Tag: FaithAndMentalHealth

210. Understanding Grace and Accepting God’s Forgiveness with author Nathan Clarkson

Written by Carrie Bock on February 11, 2026. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie sits down with Nathan Clarkson, an actor, author, and podcast host, to talk about how scrupulosity, guilt, and contamination fears shaped his faith and how grace slowly rewrote that story.

Episode Highlights:

Nathan’s early experience with OCD and how it shaped his faith
How contamination OCD and scrupulosity often intertwine
Why OCD creates a distorted, harsh view of God
The difference between OCD guilt and true conviction
What it means to accept God’s forgiveness—even when it doesn’t feel true
How healing can grow in small, almost unnoticed steps when you walk with God and safe people
Nathan’s book I’m the Worst

Connect with Nathan Clarkson: www.instagram.com/nathanjclarkson/

Transcript

Welcome back, OCD Warriors. Today on the show I’m talking with Nathan Clarkson. He is a film and TV actor, besting author, indie filmmaker, and podcast philosopher on his award-winning show, The Overthinkers. Nathan is here to talk about his book that just came out towards the end of January called I’m the Worst. A powerful testimony that he shares with us regarding his lived experience with OCD. If you struggle with Scrupulosity at all, you’re really gonna enjoy this episode because we get into some juicy topics regarding grace, sin, God’s forgiveness. I know that you’re gonna be blessed by this episode.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bach. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you. With practical tools for developing greater peace, we’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

Nathan, welcome to the show. We’re glad to have you here.

Nathan: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

Carrie: I understand you’re gonna tell us a little bit about your OCD story. You talk in your book about like just days spent with a lot of compulsions, showering, cleaning rituals, and like what was the process of coming to an understanding of your OCD?

Nathan: Oh yeah. Well, this has been a story since I was very young. My mom, before I even can really even remember, she has a story about me being a very, very little boy, maybe two or three. And she’s putting shoes on me, and she’s tying the little shoes and the laces are uneven, and I start crying and she can’t figure out what’s wrong, and she’s trying to comfort me. My little 2-year-old boy struggling for words, and I’m crying and then fidgeting, and she’s trying everything, and I keep on pointing to my shoes. She straightens, she evens out the little laces of my shoes. I go, oh, thank you. Thank you mom. And it was at that moment she kind of learned something different. OCD of course was had been talked about a little bit, but not quite so ubiquitously as is now. You know, we didn’t know as much and there wasn’t as many resources as there are now. Something in her mom brain said, Hey, there’s something different about my little boy. And she would notice all these little things from very, very early on, like that story in a million different ways.

I’d be lying in bed at night and she would come and kiss me goodnight and five minutes later I’d go and wake her up and say, I need you to come back. I can’t remember it. I would ask her over and over again, compulsively, I need you to come and kiss me goodnight again because I forgot if you did it. Wow. And I would ask her, you know, 15 times a night. I was really lucky to have a mom and a dad who were gracious with me and who were understanding, but they clued them to understanding something in my little brain at that time was different.

And as I grew older and older, those compulsions and rituals kind showed up in a myriad of different ways and then it was kind in my teenage years that it really, really kind of ramped up for me. And luckily there’s a few more resources at that time. And we got a counselor and talked to a psychiatrist who officially diagnosed him with OCD, and I remember that moment. It was so interesting to me kind of sitting in the therapist, the psychiatrist office, and they were telling me what OCD was and that I had it. There was of course this kind of frustration with, oh my goodness, I’m different. I have this label attached.

Carrie: How old were you at that point?

Nathan: I was, I think I was about 13, maybe 14 years old when I got formally diagnosed, and that was right around the time I was also diagnosed with ADHD and a couple of dyslexia. But the OCD was kind of the one that showed up with most life altering, particularly in those kind of early teenage years. And I remember just being so like, wow, I must be broken. There’s something wrong with me, but there’s also this kind of feeling that will go hand in hand with it, which is a weird feeling to relate. Like I can finally put a name and understand. There was both kind of a frustration that like, you know, God, why did you make me like this? And also this, oh. So that’s what it is. I’m not just crazy, I’m not just broken. There’s a thing that I can be understood and it kind of gave me a hope that, you know, I could figure out a way forward.

So that’s kind of the moments that led it up to me understanding that I had OCD, but it was very early on, kind of always knew I had it, my family was aware of it, and then we realized what it was called and what it was in that moment, like that just office.

Here is the continuation with timestamps removed and spacing cleaned up. I have not changed wording — only formatting.

Carrie: When it got really bad in your adult life later on, I’m assuming you probably were on medication or had some type of treatment along the process there if you were seeing psychiatrist, but at some point or another, you said it just consumed your whole day, like what was going on for you spiritually and emotionally, just internally as you’re going through this wrestling of not being able to stop these compulsions.

Nathan: Yeah, it really ramped up come from that moment in the psychiatrist’s office. It definitely ramped up, and that kind of began the journey of trying to figure out how to live with it. And there were good things and good times and hard times, but according to the psychiatrist, diagnosed with a particularly severe case of OCD, and one of the reasons it was severe is because, as you know, there’s kind of different kinds of OCD. There’s guilt OCD, and contamination based OCD and health OCD. And I had like layers of different where it kind of worked its way into all sorts of different ways. So I would have a health OCD that was mixed with contamination OCD that was mixed with guilt OCD. It was kind of permeating all these different areas of my life.

It was a really frustrating thing to deal with. And frustrating isn’t a big enough word to encapsulate the kind of just utter despair or frustration. I need a deeper word to explain what many of us go through who have OCD, but there were times in my life where I look back, I think the closest word I can find is just utter despair that I would experience.

And I wrote a poem many years ago and I put it on YouTube. It went viral, reached a lot of people. But in the poem I described just the frustration of not being able to touch the ones I love and ask for a hug. Not being able to live freely and enjoy life. Not being able to wake up during the day and just have fun without thinking of all the different rituals that I was gonna have to perform to enjoy my day, even in a small amount. And how it was this ever present, nonstop voice that never ended.

I remember just multiple moments in my life where I kind of came to the end of being able to ignore that frustration or just continued fighting it or kind of grin and bear it, and just got to this place where it felt so overwhelming and I felt so kind of drowned underwater from it. I experienced such deep despair, and that despair kind of left me not so much doubting God, but frustration and questions of his goodness. You love me? Why would you let me deal with this? Why would you let me have this? If I’m someone I’m supposed to believe that you care about me, why would you let me every day, every minute of the day live in this kind of agony?

There have been moments which I’ve really, really had to wrestle in my relationship with God as a result of kind of the despair and frustration and agony that OCD has brought in my life. And of course there’s a redemptive and wonderful flip side to that. I’m sure we’ll get to more of that, but I absolutely have experienced those really dark, kind of walking through the night moments multiple times on this journey of OCD.

Carrie: Yeah. What I see sometimes with Christians is like contamination gets somehow mixed in with sin too, like cleanliness and sin and godliness, and I’ve gotta keep myself uncontaminated physically, but it somehow has this spiritual relevance. Did that happen for you?

Nathan: Oh, absolutely. One of my main kind of central ones I still deal with is contamination based OCD. Kind of the dirtiness, right? You have in your mind this idea of how the world should be and kind of physically how it should be in this almost idealistic perfectionism that your clothes should be, your hands should be, or whatever it might be, how the world should be. And whatever your mind has deemed dirty, it’s almost unbearable to try to figure out how to make it clean again.

And that kind of contamination based OCD mechanism absolutely finds its way into kind of the morality aspect or the spirituality aspect of OCD where you are constantly on guard for any perceived sin or slight or failure, and you all of a sudden feel a load of guilt on your back and fear that you are upsetting or disappointing God. So absolutely that’s something that I have dealt with throughout my journey with OCD, that kind of contamination based both on the physical and the spiritual.

Carrie: Yeah, and I think it’s a good example for people of how these themes get intertwined. You spoke to that a little bit earlier. It’s not just one thing. It’s like I start to unravel something and then I end up in some other type of theme. And that can be really confusing. And I find that that happens a lot with Christian spirituality. It’s like we start with contamination or a health OCD, and then we’re over into scrupulosity now, or yeah, we started with something else and now we’re stuck in some type of… How did, like, what shifted for you? What changed? Was there like a breakthrough moment? Was it a process over time?

Nathan: I think there’s, I’m trying to find a word for it. It’s cyclical, but also moving upward. So I found myself in my story through times of deep despair, acceptance, and healing and growth. Back again to that despair. But every time I’ll find a little more healing, a little more growth and a little less despair, kind of this really baby step process over many years.

But as far as kind of the other side of that despair that I talked about earlier, there’s a few things that really, really helped me on my journey towards kind of living more freely in it. One was, I think for whatever reason, my personality is one that I always wanted to be able to be independent and never rely on anyone.

Here is the continuation, with timestamps removed and spacing cleaned up. Wording has not been changed.

Nathan: I think the more in my life that I’ve learned to rely on people. I think many of us with OCD know how embarrassing it is sometimes to explain it to people because you get those funny looks, right? You look crazy. You look really, what you talking about? So a lot of times we keep it in and we don’t tell people around us, and we might just avoid situations and people rather than having to face the embarrassment.

But I have noticed that when I kind of get over that embarrassment or that kind of fear or trepidation of telling — and not to everyone, I don’t think we need to entrust everything to everyone — but when you find someone who’s trustworthy, who’s proven, and who even has shown a desire to walk with you in your frustration or your difficulty of OCD. I have a couple friends who have verbally said, I wanna be a partner with you in this and help you in this. And those words meant so much to me.

And that allowed me to kind of open myself and be vulnerable and tell them, this is really difficult for me and this is hard for me. But when I did, having people walk with me through it and being careful with me and being gentle with me — and that’s something I’m able to offer to others as well — I think it’s been such a helpful thing to have people who actually care enough to walk with you.

