Tag: Feared Self

Carrie: Welcome, Angela. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Angela: Sure. My name is Angela Henry, and I am in private practice in Northern Indiana, and my practice primarily focuses on OCD, anxiety, Tourette syndrome, pans, pandas, and BRBs. As well as a little bit of trauma work. When I first started, I worked primarily with children and adolescents, and now I’ve kind of moved into seeing some adults as well.

Carrie: You can make those shifts and changes when you have your own business, so that’s helpful to know. Tell us, how’d you get into like OCD work? And this is a specialty.

Angela: That’s kind of a funny thing because I kind of feel, and this is kind of where my faith journey can come in too, is I didn’t go searching for OCD.

It actually found me before I went into private practice, I worked in a pediatric multi-specialty clinic and I worked again primarily with pediatrics and teens. And did a lot of autism work, a lot of A DHD, non-medication work counseling and social skill development, different things like that. And then when I went into private practice, I noticed a lot of people started coming to me that had OCD.

And so I started educating myself and went to BTTI, and that’s a whole story how I got to BTTI too. I don’t know if you wanna hear it, but it’s just such a cool thing. I’ll try to nutshell it a little bit, but this email came across that they were giving out some free scholarships to BTTI. It’s the Behavioral Institute for OCD through the I-O-C-D-F.

And I just thought I’m supposed to apply for this scholarship, and I just had a peace in my heart that I was gonna get it. I had no clue. They just wanted more skilled professionals in the Midwest. And so I applied for it and I got into the BTTI and I felt so honored. And at that point, I really didn’t know a whole lot about OCD, but I knew that I needed specialized training.

I had already gone for specialized training for Tourette syndrome through the pediatric specialty clinic that I worked with. And so I had OCD, what am I trying to think of? Training. And then I had the Tourette’s training, and it kind of all comes together where eventually people with OCD were coming to me, but then I learned about pans and pandas.

We’ve had an

Carrie: episode on that before. It’s been a little while, but yeah, it can cause what looks like sudden OCD symptoms.

Angela: I felt like God was really equipping me all this journey of having specialized training to treat Tourette’s, and then the specialized training to treat OCD and then again working with peds and all the specialties that come with that.

It just formed a really nice package for me to be able to treat a lot of these kiddos. Not just with OCD, but again with ticks and the Pans Pandas presentation. Long story short, I didn’t go searching for OCD. It came knocking at my door, and so I knew I needed to get extra help to know how to treat these people in my area.

There’s not a lot of people who treat OCD either. There’s just maybe almost less than a handful.

Carrie: That definitely makes sense then, and I think falls in line with what I hear from a lot of people in different parts of the US is it can be hard for them to find specialized therapists. But today we’re having a conversation about ICBT and this sense of the feared possible self versus the real self and how that connects to Christianity.

So how long have you been using ICBT in your practice?

Angela: Well, I was one of those early people that adapted it. And one of the early Friday people when there was just a handful of us on the screen talking about this new modality and how can we use it. And interestingly, as I was learning and becoming more specialized in OCD and going through the BTTI and learning how to treat OCD is when I actually started learning about ICVT too.

I felt like I was really going through a doctorate in OCD learning, ERP learning, ICBT. The original thing I think that happened was I’m A-E-M-D-R certified therapist as well, and I think I had made some comments maybe in some different Facebook groups on EMDR, and at that point it wasn’t well received.

It’s still

Carrie: not in some circles depending on who you talk to.

Angela: Right. And I remember Bronwyn and I didn’t know who she was at all reaching out to me and talking just briefly through text about her experience as well. I can’t remember if it was her that told me about ICBT because we came in to the Facebook group around like I think a week apart or so.

Or maybe it was Carl. I can’t remember who it was, but I reached out to Carl, and Carl sent me a special invite because you had to go to the Facebook group through a special invitation.

Carrie: It wasn’t just open to any clinicians or anything like that, right?

Angela: Yeah. So I joined that group and it just seemed to make a lot of sense to me.

The more it made sense, the more I wanted to invest in really consuming it and trying to understand and make it accessible to the clients that I was serving too.

Carrie: Yeah, and I think there is a ease in from, if you’re coming from the EMDR world, and we’re talking about kind of getting down to the root of the trauma and trying to clear out earlier traumas that are contributing to present anxieties and other symptomologies that people are experiencing.

For me, I was seeing a lot of people with anxiety and I started to apply some of the things that I was doing with OCD in terms of EMDR and then had some specialty E-M-D-R-O-C-D trainings. But before I knew what the feared possible self was, that was what I was going after with EMDR. I just didn’t have the language for it.

