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Four Steps to Healing from Spiritual Abuse with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

129. Four Steps to Healing from Spiritual Abuse with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie explores the profound impact of spiritual abuse on mental and emotional health, outlining red flags and steps to healing.

Episode Highlights:

  • What spiritual abuse is and how to recognize it.
  • Common red flags of spiritual abuse in religious settings.
  • The importance of identifying and addressing abusive elements.
  • The value of surrounding yourself with solid biblical teaching.
  • Strategies for re-engaging with a supportive Christian community.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I discuss a four-step process to heal from spiritual abuse. I first explain what spiritual abuse is and the red flags to watch for, such as the misuse of scripture or church authority for control, promotion of non-biblical theology, or using a position of power for personal gain. Healing from spiritual abuse takes time, especially if the abuse was prolonged or part of a rigid religious system.

The four steps to healing include:

  1. Identify Abusive Elements and Seek Trauma Therapy: Recognize the parts of your experience that were abusive and seek professional help if you’re struggling to move past them.
  2. Commit to Solo Time with God: Spend time with God to understand His true character, separate from the distorted teachings you may have encountered.
  3. Surround Yourself with Sound Biblical Teaching: Ensure the teaching you receive aligns with scripture and helps you build a healthy spiritual foundation.
  4. Re-engage with Christian Community: Once you feel ready, reconnect with a Christian community that embodies Christ’s love and provides healthy relationships.

Healing from spiritual abuse is a journey that requires time, reflection, and the support of both God and a loving community. If you’re dealing with the effects of spiritual abuse, remember that God’s love for you is unwavering, and it’s possible to find hope and healing.

If this episode resonates with you, I encourage you to reach out and explore intensive therapy options. For more information, visit my counseling website at bythewellcounseling.com or learn more about the podcast at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

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

Explore related episode:

92. When Ministry Becomes Toxic with Steve and Carrie Bock

Transcript:

Hi, welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 129. I’m your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. I wanted to share with you today a four-step process that I came up with on recovering from spiritual abuse. Before we get into that, I’m going to walk you through what is spiritual abuse. What does that mean? What are some red flags? If you think you might have experienced spiritual abuse, then we’ll go through the four-step process. My husband and I also did an episode called When Ministry Becomes Toxic in episode 92. If you want to go back and listen to that one as well, it may be relevant to you.

I want you to know that I am excited and looking ahead to the fall to get some ICBT groups together. This is inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy. You have an impact on what these groups will look like, whether you are wanting more interaction among each other in practicing the skills or whether or not you want to come learn about it and then have a self-help application to your life. Please take our very short survey on ICBT. If you’re an insider on our email list, you have already received the survey. Please go in and take it. If for some reason you’re not on our email list and haven’t received the survey, you can definitely reach out to us through the website at hopeforanxietyandocd.com

Let’s talk about what is spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse is when someone uses the Bible or non biblical theology or their position in the church as a pastor, mentor, leader to control you in some way. Some red flags would be they’re promoting non-biblical theology. For example, “God heals everyone who comes to Him for healing. If you’re not healed, it’s due to a lack of faith.”

If you look in the beginning of Luke, Jesus actually walked away from people that were coming to the house for healing because he went away to spend time with the Lord. That may be the beginning of Mark. Jesus was in a house and he had slipped away. People were looking for him. Even when Jesus was on the earth, that was healing was not his number one ministry. He was leading people to the Father. That was his main point of view, but there are some teachers out there that say, “God heals everyone and if you’re not healed, therefore it must be a lack of faith.” That’s not what we see in the Bible. We also see that Paul had a thorn in the flesh. He was an incredible man of God and God did not fully heal him. God told him, my grace is sufficient for you. That would be one example.

Another example that we see a lot of times in church is “God wants to bless you. That blessings means God wants to give you financial wealth and make you a great person. If you have faith or if you give to this ministry.” A lot of times that’s not what it is. Unfortunately, people looking for money, If you give to this ministry, then God is going to just bless you and make you super wealthy. That is not what we see in scripture. Once again, going back to Paul, Paul was preaching the gospel and there were churches that donated to him, but he also made tents for a living. I don’t know if you knew that. That is in scripture as well. Jesus said, I don’t even have a house to lay my head. There were some wealthy people in the Bible. Don’t get me wrong. You look at Abraham, had quite a bit of wealth, which back then was in terms of flocks. Solomon had a lot of wealth. So there were wealthy people in the Bible, but there were also some people that weren’t wealthy and they were just had given up a lot in the service and ministry of the gospel.

Just because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean that God is going to bless you financially. I do believe that if you’re following God, God will bless you, but that’s not always in dollars and cents. Sometimes that’s a relationship blessing. Sometimes that’s a joy that you’ve received from the Lord. I believe, that God does bless his children, just like we want to bless our children as earthly parents. That’s not always a financial or a material blessing, and that should not be our main focus of what we’re trying to receive from God.

Another red flag would be using a position of power or influence to gratify their own sexual needs. Sexual abuse does exist in the church. Let’s not try to pretend like it doesn’t. I wish that it didn’t. Not all abuse involves touching. Maybe inappropriate comments that are sexual or flirtatious comments that shouldn’t be going on with between two people who are married, or it may be inappropriate flirtatious comments going on when you know clearly that other person is married or they clearly know that you’re married. It may be like exposing themselves in some sort of way or exposing you to sexual material or pictures. Know that not all sexual abuse. involves actual physical contact.

I think this next red flag kind of goes along with that one. Someone may lead you to do something that you know in your spirit or you know based on scripture is wrong, but they may use some type of spiritual justification for it, saying God wants us to be together. This is God’s will for your life, that you do this, and you know in your spirit they’re asking you to do something wrong, like have an affair or have an inappropriate relationship with them.

Another red flag, they’re the only ones that you can get spiritual answers from. No, I know that in the early church, there was a church who would listen to what the disciples were saying, and then they would go back and they would search the scriptures for themselves. That’s something that we all should be doing, even if your pastor is using scripture. Examine it for yourselves. The Holy Spirit interprets the Word of God. Some of you may say, “Well, I read the Bible, but I don’t fully understand everything that it says.” Okay. Welcome to the club. I think it’s a difficult book for a reason. God wants us to wrestle with it, not to be completely mysterious, but that we have to seek him in that process of reading the Bible and receiving that interpretation of the word by the Holy Spirit. You don’t need a pastor to tell you exactly what it says. Some things in scripture are just very clear and very black and white.

Some things are a little bit more gray where we have to wrestle with it a little more and people may come to different theological conclusions. But some things are very, very clear. If someone is telling you, “Well, you need to run that decision by me,” and you’re kind of like, “Why would I need to do that?” That’s creating an unhealthy level of dependence on for you to, they’re wanting you to depend on them or feel like, You can’t think or make decisions for yourself. That’s not a position that you want to be in.

Last red flag that I came up with is an important one. It happens, unfortunately, a lot in families where people withdraw love if you do something that they don’t agree with. I’m not talking about something that’s morally wrong, but you make a decision. Or set a boundary in such a way where they’re not in agreement with what you’re doing. It could be something completely that you feel like God has called you to do or wants you to do and your family is kind of giving you the cold shoulder.

You’re the one that’s not invited to the family dinner and there’s a sense of withdrawing love. It’s kind of like Well, we really don’t approve of you, and so therefore we can’t love you. Those things are not mutually exclusive, right? Because as Christians, we should be loving people that we don’t agree with.

Newsflash, hold the phone if you haven’t heard that before. We are supposed to love our enemies. We can love people that we disagree with, or that are doing things that we know are blatantly wrong. We can still love that person and say, Hey, I love you, but your behavior is really off course right now, or I love you, but I’m really concerned about you.

You’re headed down a dead-end street here, and if you don’t turn around, then I’m afraid for your safety or your health. Those are healthy conversations, not withdrawing love because someone is doing something that we don’t approve of.

Let’s get into the process of healing. Yeah. Now, healing takes time, especially if the spiritual abuse was ongoing. Maybe you were a part of a cult or very rigid religious system. Maybe you were a part of that for a long time, like years. It’s going to take you time to heal from that. That’s just makes sense, right? You’re not going to be able to unravel all of that overnight. Give yourself the time and space that you need to heal.

I think the number one step that I put down was identify the pieces that were abusive and seek trauma therapy if needed. What I’ve seen with my clients is that so many people are suffering in this world. From bad theology. Yes, I’m going to use the word bad because it’s not biblical believing that we have to be perfect in order for God to love us. That’s completely antithesis to the gospel, but that’s how some treat other people, believing that God is angry with you. If you have one sin or one small mistake, you are God’s child. That’s something that is important to keep in mind. There’s always this balance that we have, obviously, between sin and grace. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about situations that are extreme. Identifying the pieces that were abusive in that maybe church context or in that relationship context and seeking professional help if you keep running against a wall or you feel like you’re not able to get to a healthy spiritual place that you want to be or you’re not able to get to a healthy relationship place with others.

You don’t feel like you can be vulnerable in your relationships. You don’t feel like you can be safe to be vulnerable with God. Maybe you’re having a lot of flashbacks back to that time or intrusive memories where you feel like you’re just constantly ruminating or thinking about various things that have happened to you.

Those are all flags that you need to get a professional to help walk you through that journey. If you are seeking to like to rebuild and re-engage with a healthy faith situation and relationship with God, it just makes sense to have a balanced, healthy Christian therapist who can walk you through that.

Even though that may be challenging if you feel like you were hurt or abused by the church, what is it going to look like? Or what is this therapist going to be like with me? I will say that I’ve seen people do incredible trauma work surrounding hurts that they experienced in the church so I know that people can heal from that.

I know that EMDR has been an amazing tool for some of those individuals to allow their nervous system to clear that out. So that something goes from, hey, it’s in the short-term memory and feels like it’s happening right now to it’s in long term storage. I don’t have to worry about that right now.

The other thing I put on here is to commit time. Step two, commit solo time with God to get to know Him personally. In the Bible, it talks with us about seek the Lord and that if you seek the Lord with all your heart, you’re going to find him. God is not going to just remain mysterious and hidden from you. If you are openly saying, “Okay, God, I want to know your true character. Maybe these are things that I’ve been taught in a very unhealthy situation. Maybe scriptures were twisted. It was kind of use the scripture, but they also There was some truth and there was some not truth mixed in there. Getting to know God on a personal level. “Who are you really?” This is so important. This should be a question we’re all asking in a lifetime process. Who are you, God? I want to know you more today than I did before.

As you really seek the Lord, soaking in the scriptures, literally reading the Psalms, seeing the depth of the emotion that people experienced with God, and knowing that that’s a welcome and safe place, God Is a safe being to connect with, because even though he is incredibly holy and incredibly above us and distant, there is also a scripture that tells us that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us to have a closeness to have a friendship with us.

That’s all because of Jesus, not because of anything we’ve done. I don’t deserve that at all. You don’t deserve that. God allows us to have that opportunity to seek Him, to know Him in a personal, intimate way.

Third step, surround yourself with solid biblical teaching, really examining, and for all of these, you have to be in the Word.

You’re not going to know God if you’re not reading the Word. You’re not going to be able to be surrounded and know that you’re surrounded by sound biblical teaching if you’re not comparing it with what God’s Word is saying to you. I think it’s an important reparative experience for you to Have a positive experience with the church.

I know a lot of people have given up on church. They’ve walked away. They’re like, “I’m not doing that anymore,” but I’ve also met some other people who have said, “I’ve had some really painful church experiences, but I’ve gone somewhere else now and God has restored my belief in the church and the importance of that.”

There’s a verse that God, like, is bringing to mind where it talks about, I will restore the years that locusts have eaten. There was this locust plague, basically, and that was God’s promise. “I’m going to restore that.” Even though it takes time for things to grow back, it takes time for fields to recover. God promises us restoration and redemption if we’re seeking him.

As you’re surrounding yourself with sound biblical teaching, when you feel ready, step four is re engaging with the Christian community. I believe that the love of Christ is so powerful, and one of the amazing gifts is that we get to receive that love from other believers and other Christians, it’s just a small picture, a small portrait of how much God incredibly loves us.

It says that we will be known, Christians will be known by our love for other people. Unfortunately, a lot of times that’s not what we’re known for in today’s world, but that is what the scripture tells us, that people will know us by our love for One another. When they see you reaching out to someone who you know is having a hard time or bringing them a meal when they’ve had a child or bringing them a meal and leaving it on the doorstep when someone’s sick, that is a powerful witness and testimony.

We like to believe that we can all survive on our own. We’ll be fine. Everything’s good over here. The reality is, is that we need each other. We need relationships. We need people who can tell us, “Hey, you’re walking sideways there.” We need people to encourage us. We need people to speak truth into our lives. We need people to just have a taco with every once in a while. You know what I mean? Or have a slice of pizza or go out and eat a plate of vegetables, if you’re a vegetarian, whatever is your flavor.

We need people in our lives. God has wired us that way. He didn’t wire us to just be in relationship with Him. He wired us to be in relationship with each other and within community and so many people are missing out on that, and that’s such a hard piece. I know sometimes people feel like, “I’m too busy for that, or I have too much going on, or I’m working too many hours.” You will feel that void, you will feel that sense of loneliness and loss when you’re not connected in the community.

We saw this huge with COVID-19. There have been studies, Cigna did a major study on loneliness. found out it was a major killer of people worse than heart, heart issues and chronic conditions were people that just didn’t have a lot of interactions with others. They tended to die earlier. Amazing, absolutely kind of mind-blowing when you think about how much the interaction between our physical health and our mental health is and that sense of interconnectedness within community.

If you’ve been through spiritual abuse, I want you to know that God loves you. That if you’ve had a bad experience with the church, that those were people who were sinning, don’t put your view of God onto those people, because God is not other people. That is something that you have to remind yourself, or as you’re re-engaging with other Christians, “Okay, these are not the people that hurt me. I’ve been hurt by other people.” That is where I need to allow that to lie and taking the time to heal from the wounds, it allows you to experience forgiveness. I think that’s something that I didn’t list on here, but forgiveness is an important part of the healing process and allows us to be able to open up to other healthy people. to be able to receive love and to give love in the future.

If we remain angry, bitter and remain in unforgiveness, then we won’t be able to move forward and experience health for everyone out there, know that you are very much loved and cared about if you’re interested and you had one of these experiences and you say hey, I want to take some time aside to heal from that.

I do intensive therapies on Fridays in my practice. You can always check that out at bythewellcounseling. com. You can check out more on the podcast at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

94. Podcast Updates and a Mom’s View on God

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

In today’s episode, Carrie shares some of the lessons she has learned about God from being a mother and some important podcast updates.

Episode Highlights:

  • The recent loss of both of Carrie’s parents and the impact it has had on her life and the podcast.
  • How being a mother has helped her to understand God’s love and care for his children.
  • The joys and challenges of motherhood, and how it reflects God’s love for us.
  • Personal motherhood stories of Carrie’s best friends, Christen and Michelle.  (excerpts from Sending Hope and Love to the Not Yet Mothers) 

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I want to share something deeply personal. Over the past year, I’ve faced significant losses, including the passing of both my parents. I had intended to talk about these events sooner, but the weight of my grief has made it challenging to find the right moment. I’m still navigating these emotions, and I’m not yet ready to fully unpack everything.