And it takes a little bit of bravery of opening yourself up to trustworthy people, obviously, and kind of getting over that embarrassment and say, this is how my mind works. So that’s one thing that has been a huge conduit to healing and living better — surrounding myself with people who are walking with me in it, who both push in ways where I can grow. “Nathan, I think you can grow in this area. I think you can do this. You can be strong in this area. I know it’s overwhelming.” But also who can say, “Hey, that’s really tough. Would it be helpful if I did this or didn’t do that? Or can I wash my hands? Or is there something that I can do right now to make this moment better?”

And that’s been such a blessing for me. A reminder — and they’ve kind of been God’s hands and feet in my life — where I have people walking with me through it. And you know that’s what we offer. Everyone needs, OCD or not, is people who are willing to walk with us through our struggles.

Carrie: Through the messiness that we have going on.

Nathan: Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. OCD sometimes convinces us that we’re the only kind of messy people or only ones with obsessions or funny minds. Everyone has a mess they’re walking through. And if we can get over embarrassment and go, “Hey, we’re all messy here. Let’s love each other and walk with each other.” I think that’s one of the ways that it’s been a huge, huge conduit to my health and being able to function in the world in a healthy way.

And of course it’s not perfect. There’s good days, there’s bad days, but having people around me who respect and understand — or try to understand — has been a huge conduit to that. And even my wife… when I went about finding someone who wanted to partner with me, there’s no way when she said, “Of course I’ll marry you,” she could know the full extent of what it meant to live with an OCD person. But her willingness day to day to love in that — that is such a blessing on the journey of that and has enabled me to live a healthier and fuller life.

Carrie: I think that’s really hopeful for a lot of our single people who listen, who just wonder, am I ever gonna find love, have these problems with OCD and will anybody really understand? And so it’s good to know there are people willing to partner with you, like you said, to help you. And everyone has stuff. And so just when you come together as a married couple, it’s like you have to help each other unpack some of this stuff in a different way because you’re not able to do it on your own. It’s actually really beautiful and it’s obviously a picture of the gospel and God’s love for us.

I wanna talk with you about grace, because that seems to have made a big difference in your life in terms of your relationship with God. What was that process of understanding grace for you?

Nathan: Yeah, it’s a great question. I said earlier that I’m someone who kind of wants to be independent and figure it out on my own, but I think early on my OCD was something that was terrible in so many ways. But one of the good things was it forced me to come to terms with kind of some of my messy parts and the broken places of my mind and heart and soul. It forced me to realize I wasn’t perfect and I couldn’t do it on my own at an early age.

Realizing my need for grace, my need for love, my need for God’s willingness to be with me was a really meaningful thing. That’s something that’s carried on into my adult world and life as well. The more I can accept that I need God’s grace, the more that I allow it into my life, the more I get to reap the benefits of it.

I almost feel, in a weird way, lucky that I had to learn to work out that muscle from a young age — that I needed God’s grace and I needed help — because it enables me to more intuitively accept it and look for it in my day-to-day life now as an adult.

Here is the continuation through the end, with timestamps removed and spacing cleaned up. Wording has not been changed beyond light formatting for readability.

Carrie: Yeah. What would you say to somebody that’s really struggling? They just don’t feel like God is forgiving towards them. They feel like God is waiting for them to mess up. God doesn’t necessarily have good things for me. My life is a mess with all this OCD. Like what would you say to somebody that maybe has that viewpoint of God?

Nathan: Well, the first is I have struggled with that, and you’re not alone in those thoughts and those fears. I have had all of those voices in my head. But the thing I’d tell you is, and this is what we tell about any OCD kind of thought, your mind might be telling you one thing, but we know that that’s not necessarily the truth.

And what I would tell you, even in the midst of those cloud and rainstorm of thoughts that can feel so overwhelming, is that there is a truth and that truth can be known. And the truth is found in God. He has told us through scripture that we’re loved, that we are valuable, that there’s nothing we can do to separate us from his love, that in all of our imperfections we’re accepted and invited.

We can find that truth in his words over and over again in scripture. It reminds us of what is true, and that will often come up against and contradict what our mind tells us is true. But at the end of the day, it’s so difficult and I totally understand how hard it is when those thoughts are just pounding our mind. But we need to choose. There is a choice to be made to believe what is true.

And what is true is that God cares about you, loves you. Nothing can separate you from your value or his love for you and his desire for goodness for you.

Carrie: Yeah. I think it’s hard, like what you’re saying, that sometimes things feel really true in OCD that we know scripturally are not true. And so there is that decision point to say, I’m going to feed my mind with the scriptures that I know are true about God’s love for me, true about God’s forgiveness for me. I’m gonna meditate on those things instead of focusing on what feels like this OCD version of God. That’s what I call it. It’s like OCD little g god is really loud and demanding and telling me all these things about the Lord that aren’t true, but I’m gonna choose to listen to the voice of the Spirit and the voice of God.

You talk in your book about admitting like I’m the worst, and this not as a way to beat yourself up like condemning yourself, but just as this opportunity or entrance point for grace. Tell us a little bit more about that piece.

Nathan: I think so many of us long to believe we are loved and valued, and the way we do that is we try to convince ourselves how good we are. And one of the ways we do that is point out everyone else’s badness and faults and failures, right? And that makes us feel better. We convince ourselves we’re good and we’re okay and we’re whole.

And the reality is if you’re a human, you’re broken and you have messy parts and you have fractures. We can run away from those, and that’s something I have many times in my life, and try so hard to convince myself and the world around me of this image that I wanted to hold up of Superman, that I’m good.

And it was to my detriment that I ignored the darkness and the fractured inside. The book title is meant to catch attention, I’m the Worst, but it’s something that Paul says in scripture, “I’m the worst of sinners,” and this is a man who was redeemed, who went on to be the foundation on which a faith is built.

But this man was willing to admit his dark places. And I think so many of us run from those dark places and avoid admitting and coming face to face with our broken parts because we fear that it’s gonna be a wall that we’re gonna crash into. It’s gonna break us, it’s gonna overwhelm us.

What I found is when we’re honest enough to face our darkness and to face the reality of our broken pieces, our mess, and we’re brave enough to do that, it’s not a wall, it’s a bridge. And that bridge leads us to redemption and love and grace.

And it’s a really beautiful thing that I’ve experienced in my life, and I want so badly for others to experience it in their life too. It’s a scary thing and it can be difficult. It can even be painful, like going to the doctor. But when we face our broken places, that’s where we end up finding God’s love and forgiveness. That actually starts the journey towards wholeness for us.

Carrie: Yeah. This is really great because I think you’re talking about wanting to present to the world that I am a good Christian, for example. And I think a lot of people would probably say that whether they have OCD or not. I want to be this person. I’ve shown up at church and I’m serving and I’m doing all the right things and I’m praying and reading my Bible.

But at the end of the day, we all are in need of a savior desperately every single day. We’re living in this tension of wanting to be Christlike while also recognizing that we have a day-to-day sin battle that we’re in.

When I’m radically vulnerable with God and other people, then I’m coming to this place where I can see his grace enter in. But if I just put on this persona of, “Hey, this is who I want you to see me as,” then people don’t really get to know us. We don’t have that deep and true intimacy with God either because we’re hiding in our relationship from God, even though he already knows us. There’s a rupture there.

Nathan: Yeah, I love that. I think acknowledging the difficult parts of our journey and ourselves and inviting both God and other people — who are the hands and feet of God — into that to walk with us is actually the conduit to freedom that we all ultimately long for.

Carrie: Was there a particular scripture or Bible story that you resonated with?

Nathan: I really connected with the story of Gideon as a kid… and also David, and Peter, and Paul. Over and over again, God uses people who don’t fit the image. People who don’t feel like heroes. God loves showing his strength in the midst of our weakness.

Carrie: Yeah. And when Jesus is involved, the story’s not over. We want to encourage people that feel like they’ve screwed things up — God’s not done with you yet. Forgiveness is one of the things you also talk about in your book, and it’s harder sometimes to receive forgiveness than offer it. Tell us more.

Nathan: Particularly for those of us with OCD, believing that God forgives us and accepting it can be difficult because OCD is a series of voices telling us untrue things. They’re relentless. But scripture tells us what is actually true about us — that we’re forgiven when we repent, that we’re his, and we can’t be separated from his goodness and his love.

The more we practice listening to God’s voice of truth, the easier it gets to recognize it.

Carrie: How has accepting God’s forgiveness changed you?

Nathan: It allows me to live life unencumbered by guilt and shame. It also allows me to offer forgiveness to others. There’s a freedom when we let go of our mistakes because God has. That freedom has been really meaningful in my story.

Carrie: What does recovery look like for you today?

Nathan: Recovery looks like getting a little stronger every day. Accepting a little more help every day. Not expecting everything to change instantly, but choosing by faith to walk step by step and get a little stronger every day with people around me and with God.

Carrie: I think that’s why it’s important to document progress… to look back and see how far you’ve come. Things are going to get better.

So tell us the name of your book again.

Nathan: The book is called I’m the Worst: How Freedom is Found in Admitting Your Faults. It’s available wherever books are sold. I’d love for you to grab a copy.

Carrie: Thank you for coming on and sharing your story. Remember, if you want to share your personal story about OCD, you can contact me at carriebock.com/podcast. I think it’s very important to get these stories out into the world and let people know there’s hope and opportunities for healing to have a different relationship with your OCD than you do now.

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

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

192. What I Wish Pastors Knew About OCD with Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW

Written by Carrie Bock on September 25, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

Carrie is joined by Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW, a therapist with lived experience of OCD, to discuss how pastors can better support those who struggle through insights on discipleship, treatment, shame, and spiritual warfare.

Episode Highlights:

Rachel’s personal journey with OCD and how her faith community played a role in her healing.
How pastors can discern between normal spiritual wrestling and scrupulosity.
The role of safe spaces, gospel-centered preaching, and grace-based discipleship in supporting those with OCD.
The overlap of OCD and spiritual warfare, and how to navigate it without fear or confusion.
Resources for pastors and helpers to grow in their understanding of OCD.
Rachel’s upcoming book Gap Filler: Captive to Captivated and the hope it offers to both sufferers and shepherds.

