In this episode, Carrie explores the profound impact of spiritual abuse on mental and emotional health, outlining red flags and steps to healing.
Episode Highlights:
What spiritual abuse is and how to recognize it.
Common red flags of spiritual abuse in religious settings.
The importance of identifying and addressing abusive elements.
The value of surrounding yourself with solid biblical teaching.
Strategies for re-engaging with a supportive Christian community.
Episode Summary:
In this episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I discuss a four-step process to heal from spiritual abuse. I first explain what spiritual abuse is and the red flags to watch for, such as the misuse of scripture or church authority for control, promotion of non-biblical theology, or using a position of power for personal gain. Healing from spiritual abuse takes time, especially if the abuse was prolonged or part of a rigid religious system.
The four steps to healing include:
Identify Abusive Elements and Seek Trauma Therapy: Recognize the parts of your experience that were abusive and seek professional help if you’re struggling to move past them.
Commit to Solo Time with God: Spend time with God to understand His true character, separate from the distorted teachings you may have encountered.
Surround Yourself with Sound Biblical Teaching: Ensure the teaching you receive aligns with scripture and helps you build a healthy spiritual foundation.
Re-engage with Christian Community: Once you feel ready, reconnect with a Christian community that embodies Christ’s love and provides healthy relationships.
Healing from spiritual abuse is a journey that requires time, reflection, and the support of both God and a loving community. If you’re dealing with the effects of spiritual abuse, remember that God’s love for you is unwavering, and it’s possible to find hope and healing.
If this episode resonates with you, I encourage you to reach out and explore intensive therapy options. For more information, visit my counseling website at bythewellcounseling.com or learn more about the podcast at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.
Thank you for joining me today. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Hi, welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 129. I’m your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. I wanted to share with you today a four-step process that I came up with on recovering from spiritual abuse. Before we get into that, I’m going to walk you through what is spiritual abuse. What does that mean? What are some red flags? If you think you might have experienced spiritual abuse, then we’ll go through the four-step process. My husband and I also did an episode called When Ministry Becomes Toxic in episode 92. If you want to go back and listen to that one as well, it may be relevant to you.
I want you to know that I am excited and looking ahead to the fall to get some ICBT groups together. This is inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy. You have an impact on what these groups will look like, whether you are wanting more interaction among each other in practicing the skills or whether or not you want to come learn about it and then have a self-help application to your life. Please take our very short survey on ICBT. If you’re an insider on our email list, you have already received the survey. Please go in and take it. If for some reason you’re not on our email list and haven’t received the survey, you can definitely reach out to us through the website at hopeforanxietyandocd.com
Let’s talk about what is spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse is when someone uses the Bible or non biblical theology or their position in the church as a pastor, mentor, leader to control you in some way. Some red flags would be they’re promoting non-biblical theology. For example, “God heals everyone who comes to Him for healing. If you’re not healed, it’s due to a lack of faith.”
If you look in the beginning of Luke, Jesus actually walked away from people that were coming to the house for healing because he went away to spend time with the Lord. That may be the beginning of Mark. Jesus was in a house and he had slipped away. People were looking for him. Even when Jesus was on the earth, that was healing was not his number one ministry. He was leading people to the Father. That was his main point of view, but there are some teachers out there that say, “God heals everyone and if you’re not healed, therefore it must be a lack of faith.” That’s not what we see in the Bible. We also see that Paul had a thorn in the flesh. He was an incredible man of God and God did not fully heal him. God told him, my grace is sufficient for you. That would be one example.
Another example that we see a lot of times in church is “God wants to bless you. That blessings means God wants to give you financial wealth and make you a great person. If you have faith or if you give to this ministry.” A lot of times that’s not what it is. Unfortunately, people looking for money, If you give to this ministry, then God is going to just bless you and make you super wealthy. That is not what we see in scripture. Once again, going back to Paul, Paul was preaching the gospel and there were churches that donated to him, but he also made tents for a living. I don’t know if you knew that. That is in scripture as well. Jesus said, I don’t even have a house to lay my head. There were some wealthy people in the Bible. Don’t get me wrong. You look at Abraham, had quite a bit of wealth, which back then was in terms of flocks. Solomon had a lot of wealth. So there were wealthy people in the Bible, but there were also some people that weren’t wealthy and they were just had given up a lot in the service and ministry of the gospel.
Just because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean that God is going to bless you financially. I do believe that if you’re following God, God will bless you, but that’s not always in dollars and cents. Sometimes that’s a relationship blessing. Sometimes that’s a joy that you’ve received from the Lord. I believe, that God does bless his children, just like we want to bless our children as earthly parents. That’s not always a financial or a material blessing, and that should not be our main focus of what we’re trying to receive from God.
Another red flag would be using a position of power or influence to gratify their own sexual needs. Sexual abuse does exist in the church. Let’s not try to pretend like it doesn’t. I wish that it didn’t. Not all abuse involves touching. Maybe inappropriate comments that are sexual or flirtatious comments that shouldn’t be going on with between two people who are married, or it may be inappropriate flirtatious comments going on when you know clearly that other person is married or they clearly know that you’re married. It may be like exposing themselves in some sort of way or exposing you to sexual material or pictures. Know that not all sexual abuse. involves actual physical contact.
I think this next red flag kind of goes along with that one. Someone may lead you to do something that you know in your spirit or you know based on scripture is wrong, but they may use some type of spiritual justification for it, saying God wants us to be together. This is God’s will for your life, that you do this, and you know in your spirit they’re asking you to do something wrong, like have an affair or have an inappropriate relationship with them.
Another red flag, they’re the only ones that you can get spiritual answers from. No, I know that in the early church, there was a church who would listen to what the disciples were saying, and then they would go back and they would search the scriptures for themselves. That’s something that we all should be doing, even if your pastor is using scripture. Examine it for yourselves. The Holy Spirit interprets the Word of God. Some of you may say, “Well, I read the Bible, but I don’t fully understand everything that it says.” Okay. Welcome to the club. I think it’s a difficult book for a reason. God wants us to wrestle with it, not to be completely mysterious, but that we have to seek him in that process of reading the Bible and receiving that interpretation of the word by the Holy Spirit. You don’t need a pastor to tell you exactly what it says. Some things in scripture are just very clear and very black and white.
Some things are a little bit more gray where we have to wrestle with it a little more and people may come to different theological conclusions. But some things are very, very clear. If someone is telling you, “Well, you need to run that decision by me,” and you’re kind of like, “Why would I need to do that?” That’s creating an unhealthy level of dependence on for you to, they’re wanting you to depend on them or feel like, You can’t think or make decisions for yourself. That’s not a position that you want to be in.
Last red flag that I came up with is an important one. It happens, unfortunately, a lot in families where people withdraw love if you do something that they don’t agree with. I’m not talking about something that’s morally wrong, but you make a decision. Or set a boundary in such a way where they’re not in agreement with what you’re doing. It could be something completely that you feel like God has called you to do or wants you to do and your family is kind of giving you the cold shoulder.
You’re the one that’s not invited to the family dinner and there’s a sense of withdrawing love. It’s kind of like Well, we really don’t approve of you, and so therefore we can’t love you. Those things are not mutually exclusive, right? Because as Christians, we should be loving people that we don’t agree with.
Newsflash, hold the phone if you haven’t heard that before. We are supposed to love our enemies. We can love people that we disagree with, or that are doing things that we know are blatantly wrong. We can still love that person and say, Hey, I love you, but your behavior is really off course right now, or I love you, but I’m really concerned about you.
You’re headed down a dead-end street here, and if you don’t turn around, then I’m afraid for your safety or your health. Those are healthy conversations, not withdrawing love because someone is doing something that we don’t approve of.
Let’s get into the process of healing. Yeah. Now, healing takes time, especially if the spiritual abuse was ongoing. Maybe you were a part of a cult or very rigid religious system. Maybe you were a part of that for a long time, like years. It’s going to take you time to heal from that. That’s just makes sense, right? You’re not going to be able to unravel all of that overnight. Give yourself the time and space that you need to heal.
I think the number one step that I put down was identify the pieces that were abusive and seek trauma therapy if needed. What I’ve seen with my clients is that so many people are suffering in this world. From bad theology. Yes, I’m going to use the word bad because it’s not biblical believing that we have to be perfect in order for God to love us. That’s completely antithesis to the gospel, but that’s how some treat other people, believing that God is angry with you. If you have one sin or one small mistake, you are God’s child. That’s something that is important to keep in mind. There’s always this balance that we have, obviously, between sin and grace. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about situations that are extreme. Identifying the pieces that were abusive in that maybe church context or in that relationship context and seeking professional help if you keep running against a wall or you feel like you’re not able to get to a healthy spiritual place that you want to be or you’re not able to get to a healthy relationship place with others.
You don’t feel like you can be vulnerable in your relationships. You don’t feel like you can be safe to be vulnerable with God. Maybe you’re having a lot of flashbacks back to that time or intrusive memories where you feel like you’re just constantly ruminating or thinking about various things that have happened to you.
Those are all flags that you need to get a professional to help walk you through that journey. If you are seeking to like to rebuild and re-engage with a healthy faith situation and relationship with God, it just makes sense to have a balanced, healthy Christian therapist who can walk you through that.
Even though that may be challenging if you feel like you were hurt or abused by the church, what is it going to look like? Or what is this therapist going to be like with me? I will say that I’ve seen people do incredible trauma work surrounding hurts that they experienced in the church so I know that people can heal from that.
I know that EMDR has been an amazing tool for some of those individuals to allow their nervous system to clear that out. So that something goes from, hey, it’s in the short-term memory and feels like it’s happening right now to it’s in long term storage. I don’t have to worry about that right now.
The other thing I put on here is tocommit time. Step two, commit solo time with God to get to know Him personally. In the Bible, it talks with us about seek the Lord and that if you seek the Lord with all your heart, you’re going to find him. God is not going to just remain mysterious and hidden from you. If you are openly saying, “Okay, God, I want to know your true character. Maybe these are things that I’ve been taught in a very unhealthy situation. Maybe scriptures were twisted. It was kind of use the scripture, but they also There was some truth and there was some not truth mixed in there. Getting to know God on a personal level. “Who are you really?” This is so important. This should be a question we’re all asking in a lifetime process. Who are you, God? I want to know you more today than I did before.
As you really seek the Lord, soaking in the scriptures, literally reading the Psalms, seeing the depth of the emotion that people experienced with God, and knowing that that’s a welcome and safe place, God Is a safe being to connect with, because even though he is incredibly holy and incredibly above us and distant, there is also a scripture that tells us that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us to have a closeness to have a friendship with us.
That’s all because of Jesus, not because of anything we’ve done. I don’t deserve that at all. You don’t deserve that. God allows us to have that opportunity to seek Him, to know Him in a personal, intimate way.
Third step, surround yourself with solid biblical teaching, really examining, and for all of these, you have to be in the Word.
You’re not going to know God if you’re not reading the Word. You’re not going to be able to be surrounded and know that you’re surrounded by sound biblical teaching if you’re not comparing it with what God’s Word is saying to you. I think it’s an important reparative experience for you to Have a positive experience with the church.
I know a lot of people have given up on church. They’ve walked away. They’re like, “I’m not doing that anymore,” but I’ve also met some other people who have said, “I’ve had some really painful church experiences, but I’ve gone somewhere else now and God has restored my belief in the church and the importance of that.”
There’s a verse that God, like, is bringing to mind where it talks about, I will restore the years that locusts have eaten. There was this locust plague, basically, and that was God’s promise. “I’m going to restore that.” Even though it takes time for things to grow back, it takes time for fields to recover. God promises us restoration and redemption if we’re seeking him.
As you’re surrounding yourself with sound biblical teaching, when you feel ready, step four is re engaging with the Christian community. I believe that the love of Christ is so powerful, and one of the amazing gifts is that we get to receive that love from other believers and other Christians, it’s just a small picture, a small portrait of how much God incredibly loves us.
It says that we will be known, Christians will be known by our love for other people. Unfortunately, a lot of times that’s not what we’re known for in today’s world, but that is what the scripture tells us, that people will know us by our love for One another. When they see you reaching out to someone who you know is having a hard time or bringing them a meal when they’ve had a child or bringing them a meal and leaving it on the doorstep when someone’s sick, that is a powerful witness and testimony.
We like to believe that we can all survive on our own. We’ll be fine. Everything’s good over here. The reality is, is that we need each other. We need relationships. We need people who can tell us, “Hey, you’re walking sideways there.” We need people to encourage us. We need people to speak truth into our lives. We need people to just have a taco with every once in a while. You know what I mean? Or have a slice of pizza or go out and eat a plate of vegetables, if you’re a vegetarian, whatever is your flavor.
We need people in our lives. God has wired us that way. He didn’t wire us to just be in relationship with Him. He wired us to be in relationship with each other and within community and so many people are missing out on that, and that’s such a hard piece. I know sometimes people feel like, “I’m too busy for that, or I have too much going on, or I’m working too many hours.” You will feel that void, you will feel that sense of loneliness and loss when you’re not connected in the community.
We saw this huge with COVID-19. There have been studies, Cigna did a major study on loneliness. found out it was a major killer of people worse than heart, heart issues and chronic conditions were people that just didn’t have a lot of interactions with others. They tended to die earlier. Amazing, absolutely kind of mind-blowing when you think about how much the interaction between our physical health and our mental health is and that sense of interconnectedness within community.
If you’ve been through spiritual abuse, I want you to know that God loves you. That if you’ve had a bad experience with the church, that those were people who were sinning, don’t put your view of God onto those people, because God is not other people. That is something that you have to remind yourself, or as you’re re-engaging with other Christians, “Okay, these are not the people that hurt me. I’ve been hurt by other people.” That is where I need to allow that to lie and taking the time to heal from the wounds, it allows you to experience forgiveness. I think that’s something that I didn’t list on here, but forgiveness is an important part of the healing process and allows us to be able to open up to other healthy people. to be able to receive love and to give love in the future.
If we remain angry, bitter and remain in unforgiveness, then we won’t be able to move forward and experience health for everyone out there, know that you are very much loved and cared about if you’re interested and you had one of these experiences and you say hey, I want to take some time aside to heal from that.
I do intensive therapies on Fridays in my practice. You can always check that out at bythewellcounseling. com. You can check out more on the podcast at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.
Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views The use of myself or By the Well Counseling our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by god’s great love for you
Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 89. I had the absolute privilege of interviewing KJ Ramsey. This was a situation where I didn’t realize before the interview how much we had in common. We both have a background as trauma therapists with more of a somatic lens. We both graduated from the same seminary.
It was very interesting to see her perspectives based on her own experiences and understanding of scripture. Kj, welcome to the podcast.
K.J.: Hey, thank you for having me.
Carrie: I know that with authors, you guys tend to have a lot of podcast interviews. It’s almost like you’re on a virtual book tour nowadays, right?
K.J.: Basically what it is, it’s an extensive virtual book tour. And an introvert.
Carrie: Oh, no. Well, at least you don’t have to meet as many people face-to-face then.
K.J.: I guess in a way, especially during cold and flu season, and there’s still COVID all around. It’s nice to minimize some of that, but it is good. I get to talk to a lot of really interesting people.
Living with a Chronic Illness and Wrestling with God to Understand Her Suffering
Carrie: So my understanding from scoping out your website is that you talk about your personal story on there, and I imagine that is what you write about as well. You’ve written a few books. Is it an autoimmune condition that you have or some issue that causes chronic pain?
K.J.: I have several autoimmune diseases, but I started with one, which is a way that it typically goes if you have one; it kind of blooms into more. I’ve had ankylosing spondylitis for 14 years, and AS is the shortened version of that, which is better on the tongue. Last year, I got COVID-19, which turned into several more diseases I will have for my life under intense treatment. I have a lot.
Carrie: So you ended up with the long haul COVID symptoms?
K.J.: Yes. Because of it, I had long covid and new diseases, which is hard.
Carrie: I’m curious because you also talked in your story about spiritual abuse, and I’m processing, as well, a lot about healing just in general because my husband was just diagnosed last year with a permanent neurological condition, and there’s no cure for it.
I’m curious if you could share some of your thoughts on healing. I think it helps our audience with anxiety and OCD as well because there’s a lot of struggle in wrestling. Why am I having to deal with this? Why won’t God heal me? Why can’t he take this away from me? He’s all-powerful. He has the ability to do that. Can you tell us about maybe some of your wrestlings with that?
K.J.: I was 20 years old when I suddenly got sick and went from being a fully functional young adult to barely walking and could barely hold a pen or drive myself across campus. I was a college student at the time, and that persisted.
I entered adulthood wrestling with this question of why I have this suffering that doesn’t seem to go away. What is the point? And also, what does God care? What is God going to do about this? And really, my better answers are in the book, my first book, this Too Shall Last. I will say that I’m more a writer than anything else, but I’m a trauma therapist learning how to listen to my body and respond to my own sensations with kindness, compassion, and movement.
I really do believe that there is healing in the way that I would say, the capacity to live as fully as we can, even for some things to be reversed. And that’s with me saying that with a person with a lot that’s wrong on my test results.
And a lot of ongoing pain still in my life that I’ve seen things change, and I’ve seen my capacity to show up in my life grow massively as I’ve learned to listen to my body and what she has to say about how safe I feel on any given day or moment. From both a theological and a trauma perspective, I believe there is possible healing in how we face ourselves with compassion and face one another with compassion. And I caveat that by saying how I define healing might be different than sudden spontaneous removal of all of your symptoms. I think that, actually, pain prompts us to pay attention and bear witness to the pain in our lives.
And when I say pain, I mean all of it. Emotional pain too, struggles, the very inconvenient experience of having intrusive thoughts. That’s painful. Pain prompts us to pay attention and can point us to the places where parts of us still need to be unfolded with the care that needs to be held.
And it’s in that process that we experience more fullness, more joy, that’s healing. There’s a difference between healing and curing. The difference is between good removal of all of your problems and experiencing wholeness, and I think we all can experience wholeness even in a body that continues to have a disease continues to have a mental illness.
Finding Emotional Support and Connection
Carrie: That’s incredible. I don’t think that I could have phrased that better because I think that aligns with some of the process of what I’ve been thinking about with my husband. It’s like we haven’t gotten the healing from, or the cure, like you said, from the diagnosis, but we’ve been healed in the sense that we’ve been healed from isolation.
We have support and other people we’re connected to who are going through this. We have a support system outside of those that are going through it. We’ve been healed from the financial stress of paying for medical bills, and God has provided. That’s something that I want to write about a little bit more.
When we started this journey, it was kind; a lot of people were praying for him, and he was having eye issues, and they were praying for him for healing. That in itself is somewhat of a miracle because even though he has a degenerative condition, his eyes haven’t changed in a year, which we are just really celebrating; that, and so thankful that he hasn’t lost any more of his vision, but it’s been a process of, I think his eye doctor’s probably not a Christian and doesn’t know quite how to make sense of that. I thought when we first started going through this, God would take healing in any form that it comes in.
However you want to do this, if you’re going to heal him physically or if you want to heal him emotionally, and there’s the level where he’ll talk about how, even though he likes to be in the background, he has this walker now that puts him in the spotlight. People speak to him, and he’s able to encourage them. Or even people with mobility issues say, “Oh, tell me about this walker.” It’s just a little bit different from your typical walker. How do I get one of those? Those types of things. It’s been very interesting to see how God’s used him differently with this struggle and suffering because it’s definitely changed him a lot. It changed me a lot and drew us closer to God and each other and those things. I’m really thankful for it.
K.J: I love that you started that off office saying God has healed you of; I don’t know if you put it exactly like this, but your individualism. I think that’s one of the core things that we’re all being invited into, whether it’s with struggling with something like OCD or Ankylos Spondylitis or complex trauma, there’s this invitation to be more fully human, which means to be in relationship to others, to be connected. There’s something about our struggles that invites us in a way that is harder to decline, to be connected, and to be supported, to be seen. The way that my body works, I can’t do life on my own.
I can’t. There are many stretches where I can’t take care of myself fully; beyond that, I need the emotional support of the people around me. I don’t love experiencing that, and I love that my body pulls me into a story where I don’t have to be self-sufficient, and nobody else has to, either. And I think that is the healing in which we’re all being bound.
We’re all being invited into. It’s the space between each other. That’s where Joy is. That’s where wonder is through love; our struggles take us to go there.