I’ve been reflecting on how grief impacts our mental health, especially when dealing with OCD. It’s a journey of trying to find balance between acknowledging our pain and continuing with our healing process. ss.

In this episode, I’ll also discuss how faith has been a crucial anchor for me during this period. Leaning into my spiritual beliefs has provided comfort and strength, helping me cope with the intense feelings of loss. I hope that by sharing my journey, I can offer support to others who may be going through similar struggles.

I appreciate your patience and understanding as I continue to work through these personal challenges. Your support means a lot to me, and I look forward to bringing more insights on integrating faith and mental health in upcoming episodes.

Explore Related Episode:

99. My Grief and Loss Journey

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 94. I am your host, Carrie Bock and we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others.

I titled this podcast episode, Podcast Updates and a Mom’s View on God. I really strive to be transparent on this podcast and, and sometimes there’s things that I’m just not ready to talk about yet, and one of those things has been my mother’s death.

It hit me really hard. My mom died in September of pancreatic cancer, and it was a short time between her diagnosis and her death. Before the cancer, she’d always taken good care of herself, had no ongoing health conditions, so it was pretty shocking to lose her and what felt like so young. I had planned for this episode since it was gonna come out on Mother’s Day, to talk about my mother’s death.

I felt like I was going through the grieving process and ready to talk about what I experienced and learned through the process. Then in March my father died suddenly of a heart attack, and this set my grief process way back to square one. So I’m not ready to talk about my parents’ death yet because it’s something that I’m still working on processing myself.

The main reason that I’m sharing this with you now is because of how it will impact the podcast. If you’ve been listening for a while, I hope you know how much I’ve really enjoyed this work over the past two and a half years, and it has been work. None of it came overnight or was easy. There have been late nights, early mornings, lots of writing, editors I had to fire and assistant I had to hire. It’s been far from a cakewalk, yet. through all of that, I’ve been able to put out episodes consistently, and I’m very proud of that. I’m definitely in a different season right now and God is telling me to slow down, not stop, but slow down. If you’ve been through a major loss in your life, you know how exhausting it is and how much energy it takes just to get through everyday tasks.

My mind is foggy. My motivation is down. I am pretty weary from losing both parents in a six-month time span. And in this season of slow down, I stopped taking new clients for a bit and I’m now being selective about who I take on limited my schedule to be with my family more. I’ve also put a hold on the course I’ve been creating for Christians with OCD.

It’s painful for me to admit that because this is something I hoped would be out into the world already and available for people. I know that in the right time, the course will be out there and available for people when I’m able to finish it, and I look forward to telling you about that someday. I have been providing some one-time consultation sessions, for listeners that are outta state to help them either find a therapist in their area, guide them in their next steps, and I’ve been really enjoying that.

You’re welcome to contact me if that’s something that might interest you. I’ve also been enjoying the intensive work that I’m doing on Fridays with clients and absolutely want to do more of that. So if you have a desire to travel or aren’t too far away from me, from Middle Tennessee, I’d love to talk with you more about that opportunity if you think it might be right for you.

We have a prior episode on that, a bonus episode that you can listen to. In the spirit of taking care of myself, I need to stop recording podcast episodes for a bit until I have the mental and emotional bandwidth to do so. The next couple episodes, they are already recorded. Let me tell you. They are so good.

I’m super excited to share them with you. They are on developing a healthy theology around healing and suffering. My guests took on some tough questions and were vulnerable enough to share their own struggles. I really enjoyed interviewing them. After those episodes come out, I’m not sure. I may have my assistant compile some of the stories of hope into episodes.

I think those would be fantastic and encouraging for all of us, myself included. We may replay some of our more popular episodes and I can give you some of my own commentary on them as I listen to them later. It’s my desire to give you 100 tips for reducing anxiety on our 100th episode, which is coming up not too far away.

I think it’ll be a good review of some of the things we’ve already learned on the show. We will continue putting out episodes. It may be a little recycled at times, and for our friends who listen to the show on a regular basis, I felt it was important to let you know why. It’s not Carrie slacking off.

It’s Carrie practicing what she preaches, taking care of her body, mind and spirit. Going to bed on time, trying to eat well, getting movement, going to therapy, journaling. More than being tired. I feel weary and I need God to restore me. I’m going through the Psalms right now and doing my best to connect with God.

I will say that he doesn’t feel close right now, but in faith, I believe that he is. And the Bible tells us that God is near to the brokenhearted. On a much happier note. One thing I’m really excited about is that for the first time ever, Hope for Anxiety and OCD will have a booth at the American Association of Christian Counselors Conference or AACC in mid-September.

If you don’t know, the AACC conference is a really big deal. It’s attended not just by professional counselors, but also lay counselors and others in ministry. When I first saw the conference was going to be in Nashville this year, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get the podcast out in front of an audience who can share it with others who need support and encouragement.

If you happen to be a counselor listening to the podcast, who will be at the conference, please stop by our booth and say hello. I’ll be working on getting some pins made as well as more podcast promotional materials. I’m very excited to get the podcast in front of so many people in basically a short timeframe.

This is one of a few things that I am pretty energized about right now in honor of Mother’s Day. I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve learned about God from being a mother the last 14 months. My daughter knows that I love her, even though she doesn’t understand everything right now. Why won’t mom let me touch the outlet?

She doesn’t understand how serious some of these things could hurt her, and sometimes I have to get stern in my tone with her about not messing with certain things. God does the same thing with us in scripture about sin. He knows how destructive we can be when we’re just out here left to our own devices.

I have my daughter’s best intention at heart, even when she doesn’t realize it. Scripture says that God knows what we need before we even ask. Most of the time my daughter hates taking naps, but they are good for her. Sometimes she doesn’t wanna have her diaper changed, but I love her enough not to let her stay that way.

We’re all a work in progress and I wanna give my daughter everything she wants, but it wouldn’t be wise or good for her character development. I had some friends who adopted two little boys from foster care, and they had a lot of issues with their teeth because their biological mother never said no to candy or sweets..

She wanted to give her kids everything they wanted, and the result was cavities. Unfortunately, I have to realize that when God doesn’t give me what I want at this moment, it’s for my ultimate good. Perhaps it’s so I won’t develop the cavity of pride or greed or something else that sneaks up on you slowly, like a cavity, but can be a whole lot more destructive.

It’s pretty amazing that my daughter loves me, even though I’m not perfect. I don’t always know what she needs. I don’t always respond with patience and kindness. She’s still there with hugs and still learning how to give kisses. She’s a picture of God’s grace in my life for sure, and I’m so happy to have her here during this time in my life.

It doesn’t help me to ask God why he didn’t allow me to have more time with my parents, but I do trust that he still loves me and he has my best interest at heart. Some of you’re wondering why God hasn’t answered a prayer or healed you. I wanna encourage you that God’s always at work. Even if we don’t see it or can’t feel it right now, to all the mothers out there, you mean so much to your kids, even more than you probably know.

If you’ve lost your mother, I feel you. I miss mine daily, but I know that she would be proud of me and what I’m doing. I know if she was here and physically able, she’d be the first person to hop on a plane and help me with the AACC booth.

The first Mother’s Day episode for the show was Sending Hope to the Not Yet Mothers when I wasn’t a mother. It was two years ago before I had my daughter Faith, and I told you all how much my mom meant to me. I also told you about how much of a promoter of this show she was. She was passing out podcast promo cards, everybody at her church, on planes. And once I do some more grief work, I will tell you more about my mom.

Until then, check out these stories of Hope from our first Mother’s Day episode on how two of my friends became mothers after waiting a long time. All good things are worth the wait.

Christin’s Motherhood Journey

How did I become a mother? That’s a loaded question. Hi, my name is Christen Jasmine Wilson, and this is my story to motherhood.

I am 39 years old, and this is important because. Maybe like some of you, I wasn’t sure I would ever become a mother. I can remember from the earliest time, always loving being around kids, around babies. I grew up babysitting, starting at a very young age. Probably too young if you ask me, but I started babysitting as early as 11 for my next-door neighbor.

She had two beautiful kids that I used to watch on occasion, and I can even remember Connie and my mother into serving with me at the nursery during the second service at church just because I loved kids that much. You can say that this might be a God-given desire. I would say that had this idea in my mind that I would always be a mom, but in my mind, by age 25, I met the love of my life in college, fell madly, deeply in love, became a psychologist.

I even found a letter that I wrote to myself in high school. I wanted to become a psychologist and have three kids of my own. By 2011 or something crazy like that. However, sometimes life just takes you on a journey and that’s not necessarily how things go. For me, I went to high school and had two boyfriends maybe, all of which lasted two weeks, and my singleness was a really, really, hard thing.

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

I know I’m a rare breed, but loved the naivety and the gullibility and just the welcoming nature of that age in working in the middle school ministry though. Remember college, I always thought I would meet the love of my life in college. I never did. In fact, after college, I started working for a ministry and for a non-profit that really just worked with middle school kids. All the while knowing that I wanted kids of my own, all the while really wanting to be married and not ever wanting to have. Kids without a partner in life.

I know I have had a lot of friends that have adopted or wanted to foster and have done that single-handedly and by themselves and my hat goes off to them. However, I knew for me this was not a journey. I wanted to enter a loan, just knowing my own personality. I knew I would need a partner and a friend, and so I prayed to God many nights that he would bring me not only a man of God, but somebody who I could have children with, and that we could raise children together.

I will say that, but it came not without tears, and not without many, many years of doubting God, of asking hard questions, of crying out to the Lord, of yet one more guy who I was attracted to and had feelings for, not return those feelings, not return that love. I can remember during college and a little after I spent some years during those college times in West Palm Beach in one of my places, I would really have heart-to-heart conversations with Jesus. I was on the beach and I can remember there was this one guy and I really just had fallen head over heels in love with him and he had no clue. I was good friends with his sister and I knew her, she could tell, but I just remember like really asking the Lord, “Why, just, why, why? I just remember asking, am I oblivious to guys?”

What is it that allowed me to not be seen by guys? Really, I look back now and I see that had those guys looked at me and seen me, I would’ve fallen head over heels with the wrong guy and really my heart is so honestly flippant and I fall in love with the drop of a hat. So it’s only the Lord’s grace and mercy that has allowed me in this. That really kept me for my husband of today. Again, college thought I would be married by 25. That was my cutoff date in my head. That did not happen. In fact, I remember I. At 25, I actually freaked out and was like, oh my gosh. I remember my mom had me at 25 and I’m really like far behind the timeline here cuz I wanted to have kids.

I thought by that time I would have them. However, that was not what was in the carts for me, and in fact it took me. A long time to even work through what it looked like to actually be in a relationship and what it looked like to actually start to date, which then led to motherhood. All the while working with kids, all the while though, taking care of other people’s kids. All the while knowing that I wanted to be a mother. I remember turning 30 and still being single, and I remember actually 29 going, I’m almost 30 the whole year, and grieving that. Of being single and turning 30, and I almost wish that whole year of 30 away. I think it was 32 or 33. When I was 32 or 33. I finally was like, if I ever want to have kids, then I need to actually seriously start dating some guys on through a few apps.

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

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

Fast forward to 2016, I was talking to a guy who happened to live in California and actually had a daughter. I knew that was going to be a little tricky, but I had been laid off. The organization I was working for had closed down and I didn’t have anything keeping me at my current location. So I decided to move to California and see if things would work out.

I honestly remember sacrificing a lot of my ethics and a lot of my morals for something that was only temporary something that wasn’t real and something, and for somebody that wasn’t authentic. I think in some of those, in that particular instance, I had really become so sick of being single and was trying to do things my own way and in my own timing, honestly, at 35, I was feeling like I was the only 35-year-old woman who had never been married. I was feeling I was the only 35-year-old woman who didn’t have kids by this time. I had high school friends that had babies. I’ve had college friends, got married and have babies. I had friends adopting babies, and I just for a long time felt like my life was on this pause track where I just had no control. So many people kept saying, well, why aren’t you married or, You’re a catch. Why are you still single? When are you going to start having babies of your own? I really hated those questions because I felt like it was my own fault that it was unable to be a mother at that time. So at 35, I got into this relationship and I just decided to try to make things happen of my own accord and was completely devastated.

When this guy only wanted to use me for certain things and then bit me back out. So with that, I packed up my bags and I moved back to my home in Chicago and warded off dating for a while actually. It was like, I’m done. This guy is stupid and really, my heart was broken into million pieces and it was partially my own fault for giving it to him without putting up boundaries to safeguard my own heart. Of course, during that time, My relationship with the Lord was nonexistent because at that point, I felt like I didn’t trust him and I was angry. I didn’t want anything to do with a God that didn’t love me enough to give me a husband and children by the time I was 35, knowing that most women go through menopause and are unable to bear children in their forties, so yeah, that was hard.

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

In the end, I got this and ultimately that didn’t work. For a small little time, I said, I’m not dating anyone else. At the time, I did have a dating coach, um, just because I was like, if I’m gonna be dating and dating on an app, I’m going to need some extra advice. I was actually visiting her at the time and staying with her that weekend, and this guy popped up on my app and I was weary. I was not even sure I wanted to talk to him. She encouraged me. I showed her our conversation, and she encouraged me to start a conversation and so we did. And he was actually from Chicago. I was already planning to move back there after having my heart broken, wasn’t about to stay in California.

From there, I fell in love and met my husband, my current husband. We dated. That was in 2017. We dated for a couple of years, and got engaged on February 22nd, 2019. We were married on June 22nd, 2019, and I have also had a lot of friends that have gotten married later on in life as well. So I’ve had a lot of friends, but like some of the ones that had gotten married like late in their late thirties, they struggled with infertility and struggled with having babies.

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

I remember laying in bed after finding out and after like looking at the pregnancy test and really coming to terms with it and, just hearing the song in Christ Alone play through my head. As like my song of coming really back to Christ and back to to relationship with Jesus. Like that was what had sealed and kind of redeemed and you know, kind of brought me back and brought forgiveness to who God was.

I think I was slowly coming back there with just the introduction of meeting my husband and there’s a lot of emotions, and hurt that had happened because of my own. Decisions in my own choices, but I think with my becoming pregnant, was my aha moment. It’s been a journey too. I’ll tell you that becoming a mom, especially at this S age, was not easy.

At 38 when I got pregnant with him, it was probably a lot harder than most people. I don’t know. I can’t say I was never married at 25, but did have a cousin who got pregnant around the same time and she was in her twenties. There’s a drastic dis difference of energy between a 20-year-old mom, a soon-to-be mom, and an almost 40-year-old, soon-to-be mom.

The gratefulness and the humility that I feel like the Lord offered and allowed us to name our son Ellis Jason, which means the kindness of God. Ellis means kindness, and I just really felt it was the Lord was kind in allowing me after all these years of struggling and wanting to become a mom and to have his kindness.

