the past probably year. I have this phrase or this compulsive phrase that I have to say and it’s, “God, please help me to do the right thing” and that falls in line with a lot of my “I don’t want to sin, I need to do the best right thing, the absolute right thing.”

So whenever I feel a little bit anxious even if I think I might’ve sinned or even if I just am feeling anxious because I have to get up early the next morning, I’ll say, “God, please help me to do the right thing.”

For some reason, that phrase helps bring that anxiety down, even though it becomes really compulsive. The phrase itself starts to make me anxious because I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I keep saying it over and over again” and I don’t need to.

If I was to look at my own hierarchy, I know that if I was not to say that phrase it would make me anxious, but it wouldn’t make me overwhelmed. It would work because it comes up honestly, a lot but eventually I know that anxiety will ultimately kind of dissipate, but right now my brain is still kind of stuck in that loop of “this is just naturally, this is automatic.” So if that gives you just any example of where you might start on your hierarchy, that’s probably where I’d start on the line.

Carrie: Great. Good to know. So how can support systems, spouses, churches help someone who’s struggling with OCD?

Rachel: First of all, I think I’d recommend counseling, but secondly, being able to recognize that the kid who is really perfectionistic on the surface, really diligent, really seeking hard to make sure they understand the right thing. Just checking in like, “Hey, what’s it like for you as you’re trying to understand more about scripture?” Even just asking like, “Is there ever an anxiety that you experienced?” So knowing that the kids who are much more like perfectionistic have a hard time with, I guess, hard time accepting uncertainty, noticing gray areas. All of those could potentially be signs. They may not be an issue for that kid and that’s fine too. Then you start to dig a little bit deeper under the surface and you recognize, “Oh, that kid is actually really struggling with anxiety.” It might just be good to kind of like, “Hey, have you ever thought about what it would be like if you didn’t have anxiety?” “Is that a possibility like a world that you want to live in?”

I think the easiest people to inform or that I think would be really great to know a little bit more about OCD would be the people in the church, the leaders in the church because if they can recognize what is going on I think we’re going to be able to identify scrupulosity a lot easier.

I think that you see a lot of it again. I said earlier, underdiagnosed going on in the church and then parents too, especially if your kids are seeking reassurance all the time, that can be a really big indication. Even in schools, like noticing, “Hey, this kid is really struggling when they make a mistake on their test.”

So any place that those people are in all the time if you can recognize those signs and then just kind of give a quick check-in and then knowing the resources, knowing somebody who is in the counseling world who does treat OCD, who does know ERP is going to be like your best bet.

Carrie: Right. So really just supporting that person and that, “Hey, it’s okay to get counseling.” Sometimes we need help that’s professional to help us work through some of these things.

Rachel: Right. There are also several books that you can look into that’s more of like a self-help book, it’s by Dawn Huebner. It’s something like when your brain gets stuck. That’s more of a kid’s guide to working through OCD and so if the signs are really minimal or even if your kid is on the younger side, and you’re just starting to see some of these signs, like exploring what that looks like, it could be a really great resource. At least a good first step to see if that’s all the support that they need.

Carrie: At the end of every podcast, I usually ask guests to share a story of hope, which is the time that they received hope from God or another person.

Rachel: I think that there’s a lot of little moments of hope for me. Looking back on my story like I mentioned earlier, the biggest piece of hope for me was learning the fact that I had OCD. That was eye-opening and huge. I also know that one of the biggest pieces of hope too that I had is 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 not necessarily this specific event, this specific sin, this specific fear, but who is God?

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’s going to look vastly different than the way that my thoughts tend to speak to me. So when I reflect on who God is, or at least even if that’s a question cause sometimes I’m like, “I don’t know who God is” like, I don’t know how He responds.

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. So at least I know that I have that support. I have that hope that God just any parents are loving their kids, God wants the best for His kids. God wants the best for me. So at least in that, I know that I have someone on my side that’s walking through OCD or walking through my struggles with me. I think that’s kind of what I tend to reflect on especially when I’m really stuck in the obsessions and I really 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: Right. I think that may be hard for some people to sit with and wrestle with because there’s a sense of, “I do love God. I am trying to serve him with my life and be a good Christian all of those things and yet I’m wrestling with this on a day-to-day basis.”

I’m just kind of curious what you would say to someone with that thought process.

Rachel: One of the biggest struggles for me is making sure that I was doing the right thing. Even in that compulsive phrase that I talked about, like, “God help me to do the right thing.” I’m consistently trying to understand this situation, this particular anxiety. What I tell a lot of clients, honestly, at the beginning of some of our sessions is OCD is really confusing, scrupulosity is really confusing, especially scrupulosity because it’s so foundational to our thoughts and I want to do the right thing so badly.

[00:39:12] So it can get really easy to think about and to get lost in all of the things that I don’t yet have, or that I don’t yet know, or I don’t yet know how to fight. So one, I like to paint a picture of how ERP works, counseling works.

There’s hope. There’s a lot of hope with OCD at the same time remembering the things that you do know. Like I mentioned a little bit earlier, reflecting on, even if it’s not like God’s character still what are some of the things that are your strongholds? What are you anchored in? Maybe I can anchor into the fact that I know I’m saved. Maybe I can anchor into the fact again that I know God is. At least I can take that of the very phrase from the Bible and know exactly what this says, God is love. I can ground myself in that. I can ground myself in even knowing the people around me that I have as my support systems. I can ground myself in knowing that at least I have the letter from God, the scripture in my head.

So going back to at least what you know while you don’t know everything, you know, some things, and it’s gotten you this far. So can we start there and know that there’s hope to build on from there.

Carrie: I think that’s relevant to so many people, not just people who are experiencing OCD, but anxiety, or even just a traumatic experience or a hard season in your life. I know that there have been times where I’ve gone through difficult things and exactly what you said, “Okay. What do I know?” I don’t understand this situation in my life at all. I don’t know why God allowed it here, but I do believe that God loves me. I do believe he has a plan somehow in the midst of all this mess like that, He’s gonna take this and make something good out of it and that really helped me get through that until that was resolved.

Rachel: Yeah. There’s one moment, I guess, that I like to reflect on and this, I guess has a little bit less to do with OCD, but more of just one of the most profound moments that I felt like I had with the Lord. I remember it was when I was in high school, maybe early college. I was preparing for leading a Bible study that night and The Lord had really laid this passage on my heart. I don’t remember what the passage was, but I remember just wanting to know really badly what it meant. I was really confused because there’s a lot of different religions that interpret that passage differently and so I was like, “I’m going to learn what this passage means that I’m going to figure it out and we’re going to talk about it in Bible study.”

So I was like spending probably a couple of hours reading this passage, reading research on the passage, trying to understand. Even then, I guess you can see some of the OCD of like, I have to miss out and I have to figure out the right and wrong answer between it. And I got so, so frustrated because I couldn’t figure out the answer and I wanted to have it for the Bible study. I went outside and I was about to start doing even more research to understand it. I just kind of felt like the Lord say, “Hey, wait, wait, wait, can we pause here?” I remember looking up at the trees cause I was on a back deck that was a screened-in porch and I just felt like the Lord was saying, “Hey, Rachel, look at the trees around you” and I was like, “Okay, so I’m looking and I’m seeing them blow in the wind” and the Lord was like, “Do you see them blowing in the wind back and forth like that?” I was like, “yes.” I was kind of blown away that I was having this conversation with God. The Lord was like, “Do you know, like how I did that? I was like, “No, I don’t know how you made the trees move” and he’s like, “Do you know all of the intricacies of exactly what type of wind and what exactly, what type of molecules and atoms and particles that went into me being able to move those trees back and forth?” And I was like, “no” and he was like, “but you know that I was the one behind it” and I was like, “Oh, yeah.”

So for some reason, hearing that the Lord even though I didn’t understand how the trees were moving, I knew that the Lord was behind it. I know that God is good. I know that He knows the answer, even though I don’t. I kind of took that and I felt like the Lord brought me back to that passage that I didn’t understand.

God was like, “Today may not be the day that you’re going to understand that, but you know that I know the answer and you know that you’re trying to know the answer and that’s okay. Because you know that I know the answer and you are following me. You can just keep following me and eventually, we’re going to get somewhere then we may never know the answer to this specific one, but you at least know that I know, and if you can trust me, you can follow me to the end.”

So that’s I guess kind of my message of hope too for OCD, in general, is if you’re religious or not, like, who are you following? Where are you walking? Where do you want to be in your future?