How K.J. Discovered that She was in a Spiritual Abusive Situation
Carrie: And we’re entirely too isolated and disconnected from each other in our society. I’m really curious about this. It is kind of totally switching topics, but your story regarding how you discovered that you were in a spiritually abusive conversation just gives us a picture of the warning signs of that or when it starts to click like, “Oh, this isn’t healthy.”
K.J.: In my previous book, the Lord is My Courage, I share a lot of my husband and my story of waking up to the fact that we were in a spiritually abusive faith community in this church and choosing to leave it and trying to heal from it. Dealing with the ongoing effects of religious trauma is so hard about spiritual abuse that it’s often quite subtle.
Of course, there are going to be things that are not subtle. But I think the whole, does the fish know what the water is around them? It’s just, you’re in, you’re swimming in the water, and that’s the water. For us, waking up to the fact that the water we were swimming in was toxic was a slow process of paying attention and sensing our pain.
For us, it was noticing how other people were being harmed. My husband was a pastor at this church, and his coworkers would come to him in tears after being yelled at in the pastor’s office. So hearing other people being belittled or overworked, noticing how people are subtly mocked in staff meetings, and being disturbed by that is part of what woke us up.
At first, we weren’t the people being directly attacked because we were doing the stuff that the pastor didn’t want to do himself. My husband was over pastoral care and counseling, and I ran my counseling practice at the church. This pastor wanted to preach, so we were in good graces because we did something that made the church look good and took stuff off his plate.
That favor you can get with a leader can blind you for a while to how they might be treating other people. But as soon as we started to confront, I don’t love how you yelled at that person; that’s when you become the problem, too. I don’t so much to categorize warning signs or red flags.
The most important thing is that we should know, especially in white evangelicalism, that we have been taught to dismiss our own bodies’ signals about how safe we are in our environment. And call it definitely faithfulness that you should serve no matter what, volunteer, and believe the best of your leaders because of so many things.
The inheritance of Nastheism down to the more recent effects of purity culture. We have internalized and ingested a spirituality that says the body is bad and your emotions are untrustworthy. And I’m here to say that’s not scripturally true, theologically true, or physiologically helpful.
Carrie: Yeah, it drives me bonkers.
The Importance of Emotional Safety in Churches and Communities
K.J.: Yes. It’s terrible. And that in itself is, those are the seeds of religious trauma right there. But your emotions and your sensations about being in church and being around other Christians are actually telling you really important things about how safe you are and how safe everybody is in that community, and learning to listen to your own sense of distress and being disturbed by something is actually what helps you move into more safety.
Sometimes, your body has wise things to point out about whether somebody’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Our bodies helped us over time. Very slowly, our bodies begged us to listen. I know it was listening that got us free.
Carrie: This is something that really bothers me, that when people comment in church, and I’ve heard it repeatedly with pastors, you have to choose faith over your feelings.
Those are interacting with each other all the time. God gave us a body and emotions for a reason, and God has a wide range of emotions. That statement, to me, I feel is very unhealthy, but it’s something that I’ve heard repetitively.
K.J.: You can walk around in public and see people wearing shirts that say faith over fear. It’s so prevalent that we don’t even need to understand how it’s been co-opted by certain political movements. But faith over fear is self-harm because fear is your body’s wise response to show you that you don’t feel safe and help you move into safety and connection. And I know this is bold to say on a podcast, especially about OCD.
Fear is not the enemy. Fear is there to move you somewhere. All emotion is energy meant to move you. Emotion, energy, and motion. It’s intended to prompt you to pay attention to yourself as somebody who deserves safety, connection, fear, and faith. Fear drives you to treat yourself as a friend of God. Fear doesn’t have to be something that we fight.
It can be something that wakes us up. Fear makes you quite alert, and often for those of us with mental illness. It might prompt us to be way more observant than we wish we were all the time. The experience of hypervigilance is not necessarily pleasant, but it is a prompt. It is not the problem; I think it’s the space that goes back to talking about healing.
That’s the space I love seeing people get to make a shift because when you start to treat your fear, which is part of your body’s physiological response to danger and the perception of danger. You start treating your fear as a friend with something important to tell you. Your life changes. There’s room for things not to feel as terrible as they do when you’re fighting part of yourself.
Carrie: It’s so rare that I get to have conversations with somebody that’s this mindful because essentially what you’re talking about is mindfulness. This sense of being curious about our emotional state instead of trying to judge it and say, oh, I shouldn’t be afraid. The Bible says, fear not, so I have to cut that piece off and go with God’s given me love and power to sound mind. And it’s this bizarre Christian CBT, is what I call it, where we try to do some thought replacement, and we’re all going to feel better now, and it just doesn’t work.
Healing Through Embodiment
K.J.: I would say, what I’m saying more than mindfulness is that embodiment is the practice of non-judgmentally paying attention to and responding to our sensations.
I take it one step further because I think that even with mindfulness, we can stay detached from our physical experience. What’s happening? I’m making this little movement you can’t see me. You keep making this movement with my hand, like cutting ourselves off at the neck. Basically, what happens when we feel afraid, or when we feel overwhelmed, we feel ashamed?
Any of these activating big feelings that come up is that the way your body works, you’re temporarily cut off from the regulating power of your prefrontal cortex. So your brainstem is very active, your limbic system and your brain is very active, and your body is quickly mobilizing you to seek safety, and you can’t actually access the part of you that’s, well, God is love, and Christ dwells in me. Therefore, I am actually okay. You can’t access that. So we’re talking about a bottom-up approach to belief, which is that response to the sensation happening in your body; that’s what I mean by bottom. So, the lower half of you, starting with your body, responds to this sensation with curiosity and compassion.
That is what brings your body and mind back together so that you can return to that place of faith, of mentally accepting an ascent and receiving that Christ is with you. Embodiment this non-judgmental, which is easier said than done, paying attention to what’s happening inside your body.
Leaving a Spiritually Toxic Environment
Carrie: When you were leaving the spiritually toxic environment because essentially you both had to leave your jobs, it sounds like that’s a significant shift. How did you recover from that trauma to become more embodied? Was that through your therapy process?
K.J.: The recovery began, I would say, I think something that feels in this moment important to point out is part of why we don’t leave is because we are so afraid of losing our livelihood and our sense of belonging; that’s why we took us so long to leave. Truthfully, the fear of how we will pay our bills and how we will afford insurance. That kept us extended our stay in the land of toxicity for years. And a lot of people don’t talk about the practicality of that. Having money to pay for your groceries and pay for your rent is pretty important. And whether you’re working for a church or maybe realizing maybe my community is unhealthy and you don’t work there.
The fear of losing your belongings is massive. Most of these kinds of churches prompt like they are ordered around the church should be your whole life. This is where you go multiple times a week. Your small group is your community. So what happens when you have to leave? You lose everything. And I no longer think your life should be ordered around an institution, but that’s a separate conversation.
Healing was started by leaving, and that was terrifying. And it was a rescue in many ways that God would lead us out into a broader place. And it was once we were out my body got even more vocal. And I was experiencing a lot of anxiety and tremors in my arms. I was falling. I thought I had had so many mysterious health symptoms over the years with my disease, and I’ve been tested for MS before.
I had a lot of tests done. I had at one point this whole brain and spine MRI done and saw this neurologist, and this was such a moment of grace, of God’s kindness. He showed me the pictures of my brain and spine and said, your brain is beautiful. There is no evidence of disease here. “My wife is a complex trauma survivor, and I think what’s happening is he had asked us questions about what’s been going on in your life.
My wife is a complex trauma survivor.” I think what’s happening here is trauma. The further you escape this situation, the better your body will feel; some of these symptoms will disappear. At that point, I was just a therapist. I hadn’t started to specialize in trauma, but to hear somebody named that for me was incredibly helpful because you feel it’s not; what I’m going through is not that bad.
It’s hard to even get to the point of letting yourself call something spiritual abuse. Because we’re so conditioned to be deferential to pastors, to leaders, and we want to be kind. We think that it’s not gracious to say something or use a word like that, but grace and truth go together. The truth is my body reacted with such violent, intense shows and displays of a lack of safety because I had been so gaslit, demeaned, and pushed out because I had been treated less than human.
My body was responding in kind, saying this is not okay. That was my body’s protest. I started there because I think it was my physical experience of such extreme distress of feeling terrible. That prompted me to seek more help to get into therapy again. I believe that, more than anything, put me on a path of studying somatics and beginning as a therapist myself into great somatics into my practice, and that’s now the foundation of everything I do. But I start there; I just gave you the version of if we would have this conversation for three hours. I always trust that you know what; sometimes, in these conversations, there’s always a reason that what comes to my mind first is what there’s an invitation to say. And so that’s where we went.
Carrie: How wise of that neurologist to be admitting. “Hey, there’s some psychological things going on.” But not make it, “Well, it’s all in your head because you’re kind of crazy.: There’s this balance where some have had either of those extremes.
K.J: Yes, I’ve been told it’s psychosomatic. It’s all in your head dismissively, and blames me like I am too broken. And I’m sure so many people listening have experienced this too, and maybe your husband did far before getting his diagnosis. There’s a vast difference between an acknowledgment of how our brains and bodies are connected that says your symptoms are real and they make sense based on what you’ve experienced.
And this is psychosomatic; if you can fix your mental problems, your body will feel better. That’s the sin right there of individualism. That kind of medical model that blames people’s symptomology on their struggle is why they feel these symptoms when our bodies are begging us to hear the truth about the broader systems that we’re a part of, our family systems, our church systems, our society.
I think the point is that these things we feel are such problems or separate us from those who don’t have struggles as much as we do. I say this as a disabled woman. I think there’s some fierce wisdom in the ways that we struggle that our bodies are trying to tell us. You and those around you deserve more love and support than you have received. All of the symptoms of stress that we experience in how they manifest are shouting to tell us we deserve to be seen, held and helped.
K.J’s Book: “The Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poem to Find Strength in Small Moments
Carrie: Very interesting and definitely brought up some things I haven’t considered. I’m curious for you to tell us about the Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poem to Find Strength in Small Moments. How this book came about and the importance of it. Why does it need to be out in the world?
K.J: Well, we’ve been talking about trauma and part of what happens when we’re experiencing trauma. Also, when we’re feeling overwhelmed, we talked about how your body is strongly mobilizing. Energy to keep you safe, but that is sinking you further away from your being able to access the language centers of your brain, for example.
The point is when life is hard, it’s hard to have words, and the Book of Common Courage is really my offering of words for the moments in our lives and the seasons in our lives when we feel wordless and when we don’t have words to pray, and we wish we did. When we are struggling to make sense of our lives, when we don’t feel strength, and we don’t feel seen. We want to that it’s an offering of presence, as I think that books are portable presence in so many ways that there’s something about a book that can enter into the private place of your home, your bedside, your living room.
And be with you and make you feel less alone in your life and story. I think we all need the reminder that we are not the only ones with questions and confusion about God. And when it comes to whether our stories are excellent. So this is just my offering to bridge that gap between belief and the body, between your hard day and the hope that’s yours.
I wrote it, not meaning to write a book. When I was writing the Lord as my courage when I was processing my own story of religious trauma. I started to write poetry and prayers for myself. Just to process the intensity of the story and really to help myself. There’s poetry is a really distilled form of language, so to help myself distill down, what am I trying to say in this chapter?
What’s the most important thing and what’s just for me and my spouse, and what needs to be out there for thousands and thousands of people to read? Poetry helped me find my way, and then, over time, I just shared it and shared some pieces on social media, mostly because I was tired while writing a manuscript and needed something easy to share.
People felt seen by the poems and the prayers. It was before I called it poetry because I didn’t even feel I could give myself that label. It was through other people’s responses to the words that I was like; I guess maybe this would be encouraging for people, not just for me. And it became a book.
Carrie: I love it. It’s based on Psalm 23.
K.J: Both The Lord is My Courage and the Book of Common Courage walk through the exact breakdown of phrase by phrase through Psalm 23. The book of Common Courage is an exploration. It’s praying through the Psalm, but it’s also praying through getting to receive, being in dialogue with Christ as the good shepherd.
Who is the person who that Psalm was pointing towards? Most of the prayers in the book are a colic, short form of prayer, which is intentional. It’s my trauma-informed way of doing less is more. We don’t need long prayers and lots and lots of words when we’re struggling. We need small, and we need a little bit of containment.
So they’re structured, and they’re a little bit of containment to help you feel held. But they’re mostly appointed at Christ to dialogue with Christ as the good shepherd who still is seeking you.
Carrie: I love less is more. We did an episode not too long back on breath prayers. That’s something that I’ve just been able to incorporate in my life at different times or seasons, and those are very short but very helpful.
If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self who is dealing with chronic pain or spiritual abuse?
K.J: I think that I would tell her your body is not bad. Your body is not betraying you by feeling all this pain and struggling so much. Your body has wise things to say, and I dare you to listen. Please listen to her. I think that’s what I would tell her.
Carrie: That’s definitely good. Your body is not bad. The people hear nothing else from this episode. I hope they receive that piece because, as you said, it’s somewhat so ingrained in our Christian culture to almost be scared. To be embodied, something like you’re getting too new age or something like that is not what we’re doing. And it’s not scriptural to be disconnected from ourselves.
K.J: It’s an expression of faith in God who put on flesh to dwell among us. When I treat my body with reverence, I worship Christ, who decided to become human in a body and still reigns in a body. This is worship.
Carrie: Thank you so much for being on the show today. Share your words of wisdom. I think this is going to be relevant and helpful to a lot of people.
K.J: Thanks for having me.
Carrie: I am currently reading KJ’s first book. I went ahead and picked up a copy after I did the interview, and I’m enjoying it. As always, thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum.
Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Suzanne Burns, founder and executive director of Foundation House Ministries and BeCharityWise. Today on the show, she will share with us about creating a trauma-informed ministry.
How Suzanne started her work with mothers in crisis situations
What led her to do some more research about trauma-informed
Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 82. I am your host, Carrie Bock, and if you’re new to our show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. Today on the show, I’ll be talking with Suzanne Burns about creating a trauma-informed ministry.
I feel like this is so important people in the church to understand and know about, and we’ve had other episodes about helping people with anxiety in the church. So I’m excited about this episode as well. Suzanne, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Suzanne: Yes, I am the founder and executive director of a maternity home, residential and non-residential program for mothers in crisis.
We serve women coming out of jail, out of rehab, pregnant, and a. Sometimes they’ve lost custody or are working towards reunification, whether that’s with family members or with the state. And so we’re part of that process towards getting them to a place of being able to build sustainable stability. And out of what we’ve learned through doing that for the last eight years, we’ve also launched a kind of a side to other churches and nonprofits to help them understand how trauma and poverty mindset and addiction affect the people that they serve so that they can serve more effectively as well.
Suzanne’s Journey and Mission to Support Women Coming out of Difficult Situations
Carrie: Awesome. Now, how did you get started in that work in, you know, mothers in crisis pregnancy situations?
Suzanne: Yeah, I was actually a single mom for a number of years, myself.
I had a crisis pregnancy when I was in college, and then, um, got grew up in a very, very Christian home and found myself by the time I was at a junior, at a Christian university, I was smoking, I was drinking, I was experimenting with illegal drugs, and then I ended up pregnant. And we did get married and it was not good a marriage as it wasn’t a dating relationship, which led to divorce when my son was just right at two.
And then several years of single parenting, I met and married my current husband. We’ve been married now almost 20 years, had a second son. And as I began to kind of rebuild and restabilize, I wanted. Be able to give back to women that were in the same situation that I had once been in. And so I began volunteering at a local pregnancy health center, and I was there for seven years.
I ended up really, really loving it, loving what I did. But we just began seeing more and more women coming through that needed a deeper level of support. They were pregnant and living in their cars. They were afraid of being kicked out by, you know, angry stepdads. They were 24 and didn’t have a g e d kind of floating like a leaf in the wind.
So many of these girls, one particular mom that I recall, she came in one day and she was really frustrated because she had been looking for a job. And so I’m kind of a fixer. So I was asking her, “You know, maybe, are you applying for the wrong kinds of jobs? Are you a poor interviewee? How can I help you fix the problem?”
And she said. “Well, you know, at some point in the interview the baby gets fussy or he needs a diaper change and you know, I’m pretty sure the interview is kind of over at that point.” And of course, my first thought was, “Oh, I’m pretty sure the interview was over when they saw you pushing in the baby stroller.”
But I had been there long enough that I knew that’s never the full picture. So as I began asking more questions, I realized that the reason she was taking her child with her in the first place was because she was living with the baby’s father who was a violent drug dealer and people in and out all day and night.
And so she did not trust him to watch their son even long enough for her to get a job. And I went home that day and told my husband, We have got to do something. It has to be. No one else has stepped up. It has to be us. It took about two and a half years of fundraising and developing, and we opened in 2014 and that conversation was in June of 2011.
Getting Started and Early Challenges
Carrie: Wow. Tell us about, as you started that ministry and were working in it, some of the challenges that you had earlier on that led you to do some more research about trauma information.
Suzanne: Yeah, it was pretty much everything I’ve learned has been because a client came in that we didn’t understand or we didn’t know how to handle, and that is what sent us then to the research.
The Lord is so gracious in giving me a picture and then giving me the education behind it, and then bringing others who need me to know that information. So first it was a poverty mindset, understanding how chronic poverty kind of reshapes. Thinking the worldview of individuals living, especially those living in generational chronic poverty.
Then we started getting some clients coming in who had a history of trauma, but we didn’t understand what that meant at the time because I was used to seeing clients like. One hour every three weeks. You know, living with them is a whole lot different. And so we were getting frustrated and, and we were having a lot of girls come in and go right back out again.
We had one girl come in and she was sick constantly and it was always like an E.R worthy trip. She would go in to, you know, about every three to four. And we began to like time. We began to say, Okay, well it’s been, you know, this period of time we’re about due. And it was always like bladder infection, urinary tracted infection.
It was always something similar but not exactly the same thing. And it was always validated by the doctors, because of course we were like, well, you know, at some point she’s gotta be faking it. and simultaneously with this, she was also losing jobs because of the time off that she was having to take her cycles was six weeks.
And so we were seeing that about every five weeks she was, you know, getting sick, not able to go to work. Her work isn’t happy. They end up firing her, she goes to the er and then we start the cycle all over again. She ended up that year with 13 different W two. And we were so confused. We were so frustrated cuz she was super, super sweet.
And then we had another girl move into the house who like used unbelievable amounts of toilet paper just by herself. This was way pre-pandemic, way before there was an actual toilet paper black market. But we were just like, how is this disappearing? How can one person be using this much? What is going on?
Understanding Trauma-Informed Approach
And then we had a student intern, a Masters in Social work Intern, doing her their practicum with us, and she had us watch a video by Bessel VanDerKolk, who is the author of The Body, Keeps the Score and instantly pieces fell into place. Immediately, we began to realize that this is the physical outgrowth of the trauma that these women had experienced.
That was the big awakening, eye-opening. We were immediately addicted to absolutely everything, trauma-informed to the point that we began teaching others just because we knew so much. We just saw the vast needs. There’s such an ignorance and such a lack within the church to understand. It was so fascinating and it was also such a relief that, “Oh, that it can be fixed.”
There is reason why her stomach issues were so constant. There is the reason why she was unable to process, to digest the healthy nutritional foods we were giving her. Her body had actually acclimated to Mountain Dew and Cheetos for lunch because that had been for years. So when we’re having salads and you know, fresh fruit and.
That was what was abnormal to her system. So layering for me, layering the poverty mindset with the trauma made it so much easier for us to then deal with women coming in with a past of addiction. Those coming in with a history of mental health because it, to me, it’s just like a layer cake based in the generational chronic poverty thinking that then the trauma is, it is components, you know, it’s either affecting or affected by the client and.
That leads to addiction as a coping mechanism, right? It leads to mental health as an epigenetic response to the trauma. It, it’s all interrelated, but it’s all rooted in their trauma, but also rooted in poverty thinking. Just from learning all of that, we have radically revolutionized how we work with.
And we now boost a 97% success rate of our clients being able to maintain their stability at least a year post-graduation, which to us is a housing, transportation, employment, and childcare.
The ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study and Its Connection to Chronic Health Conditions
Carrie: Wow. That is really amazing because those are a lot of pieces and a lot of times what we see is people come into programs and they’re doing okay and then they leave the program and they relapse or something happens and you know, they’re back into that cycle again, like you were talking about. We wanna talk a little bit about the ACEs study, and I’ll have to kind of explain this a little bit to people, and then I have a question for you. So many years ago, I think this was actually done maybe in the nineties or early two thousands, Kaiser, the eighties early is when it started.
