Tag: Faith

108. OCD Personal Story with Michael Kheir

Written by Carrie Bock on November 30, 2023. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

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

Episode Summary:

The importance of reducing stigma around mental health, particularly OCD and anxiety.

How OCD can lead to obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, even over seemingly insignificant matters.

The impact of strict religious upbringing on OCD and the concept of legalism.

The power of understanding and embracing God’s grace in dealing with mental health challenges.

Episode Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

More to listen to:

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

Transcript

I have the privilege of interviewing some interesting people on this show and hearing their stories. One of the things that we are focused on is reducing shame, so I interview a lot of people—Christians who have personal stories with OCD or anxiety.

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

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Carrie: Welcome to the show, Mike.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael: Thanks so much.

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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 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.

104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Written by Carrie Bock on September 28, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Carrie interviews Greg Atkinson, an entrepreneur, speaker and author, about the power of kindness.

Greg shares his personal journey and how forgiveness and kindness have played a pivotal role in his life. The conversation highlights the ripple effect of kindness and its power to make the world a better place.

Episode Highlights.

How Greg Atkinson’s life experiences, including anxiety, inspired his commitment to kindness.
The importance of forgiveness in fostering a kinder world.

The significance of vulnerability and openness in sharing personal stories and breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health.

Practical ways to incorporate kindness into your own life and make a positive impact on those around you.

Greg’s Book: The Secret Power of Kindness

Episode Summary:

Welcome to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast! I’m Carrie Bock, your host, and today’s episode features Greg Atkinson—an insightful speaker, author, and educator on mental health issues.

Greg recently authored The Secret Power of Kindness, a book that opens with a deeply personal account of his journey through trauma, mental health struggles, and ultimately, forgiveness. Greg shares how his experiences with sexual, verbal, and physical abuse shaped his life, leading to diagnoses of anxiety and bipolar disorder.

The central theme of Greg’s book is forgiveness—a process that has taken years of therapy and personal growth. He emphasizes that holding onto anger and bitterness can prevent us from living a kind and compassionate life.

Greg also discusses the impact of mental health in his life, from the physical symptoms of anxiety to the mental battles of catastrophic thinking. He highlights the importance of understanding mental illness, especially within faith communities, where there can be harmful misconceptions about anxiety and depression being purely spiritual issues.

Through his story, Greg aims to educate and encourage others to approach mental health with kindness, both towards themselves and others. His insights challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness and promote a more compassionate understanding within the church and beyond.

Join me in this episode as we explore Greg Atkinson’s journey of healing, forgiveness, and the power of kindness.

Tune in for another inspiring episode:

63. Trauma, Forgiveness, and Emotional Eating Recovery with Coach Jon McLernon

Transcript

Welcome to the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast. I am your host, Carrie Bock. This is episode 104. We are here with Greg Atkinson, who is a speaker, author, and educator on mental health issues and entrepreneur.

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Carrie: Welcome to the show.

Greg: Thank you for having me.

Carrie: You wrote a book recently called “The Secret Power of Kindness.” In the first part of the book, you talked a little bit about your story. Can you tell us what caused you to want to open up about that or tell us a little bit about how you got to this point?

Greg: I had a desire to write a book that anybody could pick up and read, and my previous books were written to pastors and church leaders, which is a very small niche. I knew that the average or typical reader, if they weren’t in the church pastor world, you may not know who I am. I wanted to open up with here’s who I am, here’s what I’ve been through, here’s why I wrote the book, here’s why I hope you will want to read this book. I had a mentor here in Charlotte who passed away a few years ago, but he told me when he first started mentoring me and he mentors men, he said, “Greg, every man has a father wound and a church wound.” I believe that’s true for women as well, but he was specifically focused on discipling men and mentoring men. I wanted to open the book with a chapter on forgiveness and talk about my father wound and my church wound because I have both and I have found since this book came out. That a lot of people can relate to it and a lot of people have been encouraged by my story.

I talk about issues I went through growing up with sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse. And then I talk about mental health and being diagnosed with anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder. And then I share a situation of even being fired from a job due to disclosing that I had a mental illness. I had no performance issues.

I’d worked there two and a half years, but when I finally felt comfortable enough to tell my boss, then he fired me the purpose of the chapter. The whole focus was forgiveness. It’s that I have forgiven my boss. I’ve forgiven my dad. I have forgiven those that have hurt me. And it’s not a quick and easy thing.

This is a process of years and thousands of hours of therapy and thousands of dollars worth of therapy. Just a lot of individual therapy, group therapy. I talk about in the book going to on site in Tennessee and I have been through everything you could go through to deal with my father when in my church when I just wanted to read her to know that I have wrestled with forgiveness and I found that I was able to forgive those that have hurt me or wrong me, and that as the 1st chapter of 10 keys in the book, 10 keys to unlocking kindness.

This allows me to lead a kinder life because people that struggle with unforgiveness and are hurt and angry and bitter and have anger under the surface, they could snap at people or be rude or gruff and come across as unkind. It’s the opposite of kindness. So I wanted to start with a lot of people have said a very deep chapter, for a first chapter and just share my story and say, here’s what I’ve gone through to be in a place where I could respond with kindness and treat people kindly, but it has been a long journey.

Carrie: We have had a lot of guests talk about forgiveness, and I appreciate the perspective, too, that it’s a process because I think sometimes when we learn about it in church, we think it’s supposed to be just some kind of instantaneous thing, like, “Okay, I forgive this person” but it’s almost like a journey and a lifestyle that you have to adopt between you and the Lord to say like, okay, I’m recognizing when this anger comes up. I’m recognizing when this bitterness comes up and I choose not to go down that path.

Greg: Absolutely. It is a process. And that’s what they say at onsite, trust the process. They have coffee mugs that say, trust the process, but yeah, it is definitely a process and it’s been a lifelong journey with several therapists that are trained in different skills to get to the point where I am now.