If you’re religious and you know that God is good and that you’re following Him, at least, you know, that you’re following somebody who knows what they’re doing. That helped me a lot.

Carrie: Awesome. Thank you so much for being brave and bold and sharing your story and what you’ve been through. I hope that really helps and encourages someone else today.

Rachel: Thank you for the opportunity. Just to be able to share some of my story is really exciting for me.

_____________________________________________________________.

I am so thankful for Rachel being willing to be so vulnerable with us and talk about her symptoms and how OCD has affected her. This is actually the second person on the show that has talked about exposure and response prevention. I’m a little bit frustrated with myself only because I’ve been wanting to talk about EMDR and how it can be helpful for OCD.

I know that I’m going to have some episodes in the future on EMDR and how EMDR can be helpful for OCD. Even though it is not a therapeutic approach that most people think of when they think of OCD treatment, I plan on doing a solo episode in the future regarding why I have chosen to utilize EMDR prior to using any type of exposure-response prevention methods with clients.

If you find that interesting, stay tuned in for later. I just want to throw that out there that exposure and response prevention is oftentimes the recommended therapy for OCD, but it’s not the only thing that works. So I’ll dive more into that in a future podcast. Just wanted to throw that out there.

[00:46:19] Until next time let’s continue this conversation on Facebook or Instagram, or you can always reach me at hopeforanxietyandocd.com

Hope for Anxiety and. OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

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

10. Carrie’s Story of Anxiety in Dating with Now Husband Steve

Written by Carrie Bock on January 6, 2021. Posted in Anxiety, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 10. Carrie’s Story of Anxiety in Dating with Now Husband Steve

Steve and I recorded this show about a month before our wedding. We talk about my anxiety during the dating process and his involvement in helping me work through it.

Episode Highlights:

Anxiety about putting myself out there to date and how that brought me back to therapy
Challenges of Christian dating after a divorce
Accepting the anxiety and difficulty trusting as part of the process of getting closer
Advice to singles in the church

Summary:

In this episode, I’m excited to share my story with my husband, Steve Bock, as we discuss my struggles with anxiety during our dating journey. We both faced challenges getting back into the dating world after previous marriages, with experiences of anxious feelings, especially around first dates and sharing our pasts.

We talk about overcoming fears, dealing with the stigma of dating after divorce in the Christian community, and our early dates, which included some funny mishaps like getting lost on a trail. Our journey has been about supporting each other through anxious moments and finding joy in the unexpected, which we hope can encourage others facing similar struggles.

We hope that our story resonates with others who may be facing similar challenges in their dating lives, reinforcing the idea that love can flourish even in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty. Join us as we explore this journey of faith, love, and growth together!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD.

I am very excited to share this episode with you. Episode 10, because I have my now amazing husband, Steve Bock on the show, and we are going to be talking about how anxious I was during our dating process.

I hope that this story encourages other people maybe who are scared to get out into the dating world, or if you have a partner or a husband, wife who is struggling with anxiety, this episode may help you a little as well as far as how to support them. So without further ado, we’ll dive into the show. So Steve, welcome to the podcast.

Steve: I’m excited to be here.

Carrie: Steve is normally a kind of behind-the-scenes guy and has done a little bit of public speaking, but tends to serve in the background. So I’m very excited that he is stepping out of his comfort zone a little bit and has agreed to be on the podcast.

Steve: Yeah, it’s good to be here. Nervous though.

Carrie: That’s okay cause we’re talking about anxiety, so it’s all good. Your anxiety is welcome.

We are about a month away from getting married.

Steve: Yey! It is good.

Anxious About Dating

Carrie: We’re going to talk a little bit about our story and how we came to be a couple. My story actually started a little bit in the beginning of 2019 where I realized that I wanted to get back into dating, but every time I had tried in the past I would get these awful stomach aches.

I was very anxious about putting myself out there in any way, shape, or form. I had done online dating. I had done meetup groups where I had dated here and there with guys and I realized that I wanted to be married and that if I was going to do that, I was going to have to figure out how to work through this high level of anxiety that I had after my divorce about dating again. And so I ended up going to therapy over it and I told my therapist, I want to date but every time I go to do it, it’s just this awful anxiety comes over me. I can’t sleep. I have stomach aches and I just can’t do it. I can’t follow through.

It was really funny because I saw this man online. One of the reasons I went to go see a man was because I wanted a more of a male perspective on dating. I actually was cleaning out my file cabinet and I filled in the paperwork sometime in the fall of 2019 where I had sent this paperwork to him saying, “You know, I want a date, but I just can’t.”

And here’s why when I read that it was so therapeutic for me because I realized like, “Wow. I don’t feel this way anymore.” I was so excited to go to therapy and tell my therapist about finding that paperwork and saying, “Hey, I think I’m actually ready to date.” I think it’s time for me to put myself out there and I made the decision that I was going to try dating apps again. I got on a dating app and I had went on a few dates with a couple of different guys, but I just was a little bored and didn’t feel like I was making a good connection with the guys that I was meeting. This little heart kept popping up on Facebook every day when I would go in and it would say, “Try Facebook dating.”

I was like, “I don’t know about that. I’m not sure” but I thought, well, “shoot.” I’m not having any luck on this other app that I’m using so I might as well give it a try.

So what was your pre-us meeting story?

Steve: My pre-Carrie story is somewhat similar as far as the dating goes. I had a lot of people from church trying to set me up and those are always difficult because it doesn’t work out. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but oftentimes it just didn’t, just something was missing. So that didn’t work and then I tried the online dating apps just like you and I thought here I am spending this money and getting nowhere.

So for me, I struggle my anxiety kicks in on that first date which I guess I’m not the only one that goes through that. I don’t think but just the same, it was very difficult.

There came a point where Facebook actually emailed me and said, “Hey, we’re gonna start an online dating service that will be free through Facebook and we’re interested in you. You have a nice Facebook page or whatever. It’s clean-cut, and there’s nothing terrible on it. So we wanted to know if you’re interested” and I thought, Wow! I’ve never actually gotten a thing from Facebook like that. I was a little bit special.

So I said, “Whoa, what have I got to lose? Why not?” And then after I said, yes, I thought, Oh gosh, what have I gotten myself into? I didn’t even look at what type of dating is this. What are they going to do? What are they going to ask of me and it wasn’t that bad. They asked me a series of questions and had me fill out the basics. Who am I? Where am I? All the normal stuff that you do on a dating app. So that made me feel good and then they said it might be a while. Well, I’d practically given up on the idea of it after waiting for like three months or something. maybe longer than that, but finally that little heart popped up and I started getting messages and, and then not long after there you were.

And so that’s where it all began.

How Steve and Carrie Found Each Other

Carrie: Yeah and we found out amazingly that we had a lot in common. We grew up about an hour away from each other in Florida. Even though we’re in Tennessee now. We had both been on mission trips and now we’re talking about mission trips and food and restaurants and other things we enjoyed together. So that was a lot of fun. We had a couple of phone calls and you talked a lot.

Steve: Yes. Do you want to talk about that? Well, ironically, you’re asking me if I talk a lot and to talk about it. I am one of those people that if I don’t know you or I’m in a big crowd, I probably won’t say much. It’s difficult when it’s like, “Hey Steve, this is a girl and you have to talk to her” and my mind goes, “Nope, don’t want to say a thing,” but then as you get comfortable, as I get comfortable, I had so much to talk about because I hadn’t shared anything with anybody in so long. So all I wanted to do was talk. I thought, “Wow! This woman, she’s a good listener.”

Well, little did I know you get paid to do that? I guess I knew, but anyways, you were easy to talk to. You are easy to talk to and a great listener.

Carrie: The really scary thing came for me of having to tell Steve that I was divorced because we hadn’t gotten to that part yet in our chats online or over the phone.

Steve: That didn’t bother me because I had the same issue and so the reaction you had was I kind of “felt bad for you cause you’d gotten yourself kind of worked up about it” like worried, and then I’m like, “Nah, it’s not a deal-breaker at all.” You know, I was married too. So that gave us something in common. So it kind of worked in our favor.

Tips for Dating After Divorce

Carrie: There is some stigma in the Christian church when you’re dating and you’re divorced. It’s scary because I did have men say to me, “Hey, I need to pray about this for a few days.” That happened to me at least twice and you’re going to say, “okay, go pray about it.” My conscience is clear with God.

I don’t know. He’s going to have to communicate that to you one way or the other, or I need to know everything that happened and I need to know why it ended. So I guess if I would add just a word of advice thrown out there for people who are dating, if you haven’t been divorced, and you’re potentially dating people who are divorced, give it time for that story to unfold because often that story is pretty personal and pretty intimate like reasons why people’s marriages ending. Sometimes depending on how long it’s been since that point a lot of times those things aren’t relevant anymore at this level. Would you agree with that?