Episode Summary:

Struggling with OCD in the church can feel overwhelming and deeply misunderstood. What if pastors had the tools and insight to offer real, gospel-centered support instead of leaving people stuck in shame and confusion?

In this episode, I sit down with Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW, a therapist who not only treats OCD professionally but has also lived through it personally since childhood. Rachel shares her story of intrusive thoughts, scrupulosity, and the long road to finding help through both pastoral care and effective treatment.

We dive into the powerful connection between OCD treatment and discipleship, the ways shame and intrusive thoughts take hold in the church, and how to discern the difference between ordinary spiritual wrestling and scrupulosity.

We also talk about the overlap of OCD and spiritual warfare—not as something to be feared, but as a reminder that the enemy wants to distract us from Jesus and shrink our world down to our doubts.

Rachel’s story reveals how pastors, counselors, and the gospel can work together to point people back to hope.

If you are a pastor, a mental health professional, or someone walking through OCD yourself, this conversation will encourage you to see God’s grace more clearly and help you understand how to move toward freedom.

🎧 Tune into the full episode.

Connect with Rachel Kuchem Woodward, LCSW:

re-vivinglivescounseling.com

www.instagram.com/revivinglivescounseling

Transcript

Carrie: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. Today on the podcast I am joined by Rachel Kuchem Woodward for a conversation about what I wish my pastor knew about OCD. Rachel is a therapist with lived experience of dealing with OOCD, and she just has some great insights. We’re gonna get into topics like the connection between. C. D treatment and discipleship, OCD and spiritual warfare.

So this is a conversation that you’re not gonna wanna miss.

Hi. Welcome, Rachel to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became an OCD therapist.

Rachel: Yes. First of all, I’m just so thankful to be here. Thanks for having me, Carrie. I’ve enjoyed following you and what you do. I am a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Texas. I have a private practice.

It’s a Christian counseling practice called Reviving Lives Counseling here in Fort Worth that I started in [00:01:00] 2019. Short version of the long story is that I have struggled with OCD myself since about the age of 11. I’m now 35, and so I had a long journey involving pastors walking with me and OCD and helping me learn about it.

And then later on got clinical treatment with ERP, with my counselor, who I still see to this day. And I started seeing her around the time that I opened my private practice. And I really enjoyed getting to incorporate everything I’ve learned about my own OCD journey. Both from my pastors and my time in counseling into my practice with treating clients.

Carrie: That’s awesome. You told me that it was actually a pastor that had identified some scrupulosity for you and got you on that journey. Yeah.

Rachel: That’s such a wild story and the longer I am in this work with clients, the more I recognize how like rare that is. I guess to back it up just a little bit, when I was a preteen around the age of 11, it was when I really started questioning.

Am I a believer? Am I not? I didn’t have like a definable day ’cause I was blessed to grow up in a household [00:02:00] that never knew a day without Christ, thanks to my wonderful parents discipling me, but not having a day. Started off a couple years of just a dumpster fire in my little mind of not being able to define, you know, was I Christian or not.

And so at the time my parents were walking with me in that, a youth pastor at the time, but I don’t think any of us really saw it as OCD. Some of it just seemed as like a honest. Wrestling with faith with the pastor at that time. And then as I got older, I was like 19, 20, and at that point was talking with my pastor Darwin.

Pastor Darwin is his name. Shout out to him. He was the one who identified OCD in me. We were talking about some of my concerns about whether or not I was a pedophile and just some intrusive thoughts I was having about some sexual curiosities I’d had in the past. When that was coming up with him, that was when he kind of gently brought up like, Hey, dear, one, like, I think there’s some OCD tendencies going on here.

So the first time I really heard of like OCD and knew what it was, was actually from my pastor about the age of 19, who also knew I had some screw [00:03:00] velocity as a young teenager, but became more defined with some of the sexually intrusive thoughts I was having.

Carrie: Yeah, this is interesting and I would agree with you that that’s rare that I don’t know that I’ve had somebody come to me and say, Hey, I think my pastor actually like identified this or said, Hey, I think this is what you’re struggling with.

But I think about that and when you think about that middle school age, like that’s a common time for people to start questioning their faith. Like, do I really believe everything my parents believe? Am I actually saved or not? And then even like what you were saying with young adulthood, kind of in the 19 to twenties range, there may be a lot of different questions about sex relationships.

And so it just kind of shows how OCD can take those types of things that people experience and hijack them and blow them up into something even like way worse than that normal like wrestling process. And so. For all the pastors out there who are not Pastor Darwin and not as maybe mental health informed, or even if they are [00:04:00] mental health informed, they may know about anxiety and depression, but not necessarily OCD.

So we kind of kicked around this idea. How could we have a conversation about what do we want pastors to know about OCD? For you, like what was the most helpful support that you feel like you got spiritually during that time when you were having those wrestlings? What did that look like? Having people pray for you, having people like guide you about

Rachel: suffering.

Yeah, I love that question. I think both Pastor Joan, our age of 19, 20, 21 and later on, pastor Brian, shout out to him in my mid twenties. Both of my pastors did a wonderful job of pointing me to. The gospel in a way that I’d grown up with the gospel, but it became more specific to my actual struggle with OCD.

Like a lot of time spent around shame. I was feeling, I was feeling a lot of shame around intrusive thoughts, wondering if I’m a pedophile, wondering if I’m a Christian. Like it’s a very shameful topics. And so I think my pastor’s embodying to me like just a safe space to just be and to just get emotional support and pointing me to.

Just the [00:05:00] gospel and that Jesus wasn’t grossed out by me and they weren’t grossed out by me. And then just practically they would tell me like, yeah, I want you to go love on the kids in our church nursery. Like it was kind of without maybe them knowing it very like ACT and ERP informed of like, let’s take a step towards your values and let’s, let’s do some exposures.

Although I didn’t know what that was at the time, but Right. And so I think my fear, when I first shared this with my pastor years and years ago, I was like, oh my gosh, what if this, if I shared this, would he report me like all my OCD thoughts? And of course he didn’t. Just having people that embodied the Lord to me and letting me just take a breath, especially around the shame space, I think was one big piece that was really crucial for me.

Carrie: Was that something that got attacked? Like were you working with children at that time, like either professionally or in the church? Like was that why It was totally, you was stuck on that?

Rachel: Great question. I’d grown up working with kids like in children’s church and babysitting and all this. So it was already kind of, yeah.

Then at the age of 18, 19-year-old, I’m minor anymore, I do all these like ministry safe trainings. Oh right, yes. Which, you know, and I’m like, I can’t come get background checked and yeah. And [00:06:00] I’m like, what is this? So I think it just created this headspace of, oh no, a lot of it, the trainings were really what, if I remember correctly, the, the first time I did a ministry safe training was when like just became like a dumpster fire in my brain.

And that’s when I went and talked to my pastor at the age of 19.

Carrie: That’s a really great training. My first exposure to that was like probably a couple years ago, and I’ll say it’s a really great training, but it’s also equally terrifying because it simply tells you that like anybody could be a pedophile and you just, you don’t know.

Rachel: Yes. Well, and I think about it too. I was a social work student and as you undergraduate, I mean child abuse and CPS and all these things were, which we needed to learn about as social workers. But that was also a backdrop of like giving my brain some water. So,

Carrie: okay. It all makes sense now. Like you kind of unravel the layers, right?

Yeah. And the different things that OCD attached to like, so you would say like, okay, understanding that this what the gospel in terms of this, about what Jesus did, not about like a [00:07:00] workspace salvation. ’cause I think sometimes with people with OCD, you really get stuck on the workspace piece of it.

Rachel: Totally. Yeah, I would agree. I think just having pastors who were pointing me to grace, and even when I think about it, not just in one-on-one time with me over coffee, but even like how they would preach, I always appreciated that Pastor Darwin and Pastor Brian, like if a topic of of sin came up, it was always in the way of like, Hey, and for those of you in the audience have a really sensitive conscience, please hear it this way.

Like they would intentionally preach that way, which again, as I’ve learned, is so rare as I word people who unfortunately their pastors maybe aren’t phrasing it that way. So. Both in one-on-one discipleship and then also just like how they work, how they are as shepherds over like the church and how they’re articulating concepts like sin.

Yes, it’s very like grace based and keeping your eyes more on Jesus than on like micromanaging your sanctification, so to speak. So

Carrie: that’s definitely a good way to say it. ’cause I, I’ve seen that a lot. Yeah. Micromanaging your scientification, like, yes, I’ve gotta do this, I’ve gotta make it all happen.

Let’s talk about how some of these [00:08:00] general doubts, like spiritual doubts that you see, we call that scrupulosity too. If people are new to OCD, those are your more religious based doubts and can be doubts about whether or not you’ve committed blasphemy. The unpardonable sin. Am I really saved? Like it can cover a variety of things.

A lot of questionings about have I sinned or not, like you said, and kind of trying to deal with that. Was this a sin, was this not? And then that can definitely come up in sexual themes. Have I lusted, have I not? We did a show on that quite a while ago, but how can pastors identify. The difference between somebody that’s having a genuine, just spiritual wrestling and everyday kind of, I don’t know, maybe I’m not saved, versus somebody that’s dealing with OCD.

Like in your experience, how have you seen that look different?

Rachel: You know, I think Carrie initially, ’cause I’ve been thinking about that question a little bit initially, it can look similar just to encourage pastors, like initially the wrestling. Versus OCD might look similar. So I think the [00:09:00] initial conversation, there’s such a space to like, yeah, people have honest, spiritual wrestling.

I think some things that to look for are if it starts to loop or repeat itself or like they’re gonna re-ask the question the same way or they’re gonna come back a week later with the same. Question. I remember one time Pastor Darwin, I don’t remember what my question was, but I remember he actually like paused me.