Suzanne: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah, so Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare company that’s out west in the US, they said, we really wanna look at these people with chronic health conditions. We weren’t even talking about mental health. They were talking about physical health, things like high blood pressure, and diabetes, and looking at the connection between what they called adverse childhood experiences and these chronic physical health condition.
They had a scale where there’s 10 items on the adverse childhood experience scale. Some of them are things like parental divorce, obviously types of abuse, you know, physical sexual abuse. I think maybe having a parent with an addiction, isn’t that on there? These types of experiences that people had in childhood, and what they found was that okay if you had one or two, there was maybe a little bit more of a risk for you to have a chronic health condition, but once you got four and above, all of a sudden it was like a graph skyrocketed at that point like “Whoa, for these people to have addictions and actually end up with not just addictions, but that was one of the things they were looking at. Like I said, the high blood pressure and cholesterol, and so. and looking at people who have had more adverse childhood experiences may even have a shorter lifespan because of some of these chronic health issues that also arise.
What you had told me when we had talked previously. The average church attender has zero to two adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs are usually and the average range for your ministry is seven to nine, so obviously, that’s a big gap to bridge in people kind of understanding what some of these women have been through like can you talk to us about like the challenges of bridging that gap?
Suzanne: Yeah, exactly. So many of them have this significant trauma history. Someone with an ACEs score of seven to nine means that they have experienced at least one instance of seven to nine of those items on the ACEs study. And just for your audience, they are physical, emotional, sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, and then household dysfunction category is a family member with mental illness and incarcerated relative domestic violence, mother treated violently, substance abuse or divorce, but that also can include fatherlessness. What we found was that these women are coming in and they’re carrying this load of trauma.
They’re carrying the past pain, they’re carrying the physical effects of this. They’re carrying the social and emotional and cognitive impairment because of that, you know, many of our moms about 70% did not graduate with a high school diploma or GED because all of this trauma is happening as children.
And so that is significantly affecting them as far as school goes. Then you get labeled a bad kid, and so then you begin adopting those risky health behaviours, whether it’s teen boys that are driving too fast, whether it’s dating the wrong kinds, whether it’s, you know, drugs and alcohol and, and all of these different things that then lead to disease, disability, social problems, you know, in and out of jail, in and out of rehab programs, which can then lead to early death. It can also lead to chronic heart disease, to certain forms of cancer, to COPD and so many different things that we don’t even associate usually at. For an 18 to 22-year-old, the ACEs study does demonstrate.
So we have women coming in from the church who want to volunteer. You know, in this world that have experienced, like me, the ACE questionnaire asks you from birth to age 18 that to answer that I was a zero. All of my ACEs occurred during this one single relationship. And I went from a zero to a seven and then kind of back down again once I began to get my life back together.
Challenges in Ministry and Volunteer Engagement
I have a certain degree of experience, but I cannot relate to the majority of our clients. In the fullness of what they’ve experienced. And so these little volunteers from the churches would want to come in. I experienced this when I was young, you know, I did that. And so they think that that is enough to balance out the relationship.
It really isn’t because they can’t understand the depth of the brain changes that have occurred. So one of the most important things for us when we’re talking with new prospective volunteers is to really get them to understand what has changed in the brain development of our typical client. They think differently. They respond differently. They have been conditioned to think in these certain ways, and so their behavioral patterns. It takes a long time to change those. So you’re going to see more rapid outbursts of anger. You’re gonna hear foul language as just as common. You’re going to see and hear things that you’re not going to expect in a typical ministry, and you don’t necessarily have permission to address it.
That’s usually the hardest part because that is hard. They haven’t built trust with our clients. We have, many of our volunteers want to come in and they wanna do bible. Well, many of our girls just flat aren’t interested first of all, and second of all, even if they are interested, they’re not ready for that level.
There’s a great deal of biblical illiteracy, but there’s also a lot of church hurt and church abuse that has to be gotten over before they’re ready for these types of things. And so many times they wanna come in and volunteers from the church want to come in and do these big deep Bible studies with the.
That impacted them, but they’re not a good fit for our clients because maybe they can’t read that well. Maybe they’re not equipped to do the amount of homework that is associated with some of these types of programs. Maybe they’re not ready emotionally for what is going to be unveiled. Maybe they’re not ready as far as just being able to read scripture specifically.
Some of those Old Testament names are really complicated, especially if you accidentally ask one of ’em to read out loud because you’re wanting to draw them in. You’re doing the things that in a typical church environment you want to do, it can backfire. And so we have to be really, really careful to equip our volunteers wisely so that they’re not set up for failure because our mission is not our volunteers.
Our mission is our client. And so our volunteers cannot run off our clients, but there have been several times where our clients run off volunteers.
Carrie: Yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah. If you haven’t been used to that, kind of, that experience of what those people have been through in terms of the emotional reactivity that can happen with PTSD over something that, to you seems very slight, but it was a huge deal exactly for that individual.
It was a huge trigger and I think, one of the things that you’re touching on is a lot of times what the church can be guilty of is in these types of ministries going in and trying to like clean people up, like, “Here, let me help you. Here’s some money, or here’s a job, or here’s some clothes and you know, we’re just gonna fix you all up and everything’s gonna be good.” When really true transformation has to happen from the inside out.
The Importance of Understanding and Patience When Working with Individuals in the Healing Process.
I’m curious in terms of like what you’ve seen regarding that may be in your work with other ministries, kind of how you’ve helped them to like reframe that like their role.
Suzanne: Exactly. A lot of times. Well, so it’s two-fold. One is the focus internally and how you work with clients, and the other one is how you message that to the greater community, to your donor base or to your volunteer pool, or like your occasional volunteer pool.
A lot of times, I’ll use the analogy of a pound, because sometimes if you can change the picture from people to animals, it’s a little bit easier to process. Not that I’m equating our clients with. But sometimes it’s just an easier word picture to process. You find a, you know, a stray dog on the side of the road and he’s dirty and matted and, and filthy and you know, you’ve got all sorts of insects and everything crawling all over him.
He’s just really unhappy, starving. And you pick him up and you take him to the pound, they’re going to do a lot of work. They’re. Be checking him out by a doctor. They’re gonna be cleaning him and, and de fleeing and debugging him. Whatever’s crawling on him, they’re gonna be getting him the nutrition that, that he needs.
That’s a process. It’s not an instantaneous, “Oh, I found a dog on the side of the road and now he’s ready for adoption into a new home”. They have to see what’s his temperament. What kind of personality he has. Does he get along well with other animals? Does he get along with small children?
Before they can put this animal into the adoptable population, they have to do some rehab work. But when we look at people on the side of the road, it’s like we have the expectation that all you need is a shower, a hot meal, and a change of clothes, maybe a haircut. But you ought to be fine now and go get you a job and let you know.
Start paying your own way, and it’s not at all the same. The women that we work with are so broken and they have been holding themselves together for so long that a lot of times our first few months is just giving them space to finally acknowledge their broken. And finally, feel all the feelings that they have been hiding from for so long before we can even begin the process of rehabilitation to get them to the place where they can then learn, then grow, and move forward.
Our motto is rescuing mothers, rebuilding lives and restoring futures. And that is very much the progression that we walk through with these women. Rescuing can take upwards of six. Rebuilding. That’s the point where she’s finally ready to start working and getting the job skills that she needs and figuring out, you know, credit and starting to save money to buy her first vehicle because we, we live in a semi-rural area where there is not public transportation, and so a car is almost always her first goal.
And then getting daycare and getting healthy, getting her into the ob-gyn office and, and checking her out, making sure the baby is doing well. And then as she begins to kind of master some of these things and start looking towards the future. Now we can start thinking about what does rebuilding look like for her.
What does living independently look like for her? And that whole process. Overall, pre-pandemic, we were looking at six months to a year for most. And since that time, it really is more like 18 months to two years, partly because of economic changes and partly because we are seeing a significant increase in the severity of the women that come to us.
And just for a frame of reference, we’re the only maternity home within 150 miles. So we serve 13 counties by design and several others by default. So it’s a really vast population that many, many, many are in this boat, but they are not being served because we are so limited on staff in size.
Carrie: Where are you located at?
Suzanne: Right outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Carrie: Okay, great. Tell us about BeCarityWise.
Suzanne: Yeah, that is our training arm. We have online videos and we also do in person, whether live via Zoom or local trainings to help other churches, and nonprofits understand how trauma and poverty mindset and addiction affect the people that they serve so that you can serve more effectively if people are interested in going to becharitywise.com.
I’ve written a short little book called The Accidental Social Worker that helps you get a feel for the why behind some of these things, why poverty mindset is an issue, and why trauma is affecting [hysically. Many times we just assume that, okay, well you’re not in trauma anymore. I’ve rescued you out of that. I’ve got you a safe bed to sleep in. I’ve got new food. You know, that should be enough. But the trauma carries with them because the trauma is not actually the event that happened. It’s the emotions associated with the event that happened, and that can carry through really for a lifetime until these women are able to find healing.
Carrie: Yeah, that’s huge. A lot of overlays between what you are talking about and foster care. You know, this sense of like, okay, so we’ve removed this child from the home where there was addiction and poverty, neglect, and now we’ve put them in the suburbs with this. Nice family and everything’s safe and good, but they’re still responding as though they’re in that abusive, neglected environment. You know that that happens.
Suzanne: Exactly.
Carrie: Quite frequently and a lot of times people, they’re very confused by that. Like, what in the world is going on where? Responding this way? I think that what you’re doing is so important in terms of us being able to effectively minister to people out in the community, like the real world, real life stuff that you’re seeing, and so I appreciate you sharing with us about that.
At the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.
Suzanne: The one that sparks me is actually what got me out of my first marriage and on this long journey, even though at the time I really didn’t realize it. I was so, I was still in active addiction with my first husband, but I was managing it, You know, he was a musician, which meant he didn’t have to work apparently.
and so I was doing what I could to earn more like I had sold mortgages at this time. I was selling insurance and I had had a really frustrating day and I went to go to my mother-in-law’s to pick up our son, and I was just kind of complaining, you know, these were good little church people as well. And so I was still talking the talk when I was around them, and I just said, You know, it was so frustrating.
I just, I don’t understand why God just won’t bless me. My mother-in-law just very graciously turned around and said, Well, What are you doing that God can bless? And then she just went back to filling my son’s little backpack as we got ready to go home. But in an instant, I was just stripped naked. I was so raw and open and vulnerable.
I finally saw myself through the Lord’s eyes, and that was the day that I had to shift everything. That was November. 2000. And from that point forward, it took several weeks for me to quit smoking. But uh, that was the only thing I was really personally addicted to. But the cigarettes, the alcohol and the drugs just stopped immediately.
My marriage was, was more of a challenge. But by February, my son and I were living independently because I couldn’t stay any longer. The veil had been, And I couldn’t unsee it. And I knew that if I stayed in my first marriage because my first husband was not willing to leave that lifestyle, I knew that I would not be strong enough to stay stable on my own.
It was either with him and clean or without him and clean. And he chose without. And so, that to me is one of the defining conversations of my life. And it was probably 15 seconds long.
Carrie: Yeah. Sometimes all you need is that like kind of one or two sentences and it just sparks something within you.
That was huge, Sounds like a turning point. And change the whole trajectory of your life.
Suzanne: It sure did. Yeah.
Carrie: Wow. And we’ll put links in the show notes to where people can find you and hopefully, some people will kind of take advantage of these trainings for their churches and, and ministry sites.
Carrie: Welcome to Hope For Anxiety and OCD episode 73. I just have to do a little short shout out before we get started. Cause it’s actually coming out on my brother’s birthday. Happy birthday Paul, and hope that you have a good one. I am here with my good friend, Erica Kessie who we have known each other for over four years now. Did you realize that because.
Erica: Great.
Carrie: Erica actually through my business. It’s very first birthday party. When my business, By The Well Counseling, turned one and we were in the suite together. So that was just a really fun time. And my business just turned five this year. That was exciting too.
Erica: Wow. Five years old. What they say about five years, it takes you about five years to become profitable in your business.
Carrie: Wow. Well, fortunately for counseling, we’re able to do that a little bit earlier. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here. Most businesses don’t last to five years though, right?
Erica: They don’t.
Carrie: So that’s, that’s exciting.
Erica: Yes, it is. Congratulations.
Carrie: Thanks. I wanted you to give us an update Erica, on your business, because I know that some things have shifted changed from when we recorded last, that was on episode nine, which was the very end. The very end of 2020, what’s been going on in your business in the last year and a half.
Erica: So many wonderful things. The more that you’re in business, the more that you get clear on who you serve and how you want to serve them. I have coined myself now, the leader’s healer, cause I wanted to broaden my target out to all leaders. Be mothers, doctors, nurses professionals, because I recognize with my own experience that sometimes leaders feel lost and in order to not be lost. It’s important for you to make sure you take care of yourself. That’s so important and putting yourself first, those who have servant hearts, right? They are leaders and they put everyone before themselves. So it’s important that they take care of themselves, do their own work.
Carrie: Right.
Erica: About own anxiety and their depression and imposter syndrome. And also if they do their own work, they will also be doing something that’s so important. And dear to my heart is to do no harm. I think a lot of people don’t talk about that. But there are many circumstances in which Carrie knows that counselors and therapists and even other leaders do harm in ways, because they haven’t did their own work. So I’m the leaders, healer and the entrepreneur therapist. I provide professional training and speaking, as well as civil little counseling and coaching alignment, executive coaching.
Carrie: One of the things that you do that I really appreciate is you help businesses and leaders, like you were saying, “understand the importance of counseling skills and how those can be useful in their business environment”.
Erica: I have a book called “Honey”. You need counseling skills. And these are soft skills as well as life skills. It is vision casting. A lot of even entrepreneurs don’t know the difference between vision and mission. So vision casting, mission creation, time management, communication skills, and thrive planning, which is it’s a strategic and personal plan to thrive. We have a plan for everything else. Why don’t we have a plan to thrive?
So there’s thrive plan for that.
Carrie: Awesome. Today we’re talking about boundaries, which I’m really excited about, I just.
Erica: I’m so excited.
Carrie: I’ve decided to dial some things back on the podcast and do some like 1 0 1 type episode. Let’s consider this boundaries 1 0 1 there’s lots of conversations we could have on boundaries. We’re gonna keep it really simple today for people because it’s a word that’s thrown around. And a lot of people don’t really understand what it means or how they can start to begin to even look at boundaries in their own lives or setting them. We’re in a society right now, unfortunately, where all, all kinds of lines are being blurred, lines between work and home, lines between professional relationships and personal relationships.
I asked a group of therapists today, I said, is professionalism dead. And we kind of had a chuckle about it, but I was serious, you know.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: Because there’s a lot of people that are in professional roles that are acting in unprofessional ways. So this conversation on boundaries. Is super important in the same way between client and therapists. There have been lots of different ways that receiving therapy has changed. Whereas maybe, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago we would never have texted with a client. And I still don’t text with clients in that way, but some therapists, that’s how they set their schedule. We have to kind of talk about some of these things of boundaries lines, and we won’t get into all the ethics today.
Although that cause that’s gonna be another episode. I know that’s something that Erica is really passionate about is, good ethics for professionals and leaders. Let’s talk about what is a boundary, how would you define that for somebody?
Erica: I wanna keep it as simple as possible. There’s a book called it by Henry Cloud. He’s an older book and it’s called “Boundaries”. And the way he explains it is like having a fence in front of your house. Certain people can come in the fence. For example, your mailbox is outside the fence. The mailman only goes and handles that particular part of your property. Then you have individuals like the Amazon man. He comes to the door and he drops your package he’s off, but he doesn’t come in. Correct? Or you can even say, leave it there and don’t knock. Right? When you send message, when you create your package, then you have people that can come be in your living room, your kitchen.
They can even walk down the hall sometimes and be in the spare bedroom, but only certain people can be in your master bedroom, in your bathroom. Think about it that way. It makes it really simple on how we have to isolate out who deserves to be where in our lives we are our house. This is our temple. Okay. And only certain people should be able to come through our eyes, through our ears and to allow them to be a part of our space. These are guidelines for ourselves and for others to keep us safe.
Carrie: There’s internal boundaries. I think that we can even set within ourselves. I think a lot of times we think about boundaries with other people, but there’s internal boundaries that we can set within ourselves. Just kind of knowing our move and groove of life. For example, and I know this has to do with other people. But for therapists in terms of like how many sessions that we choose to do in a day, or, you know, how many clients we see, how many of them are going to be new clients. I know for me, it’s harder to meet with new people than it is to meet with people that I’ve known for a long time.
I already know how they’re going to act, to flow. They’re not gonna read me the wrong way or if, if I say something funny, they’re gonna be like, what is that? You know, they’ll call me out on it. Whereas if I have a new person, I have to be a little bit more cautious about what I say, how are they gonna receive this and so forth. So that’s kind of maybe an internal boundary within myself that I might set for myself, or I could tell myself, you know, a boundary is that I’m gonna shut off all my electronics at a certain time so that I can get a good night’s sleep. Can you think of any of those that you have for yourself?
Erica: Oh yes. Internal boundaries. AKA your discipline, your own discipline. I have a certain discipline as 12:00 I take lunch. No one has that time. One o’clock is usually my nap time. If I don’t have a nap, I usually have a nap another time during the day. I am Adam adamant about it.
I need a nap. It’s just good for me to have my siesta every day. And those are internal boundaries, but I have other boundaries regarding myself as far as making sure that I don’t overextend myself. I have to watch myself every day. Not to have the savior complex. I’m sorry, I’m adding in things that are more complex.
This is the perfect actually podcast to talk about the savior complex. None of us is Jesus. We need to not try to be Jesus.
Carrie: That’s right. We’re not out here to rescue everyone who’s in crisis.
Erica: Yes. And so we have to decide to remind ourselves. I have to remind myself every day, I call my reminder not to overextend myself, to watch all my obligations and watch my schedule to make sure I’m not doing too much boundaries of making sure that physically making sure that I eat. And I’m cognizant of everything that I put in my mouth. So really being intentional is my internal boundaries.
Carrie: Why do you think that boundaries are so important? Obviously what you’re talking about is boundaries relating to self care. Why else are boundaries important?
Erica: Boundaries let you know exactly where you end and somebody else or the environment begins. It’s a great way to make sure that you have all the things that you need and that you’re cognizant of all the components of your life in order for you to have harmony. It’s important for you to have harmonies physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, professionally, all these ways. And we have to be cognizant of doing that. That’s the hard work. That’s a lot of work actually to do, but it it’s the kind of work that we should be doing instead of putting ourselves out there. To help other people. It’s so easy for us to extend ourselves, to help other people and neglect ourselves.
So it’s so important to have boundaries with yourself and to be cognizant of taking care of yourself, because guess what, you know, everybody’s heard this, you gotta put your option mask on in order to help other people, or one thing that I say, going back to that vision, that we were talking about my vision for myself, which that’s why this is a boundary as well. Is, I will if I like and love myself so authentically and thoroughly that I overflow onto those who stand close. Part of that boundary is, I’m not gonna seek out people to help. They will stay close if they want my help. And I will make sure I focus on loving myself and going a step more into liking myself.
So sometimes we may love ourselves and we may not like ourselves. Right? So we have to like ourselves too, and know what we know like and trust about our self.
Carrie: Boundaries really connect with our values. We really connect with what’s important to us. So if I say that my daughter is important and you have a daughter too.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: If we say our daughters are important to us, and then we don’t set up boundaries to protect that time that we have with our children. If I don’t take the time, set up boundaries to protect time that I have with my spouse or time for church and investing in my spiritual health. Not just church, but time at home where I’m reading, where I’m praying, then my values are not in alignment with my actions.
And then that causes all kinds of anxiety and internal conflict, right? I wanna be with my daughter, but I’m doing all of this over here. I’m taking on extra responsibilities. I don’t need to, you kind of call me out and say, you know, you’ve just had a child. Your normal is changed care. You have to accept that. You’re not gonna be able to go back and do all the things that you used to be able to do, which was a good call out, by the way, you know, you need to have friends like Erica in your life to call you out.
Erica: Well, you call me out too, is the end goal. Why are you doing this? This is so helpful for me, who run off trying to help people like what’s the end goal. We gotta get our money. We need to make sure we are. Moving towards getting money, not just doing all these things, because that’s how we need food, clothes, and shelter. That’s why we work. She calls me out too.