Steve: Without going into details, our stories were so similar, at least with me. I felt like people would come to a conclusion of, there’s gotta be a reason he’s divorced. What did he do? Maybe that’s not what they were thinking but that’s the feeling that I had from them. People, you can’t just jump out there and judge them like that because you don’t know and like you say, give them some time.

Carrie: Right. I think one of the things that you told me that I felt was very healing was that it takes two people to get married but it only takes one person to get divorced and in both of our situations, it wasn’t our choice. That wasn’t something that we wanted to do and we would have held on and done what we could to make it work, but there was no repair at that point.

Steve And Carrie’s Funny Date Story

Carrie: So then we branched out and met up for a first date at?

Steve: Plaza Mariachi, which if you’ve never been to a place like that. That is a wonderful place for a first date because it’s open. It’s easy to find and there’s so much going on. It offers you a pretty good place to sit and talk, although it did get a bit loud.

Carrie: Yeah. So Plaza Mariachi, for those of you who aren’t in the Nashville area, they basically took an old grocery store and they converted it into kind of an open mall concept. They’ve got a food court and they’ve got, you can get ice cream or tacos or coffee. They also have little shops kind of on the side but one thing that’s really fun that they have is performances. So, Steve, I was like, “okay, will you tell me a little bit more about your salvation story?” So he’s telling me, and he’s going through the process and of course, that’s kind of serious and then all of a sudden I just screamed, “fire!” Because all of a sudden, there’s this guy out in the middle of the food court, throwing around fire and breathing fire and all of this stuff.

Steve: Which I can’t see by the way.

Carrie: Because you’re back was to it.

Steve: Which seems when you’re given a little bit of your testimony, it doesn’t seem so wonderful when somebody else “fire” like, “Wow. I thought my story was good” but maybe I need to pray and start over here.

Carrie: So our second date, we got lost on a trail.

Steve: Yes. Mainly because they were doing some work on the trail and they didn’t mark the reroute. So we just kind of literally walked way past it.

Carrie: We missed the detour or something on the way back [01:00:37] and it’s getting closer to getting dark. This was in the late fall and it was getting dark earlier and so finally we decided to pull up the map and realize we are way down South and we need to get back up the other way to our car. So fortunately that date went well because otherwise, that would have been a long walk back to the car.

Steve: That would have been very difficult. I have to walk back that far with a person you don’t want to be with, that wouldn’t be good, but that was a good test for us because that was kind of a moment where it could have went either way. We’re together and got a few laughs and it was worth it. It was good.

Carrie: I think the coffee shop type date is good when you’re first getting to know somebody because you can leave in a short amount of time or something, but it’s nice to be able to do things with people, to look at stuff, and see how they interact around other people and also how they interact with you. And we had to problem solve on a date too. So that was actually good.

Steve: Definitely. I thought it was an easy deal. Just walk this way and make a turn and come back and you’re done.

Carrie: Yeah, there was a snafu on date three.

Steve: Yes, which wasn’t all my fault.

Carrie: No, it was not. You want to share what happened?

Steve: Yeah. I think you had suggested the place and I thought,” Oh yeah, I think I’ve been there.” That’s a great place, I think. That sounds good. The deal is to make it short and simple. There are two restaurants on the same road, not what four miles apart, I think same name. Both of them are Mexican restaurants.

They are almost identical. So I call her and I’m like, “well, I’m here just waiting” and she said, “I’m here at the table.” Wait like, “Oh no.”

That’s when we discovered we were both at a restaurant with the same name on the same street but it was not the same restaurant. So I had to find her. I went to the wrong one, by the way, not her.

Carrie: So that was fun and then we went to go see the Opera Land Hotel where they decorate everything for Christmas, really nice. We just walked around there and we took our first picture together and that was sweet. So time went on in our relationship and we were talking on a regular basis and we were seeing each other a couple of times a week.

Getting To Know Each Other Better

Carrie: One thing that you did relatively early on in our relationship was made a decision to take a night off work per week because you were working in the evenings and I think that was a big sign to me that you were interested in kind of moving the relationship forward.

Steve: For me, any relationship that I had with friends, that was the problem is that I work way too much in my mind. I thought if I’m going to make this work because I do like this girl, and if I’m going to make this work, I don’t think working all the time is going to help our relationship. You can’t just see one another here and there and expect it to work and only do the phones. So I knew I had to take a night off to make that work. I think that benefited us a lot.

Carrie: Yeah, it really did. I think it kept me going forward because I don’t know if I can do a one-day-a-week relationship or just have a weekend relationship with somebody. I want to get to know them more and have it go deeper.

Seeing A Therapist To Cope With Dating Anxiety

Carrie: So things progressed along and I was working with my therapist off and on but I started to have these awful nightmares.

They would be things like, I went to go catch a flight and I get to the ticket counter and I’ve missed my flight and the lady is saying, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, there’s nothing that we can do for you. You didn’t get here in time” or I didn’t make it to a concert that I had tickets to.

As I was talking through these nightmares with my therapist, I realized that they all had this kind of common theme and it was okay, I’m gonna like royally screw this relationship up and it’s going to be my fault. Something’s going to go bad and it’s going to be on me.

I just decided to tell Steve about these nightmares that I was having and be really honest about it. I’m nervous like I’m getting closer to you and that feels really vulnerable and really scary because I don’t want to get hurt again.

Understanding Your Partner’s Fear and Anxiety

Steve: Absolutely and when you told me, I got it. I can’t say that it was my dream but I completely wanted to understand you. That would be horrible to have to go through that and have that dream and that fear and that anxiety. So for me, I thought the best thing to do was to just be patient and wait.

Carrie: Yeah. I know that my therapist helped me realize that it was tied back to some past stuff and then I was in a different place in my life. I was an adult and I really could protect myself if I needed to. Something about what we processed and me coming to that conclusion of “Oh, okay. I’m actually safe.” Not only am I safe but I can also protect myself. That allowed me to stop having those nightmares really after the one processing session which was amazing. I know there were a lot of different points in our relationship where I felt like I was seeking reassurance from you of “Hey, is everything okay?” “Are we good?” Did that frustrate you or annoy you at times?

Steve: In a way, it was a big compliment because it meant that you were getting to a point where you wanted to trust me and wanted to get to know me. We wanted to grow more as a couple. So it kind of in a weird way. It sort of made me happy because I knew if we can get through this then we can make it. We can grow as a couple. So I was kind of excited but I knew when somebody’s going through something, you can’t get aggravated with them because that’s their something and if you’re going to be a couple, you have to go through things together. I knew that. So I knew I had to just be patient and hear you out. I know that you would do the exact same thing for me. I wouldn’t want you to get all irritated with me and say, “Hey, you jerk.” That’s part of relationships. I think though that’s a key thing.

Respecting Each Other’s Feelings

Carrie: Right. One of the things that really helped me through that process was when I would come to you with something like I’m having a nightmare or I’m scared about this, or I just need to know that our relationship is okay because we got in a fight or something like that, that you are just so open to say, “it’s okay.” However you’re feeling is, how you’re feeling and now we have to figure out what to do and how to move forward because I think so many times, people try to say, “just don’t feel anxious.” like, yeah, I need to worry about that. I mean, everything’s fine instead of just really like allowing it to be there and sitting with it and saying, you know, I know that there were several times that you told me, of course, you’re having a hard time trusting. Of course, you’re having a hard time opening up. This is still somewhat new.

Steve: I mean if it were anything else maybe this is a bad example, but if you were riding a bicycle and you had just fallen off that bicycle but you wanted to ride that bike, you would get back on it. I think relationships are similar, you have to get back at it and keep trying, or you’re never gonna get through it if you don’t keep trying. That’s my opinion but you did a lot of things for me as well though where I would have a bad day and whatever, and you were very, very patient with me when I would get aggravated, whatever it is. There were days where I thought, why in the world would she want to be with me? But you still, you man, and not to get all sappy, but you made life a lot better. Let me rephrase that, you make life a lot better.

Joy and Contentment in The Lord: From Being Happy To Ridiculously Happy

Carrie: One of the things that I realized was we had taken a few pictures amongst the first couple of months of dating and one day I was just kind of scrolling through those pictures in my phone and I had this realization and this epiphany of I was happy before I met Steve. So it’s not like you made me happy. I believe very much that there was joy and a contentment in the Lord even though I was longing to have a mate which I believe was a God-given desire that I had. But when I looked at those pictures, I was like, “Man, I went from happy to like ridiculous level happy.” And I don’t know do you feel kind of like, maybe talk a little bit about that process for you as far as like where you were before we met versus now?