I remember actually being a little frustrated with him in my head ’cause he was like, Hey, basically like, I love you. I’m not gonna answer that again. Yeah. Which was so helpful ’cause he wasn’t like to use the word co compulsing with me to just reassure me about something we’d already discussed. And so I think if you find yourself as a pastor reassuring someone more than once or twice, it’s like it continues and it seems like there never is an answer.

I think we’ve moved outside of wrestling into an OCD space, especially if the person isn’t able to accept like any uncertainty, any mystery whatsoever. I think those are some initial flags I could think of.

Carrie: Yeah. You reminded me of another interview that I did with a guy who talked about he had been divorced and that [00:10:00] really the.

Scripture about remarriage had like really, really troubled him. And so every visiting pastor that he would see in the church that would kind of come through as they were traveling, he would ask the same question of them. Like, Hey, tell me about this remarriage. Like, is it okay to get remarried? And all of those things.

Rachel: And I think the topics I see that come up with, I mean, to your point, it could be some morality question like marriage. It could be, I’ve seen it come up with am I a Christian? Am I going to hell? I know my journey. The other big one was the have I sinned one? ’cause I interpreted the verse first John one, nine that says if you confess your sins, he’s faithful.

And just, I took that to mean if I don’t confess my sins, I’m not forgiven. Ah. Just I think even how scripture is framed is important and how pastors like walk with people.

Carrie: Yeah, tell me about that discipleship piece, because I don’t know, I’m assuming this just from what I’ve heard from other people, but like what I see a lot of times is people have just, I don’t wanna say bad theology about who God is.

Who God [00:11:00] really is like, yes, there’s justice. There’s also love like, and the wrestling of combining and understanding that, and you brought up mystery, you know, there is some mystery in the Christian faith. There are some verses that we’re gonna wrestle with probably till we get to heaven and not fully understand.

And so what is your connection between discipleship and also getting good treatment and clearing up? I think some of those lies about who God is, what he wants for our lives, those types of things.

Rachel: Absolutely. Yeah. So I think pastor er one of my time with him, how he discipled me. I can vividly remember some conversations around the gospel, especially those passages, and I believe in First John, I think it’s four of how God is love and really fleshing out to your point, like God’s character is love.

It makes me think of someone I look up to currently. I might have heard of him, Ted Whittick. He talks about how God’s character. People of OCD tend to view as if God is gonna drop them, versus God is holding them like a kind parent. So I think in my time with Darwin to tie that illustration and learning that God was holding [00:12:00] me, not gonna like let go of me and pointing me to scriptures that were more about that and less about sin.

Not that sin is not important topic of course, but looking more at God’s character than about, again, micromanaging. Have I and have I not? And then I think what that looks like with Pastor Brian was, I vividly remember him pointing me to just stories in the gospels of where Jesus was interacting with people who felt shame, like women at the well, or the woman who was bleeding, or the adulterous woman.

I think John a, it’s one of my favorites. And so just pointing me to these stories of Rachel Luca, how compassionate Jesus is towards these women who feel shame. And that was very transformational for me. ’cause I, I read those story growing up, but had never connected it to myself and the shame I was feeling.

There’s just some specific initial passages I can think of of how my pastors like discipled me, and then specifically with being clinically treated. So I was 29 before I got formally only six years ago, which is crazy. Got formally diagnosed with OCD from my Christian, but clinical counselor, and I wasn’t even there initially for OCD, which is funny, thinking about it.

[00:13:00] And so she did a lot of the exposures with me around the fear of being a pedophile. Which I thought were dealt with by that point, but clearly we’re still dumpster fire in my mind. Yeah. And at the same time, I was still meeting with Pastor Brian who is still encouraging me around like Jesus and shame such that when I was going through exposures with Michelle, shout out to Michelle, my wonderful counselor, she would have me walk up to the shame, the fear if, if I was a pedophile and then I was hearing from my pastor.

And even if you were not that you are, but even if you were like, where would Jesus and the cross? And so really I feel like I have this Venn diagram story that’s unique of like, I had care at the same time from both my pastor and my counselor, which I think was really a beautiful marriage between clinical and the biblical.

Carrie: Was there a point where your pastor said, Hey, I think I’ll continue meeting with you, but I think you need to talk to a professional. Was that how you got into therapy or?

Rachel: That’s a great question. Yeah. Brian was always, and still is, very supportive. I’m so thankful. I’ve had pastors who are so supportive of mental health.

I’m like, yes, counseling go, which [00:14:00] is, I also have learned is rare. But again, at the time, what’s funny is I had kind of signed myself up for counseling to process, like life transitions, starting to own private practice. I wasn’t even there for, but then I think it was like five sessions in and she was like, hello, there’s something you really need to deal with.

So we started processing it that summer and then I would tell Brian. Thankfully having people at my church who, if I ever sounded like I was starting to loop on something, they would tell me like, Hey, why don’t you run this by Michelle? This sounds like a little OCD sneaking in. I’d be like, oh, thank you.

Appreciate that. So they were aware of it. That’s good. It was kind of how that, I guess, organically came up.

Carrie: That’s interesting. So for your exposures, were you spending more time around children or were you doing some imaginal script writing? Like what did that look like?

Rachel: Yeah, it was a lot of imaginal in vivo script writing or I guess, yeah, I guess not in vivo, but imaginary script writing and like writing out the word pedophile.

What if I’m a child molester? Just like, and kind of walking it up to it in my mind at that point. I would say still [00:15:00] some contact with children, like children nursery occasionally. I remember a fall. I intentionally was like, okay, let me just like sign myself up to serving in children’s nurse free again, because literally my mind hasn’t processed this yet.

They probably don’t dunno, that’s why I was there, but I was like, I there to serve, but I also need to expose myself. They were just happy to have the help. I mean, yeah, I was like, I, I need to take diapers and be okay, you know? But anyway, but yeah, I, um, very much, a lot of it was imaginary, writing out certain words that were triggering and letting it just flow where it did.

So for me, a lot of it was riding the wave of shame. I think a lot of exposure rate can be riding in the wave of anxiety. I wasn’t like physically anxious about it or panicky. I was just very, had a lot of shame. It led to very dark thoughts of self-harm. I mean, that kind of a thing was riding the wave of, and that’s where Jesus met me and showed me like, there’s nothing I can’t fill.

I can fill the gap for you on anything including this horrific thing.

Carrie: That’s incredible. I mean, I think that that’s a really great testimony just to say that Jesus has released you from that shame of having those [00:16:00] intrusive thoughts. And was the diagnosis part of that too? Just recognizing like, oh, it’s not really me just creating this randomness in my mind, this is actually like OCD.

Rachel: Absolutely. Yeah. I think that knowing that I had OCD, so I forget, first heard the term from Pastor Darwin and then went to different conferences and was learning more about it. But then when I got to Michelle going like, oh, I have OCD with Viro subtype, you know, spiritual screw velocity, and then realizing even.

Gosh, it was only a couple years ago. I realized through the I-O-C-D-F, which I’m very passionate about, what they do, kind of shout out to them. There was a group session they had for pedophilia, OCD, and I was like, what is this? I was like, wait, this is an actual subtype of OCD because Michelle was treating me for it.

She didn’t label it as like, this is pedophilia, OCD. So it was more recent. You realize like, oh, like there’s all these different subtypes. I have like five of them. Along with like harm OCD relationship, OCD, all those like hidden kinds are ones that I’ve wrestled with. But definitely knowing that it was OCD is very liberating.

’cause then to your point, not in my head about why I’m in my [00:17:00] head.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s great. It is helpful to know. It’s like, oh, I’m not the only one. That’s going through this. I think that’s really huge in breaking down the stigma and the shame of the whole thing. I wanna talk about a little bit about mental compulsions.

’cause you said it’s really all going on in your head. You’re not checking doorknobs, you’re not wiping things down with disinfectant or, and this is a lot of people that I see as well deal with a lot of mental compulsions. So what did that look like for you in the spiritual realm? Was there a lot of like repetitive praying or things of

Rachel: that nature?

For sure. So kind of walking through my seasons group velocity, I would say initially it looked like a lot of mental ruminating. Am I Christian? How do I know if my sweet dad or pastor said something? Encouraging, which it was, but then analyzing, well, how do I know if that’s true? Just ruminating on things.

In my mind, confessing sin. Sometimes I was a little external, but often like reviewing, have I sin? Do I need to confess this? And then

Carrie: like internal checking.

Rachel: Internal checking, right? And then [00:18:00] certain verses, which I have a lot of precious clients who also have this, but certain sermons or verses, I’m like, I take it black and white, very literally.

A big part of my testimony with that was, I think I was 20. I don’t know why it is a vivid memory. I was driving on the highway one day and it occurred to me, I think this was the Holy Spirit, but at the end of Psalm 1 39 says, search me and know me. Save there, be any hurtful way in me. Leave me in the way ever lasting.

And so just putting that responsibility on God. God, you’re the Holy Spirit. You show me if I’ve sinned. I don’t need to keep micromanaging and triple checking, have I sinned and letting him be the spirit rather than me trying to do that. But the age of 20, thankfully, a lot of the spiritual scru, really after a decade of it.

Majorly died down. I’m still aware that I have tendencies like that to this day. I have to be very careful if I confess this and it’s like two seconds, move on. Like we don’t ruminate. So I still have some inclinations towards that, but that’s kind of what that looked like for me.

Carrie: But I mean, that’s very hopeful for people to hear that.

There was a time period where it was really, really rough and consumed a lot of thought energy, and now you’re just able [00:19:00] to say like, uh, okay, don’t slip back into that. Like the warning signs, like, that’s a slippery slope. Don’t keep going. This thing that I’ve seen with clients, and maybe you’ve had people say this to you too, is they’re like, I don’t wanna just blame my OCD.

What if I’m really sinning, but then I’m saying it’s OCD, getting attached to this. How do you address that? I’m laughing ’cause I had a sweet client tell me that last week and I was like, oh,

Rachel: how I process. I literally told her, I said, what a great question. Let’s process that together. I think somehow, Carrie, when we’re working with clients that are believers, which this climb speak was, if we can point ’em back to the cross in the gospel of like, thankfully Jesus has you.