Carrie: How long did it take you from when you first started showing symptoms until you got a mental health diagnosis?

Greg: Great question. I think when I look back on my teenage years and my 20s, it was obvious there was something going on, but I actually did not get diagnosed until I was 30 years old. Which is later than a lot of people, but when I got diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and bipolar, I was 30 years old now that I know what they are and what the symptoms are and what things to look for, I can totally see it in my twenties.

Even in my teenage years. I just had no words for it, I was truly ignorant. I thought everything was spiritual and you just pray and it’ll go away and pray more and do a devotional and have a quiet time and you’ll never get depressed and everything will be fine. And I was super ignorant and I did not know anything about mental health or mental illness.

Now, as an advocate and somebody that writes and speaks about mental health. I’m trying to educate those in power and leadership to be careful with their words because they may not realize that you can’t just pray it away and that some people like myself need to take medicine when I speak out and when I talk, I tell people if you need medicine, it’s totally okay.

It’s not anti Bible, anti spiritual. If you need medicine, just like if you had diabetes and you had to take insulin, If you have something going on with the chemistry in your brain, and you need to take a mood stabilizer or something to help with anxiety, whatever your doctor thinks is right for you. I have tried to educate pastors to not shame people for needing medicine or for struggling with anxiety.

I was just flipping through social media 3 days ago. And a pastor had uploaded a reel where he was preaching and he referred to anxiety and depression as sin. And so pastor that I love and respect and know, and I followed him for a reason, but he had talked about going through a season of depression and anxiety, but he referred to it as he had overcome it and he had got the victory. And that kind of made it sound like he was sitting when he was depressed and he was sitting when he was anxious. For somebody like me that has a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, I know that those words from a person on the pulpit can be very dangerous.

Carrie: Yes, and I think unless they’ve experienced mental health disorders or have that self awareness, pastors and ministry leaders, they may not understand what it’s like to deal with anxiety or what it’s like to wake up and not want to get out of bed in the morning. Really giving them these types of personal stories and insights, I think is really helpful and It goes to show you, too, that we’ve come a long way in the church in some ways, but we still have a long way to go, and we still have people that are giving these messages about anxiety is only a spiritual problem instead of it’s a physical, emotional, spiritual problem.

Greg: As s you know, mental illness is often hereditary, and often you have relatives that have that. When I was in my early twenties, I knew that my cousin and my aunt had bipolar. I knew they struggled with depression, but I was ignorant. I was super ignorant. And I remember saying to my wife, if they would just pray more, if they would just have a devotional life and a quiet time, they would be fine. And then when I was 23, right in the prime of my life, and used to be super athletic, I had three ruptured discs and had to have major back surgery, and I was flat on my back in a hospital bed for two months, and I wanted to die for the first time in my life. I experienced true depression. It was the first time ever, but I remember telling my wife, depression is real.

It’s a real thing. I want to die right now. I was 23 years old, laying in a bed for two months. And when I did get up to go to the bathroom, I had to use a walker and I was, all my muscles had atrophied and then I went from a walker to a cane and then I had to go to physical therapy and it was a long journey back and recovery from back surgery, major back surgery.

It was almost like God opened my eyes of depression is real. This is what it feels like. I asked for forgiveness from God for how things I had said about relatives and my perspective of thinking if they would just pray it away, it would be okay. Now, as I have loved ones that struggle with depression, I am very aware that it’s real. And like you said, sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed. Super aware of that now, I don’t struggle as much with depression, but I do struggle with anxiety and take medicine for that. So I’m very aware that you could be fine with God. You could be having a devotional life and praying and worshiping and you and God are great and still you get anxiety or depression. That became real to me at the age of 23.

Carrie: How does anxiety affect you today?

Greg: There’s sometimes physical symptoms like I may be holding a cup or opening something and my wife will say your hands are shaking and I’ll notice there’s like a physical symptom of a tremor or something, which could be a side effect of the medicine, or it could be just how my anxiety manifests.

There’s also a lot of mental games that I go through of thinking worst case scenarios. Thinking about death. I have pain in my back. Is that pain cancer? I have a pain in my head. Is that a brain tumor with my anxiety? I think worst case scenario. I also at the age of 21, as I talked about in the book, my dad died, just dropped out of a massive heart attack.

I experienced a close death very young at 21 years old, and my kids are older than that now. When I was younger than them, I had lost my dad. When I have indigestion or heartburn and I feel my chest hurt, I think worst case scenario, am I having a heart attack like my dad? Am I going to die young like my dad?

When I look back on losing my dad at the age of 21, that’s when my anxiety kicked in, and that’s where my fear of death really came from. I’m sure there’s chemical issues as well and brain issues, but as far as the mental gymnastics that I go through to try to calm myself, everything became more intensified after experiencing a death of someone so close at such a young age.

I will oftentimes feel a symptom or wonder something, and I will think worst case scenario, or my counselor calls it sense of impending doom. You think that you’re going to die, and thank God my wife is a nurse and has talked me out of multiple ER visits of, no, you’re fine, stay home. But I still have those moments where I’ll go to the ER because I’ll think, no, my chest is hurting.

I’m pretty sure this is a heart attack. And I have had numerous EKGs where they say it’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with your heart. It’s just heartburn. Go home. But like I said, I have loved ones that struggle with depression. I really struggle with anxiety and it is exhausting. The medicine can help chill you a little, but the way the mind can race and the way the mind can think of worst case scenarios is exhausting.

My heart goes out to anyone that struggles with anxiety, and I know you addressed that on this podcast. I can very much relate to it. And as I have opened up to others, I’ll hear from people. Oh, my sister has anxiety or my mom has anxiety. I have found that there are so many people that struggle with mental health issues, but we’re just not aware of each other.