Steve: Sure. Prior to us meeting, I was at a moment where I thought I know that God has someone there for me, but boy I don’t know what I’m doing wrong or what I should be doing. There was just this, it’s almost like when you’re driving on the road and you’re going the wrong way, but you keep going and hope that maybe I’ll see a sign soon. Eventually, you came along, but I had to be patient to get to that.

I think there was a waiting period for me to not rush anything, to not force anything to happen because I really wasn’t happy. I was alone. I didn’t like that. I’m not that type of person. I like doing for others and a single person who likes to do for others, that’s not always a great setup. I mean, you can go and volunteer and do all the things you want, but it isn’t necessarily going to be something that makes you happy if you’re longing for someone. So for me, once I met you, I thought, “Wow! I really like her.” There could be something here. It was actually when we took our flight to Florida, then I knew because long story short, what I call my adopted mom she had cancer and I was told you need to go see her because you may not have another chance. I was really, really upset about that and you went with me, you’re like, “well, I’ll just go with you,” and, “Oh my goodness. Really?” This might be the one. I knew then for sure.

I don’t know if that answers your question but that was definitely a turning point prior to that. I wasn’t so sure before we dated, I definitely felt lost.

Carrie: Just to clarify, adopted mom is your best friend’s mom.

Steve Telling His Family About Seeing and Dating A Therapist

Steve: My best friend’s mom basically feeds me because I eat a lot. She did things for me that I needed in my life as well. So I’m just one of those special people that needed two moms. That’s all. She did not legally adopt me and she was not my birth mom or anything like that.

Carrie: To understand the context of our flight to Florida was literally that week COVID-19 had been declared a global pandemic and like nobody was flying. There were maybe like 20 people on one of our flights and then on the way back, they kept canceling the flight and they consolidated a bunch of flights. So there were more people on that one, but that was scary because we didn’t know at that point in time. Everybody was being told to stay at home. Don’t travel. Don’t go places and life at the same time was still going on and you knew if I don’t go see second mom, I may not get to see her even if she passes. So we prayed about it. I always just said, “God, please protect us and just please shelter us and cover us” and he did and we did not get sick. Praise the Lord. We did wear masks before wearing masks was required.

Steve: I’m going to back up a second on you. You asked me about things before I met you. One of the things was when you introduce someone to your family or tell your family, “Hey, I’m dating someone.” That for me, there comes a point where you say, “Oh, I just don’t know.”

I don’t want to, I don’t know. You want to be sure. All right, this has got a really good chance. Now I will tell my family. Right now, I don’t know if other people do that, but that was me. When I called my parents up and this is such a silly story.

Carrie: I know you got to tell this.

Steve: I would be in trouble if I didn’t tell this. So I thought it would be a good point, I was talking to both my parents as I often do and telling them, “well, guys, I got something I need to tell you.” And so they’re like, “Oh wait, this guy never gets serious. This must be really important.” I said, “I’m seeing a therapist.” And my dad said, “Oh my gosh, is everything okay?” and I said, “Well, yeah, it’s our I guess second, third date” something like that. Now what he said, “Isn’t that a little unethical for you to be seeing a therapist?” And I said,” well, yeah, but no, no, not that kind of seeing our therapist.” I said, “it’s our second date third date, whatever it was.” I wasn’t seeing you as my therapist.

And that took a little while for my dad to kind of get the idea that I was kind of giving him a hard time that I was actually dating a girl who happens to be a therapist, not dating my therapist. Yeah. That’s kind of our fun story.

Carrie: That was pretty funny. I laughed so hard and then I said, “Oh, please tell me, you clarified that with your dad” like you were never my client just for clarification. I was like, your dad does know we met on Facebook, right? Was it weird for you finding out that I was a therapist? Because sometimes that’s weird when you meet people.

Steve: A little bit. Only because I was afraid that the first date was going to be less personal and more, well, “how does that make you feel, Steve?” and “How do you feel when.” I wanted to be with someone who is real, not someone who is on the other side as a therapist. I was hoping, and you did that, you can let go of that therapist mode to be able to date and be you, but that, honestly, it’s not like that lasted very long. That was just a moment of “Well, therapists are real too.” It worked out great though.

Carrie: Yeah. We’re human beings. People don’t realize that a lot of times they’re just like, “Oh gosh, you’re going to analyze me or something” and a lot of times I’ll just joke and I’ll say “I’m off the clock”.

One of the other reasons I wanted to have you on the show was really to encourage single people who maybe aren’t even dating right now. Maybe they’re like me and they were hurting and burned and they’re still healing from that. Or maybe they’re in a situation where they just don’t feel like there is anybody to date and you are single for a long time as a Christian. And that’s a hard space to be in because the church and as it should be is so pro-marriage and you feel awkward or like the odd one out, a lot of times.

Steve: Absolutely. I felt like the reject a lot of times, like what is wrong with me? You know, for me, after going through the divorce, I thought, well, let me give this two years before I date at all. A year to get over that situation as best I can, a year to find me and then I thought then I’ll date and everything will be great, whatever, but it didn’t quite work like that. I can’t tell you how many times people would say, “Man, you have really high standards. You’re going to be single for a long time”, but it was important to me to have a checklist.

The first one on there, she’s got to be Christian. That is important. Not go to church. That’s not enough. I mean, Christian, like a relationship. So I went a very long time as a single man and it’s difficult. Part of that is you get this feeling of am I good enough? And there were moments where I didn’t even try.

I just didn’t. I thought, well, I can’t force it. If it happens, it happens. If you’re not doing anything and you’re not even trying, the likeliness of just stumbling upon whoever it is you’re supposed to be dating. That’s not. You have to search, you don’t find if you don’t search typically.

But I was scared, I thought, am I good enough? And all of that. Anyways, I try dating through church and different avenues and they just didn’t fit for me. That’s not saying if there’s a church out there that has a singles ministry, that it’s a bad idea. No, it’s just the ones that I went through didn’t work for me. It took me a lot of tries and a long, long time.

Carrie: I actually met someone in the singles ministry at church, and he had come a couple Sundays, literally to meet a woman I think, and I start talking to him and realize he’s not even saved. Like he doesn’t even have a relationship and so now I’m like witnessing this guy, like do you know, like it’s not just about going to church or it’s not just like, yeah, I believe in God. You’ve got to have a relationship with Jesus and he just did not understand.

I think he really thought that he had a saving relationship with Christ and I remember being very discouraged by that because I was like, okay, God, I’m in the church and I’m trying to meet a godly man. I ended up meeting someone who’s not a Christian. So, I would agree with you that I remember there were definitely times where I cried out to God and I just said, “Lord, I don’t see it.”

I don’t see single men out there that are living for you and if that’s the case, then I’ve got to stay single until I find somebody. Finding that you not only went to church, but you were serving in the church already, that you were being mentored and going through continued discipleship with other men in the church. That was really exciting for me. I was like, “How is this man not been snatched up yet?”

Steve: And it was funny to me too, that in serving, I hate to say it this way, but that’ll really make me desirable. It doesn’t work like that but I did think that at a moment and I thought, “yeah, I do missions.” Surely, that’s not why I did missions, but at the same time, I thought this will be great. It doesn’t work like that. It’s what it is.

Carrie: Yeah. I know that everybody says this. I don’t want to be cliche, but I really feel like so much is about timing and I think about even God’s grace in the timing that we met and we’re able to meet each other’s families before COVID really hit and get to know each other and go out and do things before everything shut down.

That was really God’s grace at that point. When you’re in the middle of something, it’s really, really hard to have perspective on it. So like when you’re in the middle of your single loneliness, sexless life, let’s just be honest and you’re sitting there going, “Oh gosh, like, am I ever going to meet somebody?”

It’s really, really hard. And so I guess if you’re in that place, I just want to encourage you and say like I’ve been there. I’ve been crying in the car or crying in my bed about how I’m never gonna meet anybody. But now when I look back on it, I’m like, “Oh, gosh, God is so gracious and so good to me.” And it’s almost like he had this gift and he was like, “You can’t have it now. It’s not for now, but I have it for you already. I’m going to give it to you when it’s time, when you’re ready to receive that gift and you’re ready to have it. I’m going to give it to you.” I think it’s really shifted my perspective on other things in my life that I’m praying and I’m seeking God for, and I’m asking him for, and it’s allowed me to just really trust in His timing more and more.