God giving us a son is truly a gift. If you were like me, maybe you have dreams of becoming a mom and having children. I would say it’s not too late. The Lord is good. He is kind. He gives life and brings us through things that only teach us lessons to then share and bring hope to others that might be in those same situations.

We are not without hope. We are not without life. It was really sweet to have Kristen share because I’ve seen her through this whole journey and this spiritual growth process that she’s been on. I know her story is gonna be encouraging for those of you maybe who are still single or have been through a long period of singleness.

Michelle’s Motherhood Journey

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

Hi guys. My name is Michelle. I’m here with you today to share my testimony as well as my infertility, foster care and adoption journey. I was married and divorced at a young age to my first husband. We did not have children together, and that was not something we had really tried to do, but when I met what would eventually be my second husband, I knew that I did want to have children. We were a little bit older when. We got married. My second husband and I, I was 35, and so immediately after we got married, we started trying to have our own child. Unfortunately, that was not happening for us, so we went to a fertility doctor and over the course of, I’d say about a three-year span, we had. Approximately nine procedures were done and close to $12,000 was spent, but that did not bear any fruit. At the end of those three years, I think we were both emotionally, I was physically spent and somewhat spiritually spent as well.

We both prayed and prayed over this journey and desperately wanted to have our child, and at that time we could not understand why the Lord was not providing that for us. The way I was looking at it is some so many people have children that don’t even want them, but God, why are you not providing us with a baby of our own? It made me feel unworthy of having a child the way I was looking at it. God, if you could let this person who is abusive to their child or neglectful or abandons their child, if you can let them have one, what does that say about me?

What does that say about the parenting you think that I would do? God and I went into a deep, dark depression. At the end of those three years, I began to resent my husband because I felt that I was the only one going through the emotional struggle, especially the physical struggle because all these procedures were happening to me and some of ’em were very painful.

I felt like he was doing a small fraction. Of the work and over time through scripture and prayer, I did grow to see that. That was very unfair of me to think that way, but human and I felt that I was, had been abandoned by the Lord during that period of time. I was also very resentful of other women who.

During this phase, we’re discovering they were pregnant and having healthy pregnancies and having these beautiful children. What makes it probably even worse is my career was in early childhood education, so my career was children and especially. Babies and toddlers and those early stages of life. That was my career.

Day in and day out, I was seeing and working with these babies and it really brought me to a low place. So my husband and I eventually decided that we would go through the foster care program through the PATH classes, but I told him that he would have to do all the legwork of getting us set up for the classes.

Basically, he would just tell me the time and place and I would show up. And so that’s what he did. We went through the path classes and through those classes I met other women who were in a very similar situation, who felt almost identical to how I felt. They felt worthless and useless. And the way I felt during that dark period was that I basically had one job to do.

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

I began seeing how, even though those were the things that I wanted to have my own child, my own biological child, I wanted to know the joys of being able to tell family and friends that we were expecting a child to feel a life growing inside of me and seeing this beautiful baby when it was first born and caressing them against my chest having all those moments.

Through time and through prayer, God very gently showed me that he had a different plan for me, even though I kept questioning, God, what is this? What plan is this? Do you have one for me? I don’t understand. I don’t see it yet. God. He was just really patient with me and just showed me that I need to stay the course.

We finished the path classes. We sold our small house and bought a bigger house so that we could accommodate children, and we knew we probably wanted to have multiple.In 2015 we got our first sibling set. It was a brother and a sister, and we actually got them on my daughter, what is now my daughter’s sixth birthday.

My son Larry, was seven, about to turn eight. We went from zero to 60 in 2.8 seconds. We had no kids and then we had two kids and it was the youngest child’s sixth birthday. Throw together a little party, and our lives changed from that day. Like we could have never imagined. We have been blessed beyond measure. Even in the rough times. We have been blessed because the Lord has stretched us. He has grown us. My husband and I have grown closer together. Uh, we have grown closer to the Lord. And God revealed to me pretty quickly into the foster care process that his plan for us was to adopt children who needed a family.

It took us three and a half years to be able to legally adopt our children. Then finally on January 30th, 2019, we were able to legally adopt Kimberly and Larry. Our journey has not always been an easy one. There have been days where I have. I wanted to pull my hair out and say, “God, what have I done?” and then immediately I was filled with all the love and joy that the Lord had put into our hearts when he brought us these kids. They are amazing. We knew pretty instantly that we were meant to be their parents, uh, that these kids were gonna be with us forever. And it has been such a journey and such a blessing. My husband and I both feel. That the, we just stayed the course with the Lord. He’s always sovereign. He’s always faithful to us.

He never leaves us. He never abandons us. He shows us what we need eventually in his time and not our own. So I just hope this fills you with some peace and some hope, and knowing you are not alone. If you’ve been in a similar situation and that God does have a plan for you, you may not see it at this moment, but, he will reveal it to you.

Just be faithful. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful day, and I just push blessings upon you. God bless you all. I really appreciated the vulnerability and the spiritual wrestling that Michelle shared in her story because I believe that someone who’s listening is really going to be able to relate to those thoughts and questionings that she had and wrestled with God.

That’s all for today. Thank you for giving me the grace in this season to slow down. I love you all and I will be back with some interviews before you know it.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a Licensed. Professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

85. Anxiety FAQ with Carrie and Tiffany

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 85. Anxiety FAQ with Carrie and Tiffany

In today’s episode, returning guest, Tiffany Ciccone, an author and English teacher joins Carrie in a Q&A about anxiety. 

Here are some of Tiffany’s questions answered by Carrie.

  • What is anxiety?
  • How do you respond to someone when they say that anxiety and depression are just spiritual warfare and lack of faith?
  • Everyone says to try deep breathing when you’re anxious. It doesn’t work for me. Why?
  • Should I take medication for my anxiety?
  • I pray but why I’m still anxious?
  • How do I know if I need help for my anxiety?

Tiffany Ciccone

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and ocd, episode 85. Happy New Year everyone. Happy 2023. It’s hard to believe that I started this podcast towards the end of 2020, so we’ve been going strong for a little over two years now. If you are new to our show, we’re all about reducing shame, increasing hope in developing healthier connections with God and others.

Today on the show, we actually have a returning guest from episode 41, Tiffany Cicconi. I’m very excited that you are here today, Tiffany, thank you. Very excited to be here. I brought you back because I thought beginning of the year, let’s break down and do just some very, like get back to basics. Just do some question and answer about anxiety. And I thought it would be kind of fun to have you read the questions. So that’s where we’re going today if everyone’s wondering.

However, before we get into that, I wanted to ask you to give us a little update since we missed you being a part of episode 80 on updating previous guests about what you’re doing now.

So you were writing a book about anxiety when we interviewed before.

Tiffany: How is it coming along? It’s coming along really well. A book is called Anxious with Jesus, and I have a little subtitle for it now. A memoir from the Messy Intersection of Faith and Mental Health or Mental Illness. I forget God, basically provided me with some time to just hunker down and work on it.

So I would say that my manuscript is basically finished and I’m in the process of submitting proposals to a couple publishers, and if they don’t bite, then I’m going to self-publish it. I don’t have a date yet, but it’s kind of new, exciting, unexplored territory for me. That’s where I’m at. Hey, when it comes out, we’re blasting it all over Instagram and get shared on the podcast.

Carrie: I’m very excited about it.

Tiffany: Oh. Thank you.

Carrie: If you need someone to read it and write you an Amazon review, you know where to find me.

Tiffany: Definitely will be doing that.

Carrie: I think it’s so relatable to people who deal with anxiety, because sometimes in their lives they feel like people around me just don’t get it. Even unfortunately, it happens a lot of times in the Christian community. Where if they read a story or hear a story about someone else who’s also struggled, it’s just that relatability is so helpful to be like, “Oh, okay. They’re a Christian. They’re trying to follow the Lord, and they’re also struggling too. And I don’t feel so alone anymore.”

Tiffany: Yeah, that’s definitely a major goal in my book because when I first started, I was diagnosed 15 years ago, and at that time, mental health was not as openly discussed as it is today, and I went through it very much alone. And so one of my goals now is to kind of reduce that.

I’m sharing my story so other people don’t have to live through theirs with a sense of doing it by themself.

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Fire away. What’s the first question? Or FAQ? Episode.

What is Anxiety?

Tiffany: Gladly. Let’s start with the beginning. So Carrie, what is anxiety?

Carrie: Anxiety is a bit of a broad term, so I want to kind of break it down into different aspects, right?

So there’s mental aspects of anxiety, like worry, thinking about the future, oh, something bad’s gonna happen. Being really convinced of these types of things. And we also have a physiological aspect to anxiety. In our nervous system, we have a part of our nervous system called the sympathetic that revs us up.

That’s the fight or flight response, and we have a parasympathetic that calms us down. We call that rest and digest. So people who struggle with anxiety, they’re their fight or flight systemis overactivated and their rest and digest is underestimated. So part of what we do in things like therapy is help people tap into that calming aspect of their nervous system that’s already in there.

We can have spiritual aspects to anxiety where we say, okay, maybe I’m not trusting God with my worries, or I’m closing him off, or not bringing them to him. There’s these different aspects of anxiety that I think sometimes people just look at it at only one aspect, like, oh, anxiety is a spiritual problem.”

It’s not, it’s a physiological and emotional issue. And because a lot of times the emotional components are tied to negative past experiences, times where we’ve been hurt, times, where we’ve been ridiculed, so we’re afraid of those things happening again. That makes sense. Our brain remembers things for a reason, like, don’t touch the hot stove again, don’t speak in front of people because when you were in the fourth grade and you were giving your presentation, everyone laughed at you.

It’s a multifaceted issue. So I think that that’s important for people to know. It’s not just like one simple thing, “Oh, I’m a person who worries or all of that.”

Tiffany: And I think the lack of understanding of anxiety as a multifaceted thing has been the root of so many misunderstandings I’ve had with people, especially believers.

Unfortunately, they might say, “Oh, how are you?” And I might say, “I’m okay, but I’m feeling a little anxious.” And then they come back with a spiritual interpretation of that saying, “Oh, well, when I’m anxious, I learned to give it to the Lord and he takes it.” And I wanna say that’s not what, I mean, that’s not my issue right now. It’s physiological. So I really appreciate that multifaceted definition, and I’m excited for that to kind of spread,

Carrie: Yes. For more people to understand like how our brain, how our nervous system works and that God make us robotic, but we have these complex systems in our body. And let’s face it, they’re not perfect.

None of us have a perfectly functioning body, not until we get to heaven anyway, so things are gonna malfunction and we’re active sometimes.

I Pray But Why I’m Still Anxious?

Tiffany: Absolutely. So this next question relates. It’s, “I can quote scripture and pray, but I’m still anxious. Why?”

Carrie: I think a lot of times there’s this sense of cognitive behavioral therapy that has infiltrated the church. They’ll even quote scriptures like, there’s a scripture in Proverbs and it’s probably not gonna come to me, but it’s something like about a thought process and that being a part of a person. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Tiffany: I don’t know. The first one that came to my mind was trust in the Lord with all your heart leaned out on your own understanding. But yeah, I’m not sure.

Carrie: Okay. Well anyway, scratch where I was going with that. But there’s this infiltration that if we just control our thoughts, we’ll feel better. Like just, okay. So when you have that worry, you are supposed to pray about it and let it go and move on. But going back to the multifaceted approach, we can change our thoughts about something, but that doesn’t mean that our body accepts that fact as true. There are so many people that I’ve worked with that and I think of even in my younger years, There was a very loving mentor that was like, “You just need to know who you are in Christ, Carrie, like that’s gonna change your life.”. And I knew mentally who I was in Christ, but because of previous negative peer experiences, verbal bullying, those types of things, I didn’t have that sense of confidence of who I was in Christ.

I had to heal past garbage and shame and negative experiences in order to really be able to embrace and feel deep down who I was in Christ. So with anxiety, scripture is very powerful and certainly we’re not minimizing that at all, and I do believe that you need to hide that in your heart. But I’ve met so many Christians, I’ll never forget I was, speaking at a conference on the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

It was a statewide conference they have every year on anxiety. There was an older man in the audience during the question and answer time, and he said, “I know like I’m supposed to be anxious for nothing because I was talking about how to help anxiety in all these different areas and it wasn’t a Christian conference, so I did have spirituality in there.”

He said essentially like, “How do I do that? Because I feel anxious my whole life. I felt anxious, and really what I did was I pointed him back to people that were anxious in the Bible and I said, “Okay, so do you think that Gideon was anxious before he tore down his father’s altars? Really going against the grain of society.”

I think sometimes we look at these heroes of the faith and we think that they never had any anxiety, and that’s not what the Bible says. They had anxiety, but they still acted obedience. They still followed God and Jesus’ sweat drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane over going to the cross. He still went to the cross.

He still obeyed God, but he didn’t wanna do it like he was like, “Take this away from me.”. If there’s some other way to go through this, let’s go that way. People forget that or they overlook that a lot of times. And how I see those scriptures is not as a command of like, don’t be anxious. I see it more as like, okay, God is in control.

God loves you. You’re his child and like, so there’s not anything you need to be afraid of. Like if you can rest in that security and know that like, okay, I can bring these things over to him when we pray and we let things go. I don’t think that that’s an easy process a lot of times, right? , like there are some things that really we have to wrestle with in prayer that’s very scriptural going.

And praying about something and saying, okay, God, this I don’t understand. This is really bothersome to me, or what do I do about this situation? And we don’t always get an instant answer. In fact, a lot of times we don’t get an instant answer, right? Like, okay, God, what do I do about this decision?

It’s not like there’s this shining light that comes down and says, go left. We really have to continue to meditate and pray on that. Talk to wise counsel. Search the scriptures. Okay? Is what I’m doing lining up with the Bible? Okay. It’s not a moral issue, but where do I sense the Holy Spirit leading me?

It’s not a quick thing, so I don’t know why we would think that if I just pray about something that I’m worried about, that all of a sudden I’m gonna have like, I don’t know, a warm fuzzy feeling and just be like, “Oh yes, that’s great. I have complete and total peace.” I do think that God gives us peace to where we can move forward to where we can get through to the next thing, but I think sometimes it’s oversimplified. Let’s just put it that way, in terms of how Christians view it.

Tiffany: Absolutely. I just started to look up a verse actually in Philippians when you just said that. I’m not sure where it comes from. This belief, that expectation that we’re supposed to get instant relief from our anxiety when we bring it to God.

And I think there it is a verse in Philippians. And it says, oh, it’s actually in the be anxious for nothing passage, I think. Right. Pray with Thanksgiving and the God of all peace will I forget.

Carrie: You’ll have basically, you’ll have the peace that passes understanding.

Tiffany: Yes. In Christ Jesus. And so I think that a lot comes from that and I love that they write the fact that we have to look at the entire Bible. We can’t just single out one verse and blow it, zoom in on it, and forget everything because life is complex. Scripture is complex, and that’s why I think conversations like this are really important.

Carrie: And God’s complex. Why are we trying to make God simple? He’s huge.

Tiffany: Yes.

Carrie: He cannot be simplified.

How Do I Know If I Need Help for My Anxiety?