Carrie: Don’t do too much. I wanna talk about examples of situations that the people experience in life. That cause them to have difficulty setting boundaries. It caused them difficulty to be able to say no, or say, man, that’s an excellent opportunity, but it just doesn’t fit in my life right now. You know, maybe later, let, let’s talk about that another time. I mean, there’s lots of different ways that you can say no to something or say yes to something, but what are some situations people go through that cause them difficult their boundaries.
Erica: That’s a great question, Carrie. I don’t think people talk about the situations,
Carrie: Right?
Ericaa: When you grow up, you as a child, sometimes don’t wanna do something, right? And then your parent tells you you’re gonna do it. Okay. I have to abide by this person or I have to please. Most children spend time wanting to please their parent, guess what? Then they grow up being people pleasers. Then you have a problem saying no that’s having poorest boundaries. When you are unable to say no and get yourself involved in everybody trying to help people. Then if you have some kind of trauma or you’re a pain that happens in your childhood, you’ll have rigid boundaries around certain things.
Scenarios would be, you have a balls.
There’s a power differential between you too. You don’t want to what lose your job or being seen in a negative way or retaliation in any kind of way. So you say yes to things that are against your values. You can’t go spend time with your daughter because your boss wants you to work extra hours. There’s so many scenarios with our partners. We may not want to do something like they wanna watch anime all night. You’re like, I gotta go to bed and they’re like, we don’t never spend no quality time with me. That’s a guilt trip, FYI. Let’s going into those manipulative tools. Anyway have to be able to say the boundaries, but you may have a rift in the relationship that you don’t wanna experience because you had to assert yourself and say, “I don’t wanna do this”.
So you have to have good communication skills. You have to be able to assert yourself. You gotta be brave to hold your boundaries.
Carrie: Let’s talk about parenting for a little bit, because this is a huge issue. If you had parents who were like, I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m the adult, you’re the child. It reminds me of that dad in Matilda.
She’s smart enough to realize that some of the things that he’s doing are wrong. Right? As a child, she’s like, wait a minute, dad, that’s wrong. You’re cheating people up to go into a movie analogy, but that’s basically what he tells her, you know, I’m right you’re wrong. Then we’re not teaching kids to think for themselves.
And there’s no autonomy there that’s learned. So it’s, it’s finding this balance. You wanna set boundaries for your kids, but you wanna help them understand why those boundaries are there.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: There’s a reason. There’s a difference between saying don’t you ever talk to a stranger, you know, and, and threats and those types of things, I’ll spank your behind If you do that and a parent who says, Hey, we don’t talk to strangers and let me sit down and tell you why I’m telling you, you don’t just run up to the guy that says he has puppies to show you. There are people out there that want to do your harm. Here’s the lines that are drawn. You know, I’m asking you to pick up after yourself because one day you’re gonna be an adult with a house and you’re gonna have it. Learn how to manage a household, not just your room. So if you can’t pick up your room, you’re not gonna be able to manage a household.
Erica: Oh my goodness. You understand this because also you used to work with children as well. And I also, we both specialize in planning, express for arts therapies. We understand that we need to respect them and honor their thoughts and honor their behavior and try to empathize the reason behind the behavior that they’re exhibiting. I always find that it’s the parents. If I need to get the parents straight, cause it’s not the kid, the kid does need a healthy relationship with somebody who was going to honor them, who was gonna respect and listen to them. You have to teach your children communication. You have to let them know the reason behind it. You don’t just say it’s because I said so.
Carrie: Right. Everybody at one point or another, I’m sure there’ll be some point where I say it, you know, so , I’m not gonna call anybody out for that. But I think growing up in a type of household where the boundaries were not just strict, cause a lot of people grew up in a strict household, but where the boundaries were too rigid really. I mean, you got in trouble practically for breathing in some of those households. It can be, people have a really, really hard time setting boundaries because they were always told, no, you can’t do that. And it was very much that authority position.
They probably felt less than. And, you know, growing up in some of those environments or let’s talk about something even further where there were environments of abuse, there were boundary lines being crossed. In that person’s childhood, it doesn’t matter what kind of abuse it was, physical, emotional sexual. There was a line that was crossed and it was basically told your rights, your needs, you know, were not valued, were not important at all. And there was a violation there. And so people who have had their boundaries violated often have a hard time setting them for themselves. I mean, is that something that you’ve seen as well.
Erica: Definitely. They don’t understand what healthy boundaries is. So let’s explain what that is let’s define that. And then also go and look things up. One thing that I say is don’t listen and wait for someone to define things for you. This is what I tell my daughter. Go and find out for yourself. Look it up, go to the library, Google it, ask around. That’s one reason how abuse happens is the isolation of the information and your experience with an exposure to things. So always define things for yourself. Let’s define healthy boundaries. That’s when you are able to say yes to something or no to something based on how you feel, you understand how you feel about the circumstance and it aligns with your values. Going back to what you said, your values, and you understand how to assert your boundaries and say clearly and not have a problem with saying clearly. Yes, I can do this because, or no. And guess what period.
You don’t even have to give any definition. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t wanna do it. It’s simple. You can say no and that’s it. And I know may, sometimes people feel like, I can’t say no, there’s gonna be backlash if I say no, but a lot of time. It is you that’s stopping you from saying no, it’s your fears. So you have to interact with your fear and ask that fear. What’s why are you coming up? What’s going on? There is fear and there’s love. So how can we bring love into this circumstance to kinda dissipate this fear that you have that you can’t say no for something you don’t wanna do.
Carrie: And it’s okay to have physical boundaries with people. I think I wanna throw that out there.
Erica: Yes.
Carrie: If you don’t feel comfortable, some people are huggers. I like hugs, but I’m more of a person that I want to hug people that are close to me, that I know really well, that I’m really comfortable with and have had that kind of relationship. Some people just wanna hug you the first time they meet you. I’m not quite Into that, you know, but, I’ll probably have an uncomfortable look on my face and kind of do one of those tap hugs or something like that, where you just kind of lightly tap ’em on the back. Hey, it things, things like that. If you have somebody maybe that you feel like is too touchy, you know how the, some people just wanna touch you when they talk to you.
Maybe this is not as much cause of COVID maybe we’re we’re keeping a little more distance. I don’t know. I remember there was one time where I was talking to somebody. And a kind of a dinner thing and they just kept touching me. And I didn’t say anything about it, but I thought, well, this is really, you know, kind of odd and thinking about it just in terms of interpersonal context and things. But if you don’t want somebody to hug you, or if you’re in a dating relationship and you’re not comfortable.
Erica: I’m think about that Carrie all the way.
Carrie: With certain things, then it’s okay for you to say, I’m not there yet in the relationship. I don’t wanna kiss you yet. You know, I’m not there. Those are examples of physical boundaries that we can set for ourselves. And if you’re in a dating relationship, you probably need to have some of those conversations pretty early about where you’re at, what your expectations are, what you want, what you don’t want, because those can really go south fast. If you’re not upfront with the other person absolutely.
Erica: It’s all about having the right fit. If you feel like you can’t say no to someone, then you probably need to investigate that relationship about why you feel unsafe to say no.
Carrie: And regardless you brought up bosses earlier, and if you were an adult
to adult relationship. That’s what we’re trying to seek out. Even though there is some power differential there, you do have to respect your boss. You do have to listen to them. You do have maybe, probably some things from your job that you can’t say no to, but let’s say for example, that your boss hires you. This happens all the time, America, right? Your boss hires you and says, “Hey, you’re gonna work Monday through Thursday, 10 hour or you know, you’re only gonna put in 40 hours a week. That’s all we’re gonna ask from you”. And then next thing you know, you’re into the job two months later. Well, you know, we need somebody come in on Fridays. We just don’t have anybody come in on Fridays. And can you please, we really are gonna need you here this Friday. That’s an example where somebody has a freedom, perfect freedom to set a boundary, even though that’s their boss, even though they’re in authority role.
Erica: Yes, very much so like right now we have the great resignation that’s happening. Cause most people recognize that I don’t wanna be disrespected. I don’t wanna be disregarded for my personal life. And this is my job description. I’m supposed to be able to deliver this, but you also have to be courageous enough to speak up and say, that’s what it is.
Everybody knows the 80 20 rule when you’re working 80% of the people are not working or lacks of days old on how they work. And 20% are doing most of the work, right? Don’t be 20%. You have to decide that I told plenty of my clients, you should probably work. Give them 20% of your energy. And she actually got an award for her work ethic. After she did it, but also I told another lady who was having heart issues and stress and anxiety about working to slow down and only give them 20%. And her heart palpitations stopped.
Carrie: Wow.
Erica: Sometimes we do it to ourselves. A lot of this. Is, we have to step back now. It’s hard to do it in a job that you went in there and I’m gonna fix it all. And now everybody think you gonna keep on fixing it all. But if you go to another job or you could try to fix help with the boundaries, boundaries are easier with new circumstances sometimes because.
Carrie: That’s true. They’re definitely.
Erica: You can say this is who I am and they don’t know you to be a pushover. They don’t know you to be a doormat or a people please. But when you really wanna decide for yourself that boundaries need to happen, sometimes environment has to an environment change has to happen too.
Carrie: I don’t think I can stand behind giving your employer 20%. I think you’ve got to really work as an unto the Lord, you know, as a scriptural principle. And so I think that you have to put forth the effort to do a good job, but there’s, there’s a difference between doing a job where it’s like you said, kind of killing your health. And, and if you’re at that point, then I think that a conversation needs to happen to with your employer or your spouse. If you need to take a step back or whatever, to be able to say, you know, this job really is affecting my physical health, my mental, emotional health. And sometimes people have to either work less or they have to pick a less stressful job or different work environment. Maybe they need to be working from home.
Whatever the case is there are a variety of different boundaries and it’s okay to say to your employer, you know, I feel like I’m doing too much. I feel like the workload is too heavy. I don’t think that I need some help with this. How can we delegate some of these responsibilities? Is that okay? That those types of conversations I think are super important because unfortunately not just employers, but if someone sees that you are willing to have your boundaries crossed time after time after time again, like if you come in on that Friday, just this Friday. And then next thing you know, two Fridays later. You know, we need you again on Friday. It’s like, no, I agreed to work Monday through Thursday was our agreement. I’m not gonna be able to come in on Friday.
I had a friend a long time ago who, one of his first jobs he worked at McDonald’s when he was a teenager. And he said to the people, when he got hired, he said, “Hey, I just want you to know that I will work any day, but Sunday I’ll work, you know, the evening shift I’ll work late at night. I’ll I’ll work in the morning whenever I can”. Obviously it was the summer or something. He wasn’t in school. I’ll work here, but I will not work on Sundays. And so is that okay with you? I just want you to know that, is that okay? They said, “sure, that’s fine we can accommodate your schedule”. So the first time they scheduled him for a Sunday, he said, “now you remember that I told you I’d work any day, but Sunday and I’d work all these different shifts. I’m going to church on Sunday and I won’t be here. I just wanted to let you know that ahead of time, because that was our agreement”. And you know what, they had to honor that at the end of the day, cause that was what they had agreed to. But had he said, they put me on the schedule. I’ve gotta do it. I’ve gotta go in. They would’ve probably continued to schedule him for some days. And then that would’ve been a violation of his, not just his boundary, but his values of church and spiritual rights.
Erica: His religious rights as well. I wanted to go back really quick to say that most of my clients are really high functioning individuals that give like 200% work. So I have to say 20% to help them to edge off.
Cause if I told them only give them 50%, they would still give them 150%. So I’m trying to get them to edge off and not do so much because they’re a lot of their energy, cause they’re just high functioning individuals who feel like they have to work very, very hard. Those are usually my clients. I have the high functioning anxiety clients most of the time.
Carrie: So you, you have to throw out something drastic to get them to dial it down just a little bit. Okay, let’s talk about how do you know a boundary has been crossed?
Erica: Great question. First of all, you can feel it. It’s a gut feeling.
Carrie: Yes.
Erica: You can feel it. The thing is we ignore our feelings because going back to what we said about growing up, we had those good feelings and our parents shut it down. We were silenced. So you think, this is the feeling that I always have here, but I had to do it anyway. So I’m just gonna go ahead and do it anyway, like surrender to. I’m saying if you have this feeling, listen to it and acknowledge it. I feel statement is amazing. Go ahead and figure out what the feeling is. I feel irritated, frustrated. It doesn’t matter who this is, whoever you’re talking to, you can say this statement. I feel when you, whatever they did, I would like you to there’s that boundary. I would like you to whatever you would like them to do. That’s very explicit on what they can do to help you not feel frustrated. Now sometimes people do not respect your boundaries.
First of all, if they don’t respect your boundaries, then you have to go ahead and recognize that in this relationship, this person does not respect me. You have to decide if you’re gonna continue to be disrespected, or you’re want to figure out a way that this relationship is something that you maybe need to not have in your life.
And the other thing is, other than disrespecting you, you have to make sure that the individuals are clear, very clear on the boundary that you set. A lot of times, we’re kind of, you make me unhappy. I will like you to make me happy no like.
Carrie: What in the world does that mean?
Erica: Right. What does happiness to you? So that means that you gotta do some internal work to know what your boundaries are. I think a lot of times people wanna have boundaries. But they haven’t figured out what they like, how they want people to treat them. What do you want? I ask you for that. I ask a child that what they like want they know.
Carrie: Yes.
Erica: I know because they’re so accustomed to accommodating others, especially women, Carrie, let’s talk about that, that story that you said it was a man.
I haven’t heard many stories like that when a woman doesn’t to it and go ahead and go with.
Carrie: I mean, you look at women are much less likely to negotiate their salary going into a job. Because they just feel like, well, someone’s giving me a number. That’s what they’re comfortable with.That’s just what I’m supposed to take. And going from there, you know, that’s a boundary. If you say, you know, I have the skills and experience and I can show on paper that I should be making this much money or somebody else offered me this, are you able to match that? Or I need to be making my current salary. That’s okay to have that boundary. I think in terms of going back to like, feeling like a boundary has been crossed for me, it usually comes up as anger.
A lot of times, like, I’ll feel this feeling of anger. And a lot of times, you know, I’ve been in business five years. I talked about that. And so when I feel like something’s not working and it was frustrating me, I would say, okay, Something’s frustrating me about this process or this system, what do I need to change? But that anger came first and that was a good gut check for me. Okay, I’m frustrated, I’m angry. Why am I frustrated and angry? Okay. Well, because maybe I took on this client that wasn’t the best fit for me. You know, maybe it was a referral from a colleague and I felt like I really needed to take that person on.
Maybe it was somebody really begged me. They couldn’t find a therapist. And so those days are long gone. If I don’t feel like people are a good fit, I don’t have any problems, you know, referring them out or something.
Other things, I’m just thinking of other things that came up were phone calls. I was spending a lot of time on the phone with, you know, people that hadn’t really researched who I was or what I do and was trying to, I literally was trying to help everyone that called me on the phone, whether they wanted anger management classes. And I didn’t have anything to do with that, whether they wanted, you know, something for custody issues with their children, which I didn’t do. And so here I was trying to find resources for people and pick up the phone every time I called, because I thought, well, these people really need help and I need to be the one to help them.
I had to really let that go because. I recognize you cannot help every person that calls you on the phone. That is impossible. You’re not the right person to help everybody that calls on the phone. Some of them need other things and it’s okay. You don’t have to pick it up every time it calls, you can let it go to voicemail and you can return the call later. It’s gonna be okay. It’s not gonna be a huge thing, but that was some hard boundaries for myself in terms of, setting boundaries just in my business, interpersonally in terms of working with clients. I just know that for me, a lot of times it comes up as anger or as a gut feeling, the gut feeling is like, you know, it’s just like this. Something’s just not right about that.
Erica: Dare they did that to me, you know.
Carrie: You feel that sense of like and dictation.
Erica: It does not feel good. It’s like a gut and hard feeling. And I immediately, I think about my feelings, like, what is that? What is that? I immediately go to what’s the feeling. Okay. And I do, and I feel saving, even if I don’t say it to that person, I have to write it. I have to say it to get it out of me. Otherwise it’s going to just eat at me. And then I figure out a way to talk with them. Sometimes I just write it in my journal and it’ll all work out on its own in some kind of way in a conversation without me specifically saying anything, especially if I’m really mad about it.
Carrie: Okay. That’s good. I mean, I think that that’s a really good pathway. Of like teaching people how to do that work, how to tune in internally and then try to figure out like, okay, what’s the next step? What is that next step that I need to take here?
Erica: Usually when you feel that you’re triggered in some kind of way, what is it taking you back to going back to a scenario where you were disrespected or dishonored or felt the same feeling before?
Carrie: That’s good talking about trauma trigger. That come up for people.
Erica: Because you didn’t set a boundary. So then it’s always gonna keep showing up, cause the boundary’s not there.
Carrie: Let’s talk about how do boundaries align with the Christian faith? I think people have this view that if I’m a Christian kind of going back to, I’ve gotta help everybody.
I’m to be loving towards people. And if I say no to them, I’m not being loving towards them. But I mean, we kind of gave that example of parents and their children. You can’t always say yes to your children because that’s gonna lead to disaster. There are times where you need to say no for their own, even personal safety.
Erica: Boundaries is part of the Christian faith. I know that it says, okay. And we kind of capitalize on that part of being selfless and don’t be selfish, but the Bible does talk about, like, there is boundaries, the 10 commandments are boundaries there.
Carrie:Yes they are.
Eric: You know, there are other things that are told to us lot and his wife don’t look back. Right? That was a boundary. And then we saw the consequences. You have to have consequences too, to your boundaries. You can’t just have these boundaries. It’s like you are a Chihuahua, Chihuahua. You’re a Chihuahua barking saying you, this is your boundary, but you’re not doing anything. And people are gonna keep pushing over. What’s the consequence that there has to be some kind of consequence. To pushing over your boundaries.
I just wanted to mention that, but in nutrition faith, we have boundaries. They are parents throughout the Bible. I don’t think people look for those because I’m gonna say some, I’m gonna say some, I think that a lot of people who may be leading flocks want them to follow along with what they are saying. So if you tell them, empower them in too many ways. They then are thinking for themselves and not following along. So they’re now share that kind of information.
Carrie: Well, I, and I think that’s why we have to go to following Jesus in the Bible versus following man, you know. Because not everyone is following Jesus in the Bible who is in leadership.
Erica: Too many times. I’ve had some scenarios of, man, pastors doing many things that should not have happened or I felt it. I was like, this is not supposed to be right. But it wasn’t like no one said to me that this person is not supposed to do it, but he’s up in front of me telling me that the gospel telling me the way to go, but it doesn’t feel right. You always have this feeling. It doesn’t matter what kind of leader it’s there. You have to listen to yourself. You gotta tap in and find your own answers.
Carrie: I picked out a couple of Jesus examples for how do boundaries align with the Christian faith? There was in Matthew 12 Jesus refuses to perform a miracle.
So people were saying to him, perform a miracle to show us, you know, that you’re the Christ. And the funny thing is Jesus was already performing miracles. By this point, it wasn’t like this was gonna be a new thing. They had already seen evidence that he was a Messiah and he told them, no, I’m not gonna do that because you’re basically you’re unbelieving. And you’re showing that you don’t have faith. You know, and I’m not gonna give you a sign.
Erica: I’m not gonna be a politic for you like.
Carrie: Not gonna perform miracles on demand. There was a time in Luke nine 60 that the verse, you know, let the dead bury their own dead. There was a man who he had said, Jesus said, come follow me. The man said no. First let me bury my father. And Jesus said, well, let the dead bury their own dead. It wasn’t, a cruel heartless type of thing. He was wanting to wait around for like some year long ritual that was gonna be happening. It was, what do you call that? It’s more about tradition than actually. Just a regular funeral. We have, we have probably really quick funerals compared to what they did back then in the whole process.
So Jesus was like, no, you really need to come follow me. You know, you don’t need to basically make an excuse about why you can’t come at this point. I mean, Jesus told the rich young ruler, he had to sell all his stuff too. It wasn’t really about him selling his stuff. It was more about your heart’s not in the right place.
Erica:Yes.
Carrie: To be following me. So these are all different examples where Jesus really put people in their place in a lot of ways. And times that we look at that and we’re like, that’s really radical that he said that, or I don’t know if you do that. Sometimes I read the Bible. I’m like, I can’t believe he just said that. Wow. That was.