Steve: Absolutely and like you say, I think you’re absolutely right, it’s about timing. If I would’ve seen you 15 years ago, would it have been the same? No. Everything had to match up. You had to go through what you went through and I had to go through what I went through.

I’ve matured so much as a Christian since then. So, it’s a good thing that we had to wait, but when you’re going through it, it does not feel like a good thing. No one says, “Oh, I’m so glad to be single and sprinkle…I can’t even talk single and miserable and I’m so glad I have to wait. Yeah, this is wonderful.

I’m lonely. I don’t even like myself. Isn’t this great. You know what I mean? But when you look back, you see how you’re molded and you’re preowned and the right one is there for you.

Carrie: Yeah, let’s just do some, maybe some general advice for single Christians. I would say really be passionate and dedicated to something specifically God. Obviously putting God first and serving the church. I think too many single Christians I’ve seen are going to this church over here on Sunday mornings and they sometimes hit that church over there on Wednesday nights and they’re not really necessarily dedicated to a church or they attend, but they aren’t pouring into it. They aren’t serving.

I think, any opportunity to be really dedicated and committed and serve others because as a single person, sometimes we can really get self-absorbed and just kind of into what we’ve got going on and just going through the motions and survival. And so being able to be committed to something or committed to the church prepares you for when you’re committed to another person because if you’re willing to carve out, say that time to serve the children’s ministry. Then you’re going to be willing to carve out that time to date someone. You’re going to be willing to carve out that time when you do get married.

Steve: That will be something that if you’re looking for someone when they see that you’re working in serving in the church and you’re happy and doing it, they’re going to see that as a great gift. That is a wonderful thing. It’s a great attribute versus “Oh, well, look at the desperate one there.” That’s who I want. Nobody wants to be desperate. Serve more because what you need is what you need to do and that’s what they’ll look at.

Carrie: I think for me too, when I knew I was ready to date again, it was because I felt like for the first time, in a long time, I felt like I had something to give. I wasn’t just looking for what I was going to receive as part of the relationship and that was really huge for me.

Steve: I didn’t want to be, for me, that person who is just afraid to be alone because you see people that date and the only reason that maybe they’re dating, maybe this is judgmental on my part, but you get the idea that the only reason they’re dating because they don’t want to be alone. That’s just a recipe for disaster. I think being patient there’s a lot to that.

Carrie: Any other advice or anything else you want to add?

Steve: We didn’t say this and we should have. Pray a lot. Pray a lot about it and don’t just say, “God help me to find a wonderful, beautiful woman.” Don’t be selfish about it.

Pray that you’ll be the right person for them because he’s got a future for you, but you need to be ready.

Carrie: And you’ve got to be willing to work on yourself and examine yourself and look at how can I prepare myself? How can I surrender to God’s transformation process in my life?

If you’re not a person who’s willing to receive feedback from other people, that’s going to be a stumbling block in a relationship. If you’re a person that has a hard time being honest about what you think and feel that’s going to be a stumbling block, but the good news is that you really can work on those things in your friendships and your relationships with coworkers, in your relationships with family and other people in the church and community and that’s so valuable. Those things are really going to prepare you. I definitely would agree with what you said about praying and really allowing God to bring forth that prayer process, the qualities that you really want to have in a spouse.

I know one of the things that I prayed for was somebody who would be in love with Jesus, not just go to church who would be serving the church, who would be involved in ministry opportunities and who would pray with me and who would be willing to encourage my spiritual journey as well.

There were many different characteristics that I was able to pray through and then go back and look at our relationship and look at you and say, “okay, these are the things that I’ve already been praying for and now I’m seeing the answer to those prayers.”

Steve: Yeah. That was important with the prayer was not just me praying. I don’t know for you if this happened, but for me as a guy, I had to open up to someone and say, “Hey bro, do you mind praying for me that I won’t be single and miserable?” I’ll be the man that God wants me to be for whoever or wherever she is. And so I did. There were several people praying, but there were two specifics. One was a former pastor’s wife and another was a very close accountability partner, buddy whatever you want to call them of mine.

And they’re both just two of the most, I don’t know if I could say the most Christian people I know, but definitely there in the word every day they are connected. They are great prayer warriors and both of them prayed like crazy and so, boy did their faces light up when I said, “Hey, guess what? I found someone.”

Get someone to pray with you because it’s not just about you praying. God wants us to include others. It’s not a solo thing. So get someone to pray with you because they can tell you things that maybe you’re ignoring or you’re not seeing. They can go deeper with you. It’s worth it.

Carrie: We’re both blessed to also have praying parents who watched us go through divorce and obviously were heartbroken because no parent wants that for their kids and they really were praying along with us.

Steve: Yes. I think my mom is more protective of you than she is of me, which is really saying a lot, but that’s a good thing. She always wants to know, “are you treating her good?” How is she doing? That’s good though. That’s what I want. It’s a good thing. It’s a good feeling.

Carrie: I didn’t tell you were going to be asked this, but at the end of every episode on hope for anxiety and OCD, what we ask is for the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time that you received hope from God or another person.

Steve: Wow. That is a tough question. Probably when my brother died because that was someone who I was extremely close to. I had really more than one person, but there were a few that came up beside me and just kind of said, “Hey, we know you’re not going to open up about what’s going on, maybe, but we’re praying for you.” Specific prayers, very specific. That gave me hope because I had never been through life without my brother. Losing a family member that is so difficult but having people there that said, “Steve, we know that you lost someone and we can’t fix that but what we can do is we’ll be your family.” “Where you had that phone call with your brother, every whatever day we’ll call you. We’ll do this or we’ll do that.”

So that’s part of how my mission family that I have actually grew because that group of people who I did missions with, they would call me and they would just show up and say, “Hey, you want to go out to dinner?” “You want to go out to lunch.” Do the things that my brother and I might do. So that gave me hope. It made me realize if someone’s going through someone or something, you need to do that for them. Stand up and do something. Be there for people.

Carrie: Just being there is so important. Thank you so much for sharing all of your singleness. It’s always good laughing with you.

Steve: Yes, always good laughing with you too.

__________________________________________________________________

I am so thankful that Steve was willing to come on the podcast. He’s a bit more of a private behind-the-scenes guy. So this was really a gift to me to get to interview him and share our story and talk a little bit about what dating was like for us. I hope it provided some encouragement to some other people who are out there maybe who are struggling with anxiety in this area.

Since this is our 10th episode and we launched with 10 episodes, I really want to hear from you as far as what parts of the show do you really like. What parts do you not like? What things can we improve on and make them better for you?

This is not just about me talking into a microphone, finding some friends to interview, and throwing it out there. It’s really my desire that this information be encouraging, helpful, and hopeful. So whether you think that we’re meeting those goals, or we’re not, please let us know on carriebock.com/podcast

Thanks so much for listening.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD Podcast – Not sure about Therapy?

9. Not Sure About Therapy? Try it on! with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on December 30, 2020. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 9. Not Sure About Therapy? Try it on! with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

Different therapist personalities and styles
Demystifying therapy
Finding the therapist who is the right fit
Different kinds of therapies that therapist utilize such as CBT, DBT, IFS, Psychodynamic or Play Therapy
Erica’s experience with mental health in the African American church
Seeing a counselor of a different race

Resources and links:
Erica Kesse, Your Goal Concierge
Try on Therapy
Mental Health Marketing Conference

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 9

Hope for Anxiety and OCD. Episode 9

Today, we are talking to Erica Kessee who is a good friend of mine and fellow entrepreneur. She is going to share with us something that she created called Thrive on Therapy. I’ll let her tell you more about that.

One thing that I want you to pick up, hopefully from this conversation is an understanding that there are many different types of counselors and many different personalities of counselors.

There are many different counseling approaches that those counselors utilize and this can really help you if you’re processing, searching for a counselor, or what you might need from a counselor. And of course, I couldn’t have Erica on the show and not ask her about her experience with racial issues and mental health in the black church, but I was not prepared for what she was going to say.

So let’s go ahead and dive into this episode with Erica.

Carrie: Miss Erica, you and I used to share an office space together, right?

Erica: It was a blessing because another colleague told me about you and that you had an office. I was so excited because I was able to be in a space and start my practice in my own office and it was ready for me to hang my shingle.

Carrie: Yeah and we have to let people understand that this office space was very small and you somehow found a way to make it super cute and homey and you had someone help you decorate. It was adorable, very adorable.