Tiffany: Yeah. I have another, I like the next question. I feel like I’ve heard it from other people. How do I know if I need help or my anxiety? Where’s the line?

Carrie: Of course, we’re talking to a therapist and I’m very biased towards therapy, so I truly believe that anyone can benefit from therapy.

I think sitting down with someone and having an objective perspective on your life, I know as a therapist. I practice this stuff, that it’s been transformational to me to receive that support and love and acceptance from another believer who is able to affirm me and validate me, but also at the same time challenge me and say, well, have you thought about it this way?

Maybe you’re only looking at one side of the story and not the whole thing. However, when we’re talking about medication counseling, those types of things, getting help, I think we’re looking at the domains of a person’s life. Are the domains of your life impacted? So those would be things like your relationships.

Sometimes people come to counseling because they may say, “You know what? I know, like I’m driving my spouse nuts, and it’s to the point where they don’t know what to say to me. They’re trying to be supportive, but they kind of said, Hey, like maybe you need somebody more professional to talk to about this, because I’m kind of like at the end of my rope, I don’t know what to do.” Or

the anxiety is affecting their ability maybe to go out with their spouse and have a good time or be able to enjoy life with them. It may be it’s impacting work or school. So the anxiety has gotten to a point where I can’t complete my assignments because I want them all to be perfect and I’m super stressed myself out over.

I’m not sleeping, so we’re also looking at symptoms. Things like sleeping, eating too much to cope, not eating enough because you’re so anxious I can’t eat. Same thing with sleeping. Typically with anxiety, people sleep less or they’re waking a lot during the night. That can be another issue. Those types of things. Daily functioning. Is it hard for you just to get out of bed in the morning and get going? A lot of times if people have been anxious for a long period, they’ll get depressed because it’s really hard. Same with OCD.It’s just really hard to wrestle with it every day in and day out, every day, and that can really lead to a place of depression.

So sometimes when you treat the anxiety, develop some better coping skills for it, then the depression will relieve. Or sometimes antidepressants can help and different things with that too.

Should I Take Medication for My Anxiety?

Tiffany: Well said. I love that you mentioned antidepressants because that begs a whole, whole new question. New topic to explore here.

Should I take medication for my anxiety?

Carrie: Yeah. I think there is the stigma in the church about taking medication for mental health issues, which is really interesting to me because there are a lot of people in the church who take medications for other things like blood pressure or cancer or diabetes, or they have some personal family members that I know that take medications for these types of things and,

I would never say to my relative, “Well, you shouldn’t be on that high blood pressure medicine. Really what you need to be doing is exercising and eating right.” Well, they need to be doing that too, but at this point, since it’s not managed very well or their high blood pressure may be genetic, cuz sometimes it is, then that’s a medication that’s helping them live and helping them function in day-to-day.

If I have high blood pressure that is can be dangerous. So when we look at anxiety and talking about it as a multifaceted issue, if it’s affecting my physical body, then why should it be wrong for me to take something to help my physical body? Just like it’s helpful to take these things for other issues, medications for people. I always say it’s a personal decision because medications, sometimes people have had negative experiences with them or they’re like, you know what? I’m the person that gets all the side effects from the medicines and I have a hard time with them. So there are people, even though I will say there’s different options, just talk to your doctor about it.

If one thing doesn’t work well for you, you can look at something different. But some people say, “You know what? I’ve tried a medication or two, I just wasn’t happy with it, or I didn’t feel like it really helped me the way I had wanted it to.” And so they try counseling. Sometimes we try counseling for a while and then we roll back around and say, it’s really like hard for you to engage in these positive activities because of the anxiety. Your depression is so bad like would you be considered taking medication for it? And so those can go either way. I always think obviously, it’s a very personal decision what you put in your body, so I never tell people like, oh, you have to be on medication to see me or anything like that.

It’s just, “Hey, this is something that could be helpful for you. If you’re interested, why don’t you talk to somebody about it?” Whenever people initially come in, if they haven’t had just like a general blood work screening for things like vitamin deficiencies, thyroid, iron, that’s another thing that can cause issues, although that’s probably more on the low energy side rather than the anxiety side.

But anyway, the point is all of these things we talk about in a very early episode with a nurse practitioner about how all of those things can contribute to anxiety. So always like people to have a blood work rule out too. And we don’t wanna assume it’s all emotional if they’re also could be something physiological going on that could be contributing to the symptoms.

Tiffany: Absolutely. Yeah. That holistic approach is really important. And I’m gonna mention it’s just so on topic with a lot of things I’ve thought about and wrote about. One of my chapters in my book is called Therapy and the one after that is called Medication because that’s my story and I’ve been on medication for over 10 years now.

And like what you’re saying is absolutely true. In my case, I’m able to actually engage with life, engage with people, engage with God better because my mind’s working the way it’s supposed to with, you know, a boost from the medication I take. But it definitely was a journey. I know people who all over the place.

A couple good friends actually I saw go through hesitation with medication. One because of breastfeeding issues. Another because of one thing you mentioned with the, oh, I get all the side effects from everything I take, and it’s been a blessing to be able to walk with them, just kind of watch their story unfold.

And like you said, it’s not for everyone, but actually they both ended up trying it because when things get really hard, for me anyway, I end up at a place where it’s like anything to stop the anxiety. There’s something that can make me feel better. I’ll try it. That’s just my story.

Carrie: I talked about this in my first episode as like when I was going through my divorce, I was like, I’m not functioning.

I mean, I just remember periods where I would like, I’d be trying to write something for work, like a progress note, and I’d literally just stare at the computer screen for 30 minutes and all I could think about was you know my marriage that was ending. . It was very tough. I remember that was my realization moment.

That was like my wake-up call. And it was interesting because I think either that week or shortly after my therapist had said, “Have you thought about getting on an antidepressant, at least for this period? Like until you can get over this hump?” And I saw my doctor and ended up taking one for six months and it was probably one of the best things I did at that point in my life.

I think that’s another thing to tell people too, is not everybody has to be on it forever. I don’t know why people think this, because like I said, it’s not true for other medications. There’s people that might start taking medications because they’re pre-diabetic and then they can come off of. They manage with diet and lifestyle, those types of things.

But for some reason, when it comes to mental health meds, people think that somehow they’re gonna get sucked into this vortex and they’re gonna have to take it for the rest of their life. I don’t understand, cuz we don’t believe that about other kinds of medication. , it’s so bizarre. But that’s a thing that I hear a lot from people.

“Well, I’m gonna become dependent on that and I’m gonna have to have it all the time.” Plenty of things that you can take that are not addictive, right? Certainly for anxiety. Now there are some that can be potentially addictive. Those are typically prescribed more for like short-term relief, panic attacks, those types of things.

Even with that, there’s, you know, other options as well. It doesn’t mean you’re gonna get addicted if you get on an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication.

What Do I Do If I Have No Idea Where My Anxiety is Coming From?

Tiffany: Right. Yeah. Thanks for diving into that. Let’s see our next question. This is a good one. I’ve been there. What do I do if I have no idea where my anxiety is coming from?

Carrie: Yeah, I think this is a good one because people are always trying to find like the answer, right? So like if I’m anxious, there must be some kind of reason that I’m anxious. Let’s face it, because we’re both females. Sometimes you just feel stuff, , and you have no idea why. I don’t know. Hopefully, men could resonate with that too, but I really believe like there’s some hormonal components at times that we don’t know are working behind the scenes.

You know, maybe we ate something that wasn’t agreeable. Maybe it’s just something with our nervous system that’s malfunctioning and to really be able to say, you know, “Okay, I don’t know why I’m anxious right now. Like you, you may know. And if you do know, then you can acknowledge it and go, “Okay, like, yeah, I’m really worried about this test that’s coming up on Friday.

It’s worth like three grades. I’m afraid I’m gonna fail it.” and then I can approach that several different ways. Obviously, I can breathe into it, I can pray about it, I can study, I can say, you know what? I’m gonna do the best I can. And if I fail, you know, I fail.” And then we’ll have to regroup from that.

But most likely if I study, I’m not going to fail. I’m not gonna get to that point, but if you don’t know and you just feel that, especially the physiological sense of anxiety. Sometimes it can be because something from the past is triggered that something going on in the president has kind of reminded us of a previous time, and our cognitive brain is not necessarily able to link it.

But it’s stored somewhere in our body. A lot of times trauma can be stored in in the body. When we realize that, I think it’s just, we lean into it and we say like, okay, I don’t know why I’m anxious right now, but that’s where this place of awareness and acceptance comes in. So I’m gonna acknowledge it first of all, like, “Okay, I’m acknowledging that I’m anxious right now and that we can’t snap my fingers and let that go.”

But what I can do is try a coping skill. I can try to think about something positive. I can breathe, I can go outside for a walk, you know, I can pet the dog. I can think about vacation I wanna take, that would be really peaceful. Those types of things. Even though that can be scary because we feel outta control, it’s like, “Oh gosh, this is just coming up

Seemingly out of nowhere.” A lot of times it’s not really as out of nowhere as we Think it is. If we’re able to kind of like dig in and do some work in therapy. But that’s kind of what I would recommend. I think

Tiffany: That’s good. I once had a therapist recommend to me if I’m interested, if you would agree with it, recommended, you know, if you’re feeling your anxiety physiologically, if it’s just a, I think she said somatic thing, then you should attack it on the somatic.

She recommended like a jog, try yoga, you know, breathing those things. Because you have no thought to work with it. It does make it a little more challenging. Right. And I’ve actually just went through a bout of that about a month ago I was unemployed and I was shocked by how much jogging actually helped work it outta my system or something. Nothing else would get rid of it. I just go run it off and then I feel better.

Carrie: Yeah, exercise is really great. It’s really, really good for anxiety and depression and does wonders for our body, but I would agree with that. Yeah. I think a lot of times this is another problem that people have if it’s physiological, then a lot of times what they’ll do is they’ll sit there and they’ll go, “I have no reason to be anxious.

I’m fine. My life is good. It’s okay. Move on. Like what’s the next thing?” Instead of like using something physiological to help themselves calm down. Take a deep breath, quiet your mind. Meditate, walk. Good.

Everyone says to try deep breathing when you’re anxious. It doesn’t work for me. Why?

Tiffany: Yeah. So speaking of taking a deep breath, the last question I have when I got from, a friend, this one says, “Everyone says to try deep breathing when you’re anxious. It doesn’t work for me. Why?”

Carrie: This is a good question, and I think there could be a few different reasons. Some people have get really weirded out focusing on their breath, or they start to have some obsessions about it or doing it right, something of that nature. So it really trips them up to kind of have that focus is one thing I’ve seen.

Another thing that can happen is people are not breathing in a way that’s activating that calm-down response. So like we were talking about the rest and digest, there’s something called your vagus nerve that is around that diaphragm area that if you’re breathing from your diaphragm for anybody that’s. Taking choir or anything like that, it’s right above your belly button.

So if you’re breathing into that area, you’re pressing on the vagus nerve, and that’s gonna trigger that calm down response. Sometimes when you see people take a deep breath, it comes from their chest, and it’s like, if it’s way up top, then they’re not activating that parasympathetic nervous system response.

So that’s a problem. It also could be because if you’ve had a lot of trauma or negative experiences, it may not feel safe to be at a place of rest. And this happens a lot for clients that have experienced chronic developmental trauma. So for example, growing up in a home with an alcoholic parent, I come home.

Dad’s been drinking. Dad gets violent sometimes. I don’t know. Is he gonna hit mom? Is he gonna throw something? Is he gonna just gonna be passed out in the chair? I don’t know. But I need to somehow be on high alert when I get home because I need to be prepared at all times for whatever it is that I’m gonna face.

And so that will linger in people’s nervous systems and in their body. So even though they’re a grown adult, they have a good spouse. They have kids, like their home life is actually okay and can be, you know, reasonably calm. They may wonder, why do I feel so anxious? But they’re still keyed up from all that stuff that happened to them earlier that they haven’t been able to clear out of their nervous system in some way, shape or form.

So when you try to teach relaxation skills to these people, you say, “Okay, like take some deep breaths.”. It’s almost like there’s this part of their body that’s like, “Nope. We can’t do that. Not safe. Okay.” . And it almost like, sounds this like secondary danger alarm, like, “Nope, nope. It’s too dangerous to relax.”

So in those types of situations, we really have to like ease into it and kind of like dip our toe in the water and even like recognize that anxiety and like acknowledging and validating that like, “Oh, okay, it didn’t feel safe when a kid to relax or didn’t feel safe to let your guard down.

Sometimes vulnerability is super hard for people, so it may take them time to open up in therapy or time to be able to feel comfortable enough. Sometimes it’s like having another person in the room. It feels too vulnerable to relax in the presence of another person. That can be another issue that comes up with those types of things. Multi reasons. Someone may have difficulty using breathing to relax.

Tiffany: Thanks for sharing. That’s all really interesting. I’ve never been in that place myself like the deep breathing, I have positive reactions to it. I find that really interesting. It makes a ton of sense. I also didn’t know that about the vagus nerve, about that being a reason why it helps calm down.

How Do you Respond to Someone When they Say that Anxiety and Depression are just Spiritual Warfare and Lack of Faith?

Tiffany: The last question comes from a friend of mine, and it’s something again that I’ve heard plenty of people say when I’ve come out about my anxiety. Basically, what do you say or how do you respond to someone when they say that anxiety and depression are just spiritual warfare and lack of faith?

Carrie: Yeah. Okay, so there’s two different aspects to that, right? , I think we have to address those one at a time because they’re two different responses. So our anxiety and depression, spiritual warfare, I think they can be, sometimes. , but I don’t think that they always are. So that’s really the defining piece. I think that there are times where I have like a feeling of oppression on me.

That’s the only way I can kind of describe it. I can verbally say like, “Okay, this is not from God. I don’t know where it’s from. I don’t know if it’s from Satan or if it’s just depression, but it definitely feels like, okay, this is something that’s trying to pull me down. If you acknowledge that, kind of going back to the multifaceted view of anxiety.

You know, there can be spiritual components to it where you say, “Okay, I have put my faith and trust in say, money, for example.”. Maybe you are a person that was like super financially secure and then you lose your job. Well all of a sudden you’re like trying to do it all on your own. You’re not like necessarily praying about it and you’re just, you’re getting super stressed out cause you’re like, I have to make it happen.

Pride can get in the way or not trusting. So can anxiety be a faith issue? Can it be spiritual warfare? I think it can be. However, it’s just not always going back to people like, I think to give simplistic responses to more complicated issues because they don’t. What to say or how to respond. So going back to looking at people in the Bible who were anxious or who were sad. I mean, there were people in the Bible who wanted to die, you know?

Because they were so sad about their situation. So I don’t think that those individuals had a lack of faith. When you look at faith, You look at like David prayed for his son that was sick and then the baby died. Did the baby die because David didn’t have enough faith? No. That’s not what the Bible tells us. Or there are other situations you look at Paul with like the thorn in the flesh. So did Paul not have enough faith that he could be healed from this? Well, no. It was something that God used in his life as part of his sanctification process. Mm-hmm. . One of the things that I’ve really come to learn is that the things that we want God to take away in our lives, the things that we say, Hey God, I need this.