So let’s walk up to, okay, sure. Let’s pretend you were sydnee. I’m confident that the spirit in you will show you through conviction, not condemnation. Yeah. And so CD is always gonna have a voice of condemnation and a blooping and never ans it never resolves. And the spirit is going to be through conviction.

That leads me to love God and love people not implode. I think something in my own story I’ve learned over the years is just not get on the [00:20:00] despair train. Like if it’s leading towards despair and doubt, that’s probably not a fruitful thing for me to get on and trying to explain it that way to clients.

Carrie: No, I think that’s great. I think we, kind of going back to what you said about micromanaging your sanctification, it’s like if we can help people see, you really can trust the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. It’s just so mind willing. The Holy Spirit is in us. So I can’t wrap my mind around that. That is a really big concept.

Yeah. Yeah. And so like we can trust that conviction is a good thing and it’s healthy for us, and it maintains our relationship with God, and we don’t have to run around and micromanage our spirituality. We can show up every day and say, here I am, God, I’m a mess. I’m broken. I’m dealing with this sin issue like I’m fighting and I need you.

We really wanna create that healthy level of dependence and trust on God versus. Feeling like we’ve gotta do it all ourselves.

Rachel: And I think that even ties to identity as believers. Something Pastor Brian really kind of drove [00:21:00] home with me is that like we are the beloved, like we are his beloved children.

And if my posture towards God, or towards my head space with OCD is I’m just a beloved child, that gives so much more breathing space than trying to drill down. And again, micromanage. And trying to make sure to cross every T dot, every I, it’s like, well, if Jesus already died, he crossed every T and dotted every I for me.

So I don’t have to keep doing that anymore.

Carrie: I am really interested in this next topic, OCD and spiritual warfare, because this is something I think I’ve been asking God about. It’s like, what role does spiritual warfare play in OCD? And we want to be really careful because then people get. Super freaked out like, am I possessed by demons?

No, that’s not what we’re talking about here. We are talking about that we do see in scripture that our battle is not against flesh and blood, and that there’s spiritual things happening, even like our flesh and the spirit. There’s a war between Satan and what he’s trying to accomplish in Jesus and what he’s trying to accomplish on this earth.

So how do you see those playing [00:22:00] out like the spiritual warfare in OCD?

Rachel: I love this and I loved knowing that you’re gonna ask about it. One of my most passionate topics. Yes. So I think initially, if I’m processing this with a client or friend or whoever, making sure they first know, to your point, you know, OC D is a mental health issues so that people don’t oversize because we both probably heard horrific stories of people who had demons prayed out of them, and it wasn’t a demon, it was just OCD.

So usually always start with making sure someone understands it’s a mental health issue. Then once they have grasped that, then I will gingerly tie in spiritual warfare. If I sense, honestly, I pray like the spirit leads me to bring that into a session. I think with spiritual warfare, I often see that come up.

I’m gonna quote Ted would say again, but he’s phrased it as OCD is kind of the surfboard that’s already there and the enemy kind of rides on the back of that surfboard. And so thinking of, you know, in John 10, it talks about the thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy. These are the brethren. What revelation is it?

[00:23:00] 12 or wherever that is. And so if I see a client really being accused, often it’s the accuser coming on on the back of OCD, which is the doubting disease anyway. And I think helping people know spiritual warfare, to your point, doesn’t have to be this woowoo thing I think we think of as demon possession.

Not that I don’t think demons are real, that’s a thing. But I think it can even be through the enemy trying to distract us. Because enemy’s goal is to get our eyes off of Jesus. However that looks with someone who has a sensitive conscience like me. It might look like, let me get her to stew so much on her sin that she’s not looking at the cross anymore.

I believe that spiritual warfare, I think the enemy wants us to micromanage our faith and shrink our world down to the size of that, and that is spiritual warfare. So I think you’ve been helping people define like if your world is shrunk down to the size of a sin, that’s maybe the accuser accusing you of something to get your eyes off of the Lord.

Carrie: And just this idea that in terms of OCD and values and acceptance and commitment therapy is about moving towards your values. And so we’re, we’re helping people with that in the process of [00:24:00] therapy. And oftentimes people want to do something and it could be a variety of different things. It could be, I want to get married, I want to date in order to get married.

I want to go on a mission trip. I want to serve in the children’s ministry. Feel like they can’t because they feel like OCD is so bad. I’m just, life is a little bit arrested because of all these thought loops that I’m constantly in. And so that’s where I see it as like people having difficulty moving towards the things that they really believe wholeheartedly, that God wants them to pursue.

And so I think anything that we can do as believing clinicians to help support people in that process is, is so huge to know. Like. No. Like we want you to walk in the abundant life that Christ has for you and move forward.

Rachel: Absolutely. And I really love the verse in Psalm 34 that talks about magnifying him because I sometimes I tell clients like, Hey, whether it’s the enemy attacking you, or it’s OCD, we don’t even have to like analyze.

I’m all about saying one prayer, like, Lord, if there’s attack going [00:25:00] on, protect us one and done. So it doesn’t become a compulsion. But after that it’s like we don’t even have to scrape the bull, so to speak. And pinpoint is this enemy, is this OCD? Is this leading me to magnify God? No. That’s all I need to know.

I think sometimes that’s really helpful for someone with SCR loss or OCD to know that they don’t even have to completely like, well, is this the enemy or is this OCD? This isn’t of Jesus. It’s not leading me to love God and love people. So I’m gonna, to your point, walk towards my values of love, God and love people, and be embraced by God and his character, and move towards that.

Carrie: I think another way to say that is like love or fear, am I in complete terror? We know that that’s not of God. Yeah, that’s a helpful distinction. Yeah. Perfect. Love cast out fear. Yeah. That’s awesome. So you’re in the process of writing a book, which is really exciting. So tell us a little bit about the book and where that’s going.

Rachel: Yeah, I love that you asked. So my book, Lord Willing, will be coming out next summer. I’m in the process of figuring out self-publishing and that whole process, but it’s called Gap Filler Captive to Captivated, and it’s a [00:26:00] unique book, I think, ’cause I’m trying to speak to two audiences and build a bridge between people who have OCD, the suffer.

People who are trying to help OCD, the helper, whether they be a clinician or a pastor, have a big heart for shepherds in the church and for pastors particularly. And so it’s a resource to help bridge helpers and sufferers to have less triggering, more fruitful conversations around specifically pure o those more hidden types of OCD.

I’m gonna try to address it holistically and biblically and show how Jesus fills the gap, which the whole book unpacks the gap. Illustration is something Michelle drew me back when I was in counseling with her for OCD, and then Jesus kind of gave me part two of the illustration of the cross filling it.

And I’ve used the illustration with clients. They have found it really transformative, and so I’ve decided to build a book around that whole. Illustration from my own counseling journey.

Carrie: Oh, that’s really exciting. I’m so excited for you. And I think that that’s gonna bless a lot of people and hopefully God will open doors for you to be able to share more about that.

If pastors are looking for other [00:27:00] resources, like you mentioned Ted Wick. Sorry, so I said his name wrong. But, um, are there other like books that you’ve read or things that you’ve found helpful?

Rachel: Ted has some great resources. One of my friends and colleagues, um, Justin Hughes. He’s in Dallas. He is a Christian counselor and very passionate about this topic like I am.

I would definitely point to his resources. He’s writing a book as well on OCD, which is very exciting. And then I think there’s even just some great resources on OCD, like on Piro in general. Like there’s different workbooks and I think are helpful just for pastors to understand like what it is. Um, I like Mike Emile’s article on OCD.

He’s from CCEF, if you’re familiar with them. He kind of talks about kind of spiritual as heart themes that we have with OCD, like perfectionism and certainty and those sorts of things. And there’s a good book called Christianity Cure, OCD by Ian. I forget his last name. Osborn. It’s Osborne. Yeah, that’s a good one.

Yeah, so I would say there’s some on group velocity, spiritual OCD, and there’s some, even just basic OCD [00:28:00] ones. I think if pastors even just understand what OCD is, it can be helpful.

Carrie: And for anybody who’s wondering why I haven’t had Dr. Osborne on the uh, podcast, he has declined saying he is too retired and old to be on the podcast, but we still love him anyway.

We love him. Hurts out to him. Yes, absolutely. Hard part. Yeah. That’s a very interesting book and talks about Martin Luther’s story. Mm-hmm. And just like what grace and that understanding and how that changed everything for him was really insightful. Yeah. From what I remember of that and really just getting to that place of can you trust God with a, whatever that Harry scary thing is.

That’s what I kind of remember the takeaway from that book. If you can boil it down, like is this something you can really trust God with?

Rachel: Absolutely. I think he has another book out about just Martin Luther. I saw something a couple weeks ago and I was like, oh, I don’t know. Anyway, but, and there’s even some great devotional resources like Pastor Brian years ago recommended I read Gentle and Low Leaf.

You’ve heard of that. That one is great to just point people to God’s character. It’s not OCD per se, but I feel like it [00:29:00] was written for someone like me. So worth mentioning. That’s a great resource as well.

Carrie: Getting back to that father, heart of God is so huge, and that can be hard for us to understand and really conceptualize.

Well, this has been a really great conversation. I’ve enjoyed chatting it up with you. I know we could probably go on and on and on, but we’re gonna Yeah. Wrap things up. I like to ask some of our guests who have struggled with OCD, like, what do you feel like recovery looks like for you now?

Rachel: I love that. I think an ongoing embracing of uncertainty and taking leaps of faith every day in my life.

Whether that’s with how I read a verse that used to trigger me or how I interact with a client, if that triggers my harm, OCD or how I’m with a kid in the nursery, if it triggers pedophilia, OCD, like I’ve still triggered. I just have a relationship with uncertainty now that I’m more resting and um, Jesus is my certainty.

Carrie: That’s great. Thank you for sharing. That’s very helpful.

Rachel: I just appreciate you having me in everything you do.