I didn’t know, but I would say there’s something underneath all of these. Symptoms and people’s lack of confidence to be able to engage in treatment or deal with the symptomology that they were experiencing. And these were, I would say, lighter cases of people suffering from OCD. I wasn’t working at that time with people that had more severe.

Symptomology like I am now. But I think that sometimes there’s more than one way to get at what you’re working on in terms therapeutically. But I like that ICBT has definitely way more research around it than EMDR. With OCD, I think that they need a little bit more kind of beef up in that department, but this is a great opportunity and option for people who are looking for evidence-based research treatment practices.

For OCD,

Angela: it pairs nicely. With my belief system, with my faith, and as you know, we can’t just talk about our faith in sessions unless the client brings it up first, but it’s something that I feel like I can use my faith and belief in a way that really resonates with ICBT and how I view people the world.

In terms of the feared self, it’s kind of funny because I’ve gotten a chance to do some presentations with some different colleagues, and it seems like I’m typically asked to do either the feared self or the real self, and I love that they feel confident with me doing those pieces because. Out of ICBT.

I mean, there’s a lot of great things that I love about ICBT, but that feared possible self and the real self just really hit it home. We know that there’s a difference between the feared possible self and there’s a vulnerable self, which all of us hold. And then there’s the feared possible self, which is specific to OCD.

Carrie: How do you define the feared possible self to clients?

Angela: So the feared possible self, how I define that is. It’s this feared possibility of who you might become if you’re not following the directions of OCD and the compulsions that it’s asking you to do. It’s this feared version of yourself that OCD makes you feel might be possible.

I. So, of course people with OCD are going to want to do those compulsions because they would never wanna be that version that OCD makes up about who they could become or who they might be. And I think that all of us have a piece of that in the overarching, what did we call it? Yeah, vulnerable.

Absolutely. We humans are vulnerable to so many different things. I think that’s one of Satan’s tricks is that if he can have us question ourself, have us look at ourself and take who we really are, which is our real self, who is in my belief system, who God made us to be, who we’re supposed to be walking in light of who God made us.

But if Satan can have us look at those things and tweak it. And send it off one or two degrees, and then we are living in this feared, possible version of ourself.

Carrie: Yeah. It’s like you end up doubting your true identity Absolutely. Is what you’re saying. Yeah.

Angela: And then we end up walking in such a different path than what we were meant to be created for.

You might have been supposed to be living in Paris or walking in light of one version of yourself, but then you end up way off course and living in Africa because he likes to take things and just move it off a few degrees, and then it disrupts our course and how we were meant to be living.

Carrie: I think that’s a beautiful thing about OCD treatment is it can lead you back towards a authentic practice of your faith because you’re not living in that state of intense fear anymore.

I was thinking about like there’s no fear in love. So if we have our identity and the love of God that how God sees us, then we’re not gonna be stuck in that place of fear. And I think that’s the goal for Christians who are struggling with OCD. Totally agree. That’s a beautiful way to say that. There’s an opposition to this feared self of who?

That’s the lie You buy the lie that OCD cells of, Hey, if you just do these things, then you’ll be considered a careful person versus a careless person or. You’ll be a devoted follower versus someone who doesn’t really care about their faith, and then you’re engaging in all of these extra maybe religious compulsions, or you’re doing extra checking to not be careless.

Angela: And especially when it comes to scrupulosity. You can look at that and you can say, either I’m at a moral crossroads and I don’t know what I believe anymore. Or it’s OCD because we have this knowing, and I think in ICBT when we’re talking about direct evidence and we’re talking about our internal sense information, our internal desires and intentions.

Yeah, that’s huge. That to me, that’s just one way that God speaks to us. He’s always speaking to us. He’s always giving us information. He gives us information through our five senses. He gives us information through our internal desires and intentions, and again, the real authentic self, who we really are, who he created us to be.

OCD wants to diminish that. It wants to have us not be in line with the things that we know, and then we end up going against the things that we know and how God is speaking to us and we move in a different direction because that feared possible self seems so real and so true. Yeah. And so that can be so scary.

OCD definitely. It’s a doubting disorder. It’s a distrust of self disorder and instead of trusting in who we know we are. Our real authentic self. I think sometimes we outsource. We outsource our trust and we put the trust in compulsions to keep us safe. And it’s really like needing to lasso that trust back and bring it back to ourself where it was really meant to be all along.