Like I need this tho removed and I need it removed right now is like the very thing that God may be wanting to use in our life to make us more like Christ.

Tiffany: Amen.

Carrie: My husband was recently diagnosed. I’ve talked about this on the show before, but he was recently diagnosed last September with basically a life-altering neurological condition and it’s degenerative and there’s no cure.

And so I think it, it’s been interesting kind of to see some similar responses to it. Like, “Okay, well we’re gonna pray for you and we’re gonna lay hands on you and God’s gonna heal you.” And he has had people lay hands and pray for him, and that’s been incredible. But also what I’ve really seen happen over the last few months as he’s, you know, walked out his life in his struggle to walk with a walker in his forties is that other people look at him and become inspired or their faith is increased.

I don’t know how you are so positive while you’re going through all of this. You know? So I would say if somebody’s struggling with anxiety or OCD, never underestimate how God may use that in your life. Or may use it in someone else’s life. When my husband was diagnosed, I remember just sitting there and telling God, like, “I don’t have the prayer life for this.”

You know, it’s definitely transformed the way that I have depended on God. It is transformed how much I’ve realized I need community and the body of Christ instead. You know, living in a lot of independent pride for a long time saying, ah, I don’t need your help. No, we got this. Like, we’re good now. I’m just like, yes, I need help. I raise my hand. “Can I have some help over here?” And that has been incredibly humbling, and hard.

This is, none of this that I’m talking about has been easy, but I’ve been reading in Olympians and Paul talks about being in Jail. He’s like, Hey, I’m in jail. And it’s totally like advanced the gospel all over the place.

Everybody knows like I’m here because of Jesus. And that’s what I really pray over my husband is that when people see him and they see his positive attitude that they’ll see like, This is Jesus, you know? In him. And that’s how he’s able to get up every day and do the things that he’s doing and have hope and to keep moving forward each and every day.

That’s a long response and some, you know, extra personal info in there. But I think if we run around every corner and say, you know, that must be Satan, or you’re not trying hard enough, because I think the lack of faith response, my husband gets really, , tiffy about this one because essentially, it’s saying, you’re not a good enough Christian, essentially, right?

well, you don’t have enough faith to be healed, then you know you’re not a good enough Christian. And we just don’t know like what God is doing behind the scenes. So many times in our life, we just have no clue. Like if you never had anxiety in your life, And this happens to people. I’m not saying it doesn’t, but like if you went forward at a prayer service and someone laid hands on you and you never felt anxious again, you and I like, we wouldn’t even be sitting here having this conversation, like trying to give hope to other people.

You wouldn’t be writing a book to encourage other people. You just never know. We don’t always see the purpose in it when we’re suffering, especially in the beginning of our suffering, we do not see, we’re like, whoa, this is awful. Take this away. Right? God’s at work all the time.

Tiffany: Amen. That’s beautiful. And we see it in Jesus himself. So, yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

Carrie: I kind of shared a little bit of a story of hope at the end, but a lot of times I like to, I didn’t prep you on this ahead of, but do you have, you have any recent story of hope, like where you received hope from God or another person?

Tiffany: I like that. Sure. I know I do. There’s been a lot going on lately. I think there’s a girl who’s kind of recently come back around, a church, church that I meet with, and she struggles from anxiety and trauma growing up. She’s in her early twenties. Context. I’m 40 in a month, so we have a bit of an age gap, but we’re in the same small group together.

And she called me one night asking if she could have a ride to the emergency room, and her anxiety had been so bad recently that she got to the point of throwing up the hospital visit. They said that there was more going on than just anxiety there, but I see hope in that. She called me and I stayed there with her in the hospital until 2:00 AM.

Carrie: Wow.

Tiffany: When we got out, you can’t explain that other than Jesus, like we don’t have a whole lot in common. We both really like coffee. We both have anxiety. , but, but that’s Jesus. Like, I don’t think I would’ve stayed if I didn’t know how it might feel to be in anxiety alone.

Carrie: Right. And I didn’t want that for her. And there was another occasion before that where she texted me, “Hey, I’m really anxious right now. Can you pray for me?” And I texted her back, “Yeah, should I call you?” And she said Yes. And so I called her. And I don’t often pray for people over the phone, but this is just one example, like how your husband’s, how his

disease has reawakened your prayer life. I guess that’s kind of a micro example of that. Her reaching out to me saying just like you, you know, I need help that awakened my prayer life. And reminded me of years ago when I was like much more practiced in my intercessory prayer life. And you know, I feel like God used that to kind of start nudging me back toward that and she’s, I’m going to her birthday party in a weekend or so. So that’s definitely a story of hope. I can definitely see hard things bringing people together and the body of Christ coming together in community to support one another.

Yeah. That’s awesome. I love it. I’m so glad that you joined me on this episode. It’s been a lot of fun.

Tiffany: Me too.

Carrie: It’s good to have like your insights and your feedback as well. That’s awesome. Glad we could work this out. Well, like I said before, let us know when the book comes out. We want all the details and all of the links and people can go follow you on Instagram too to keep up with you.

Tiffany: Yes, absolutely. It’s uh, Tiffany and some Italian last name, .

Carrie: I’ll link it in there for you all so you can just look in the show notes.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Carrie. I really enjoyed this too.

Related Resources:

Tiffany Ciccone

77. Postpartum Anxiety and Depression with Julie Lamb

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 77. Postpartum Anxiety and Depression with Julie Lamb

Julie Lamb, LCSW who is a life coach at julielambcoaching.com shares with us about postpartum depression and anxiety, and how to cope with it. 

  • Julie’s personal experience with postpartum anxiety and depression
  • How many weeks are considered postpartum
  • Difference between postpartum depression and major depression
  • What makes postpartum depression worse
  • How to cope with postpartum depression and anxiety

Related Resources:

Julie Lamb Coaching

How to Reduce Anxiety About Giving Birth with Carrie Bock

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 77. I’ve been trying to do an episode for a little while on postpartum depression and anxiety because this is. Such a common issue in our society. And actually, as several of, you know, I have a young daughter, but actually, I’ve been trying to do this show way before I became pregnant. And it just didn’t work out with guests and so forth. But we have a guest today that has both personal and professional experience. So I’m super excited to interview Julie Lamb, LCSW who’s a life coach at julielambcoaching.com. 

Carrie: Julie, welcome to the show today. 

Julie: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Carrie: Talk with us a little bit about postpartum depression. How would you define it on a basic level for people?

Julie: One of the first things I wanna talk about when it comes to postpartum, depression is we have to understand that birth is traumatic. It is a traumatic thing that happens to your body, and yes, we can say it’s normal, natural, whatever.

It doesn’t matter. It’s still traumatic to your body. It increases all those hormones. It increases all of that adrenaline within our body. The parasympathetic nerves kind of go out whack. And what happens is that every woman that has a child will experience it. Some symptoms of loss, sadness, and some anxiety, everyone will experience. However, postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety come into play. When those symptoms continue generally about two weeks after birth. And so the biggest thing to think about is. Everybody’s gonna have these normal feelings, but if they continue past two weeks is when postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety come into play.

Carrie: Okay. So it’s gotta last for at least two weeks.

Julie: Yes

Carrie: How would you say that it’s similar or different to someone who’s maybe going through a major depressive episode or a dysthymia

Julie: depression has so many different layers. And one of the things that are really fascinating about depression is that it’s not a one-size-fits-all.

It’s not a, oh, you’re sad. Therefore you have dyslexia or you are manic, therefore you’re bipolar. It doesn’t work that way. But there are certain categories that we say that would then say, this is the kind of depression that you have a major depression is essentially where for a period of a long time, you have had these feelings of sadness of overwhelm, perhaps not being able to sleep or having no desire to do anything.

Those continue dysthymia. You have to have that for at least a year. I mean, can you imagine, I have to feel this way for a year before I can finally say something’s wrong. And major depression tends to be a shorter period. So a lot of times people will be diagnosed with a major depression first because it’s something that you can diagnose quicker generally before six months when somebody’s had those experiences and SEIA says, well, you’ve had these a lot longer.

And this is what this looks like. Postpartum depression is just different from that because it’s quicker onset. Essentially you have nine months and some people will also experience depression during their pregnancy. And unfortunately, people will tend to people, meaning doctors will tend to be like, it’s just your hormones, just your body changing.

Women kind of get put to the side, basically. Like that’s not really a problem you’re just changing. And then what happens then is you may have had those feelings and then after the baby is born, they are magnified and they’re made so much bigger. And if you’ve ever had any depression in the past, then you’re more likely to have this postpartum depression and we’re talking any, you could have seriously a week of just feeling really down.

And then you’re more likely to have this postpartum depression that will hit and it will feel even. More triggering more sadness, more overwhelmed, more irritability, more feeling like you just can’t get up and do the next thing. And it all is because of that one event. And that’s having a baby.

Carrie: Yeah. It’s interesting. I’m glad that you brought up being depressed in pregnancy because I got depressed in pregnancy and I felt very isolated because there was all this conversation surrounding postpartum depression that it almost, I felt like a weirdo. I was like “I’m supposed to be happy being pregnant.” And was really struggling because I had a lot of friends and family members that either, you know, had infertility difficulties and I thought, well, here I am supposed to be. Really happy and thankful that I was able to get pregnant and give birth, but it absolutely wrecked my body. Unfortunately, it’s interesting that you said a little while ago, that birth as being traumatic.

And I necessarily wouldn’t have said that for myself and my situation, although I will say that just even the process of the pregnancy and the hormones and different things really mess some things up for me. And I’m still dealing. Some ongoing back issues and stuff that I’m trying to get straightened out because of the pregnancy stuff.

But I think in my situation was a little bit different because it was connected with chronic pain. That was really kind of fueling that depression. I’m curious too, about the onset of postpartum depression. Is this something that happens right after people give birth or can it have a later onset? Like when they go back to work, for example,

Julie: It can happen later and it can happen both.

It can happen almost right at birth, and then it can happen later. Part of my story with postpartum depression is I actually have had very difficult pregnancies when I had my first baby. I actually, my body started to shut down. And so I had to have her cuz it went into help syndrome. If anybody knows what that is.

So my body was shutting down, saying, you have to have this baby. I have an epidural. So it was all natural. She was about three and a half weeks early. So she was little, the whole. I had this baby feeling pretty good. I will say afterwards, you know, maybe a little bit of the blues, but then I had a significant loss.

I had a brother that died about two weeks after the birth of my baby. Wow. And so what happened is that that compounded all of those feelings. Here’s this supposed to be this happiest time? Which I think is a misnomer anyways, but supposed to be this happy time. And yet I’m dealing with this grief and I’m supposed to just move forward with it.

I’m supposed to just, you know, grieve move forward refined. And what I noticed is it was about four or five months later that I went into a real deep depression. You could say, yes, it was postpartum. You could say, yes, it was because of this grief. You could say it was cuz I went back to. You could give all those different circumstances.

The point is that I hit that depressive wall where essentially it was like, I wasn’t bonding with my child. I wasn’t viewing life could be any better and all, because essentially all those circumstances compounded together. And my body said, you have to deal with this one way and we’re gonna make you deal with it mentally.

It’s kind of how I viewed it. Looking back how I viewed it now.

Carrie: Wow. So it was just like, that’s how it felt. It just kind of a shut or like hitting a wall and like, you couldn’t go forward or do the things that you need to do. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into caring for a baby. It’s very time-consuming and it’s very exhausting.

Julie: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing with caring for a baby is that we all think, again, this is supposed to be the greatest time babies are so sweet and precious. You have a lack of sleep. You’re not eating well. You’re 100% focused on this little person and forget the whole idea of taking care of yourself.

Forget the idea of even having a relationship with your partner. Like any of that, it suddenly becomes, I am so focused on just a survival instinct of that day to day. And a survival of this infant, of this person that 100% relies on me. And that’s a lot of pressure. And if you are already not taking care of yourself with sleep with food, or even just rest like mentally resting, it just compounds more and more and more.

And then you throw in the idea that you have some depression in the past, you throw in any circumstance, job loss, financial insecurity, you throw in any of that. And suddenly our brains go, I just can’t do this. it’s just way too much. That’s when postpartum depression almost seems to flare a lot more.

Carrie: Yeah, this is pretty common. I think I read something like one in seven women. Just kind of from what you’ve seen statistic-wise. Okay. Mm-hmm cause this is a pretty common issue, but I think a lot of times people feel. Very isolated by it. If they haven’t heard other people talk about it or, or known someone that’s gone through it.

Do you feel that way? Like just the, what you were talking about, the shoulds and the supposed to that you feel like are on society.

Julie: Yeah. And there’s also this idea that this is what you’re supposed to do, so you should just be okay with it. . And so I think it also leads to a lot of women that are afraid to talk about it.

You mentioned something. And I saw this a lot when I worked with adoptions for years was the fact that there were women that felt guilty for having babies because their friends couldn’t. And I, again, I worked with adoptions and I felt guilty that I could get pregnant. And it becomes this fear of like, well, I should love this.

I should be happy. And if you suddenly feel like you can’t. That’s a huge amount of pressure that you put on yourself and that you put on everybody else around you. And I noticed something really interesting with me was this idea that I had to do it all. And so here I was with this new baby and I was like, I have to make sure the house is clean.

I have to make sure that I’m, you know, that I’ve got food on the table. I’ve gotta make sure my husband’s taken care of and that, oh, I have to go back to work and I’ve gotta make sure I’m working all these hours. And I’m doing all these things. And suddenly it was like, my husband was not good enough with the baby.

It was only me that could do it. And all of us as women. We have this idea that there’s a standard we’re supposed to meet, and this standard comes from maybe something we’ve been taught to, maybe something we’ve experienced, maybe it’s even something that we just inherently believe. And that standard is sometimes what creates this feeling of. Unworthiness this feeling of I’m not good enough. And when we feed on those feelings that it can lead to a lot more depression. And especially that can lead to a lot of anxiety because you’re not living up to that standard.

Carrie: Yeah. I know that that was hard for me more so when I went back to work of handing over more responsibilities to my husband, we had like a dramatic household shift in our world where I was at home for maternity leave for three months, you know, I was doing the majority of the baby taken care of, and he was very much involved and he would come home and spend time with her and spend whatever time we could together, so forth. But then it was like this light switch flipped.

He quit his job. And became a stay-at-home dad. So all of a sudden he was like the primary baby caretaker. And I was like, full-time household provider. And that role switch was just like very jarring for us. And it took a lot of communication and a lot of adjustment, but for me learning that I had to let go of some things and trust him to be able to handle the baby stuff that I had learned to do. Like he can’t actually do some of these things, but I think what you’re saying, like that sense of like, oh, I have to be the one to take care of this, or I have to be the one to handle it. Was it pretty easy for you to recognize that you had postpartum depression? Or were you kind of in a little bit of denial?

Like, no, that’s not me.