Erica: I was very proud of my space, loved my little space, my little couch. When you will listen to a decorator, they work wonders. So it’s just like, “you paid me.” So cozy and sweet.

Carrie: One of my favorite Erica stories that I have to tell is that we have a lot of things in common. We have really a passion for people getting really good help and treatment and reducing stigma. We have no problem talking about difficult issues, but our temperaments are a little bit different in terms that I’m kind of quiet and somber and calm and Erica is exciting, exuberant, and full of energy and life. That was very interesting. There would be times where I just go down to your end of the hall and just kind of gently turn up the sound machine. Do you remember that?

Erica: Yes. When I was working in community mental health and in other places when there’s other people around, it’s always been noted that I am having a great time in my session and I am laughing, enjoying the time that I spent with the people who are in the room with me and it is outside of the room and so it made the sound machine to be brought up a little higher.

Carrie: I think that’s an interesting thing cause we’re going to get into this a little bit later about different therapists having different personalities and different fits. There’s just kind of a little intro of one example of that, but tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today professionally.

Erica: I am Erica Kessee, a CEO and founder of Your Goal Concierge. I also have a service within Your Goal Concierge called Thrive on Therapy. Your Goal Concierge Mission is to provide services, support, enhancement, and encouragement to those who are in helping professions. Counselors, coaches, nurses, frontline people who had to go out of the house even in the middle of quarantine. Those are people that I serve and people who are trying to create businesses, try on therapy as a service specifically because I have a master’s in clinical mental health counseling and civic leadership.

I wanted to make sure that individuals, both the public had the right fit for their therapy and that therapists had opportunities for networking opportunities to show their craft and opportunities to offer services to others and show what they’re good at and to make sure that individuals are with them. Every counselor coach knows this person is like the perfect client for me because they have a lot of the same story that you have.

You understand how to work with them and get them to the next level. It is an immersive learning experience for individuals. So individuals who have the temporary license, which that’s what I have, or a master’s in clinical mental health counseling can provide this immersive learning experience to people so they can at least get a taste of therapy because there’s a lot of stigma associated with getting mental health services.

Carrie: Right. I remember you came by my office one day and you were so excited and you were like, “Carrie, you try on clothes?” And I was like, “at the store” and I was like, “yeah”. She was like, “what if you could try on therapy?” And I was like, “What in the world are you talking about? This is a little out there, Erica. I don’t know about all this.”

Tell us about how that originated because you did actually create this for the mental health marketing conference originally, right?

Erika: Yes. Exactly. So for the mental health marketing conference, I started going to the conference while I was at Lipscomb. I went to get my master’s in clinical, both masters from Lipscomb University. There was an opportunity as a student to go to the mental health marketing hub. I got there and I looked around and I saw all the marketers and I thought, where are the clinicians? They don’t have a seat at this table when they’re supposed to be marketing for mental health services. Only the clinicians know how to market to the people they’re trying to bring in the doors. And so I spoke to the founder, which was an Austin parent about incorporating more clinicians. I did speak the next year and it was that third year that we spoke about having clinicians at the table. Then the third year was, hey, we’re going to actually pilot trial therapy and let these marketers experience therapy because they had never experienced therapy. They have no idea how they are going to be marketing something they’ve never experienced.

Everybody else gets something free. If somebody is in the market, they get a product for free. So they can say, I buy into this product. Like a sample, that’s what trial data is. It’s a sample of therapy and the sample is actually not watered down or anything, but we call it an immersive learning experience because we don’t want to say it’s therapy. It’s just a crucial relationship. So you don’t want to say that you’re entering into that relationship until you’re truly entering into a relationship with a person that’s going to be taking you to the level you need to go to according to your treatment plan. So we offered it and at that time we asked Carrie, even though I went over there to her office, I was actually trying to get her to come to be a trial therapist.

I’m always a connector. I’m always thinking about opportunities to reel people in and Carrie was one of the child therapists that year. I can’t remember the numbers. I do have an annual report. If anybody is interested in it, you can reach out to me for it. I have the numbers in there. With every person that we did have, every person that I met was there also exhibiting. I did have a conversion of a person that stayed with me from that conference that very first time.

Every single year we’ve done trial therapy there and they asked us to come back every year, try on therapy in there because there are marketers, people who’ve never experienced it. There it’s just valuable and this makes sense to me.

Carrie: Now you’ve expanded to other places and it’s not just for the conference and it’s not just for marketers, what other locations have you been to where you’ve utilized this?

Erica: Because of the specificity of the middle half marketing conference so we went to the Sexual Assault Center here in Nashville, Tennessee. They were talking about a particular thing that could trigger individuals. There was a therapist there who could be available for anyone that was triggered but then we also provided sessions at the end of the conference.

I closed two people from that. When I say closed, they converted into clients. I went to the sexual assault center twice. After the second time doing the mental health marketing conference, I met a lady with HCA health corporations in America, and they had a hiring event at top golf, which is a place where people can do golf and shoot there.

Carrie: They’re trying to hit a target right, the golf ball into a target. I’ve never done it before, but it doesn’t look like much.

Erica: It’s a cool place. So we went there and we provided group therapy. We had therapists there, they wanted a group, they wanted to hit as many people as possible and so we did three 30 minute group sessions on self-care. The topic of self-care was amazing. I had a wonderful time. They’re going to invite us back next year. As soon as someone tries it, even like it’s so fun in trial therapy, usually, you convert them to a client. When a corporation tries this trial therapy then they usually want me to come back every year to continue to do it for the individuals that they’re serving.

Carrie: it’s been a great success for you. I think it’s opened a lot of people’s minds to what therapy is. Maybe people have ideas that it’s something mystical or they’re really uncomfortable about it like it’s this big mystery like, “what in the world do you do in there?”

Erica: That’s part of our marketing. What happens behind those closed doors. A part of the marketing is also learning the product of therapy. The product of therapy is sitting with that therapist. The therapist is the product. You need to have a relationship with that person and get the right fit with that person. So I recommend you not just meet someone and say, “Okay, I’m going to go through therapy with that person.”

I feel like you should shop around, there’s a sample here and a sample there of how they flow, how it feels in the session, what things they say, and the methods that they will like to show you. Mainly, I would have to say how it feels, because if you’re doing some transference or anything else, which is when you feel some feelings about this person and you’ve never met them, but they bring up things in you that are not so good, then you don’t need it. Then you don’t need that therapist. You need to get somebody else.

Carrie: You mean if they remind you of your mother who you got a strained relationship with it may not be the best fit.

Erica: Not a good fit.

Carrie: Talk about that a little bit, because I think a lot of times people approach finding a therapist like they would a doctor like, “Okay, well maybe who’s in my insurance network or who’s the person that’s within the 10-mile radius of me and looking for a therapist really needs to be a very different process than that.

Erica: Oh my goodness Carrie I just had a bright idea and maybe we should collaborate on that. Oh, I’m sorry. This is how I am, but yes it shouldn’t be a different process and you’re right.

Let’s talk through that process now. It can’t be that way. That’s why when your insurance gives you a list, they give you a list. The list is pretty big.

You need to go through and call through. First of all, if they don’t call, if they don’t call you back or they call you back, like three months later, then you know, it’s not a good fit. There’s some issue that’s there that you don’t mean to keep pursuing but also the whole insurance rate also, the radius is maybe a problem as well. It’s like you have to decide that this is life or death.

A lot of times people don’t see our mental health, our brains, and our emotional health as a life and death situation, but it is because most of the time when people come to us, it’s a conflict that’s happened. That’s just during a crisis. So sometimes holding onto this crisis for years and then finally it just boils over and they’re finally reaching out. You can’t decide that it’s going to have to be with the person within a radius or the first person that you get to answer the phone.

Carrie: I think the process of finding a therapist is really important and I can only share from my own personal experience of finding a therapist. There was one period of my life where I really wanted to see a female therapist. I thought that person is going to be someone who I would feel more comfortable with. I don’t feel comfortable with talking with a male right now, but then after I went through some other things. I was really looking to get back into the dating world after my divorce and I just said, “I want to talk to a male about this because I feel like I need that perspective.”

I need that opposite sex perspective of some things that I’m dealing with or some questions that I have and that was just so helpful. So even sometimes that male or female distinction, sometimes people feel more comfortable with a younger therapist. Sometimes people feel more comfortable with an older therapist and don’t feel bad because maybe it sounds kind of superficial like, “Oh, I’m ruling that person out because they’re too old or they’re too young, but it’s who you’re going to be able to connect with personally. Other people are going to be able to connect with that other therapist personally. So it’s okay.