Erica: I love it.
Carrie: You know, that was intense. .
Erica: My daughter has the Bible now we’re reading again. I loved reading the Bible. It’s great like if you read it, so I think people take, read it as if it’s a book and it’s great. It”s so much going on to so many heroes. It says that Jesus is a first superhero and that there’s sons of other heroes like Ruth and like, Esther, it’s just like, it’s radical. It’s a, it really talks about all the situations that we have even now in trying to relate to others. Jesus does plenty of parables talking about boundaries and how you should interact and what’s your value system and how to have your certain Christian values that I feel like are not upheld. They should be in a real authentic way.
Carrie: I was so glad that we are having this conversation, you know, essentially a, a boundaries 1 0 1, because there’s so many people that misunderstand what a boundary is, or they don’t think that they can set them with a boss, with a parent, with a spouse and boundaries are for many different areas of our lives. We have to learn how to set them respectfully and so fort. Let’s talk about boundaries with a parent, because I think that’s another one people carry their childhood into their adulthood of, you know, well, this person is my parent. I have to honor them and I have to respect them according to the Bible. So I can’t say no. If my parent wants to call me at all hours of the night or if my parent wants to just drop by, I just have to be okay with that because that’s my mother. That’s my father.
Erica: I’m the one to talk to about this. Or I was in my internship, I was trying to create this group called “Toxic mom relationships and how to manage them”. So when I talk to every people, just, you know, one on one, every last person has some kind of issue. With they mama or they daddy, or both of.
Carrie: We call those family of origin issues. Everybody has to deal with their family of origin issues.
Erica: This is actually the first, I think people they’ll have problems in their relationships, their intimate relationships, you know, sexual intimate relationships.
And it be the same problems that they have with their parent, like the same boundary issues, being people pleaser, or thinking that you have to say yes to everything. When you become an adult, like first of all, you were supposed to be expect when you were a child, maybe didn’t happen. You have to understand.
Now you’re an adult. Okay. And you’re taking care of yourself. And even if you’re not, cause I have a lot of college students, I have individuals who are still on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26 and they’ll think, I can’t say no, cause I’m still tied to them. You have to decide. What’s right for you.
Your life is your life. It’s not your parents. I think a lot of times, some people have issues with feeling like they are connection or, you know, a part of their parent instead of them being a whole person and they have their own thoughts and their own feelings and their own way of doing things that fits best for them. And you have to going back to being brave. Being brave to say and speak up for yourself. Now, let me just tell you if your parents love you, love transcends all of this, and it’s opposed to transcend all of this. And if they reject you because you asserted your boundary, then maybe later on, they will think more about this relationship and not. Let it be severed, but you get to have your boundaries and it’s important that you have them and you have to assert them. You have to be clear on what and who you are.
Cause a lot of clients say, my parents don’t even know who I am. You haven’t shared who you are with them because you’re afraid to share who you are with them. And then a lot of parents say, all my kid only calls me once a week or I only see ’em on holidays, probably because you have no idea who they are and they are afraid to show you who they are. And it’s such a sad circumstance to live in a life where a person brought you into this world, but you can’t share who you are with them.
Carrie: That is a sad state. This has been such a good chat and I hate to cut it off, but I know we’ve gone a little while and maybe at some point I’ll do boundaries 2.0 or, or we can do it or something like that. We’ll figure it out. But I think that this has been a great intro for people to understand really what’s a boundary and hopefully it’s got people thinking like, maybe through the podcast, like maybe there is a boundary that I need to set with myself or with other people in my life and knowing that. Not only is that okay to do so, but that’s a healthy thing. And we can follow, you know, in Jesus’ example, in terms of, of setting boundaries.
Erica: Yes. Going back to the book I recommended was Henry Clouds “Boundaries”. It is actually Christian based. So if you’re listening to this podcast, it puts a lots of information in there about Christian examples of how you should move in your boundaries in that you are not meant to be selfless, but you have boundaries. And I do wanna be before I end, is to talk about hunting unique counseling skills, because that book is a book that you can get on Amazon that I wrote and boundaries is in that book.
So I talk about it in that book, as well as other counseling skills that are needed, like communication and time management.
And lastly, I have a freebie. Because it’s, I am this boundary thing is so important. So I have a freebie it’s 11 page ebook called “Boundaries guide four leaders”. You can get that at www dot heal yourself, grow.org. Heal yourself. grow.org. And you can get free freebie on how to even discover and set boundaries under eight categories and even affirmations in order to hold your boundaries and reiterate your boundaries to others.
Carrie: Okay. And we’ll put those links in the show notes too. If people are listening to this in their car and didn’t have a chance to write that down so they can go back to the show notes and, find the links in there to your book and to the, boundaries resource that you have there. That’s awesome.
Erica: It’s so great. I love, I love talking with you.
Carrie: We have good times. I had so much fun having this conversation with Erica about boundaries 1 0 1. Stay tuned for boundaries 2 0 2. I may do that as a solo episode another time. We do have some great interviews coming up in the next month on breath prayer and on exposure and response prevention. So stay tuned for those episodes. If you like our show, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with someone else. So I know that you know, someone in your life probably who’s having difficulty with setting boundaries or they feel like if they set a boundary, that’s somehow un-Christian of them to do so. So feel free to forward this episode onto them. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee, opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By The Well Counseling.
Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Dr. Nicolas Grier is an Associate Professor of Practical Theology, Spiritual Care, & Counseling. Dr. Grier is also a mental health therapist and author.
How do churches minister to the mental health of Black men
The stigma surrounding mental health and receiving help in Black Community
Common struggles that black men are facing today
Early beginnings of Black Psychology
Dr. Grier’s view on APA’s formal apology to people of color in promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism.
Dr. Grier’s Book, Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of Black Men
Carrie: Welcome to Hope For Anxiety and OCD episode 70. Today on the show, I have an interview with Dr. Nicholas Grier, an ordained minister and therapist and author of The Care For The Mental and Spiritual Health of black men. He’s gonna talk with us about mental health in the black community. One of the things I really value is hearing from people who have other lived experiences or cultural backgrounds that I don’t possess to try and I guess understand where different people are coming from because I see all different types of clients and it helps me to be able to empathize with others. So let’s go ahead and dive into this interview.
I know that I had talked with you earlier that this particular episode was kind of prompted by something a close friend of mine said in an earlier episode, episode nine, actually. And I was asking her about her experience with mental health in the African American church. And she said, “well, you know, the pastors in those churches are like ostriches, and they just have their head buried in the sand, they don’t wanna look at their own issues”. And so I really thought, okay, there’s somebody in this community that understands mental health that we could talk to and really combine those two worlds. And I thought it would be awesome to provide an alternate perspective that was her lived experience. And so I was glad that she shared that, but I’m just curious, has it been a challenge for you. Since you work with churches to know how to minister to the mental health of black men?
Dr. Nicholas: That’s an excellent question and observation. The first thing I consider is the fact that there are a number of black churches, right? so there’s a.
Carrie: Sure.
Dr. Nicholas: Diversity of black congregations. And so from that perspective, I think we have to go into that question, realizing that, like there are different ways that your various clergy, respond to this, very same question.
So for instance, last summer, I was working with a number of clergy on the south side of Chicago with a grant that really focused on this very thing that you’re talking about, you know, so the mental wellbeing of clergy on the south side of Chicago, and most of them were African American. There were, you know, 40, 50 clergy who were part of this program. And so from my experience in that program. In administering that grant. My goodness that the clergy were more than willing to dive into, their own, you know, experiences with, the heavy load that many of them carry the emotions, the psychological burdens that are placed on them.
So I think when we think about response to this question, we have to think about, okay, who are the specific black congregations and black clergy that we’re talking about? Because my experience, especially recently, there’s a lot of openness from, you know, black clergy really saying that, “Hey, this is something urgent that we need to reflect on”. So not only was that a particular experience that I’ve had with clergy, but most recently there’s another denomination. That’s also, you know, asking me to work with them on developing a program to help their clergy deal with the mental health experiences.
Now, I think part of that is also who do clergy feel like they can trust specifically who do black clergy. Well, they can trust. So, so I realize that perhaps have maybe a little bit of an inside edge, if you will, just to take very seriously the experiences of clergy. So from this perspective, because I am an ordained clergy, cause I also happen to have a PhD and a licensed professional counselor. Well, they tend to trust me, in that sense. But I think part of that too is the ways in which I try to engage them. So I engage them with a lot of respect, deep appreciation for who they are. So I think all those things affect how we think about mental health and black faith communities.
Carrie: Sure. And obviously, if you’ve already been there and had some of that lived experience of ministering in the church, that’s huge. So in the counseling community, we’re always like working really hard to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health and receiving help. Do you believe that black people face more challenging stigma to receiving mental health services? I don’t know for example, in the past I’ve had someone share with me that it felt very punitive for them almost like you’re gonna to therapy, but it was kind of like a punishment like you’re kid that’s in trouble and you’re going to therapy now. And it just, wasn’t a positive experience for that, for that individual who was in the black community.
Dr. Nicholas: Well, I’d be curious to know more about that person’s experience. And you know, this to me is, you know, back to my emphasis on focusing on particular situations. And so each situation has its own nuances. And my sense, when I think about a type of situation like this is. That there are a number of, I think, complexities that one must engage. When we think about how do we, address the experiences, that the emotional, mental, and psychological experiences of black folks going to therapy. So in one sense now, which is one of the reasons why I’m so passionate about the work of coloring mental health collective, which is organization.
I started that advocates and organizes for the mental well-being of black and brown people. One of the things we’re passionate about with that work is to say that, “Hey you can tell a black person to go to therapy”. But if they’re going to therapy with a therapist, who’s practicing out of theories and Ideologies that actually perpetuate colonization racism and things that sort, without them even being aware of that, then that can actually be very detrimental to the black person going to therapy.
So in actuality, they’re actually worse off for going to therapy. If they have someone who’s not practicing out of theories and ideology, that’s actually helpful for black people. So this is why I’m so passionate about reflecting on how can we help equip clinicians with theories and practices that actually nurture the holistic wellbeing of black and brown folks. So this can be done by taking very seriously, you know, for instance, the literature of black psychology of womanness in Mahata psychologies, right? So there are a number of resources that a clinicians can use. So I think that’s part of what’s at stake in this type of situation, when a person says, okay, feels are punitive when I’m going into therapy.
Well, I mean, my experience at doing therapy with black folks is that they often like wanna meet multiple times a week and even want to go over the sessions. I mean, in my view, it’s because. They feel respected, they feel understood. And it’s not all just having to explain my reality, to someone else.
Carrie: And I think that we’ve come a long way from original psychology in its infancy was a bunch of white European men. And now we have a lot more diversity in the counseling community as a whole. We have a lot more people of color. A lot more people of different ethnic origins and backgrounds. And that helps a lot with people being able to find someone that they can relate to, that they feel like, this person’s really gonna get it. And they’re really gonna have that level of like cultural sensitivity to their work.
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely. And you know, I was just inviting womanist, pastor theologians and therapists to a class. So I’m teaching a woman is pastor theology and spiritual care class where I teach at Clare Osteology. And one of the things that was significant. So Dr. pH shepherd was the person who came to visit us and she teaches at Vanderbilt. And she was just naming that when she, teaches her students about, you know, women as pastor or theologies and womanist psychologies, she’s like the things that we’re contributing, like these are not necessarily brand new. In other words, she was naming that even before like certain books and certain academic fields. There were actually black women writing of.
Carrie: Wow.
Dr. Nicolas: About psychology, right? And about, you know, spirituality. So just because psychology came into existence as like this Western Eurocentric male-centric field, that was not the beginning of human psychology.
Carrie: Right. No makes sense.
Dr. Nicholas: You know, it actually existed before then. And so, when we realized that the fact that, even if we take a very seriously a, you know, African traditions and indigenous African traditions, a lot of these traditions were oral traditions and things that were passed down. And so there’s a lot of diverse types of wisdom that we can pull from whether it’s from the oral traditions or even like the other written works that don’t get highlighted in traditional psychology.
Carrie: So you’re really feeling like there’s more of an openness in the black community towards mental health, more openness, maybe towards clergy to be talking about mental health and how can we apply these things to ourselves to be healthier clergy, but also how can we help the people in our congregations be healthier?
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely. I think a lot of it’s trust. I mean, I’ve been clergy in the local church setting. I’ve worked with clergy in the local church setting. I know very well, the suspicion, and I would say a healthy suspicion, oftentimes that black folks have of, you know white, if they’re not centered in a deliberative practice. I mean, they can sniff it out just like that. And so when you have clergy, for instance, who are trained in, you know, like liberation theology, being a type of theology that takes very seriously that systemically marginalized and that systemically oppressed and tries to nurture their wellbeing. I mean, I, I can think about the work of Howard Thurman. Who asked the question? What does the religion of Jesus have to say to those who love where their backs against the wall? And so when you’re doing ministry and theology from this vantage point as a black clergy person, well you wanna make sure that a therapist you go to is also reflecting on, how can I conduct therapy in such a way that helps people who are living with their backs against the wall?
Carrie: What are some common struggles that you see black men facing today?
Dr. Nicholas: The struggles that I see again, I guess I wanna repeat the thing that these are diverse struggles, right?
Carrie: Sure.
Dr. Nicholas: There’s a difference. In other words, there’s a lot of variation within black communities. You know, no one black man is alike. And so I, I think it’s important to honor that, but then also when I think about some of the common themes that I’ve seen with black men, even as I wrote my book on the mental and spiritual health of black men. A lot of these things, get back to what I name as like, the social pathology. In other words, what’s wrong with society? What’s the dysfunction in society? I mean, a lot of Western individual psychology looks at the pathology as individualistically based. They point, even when you look at the DSM. It’s always ask Okay. What, what disorder does this one person have? Part of what I wanna ask is what disorder does society have? That causes a black man to struggle mentally and emotionally as they might.
So from that perspective, I think there’s a lot of ways in which black men experience people, looking at them as if they’re not educated as if they’re criminals, as if they’re dumb as if their ultimate destination is to be locked up or, you know, killed by police. Or if they’re going to be successful by being some type of entertainer, whether it’s, you know, an athlete, visual artist, musician, you know, rapper, things of that sort. So these are all things, themes that came out of the interviews of black men, that I put in my book of The Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of black men. I, I think when we realize that these are common things, you realize these are significant odds. So, so this gets back to the whole concept in psychology of projection and projective identification.
So one of the questions I asked black men in my book was what does society say about you and what does society think about black men? What is the ultimate life destination that society sees for black men? And that’s when they responded with all of those things that I named in terms of naming that, you know, black men, that society sees black men as criminals bugs as, you know, savages, as people to be feared, devalued, discredited folks who are not known by society, unless we actually take time to have conversations like this. Right? So, so it’s almost like as a black man, even though I’m a person like I’m a professor, I have a, you know, PhD minister, all these things. I often have to like, earn my way, even having these things.
I have to earn my way to be received by someone as something who actually is this person, as opposed to whatever thing they have in their imagination of who I am. And so when you realize that there’s so much resistance, that that has to go on in a black man’s life, you know, in other words, I’m having to, and black men are having to resist these negative projections that society has of us. Right? And so, when I look at the various psychological theories I studied, which is one of the reasons why I decided to write my own theory for the mental and spiritual the black men was because I noticed that when I was in graduate school, you know, studying psychology, a lot of these theories when they talked about these are the things you need to be. Well, psychologically, whether some of them talked about it from the perspective of everyone has like, you know, mirroring needs. Everyone has idealization needs. Everyone has these needs to be safe and all these things, I mean, these are all good and well, but they weren’t even talking about the specific things that black men face.
So this is why I think that when we realize all these things that black men face, we have to then take a step back and say, “okay, there are some additional things because of the realities of racism, sex, and classism in black men’s life”. One of the things that black men need to be able to do is to resist on a continual basis. All these negative projections. But then a part of that means that because we’re resisting so much in our lives, we also need to be able to experience mental and emotional healing on a consistent basis as well, because those negative projections keep coming our way.
Carrie: And I think being able to talk with someone who can really validate that, their lived experience of, okay, I’m feeling like I’m having to work harder or climb this extra mountain, just to be able to do the things that other people may be able to do easily, reputation-wise and things that you were talking about. I think that that’s really important in terms of just the therapeutic context of validating that. That those things are real, that people may look at you and it doesn’t matter that you’re well educated and you’re dressed nicely. They may assume you’re a drug dealer who, you know, because of their own preconceived notions that they have.
I found this interesting that it, it really just came out very recently prior to us recording this, that the American Psychological Association, it recently published a formal apology for their role in promoting perpetuating and failing to challenge racism, racial discrimination, and human hierarchy in the US. And I’m curious about your response to that article,
Dr. Nicholas: I’ll say, “yes”. I’m curious, what else that we want to reflect on from it?
Carrie: Do you feel like that, that’s been a long, like overdue statement that they made basically. I mean, cause they listed several different things. Just, you know, not taking into account marginalized populations. When we look at studies, sometimes the studies are not diverse. And then we’re trying to apply something that was not studied on people of color to people of color. For example, just some of those types of things. From your perspective as a black man, does it feel validating like, well, it’s about time.
They got around to that. Just what does that feel like for you?
Dr. Nicholas: That’s a very good point. The reason why I respond to that as I do is because there is a way that I would say people of color and certainly black people see it, you know, see this, apology and say, “okay”, well, you know, the response might be, I’m glad that that happened. And also we know that like our livelihood, our survival, our liberation, our flourishing is not, you know, predicated on whether or not we’re gonna get this apology, right?
We know that it may or may not happen. History has proven itself a black folks will go to the grave without getting a certain apology or reparations or things of that sort. So we’re not basing our livelihood, our survival and flourishing on whether or not certain groups apologize and give reparations. Now, of course we’ll strive for these things to happen, but we’re not waiting for that to happen in order for us to nurture our own wellbeing, an approach that many of us have. And I can think about groups that I’m a part of. Well, we organize within ourselves to nurture our own well being because we’re like, we know they may or may not get. But we know we have the wisdom, the genius within us to nurture our wellbeing. One of my amazing colleagues, and I will say, you know, she’s someone who I admire deeply because she’s the first black woman to have a full book. And woman is pastor theology and spiritual care. So this is Dr. Carol Watkins Ali. She wrote the book Survival and Liberation, which focuses on pastor or theology and pastoral counseling in the African American context.
One of the things that she said is if the trauma isn’t the DNA, then the healing is in the DNA. She talks a lot about, you know, black women, especially poor black women and saying that all of society will be better if we care deeply for poor black women, because a lot of our capitalism, the ways and we profit are built on the labor backs and suffering of poor black women. I, I think it’s very important to honor that. And so, when we take seriously the reality that folks who’ve experienced the trauma know very well of the experience of it and have the ability. If we nurture constructive self-reflection and ways to engage and respond to the suffering, then we ourselves can nurture our own wellbeing. And of course, there’s always room for allies in the struggle.
One of the things I’m clear about is that, you know, black folks not waiting on whoever to apologize to us, like we know we’ve got the power, we’ve got the ability, the wherewithal to nurture our own wellbeing. Even as we work with willing allies.
Carrie: And I think, definitely actions speak louder than words. And so it may take time for some of these things that you’re talking about for change to occur. Obviously, if you’re talking about things that have been going on for a while. Takes time to make changes.
Dr. Nicholas: Right.
Carrie: Tell us a little bit more about your book, The Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of black men.
Dr. Nicholas: So, as I alluded to earlier, you know, I just got tired during my PhD program, seeing all these psychological theories, not, you know, fully addressing. Emotional psychological and spiritual experiences of black people in particular. And when you look at, you mentioned the early beginnings of psychology, even when you look at the early beginnings of black psychology, certainly a lot of it was focusing on the strengths of black people and, you know, how do we engage a strengths-based model instead of a deficit-based model, which is significant shift from how a person engage, you know, traditional Western therapy. So that’s been a part of black psychology, but a lot of the beginning of black psychology was about responding to what centric psychological theories were saying. So a lot of these early psychological theories and literature about black people about how black folks are less than, and you know how we’re so different from white people.
So then you have a lot of black psychologists coming along saying, “wait a minute, we need to respond to that”. Because that’s not true. We’re not less than white people inherently. And so when I look at the work that I do, I’m dishonored by those who came before me, because I’m only able to do what I’m able to do because of those who’ve paved a path.