Julie: I was in denial because as a therapist, I knew all the signs. I even remember before I had my babysitting down with my husband and saying, here are all the signs of postpartum depression. So you are aware of it. You get to know what it is. And my husband (bless his heart) was like, okay, I get it.

I got it. I’ll know, and this will be fine. but a lot of people think postpartum depression is just that, like, I wanna kill my baby. That’s honestly like, we’re gonna go that extreme. And so here I was like, no, no, no. Like if you notice I’m crying a lot or you notice that I just feel more lethargic. I don’t have a lot of energy.

Those are things to watch out for. It was interesting because he was very aware of that. But I think because we had a death that got mixed in and very confused. Oh, He said he was really good at that. But what happened is that after I started to feel that way, my training kicks in was like, you can’t have postpartum depression.

You’re not allowed to have postpartum depression. So here’s what you need to do. And I remember trying to tell myself, do this, this and this, this, and of course, none of that worked. So I was still feeling really off. And I was like, well, I’ll go talk to a therapist. I went and talked to them, it was not a good therapist.

And I went, talked to a therapist who basically was like, you’ve just had a lot of things going on. Just make sure you get some. Make sure you let your husband do things, you know, whatever. And it wasn’t helpful because on the way home, I could acknowledge that I had postpartum depression and he missed it.

I feel like many times we, as women, we think we know something is wrong, but we almost discount it. Like I discounted because, well, you know, I’m qualified. I should know better. Mm-hmm but I also discounted it because it didn’t seem as severe as what I had thought it should look like. And it wasn’t until somebody actually did discount it, that I was actually able to say, okay, wait, maybe there is something going on here.

And I think many women go to their doctor afterwards. And the first thing they asked them was like, do you wanna hurt the baby? I’m like, no, no, I never wanna do that. Okay, then you’re fine. I

Carrie: just wanna tell you what my doctor asked me six weeks after I had the baby. Literally, this was a question and this was the.

You’re not depressed. Are you? And I was just like, I’m smacking my forehead, you know, as a mental health professional, I’m like, that is not how you ask somebody. And funny enough, the paediatrician’s office, I feel like has been much more sensitive and has given me a questionnaire. Like every time that I’ve gone in there, But, you know, if somebody says, well, you’re not depressed, are you, I mean, then you feel like, well, what if I was like, would I wanna open up about that right now?

Would I wanna tell you if I was, of course, I’m not gonna open up yeah. That was an interesting response. Let’s talk about anger connected to postpartum depression because maybe that’s a sign that sometimes people don’t necessarily like see as being connected and anger can be really connected to depression.

Julie: Absolutely. And anger, a lot of times are like, well, that’s just something that happened to you that made you mad. And they don’t actually recognize that there’s sometimes a rage. And that’s what that anger tends to feel like in postpartum. Depression is just this idea. I’m yelling. I’m screaming. You may not wanna hurt anybody, but you just feel like I said, this intense rage going on, and that is an irritability.

And the funny thing is, is that people will say, well, you just need to go get some sleep or you just need to go relax or something. Yes. Sleep is vital and important. And I wanna know any new mom that gets sleep. It’s more than that. It’s the fact that I want you to imagine all these pressures, all these feelings, all these thoughts being put into a kettle and they are just put pressure upon pressure upon pressure.

And then you have a doctor saying you’re not depressed, or you’re not anxious, or you’re not whatever. And you’re inside you’re bubbling. And you’re just thinking what I am like. You don’t understand. And it just feels like it’s exploding. And what’s interesting is that if you have experienced ever some postpartum anger, you will most likely experience it.

Every pregnancy after. And people don’t think that they’re like, no, no, you can overcome it. But realistically speaking, when your body naturally holds that it almost associates that with every next pregnancy, I had a client that came to me specifically while she was pregnant and said I’ve had postpartum anger, and I need to know how to deal with it now, because I don’t like who I.

So we worked with some very specific tactics that helped with anger. That would also help her as a new mom. And it was interesting. She went to her husband, she says, here’s what I’m gonna do. And she messaged me after she had the baby. She’s like, I have to just tell you my anger. Yes. It’s there, but because I can acknowledge it and it’s safe to say it just doesn’t feel like it’s overwhelming.

It doesn’t feel like that rage that’s gonna come out and just explode at any moment. She’s able to say I’m angry and it’s okay. That I’m angry. and these are the things that I do with it. And I think that’s, yes, anger is definitely a part of all of. Yeah, that’s really good. How did you get the help that you needed?

I knew that something wasn’t right. So I, I first went to my OB doctor and she is fantastic. She delivered all my kids. I’m a high risk pregnancy, so she very much, her and I are, are really good friends. She was like, Julie, here, you should take some Lexapro. You should take, you know, just take something. It will help.

And I will admit that I didn’t want to, because I was like, no, I can do this on my own, but she was there. That’s like, then talk to me, tell me what’s going on. And you need to make sure you have somebody to talk to that you have some resources in place. So it was really great that she was one. She prescribe the medication, if I needed it and wanted it. And there’s nothing wrong with taking that. But she also was like, if you don’t want to, here’s the things that you need to do. So I did go that’s when I went and found that therapist, I would recommend that you don’t go see a male therapist. That’s my number one mistake.

I think I know we should say no out. They’re all getting no, no, no. You need somebody that understands women’s hormones. And that specifically understands postpartum and understands what that is like when you have somebody that knows those feelings, those emotions, and can help you through that. That’s one of the best things I did do some cognitive behavioral therapy.

So with him, he didn’t help me at all. So I went to like with another therapist, friend of mine, And I said, okay, this is where my thought is and help me with my thought process. And so I did have that available, but at the same time, if it wasn’t available, I would have gone and sought out somebody else, another therapist, another somebody else to talk to.

So by all means, that’s kind of what I did. The other thing is, is I actually allowed myself to just take a break. And so I acknowledged that. I’m not okay. I’m not good. This is not what I need to do. And I told my husband, I said, I need to just get away for a little bit because I am not in okay. Place. I wasn’t breastfeeding.

So I was formula feeding at that time. And so I was able to kind of walk away and just like take some time to myself. I knew she was in good hands. When I say take some time, it was literally like a weekend. It wasn’t like I was gone for months on end. I’ve thought about it. No, it was just, it was like a weekend.

And I went and I just like, was able to just kind of relax into that. And I came back. I was really overly in love, I think, with my baby at that point, because it was like, I felt healthy. I felt good at that moment. And I think those are the things that really helped me, especially when I had my next. You and those next two were very difficult and there was a miscarriage in between.

I mean, there’s lots of stories there that just compound all of that. That essentially after I have had my third, I was able to look back and say, here’s the things you did that work. Do this again. Here’s the things that didn’t work. Don’t do that. And I implemented that a lot quicker with number three than I did with number one, obviously

Carrie: From what you’ve seen in your experience is postpartum more common for first-time moms or not necessarily?

Julie: Not necessarily. I’d love to say, oh yes, if you have it once, then you’ll never have it again. But, or if you’ve never had it, you’ll never have it. That’s not true. I believe that there is a chemical that does get impacted very much so with every pregnancy, I explained it kind of my first pregnancy, I left feeling like something was just incomplete within me.

My second pregnancy. I literally felt like all my hormones went back into place. It was like the weirdest sensation. And it was actually the healthiest, I would think after that pregnancy. But I got pregnant really soon after that one. And then it was like, I was depressed pre-having this baby because it was so close.

It felt so soon. I wasn’t sure I could handle this. And then that impact. I feel like my depression. Well, no, actually it was anxiety that hit me after the third one. Depression was the first one, but then I had anxiety the third one. And so I think that that’s important to recognize too, is that you don’t always have to have depression.

I had depression and then I had anxiety at the last pregnancy and they can also look very different. I think the second one, I did have a lot more of what we’re gonna call the baby blues because it was, you know, a new baby. It was hard. She didn’t latch. She was so difficult in that way. It was like some of that.

Whereas with the third one, she was in NICU and that escalated my anxiety escalated some of my concerns in that aspect. So I think you really have to look at the circumstances around each pregnancy to understand sometimes which one somebody may perhaps have.

Carrie: That makes sense. Tell us briefly about postpartum anxiety.

Like, how does that typically show up for moms?

Julie: Anxiety is a worry and it’s a fear almost this is fear-based. And so postpartum anxiety is where for moms, it’s like, you’re deeply worried something’s gonna happen to the baby. And so many moms may not sleep at night because they’re constantly making sure the baby is.

Like nothing’s gonna happen or they are afraid to leave the baby with anybody because something could happen to them or the baby they’re even afraid of. Sometimes they’ll leave their house because what if something happened to them and the baby. And so it becomes a fear-driven base where you are so afraid that something terrible is going to happen, that you then try to protect it and hope that nothing does happen.

Anxiety really shows up that way, shows up more. If that fear and that worry about the incessant, worry about the future.

Carrie: I think that that’s a good distinction to make. And this, we have some listeners who also have O C D. So it’s important for people to realize too, that OCD latches on to things that are important to you.

And so you may have different themes come up, either when you’re pregnant or after you have your baby. And if you start to have, you know, obsessions about harming them, Those types of things, that may be part of your OCD that you might need to get help for. How did you handle that anxiety? I mean, obviously, you felt like, okay, you know, you wanted your baby to make it through the NICU and be okay at home.

I know, like for me, I didn’t realize how still babies can be when they’re sleeping. I know I definitely did a lot of like breathing checks and was a little worried about SIDS, not to an extreme level, but I definitely was like, is she still breathing? Like, oh my goodness. She’s been like, so still she has not moved.

Julie: Yeah. I think what helped me with the anxiety is that actually, this is the same doctor when my baby was in NICU. She came and found me and pulled me aside one day and she. It doesn’t feel like this is a good thing, right? She says, but you know, your baby’s gonna be fine. And she said, you did everything right during this pregnancy.

I was like, of course, she would say that because, you know, she’s the one that delivered this baby, but she’d been with me through two other pregnancies. This pregnancy was more challenging and she’s like, we did everything, right? This is not your fault, which I needed to hear from that professional. Yeah.

And then she told me, you know, that this baby will be right. Be okay in the ni. Your number one focus she said is to sleep. She said “I want you to heal because you’ve had, again, this traumatic experience of giving birth, I need you to heal and Trust NICU will take care of your baby.”  And she said, “You will actually feel so much better”

And I really wish that we had more professionals like this doctor that actually were the ones that cared about us as patients. Not only to be able to say, yeah, this sucks. This is hard. This is not what you signed up for, but it will be okay. And here is what you need to do in the process. I did. I cried every single day when I had to leave the hospital, but my husband was so good cuz she also pulled my husband aside and said, you make sure she sleeps.

And so I would get home and that was my job was to just go sleep. He took care of the other two and he’s like, you just go take a nap. You just go to sleep and then we will get there as early as you need in the morning. And during the day I would have all the anxiety that’d be like are my other two.

Okay. And I lived an hour from the hospital as well. So it was like all those things compound. I just remember, as soon as I could bring her home, I was grateful that I’d had the rest because I knew mm-hmm it was like a blessing in disguise where I was able to get this rest where I could heal from giving birth.

And then I was able to bring this baby home and then I was able to know that she was okay and she could breathe. And it was fine. It was interesting though because she had one episode where I think like, I felt like she struggled. And that’s when my anxiety was like, came back in full force. And when I recognized it, I didn’t say, “Oh, Julie, just sweep it on, it’s fine.”

I allowed myself to say, of course, I’m anxious. Of course, this is difficult. And I allowed myself to say, it’s okay. And I cried. And I just, I allowed that. I think sometimes we are so used to just. Pushing through and being strong that you have to be okay to allow yourself to just cry, to allow yourself to feel that.

And there are, some other things that I did, if any of your listeners are familiar with tapping? I did a version of tapping for myself at that time. Okay. I also did some guided imagery just for my myself to kind of find my places that helped me. And those were things that helped a lot. And then it’s interesting.

So my baby isn’t such a baby anymore, cuz she’s seven. And I noticed that this summer my anxiety seemed to spike. It was like, I was worried about my kids, worried about something happening to them, worried like all of those. And it was interesting how I could recognize, of course I’m anxious because I’m worried and I love these children and it’s okay that I’m anxious about them and it’s okay that I then do something with it.

So I. Never ever tell yourself that my anxiety, my depression, my OCD is a problem is wrong. Like it hurts because it doesn’t it’s normal. It’s absolutely just a part. And it is okay to be anxious. It’s okay. To be depressed. It’s okay to have O C, D it’s okay. To tell yourself I have me. I’m alright. And then to be able to say, this is what I’m gonna do with it.

This is what this means. This is how I handle it. And what that may look like for you definitely is very different per person, but that’s, for me, that was the best thing you to be able to say. Of course, I’m anxious and it’s okay. That I’m this way as well.

Carrie: Yeah, it is. Okay. that you feel a certain way and so normal and so understandable.

A lot of times, like when we really look at the situation that we’re going through, it’s like, yeah, this makes sense. you know, that you’d feel that way. One question I like to ask people towards the end of the podcast is what would you say to your younger self who is going through postpartum depression, and postpartum anxiety?

Julie: I’d wanted to know that one, this was completely normal, even though we have those, you know, one in seven we’ll have postpartum about 50 to 75% will experience some sort of baby blues. So that’s definitely more than half. All of us will experience those feelings. Not only is that normal, but it’s also a sign that everything has gone.

Right. And I wish that I had told my younger self that even though the pregnancy felt like none of it went right. The delivery, none of it went right. Like nothing happened the way that it was supposed to happen. Everything went right. And that it was okay for me to take a step back. It was okay for me to not have to do it all.

It was okay for me to acknowledge that this could be somebody else’s response. Or something else somebody else could help me with. I didn’t have to do it all. And I think that would’ve been the advice I wish that I had gotten then. Yeah. Good.

Carrie: Thank you so much for sharing your personal story and your professional experience with postpartum depression, and anxiety.

I think this is hopefully gonna be a really helpful show for people.

Julie: Thank you. I love talking about this. So I’m hoping that this will help others as.

 I really feel like this is one of those. You are not alone type episodes. And I love it. If you are struggling with postpartum depression or anxiety, please reach out and get the help that you need. Whether that’s medication therapy, support group, friends, spiritual counsel, whatever that is, just make sure that you reach out and get the help that you need. If you like this episode or found benefit from it, let us know. You can always contact us on hope for anxiety and ocd.com. There’s a contact form at the bottom of the front page of our website.

Thank you so much for listening. Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.  opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling.

Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

62. Connecting with God Through The Psalms with Courtney Reissig

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 62. Connecting with God Through The Psalms with Courtney Reissig

Courtney Reissig, a mom, author and speaker is joining me on the show today to share how God used the Psalms to prepare her for a traumatic and life-threatening pregnancy experience.

  • How Courtney started diving into the Psalms
  • Psalms as the language of the realities of life 
  • How Courtney processed her emotions 
  • How she worked through her trauma and what she learned from it
  • How to use the Psalms in prayer 
  • Courtney’s Book, Teach Me How to Feel 

Related links and resources

http://courtneyreissig.com/

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 62. I am your host Carrie Bock. And today, I am joined on the show by Courtney Reissig, author of Teach Me How to Feel. She’s written other books as well.