One of the tactics of the enemy is isolation, thinking we’re alone and we’re the only one that goes through it. Whereas, on any given Sunday, when a pastor stands up to preach, at least one fourth of the congregation has some type of mental illness. They say 25 percent or more. When they’re standing up to speak, a fourth of the congregation is struggling with something and it could be anxiety. My heart goes out to them.

Carrie: I’ve heard from some pastors too, who have been really vulnerable and I think that makes a huge difference to see a spiritual leader get up there and say, Hey, I’ve been to therapy or I hit a rough patch in the road and I needed to go talk to somebody or I needed to look at medication as an option.

We had a pastor on here not too long ago who talked about how he started having panic attacks and developing anxiety in his process. Of working through that. It’s always helpful for us. We’re scared, I think, sometimes to be vulnerable and share our story, but it blesses other people in the body of Christ when we have the courage to do that and to open up.

I appreciate you sharing your story here and also in your book. Why a book about kindness?

Greg: Well, it’s no secret, we live in a divided world, and there’s a lot of hatred online. There’s a lot of device in this. There’s a lot of anger and tearing people down instead of building people up. And, as you know, kindness is a fruit of the spirit. And I thought if this is what the Bible teaches that Christians should be known for, then we as the church have got to do a better job. I met with my publisher who I’ve known for 20 years. He flew to my house, met with me in person. I had shown him some thoughts I wrote down four years ago. He said, “I love talking about a fruit of the spirit.” He said, “I think you need to go all in on kindness and write about the power of kindness.” I adapted what was a previous book proposal that the subtitle was “The Power of Kindness,” and then we went all in on it and made the title, “The Secret Power of Kindness.” I start the book with a sentence, “Imagine a world where everyone is kind to one another,” and I end the book with that.

That’s kind of my dream of no matter who picks up my book and no matter what faith background they have, if we could treat one another with kindness, what I have found and what I talk about in the book is that kindness is contagious, and kindness unlocks kindness. I’m kind to you, and you’re kind to me, and we’re kind to others. We can change the world.

When I talk about kindness being contagious, I share a story of my youngest daughter when she worked the drive-thru at Dunkin’ Donuts. She had a day where somebody paid for the car behind them, and that went on for 27 cars, like paying it back or forward or whatever it is—they kept paying for the car behind them 27 times. And I have had times where I arrived at Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ Donuts, and I get to the window, and they said, “The person ahead of you paid for yours,” and it made my day. That’s what I talk about in my definition of kindness.

I had written it down at like 1:00 A.M., one night, but in the preface, I wrote, “The secret power of kindness is the self-awareness to know that you have the power to make or break someone else’s day and eventually change the world.” That kindness being contagious when somebody bought my meal, I just lit up and just made my day because it was surprising. And when somebody reacts to us in a harsh way or a critical way or a mean way and we respond with kindness, it surprises them and kind of catches them off guard, and they’re like, “Oh, wow, I thought you would bite my head off.” They don’t expect you to respond with kindness.

What I am proposing is a kindness movement, where kindness is contagious, kindness unlocks kindness, and together we are kind to those that we come into contact with, realizing that we do have the power to make or break someone’s day. And I share personal stories in there of how I’ve done that with servers over the years, waiters and waitresses and people that I’ve come across where I just try to make them smile. I try to make their day.

I was literally having a business meeting with my designer last night at 11:30 PM at Waffle House. And we blessed the waitress there, and she is amazing. And I’m going to go back to see her again because it was the first time I’d been to this particular Waffle House. And then before that, I had another business dinner with a friend at my favorite Mexican restaurant, and my favorite waitress Wendy came over, and she loves when I come in because my goal is to make them smile, to lighten their load. I share real stories of that in the book, of things that I’ve done over the years ever since college to build relationships with people in the community.

But, there are stories that go back 30 years of trying to live a life of kindness. And the first chapter is important because I did not receive kindness from my dad, and I never heard, “I love you,” from my dad when I became an adult and left the house. I decided that I’m going to end the cycle, that this stops with me. And I am going to tell my kids I love them, and I am going to be nice to people. My dad used to make waitresses cry in a restaurant. He was very mean, very harsh, is what one of my friends from high school just recently described him when I told him about my book. He said, “Oh, your dad was a harsh man.” And I remember him making waitresses cry. He was just brutal. I remember family dinners around the kitchen table of crying because he just ruined the whole dinner. And I just, when they decided this ends with me, my kids are not going to grow up in a dysfunctional home. They’re not going to go through this, and I choose kindness.

There’s a lot to it that I dive into the book about abiding with Christ and developing a relationship with Christ so that those fruit of the spirit come out of me naturally and I don’t have to force it. It’s one thing to say, “I’m going to be kind. I’m going to be kind. I’m going to be kind.” It’s another thing to have it come out naturally as a fruit of the spirit. There’s a quote I share in the book of when the toothpaste gets squeezed, whatever is in there is what comes out. The Bible talks about your heart being revealed, out of the overflow of your mouth, the heart speaks.

I want to spend time with God in such a meaningful way that when my toothpaste gets squeezed, what comes out is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. So the fruit of the spirit comes out naturally. And I don’t always get it right. I’m not perfect. I’m not the kindness expert. But I talked about things that I’ve learned. One for me that was very important was learning to forgive so that I would not hold onto anger and bitterness. Another chapter in the book that was super practical that came from my therapist in life was about the importance of sleep and rest.

There’s a whole chapter for me with bipolar and with anxiety disorder. I really wrestle with sleep and my therapist had given me a worksheet on sleep hygiene and how to get a better night’s sleep and things I can do to set myself up to succeed and to win when it comes to getting proper rest. There’s a whole chapter in the book that addresses rest because if we are not well-rested, then we’re going to snap at somebody, and we’ll again come across as the opposite of kind, and our heart may be that we want to be kind. We want to be known for kindness but we’re so tired and exhausted that we’re snapping at people. That’s a very practical chapter right in the middle of the book of this is something you can do to be at your best.