In other words, if I came into existence at a point in time in human history where nobody had defended against this oppressive thought from early psychology about black people. Then, a lot of the tasks of my work primarily respond to these negative perceptions of black people by white psychology. And so, because you have so many folks who’ve come before me, who’ve already done that work. I then can develop an approach to counseling and mental health that, you know, stands on their shoulders and enables me to think about how do we nurture not only the survival of black people, but the flourishing of black people.
So, this is how I enter into the conversation in human history is to say that, you know, look at these amazing black psychologists, who’ve done this work up until now. And even in more recent years, you’ve had, you know, certain works that highlight, you know, black psychology. I’m thinking about various volumes, on the black psychology, which are available. All we gotta do is look ’em up and, and teach from them and study from them. And we’ll be better equipped to care for black people. And one of the things that I saw was even as I, I did the research, there was not much of anything highlighting the experiences of black men in their own words. And so I felt like it was important to actually, how about we actually talk to black men, see how they experience life, make a space for their stories to be told, and then, to do some reflection about how can we nurture, not only their survival, but also their flourishing.
So this is how and why I develop, what I name as a hope to keep going model. For care and counseling, which is in my book care for the mental and spiritual health of black men. One of the, the folks I build off of is Victor Anderson. Who’s also at Vanderbilt. And one of the things that he talks about is that for too long, black existence has been taught to suffering and resisting that suffering. So in his book beyond ontological, blackness, you know, he makes an argument that, black folks should not be tied solely to an existence of, you know, suffering and then having to resist that suffering. But he’s like everybody wants to flourish including black people.
Carrie: Right.
Dr. Nicolas: So what does it look like for us to not. Get rid of the need to resist all these oppressive things that cause us to suffer. We’re always gonna have to resist those things, but what does it look like to also think about how do we intentionally nurture the, the flourishing of people? So I pick up on that in my book and say, “Hey, this book is about certainly nurturing the survival, the healing and the liberation of black men”, and also the ultimate step of this work is to nurture the flourishing of black men. So that’s a significant aim of my book.
Carrie: Awesome. It’s really great. So at the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.
Dr. Nicholas: Wow! I was just thinking about this the other day with the person and saying that there was a moment when I was, it might have been 11 or 12 years old, and I started playing piano when I was five years old, started playing saxophone when I was nine years old. And I remember I was at a church, my home church there in Atlanta and the pastor at the time, you know, he references, you know, the words in the Hebrew Bible and you know, the Old Testament during his sermon, he asked a question, what has God placed in your hands? And that was a significant question for me to reflect on, right? Because I then began to recognize, oh my goodness, I’ve been blessed with all these different gifts and ways of being. And, and then part of that work of God and the act of God that I experienced throughout my childhood was a village of people. Whether it was from that church or, you know, from the various schools I attended, you know, and certainly middle and high school. People who saw these gifts, these things that God placed in my hand. And help to nurture those gifts.That that’s been a significant, you know, gift that I experienced and, and act God in my life that has nurtured my own survival and flourishing.
Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s really, like amazing. We take that step back and realize, like what God has gifted us with.
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely.
Carrie: Thank you for having this conversation. I’m always very interested and open to hearing people from other perspectives and other lived experiences that I haven’t experienced. So I, hopefully it will enrich other people, as they listen to conversation as well.
Dr. Nicholas: Absolutely.
Carrie: Regardless of your cultural or racial background, I hope that you found this interview interesting, and that maybe you learned something from it that you didn’t know before. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about doing the podcast has been the variety of different people that I’ve gotten to interview and talk with people from really all over the world, Canada, London, Africa.
We haven’t had anybody that I’ve interviewed from Australia. So if you’re in the mental health space in Australia, I know we have listeners out there, certainly hit me up on the website and let me know what you’re doing in your community and in your part of the world. For all of our listeners, if you enjoy the podcast and you really feel like you have benefited from these episodes, I want to encourage you to think and pray about giving back. This is a ministry that reaches people all over the globe. You can support our show financially either through Patreon or buy me a coffee. We will have both of those links in the show notes for you. Thank you so much for listening.
Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of, By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guest are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By The Well counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
I had the privilege of interviewing Aron Strong, LMFT, a former pastor turned therapist. Aron talks about how having a healthy theology about God and HIS feelings, helps us understand ourselves as we grow closer to God.
Does God have feelings? What emotions does God feel?
The importance of knowing God and understanding His emotions
God is for us, not against us
Understanding human emotions
Why did God create emotions?
To negate emotions is to misunderstand who God is.
How to manage intolerable and overwhelming feelings
Brief overview of the modality created by Aron called Attuned Systemic Repair
Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 29. Today, I was able to interview one of the local counselors here, Aron Strong. There were so many different things that Aron could potentially speak to that we really had to narrow it down as far as what he was going to talk about today. We landed on discussing the intersection between having healthy theology about God and God’s feelings, which helps us understand our feelings since we’re created in his image. This is a conversation that I believe we really can get a lot out of. So let’s dive right in.
Carrie: Welcome to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about you.
Aron: My name is Aaron Strong. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist and an approved supervisor. I worked in church ministry for 15 years as, pastor and some other roles. I am now the founder and the director of pathways counseling in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I’m the co-founder of a company called the In Relationship that focuses on helping therapists in the general public develop healthy relationships in a lot of different contexts.
And we have online courses and marriage workshops and other stuff. And then I’m also the creator of a therapy called Attuned Systemic Repair and we’re developing that. I’ve been married for over 20 years. I’ve got a 15-year-old son and a bunch of pets. That’s a little bit about me.
Carrie: Are you a dog or a cat person?
Aron: We have both, 2 dogs and 4 cats. We didn’t always have cats. We had a dog once that thought of cats like tennis balls. And so that didn’t work out well. We had her for a long time. When she finally passed of old age, we got some new dogs that were a little more cat-friendly and so now we have a diverse brood in the home.
Carrie: That’s interesting. You’re the second person that I’ve interviewed that started out as a pastor and then became a therapist. Can you maybe briefly tell us a little bit about what that transition was like for you or how God brought that about.
Aron: Sure. Well, for me, it was a little traumatic. I didn’t plan on leaving the ministry.
My wife and I had met on staff at a church in California outside of Fresno in a town called Clovis and worked at that church for 13 years, 12 years. And then moved across the country to Tennessee, to work at a church out here. That didn’t work out. We had thought it would pretty quickly.
And so I was there for about a year. And then I was out of ministry and left wondering what was next and prayed and sought counsel. I didn’t feel called back in the ministry, which was kind of shocking for me. I always thought I’d always be a pastor and working for a church, but then God led me to pursue marriage and family therapy.
And that wasn’t something that was ever on my radar. And so it was a little surprising for me. I enjoyed it as a pastor, but when you’re a pastor, you’re expected to know a lot more things than you actually know. And so it was always terrifying for me. So if I was going to do that and I was going to do it right, and what that meant grad school and the whole deal.
And so I talked to my wife about it. We prayed about it, felt it was right and then at 40 years old, I had changed careers.
Carrie: That is an inspiration to somebody out there that’s listening that feels like they need to make a change and do something different. So that’s awesome for you to be brave.
Aron: Yeah, I think I’m probably better at this than I was working for the church.
I hadn’t quite expected that. It was a hard transition. Working full time plus doing grad school and an internship and trying to manage a family. It was not an easy transition, but it was definitely worth the price. And so I’m very, very pleased to be where I am now.
And you know, that God called me into this and I still get to do a lot of ministry. It looks a little different than it used to, but I still do a lot of speaking at churches and training and kind of integrating faith and theology with clinical therapy. it’s neat to be able to draw from both.
Carrie: Absolutely. That’s a good segue into what we’re talking about on the show today, which is essentially how our theology of feelings, how we understand God’s feelings and our feelings and those interactions and connection pieces. How was it helpful for us as Christians to understand that God is a God who has feelings?
Aron: Well, it’s really interesting is our perspective of wondering about God’s feelings. And I think we often forget that we’re made in his image. So the reason why we have feelings is because he has feelings. It’s not hard for him to understand how we feel. We actually have all his feelings. That’s how it works.
God has all the feelings and we don’t think of him that way. Scripture shows all those feelings of anger, joy, and sadness. He feels hurt. There was at least one time he felt horrible. There was at least one time he felt regret, making the world around the time of the flood. He feels longing. He knows what it’s like to feel misunderstood.
He knows what it feels like to love someone who doesn’t want to love you back. He feels weary at times. He knows what it’s like to feel jealousy of wanting the affection of the one that you long for. All of those things that are regular experiences, or feelings that he experiences and scripture talks about.
So we can feel comfort in knowing that we have a God who not only understands our experience, our experiences help us connect to who he is, and we have a better understanding of who God is because of our experience.
Carrie: That’s really good. I think a lot of times people focus energy on the maybe negative feelings of God like God must be mad at me. God must be disappointed with me. And it’s hard to find that balance in understanding that there are times where God may be upset about our behavior, our sin, but at the same time God delights in us as his children. Our own woundedness really clouds how we see God based on our interactions with caregivers and maybe former spouses, other things that have really messed with that view, harmful church experiences.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Aron: Yeah. It’s interesting that even before we’re born we have feelings. Feelings, or sensations that happen in our body that communicate to us about our experience of something and the part of our brain that does the processes. Physical feelings also process emotional feelings.
It all runs through the vagus nerve in our bodies. We literally feel our feelings in our bodies and that begins in utero. We’re born feeling feelings, but what we don’t have as a language to describe what’s happening to us. So our understanding of feelings comes through our development and our interaction with parents and caregivers and other people in our lives.
Then based on however our family manages emotions or has language for them, or doesn’t talk about them. We try to build models. We don’t think about it, but we just do of how to manage feelings and what that means. In that context then we kind of do something very similar with who we believe we are and who we see God as.
As we build our models of who God is based on our interactions from others and our own felt experiences in contexts. And we construct ideas of what those things are out of the lack of knowledge or direct interaction with him to know him personally.
And so we don’t know him personally, then we kind of like we do with celebrities or other people in our lives, we don’t know them, but we build ideas of them based on what we hear and what we see and how people talk about them. We may read a report that they did, but we don’t know them personally to understand what’s really going on inside. So part of our experience in our faith journey is beginning to understand who God is personally and how we interact with him and learn from him and understand how he sees us. Helpfully, a lot of our personal experiences in life help us once we have a good framework to understand them, how to understand who God is and how he sees us and being a parent is probably a great example of that. Because I can both love my son and want to murder him in the same moment. That’s what it’s like sometimes no one knows how to hurt you like your kid when they’re being rebellious. I remember the first time, you know, um, my son told my wife, he didn’t like her, and the pressure feelings because she loves him so much. So there are times that you can absolutely love someone and be disappointed in them, but that’s not the totality of your belief in them because you love them.
And when you understand the totality of God’s love for mankind and for us individually, then his anger or his jealousy or his disappointment, or those things have a context that isn’t against us. God’s feelings are always for us to draw us into relationship. And when we understand the context of how God manages and expresses his feelings, we begin to understand what a healthy expression of anger or a healthy expression of jealousy might look like. We tend to do ours. It’s very self-centered and about ourselves, but God’s feelings are for us. He’s jealous for us. Not against us. He’s not disappointed to drive us away. His disappointment wants us to live up to all the good things that he has in store for us and wants to draw us into the fold.
And so those things aren’t to drive us away, they’re always to draw us closer to him.
Carrie: That’s really great. I like how you, how you put that. If we have this understanding of God’s love like at the deepest level that we as humans can really understand it because I don’t think that we can fully grasp the depth and the height of God’s love for us.
But if we can somehow tap into that and filter God through that lens of love, then these other feelings are going to help us make more sense that God desires to be in relationship with us. And wants us to be close to him. And oftentimes when we have certain feeling experiences, our tendency is to do the exact opposite. It’s to do what Adam and Eve did is to run and hide from God, you know, because they felt ashamed or to be afraid and isolate.
Aron: Yeah. It’s hard. We tend to think people are one feeling. If someone is angry, all they are is anger. And we miss the complexity of who God is and who people are. God has this very strange dynamic that we’re not used to where he is fully love and grace and mercy and compassion. And he is holy and he is righteous and he has judgment and he has wrath.
And he’s not one of those things. He’s both of those things. And when we understand the balance of love and desire for relationship and accountability, and managing the context of relationship that keeps it healthy. It’s the interplay of those two things that helps us understand the total, who God is.
He’s not love at the expense of any sort of accountability because no relation can function that way where there’s no rules and no boundaries, and people can hurt each other as much as they want. “But hey, we love each other like that.” That’s not a healthy relationship. Likewise, someone’s only judgment and wrath and condemnation. That’s not a real relationship either. There’s no tenderness. There’s no connection inside of that. And so the context of the fullness of who God is and both of those aspects and all of those feelings that go inside of that, they show up in us in everyday experiences with our spouses or our bosses or strangers in the freeway when they cut us off in traffic. And we feel like that stranger isn’t caring for me because of the way they’re driving.
But they don’t know me. They’re not thinking about me. The context, I think about it and I want to hold them accountable because I didn’t feel cared for. So this interplay of needing to feel loved and managing accountability is the dynamics of all relationships, both our relationship with God, our relationship with others and our relationship with ourselves, where we have to lead ourselves.
I have to lead my feelings. I can’t let them just leave me because one feeling can’t represent all of who I am, but when I let a feeling do all the talking for me, I ended up saying things that I don’t really fully mean. My anger does all this talking and I regret everything I said because that anger didn’t reflect the rest of me.
It was only just this one piece of me. And so I have to leave my experience and I have to submit myself to be cared for by others. It’s a very complex dynamic. I think that’s why we struggle with it so much.
Carrie: I would agree with that for sure. What kind of things do you see Christians doing to get out of their feelings in an unhealthy way where maybe they really need to be with what’s there?
Aron: I would say Christians tend to do the same things. All humans do. I don’t know that Christians manage it any better than any other person. It’s funny. There’s one thing every human being has in common with every other human being on the planet. It’s not their class or their race or their culture or their socioeconomic status.
That’s not their traumas. You don’t get to pick those things. You don’t get to pick who your parents were or where you were born. There’s so many things that make us all very unique from each other, but the one thing we all have in common is we all have the same feeling. Everyone knows what hurt feels like.
Everyone knows what disappointment feels like. Everyone knows what longing feels like. Sadness. Those are universal expressions that live inside of us. The contexts in which those feelings occur are very different. but the feeling itself is universal. We all have the same feelings. They’ve even done research on facial expressions and paired with emotions.
They’ve gone to every culture around the world, and they’re all universally recognized because again, we’re all made in God’s image. So we all have in the same way. So the inappropriate ways Christians manage their feelings, look a lot like the way the rest of the world manage their feelings because we don’t know what to do with them when we feel overwhelmed.
And so we avoid them, we try to pretend like they don’t exist. I can’t tell you how many, especially guys like to do this, they’ll come to my office and they’ll say, “yeah, I don’t have any feelings.” And I’m like, “really?” And they’re like, “no feelings.” I’m like, “you’re never angry.” “Oh, well I’m angry. Oh, but never frustrated while I’m friendly.”
“Bored?” “Yeah, I’m bored.” “Irritated?” ”Yes. Apparently, you only get the bad feelings, no good feelings, but you got a lot of feelings. So we tend to suppress them. We avoid them. Oftentimes we overexpose them to everyone because we don’t know how to manage our feelings. And so we really want somebody else to do all that work for us.
And so we express it in a very large way, but oftentimes the ways we express it, make it kind of intimidating or overwhelming for others to care for us in the ways that we can. Sometimes we want others to know what we need without having to disclose it. And so we just want them to know what it is. And so we drop hints or innuendos. For me, manipulation means that we’re trying to get our needs met without disclosing what they are.
It’s actually a protective strategy that we use to protect ourselves and still get our needs met. It’s not against someone, it’s to try to help ourselves, but we’re not going to, we don’t trust others enough to let them in on what’s really going on in us. So there’s a lot of different ways that we don’t know how to manage our feelings well, and everybody tends to do them pretty similarly in categories, I suppose.
If everyone’s unique in their specific ways they try to manage themselves. There’s also broad categories that we all tend to fall in, in terms of the ways that we do that. We overexpress or we under express or we swallow, or we pretend like they’re not there until we explode. There’s so many options we get.
Carrie: Yeah. Something I hear commonly in my office. I imagine you may in yours as well. “Well, I’m angry about that but I mean I really shouldn’t be” or “I feel guilty that I feel this way, that I feel sad about that”, or “I know I need to just like have joy in the Lord, but I just feel so depressed right now.”
And sometimes there’s Christian mask, almost that we put on things like somehow we’re supposed to feel a certain way about a situation. And if we feel differently, or if we have a complex feeling, if it’s multi-feelings, then we may feel guilty for one of those feelings or the other. And somehow there’s this expected Christian response.
And if we don’t fall into it, all of a sudden there’s like this guilt and shame over our experience.
Aron: Yeah. That’s very interesting when you’re helping somebody understand their feelings, they don’t realize they can have a feeling about a different feeling. I feel guilty about my anger.
And so they could become very complex. There’s times when we believe that we’re supposed to feel a certain way because the way that we would feel would make a statement about who we are. I shouldn’t feel angry because that means I’m a mean person or I’m ungrateful or whatever meaning we’ve constructed that goes with that feeling.
And we miss the importance of the feelings that we have. We’re kind of not addressing the reason why we have the feeling we have. We’re just wishing we had a different one, but our feelings are so important to us because they reveal what’s going on in us in the moment we feel. I call them a temporal truth.
It’s not an absolute truth like gravity. Gravity is gravity. It doesn’t matter how you feel about it or what time of day it is. My feelings are more like rain. It’s raining when it’s raining, but when it’s not raining, it’s not raining. It’s a truth that can come and go. So my feelings telling me what’s happening inside of me in the moment I feel it. The reason I know I’m hurt or feel angry, I feel hurt, or I feel angry.
It’s telling me, hey, this is going on right now inside of me and it needs to be attended to, or it needs me to lead it or comfort it or express it or do something. So, whether it should be there or not is kind of immaterial, the fact is it’s happening right now and we have to do something with that because we’re called to lead ourselves.
Scripture talks a lot about discipline and directing ourselves. I have a thing about that, but this idea of I’m supposed to manage my experience. And I’m supposed to know how to submit myself to someone else to be cared for after all God asks for us to ask him for what we need, even though he already knows what we need, he wants us to disclose because that’s part of the vulnerable part of relationship will be shared what’s going on in our hearts with one another and not just expecting someone else to know it. But on the other hand, I can’t just prioritize my own experience. I have to be able to put my experience aside. Scripture says to consider others’ needs as important as mine, you know, not just looking at my own interests, but the interests of others.
And in balancing that out, but feelings they need to be attended to, and it’s helping me know what’s happening. We would be burned or hurt all the time. If we can’t feel what’s going on inside. I have a father-in-law who has diabetes. He’s older and a couple of years ago he had to have a toe amputated because he broke it and had no idea. And by the time they saw it, it was completely black. It was your feelings help you know this is happening so we can care for it. So that’s an important thing. We just don’t worry about whether you should or shouldn’t have a feeling when you have a feeling, then it helps you know yourself and kind of what to do.
Carrie: I like the rain analogy that you use because there’s some language in church sometimes that I hear about, “you just need to fight your feelings with faith.” And I take issue with that statement because you wouldn’t fight the rain. You know, you might get an umbrella or put on stand galoshes, but you wouldn’t have a war with that. Like you said, if the feeling is here, it’s like, okay, well it’s here. So now what do we do.
Aron: Pastors are humans like everybody else. They have the same models of managing their feelings that other people have. They don’t have more access to those things than others. And I don’t know many seminaries that spend a lot of time talking about feelings.
They talk about liturgy and they talk about exegesis and all these kinds of bigger concepts. And so I’m with you. I was getting irritated when I hear a pastor say that if you believe in God enough, you won’t feel anxious. And I’m like, that’s ridiculous. Anxious is a very important feeling that helps you be prepared when you’re not anxious enough.
Sometimes then you make mistakes because you weren’t paying attention to it because anxiety is a feeling that says, hey, get ready for this. It’s when we try to be ready for things, we can’t get ready for that. We get stuck. We’re preparing for things that aren’t prepared, no something I can’t know.