We were talking about using the Psalms in our spiritual journey without using the Psalms to connect with God and in prayer and meditation. So I’m really looking forward to this conversation. 

Courtney, I know that you had a difficult experience that was traumatic for you and prompted you really to dive in, and study the Psalms, in more detail. Can you tell us about that?

Courtney: I had a traumatic delivery with my last son,  and it was actually like a medical crisis, but I actually started diving into the Psalms about six months before that, and was truly interested in them and how they fit together and how,  as I learned more about them, I realized the Psalms was giving us language for the realities of life.

It was so interesting at the time. But I didn’t know, that the Lord was using to preparing for what was to come. And so, I had spent that six months diving into the Psalms. And then when I was 33 weeks pregnant, I had a placenta abruption, which is the  Medical crisis full abruption is sudden death for the mom and the baby, but mine was partial.

And so I was admitted to the hospital for three weeks as we waited for either to stop or for him to be needed to be delivered. Really, what happened to me. And that time was kind  of hospital  bed rest  is really , really traumatic.  I felt like everyday with a life or death situation   with whether or not I was going to have to deliver him, whether we be okay. On those days, I couldn’t read anything. I couldn’t read the magazine people brought me, I couldn’t really watch TV, but I could read the Psalms.

And I spent so much time in the Psalms in those days, reading and processing and journaling about them. It’s not for I really start that I’m using the Psalmus. You’re not the first person who had walked through something that was life or death. And the Lord really met me there and showed me that He understood my frame and understood my struggle and was giving me language for what was going on.

Carrie: Yeah, So did you feel like, even though you could really describe like what you were feeling exactly. It was almost like when you opened up the Psalms, it, it really was like, oh yeah.

That’s, how I’m feeling right now. 

Courtney: Yes. Oh yes. I mean, there are so many songs where I opened them up and was like, yes, that’s how I feel. I feel as though God has forgotten me. I struggled a lot and actually after he was born kind of that. And I struggled with guilt over that because, I lived and I had the best-case scenario, but I still had all of that trauma that I had to work through. 

And even then I had a lot of darkness and postpartum depression. And even in that, the Psalms really helped me see that I was not the first person who had felt darkness or felt like God’s hand was against me or felt like I had sorrows in my heart all day or anxiety in my heart all day. So it really did give me words when I didn’t have other words for what we know.

Carrie: Um,  that’s good. How did you process those emotions as they came up? Just, you know, feeling like God had forgotten you or maybe other concerns that you had, you know, sadness, anger, fear?

Courtney: Yeah. It’s really understand talking to your friend about how kind I processed it at night. And I, it took me a long time to realize that I’m an internal processor. And so a lot of people didn’t know that I was struggling for a really long time until like six months after he was born. I had shared that I was really struggling. I think for me, I just had to really work through my own thoughts in my own head.

And through writing, primarily for me is just a big way for me to internally process what’s going on, that was a big thing for me. I find that when I’m deeply, deeply struggling, that I’ve got to write to get it all out before I can never talk about somebody else, which I’m a natural born talker, which so people don’t think that that’s how I process.

They usually think that I brought those through talking about it. Cause everything, but when I’m really, really struggling, I work it through with writing and then reading. I didn’t have a lot of quiet moments. It was my fourth son by the time this happened. I had four children, four and under,  there were no quiet moments.

My husband was really gracious and gives me time to process. And I will say too, I eventually did go to therapy and that was really helpful. I needed someone else  outside of myself and outside of my circumstances to really kind of help me work through what we had walked through. And I still remember I canceled number of times that I had a really good friend who finally was like, I’m going to come watch your kids and you’re going to make that appointment.

Carrie: You thought, I don’t have time for this, or you were avoiding it because you knew it’d be uncomfortable to talk about?

Courtney:  I think I knew I needed it. Like, I think I knew like deep down that I really needed just to like an hour, a week to sit and process. And I was gonna have that unless someone had given me that time.

Yeah. I think I was just like, I didn’t have the time. I just didn’t have the time or the energy. It seemed impossible to me. Yeah. 

Carrie: Yeah. That was just really loving what your friend did to just kind of step in and say, They all l take care of your kids so that you can go take care of you.

Courtney: Right, and I think sometimes we’re afraid, I  think as moms, maybe it’s women in general to kind of say I’m willing to do that, it feels too self-focused and we are kind of conditioned to be like, we’re always dying to self and I think we’re supposed to die to self. Because  Christ, I just like drive to himself.

Carrie: Right.

Courtney: But we are also not God, you need help sometimes. And so, sometimes the most self-sacrificing that you can do is to help and you can help  others. And I think, that’s what my friend saw in me is that I needed that so that I could serve and the way I was called to serve.

Carrie:  I know some people, when they go through trauma and then they get to the end of experience, they’re like, okay, it’s over. I lived, I should be fine. Like, I shouldn’t be having those residual effects. Like, did you understand that it was. The trauma that was impacting maybe emotional experiences that you were having, or was it kind of like you learned some of that later? Like after the fact? 

Courtney: Yeah, that’s a really good question. Cause I don’t think I understood that fully in the moment. And it’s been helpful since I’ve come to realize that I have that  It’s helped me love my kids well through it, I had a few people in my life who understood enough of what we had walked through and had lived long enough to say,

Carrie: You’re going to have to be working through this for a while.

Courtney: It took me a while, like a few years to realize that there were these things that would happen. And I wouldn’t understand why I would all be dealing with it again, even it was in my mind seemed to be kind of unrelated. It’s only been as I’ve learned that I’ve learned part of the process of working through trauma is that eventually, I think hindsight now allows me to say, oh, I was not in a good place then, because that  I’m in a better place now. 

Carrie: Sure.

Courtney: Yeah, I don’t think I fully understood in that moment, but I’ve walked through the trauma scene. Then, so I was diagnosed with cervical cancer during  COVID.

Carrie: Wow!

Courtney: Yeah,  and I was really, really unexpected. All the markers to catch it, just kind of fell through the cracks for me. And, um, so I had radical hysterectomy really quickly because I had walked through the trauma with Ben. It didn’t make it easier and didn’t make it less traumatic, but it did make me more aware of what I was going to need to process what had happened. And the healing emotionally from that was better the second time around versus I just felt like I was blindsided by what happened with him.

Carrie: Right, right. Yeah. It’s interesting. Because so many times when we’re in survival mode, we are not aware that we’re in survival mode. We’re just kind of making the next day happen. Like, I’ve, you know, in your situation, it’s like, I got four kids and somebody is going to feed them. 

Courtney: Right. And you don’t realize that you’re like deeply not okay. Like, you’re like a hair trigger away from like blowing up. And I’m thankful that the Lord brought me through it and then allowed me to give me some clarity to see so that I’m aware. I mean, trauma happens all throughout our lives. 

Carrie: Sure

Courtney: And so I’m not naive enough to think it won’t happen again, but.

Carrie: What guidance, like you can give us on using the Psalms in our day-to-day prayer and devotional life? 

Courtney: I’ve used them all different ways. Right now, my life, I’ve been really convicted over the last year that my prayer life is really lacking, it’s always been, like more of a struggle in my own life to just find, to be purposeful in prayer. But so many of the Psalms are prayers and written as prayers

Carrie: Yeah.

Courtney: And so one of the things I’ve done over the last year has been to pray the Psalms and just pray them based on whatever’s going on in the lives of the people. I’m praying for at the time or my own life.

I think that’s one way to use them is to use them as prayers. Many of them are prayers.  I think another way to use them, is to read them when life is hard and read them to find familiar friends who also understand that life is hard. You know, I read them a lot when I was writing the book, I write them a lot.

When I was walking through this trauma, I read them a lot when COVID first started, because everything felt so uncertain and crazy. And I have found in every one of those seasons that the Psalms get the human experience. I think I’ve heard a Tim Keller, wouldn’t say. That part of his devotional reading is he reads, a Psalms everyday  because we’re always walking through something that the Psalms understand because God is the author of the Psalms and he understands us. And so I think for anyone, it’s a really helpful tool. And seeing that we have a God who sees no matter what we’re walking through.

Carrie:  Yeah, Just sense of relate-ability that we have to. I mean, it’s the human experience. It’s anger, it’s sadness. It’s uncertainty. It’s fear. And for me, I think it opens up and gives us permission to have a messy prayer life.

Courtney:  Yes,  absolutely. 

Carrie:  So just say, this is how I feel and it’s messy right now and I don’t care what’s going on in my life. Like it’s crazy. 

Courtney: .Right,  and I think sometimes we’re afraid just to be like that because we, depending on, like our theological tradition, we are so prone to wanting to have it all put together and to sound like we’re trusting the Lord and that everything’s going okay. And I think that’s the reality of the Psalms is that they’re not afraid of the struggles. And they kind of reorient us to acknowledge that.

Carrie: Hmm.

Courtney: Stop pretending that everything’s perfect and that we’re able to respond rightly to everything at all. Any given time.

Carrie: Yeah, the, we don’t have to have polished prayers all the time.

Carrie: Right? Yeah. I love that. Tell us about your book. Uh, “Teach me how to feel?”

Courtney: Yes, that book was born out of our experience with Ben and it kind of takes us through 24 different Psalms and walks through how the Psalmus experiences, the feeling, and then how this almost experiences God. There’s also a study guide that goes along with it to kind of help you add more depth to it.

If you’re trying to really kind of work through the Psalms, but the heart behind it was that a person who is walking through something could take any, could open up and look at any emotion that they’re feeling at any given time and find language for their struggle. There are short chapters. They’re designed for, like, if you’re walking through struggle, you need something 

short and accessible.

There are a variety of feelings. There are happy ones like joy and forgiving and different ones like that. And so it’s not all sad songs, but it’s really intended to show you the breadth of the songs and the breadth of how God gives us language and the different struggles and joys and sorrows of life.

Carrie: Hmm. Good. How can people get in touch with you if they want to kind of find out more information?

Courtney:  About the book? 

Carrie: Yeah. Or just if they want to get in touch with you, um, do you do speaking engagements sometimes or? 

Courtney: Yeah, I do. Um, I don’t do them as much as I used to, so COVID really slowed down what ended up speaking that I did. And then, um, it kind of gave us, like a little bit of a reset. Is this what we want for our season of life right now? 

And so, I don’t accept a lot of speaking engagements throughout the year. I accept maybe like one or two outside of Arkansas where I live, and I’m also on staff at my church recently. So that takes up a fair amount of my time.

And I have a website that I. Should I update more than I do Courtneyreissig.com, but I feel an urge to write something. I primarily put it on Instagram, so it’s just my name. Courtney Reissig.

Carrie: Okay. Awesome. So when you were struggling, if you could go back in time, like what encouragement or hope would you provide to your younger self?

Courtney: Hmm. That’s a really good question. So I would provide, to my younger self, I would say trust the long game. That’s kind of the thing that I would tell younger Courtney, is that what seems like an impossible thing right now, it seems like God’s not going to work that out for you right now. God plays the long game in life.

And so it’s kind of the message of someone, where the one who meditates on God’s word day and night is like a tree planted by streams of water. And what we know about trees is that they don’t grow overnight and transformation doesn’t happen overnight. 

And so the life spent in the world. And what life spent trusting in the word made flesh Christ is one that grows over lifetime. And so that means that there are seasons like summer where everything is going really well and the trees in full bloom, and then their seasons, like winter, where it seems like nothing’s happening. 

And I think I spent a lot of time in my younger, in my twenties and towards the end of my thirties now. So most of my thirties, not trusting the long game, not trusting that God was working, that God had a long-term purpose in view when He was working in my life or not doing anyone else.

I think it’s probably the greatest struggle of these younger people, in general, is we’re so instantaneous and that’s not how God works. 

Carrie: Yeah, I think that’s so good. Just to have a little bit more for ourselves of an eternal perspective. What God’s doing right now, you know, we may not see the fruits of it for many years. Something that we’re investing in, you know, you could be investing in kids or teenagers and you may not see the fruit of the day to day what’s you’re doing until many years down the road, you know, or the difficulty that God’s bringing you through right now is the difficulty that you’re going to be helping somebody else walk through and 10 years. Right?

Courtney: Right, right. I mean, there’s in our own life. We’ve seen in just the last few months, an answer to prayer that we’ve prayed for 10 years. 

Carrie: Wow!

Courtney: And I mean, that’s just a long time. And to be honest, like there’s, there was like whole years where I stopped praying for it, you know, because I just don’t think it was going to happen.

So I think that it’s the benefit of getting older is you get to see God work over the long haul that you don’t see when you’re younger. 

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. That’s good. Hopefully that encourages some, some younger people out there that are wondering why something isn’t happening right now.

Courtney: Right. Yeah.

Carrie:  Well, Courtney, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to talk with us about these things. And I hope it expands and encourages people’s prayer and devotional life, or if they’re going through a hard time to really just dig into the Psalms and see what God is going to show them and teach them through that.

Courtney: Well. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: I really hope you enjoy this episode on the Psalms. In a couple of weeks we have a really powerful interview about forgiveness that I wanted to share with you. So, if you’re struggling with forgiving someone in your life. You may wanna  tune in, in a couple of weeks to that episode. 

Just a friendly reminder that we have a couple different products on our website for sale. We do have some t-shirts. If you want to share the news and share your excitement about Hope for Anxiety and OCD. We also have an e-book on finding the counselor who is right for you. If either of those things are an interest to you upon over to Hope for Anxiety and OCD.com.

My assistant and I are also working on putting together a  facebook group which will be an encouraging, supportive, positive place for hopefully to be able to connect with us and other listeners. But definitely be on the lookout for that.

58. Using Humor for Anxiety with Sporty King

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 58. Using Humor for Anxiety with Sporty King

Today’s special is a certified humor professional, certified stress mastery educator,  master listener and author, Sporty King. Sporty talks about using humor as a coping tool for anxiety and other mental health issues.

  • Laughter is a part of humor but not a requirement. 
  • Sporty’s view on these two different extremes: people may take themselves too seriously or they may make everything a joke.
  • How Sporty became a master listener at the same time a public speaker
  • The healing power of laughter and the study of healthy humor
  • Helpful advice for those who mask their feelings with humor
  • How Sporty use humor to help people master their stress and anxiety
  • Does God have a sense of humor?

Related Links and Resources
 
Sporty King 

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript pf Episode 58

Carrie: Welcome to Hope For Anxiety and OCD. I’m your host Carrie Bock. And today on the show, we are talking with Sporty King, who is a Master Listener, Stress Master Educator, and Certified Humor Professional to talk with us about humor. I did not know prior to meeting Sporty that you could be a certified humor professional, but I find this very interesting and intriguing. And I think we’re going to get into a great conversation today. Even though you’re a public speaker, why would you say that you’re a master listener? That seems like a contradiction a little bit there. 

Sporty: Great and say that’s part of the beauty of life and humor is the contradictions. Listening is actually the number one communication skill.