We’ve all seen the examples of the toddlers that are throwing a fit and fussing and whining and having a mental breakdown in the middle of a store. You hear the mom say, “Somebody needs a nap.” A lot of time it just comes back to something as simple as rest and vacation and days off and a sabbatical if needed, but taking the time to be properly rested and sleep is a battle for me. It’s a battle for one of my daughters. I often say sleep eludes me. It is so hard to get good sleep when you have certain types of mental illness.

I wanted to talk about things that I have learned and tried and do and practice to get a good night’s sleep because I am not at my best if I am short on sleep. As much as I want to be known for kindness, if I had three hours sleep, I am not going to be in a good mood. And I found that that’s pretty universal. Everybody can relate to that. So that’s a little bit about why I wrote about that.

Carrie: That’s really good. We’ve had a couple of episodes on sleep on the show, one from a spiritual perspective and one from a mental perspective and kind of behavioral change perspective. It’s been good conversations about those things.

You reminded me of a story that I wanted to share with you. I was just about 2015. I was going through a divorce. My husband was up and left, and I was trying to work, and I just couldn’t even think straight really sometimes. I went into this gas station. They had these refillable cups and if you take the cup back, you get a discount or whatever it is. You don’t have to pay the full price for the drink. So I’m in there in the gas station, and I’m struggling with this lid. For some reason, the plastic lid that I had would not fit on there very well. And this guy comes over, and he said, “You know, you can get another lid. It’s okay. Try this other lid.” It was just such a kind moment for me that someone would step in when I couldn’t even think straight and kind of solve what is a relatively simple problem, but I just remember that moment. It’s almost like bookmarked in my mind of that guy really did make my day that day because it was just tough going through that grief process and him being able to do something so simple. He has no idea how much that affected me.

Greg: That’s where the title came from. You experienced the power of kindness. I went to my barber a few days ago, and she had just opened up a new salon, new suite, and she had a framed picture up that said “The Power of Kindness.” I had already given her a copy of my book and she said, “Look what I got.” And she pointed to this picture that said “The Power of Kindness.” She had read my book, but that is something like you said, that is landmarked in your mind. It made such an impression that you’ve never forgotten it. And that is the secret power of kindness—to make someone’s day and thus change our world.

Carrie: The Bible talks about loving our neighbors as ourselves. And how does being kind to ourselves help us be kind to others? Because I truly believe this and what I’ve seen in my own life and the lives of my clients.

Greg: I write about this in the book. I have a whole chapter on love, which is also a fruit of the spirit. I talk about loving yourself so that you can love others. I talk about being kind to yourself so that you can be kind to others. I talk about forgiving yourself so that you can forgive others, but it all starts with us and self-reflection. I talk about meditation. I talk about journaling. There’s so much that has helped me in a therapeutic way from journaling, and my devotional and anxiety that I wrote came from journaling. It came from writing about what God was showing me in scripture.

I have found that oftentimes, and this was new to me, about a decade ago, I had learned and was taught, and then as a pastor taught, the great commandment poorly. We had bumper stickers at my church that said, “Love God, love people.” And I always taught love God, love others, love God, love people. And it was a two-prong approach. And then the last church I was on staff at, nine years ago, the pastor talked upward, inward, outward, love God, love yourself so that you can love others. It was a three-pronged approach, and that’s exactly what scripture says. Love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I have found that oftentimes when we talk about loving ourselves, we cut ourselves out of the equation. And we exhaust ourselves by saying, “Well, and I know the Bible says to love God and love others. So I’m going to try to do it with all my might.” But if we haven’t stopped to love ourselves, we’re not properly able to love others. We won’t have the strength and the resilience to do it. In this book, I do a deep dive into love and the great commandment. And one of the most beautiful and healthy things that you can do is to love yourself, to forgive yourself, to be kind to yourself. And the byproduct of that is you’ll love others, be kind to others, forgive others. It’s a win-win scenario, but it starts with loving yourself.

Carrie: Right. I think one of the things that we do, especially in trauma work, is people will be very shameful or angry regarding things that they’ve done in the past as a teenager, as a young adult, or just a really low time in their life where they made some bad choices and went down the wrong path. And really helping that person gain empathy for that younger self, like, did they have the knowledge? Did they have the skills to act differently? Did they know how to regulate their emotions? And once you’re able to kind of go through all that, it’s like, “Oh, wow, no, I was completely ill-equipped, and I was acting out of my woundedness.” It didn’t make it right or okay, but I can have compassion towards my younger self, understanding how I got to where I was.

That’s often like just a really breakthrough, beautiful moment for someone that helps them also be compassionate towards other people who are acting out of their own woundedness and their own hurt. I think sometimes when we encounter people that are maybe a little bit prickly, we forget, well, maybe they’re really hurting right now, or maybe they have their own struggles they’re going through that we can’t see or we don’t know about.

Greg: I talk about that in the book. There’s a quote that somebody said that I referenced in the book of when somebody is harsh to you, critical of you, or rude to you, or just comes at you in a hard way, oftentimes we want to respond with, “What’s wrong with you?” instead of “What happened to you?” Everybody’s got a story. Everybody has a background. Maybe they were abused as a child, maybe they just went through a divorce, maybe they had a bad night’s sleep. Instead of responding with “What’s wrong with you?” if we have the approach of, “I wonder what happened to them that led them to this point,” because everybody’s got a story.

As I mentioned in the book, almost everybody I’ve come across has a father when there are things that have happened in our life and our childhood and our early adult life that bring us to a point where we are not acting like our character is and like we want to be known for.

There are things that people go through that lead them to maybe treat us poorly. And if we can start with compassion and realize that, wow, that person could have been through a whole lot in their life. I’m going to extend grace to them. I’m going to extend mercy to them. And grace is undeserved. It’s unmerited favor. People don’t have to deserve grace. It’s just something we give. It is not only my favorite word, I named my daughter Grace, my first child.