’cause God gives that to us. Yeah,

Carrie: it’s like putting your trust in God and what he’s shown you. Like in terms of the sense data and the internal sense data, instead of putting it in, I’m gonna take control. I’m gonna take the reins, I’m gonna fix this and make it so that I don’t ever become that feared self.

I’ve noticed it’s really hard, this concept of perfectionism. I. Within Christianity, there can be this fine line where we’re trying super hard to be someone that we believe God is going to accept, versus the reverse of that is saying, I’m already accepted. I’m already fully loved what Jesus died for me, that has made the difference and now I can live out of that.

It’s a complete transverse of the way a lot of people are looking at things.

Angela: I love that you’re bringing that up, Carrie, because I remember talking about this in consultation with Dr. Artema. It was a case with ringworm, but how people can keep their desire for excellence, to do things excellently, to do things to the best of their ability.

Those are values. Values that God finds pleasing. He wants us to do anything that we do. He wants us to do the best that we can so that it gives him glory. But then OCD takes a hold of that and rearranges it, and it’s off kilter again. It’s changed the degrees, so it was meant to be here, but then it ends up someplace else when OCD kind of taps the shoulder of it.

I remember Dr. Artemis saying, you can keep your values. That’s okay. You can keep your values and you can drop OCD.

Carrie: That’s great. I think that’s really good for a lot of people to hear.

Angela: They’re mutually exclusive, right? Right. They’re not the same. They’re very different. So you can keep your values of wanting to do things with excellence or doing things well and drop the OCD.

That’s really good.

Carrie: At some level, there has to be this acceptance or understanding that we’re not perfect and we’re not going to get it perfectly, and the acceptance that part of that real self as a Christian is a forgiven self and a self that is in process not done yet. And continuing to go and like, I’m gonna mess it up and I’m going to have to ask for forgiveness, and that’s okay.

That’s part of a healthy process. Let’s talk a little bit about like kind of when you’re helping people get in touch with their real self. A lot of times what clients will tell us is, well, but I’m not that way all the time, or I don’t know if I can really identify with what these activities are showing me.

Talk to us a little bit about that. It’s kind of maybe hard for people to accept their real self sometimes.

Angela: When I spoke at, I think it was I-O-C-D-F last year, and Amanda Petrich and I were doing feared self and Real Self, and at that point I was doing the real self portion, and this was a really powerful visual I think for this.

I had sticky notes and I had a handheld mirror that she was holding and I was asking her questions about her real self. I was asking her. Questions like when you cry at a movie, what is the thing that’s making you ugly cry? Because that shows your heart. If you were standing at your funeral and people were standing around, you know, the video that was playing, and they were saying, oh my gosh, Amanda, she was so great, what would you be hearing?

What would they be saying about you? And as she was answering these questions, she was writing them on sticky notes. She was putting them on the mirror that she was holding, and at this point she was actually wrapped in toilet paper to visualize the feared possible self keeping you in bondage because it’s keeping you away from the life that you were supposed to live.

So she’s wrapped in toilet paper and she’s answering these questions and we’re putting it on the mirror and asking her a question. I remember she got tearful. I can’t remember exactly how I said it, but let’s say you’re gone someday and your kids are remembering you, and what kind of values did you instill?

What did you model for them? And she kind of stopped for a second. She’s like, I think I’m gonna cry. And it actually makes me tear up in this moment because I think. There’s capital T. Truth. Yeah. Little T truth is what I consider kind of Satan kind of masquerading is what would be capital T truth, but capital T, truth is wherever it is, right?

Can be on a stage at I-O-C-D-F talking about the real self. She kind of choked up for a second. She said, I think I’m gonna cry. But I think those tears were because she was seeing and experiencing and taking in through God, whispering to her who she really is, her real self. And when we see that it is a beautiful moment, and it could be a reason for tears, right?

Yeah. We put that on her mirror and then we started to take off the toilet paper. We started to take off the bondage of the feared possible self, and what you’re left with when you do that is your real self, your real authentic self. She could see then on the mirror, face to face, it was reflected back at her.

And I said to her, what do you see now when you look in the mirror? And she saw all those truths, all those capital T truths about who she really is looking back at her. That’s awesome. And I see me, and that’s kind of one of those mic drop moments.

Carrie: Yeah, and I just don’t feel like the identity work is something that I’ve seen come out of exposure and response prevention.

And I could be wrong on that and maybe there are other people who would disagree with me or see that, but something that transformative where people are able to walk away and say like, I have a greater sense of who I am, who God has created me to be. I just haven’t seen that happen with another form of therapy for OCD.