Carrie: Thanks so much for tuning [00:30:00] in today. If you know a pastor that needs to hear this or a friend that needs some encouragement, will you please send this episode to them so that more people can experience hope and know that God is with them on their OCD journey.

183. Deciding to Take OCD Medication During Pregnancy: A Personal Story with Amber Williams Van Zuyen

Written by Carrie Bock on July 23, 2025. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

As part of the Personal Story Summer Series, we’re bringing back Carrie’s powerful conversation with Amber Williams Van Zuyen, who shares her journey through harm OCD, intrusive thoughts, and the difficult decision to take medication during pregnancy. Amber’s story is relatable, faith-filled, and a reminder that you’re not alone in the struggle.

Plus, don’t miss Carrie’s upcoming live webinar Calming the Inner Chaos: Tips for Christians Seeking OCD Treatment on August 11 at 4PM CT—replay available!

Episode Highlights:

What harm OCD really looks like behind closed doors
The guilt and confusion that often swirl around faith and medication
The impact of dismissive or misinformed “Christian” counseling
Why finding the right diagnosis and treatment made all the difference
How Amber leaned into Scripture, community, and honesty to reclaim her peace

Episode Summary:

Welcome back to the Christian Faith and OCD: Personal Story Summer Series! Today, I’m re-airing one of the most unforgettable conversations I’ve had—Episode 91 with Amber Williams Van Zuyen, author of Pregnant and Drowning. Amber’s story is vulnerable, faith-filled, and painfully relatable, especially for anyone who has faced the intense tug-of-war between mental health struggles and pregnancy.

Amber was diagnosed with OCD early in her pregnancy after being hit with terrifying intrusive thoughts—what we now know as harm OCD. She faced the difficult decision so many moms wrestle with: Should I take medication while pregnant? Will this hurt my baby? Will this make me a “bad” mom… or a “bad” Christian?

We talked through her childhood symptoms, her family’s history of mental health, and the spiritual confusion that can come when intrusive thoughts get tangled up with guilt and faith. Amber shares how shame nearly silenced her, how misinformed “Christian” counsel did more harm than good, and how God, good resources, and the right support brought her to a place of healing. Her honesty gives voice to a struggle many are too scared to name—and her story reminds us that you are not your thoughts.

If you’re pregnant, hoping to be, or just navigating OCD and anxiety with a side of spiritual questioning—please tune in to this one. It’s real, it’s raw, and it just might be what your heart needs today.

Tune in to the full episode now and hear Amber’s full journey.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Personal Story summer series. Today I’m re airing an episode that came out back on episode 91 with Amber Williams Van Zuyen. Amber got diagnosed early on in her pregnancy and had to make the difficult decision about whether or not to take medication. I know that this is probably something that others of you have struggled with if you are planning to become pregnant or you are pregnant and experiencing an intensity of OCD symptoms, so I thought that this would provide some great insight.

She also talks about symptoms that she had earlier on as a child and how that factored into her family tree. So even if you’re not a mom, you still may really find this story of harm. OCD. Very relatable to you. If you haven’t heard already, I am hosting a live webinar on Monday, August 11th, 4:00 PM Central Time.

We’re also gonna have a replay if you aren’t able to make it live. It’s gonna be calming the inner chaos tips for Christians seeking OCD treatment. I hope that you will join us. We are getting ready to kick off. Another round of Christians learning OCD on August the 18th, and this would be a great introduction if you’re really thinking about joining us for that course this fall.

Love to see you on the 11th. You can get all your questions answered. We’ll put the link in the show notes for you to sign up. Here is my interview with the author of Pregnant and Drowning Van Zuyen

Amber, welcome to the show. It’s good to have you today.

Amber: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Carrie: You have a really unique personal story about anxiety and OCD and how that’s impacted you and your life, especially in terms of being pregnant and having your son. Take us back a little bit earlier to when you first started experiencing anxiety or OCD symptoms.

Amber: Well, looking back, I can pinpoint when I was 24 when it heightened and got to its worst point, but in early childhood, I would do things like, I’d be in the grocery store with my mom and I didn’t want to step on the lines on the squares because I believe something bad was going to happen or I just had to make sure that I did that so nothing would happen to me, or there was a little girl who had lice in class next to me and I obsessed about constantly having lice and I would go home and have my mom check constantly and it never stopped. It was always just, check again, check again maybe that’s kind of where I noticed my OCD in my earlier days. And then when I was in high school, I got obsessed with makeup and I always felt ugly, I had to cover that up during that time in my life, I would go to the bathroom during lunch periods and take it all off and then re-put it all back on just because I didn’t want anyone to see me. Looking back, those were things where my obsessive compulsive was kind of taking over. But when I was about 24, I had this really scary thing happen with my vision.

I ended up having something called ocular migraines which affected only one eye. I thought I was having a stroke, and my grandmother also suffered from MS terribly early on in my life, I saw her in a bad state, and that was also another concern of mine. So I was kind of always having obsessive thoughts about getting diagnosed with something, constantly reading things, self-diagnosing that triggered health anxiety for me.

I went to the doctor and he told me it was ocular migraines, that there’s nothing to worry about, but I also was concerned about MS too because my grandmother had it, and I was just so terrified and it just played over and over in my head that I was basically already living with a disease that I didn’t even have to the point where I didn’t wanna go out of the house.

I was obsessing with medical books, reading symptoms over and over again, and actually convincing my body that I was having those symptom. This went on for about a month, and I went to the doctor and they prescribed me medication, and I refused to take it for about a month, but I eventually did, and I slowly got better I never completely got over it, but I learned how to deal with it differently.

Carrie: Did they recognize the OCD at that time?

Amber: No, they told me I had anxiety, but looking back, I definitely in the mind it’s repeat, repeat, repeat. It was really destroying my life because I obsessed about it so much as I was living at 24 7 but I eventually got on medication and it got better. And then it was one of those things where I’ve always felt guilty about it because it’s like a lack of faith I feel in a sense, but I do feel like it’s an imbalance that I’ve struggled with and that I truly need medication for it. There have been points in my life where I’ve been off of it and then on it again, and then, Recently I’ve had a trigger because I got off a medication and I was triggered again with medical stuff because of stories Christina Applegate just came out with MS and it triggered that time in my life again but with that said about MS, I see a lot of people doing wonderful with it.

My grandma just got diagnosed at such a weird time she didn’t get diagnosed for with it for 10 years people said she was crazy. She went to doctors and they told my grandpa, you know, your wife’s crazy you need to lock her up in a mental institution but really she was really sick with MS they just didn’t recognize it at that time. She got so debilitated and basically, there was nothing that they could do for her she was too deteriorated at that point to help her. A part of me feel so guilty because I see all these people doing so wonderful with it or just having a good attitude with it and that has been a struggle for me, I feel guilt.

Carrie: Going back to the piece about faith, because I think a lot of people have that wrestling that struggles with anxiety or OCD, well, maybe this is a faith issue, “I don’t have enough faith in God kind of flesh that out a little bit more for you was, I don’t have enough faith, if I do get MS, that God’s going to take care of me and I’m going to be okay.”

Amber: Yes to me, I felt so bad because here I am creating these things in my own head when there are people out there suffering with it and doing good with it because the most courageous people that I know, my brother-in-law’s a paraplegic and he’s just a testimony.

Just such an attitude and I just think God, what is wrong with me? Why am I like this? Is it a lack of faith, but really it’s anxiety and OCD, and it’s truly a disorder? And I had to come to terms with accepting that because I know now going through several years, I’m almost 40 and dealing with it, that it is an actual disorder.

When I’m on medication, I can control it and I can think clearly, it’s almost a bunch of trash jumbled up in your head and then it gets cleared away and you could see clearly without the medication I couldn’t see clearly.

Carrie: I think it’s really hard for anybody to accept that they have an issue, whether it’s physical or emotional. There is a sense of grief and loss of saying, okay yes, I am struggling with OCD because it wasn’t something that you wanted, it wasn’t something that you brought upon yourself it just, it happens, and there’s probably genetic and environmental factors that contribute to all of that most mental health conditions. So that piece of just learning the acceptance is hard.

Amber: It is, and a lot of people are just, oh, get over it they don’t understand so there’s just this stigma that anxiety isn’t real, your OCD is just something that you are making up. You get a lot of that from people that don’t understand it, and I think that’s where a lot of the guilt comes in is people just throw it to the wayside.

This isn’t a real problem, this is just a you problem, but anxiety has a face just like diabetes or anything else does, and it’s an actual disorder some people need medication for it, some don’t, I tend to relapse when I’m not on medication.

Carrie: Tell us about that in terms of maybe responses from people in your faith community when they found out that you were struggling.

Amber: Well, I had a really interesting experience while I was pregnant, I was really struggling with really dark, violent thoughts, and I was thinking these thoughts were my thoughts and I was struggling so much my mom didn’t know what to do. She made an appointment with a Christian counselor at her church, and I went, I sat down with her. She was an older woman, and I began to tell her, I’m struggling with these thoughts I’m getting really depressed, I don’t know what to do. And she looked at me in the face and said, you don’t have real problems, my daughter has real problems, my daughter almost died giving birth, you don’t have real problems. And I just couldn’t even believe that she had gone there and said that, because I’m already so fragile she could have pushed me to, I don’t wanna say suicide, but there were moments during my pregnancy that I questioned those things. Without my family I could have done that, which is her saying that, and it was just so shocking coming from a Christian counselor.

Carrie: That’s really unfortunate that happened it sounds sometimes counselors can have an internal reaction to things that people tell them, and if we’re not in check with those experiences that happen within ourselves, we can do damage. And so it sounds she had some kind of, we call it counter transference reaction towards you as a pregnant woman and dealing with things. And clearly it sounds like she was not up to speed on OCD or what those symptoms are.

Amber: Yes. She definitely was not qualified for at least someone with my condition going on.

Carrie: When did you get that diagnosis of OCD? Was it when you were pregnant? Did someone tell you like, “Hey, this is harm OCD, these are some classic things and these are intrusions it’s not really you?”