Grace is unmerited favor. It’s undeserved. It is a gift, and a gift doesn’t have to be earned. It’s just given. When somebody comes at me in an attacking way or a rude or tough way, I can choose to extend grace to them, whether they deserve it or not. And just saying, maybe they’re having an off day today. I’m going to choose to be graceful.

Carrie: If you can go back and tell your younger self something that didn’t have the awareness that you have now about mental health issues or what you were struggling with, what would that be?

Greg: Great question. I think because it’s fresh on my mind, I probably have a new answer now. My oldest daughter, who has now gone off to grad school, she’s getting her Ph.D., and she was at the house visiting before she moved into her new apartment over the summer. And somehow we got to talking about Matt Damon or something. And I said, I know it was before your time, but have you ever heard of Good Will Hunting? And she said, Yeah, I guess I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it. I said, “Well, let’s watch it.” So we watched it and that scene where Robin Williams says to him, “It’s not your fault.” That’s what I would tell my younger self because I was abused, but it wasn’t my fault. I was molested, but it wasn’t my fault. My dad was terrible to me, but it wasn’t my fault. That’s what I would tell my younger self because I grew up with just terrible emotional pain because of all that I’ve been through.

On-site, they do exercises where you speak to your younger self, and they walk you through all types of therapy where somebody stands in and you speak to another person in the group that is representing your younger self, and you address that person, but I think now, after freshly, after nearly 30 years, rewatching Good Will Hunting, I would just say to Little Greg, “It’s not your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

Carrie: Yes. I feel like we could have this conversation for hours. This has been really great. I hope that people will look into getting your book, “The Secret Power of Kindness.” Thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Greg: Thank you for having me.

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Carrie: I appreciated this episode so much because I know those that struggle with anxiety struggle to be kind to themselves and often can struggle to be kind to others as well. We all have opportunities to practice kindness every day. All the little acts of kindness do add up to make the world a better place and allow us to share Christ’s love with others. In a couple of weeks, Steve will be back to join me on the show as we talk about what we’ve learned in our third year of marriage. Thanks so much for listening.

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

37. Doubt and Faith with Pastor and Author Steve Hinton

Written by Carrie Bock on July 14, 2021. Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 37. Doubt and Faith with Pastor and Author Steve Hinton

Today, we are privileged to have pastor and author, Steve Hinton as our guest. We had a meaningful conversation about doubt and faith. Pastor Steve also shares his journey of finding hope in the face of doubt and childhood wounding experiences.

Episode Highlights:

Doubt as a normal part of one’s faith experience
What is the root of doubt?
Why wrestling with God is a good thing?
How to hear and discern God’s voice in the midst of doubt
Embracing the mystery of faith
Seeing God through pain and suffering
How can we help those who are hurting see that God is good
Pastor Steve Hinton’s book, Confessions: Finding Hope Through One Pastor’s Doubt

Links and Resources:

Pastor Steve HintonBook: Confessions: Finding Hope Through One Pastor’s Doubt

Episode Summary:

Doubt is something that many of us wrestle with in our faith journey. I know from personal experience that it can be tough to understand God, especially when past wounds cloud our perspective. In this episode, I explore these struggles with Pastor Steve Hinton, an author and experienced pastor, who opens up about his own journey with doubt. Having spent over 27 years in ministry, Steve discusses how early childhood wounds influenced his view of God, and how doubt is often rooted in misunderstood childhood experiences, leading us to question God’s goodness.

We also dive into the shame many Christians feel around having doubts. Steve shares his perspective, noting that doubt is a natural part of faith. He encourages us to reflect on the roots of our doubts, whether they stem from a lack of clarity or past trauma. Just like in the Bible, where figures like Elijah experienced doubt, it’s important to acknowledge these struggles and bring them before God.

Steve’s journey reminds us that doubt doesn’t mean a lack of faith—it’s a chance to build intimacy with God. It’s through wrestling with our doubts that we draw closer to Him, much like how we navigate challenging relationships. We can trust that even when things don’t go as we expect, God is still good and has a plan for us. Ultimately, pointing others to Jesus, as Steve emphasizes, is the key to finding peace through doubt. His approach teaches that no matter the circumstances, our relationship with God can deepen when we lean into trust and faith.

Transcript

I imagine that if you’ve been following God for any length of time, at some point or another you’ve had some questions and doubts come up. How do we know that God is really good and maybe hard to come to a certain understanding of God due to past woundedness getting in the way. We’re going to talk about doubt today with pastor and author, Steve Hinton.

Carrie: Welcome and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Steve: Thank you very much. First of all, I just want to give a thumbs up to you. The whole question of anxiety, especially today, the past couple of years, everybody’s past year, everybody’s been worried about the physical aspects of COVID. Suicide hotlines are off the charts and nobody’s really talking about the whole anxiety.

I just want to encourage you and what you’re doing. I think there is a connection to me, I’ve been in vocational ministry about 27, 28 years now. So I’ve seen all kinds of anxiety and, and had to work through some of that myself, just from some wounding in my early childhood. I grew up in the Northern Panhandle of Texas, which is kind of a conservative area.

I grew up with a general biblical Jesus worldview, but I really didn’t know Christ until I was a young teenager. I had to work through some father figure issues in my life. Couple of dads were in there. And then when my mother remarried, when I was about seven or eight, He adopted me. Jim Hinton adopted me the father one year, but he had to work through his own issues from his own childhood.

All that to say is, you know, a lot of times people get their idea of what God is, who God is by the father figure in their lives. So that bled into the book that I had written Confessions: Finding Hope Through One Pastor’s Doubts and doubts a big topic today. Carrie, I’ve been married for almost 30 years. And we have four young adult children. I’m kind of an adventurous guy and I’m looking forward to having this adventure with you.