Erica: It is. I’m so happy you’re affirming and confirming that it is okay to have your preferences. Just like right now because I’ll have to say black awareness and racial awareness that’s happening, I’ve gotten more people contact me who are black or people of color because they need counseling, but also because they are reaching out to someone that looks like them. And so it’s important to decide to pick who you want. Even somebody that looks like you may not be a good fit either. You need the right temperament.

I know I need an action-oriented counselor. I don’t want one to just sit there with me because I will take over the session just like right now. Carrie knows what she’s up to. So like, I need someone that’s going to say, “This is your homework. This is what you need to do.” Give me some parameters. I need some CBT DBT. Well, let me explain those things, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy. So I need these things for myself. I know that.

Carrie: Sure. Those types of interventions are helpful for you.

Erica: So that’s something to think about too when you’re trying on therapy is the structure. What is the structure that works best for you? Especially in a trial therapy session, you can always ask a therapist about internal family systems or psychoanalytic therapy or EMDR or like I specialize in plant expressive arts therapy. So talk through what that looks like.

So it’s, it’s good to kind of build your many, a listing of things that maybe sounds like something you want to try. You can talk through that. For example, when you’re talking about male and female thing. One of the people who came and did the mental health marketing conference was an exhibitor there, so she wasn’t a marketer. She worked in one of the nonprofits. She wanted to test out or try out a male. So she was able to check out one of the males there. I try to have it at the conference, like blubber city, diversity, and males. They’re scarce.

They really are. I had actually a black male. She was able to meet with him and she was the one that converted to see me because she got a taste of him. It didn’t fit and be with me and we did great work. So she did get that out of her system. She understands a male, isn’t a good fit for her.

So then she decided to try something else, which was great.

Carrie: I think it’s important to you that once you talk with a therapist, whether that’s over the phone or once you meet with them in person, they may be diving into certain topics because of their training and their worldview and how they were trained as a therapist.

Specific different types of therapy, just like Erica was talking about earlier that that person may be kind of guiding you down a path that you might not want to go to. So they may be an insight-based therapist. And you may say, I need an action step or vice versa. Maybe you’re not ready for an action step and you’re just going to therapy because you’re trying to learn about yourself. Maybe I’m very upfront that I’m very interested in people’s past and trauma and difficult experiences that they’ve had because that’s the lens that I work from, but not everybody is like that. Some people will say, I don’t want to hear about your childhood.

I just want to know what’s going on right now. And so it’s important to know those distinctions in terms of finding a fit. If you find someone that’s going in one direction, it’s okay for you to say, you know, I think I’d really like to go a different direction, or I thought we were going to talk about this instead, or this is important to me right now.

You have that power as the client.

Erica: Yes, Carrie. I’m very expressive. So yes, it is definitely about the relationship that you have with the person that you’re working with. You have to take ownership of your session. I’ll have to say this in a medical field too a lot of people are not taking ownership of all of their doctor’s appointments as well.

But with counselors, you’d say, “Hey, I want to work on this because they’re supposed to be building your treatment plan according to what you need and what you think your goal is. That’s one reason why my organization is called Your Coal Concierge. I’m your goal concierge. I’m going to help you with your goal.

It’s just important to have that relationship and speak up for yourself. There’s no power differential between you and your therapist. They are an expert in what they’re expert in. So they do understand that because they got the master’s degree, but you’re the expert on you and they’re there to help you work through and deal with and support you and where you’re going.

Carrie: I love this conversation but I also want to move on because I know there’s some other things I want to ask you about.

What is your spiritual background and how would you describe your spiritual identity today?

Erica: Okay. I have to talk about the past a little bit in order to get to today and I won’t be long-winded.

I grew up in Missionary Baptist Church then went to Full Gospel. That’s where I learned about my relationship with God. I didn’t learn much about it before, but once asked about the relationship with God it’s like my eyes were open to the possibilities of this beautiful connection.

That’s father. That’s just for me and for other people too. The relationship that I have is just for me and God. I could ask for whatever I want and it just blows my mind. I also believe that God lives inside of me and I’m still grateful too because I’m also I’m Christian too. So I believe in Jesus.

I need a savior as well, but you can tell that it’s like, people go through things and they may have got a family that taught them to do things a certain way and they just go along with it, I decided to do my way. According to me, thinking through and deciding that this best works best for me to, to be Christian and believe in Jesus.

And then I am also very spiritual because I really take a whole to that part of God living inside of me. So if God lives inside of me, then I got a source to everything.

Carrie: I’m curious what your experience has been in black Christian community surrounding mental health treatment.

Erica: I had a group that I was trying to promote that never really happened because people are not ready to have this conversation.

People are not. It’s not just black churches too. I went to some Church of Christ to do some things and try to do some things. I’ve noticed that it really doesn’t want to deal with things. It’s like an ostrich with his head in the sink. It does not want to deal with the real things that’s happening.

Carrie: Let’s pretend this is not going on. Let’s pretend people are not struggling with these big issues like anxiety and OCD.

Erica: They don’t want to talk about them. I would think that you could find evidence in the Bible where there was somebody who was displaying the symptoms of anxiety and how they persevered or OCD and how they persevered.

One of my things that I always talk about is single motherhood. They don’t want to deal with that either.

Carrie: It’s very prevalent.

Erica: Yes, I did my master’s thesis on that. They didn’t want to deal with it. I never got support within the church to help do a group for single mothers.

Anyway, black church entered the price, white churches. The reason why I’m saying this is because those are the ones that I know of. I don’t know. Churches, and that’s my experience with them and it’s my personal experience. I just know that that’s one reason why I have another endeavor called trials spirituality, which if you go to Your Goal Concierge. That is my website, yourgoalconcierge.com. There’s a link that says trial spirituality. In there, it talks about small groups that people have at their homes. Actually, churches used to do this, but they have small groups at their homes about specific issues, scriptures that go along with for example, anxiety, that’s fine. So in the Bible to study who has anxiety and how they persevered through it and that group talks about it. So that’s definitely something that I am very passionate about. Let’s talk about the real things.

Carrie: We’ll put all of the information on the websites, in the show notes too, so people can click on the links.

Why do you think this is? Why do you think that people have their heads buried in the sand? Because we look at the lifetime prevalence of things like anxiety and depression and it’s high. This is not just affecting unbelievers. This is affecting believers as well. So what do you think is going on with church leadership that it’s having the ostrich mentality?

Erica: I think it’s too hard. It’s too hard of a topic and they don’t want their own stuff to come out like there’s needs to be some kind of transparency that happened in their own life. They probably have had it. Everybody has some anxiety. Everybody has a little bit of it. So that means you have to address your own stuff, This is like with counseling. That’s one reason why I decided to do my master’s in clinical mental health counseling because I needed to evaluate myself before I can even sit in the room with somebody else and I’m not sure they’re willing to evaluate themselves, but then they don’t address. There’s a lock.

Carrie: Right. Talk with me a little bit about your experience regarding racism, black issues related to counseling because I know you and I have had some conversations surrounding this. There may be some white therapists that don’t want to look at their own experiences or their own potential biases that may have a hard time seeing someone of another race or cultural group and vice versa too.

Erica: So being a black woman, it really is a conversation going on right now and I was just telling a friend of mine who is a white woman about it. It’s an everyday thing. They were talking about the protest that was happening and I said, “there’s no reason for me to get out in the streets and protest.” It’s a protest that I get up every day and not to come to the weight of the world that I feel as a black woman. Knowing that the people around me who are close to me could easily be killed at any point, just because of my skin. People don’t even think this way. Zora Neale Hurston kind of summed it up. She’s one of my role models is that my race, my race is only a part of who I am like brown coloring on top. Like it’s so much of me that doesn’t have anything to do with my race, but it’s just one of the parts, just like I am, you know, I love to giggle.

This is same day. It’s just one of the big. So everybody puts so much merit on it and seeing the differences in us when there’s so many similarities that my experience with racism is every day. Like I hear it. I feel it. I see it all the time and I can tell you many stories.

Because of who I am. I love to have, I love creating, I have an idea and launching things, but I’ve had many circumstances where people did not want to see the merit in what I was saying and what I was doing until somebody white was interested in it. I was capitalized on in some type of way by someone who was white on a regular basis.

That’s a normal thing. There’s always circumstances where someone wants to capitalize on what I have, which I mean, as a black person, I’m never going to have as much as they know. I’m working on trying to create my own dynasty, but like, there is just historical wealth that people who are white have that I will never be able to match.

Right. Because I’m working towards that, I started from the bottom, everything that there’s always someone who tries to align with me to try to capitalize on me, even my supervisor that I had.