And then it goes sideways, but a regular feeling is you’re going to have a test and you should feel anxious about that because it’s going to make sure you study harder. And so there’s appropriate ways of managing those things. But when we give a message that if you have enough faith, you won’t have any what we call negative feelings. That’s kind of really disabusing people and leading them down a straight path of how to attend to their experience and lead their own experience and know that all of those feelings have healthy expressions and unhealthy expression.
Anger is not bad. God’s angry all the time. Apparently, there’s a good way to be angry or hurt or sad or any of those things. Those are things that God does. And so it’s more important to understand the healthy expressions and how we do that well than just telling people to have more faith, pretend like those feelings don’t exist.
Carrie: I think you hit upon on a point where in church circles, at least the ones that I grew up in, I know there’s many different streams of Christianity. There was a lot of focus on knowing about God, a lot of focus on learning about God and less focus on really the experience of interacting with God.
Aron: I remember there was a period of time when church culture was very worried about manipulating the congregation through emotion. And the emotion was manipulative and not authentic. It’s important not just to make an emotional decision about anything. You need a whole body to experience. You need your emotions and you need your intellect. Sometimes you need to trust your gut and your intuition and your body. And so having a whole-body experience in how we make decisions is important, but to negate the role of emotions is to misunderstand the context of who God is. God created emotions to be powerful for a reason because I think he feels them powerfully. He invented things that have you foric feelings. He made those feelings and made it that way. And so I think that understanding the fullness of balance and reason and the experiential, and not just knowing about who he is, but knowing who he is. Those are the best protectors in our faith and especially when it comes to sin, breaking the boundaries of relationship. To me, sin is a break of relationships. Sin is when we turn away from the relationship to do something that’s solely for ourselves. We neglect him or we forsake him to do something just for myself. And it doesn’t include him as part of the relationship.
And that hurts. So that’s outside the bounds of what he longs for in a relationship. And so understanding who God is and wanting. It’s kind of when you know your spouse really well, you know the things that hurt them. And so you try not to do those things because you love them. You don’t want to hurt them. But it’s not about checking boxes of legalism and rules, it’s about understanding the context of the one that you love and maintaining an as close and intimate and healthy relationship as you can. And that’s almost intuitive. It’s very easy. That’s why Jesus said if you love me, you obey my commands.
Not like, come on, baby. If you love me, you would. Or if you obey my commands, you don’t love me. You just say, it’s almost like when you love me, then it’s easy because it’s about the relationship.
Carrie: That whole like my burden is light verse.
Aron: That verse to me is about ownership. Come to me, you were weary and burdened. I always ask clients what’s the burden you’re giving God? And what burden is he giving you? Because he says he gives you a yoke. It’s just lighter than the one you carry. So what are you giving him and what are you receiving in return for me? The one we give him as the burden of ownership, where I take on the burden of owning my own sin or my own guilt or my own shame or trying to control my future and all of those things.
It’s the ownership I’m giving him. I’m giving them ownership of all of those things in my life. And the burden he gives us in return is the burden of faithfulness. That my job is to just be faithful to what he’s called me to do. To do the best I can, and to trust him to carry all the things I can’t because there’s only so many things I can manage. Everything I can’t manage is his job because it’s too much for me. And so I don’t need to be him or take over his role in the relationship. I can let him be strong where he’s strong and then I can be faithful to do the things that I’m called to do. Now that he’s called me to do and trusts me to do those things.
Carrie: What would you say to someone who finds their emotions intolerable?
I know that’s a really big question, but let’s say there that they’re trying to have a healthier relationship with themselves, their emotions, and God in that interaction. What encouragement would you provide to them or maybe a starting place?
Aron: People who find feelings and intolerable have had experiences that have been overwhelming that they did not have someone assist them or care for them through the process.
So in those experiences, their self, who they are, their soul was unable to manage the context of the totality of their experience. And so their self kind of collapses. The feeling is uncontained. It’s out of control. And that feeling begins to persist. And it’s a lot of what we describe as trauma is parts of us that remember in re-experience the intolerable illness. The overwhelming sense of helplessness or fear and they can’t be contained. And then my feelings don’t trust myself to lead it because when they reformed, myself couldn’t do it either. I was too young or somebody literally took away my power because I was being assaulted or I was in a car crash where literally I was helpless.
There’s a feeling of helplessness and the feeling has no sense of containment at all. And that happens. Even those times occur to us, that doesn’t have to be a persistent experience because our feelings are still looking for the same things they were looking for when they originated, which is to be led, to be held, to be understood, to be comforted, to be directed in a way that’s productive and helpful.
And oftentimes when we don’t know how to do that with our feelings, and we don’t know how to manage those feelings. So often others are fearful to engage with us in a way that feels safe to us then we stay trapped in these patterns of feeling overwhelmed, having maybe some other side coping ways we try to do with it.
We’ll do it through. Some kind of maladaptive ways. We’ll gamble, be promiscuous or we’ll do drugs or we’ll do something right to help manage these overwhelming feelings. And so, finding healthy relationships, finding a therapist that can help assist that process who’s trained to not be overwhelmed by your feelings and help engage you and help you lead your feelings and help rebuild. One of the principles of the modality I developed an attuned systemic repair is restructuring the leadership of self over our distressed emotions and repairing that relationship so that the parts of us within us can trust ourselves to lead that process.
And the therapist can model that and guide, direct that and restructure how that works in type the individual in helping them know how to do that with others. So there’s ways that we can learn how to manage those intolerable feelings just because they have never been contained or led doesn’t mean that they can’t be.
And in fact, they are still crying out for those experiences, which is why they’re so big. The only way that those feelings know to get cared for is to increase their volume until someone hears and responds. And so that’s what they do. They cry out for help. And when we learned that that’s what people’s feelings do, I can stop feeling attacked by the overwhelming feelings of others. I can hear the distress inherent in what’s going on. And that allows me to be more like a firefighter that runs into the fire to put it out rather than just being like, well, I guess I’ll just let that thing burn to the ground.
Carrie: Good. So if we have some therapists or students or others that might be interested in attuned, systemic repair, where can they find out more information at the moment?
Aron: So I’m developing a lot of training materials. I’m hoping to have some training videos out later this year. We’ll walk people through that. So I’m still in the process of writing. I’m an approved supervisor. So if they want some they’re pre-licensed that can get supervision hours. If we can get enough people interested, I’d love to start some supervision groups for ASR. I don’t know, maybe about a dozen people that are practicing it right now. So it’s not out there a lot, but have a lot of writing and we’re looking for ways to kind of communicate that.
So I’m still starting to let the cat out of the bag a little bit through this podcast and saying it’s out there and letting people know.
Carrie: Well, that’s very exciting. We can put the link to your counseling practice on there and they can contact you through there. I’m sure that’d be great if they’re interested.
Aron: Yeah. Awesome.
Carrie: Because this podcast is called hope for anxiety and OCD. I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time where you received hope from God or another person.
Aron: Yeah. So I’ll mention that time shortly before I moved to Tennessee the church I was working at wasn’t as healthy as we had thought it was and could see that things weren’t going well.
And I had never expected to be out of ministry. I had never been as, I don’t know, I was just terrified. When you’re a pastor you have no marketable skills. I don’t know if you write a resume and say, I worked for a church and I’ve led hundreds of people in teams and volunteer teams and they say, “oh, in retail.” And you’re like, “no.”. And you’re like, “managed six-figure budgets.” And they’re like, “oh, in a warehouse.” And you’re like, “wow. no.” And so finding a job was really hard. And so there was a season of time when, um, I didn’t know what was next. I hadn’t come across therapy yet. I just needed a job.
And that fear of not knowing, I felt like I lost my purpose. I’d always felt called to ministry, felt scared. I’d moved my family across the country and then didn’t have a job to support them. I had some friends that were very encouraging and supportive that stayed with me through that process.
And it didn’t make it less difficult. All of the journey to find just a job and kind of get through that. Just the beginning of that job, knowing that job was not going to be the rest of my life and figuring out grad school and all of that was still difficult, but having people around me, expressed concern, expressed care, offered encouragement was such a lifeline through that period. It helped me get through some very difficult seasons and it made in some ways survivable or helpful. And so I guess what I want people to know is that the relationships are the key to life. We are not made to function outside of relationships. I’m trying to find the source for this and I can’t find it, but I know I read it somewhere that it said that it takes 60% more glucose in your brain to comfort yourself than if someone helps you with it.
In social baseline theory, it’s a body of research that shows that we are not made to manage things alone. Our perception of difficulty, our experience of physical pain, our resources to engage difficulty are greatly increased by the access of social relationships. So social baseline theory says, add our baseline. We are designed to be social. We are designed for relationship. And I would say that if you have a lack of relationships in your life, you feel isolated, you feel alone. Oftentimes we try to solve that by being more alone, because if we feel like I get to choose my abandonment, then it feels less painful than if someone else has abandoned me. But then I’m still stuck alone and I’ve encouraged you that relationships are the key to life. And if you don’t have them, they’re accessible to you.
Start with therapy, find a small group, find a support group, find a place of people who know what it is to be like you, or have gone through similar experiences. Allow that to find hope that it’s survivable to know that you’re not in it alone, that people know how you feel. Everyone knows how you feel. Maybe not your context, but the feelings are universal. And when we share those feelings with each other, then suddenly, you know, we have on our wall, in our waiting room, we have a little chalkboard and we write little things there. And right now we are saying, “pain shared is pain divided, joy shared is joy multiplied.”
That’s the context of relationships and what they do. You’re made for relationship. And even if there’s not a human near you at the moment that feels safe, God loves you. He is for you. He created you. He sacrificed for you, and he wants to lead you to fullness to the person he’s created you to be that you have yet to fully realize because of the obstacles in your life. But God’s promises that he worked all those things for good, not the bad things are good. He’s a Redeemer and a restorer, and he can lead us through that. So there is hope because the God of the universe loves you and wants the best for you. We also have to be willing to participate in that process and take those risks.
And that’s hard and scary, but there’s always hope.
Carrie: Good. Thank you for sharing all of that with us today. I think this is a really great thing for people to think about and process what are some ways that they can have healthier relationships with their feelings with God, with other people. It’s all interconnected together.
Aron: There’s a way that we’re called to live. There’s a way that life is designed to work. And when we’re outside of that, everything is really, really hard. But when we do it the way that God designed it to be, it feels easy. When couples or individuals end therapy, I’m like, who wants to go back to the old way?
And they’re just like, oh no, not at all. How much easier is this week? Oh, it’s so much easier, but it’s so hard to get to the easier way because it’s scary and risky and it takes a lot of hard work. But when you get to the other side, that journey is so worth the effort. The rewards are good.
And probably even greater because of the effort required to get there in the first place.
Carrie: Absolutely.
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There are so many different ideas being circulated around about our feelings and how to deal with them. Some of those are healthy and some of them are unhealthy things that we’ve picked up maybe from our environment or family of origin. So it’s nice to have this conversation in the context of biblical Christianity. By the time this episode airs, I will have been on a recording blitz in the month of May. Recording all kinds of episodes to take us through the summer. I know that we’re going to be diving into things like emotional eating, body image, learning to see ourselves the way that God sees us in dealing with doubt, just to name a few. There are so many more interview topics that I have that I’m working tirelessly on finding guests for all the time. And if you have any suggestions for me, whether they be guest suggestions or topics suggestions that I can find guests for, I would love to hear from you.
And you can reach me via the contact page of our website any time www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com.
Thank you for listening. Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of by the world 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.
Last time on the blog, we broke down how the two verses prior to Phil 4:6 provide some guidance to help with anxiety. If you happened to miss that post, you can read it here. Today, we are going to go through verses 6-8.
Verse 6 follows instructions from verses 4-5 to rejoice in God, examine thought process for reasonableness, and understand God is right here. What comes next, “Do not be anxious about anything,” makes sense in light of the entire context. This verse is not meant to produce guilt for worrying. Now don’t get me wrong, Paul has been known to lay the smack down on some people when necessary (1 Corinthians), but this is a different letter. With love and appreciation, Paul is thanking the Phillipians for supporting him financially, giving ministry updates, and encouraging their walk with the Lord. Even though Paul was under house arrest at the time, he was joyful because he was seeing the work of God all around him. If anyone had a reason to be anxious, it was Paul. He was not just writing words that sounded good. He was living this stuff out.
Let your Requests be Made Known to God
“In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (verse 6). There is absolutely nothing in my life I can worry about that I can’t pray about. I was driving to work one morning, and I was praying about something. I don’t even remember what it was. When I got done, I was actually apologizing to God about my prayer! I was like, “Well God, I know this is really just a first world problem, and I shouldn’t even be bothered by this or worried about it, so I’m sorry I even brought that up.” That was the day God spoke to me that all my prayers are important to Him, even the ones I see as silly or trivial in the grand scheme of things.
With Thanksgiving
Let’s talk about this “with thanksgiving” part. What do you have to be thankful for? What good things has God done in your life? Are you healthy? Is there a friend He has blessed you with? Are your bills paid? Do you have not everything you want, but everything you need? Be thankful. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17a). If there’s something good in your life, God put it there. I can also be thankful when I pray that God hears me, and will answer even if it’s not the way I expect or in the timeframe I expect Him to. I can thank Him for how He is going to work in this situation or how I will experience Him in a way that maybe I haven’t yet before.
The Promise
Here comes the promise, and this is the best part! “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (verse 7). You have been promised peace. This is great news. I think sometimes we confuse peace with circumstances going well, things working in our favor, or a warm, fuzzy feeling. Peace is a sense that even though circumstances are not lining up the way I want or I don’t see a way out of this mess, I have a deep knowing in my spirit that it will somehow be OK because of God’s divine intervention in my life. God has this situation taken care of before I even ask. Oftentimes, we rob ourselves of peace by not doing the things contained in the verses prior- praising God, recognizing his presence, thanking Him, and requesting intervention.
As a caveat here, I know some people struggle with a high level of physiological anxiety, which in my therapy experience, is usually connected to some type of past trauma. You may need physical and emotional intervention along with spiritual intervention. That is OK. I have had several clients in therapy who had a sense of spiritual peace even though they were physically and emotionally anxious.
Think on These Things
Last, but not least is verse 8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” This verse is a refrain of verses 4-6, but important subjects are worth the repetition. I could probably write a whole post on this one verse, but if you were wondering what to think about, here is the litmus test.
Now, you don’t choose what pops in randomly, but you do choose what you dwell on (exception of OCD). Learning to switch thoughts from something that is negative or anxiety provoking to something that is positive takes practice, intentionality, and time. You can learn to change the channel in your mind. How about starting by memorizing some of the above verses, so you have a positive go to?
My hope is that this post and the last have provided perspective shift on, “Do not be anxious,” not as a command, but perhaps a desire from Paul for people to experience the same peace that he had found in Christ. I’d love to hear what you think as well as other topics you’d like me to address on the blog.
I work with a lot of people who experience anxiety, and some have sought help from well meaning, but misguided church leaders who told them they haven’t prayed enough, read their Bible enough, or trusted God enough. In some cases, my clients have been told that their anxiety is a sin. After all, the Bible does say, “Do not be anxious about anything.” (Phil 4:6).
Anxiety may be defined differently by different people. Anxiety could be described as a thought process of worry or as the physical symptoms of sweating, heart racing, and shortness of breath. According to Dictionary.com, anxiety is, “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease.” Anxiety is a feeling. Are feelings sin?
The short answer is no. Many biblical “heroes” were anxious or afraid: Gideon when he tore down his father’s altars, Elijah when he fled from Jezebel, and Moses going before Pharaoh. Jesus himself knew about anxiety before he went to the cross. He was in such anguish that he sweat drops of blood (hematohidrosis if you’d like to google). In my years of working with anxious people, I’ve never met anyone who has experienced that level of physical anxiety.
Even if you’re not sweating blood, you may have some intense physical experiences when you’re anxious. Your brain and nervous system are hardwired to keep you safe and alive. That’s very helpful when faced with true danger, but the problem is that sometimes the danger signal in the brain can be prone to misfire. This is especially true in the case of those who have experienced trauma. If you have experienced trauma or are dealing with a lot of anxiety, there are trained professionals who would love to help you. In my experience, EMDR is a great treatment option for people experiencing anxiety because of the physical release that can be obtained.
So, the feeling of anxiety is not a sin, but how you handle it may or may not be. Avoidance of doing what God calls you to do because you are afraid is sin. I’ve been anxious about many things that God has called me to do such as speaking in front of people, traveling across the world on a mission trip, and starting my business. Starting the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast was very anxiety provoking because at the end of the day, I’m still a little shy about sharing details regarding my life. I’ve been able to feel that fear and continue in action because I have confidence that God has called me to this work.
There have been other times though that my anxiety has gotten in the way of my faith. There have been times where I tried to convince God there was already someone else out there who is either already doing it better or would be much more qualified for the task. There have been several occasions where I have kept quiet for fear of misunderstanding, judgement, or rejection. I have taken the “God language” out of things God has clearly done in my life that He wants me to share with others. That’s not OK.
You may struggle with some of the same things too. I want you to know that if you’ve avoided doing something God has called you to, God’s grace is big enough to cover all of it. You can accept that grace while also challenging yourself towards growth into who God desires for you to be. Take action on what you believe God has spoken to you about doing.
While doing a little searching for this post, I found 81 references in the Bible for, “Do not be afraid.” Why is that in the Bible so many times? Because God knew we were going to be afraid. He knew we were going to wrestle with this emotion and need some reassurance that everything is going to be OK, that He is big enough to handle it, and that He will not leave us in the process. “Do not be afraid” is there to comfort us, not to condemn us when we are afraid.
I’m sure there is much more that can be written about the intersection of anxiety and faith in Christ. Until then, if you have specific questions, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.
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.
Anxiety is often seen as a negative, something we ask God to take away from us. In episode 4 of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, Author Rhett Smith discusses how God can use anxiety for good in our lives.
Rhett’s story of transitioning from pastoring to therapy
How anxiety can be used for good
Rhett’s view on pastors going to therapy
How pastors and ministry leaders can support those in the congregation with anxiety
Resources and links: Verses discussed: Philippians 4:6, 2:20, 2:28
Today’s episode, you are going to get to hear my interview with Rhett Smith. It was an amazing privilege to be able to interview him. He is a former pastor, licensed marriage and family therapist, ministry leader, speaker, podcaster, and also the author of the book, The Anxious Christian, Can God Use Your Anxiety For Good?
Rhett has some really great things to share with us about the use of a famous verse for anxiety, Philippians 4:6 regarding how sometimes we use this verse and sometimes we don’t.
So diving in today, here is my interview with Rhett Smith.
Carrie: For those that don’t know you, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Rhett: I am in private practice in Plano, Texas, which is kind of a suburb of Dallas. I’ve been in private practice for probably about 10 to 12 years. I primarily work with couples and families. I do a lot of individual work too, but I’m trained and licensed as a marriage and family therapist.
[00:01:36] I spend about half of my week, about two days a week seeing people in my office and then over the last year and a half, I got more into executive coaching and went back to school at SMU to do some more training. I am currently working with some vice-presidents and stuff and some different organizations here in the Dallas area. I’m doing some executive coaching and helping them perform at a higher level. On the side when I have time, I enjoy doing stuff like this, like podcasting and do a little bit of writing and a little bit of speaking. I would say though those are primarily what takes up my time.
I’m married to my wife, Heather and I have a 13-year-old daughter who starts eighth grade tomorrow and a ten-year-old son who starts fourth grade tomorrow online. We’re trying to be flexible and anticipate, whatever happens, happens.
Carrie: I also saw on your website that you were a runner.
Rhett: I do like to run. I’ve always run my entire life just a little bit here and there. I was in track in high school, but short distance.
The short story is that my brother said, “Hey, you wanna run a marathon for this organization to raise money?” And I said, “Okay” and so I ran my first marathon in 2006. Prior to that run, no more than maybe three miles at a time, I started getting into running and the distance has got longer. I did a 50k and then I did a 50 miler.
[00:03:12] In February, I just completed my first 100k, which is about 62 miles. These are all now primarily trails. I do it mainly because it’s a way for me to kinda have my own therapy, to get out, and to have some solitude and silence. It’s just a way to take care of myself and exercise since I sit in a chair a lot during the week. For me, it’s just a huge outlet and I really enjoy it.
Carrie: Yeah. I can definitely attest to that. Exercise helps with mental health.
Rhett: For sure it does.