Carrie: Awesome. So are all your kids out of the house yet or not yet?

Steve: Just about our third is going to junior college here in the Houston area. The youngest is a college in another state.

My oldest works for a church camp in the state of Washington. And then my second one completed a tour with the Marine Corps and he’s about to do a contract, a security contract, actually for the army in Kuwait here in a month. So we’re almost to that empty nest place, but you know, we can see the light.

Carrie: There’s a line at the end of the tunnel. I’ll just watch out sometimes they become a boomerang generation and boom, bring back. So hopefully yours will say stay launched and you and your wife can enjoy your time.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: That’s awesome that you have been married for so long, having that type of background and having, you know, being involved in your children’s lives because so many people grow up in a broken situation and then they end up repeating that same pattern.

Steve: Yeah. And that was a big prayer for me, Carrie. That was a big goal for me coming into marriage and coming into parenthood thinking, man, I want to do this fight and not saying that to throw my mother or anybody under the bus but also looking at the right care, looking at society as a whole. We just have way more dysfunction played out today than what we witnessed 20, 50, a hundred years ago because a lot of these root issues that we’re talking about the anxiety, the doubt A lot of those are the fruit of people growing up with the traditional nuclear family, not intact like it was a number of years ago. So some of the anxiety is a by-product of how we’ve constructed life today.

Carrie: I think that sometimes when I talk with Christians in my counseling practice, there’s some shame maybe around having doubts about God or just through church ministry. People say, well, I know that I need to have faith. I know that I need to trust God.

They really struggle maybe with some sense of shame about having these doubts, do you feel like that’s a normal part of our faith experience?

Steve: I think it’s a practical part. I think it’s a reality today. And I resonate with what you’re saying there with the shame, and that’s actually one of the reasons I wrote the book so that people would see, here is a vocational pastor, a guy who’s vocationally in the ministry, and he wrestles with some of these questions and he’s come out of the other end. Therefore, maybe there’s hope for me as well. And even on the shame picture, you know Carrie early on in the process when I was finishing up writing, I had to ask myself this question, how raw do I want to be? Because on one hand, there’s going to be people, for example, in ministry or people who seem to feel like they’ve got it all together who might look at what I’ve written in a judgmental way, but then I thought I’m not writing it for those people.

I’m writing it for those people who are really wrestling. Maybe with the journey of doubt, asking, what is the root behind it? And I think you’re right, some people think, yeah, if I, if I really had faith, I wouldn’t be wrestling with this. But asking what is the root behind the doubt?

Just one needing more data, Luke chapter one, God shows up and says, by the way, Mary, you’re going to have. And her question is how will this be? In other words, she accepted what God was saying, but she’s looking for some clarification. Sometimes the doubt and people maybe who are listening in and maybe they don’t know Jesus yet.

Sometimes the root of the doubt is really not data, but it is an expression of rebellion. As long as I could push this issue off, as long as I can pretend to be an atheist or agnostic, I can push off responsibility. And then also, maybe just, again, looking at the root. Is somebody doubting because they see the promises of God,

they’re trying to walk in faith, but they have these triggers and it’s really not so much about God as it is something that happened to them early in their childhood that just totally got them off rails. And they’re not able to connect the dots and, you know, they need to talk to someone like you Carrie to pull all these pieces together to realize that our God in heaven is not our biological father or our mother or our aunt or whoever that might be.

So I think doubt happens, Elijah in the Bible, a huge man of faith, but in First Kings chapter 19, he wanted to die. He was wrestling with fear and he was also wrestling with exhaustion. So trying to acknowledge doubts there. Okay, how do we couch it? What’s going on? What is behind it? And just being honest about it.

Carrie: Just having a sense of prayer of, I believe, but help my unbelief.

Steve: There you are. I liked that. Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah. I know there are some things that I’m definitely wrestling in questioning God about things that I believe that he’s spoken to my life and I don’t see the fruits of that or their fruition of that vision. And it’s really hard, but I think the wrestling part is so important. It’s an important part of our relationship with God. I don’t think it’s wrong to question at times and say, Hey, help me understand this. You know, I believe that you were speaking this into my life, but then this is what actually happened. And that just brings us closer to God to even have those conversations. It’s a different level of intimacy.

Steve: I liked the way you finished that. You know, Carrie, the level of intimacy because sometimes the doubt will force us to move closer. We’re no longer functioning on this vending machine relationship with God. You put in your dollar bill, your quarters, your credit card, and then you get what you want.

And then sometimes like a good parent, God says, no, or God says not now. And part of the trust is stepping back and saying, okay, God, I don’t understand, but I’m going to trust that somehow. We’ve got to reframe things. Maybe there’s something I’m not seeing clearly. Okay, God, I’m going to be patient and wait on you to clear everything up.

Carrie: Right. I wanted to add something to what you said earlier about God is our father, but God is not like your biological mother and father were to you because they’re human and they’re imperfect and God’s perfect.

I would also say that sometimes people have spiritual leaders like pastors or other people in the church that they’ve really been wounded by, and God is not those people either. And so if people have been wounded by spiritual leaders who led them towards paths that were not biblical, or, dumped a bunch of extra rules and legalism on them and excluded them from grace. God wants us those people to have a different kind of experience with him where they understand his true character.

Steve: I think you’re spot on there, Carrie. And even in my own life, one of the greatest mentors in my life, a wonderful man of God, incredibly brilliant, but he’s very stoic, very logical.

I tend to be very ADHD and I want to go save the world and go see the world. So I’m going, into adulthood trying to process this. I don’t function the way my uncle functions. How does that play into God? And obviously, my uncle loves God and I love God and God’s doing this, but not this.