Carrie: So like for example, people wanting you to do work for free or expecting that from you and so forth.

Erica: Yes work for free. That’s normal. I’m the kind of person where I get in and I jump full speed ahead into organizations and to opportunities and so I just give away so much information and I’m not paid the way that I see my counterpart being paid or the information is taken. I’m not appreciated for what I was, what I gave.

At all. Yeah. So that occurs. That’s the part that hurts me sometimes. I’ve spent some time with God on that and what God has for me, it’s for me, and whatever I gave away was what needed to be given away.

Carrie: And do you think that people could benefit sometimes from going to a therapist of a different race?

Erica: Of course. I know I’ve been to several people who were not my race and I got something out of each one of them like beautiful stories. Whenever I was in a room with someone, I had a white male one time through my EAP program when I worked at Vanderbilt and I only met with him one time because he was like to the point-blank. He affirmed me and I was on my way. I didn’t need to go back. I was good. I just needed someone to affirm me and affirm things that I did know, because when he talked about the exhaustion that you have in between two programs, getting my bachelor’s and getting my master’s and that loll in between there, I was not trying to give myself a rest.

I was ready to go to the next thing. And he was telling me, no, this is the time to rest. It’s all right. Your life is not going to crumble. Those kinds of things. So it was great. They were a white male, but also, you know, I’ve had, I had, uh, I had a black, older woman who I needed because she was helpful and there was transference that I felt with her that I wanted and I needed because I needed a mother in my life.

I needed it and I got it from her. It was a beautiful relationship. It was very psychoanalytic. So that was the part that I was missing like she didn’t give me much of that, but I found that somewhere else. So I think that every relationship that we have in our lives and not just counselors is something that you need in your life.

You call into your life to happen for you. So just look around and you’ll find the right people for you.

Carrie: I think we have so much to learn from each other. People that are similar to us and people that are different than us, people that look different than us. People that think different than us and people that have different backgrounds. And if we just keep our mind open to what we have to receive from that person like you were saying I think it’s a great thing.

Unfortunately, a lot of times we get so close-fisted to our position or stance on something that we are not willing to look at what’s the other side and why does this person feel so strongly about this? Why does this person who’s out in the street protesting? Why do they feel so strongly about that? Why is this person at home who feels very passionate about these issues, but they’re not protesting and so forth? Kind of like you talked a little bit. How about, is there anything, I guess that you would want to say just as an encouragement to Christian Black women?

I know that it’s, you’re a double minority in a sense, because, you know, there’s somewhat male privilege in our society, whether we want to admit that or not men are often paid more for the same positions than women. You’re also a racial minority and a lot of times what I’ve seen in my practice is that African-American women just kind of put up with a lot of things that they don’t necessarily need to put up with.

And sometimes they need somebody to speak into that space and say, “Hey, you can set a boundary there or you don’t have to do that, or you’re doing too much, you know, let go get some help.” I don’t know, maybe I’m stealing your thunder.

Erica: I remember, I love it that you had a board in the lobby of the suite that I worked at.

I worked out of the suite and it was, she took care of the lobby and everything, and there was a chalkboard and coffee table.

One thing I put on there was I have done enough. That’s something that I was speaking to myself, but black women and all the people that seem to be my clients, individuals that are type A people who are running and running and running to get things accomplished that they feel that they need to get accomplished in life, but they don’t give themselves rest and stuff.

Well, and so they have to decide something. They have to decide that they’ve done enough. I’ve done enough. You know, the thing is, people are going around saying, you know, I am enough, but for these people and those are my clients, the ones that made that message. I have done enough. I want to give them rest. Let’s be strategic about the next step you take.

Let’s not just go right into something else. Let’s decide that this is the next thing for me. And so I find that with black women It’s a crushing feeling of all the things that I have to do. I have to lecture with my male friend or my partner, my children. Oh, we’re doing virtual school right now with my boss.

My mind, I also feel the burden of the whole black community. Recently, we just had another blackmail murder. It just weighs down on us and it makes us want to run to do something to fix it, but I’ve done enough. I’ve done enough.

And one thing, another affirmation I would love to give is that I just recently started and it felt so good was I am at peace with the progress in my life. That made me just do a deep breath because I am. If I could just be at peace at the progress. Because you have done, I mean, just take like you get suspect amnesia and you think that you didn’t do a lot, but if you sit and think about all of these you haven’t.

You can sit and think about what you’re grateful for it makes you sit down and be strategic about the next thing that you’re going to do.

Carrie: Because progress is more important than perfection. Love that.

All right. So at the end of every podcast, because this is called hope for anxiety and OCD, I like to ask all the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time that you received hope from God or another person in your life.

Erica: Okay. I received hope when I had a very traumatic scenario happened. I had a fear of losing a child or my child dying. That was my fear and then it happened and it broke me down and it helped me see all the people around me who were capitalizing on me taking on the responsibility of so much.

I went through a depression and I reached out to a therapist and my hope came from my daughter, looking at me. She was the one that walked me to the car in the middle of my ectopic pregnancy and put me in the car, put the seatbelt around me and said, my daughter who is seven, she put me in the car put the seat belt around me and said, “Mama it’s going to be okay.”

And I knew that came from an inner part of her like that wasn’t a seven-year-old clock. That was God telling me that this is for a reason. All of this is for a reason. You’re going to be okay and in the middle of it, I’ve received that hope. Even though I was in pain there was a piece that I had because ultimately the version of who I am now is so much greater than I ever been. I would never be at a point that I can say, I’m at peace.” I’m not with my progress or even give myself the self-care and the self-love if I had not shared all those people around me and taking all of my energy and taking all of my love and not putting in anything. So that’s my story of hope.

Carrie: Thank you for sharing that. It is really those hard times that we go through that are transformative for us the most. And we can look back and go, “Oh, wow. That was a really hard situation but if I hadn’t gone through that, I wouldn’t have reaped to this benefit over here and I can be thankful for that.”

And you never know who you’re going to meet, who may be walking through similar circumstances that you can encourage as well. And side note, Erica’s daughter is really cool too. She’s fun. She’s a fun human being.

Thank you so much for being on the show and for talking about trying therapy and how we can find a good therapeutic fit.

Thank you for talking to me about hard sayings, about racial issues, and letting me ask you those questions as well. I think that’s awesome.

Erica: Thank you so much. It was such an honor. Thank you so much for reaching out to me to be on here. We’ll love to come back and you want me to talk about something else or whatever.

___________________________________________________________________

Everyone. I had no idea that Erica was going to speak so strongly about her experience related to mental health in the black church and remember this is just one person’s experience that we’re interviewing. It’s on my wishlist bulletin board for guests, I would love to talk with a black pastor who feels like that they really get and support mental health.

So if that’s you and you are listening or you know of a pastor, or this is your pastor and you say, “Carrie, you absolutely need to talk with them.” Please, please get them in touch with me. You can always reach us on hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you feel like our content is valuable, I really hope that you will tell a friend and say, “Hey, I found this podcast and I think you might be interested. Why don’t you give it a listen?” I’m sure you know somebody that needs a little hope.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.

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

Bring Your Own Tissues: My Experience with Online (Telehealth) Counseling

Written by Carrie Bock on December 16, 2020. Posted in Blog, Counseling, Personal Testimony.

I wrote this about a year before COVID-19 hit. Telehealth (online) counseling was still in the shadows and people were skeptical of it. In 2020, telehealth is more the norm than in person sessions. I felt this was worth sharing as the words are still as true today as they were in 2019.

My therapist lives about three hours away, but I don’t get in a car to see him. I turn on my computer. I’ve been seeing him via telehealth, and it’s been one of the biggest blessings of this year.

Episode Highlights:

Episode Summary:

Transcript

Episode Highlights:

Episode Summary:

Related Links and Resources:

Transcript

Episode Highlights:

Episode Summary:

Transcript

Transcript Of Episode 13

Transcript of Episode 12

Transcript of Episode 11

Transcript of Episode 8

Episode Highlights:

Summary:

Transcript

Anxious About Dating

How Steve and Carrie Found Each Other

Tips for Dating After Divorce

Steve And Carrie’s Funny Date Story

Getting To Know Each Other Better

Seeing A Therapist To Cope With Dating Anxiety

Understanding Your Partner’s Fear and Anxiety

Respecting Each Other’s Feelings

Joy and Contentment in The Lord: From Being Happy To Ridiculously Happy

Steve Telling His Family About Seeing and Dating A Therapist

Transcript of Episode 9