Angela: Exposure and response prevention. I think when they’re making new associations between the once feared thing and then they’re no longer held in bondage of that to walk in freedom, I think that’s one way that they can walk in their real self. I just don’t think, and that’s a beautiful thing because then they’re walking in freedom.

Carrie: They’ve moved towards their values because they’re not engaging in the compulsions.

Angela: But I don’t think ERP spells it out like ICBT does. Yeah, self vulnerable, self and authentic self. Mm-hmm. And I think Icbt does an incredibly beautiful job of spelling that out.

Carrie: The reality is you look at people’s lives who are suffering immensely from OCD, maybe they’re ruminating for hours a day, or they’re taking two hours to wash the dishes at night.

They’re getting up at their morning bathroom routine is taking them two to three hours. A lot of times what I will say to them, I might even ask them or explore, if you weren’t spending this much time on this, they’ve been doing it maybe for a long, long time, for years. If you weren’t spending two hours on the dishes, what would it look like for you to get that time back?

What would you do with that time? Because that’s an identity issue. I’d say, well, I’d spend that time with my husband, or I’d spend that time with my kids. Awesome. That’s great. That’s who you really are and where you really want to be. And so it can be hard when you had so much identity surrounding OCD, like, well, this is just who I am and this is what I do.

I have a whole process for. Whenever I have to take out the garbage, for example. I mean, it gets really sucked into people’s identities in all of these tiny little ways in their day-to-day life that when they’re able to break free from that and move towards their values, it’s just amazing to see the transformation process that people have had.

Angela: I know ICBT has a special word for that called the void. That discomfort that we experience when we’re no longer doing the compulsions because we do have so much more time to do the things that are value driven. And I kind of see it as a coming back alive to oneself, kind of like we talked about when we’re outsourcing trust in self to compulsions.

Once brought that back and we might experience a void of all the time that used to be taken by those compulsions and we can come back alive to ourself and do the things that bring us joy.

Carrie: That’s great. And be able to, for people who are dealing with scrupulosity to. Find an authentic connection with God and be able to engage in their spiritual practices in a really healthy way instead of it being compulsive.

Angela: I was actually thinking about that earlier when you were talking about something different, but. I think it’s when we were talking about how you can keep your values, but drop the ooc D let’s say we’re compulsively praying. Yeah. That’s not how we praying. Because you have a desire to, it’s out of fear. So now we’re freed.

To do things in a way that’s pleasing and actually honoring to God instead of compulsory.

Carrie: I’m curious for you, since you have a trauma background, for those listeners that have experienced traumatic events or maybe things in their family that they’ve just had a really hard time recovering from or shaking in their adult life, how do you feel like that fits with what we’re talking about?

Angela: I can say, and we might intersect a little bit of EMDR. Is that okay? Yeah. Uhhuh, yeah, sure. In EMDR, and this might be more like the vulnerable self theme. Mm-hmm. Kind mixing in with EMDR, but when we talk about those traumatic events. I think that those traumatic events can happen. And then I kind of think of that as at some place in your life, there was some fertile soil for seeds to be sown that grew into this negative core belief.

And I would segue that and kind of match that with the vulnerable self theme, not the feared possible self, but the one that everybody has. And at that point, as those seeds were sown through a traumatic event, I visualize that as being kind of like Jack and the beam stock. And that might kind of sound weird, but those seeds are thrown and then the beanstalk starts to grow.

And inside that is that negative core belief that’s starting to grow. That’s the bean stalk. Mm-hmm. That’s the vulnerable self. And as further events happen, it kind of feeds back into this growing beanstalk. It becomes more and more believable, this negative core belief or this vulnerable self theme with EMDR.

We go back into those events and we update the system with what I call capital T truth. And in OCD we’re going into a feared possible self, but we’re updating the system and we’re taking out the feared possible self, and we’re installing, if you will, the positive core belief or who we really are, that real authentic self.

When we do that, we can pull out that beanstalk by its root and do away with it. What was a little T truth masquerading around as Capital T Truth. Keeping us in bondage away from who we really are and how we were really meant to live.

Carrie: I think that those therapies in my practice integrate really well together for people that definitely have some significant trauma that they feel like has contributed to the OCD.

Not necessarily, I’m not saying cause, but through gasoline on the fire of the OCD. Absolutely. It really has been helpful and beneficial. Thanks for sharing all of this. It’s been a joy to meet you and get to hang out with some of the ICBT people and learn from the just very generously giving and community.

That’s a wealth of information.

Angela: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate being here and talking to things and sharing.