And then I start to doubt, well, did I hear from God, right? Or does God even liked me or what do I do now? So one of the things I do carry to encourage other people is I just try to point them to Jesus again and again, and again, even people who don’t know Jesus, I try to say I get it.

There are a lot of people out there who have wounded you, who have done things, maybe even false teachers, but I try to point them directly to the person of Jesus Christ, both divine and human. And that’s the perfection. No human being, no woman, no man, no matter how good they are is perfect, but Jesus Christ.

Carrie: How do you feel like God spoke to you in the midst of your doubt as you were wrestling with some of these things?

Steve: A lot of it Carrie is just keeping my nose in the Bible on a regular basis, even times when I don’t feel it. We have to ask ourselves what are we listening to. If we’re listening to the media, the world 24/7, that’s going to cost a lot of doubt.

If we’re listening to God’s word, who are we with, I believe we’ve got to be connected to a local body of Christ. So in some of the darkest hours, I try to listen to the still small voice of God, which means you got to shut up and be quiet. But also, we’re trying to hear God’s voice.

Okay. Well, God’s given us the revelation through the scriptures. So being in the scriptures, especially the Psalms, especially the Psalms over and over and over again. And just wait.

Carrie: Waiting is so hard sometimes when you really want an answer. I went through a divorce. That’s something that you probably don’t know about me. It was a pretty traumatic divorce a few years ago, and God told me through that process through basically three different situations like I sensed it in my spirit that God was telling me. You’re just not gonna understand that. And you need to let go of your need to understand because I wanted it to make logical sense and it just didn’t make any logical sense. So there was a mentor at church that also spoke to me as I was trying to process it with him. And he said almost the exact same words that I sense to my spirit. It was just like “Carrie, you’re going to have to let go of this need to understand because it’s just not going to make sense to you.” And I feel like there was one more situation at like came in threes and I was like, okay, God, I’m sorry that you had to tell me three times.

I’m sorry. I didn’t listen the first time, but I hear you loud and clear. This is just something that I’m not going to be able to understand. And that’s something that’s really hard for people with OCD to sit with their level of uncertainty and doubt about the situation. I don’t know if you know that but they call OCD the doubting disease. There are always questions.

Steve: I had not heard that, but that makes sense. There’s probably a connection with that and these control issues that I want to, why am I doubting because I want to control it and I can’t control it.

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Just trying to like wrap our minds around spiritual things. Sometimes God is so much bigger and beyond where we are that we’re not going to be able to keep humanly comprehend him fully. We’re only getting the bits and pieces that we can receive. I think there’s just so much more, and I’ve learned, I guess, through some of that process also to embrace some of the mystery of my faith, that it’s faith that’s part of the process is that there are going to be things that I don’t feel know or can’t fully explain and that’s part of my connection with God.

Steve: I think I’d put us to Kado on that. And again, part of the reason I wrote the book was to show, here’s a vocational guy who’s been in ministry for a long time, and he’s still wrestles with doubt. I have more questions now than I had when I first went to Bible college when I went to seminary, but by getting to a place where I’m able to say, okay, God. I’m okay. There are some things I’m never going to figure out, which actually means you’re bigger than I am and being at peace with that. So I think that might be a component of the doubt, being able to just rest in and again, looking at Mary. Mary, didn’t have all the details figured out, but she was able to say, okay, God, I’m your servant. You’ve given me a thumbnail sketch of what’s going on here and I’m going to trust you with the rest.

Carrie: Yes, that’s so good. So I know one thing that can come up in, in therapy and, you know, you had your kind of own share of childhood. What I would call attachment trauma with caregivers and other people have had other experiences in childhood that maybe they went through an abusive situation and they might really be struggling with.

What would you say to someone who struggles with this idea of God being good? Because maybe they’ve experienced a certain level of trauma in their past, and you had some things that you talked about in your book in terms of growing up without a father or having various father figures in your life? And so it’s hard for us to wrap our minds around, like, okay, if God’s good, why would he allow us to go through these very painful situations? Or why would he put us in that particular family that hurt us?

Steve: Yeah. Again, affirming them, listening to them and trying to understand them and be in their shoes. I think sometimes leaders, we try to answer too quickly until we empathize with them and then hear them. There’s the whole theological aspect the fact that we have free will, that’s why people make dumb choices. There actually is no good unless there’s the opportunity for evil, the opportunity to go against what is good because we would just be robots without them.

And then again, reframing that what we do, for example, what we think success is. You may have people in your practice who have huge incomes and huge salaries and they’re on speaking towards and things like that, but they have zero relationships with their spouse or their kids, but would we call that successful? The world would. But in my years of vocation and vocational ministry, any time I’ve been with someone when they’re on death’s door, if there is ever been a regret, it was always a relational regret. I wish things were better with my kids. I wish things were better with my spouse. It’s never a regret of I wish I made more money or something like that. So maybe reframing what is success, what is good. I’ve talked a lot about being in the Bible and I’m thinking of the apostle Paul. If anybody would have their prayers answered, it was the apostle Paul, but he made it very, very clear and talked about the thorn in the flesh.

There was something in his life that was causing all kinds of trauma and he prayed more than once. And God says, “I’m leaving this there for your good and my glory.” So I would tell people to keep their life in the word, keep pressing in, be in the church, because these are people that can encourage you.

And you go back and you look at Thomas, you know, refer to him as doubting Thomas. He said I’m not going to believe. Well, if you look at a context, Thomas was not with the other apostles. The first time Jesus appeared to him, Thomas was out of the community and Jesus came back around and said, Thomas, look at my scars and stop doubting and believe.

But that’s an illustration as to why I say care, you’ve gotta be in community to work through these doubting issues.

Carrie: Community is really, really powerful. One thing I’ve realized, I think through processing literally now hours and hours of traumatic material with people is two things. One, those hard situations are what builds our character.