Amber: Probably I was 12 weeks pregnant, these obsessive thoughts started five days after I found out I was pregnant. I’ve always had that health anxiety and I’ve always worried, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to have children at the time, and I was still married. My mom’s like, oh, when are you gonna have kids?

Everyone’s like, “When are you going to have kids?” I don’t know. I was 33 and I’m like, okay, I guess we’ll try and I got pregnant really fast. It scared me and I was laying on the couch one day, a few days after I found out I was pregnant and I was petting my dog and I had this thought in my head where she trusts me so much, I could just snap her neck and she wouldn’t even know it and it scared me.

I had no want or desire to do that, but I started to think, am I starting to go crazy? Am I going to get postpartum? And then I let this repeat, repeat and it turned into a big monster, and it got to the point where I called my OBGYN, and I said, these are the things that are going on in my head and I don’t know what to do, I’m scared that they could happen, not that I want them to happen, but they could and she told me, well, thoughts turn into plans, and then things happen.

Carrie: Oh my goodness. Thanks.

Amber: That triggered me so bad that now the thoughts went from my animals to my mother, to my husband to everyone around me is not safe anymore. Any object around the house, I took all the knives out of the house, put them away, I was scared of the knife drawer, I was scared of the cord that goes through your iPod I thought anything could be a weapon. I was talking to my good friend, she’s a nurse, and she was just walking me through all this, and then one night I was lying in bed and I thought I heard a voice say, just do it already but it was really my thoughts but my friend got freaked out and she said, it’s time for you to go get evaluated. I went to the hospital the next day I was so incredibly terrified I thought everyone’s gonna find out, but at least they will shackle me down and I can’t hurt myself, I can’t hurt anyone else, and this baby can have a chance, so I’m gonna go, but I really thought they were going to 50150 me, they didn’t.

Carrie: In terms of involuntarily hospitalize you, that kinda thing?

Amber: Yes they told me that I was suffering from horrible OCD and anxiety, extreme levels of it. I was like O C D interesting, I didn’t really think about that ever being a thing, because you know, when I think of OCD, it’s like locking the door five times or checking. I didn’t do that, but my mom did that I don’t know if it was hereditary. I ended up going to a therapist through my insurance company and I ended up getting on medication while pregnant, and that was a whole other ordeal as well, because I had one doctor tell me he was, I just switched carriers, so I’d gone to a new carrier while I got pregnant.

This is a whole new doctor, and he told me that because I told him I was suffering from anxiety and this was prior to me going to go get evaluated. And I was just kind of seeing what I could do, I tried acupuncture and I was going to try to get a referral cause it was really expensive to go out of pocket every day because I was suffering so bad, because I said antidepressants while pregnant, what do you think about it? And he said it’s equivalent to a mother drinking every day pregnant. And I’m like, what?

I was just shocked well, okay, this isn’t an avenue I can go down this isn’t going to work. I guess I ended up getting put on medication and I had another doctor, a different one after going through the evaluation process, she put me on something, a roll of doses and it turns out that it’s not the stigma that’s attached with taking antidepressants while pregnant. There’s some that are more harmful and then there are others that don’t travel through the placenta quite the others do. And I’ve asked several doctors and they say that it’s a very low-grade risk as far as the baby’s health goes certain ones and the one that I was on in particular, Prozac, was a friendly one for pregnancy.

Carrie: That’s interesting that your first doctor said that because there are all kinds of studies that have also been done on depressed mothers who are pregnant and that can actually cause harm, low birth weights and those types of things.

Depression in itself is not good for pregnancy, but taking an antidepressant sometimes can help, mitigate some of those risks from the depression.

Amber: Yes.

Carrie: Did your baby come out just fine?

Amber: He came out wonderful. I missed one little part of that story when I told my OBGYN my thoughts, she put me on a medication instantly and not a lot of high risk to it. I was terrified I was on that for six weeks, and then they switched me to Prozac, which is a lot better but he came out beautiful, perfect, good birth weight, he was seven pounds, eight ounces.

Carrie: That’s great. Do you feel like that changed the course of the rest of your pregnancy? How far along were you when you got on the medication?

Amber: 11 weeks.

Carrie: You had these symptoms really early and I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know a ton about this, I just know from anecdotal experience that individuals I’ve talked to have struggled with OCD. Some of them, I guess with all the hormones and different things that are going on in your body and pregnancy is somewhat stressful to your body in general, that can increase people’s OCD symptoms.

I don’t know if you’ve talked to other people who’ve had similar experiences or heard or read articles or things like that.

Amber: Actually, I had two girls reach out to me that kind of heard about my story. Their OCD was a little different. One girl was just terrified of throwing up she has this horrible fear of throwing up, and she was obsessively thinking about it during her pregnancy, and it was derailing her from her everyday life.

She couldn’t focus, she couldn’t go to work. I kind of tried to talk to her as much as I could through it, just knowing that she’s not alone, that we’re all in this together, and that we all have different little things, but they’re all kind of in common when it comes down to the core of it. And then there was another girl who suffered horribly with depression and my boss at my job kind of hooked us up and I kind of just texted with her and she ended up getting on medication while pregnant, and that was a big game changer for her too. She didn’t completely get through her OCD depression during pregnancy, but it helped tremendously.

Carrie: That’s great. I think it’s mental health it’s so important to talk about these things while pregnant too and this is kind of close to my heart because I had some mild depression when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I think I struggled so much with like the shoulds. Well, I should be happy because I got pregnant and I was older and had lots of friends and family that had dealt with infertility, and so I put all these kinds of like shoulds on myself. You should be happy and I had this expectation that I was going to still be able to be fit during pregnancy and dealt with some back pain and different things. It was hard I really had to read just things. I guess I say all that to say I want people to know pregnancy is a happy time, but people can still struggle with some pretty significant mental health issues through that experience.

Amber: Yes, I mean when I had my baby, I held him and I didn’t feel anything right after I had him and I’m just thinking, aren’t I supposed to feel all these things? I just felt numb. Before they make you go home they have you watch this video, don’t shake your baby, don’t do this, don’t do that and I just felt, or if you’re feeling these things, come back in it’s one of those postpartum videos. And they’re playing this because they know who I am you know, just like all of these fears and for the longest time after he was born, I would get these bouts of fear changing him. I’d feel I’d lose control over my hands and they would do something to hurt him not that I wanted to, just the fear of it. And I would have to take him to my mom’s and go, just take a breather for a minute, go for a walk, and kind of work through that.

Carrie: I think the things that you’re talking about, one of the reasons OCD goes undiagnosed is because people don’t know what a lot of the symptoms are and that the obsessions can take a variety of different forms.

It sounds like you’ve struggled with your share of harm, OCD obsessions, but also somatic obsessions in terms of your body, and maybe there’s something wrong with me and maybe I’m really ill. Tell us a little bit more about how you got through that dark part in your life spiritually, this is the lowest point I feel like I’m going crazy, I feel there’s something really wrong with me, I don’t know what it is God help me.

Amber: I meditated on the Bible so much, just verse after verse, great glory from harvest I would put him on every night about fear and worry and anxiety, and I just would fall asleep to his messages and it would give me peace and calmness.

That was the only place I found a place where I could take a deep breath and just be like, I’m going to be okay. Another book, which really helped me was Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer. That just really helped me put into perspective. I can have a thought come into my head, but I don’t have to let it make a home there.

Just that God got me through it I never felt so close to him, but yet so close to the enemy as well I just felt it was a battle for my life. I definitely feel, Yes, I have anxiety and OCD, but there was some massive spiritual warfare I’ve never felt anything like that ever and it’s only by the grace of God that I got through it.

Just prayer, prayer, prayer, talking, I talk to a lot of Christian friends and that’s one thing that I think is a strong suit in me. I don’t have money, but I’m an open book and I tell people I just spill my guts. I think a part of that was a big part of my healing process, just letting it out, letting people know I’m not ok.

Letting them pray for me and I got baptized when I was pregnant was a huge thing for me it was like a rededication. My faith is stronger now than it has ever been, and I’ve never felt closer to God during that time it was wild.

Carrie: Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. The harder circumstances and his sufferings lead us closer to God and we discover more about who he is through those really hard times in our life. Then you felt led to write this book titled Pregnant and Drowning. Can you tell us about that?

Amber: While I was pregnant and going through all these things, I so desperately wanted something to relate to. I could find little tidbits here and there about women that had suffered from postpartum. Some are a little bit similar to mine, but not a whole lot.

I didn’t find a whole lot on harm OCD when I was going through this, and I don’t know if I wasn’t navigating correctly or how I was searching, but it just seemed so taboo to talk about and I just wanted people to know that you are not your thoughts. One thing that I really struggle with, and this is just strictly my opinion.

When I see a horrible headline where a mother bills her children, I think that is not postpartum in my opinion, that is evil and from the enemy. The devil does all these things to make you think that you’re going crazy and that you’ve got to do these things I’ve never had that desire. When I see that and I see postpartum, I go, I don’t know if can postpartum go that far to where you could harm a child like that.

I don’t know I just wanted to tell my story because I would never do something like that, and I felt like a monster and I was ashamed of it, but I know now that wasn’t me those were just thoughts that I invited in and I just could not get them off of the OCD wheel in my head.

Carrie: I appreciate you being so vulnerable about some of those specific thoughts that you had, because I think a lot of people, even people who come to therapy that I see, it takes a little while before they can even open up and talk about some of the things that are going on in their head because they feel they’re so horrific.

And then if I start talking about it, I’m going to possibly start obsessing about it, it can be really tough for them and I think that other people will be listening to this and find it very relatable of some of the things that they’ve had. I appreciate what you said earlier too, about how you can have a thought come in and it doesn’t have to make its home there, like you don’t have to continue to dwell on it you can notice there’s a separation that we can create. I’m having this thought, but one that’s not a reflection of my character which is so important and then two, it’s a thought. I can separate myself from that and say it’s not the same thing as a desire that doesn’t mean that I want to engage in that.