From A Full time Pastor to A Therapist, Providing Mental Health Support to Pastors and Business Leaders
Carrie: So you had talked about doing some executive coaching. Do you have a background in business then too? Were you involved in business before therapy?
Rhett: No. Before therapy, I was a pastor, full-time. I had gone to seminary out of college. I actually planned to do this in college. I wanted to be a psychologist and I took a church history class in my senior year and it changed my life. I decided to go to seminary. I went to Fuller Theological Seminary there in California. I started off at the extension campus in Arizona and I was working at my Alma mater, which at the time, was a small Southern Baptist School called Grand Canyon University. I was working there and going to school and then I moved to California. I was required to do a church internship as a part of that. I landed at a church called Bel-Air Presbyterian Church and I was working in the college ministry on the campuses of USC and UCLA. Just by weird kind of circumstances, they ended up putting my name in the hat. They’re on the search for a new college pastor.
I didn’t really want to be in ministry. I just went to seminary to do a PhD. I wanted to teach and I ended up getting the job. I was the college pastor there in Los Angeles for about seven to eight years. I have no business background but it was in the ministry and the way that I got into therapy was just working with college students day in and day out.
I realized that what I love was not the preaching and the speaking, but was the one-on-one and helping people through difficult times.
I just felt ill-equipped to handle some of the more difficult situations. So I decided to go back to Fuller Seminary when I was pastoring. I did my marriage and family therapy program there. I think the combined experience of working with pastors and leaders and doing therapy just helped in such a way that all of a sudden, I had business leaders and organizations asked me to come to speak to their leaders about mental health, how to deal with difficult relationships, or what our boundaries are like in the workplace. I found myself in the business world with no really quote-unquote business experience except building my own practice.
I really enjoyed that aspect of work too. Working with business leaders to help them figure out how to perform at higher levels and how to actually take care of themselves. To be honest, even though it’s not a therapy, most of them are like, “Hey, I don’t mind if you do a little therapy.” So I’m in this weird place kind of spending time between church work, kind of corporate world, and in my own private practice. I just kind of learned a lot along the way.
Carrie: What’s really interesting though, I would imagine is that there’s a lot of overlap and relationship principles. You can apply those anywhere. You can apply those in your marriage. You can apply them at work. You can apply them in your corporation. So there’s probably a lot of overlap in that wisdom.
Rhett: Yeah. I would think in my experience, any of the training that we’ve done, especially when relationships and family systems and stuff is that it’s really easy to apply to organizational systems. I may have to change the language a little bit in terms of how we communicate and the tools that I might use, but what I’ve come to learn recently is that there’s really nothing new under the sun. Everyone is saying the same thing. It’s just that we’re all coming from different angles. I’ve enjoyed stepping into that world and I feel kind of green and new at it, but I’ve learned a lot.
Equipping Pastors To Deal with Mental Health Related Issues
Carrie: That’s awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about the training that you’re doing with pastors on mental health issues?
Rhett: One of my mentors is Terry Hargrave. He’s at Fuller Theological Seminary and he founded a model called restoration therapy. I got into that by doing some marriage intensives back in 2010 to 2014. Up at a ranch here in Texas, we would bring couples in and do these marriage intensives. The model that we used was his model, which eventually he kind of built into a bigger framework and started training therapists.
I was trained early on in his model and I’ve been really close to him. Over the course of the last several years, he and his wife, Sharon who’s on staff at the Boone Center for Marriage and Family at Pepperdine University, got together with some other leaders from Azusa Pacific and Fuller Seminary. They decided that we need to equip and train pastors. Pastors are overwhelmed and busy. They deal with all kinds of issues. They’re the frontline that people bring all kinds of issues to them, so they put together a team of about seven to nine people with experience in different issues related to mental health.
We’ve recently had some of our work published through Barna as part of a relationship kind of mental health piece. I’ll be doing that again in a few weeks and I’m looking forward to that.
Carrie: That’s awesome. I think pastors oftentimes are ill-equipped to deal with mental health issues and so providing that training is really crucial because they are on the front lines and people are coming to them with problems.
Rhett: Yeah. It’s a lot to ask a pastor to, who at the most maybe was required or given one class on counseling and seminary and then everyone comes to them for everything.
There’s this huge gap I think. There’s a lot of opportunities to come alongside pastors and to be a resource for them and help them in any way that we can. Being a former pastor myself, I feel like that’s really important.
Integrating Faith With Pyschological Tools
Carrie: Do you find that some are hesitant to refer out because they aren’t sure if people are going to be getting sound biblical advice or feedback on their issues?
Rhett: Yes for sure. You talked about going to Denver Seminary and I went to Fuller Seminary and a lot of my friends are going to Dallas Seminary. So depending on the education, people and pastors are concerned about what kind of therapy it is going to be. Is it going to be biblical therapy? Is it going to be some type of Nouthetic therapy, which is basically the only counseling you provide is that you open the Bible and point to specific verses or it might be like new age therapy.
I guess what I tell pastors is my job as a therapist is to bring the best psychological tools and to integrate my faith into that process. That’s how I was trained. What I find is if I have a good relationship with the pastor, then they feel safe and trustworthy. Also, we’ll create a list of different therapists in the area that I think are really great at what they do. We’ll give those to pastors as well.
I think that is a huge fear for pastors and I understand that, but I think it’s changed over the years. I don’t see that fear nearly as much as I used to. I think churches have done a good job of vetting who they think is best for their congregation. I always tell people, if you’re looking for a therapist and you don’t know, just go to your church. They usually have a list of therapists that they highly recommend.
Misapplied Bible Verses About Anxiety
Carrie: You wrote a book about anxiety called, “The Anxious Christian”, which I wanted us to dive into a little bit, but before we do that, I wanted to talk a little bit about this verse, Philippians 4:6, “Be anxious for nothing…”
There are a lot of Christians struggling with anxiety and they tell me that they feel shame around this, first because they’ve tried so hard not to be anxious through prayer. They’ve tried to bring everything to God. They’ve tried to ask Him to take their anxiety away.
Are there times you feel where we as Christians misapply this verse or are taken out of context?
Rhett: Yes. I think that’s the verse that got me really interested in writing more about this topic because like you, I have people coming to my office and they needed help. They had reached out to someone, maybe a ministry leader or a friend, and that verse I think was meant in good intention, but it was received in a way that made them feel ashamed like their faith wasn’t good enough. They ended up in a counseling office with someone they didn’t know but that was the only safe place.
[00:13:17] In some ways, I feel that’s a tragedy that they had to go somewhere where they didn’t even know anyone to talk through this. I do think it’s misapplied. We can talk about this at length, but in short, the flow of that whole book is there’s a lot going on. The word there in Philippians 4:6 that Paul uses for anxiety, which says, “Do not be anxious” is the same word he uses for anxiety in Philippians 2:20. He talks about the anxiety that his ministry leader, Epaphroditus had. He says Epaphroditus has anxiety for the people there because he cares about them. Paul uses that same word.
In Philippians 2:28, Paul talks about basically the lessening of his own anxiety. He uses a different word there for depression. They’re also in Philippians 2 and so you get this really interesting passage where Epaphroditus has anxiety. Paul talks about the lessening of his anxiety. You get to Philippians 2, it’s about Christ coming down in suffering on our behalf.
Paul is someone who’s been through a lot of difficult times. I think in the flow of everything he says, “don’t be anxious”, but if you are, in Philippians 4: 7-8, he says, “do these things.”
I think in the context, they actually acknowledged that there’s anxiety present in their lives, that we can go to God and we cannot be anxious, but if we are, there are some things that we can do. I just think the whole flow has to be applied when we talk to people about it, rather than just say, “don’t be anxious.” That does a disservice to people.
Carrie: Yeah. I love the other verses in that section that talk about “The Lord is near” and you think about like your kids when they were little, just you being there, sometimes is that calming presence for them. It’s like, “I’m here. I’m with you, you don’t need to be afraid.”
Rhett: Yeah. In 4:7-8, he basically talks about whatever is beautiful and Holy and loving, he says, “Meditate on these things.”
Paul knows thousands of years before we have the science to know it, that the things that we think about, change our beliefs. The things that we are to believe, change our actions. I think Paul has a lot of grace for people and the whole flow of the text needs to be taken into consideration.
We need to handle people in a very loving way who come to us with anxiety or depression or some other mental health issue.
Rhett’s Journey Of Anxiety And His Book, The Anxious Christian
Carrie: You make this argument in your book that a lot of Christians I think are focused on, “God, please just take this away, please.” “Can I get rid of it, please?” “I don’t want to deal with anxiety anymore. Just release me from it.”
You make the point that God can use your anxiety for good. How have you seen that played out in your own life? Or can you talk about that a little bit more?
Rhett: I think I first thought about that idea because I grew up in a family where my mom had breast cancer when I was six and she passed away when I was 11. I talk about that in my book. That was the day that I began to stutter and I still stutter sometimes but it’s pretty rare.
That was the day also that anxiety was kind of introduced into my life. What I noticed over time was that the really beautiful things that happened in my life were the things that I was able to work through my anxiety. Anxiety propelled me to work towards those things.
A couple of examples I use in the book is when I was a junior in college. I was asked to speak at our chapel for the Easter morning sunrise service. I’ve been praying about that, that God gave me an opportunity to speak somewhere just because I knew I needed to face my fears. I got a call to speak and I declined it. I remember getting off the phone saying, “I prayed about that.” I called them back up and said, “I’ll do it.” This is in 1996, almost 10 years after she (mother) had passed away. I remember getting up and speaking in front of an audience really for one of the first times and I stuttered my way through it.
I knew like something was about to change for me. This happened later on when I took the job at Bel-air. I remember saying to God, “Okay, I’ll take this job, but you have to show up for me and you have to speak for me.” What I started to notice is the things in my life that are really important. God somehow used that anxiety to propel me towards things because the anxiety was uncomfortable. [00:18:16] So it forced me to look for solutions. It forced me to look for ways to change and ways to grow.
Sitting With Anxiety As A Conversation Partner
Anxiety doesn’t leave you feeling comfortable if that makes sense. It was almost like the anxiety was God’s way of saying, “Get up and get moving. I’m not going to let you sit here. I’m not gonna let you just struggle in this” and so I just started to listen to my anxiety and pay attention to it.
If I’m working with people right now, I had them imagine like anxiety is a conversation partner. What is anxiety saying to you? How can you grow? I’ll use this metaphor: We all drive cars and our car has dash lights that tell us what’s going on underneath the hood and we paid attention to those things. Our car will run smooth and we’ll get to our destination. If we ignore those flashing lights, we’ll end up stranded, right? Or broken down. We just know physically and physiology and from the science that depression, anxiety are often just internal cues of something going on saying, “Hey, pay attention to me, pay attention to me.”
Reframing Anxiety And Following God’s Leading
[00:19:16] I encourage people that when they’re anxious or feeling depressed, ask yourself how you can listen to those things cause they might be a way of God guiding you and leading you. Do not see it as something’s wrong with you, but maybe there’s an opportunity for growth in here.
I know there’s lots of nuance around that. [00:19:36] I’m not saying God just gives us anxiety to grow us, but how do we reframe it as something wrong with us and more as maybe an opportunity to come alongside and to move in the direction God is guiding us.
Carrie: Right. I think for me, I resonate with the sense of, sometimes God calls you to do big things and I think it’s normal to be anxious in that process. For me, it caused me to lean more on God and rely on Him during that time. It’s also almost been in some ways a confirmation. I know I need to do this. I feel a spiritual piece of this is where God is leading me. I’m anxious about it because it’s bigger than me. It’s not something that I can do on my own. I need God to intervene.
Rhett: Yeah. I love that. I think there’s lots of good stories in the Bible where they may not use the word anxiety specifically in the text, but somebody is overwhelmed with the tasks that God has given them. Moses or Gideon or Peter, Paul, Mary, all of the people that they have to depend on God to get them through that situation.
I love that idea that it’s almost confirmation that if it’s too big, maybe you were on track.
How Churches and Pastors Can Support Mental Health
Carrie: How do you think pastors can really support Christians in their congregation who are struggling with some of these issues? How can they come alongside them and say, “You know, I’m here for you.”
Rhett: That’s a great question. I think it starts from the top down. It’s a ministry, it’s a pastor, or a ministry leader, or someone who leads the Bible study within the church or as a volunteer leader. I think the message actually has to come top-down. It needs to be something like, “we want you to know that it’s okay If you struggle with mental health issues, anxiety, depression.”
Number one, it’s okay. There’s not a stigma around it. I think that almost has to be verbally spoken and number two, we are going to look for ways to make it safe for you to find a community to talk about these issues within the organization.
Number three, we’re going to partner, pair up with other organizations or leaders within the mental health field if you feel we can’t support you, or even if we can, we’re going to bring other leaders in to help, guide us, or to give us some expertise in areas that we don’t have. You can get into a lot of details after that, but I think it starts with just the idea of a pastor getting up and saying, “it’s okay if you struggle and it’s okay if you’re anxious or depressed. This is a safe place to be in that moment and we’ll walk you through that.” I think if you do that, the other stuff will come in terms of how we execute mental health within the church and how we come alongside people.
Carrie: I think that’s huge. Just normalizing the struggles and saying like “that’s okay” because how many people, in the trajectory of their life, there’s a huge percentage of people who at some point or another are going to experience either anxiety or depression.
Rhett: Yeah and there’s a quote attributed to C.S Lewis and I can’t remember which writing it is but something like, “Two of the most beautiful words in the English language is “me too.” It’s like to know that “you’re not alone.” That other people suffer from this and I think if you say that out loud to people, a lot of beautiful opportunities will open up then in terms of how you can discern to come alongside each person in their own unique way.
Shame Around Mental Health In The Church
Carrie: One of the things that I ran across when I was doing this podcast was I had a couple of people telling me they were struggling with anxiety. It’s hard for me to talk about it in the church because people see me as a spiritual leader or as a pillar of faith. For me, when I start opening up about anxiety, they’re like, “no, not you.” So it almost gets this response of denial. I think that’s just a good thing to put out there for other Christians who may be in the congregation to say that when somebody is trying to tell you about their struggles, believe them and really hear them.
Rhett: Yeah. Statistics can be all over the place. When we’re talking about anxiety, for example, on average, about 18 percent of the American population, 18 and over is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. That’s someone who’s diagnosed. I saw the latest stats this year that said 33% and so it’s probably pretty high right now. Those are people who’ve actually gotten the help that they’re diagnosed with. They’ve seen the counselor, they’ve seen a doctor, they’ve seen a psychiatrist.
If I’m a pastor and I’m preaching, let’s say to a congregation of a hundred people. I could safely assume that 20 to 33 people in that audience have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder that says nothing about the other 70 people who probably have some level of anxiety or have experienced anxiety, but there’s shame around it or who haven’t gotten help or don’t even know they’re anxious because they’ve lived in that feeling for so long. That’s a huge amount of the people that you’re ministering to each week and that’s significant. That’s why I think the issue has to be addressed. I think it’s safe for pastors or it’s important for pastors to say from the top, down even if they haven’t shown anxiety, that it’s okay if you are.
Pastors Need Counseling Too
Carrie: [00:25:31] Having been a pastor yourself, do you feel it’s beneficial for pastors to receive counseling? Just to have an objective viewpoint, or be able to talk about the stressors that come with ministry.
Rhett: Yeah. I actually grew up in a pastor’s home too, my entire life. I credit my dad with that because there was never a stigma. I knew that he had seen counselors and stuff as well.
I think this is kind of a strong language, but I would say it’s a must. If you’re going to be in ministry, you need to have a counselor that you work with regularly. I was going through the ordination process and the PCUSA, I’m not ordained but my initial steps were I was required to have the MMPI Assessment on me cause they want to flesh out if people are stable and stuff and I had to see a counselor. I had already seen a counselor prior to that and then when I decided to do my MFT training in California, every hour, you see a therapist. They’ll give you three hours towards your state licensure. So I did hundred-plus sessions with a therapist there and then I continued that for a couple of years after I was working on my license. I have a therapist I work with here.
I probably see right now 20 to 25 different pastors within my practice. The pastors I see usually come from congregations where they’ve made that something as important.
As pastors, we want you to go get help, or we want you as a congregation to get help, but there are people who kind of come one-off from other churches. What I find is communities that have made it safe and told their pastors, “this is important.” I see pastors doing that.
I don’t know. I’m biased, but I think pastors should have a therapist they work with regularly. I think it’s dangerous not to. I think counselors should have counselors that they work with regularly. I mean, it’s important when you’re helping people that you have a place to get help and to have space to talk about things.
Carrie: There’s something about just clearing out your own junk that makes you more available to other people. I really believe that.
Rhett: Yeah. If you’re doing this work all day with people and doing pastoral counseling and doing the work that you do as a pastor or a counselor or health field, your bandwidth over time gets pretty frayed. You have less to give others. I see that in my own marriage and my own parenting and my friendships, I just have less to give over time. I’ve had to figure out ways to take care of myself and to get the help that I need so that I can be in these relationships with people.
I think pastors, there’s a heavy burden on them and so I just think they need an outlet, to have that safe, confidential outlet to wrestle through issues.
Carrie: I think what you’re kind of talking about a little bit is there’s this potential for burnout and that’s not just from ministry leaders, that’s other people as well. Moms can get really burnt out on what they’re doing and that can cause a lot of either the result of ongoing stress and anxiety until things just kind of crash.
Rhett: Yeah. I think burnouts can happen in any field. Lay or professional field, you may have noticed in your practice, the word burnout is being used more. Currently, I think with my clients, in the workshops that I’ve been doing, as COVID has dragged on and uncertainty is dragged on people have felt burnout.
You mentioned moms stay at home, parents are burned out, having to teach and to do other things that they were doing, parents are working from home. Burnout I think it’s not something you can usually anticipate. You can sense it coming on, but from what I gathered from the research and experience, all of a sudden, it just kind of hits you and then you can’t function.
I think we’re in an interesting time right now that’s why people are reaching out to mental health people, counselors, and therapists, getting help is probably pretty critical.
Rhett’s Story of Hope
Carrie: I think we pretty much covered the stuff. So, at the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.
Rhett: I knew that the question was coming in. It’s a really good question. I have to think about it for a while cause I feel fortunate that there’s a lot of people around me who’ve given me hope or who’ve encouraged me but the thing that came to mind was my daughter who I’d mentioned earlier is 13. She’s in theater at her school. Last year when she was in a theater production, I was watching and she had a couple of different parts where she spoke and I was watching her speak and she did it with confidence. That really hit me at the core. I think also because I pictured myself at her age and I was in a school play that you had to be in and I remember staring my way through that and living in fear and anxiety.
Seeing her being so competent, I think gave me a sense of hope that God changes and redeems situations. He transformed people’s lives. Even though I struggled with anxiety and stuttering and things were really difficult for me, He was able to help me work and to grow that it somehow changed my daughter’s life in such a way that she didn’t have to deal with those same struggles.
Though my daughter is not me. I felt like in some way it was a mirror God saying, “things are going to be okay.” It just gave me a sense of hope. I saw my younger version of myself in her and that’s been something I’ve thought a lot about, I think over the last probably five or six months since she had that play, that’s something I’ve been really encouraged by that through difficult times, things are gonna be okay. We’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through these times and God will redeem the situations and He’ll fix the broken pieces. That for me is huge.
Carrie: I think it’s really powerful seeing your child have something maybe that you didn’t have at that point in your life. That’s awesome. I’m so glad that you have that gift.
Rhett: As a therapist, I’ve just become aware that I’m going to mess my kids up. There’s no perfect parenting. The things that you don’t even intentionally do, kids just interpret in certain ways. So it’s given me a lot of hope to know that we do the best that we can and, and it’s not perfect. God’s going to work and it’s cool to see our kids inspire us. We didn’t thrive in ways that we thought we messed up.
I think that’s why I enjoy working with people in counseling. I’m able to see people’s lives changed and transformed, and sometimes it’s really slow and other times it’s overnight. That’s what keeps me engaged.
Carrie: I really appreciate you giving us the most valuable gift of your time today and talking about these issues with anxiety and church leaders. It’s just been incredible to just get your wisdom on these issues.
Rhett: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. It’s been fun. I enjoy doing this stuff. Awesome.
I really enjoyed that interview and I hope that you did too and were able to get something good out of it. If you want to continue the conversation with us, please hop on over to Instagram and Facebook. You can follow along with the show there and hopefully receive some microdoses of encouragement for your day.
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.