So if we didn’t have those difficult and challenging situations, we wouldn’t be as compassionate as we are today. If I hadn’t have gone through my divorce, I wouldn’t have the understanding of grace that I have today that I’m really so incredibly thankful for. And it has allowed me to extend grace to other people. It’s taught me so much about forgiveness and so many different things that I could go into there. I talk about it in my initial episode, but if we don’t go through some of those hard stuff like God uses that in a beautiful way to really like the working of things together for good, like Romans 8:28 talks about in our lives.

And if we didn’t have all of that, we wouldn’t be the people that we are today. And God uses those things to sanctify us and grow us closer to Christ. One of the other things that I’ve realized through processing childhood trauma with Christians is often people will have this spiritual experience. It’s like once the trauma part gets cleared up, they’re able to see, look back through a different lens and recognize that God really was there for me.

And he was there the whole time, working behind the scenes. And he was always with me. He never left me. He preserved me through all of the challenging, dangerous, whatever, fill in the blank things that I went through. And that’s a really powerful experience, I think for people as well, to recognize and acknowledge, and just in terms of wrestling with the role of suffering, I guess, in our lives.

Steve: Yeah. There’s tons of volumes on suffering and how that fits in. It circles back around to the whole question “If God’s good, why is there suffering?” And again, reframing our world and in our worldview and in our philosophy and our theology.

The reality that God allows things to happen to refine us and thinking about my own story. I came out of high school with all these doubts about who I am, went into college, and I realized pretty quickly that God had called me to preaching that aspect of ministry. And I was pretty good at that. The art, the craft of homiletics and in writing. And I began to put my identity into that. And then when I go through a period of time and I went through a period of time where nothing is working right. And then I began to realize, it’s not about my identity as the preacher. It’s my identity as Steve, just Steve.

And that’s illustrative of getting to a level of depth, relationship with God If I had not had gone through these tough times. We may say, “Where are you, God? What’s going on?” Well, the bottom line is, there’s a lesson in that.

And we do come out of that with more grace to people, more compassion to people. And we’re able to minister to people at a deeper level that we would not have been able to do so If everything happened at exactly the way we wanted it.

Carrie: Right. What do you hope that people will experience by reading Confession?

Steve: Carrie. I hope they have a smile on their face. There’s a lot of raw material in there, but there’s some funny stuff. And I hope that they’re able to say “I get it. I’d been there.” And you know what? there are other people who’ve gone through the tunnel. I think there’s hope I can get through the tunnel as well.

I hope that it will be an encouragement to people that they will press further and deeper into the presence of Jesus and no matter what they’re going through, they can come out at the end of the tunnel stronger and then be able to share that with other people.

Carrie: Right. One of the things that I appreciated you sharing in the book that I felt like it would be good to bring out is this sense of like struggling with has God really forgiven me for my past mistakes. And this element of it took you a while to kind of work through some past sins. I don’t know how you would say it if like the devil was holding them over your head or you were, but it just was something that like kind of kept coming back up and coming back up for you.

A lot of Christians can really identify with that, that wrestling of really like how can we rest in God’s forgiveness and have that assurance?

Steve: That’s a good question, Carrie. And I think you’re right that I’ve had two or three monumental peaks where I was able to look at things and say, “yeah, I own it.

I did it. That was me.” I think that’s part of the process. We can’t blame other people. We got to own it. And then being able, to surrender it to God and realize that that whole Jesus died on a cross thing. It is finished. That’s a real deal. But again, I want to come back to the community. that’s the beauty of the church.

I’m not talking about my local church, although that’s true, but the universal church that has a body. We encourage one another. And for me to affirm other people and affirm the grace and then receive that back as well. That’s why it’s so important that we have people in our lives that we be people.

And then we have people in our lives to remind us of the things we know. We may have it in our head, but it takes a little bit longer to move that 12 inches down from our head to our heart. And that’s why we got to keep repeating it again and again and again.

Carie: Yes, absolutely. Just keep repeating like the promises that we have through scripture and in Christ. This is so important. We can’t forget those things.

So at the end of every podcast, I like our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time where you received hope from God or another person.

Carrie: One immediate thing, here we are, we’re recording this in may, and I know it’s going to launch later, but one immediate thing is a big debt that I took about 12 years ago because I was just so certain I was following God’s lead and everything fell apart. And over the past couple of months, it’s interesting Carrie to see, here are some things I have been praying about for years that it just seems they’re falling into place. So maybe again, part of the reason I wrote the book is to say, here is a narrative to show that God is faithful and we can look at the faithful stories and in the lives of other people. But I think that that would be a situation where I’ve been praying about a few things for years and just over the past month, they’ve just been coming together. And maybe that’s an encouragement to folks to not give up. Just keep on keeping on.

Carrie: Yes, that is really good. And there is something about persevering in prayer and waiting for God’s timing.

Steve: Yes because God’s timing is better than ours. Sometimes we’re not ready. Sometimes we are not ready for it. Sometimes other people aren’t ready for it. So it’s a waiting for it.

Carrie: Absolutely. This was a really great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and talking with us about doubt today. That’s good.

Steve: Well, Carrie, thank you for the opportunity. And again, I just want to encourage you in what you’re doing because it is so vital, especially in our world today, people need hope and thank you for giving that to people.

Carrie: Thank you. We will put all the information in the show notes. The link to where you can find the book and get in touch with Steve, if they would like.

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God in his amazing, perfect timing knew that I needed to have this conversation with Steve when I did. It was such a blessing to be able to talk about these things. And I hope it was a blessing for those of you who are listening as well.

If you’re new to the show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope and developing healthier connections with God and others, specifically for Christians who may be struggling with anxiety or OCD.

If you’re searching for a little extra encouragement in the middle of the week, you’re welcome to follow us on Instagram or Facebook. Thank you so much for listening.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Until next time. May you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Tag: Faith

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37. Doubt and Faith with Pastor and Author Steve Hinton

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