That’s why we call them intrusive thoughts because they intrude when you think about something that kind of pushes its way in, that doesn’t need to be there. That’s something that a lot of people, especially when they’re first kind of getting to know themselves in OCD that they really struggle with.

They think, Oh because I had this thought about hurting myself, my animal, my kids, whatever that means, somehow there’s some deep-seated secret desire that I want to do that, and that’s not the case so it’s important for people listening to this to know that.

Amber: There’s such a difference and it took me forever to realize that because I thought I don’t want to do these things, but why are they in my head because I won’t let them go I’m giving them value. I’m creating this monster that’s under my bed, and I can’t get rid of it until I can figure out that there’s a difference between a thought and who I am as a person, and that doesn’t reflect me.

Carrie: Your book is about your personal story and some things that were helpful and beneficial to you during that process.

Amber: It starts off in my earlier anxiety and then it moves on to my pregnancy, and there was so much darkness in that time and just the struggle I went through to try to get me in this baby through that journey also, I ended up having another baby and I was on medication the whole time. It was a great pregnancy as far as mental health goes totally opposite.

Carrie: That’s so hopeful too for people to know that they can have a different experience than they did the first time, even if they had difficulty with their mental health.

So you just kind of knew going into the second pregnancy, okay, I know what I’m dealing with I know what thoughts could come up, I have some more tools, skills, or resources to be able to separate myself from those and distract myself and move on. Did you ever get any good therapy in this process to specifically deal with the OCD?

Amber: I went to a couple of meetings. It was kind of far away from where I lived and I should have done the group thing I think it’s helpful. I am interested in joining one now cause I think it’s so important to support each other and to realize you’re not alone and that we can all get through this together, just hearing each other’s testimony, each other’s stories, helping each other through struggles.

I know that for me, I don’t have a lot of friends that struggle with the same things I do. I have one friend that has pretty bad anxiety, so to be able to relate to her is medication and therapy. Just to be like, “Hey, oh gosh, you do that too oh, okay I understand how that feels.” Just knowing that you’re not alone is such a game-changer I think.

Carrie: Amber, you have such a powerful testimony and I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us, I hope that people will get your book if this is something that they’ve struggled with and so that they can kind of relate and relieve a sense of shame that they may be having over dealing with some of these thoughts.

Amber: Well, thank you so much for having me.

147. Does Talking About OCD Make It Worse?: 3 Reasons Why

Written by Carrie Bock on October 30, 2024. Posted in Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie delves into the reasons why talking about OCD can sometimes exacerbate the condition. She discusses how reassurance-seeking, co-rumination, and the urge to “go deep” can create unhealthy cycles that hinder healing.

Episode Highlights:

The harmful cycle where temporary relief from anxiety can lead to increased obsessive thoughts and compulsions.

Why traditional talk therapies may be ineffective for OCD and can sometimes reinforce compulsive behaviors.

How to identify when OCD is influencing your thoughts and behaviors, enabling you to take proactive steps towards healing.

Discover practical strategies for staying grounded in the present moment, which is essential for overcoming OCD and resisting its narratives.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD! I’m Carrie Bock, a Christ follower, wife, mother, and licensed professional counselor dedicated to helping Christians struggling with OCD find deeper healing.

In today’s episode, I’m exploring whether talking about OCD can actually make it worse, sharing three key reasons why it might. As a therapist, I naturally see value in discussing problems, but when it comes to OCD, traditional talk therapies often fall short. Many people mistake their symptoms for general anxiety, spending sessions sharing worries without finding lasting relief. Here’s why this approach may not work and what we can do instead..

Here are three reasons why:

Reassurance Seeking: Repeatedly asking for validation to ease anxiety may offer temporary relief, but it reinforces the OCD cycle, causing obsessions to resurface.
Co-Rumination: Constantly discussing worries, especially about unsolvable issues, can deepen distress and worsen OCD symptoms.
Going Deep: Trying to understand issues at a deeper level often leads to obsessive thinking instead of grounding you in the present.

Tune in to learn more about these traps and how to avoid them. For additional support, head to carriebock.com/OCD

Explore Related Resources:

5 Ways Therapy Can Make OCD Worse

Transcript

Episode 147. Does talking about OCD make it worse? Let’s find out. I’m going to give you three reasons why.

Hello, and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Keri Bach. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right in to today’s episode.

If you are like me, you like talking through problems. I mean, hello, I’m a therapist, obviously I do this on a regular basis. I’m However, not just with clients talking through their problems, but if I have my own problems, a lot of times I’m going to friends or family members or other people to really try to sort through things, talk it out, and figure things out.

Here’s where we run into problems with OCD though, and this is why traditional talk type therapies don’t work with OCD. There are lots of people who don’t realize they have OCD, think they have anxiety. Go to a therapist to talk about all the things they’re anxious about. And next thing you know, they’re in therapy, they feel a little bit better, they leave, they don’t feel any better.

And they repeat this cycle week after week after week, like, hey, here’s what’s going on with me this week, this is what I’m worried about, it’s what’s bothering me. The therapist provides them some type of solution based or thought challenging or reassurance, and then it doesn’t ever seem to help. That’s why this topic is so important.

The first reason talking about OCD can make it worse is Reassurance seeking. This is a really common one with OCD, right? You have a question, you really want to ask your therapist, or your spouse, or your friend, do you think that I’m a horrible person, or did I offend you, or is this object clean, what do you think?

Reassurance seeking is a compulsion. I know it is super hard to not ask for reassurance sometimes, but it’s important to try to hold off if you can, because the reassurance seeking only continues and reinforces that OCD cycle in your brain, where you have an obsession, then there’s some anxiety. There’s a compulsion, and there’s temporary relief.

People seek reassurance because it works, they do get some relief from it, but then the next thing you know, they are becoming anxious again because the obsession just goes right back. And sometimes you may feel like the obsession comes back even stronger. I feel like we could do an entire episode on reassurance seeking, but I’m going to spare you that for right now.

If you think you might be reassurance seeking, you can ask yourself to evaluate, Am I feeling this urge to get this information? And do I feel like if I get that information, there’s going to be some internal calm or slight relief from this anxiety? That’s a good indicator because you may have gotten really sneaky about how you’re asking for reassurance.

It doesn’t always sound as direct as, is this object clean, or have I offended you or upset you in some way. The second reason talking about OCD can make it worse is that you may be participating in co rumination. I have a confession to make. I was working with a client who had some scrupulosity obsessions about a variety of different issues related to Christianity and the Bible.

I was receiving some supervision, so I was talking with another OCD counselor about how can I help this client better? What are we doing? It just doesn’t seem to be working. And she completely called me out on it in a very nice and loving way and said, you are co ruminating with this client because these issues are so important to you and you see that and so you want to talk about these things.

And I was like, oh my goodness, you know, sometimes you don’t even see what you’re doing and you need someone else to point it out to you. You might be co ruminating with someone if you were trying to solve a level of uncertainty. that we have to sit with. So I’ll give you an example. If you’re really stuck on whether or not God created the earth in seven literal days or periods of time, and you’re scouring over all this evidence for the seven day creation versus the, hey, the word for day means period of time, and so I don’t know, was it, how do we have a literal day when we don’t have the planets yet?

All very interesting and philosophical questions, certainly things that Steve and I have talked about, have talked about with other people, but in those conversations, we don’t have a high level of distress over this. We’re just saying, this is an interesting topic and there’s different views on it, obviously.

If you are spending a large amount of time trying to figure something like that out that’s not solvable, Because it requires a certain level of faith, you might be co ruminating with someone. If you have talked someone to death about the same topic and haven’t come to a resolution about it, you might be co ruminating with that person, or another person’s response might be like, I have no idea why you’re stuck on this, it really doesn’t matter that much to them, but to you, it feels like I have to resolve this, or otherwise that means I don’t know, whatever you’re saying that it means, that you don’t have enough faith or you’re not sure if you can love God unless you understand all of these different nuances of things that occurred in the Old Testament.

Reassurance seeking, co ruminating can be very sneaky. You may not realize you’re doing it, your friends and family may not realize you’re doing it. You can see how reassurance seeking and co ruminating can become really problematic in therapy Obviously, we’re here to talk with you about things, but there also has to be some kind of strategy behind it, and often redirection, for you to notice when you’re in the OCD bubble.

I’ve had clients where I’ve spent a lot of time helping them recognize that what they were dealing with was OCD. Because there may have been a level of lack of insight, just feeling like they’re ruminating about these things all the time and thinking, like, this is my own thought process versus OCD has gotten you completely down an unhealthy rabbit hole.

The third reason why talking about OCD can make it work is a trick that OCD will play on you called going deep. Going deep is where you feel like you just have to understand something more at a deeper level. This may cause a lot of research, but it may also be connected to these other two that we talked about, reassurance seeking and corruminating, because you may be talking to other people trying to gain more understanding. Like, “if I just understand everything there is to know about germs, then I will be able to keep myself safe and not get sick. If I really understand these deep theological issues then that means I will feel more secure in my salvation or relationship with God.” Going deep doesn’t work because it actually just moves you farther and farther into the OCD instead of grounding you back in reality.

This is what we’re trying to do in ICBT is keep you connected to the present moment experience instead of the narrative that OCD is telling you is happening right now or what OCD is telling you is going to happen in the future. There’s a distinct difference, and the more that you understand what we call the tricks and cheats of OCD, the The more that you understand your own obsessional story that OCD is crafting for you, the better that you can do in staying in reality and trusting your sensory experience.

If you want to know more about that, our next ICBT Learning Sessions for Christians will be starting in January. Getting on our email list is the absolute best way to do that, and you can also join the waiting list at karybach. com slash OCD. Can I tell you a secret about our next learning sessions?

They’re going on sale in November. Okay, it’s not a secret. The cat’s out of the bag now. But in all seriousness, the only way to find out about the November sale for the January Learning Sessions is to get on the waitlist. So there will be information to our email subscribers about that and you can go to carriebock.com/OCD.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other OCD be able to find our show.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.