So what happens is, we tend to hear people say that they’re motivational speakers, you know, they’re speakers, but the truth is you have to listen when you speak, you should be sharing. And so you share the information that went in and you’ll see then, later on I taught her some things that will really show you why I call myself the master of listening.

And, the reason I also came up with that moniker is instead of saying, I’m a master, a master of ceremonies, I’m a master of listening. I will listen throughout in a conference for instance, awards,  a banquet or whatever. And I listen to the things that people say, and then I do what I collect the words and then at the end, I will actually create a poem on the spot that grabs the spirit of what went on in that tribute or the conference as well. And so that’s why , another reason I call, the master of listening.

Carrie: Wow. That’s impressive. Poems on the spot. Awesome. You told me that laughter is a part of humor, but not a requirement. So tell us more about that. 

Sporty: Yeah, you see, humor is actually the quality that makes something amusing or laughable, whereas laughter is actually the biological reaction. So laughter is that outward expression of humor. So, you know, it’s just like we hear people say I got a good sense of humor. You can have a sense of humor and not actually not laugh, at all. Gosh, let me tell you this last batch that I just had earlier in my speaking business, a disease called R R F D

Carrie: Ok? 

Sporty: And it stands for reflex dystrophy or  Reflex, Dystrophy, Sympathy, RDS. And so I’m speaking to this group as I’m talking and I’m laughing and I’m talking. And about 10 minutes into the presentation, one of the persons in front of us said, “ Sporty”  because no one laughed while I’m talking.

And she said, “ I just want you to know that we are really enjoying you. But this disease is a cross between cancer and arthritis and actually laughing is painful sometimes.”  So it gives you another look at, when people talk about being speakers, we got to reach your audience and go with their moods. You can’t always do that because you don’t know, you know, someone who you think is looking stoic or uninterested may be the most involved, engaged person in your audience. But you don’t know whether to have a disease or what type of trauma they’re going through in their life that they are thinking about, so they, you know, say may not be responding the way you want them to.

So that’s just, you know, one of the early lessons I got in my speaking career, and I love it. 

Carrie: Somebody took a nap one time while I was speaking at a conference and I just figured that they really needed that nap at that time . I tried not to take any offense to it, but I was like, “ Man, this is rough here.” I wasn’t even after lunch or anything.

Sporty: See? Because that laugh at large you see from speaking after lunch, I’ll open the session by saying, “ Welcome to sleep therapy.” 

Carrie: Yeah 

Sporty: But, but yeah, maybe your voice was so calming that that allowed them to get that rest that they need. 

Carrie: There you go.

Sporty: Again, switching, switching things up.

Carrie: Yeah. One of the reasons that I wanted to talk about humor on a show that has to do with anxiety, is because I know somebody who’s tuning in right now going, “ Why in the world are they even talking about this on the anxiety show here?”

But I noticed that if people aren’t careful that they struggle with anxiety, they can really fall into two different traps. And one is, they may take themselves too seriously and they have a hard time just finding that sense of humor and maybe making light of some things that happen in our lives. I think that’s a skill that we all have to kind of develop to, I don’t know how to stay sane and get through some difficulties. But then on the other trap, they may make everything a joke and just kind of joke their way through life and avoid really diving into some of those difficult feelings they might actually need to feel. I’m curious about, you know, your thoughts on those two different extremes.

Sporty: So let’s jump right on that word you use twice, feelings. Say because the key is no emotion is wrong. And sometimes we have to recognize how you feel.  You should feel nervous . You should feel anxious.  You should feel excited. You should feel great. You should feel sad. No emotion is wrong. But the key is how do we choose to then deal with the emotion?

Like you say, “ I’m not taking myself too seriously?”  or “ Am I hiding how I feel with jokes?” I see anxiety and excitement as fraternal twins. We both recreate a reaction in the body of what’s about to come and how I’m going to perform. “ Am I being judged because we’re judging ourselves?”  All of that is there. We can just as quickly make it trivial, but the same way you say, “ Oh my God, I don’t think I’m going to do well. I’m feeling scared. I’m nervous.”  We can just as easily say, “ Man, I’m excited. I’m about to do a great job and make a difference in people’s lives.”  The brain doesn’t say, “ Oh, Siri here. That’s correct. That you’re nervous. You’re scared. Now the brain goes with what you are telling. Sometimes, like I said, it’s not necessarily going to be easy, but it’s a commitment. And so, if I’m taking myself too seriously, the key becomes the world throws around and that is truth, truth, and trust. You know, you’ve got to  be honest with yourself because sometimes , the people who take themselves too seriously, I think it is because they, they won’t let anybody else in who will say to them,  “ Hey, look, you’re doing this.” And then therefore now to  have a chance to correct it. 

Carrie: And sometimes humor, you know, requires a certain level of vulnerability because you don’t know, like, is the other person going to find this funny? Are they going to get it? Or they, you know, sometimes you’re dancing on that line of, they’re  going to be offended by the joke I just made or something of that nature too.

Sporty: Yeah, I’m a member of a, you mentioned my CHP, is it Certified Humor Professional. I’m a member of an organization called A  A T H and it’s just the “ Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor.”  We believe in the healing power of laughter, but also in the study of healthy humor . So say, you know, when you’re wondering, “ How is someone going to  react to this?” Well, flip that coin and , “ How am I going to deliver this?” 

Carrie: That’s good. So for people who use humor to like, hide their feelings, do you have any ideas or recommendations about how they might start to shift to that a little bit?

Sporty: It’s funny because I think when we, even, when we think about that humor style for most people, young and old, I think even a lot of young people know Rodney Dangerfield. And that was his style, just totally self-deprecating humor. You know, it’s funny when you have to figure out,

 “ Does he really feel that bad about himself or is he aware that sometimes the humor actually can trivialize and cut that anxiety down, make the anxiety? ”  No, you don’t have the best of me,  master of listening.

I’d like to use the English language and massage it. Right? So ,Hope as the name of your show. I hope it’s one of my, I call them my act formations because their acronyms,  that are affirmations  and my act formation for hope is, “ Having OverPowered Evil” . So therefore if you get into that state where you are, that to me, that’s how you can laugh in anxiety’s face.

“ Oh no, you can’t beat me.” See, we can beat. If our problems just popped up one at a time, we have no problem. We can beat them one at a time. 

Carrie: Sure, sure. That makes sense.

Sporty:  Yeah, the challenge is when they come in DRO and then we think that we can’t. And so now we backed out. I actually, I know I want to round the field on that, but I take that back to where I’m saying a person, who’s making a joke.

That could be a way of standing up to their anxiety and saying, “ You know what? Hey, I’m not going to take it that seriously. I am going to get through this and see things come out in a positive vein for myself.”

Carrie: I know sometimes when you look back on a situation, not when you’re in the middle of it and you’re anxious and you’re in the middle of it and you’re worried and you’re anxious.

It feels so real. And like, it feels like that bad thing really is going to happen. But sometimes after you’ve had some time and distance from it and the bad thing didn’t happen, you can look back and it can be funny. It’s like, “ Oh wow! I can’t believe I was so worried . I was so convinced that that thing was going to happen and actually it just never happened. “

Sporty: Self-fulfilling prophecies. When we decide bad it’s going to happen. We just need to wait for it to catch up. Even if you think, look at comedians, the best jokes are the truths. They don’t make a lot of those things up. 

Carrie: Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. You are also working with people who are, uh, you know, coming back from deployments or are getting ready to go on a deployment with the military. And that’s some of where you use the stress mastery education. I’m curious, how do you help people use humor to help master their stress?

Sporty:  My form of using it is similar to what I, what I did with the HOPE thing. I call it controlling your vocabulary, rather than allowing your vocabulary to control you. See ,if we can put all of the stuff together that I talked about, the AATH, stress mastery that the act formation controls your vocabulary. And if you decide that I’m going to have a positive vocabulary, it actually helps you again, because your brain is going to go with whatever you say and you tell your brain,  “ Hey, we’re in a great situation right here. We’re not anxious and nervous. We’re excited.” And in fact, one of the biggest examples, people are afraid of public speaking. They get up there and they say, “ Oh my God! What if I screw up?”And you know, “ What, if I knocked my notes over?”,  you know? So they come up with all of these reasons and no one’s going to pay attention and you could just as easily. And again, I used the word easily, but I never ever realized. You can say, “ Man, when I get up here and I start talking, I am going to knock the shoes off of these people.”

Okay. So you can, I saw this on TV. So now all I have to do is be the hero that I saw giving this speech on TV because you’ve been asked to speak. So sometimes we erase the gift in favor of the challenge. And so you’ve been asked to speak that that was a gift to you instead of you accepting what has been given to you, you decide, but I’m not the right one.

Hey,  sounds like,  “ Bows this to me, you know?” ,  I mean. 

Carrie: Not me. I don’t think I can do this task. Yeah. I mean, that leads into my next question, which is, “ Do you believe God has a sense of humor?” 

Sporty: Absolutely do. And I think that if you believe in God, think you kind of have to, because if you believe in what’s, the premise of, of us is that we’re made in God’s image.

So if we are made in God’s image, we have the characteristics of God. Therefore, our sense of humor is a characteristic of God’s . We are the living sense of humor of God. 

Carrie: Yeah. That’s awesome. Absolutely.

Sporty:  I’ll check with Him on that by the way. 

Carrie: You’ll, you’ll ask Him. We had a funny experience in our household this week, actually. We sat down to pray at the dinner table and my husband’s no sooner as he gets,  “ Dear God”, out. Then we started to hear this music and it’s like, uh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. And we’re like, “ What in the world is that?” The ice cream truck was passing by like right at the time where he goes to pray. And it was like trying to pray the pop goes the weasel ,  just doesn’t doesn’t quite seem right. But it was just so funny, the timing of that happening, and we very rarely get ice cream trucks that pass by here. So at first we didn’t quite even know what it was. Like, “ What is that noise? And we just started laughing at the table. It was good. I know that there have probably been times in your life. Has there been a time where you.

Look at something and maybe you said, “ No, I’m not going to do that.”  Or, you know, “ I don’t really think that’s what I should be doing.”  And then next thing you know, God like,  somehow leads you in that direction in some kind of roundabout way. And you ended up doing that thing that you didn’t think you were going to be doing?

Sporty: Uh, there’s a novel, right? One of, even first, which is talking about prayer, I would like to connect that to humor. One of the things like, for instance, I was a master of listening at an event , that was a fundraiser and they asked me to do the invocation. That was on the board and this way back, and I was known for my zaniness.

So I get up to the mic and I say, “ God, It’s me again, Sporty and my board members held their breakfast like, “ What is he doing?” And I said, “ And I’m glad to say I’m in a room full of other people who, you know, by first name. And see? So there is humor that does not require this crack up laughter. God, again, God has a sense of humor. So you, you don’t always have,  I don’t believe you always have to have this big reverent prayer to God, as much as you have to talk to God. And let him know that, you know how you feel because He knows.

Carrie: Sure. Absolutely.

Sporty: Pop goes the weasel. Okay. We’ll pass the potatoes and share the gravy. Make sure you pray first. 

Carrie: That was pretty good. 

Sporty: There it is. As these things happen in our lives, you’ve got to see the funny. You don’t always have to be funny to see the funny,

Carrie: Yeah. 

Sporty: So, even as you’re talking about the one thing, I mean, God, like I said, there’s a million things that I said I wouldn’t do. In fact, one of them, I’m doing one of them right now.

And that is, I live in Charlotte. I’m a native New York. I worked in corporate America, 18 years. I worked at the Wall Street Journal. I started as a messenger and when I retired, I was an advertising sales manager. But the reason I say that is because while I was there, I said to myself, “ I’ll never leave the Wall Street Journal.”

Carrie: Yeah. I am gonna retire here. 

Sporty: Yeah. And, “I’ll never leave New York. “ Well, they transferred me from New York to Maryland. When they promoted me to a sales rep, then they transferred me  from Maryland to Chicago when they promoted me as a sales manager. And then when I retired and decided to be an entrepreneur, I moved myself to Charlotte.

But somebody, even when I first relocated from New York to Maryland, my boss was so surprised that I was even interested in the position when it was open, when I went in to him and  he was like, “  Really? You would leave New York?”

Carrie: That’s funny. 

Sporty: So that may not be a huge example, but in all of that, what is also where at that time, when I started to journal, I didn’t have a great sense of spirituality to myself. I was just living the way I once lived.  I wasn’t reckless on anything, you know, but I didn’t really connect. And I think this is sometimes a challenge for people. I didn’t really connect to my spirituality ‘til about 38 years old. And where I, like we talked about earlier in retrospect, when, when I was in Maryland, North Carolina was my sales territory and I stood on a corner in Charlotte and I said, “ I like it here. I think I’ll move here one day.”  25 years later, is actually when I moved here, but I had that conversation with myself in 1985 and then it was, so I must’ve been probably  20, 28. And then, because it was when I was 38, that I was able to look back and see that that was my first conscious conversation with God.

And even when I moved to Charlotte in 2010, people said, “ Goodness, you took 25 years? “  I said , “ No, I use 25.” And again, just change…

Carrie: Changing the words. Yeah. 

Sporty: Now you look at it. 

Carrie: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s awesome. I know I was just batting around some different ideas with one of the counselors in our office one day. And we were talking about, I said, “ You know, I want to do a little bit more than therapy.”  I’m enjoying what I’m doing, but I think I just needed a challenge. I needed something like kind of to keep me more fresh and new. I said, “ Maybe I’ll write a workbook, you know, for people with anxiety or maybe I’ll work on some self-help type stuff, as well. “ Why don’t you start a podcast? And I was like, “ A podcast, like what?” And I was like, “ No.”  I was like, “ I just, I don’t know what I would talk about if I started a podcast.”  And now we’re over 50 episodes in. So I guess I didn’t run out of things to talk about. But I look back on that and I think that’s God’s sense of humor. Like God knew that I was going to end up taking this path and falling along here. And I’ve enjoyed it so much.I enjoy meeting people and talking with them and having all kinds of great conversations. And I learned a lot and other people learned a lot too. So it enriches me and enriches other people.

Sporty: Do it so smoothly. I mean, I love how things reconnect. It takes us right back to what we talked about, where you have to accept again.Rather than look at it as you know. Oh no, I’m not going to write a podcast. Excuse me, Carrie.  I’d like you to write a podcast.

Carrie: And sometimes people see things in you. Like we need those other people outside of ourselves to speak the positive things into our life or the gifts that they see that God has given us.

We’ve talked about this on the show before, but it’s like, it’s important to like, for us to be in community with people who are able to kind of call some of that out sometimes and say, “ Hey, you know, I see this in you. Have you ever thought about that? “  I mean,  that in itself is a blessing for sure. 

Sporty: Yeah. And you know, it takes me back to what we were saying about anxiety, people taking themselves too seriously. How I help people deal with stress. One of the main things, other than telling them, you know, control your vocabulary, do not compare yourself to someone else. 

Carrie: That’s huge.  Very huge. Nothing will rob you of your joy and peace and all of that more than comparing yourself to other people. I really believe that.  Everyone is on their own journey and their own path. And unfortunately, I think someone said this and I don’t remember who it was, but it’s like, “ We used to only compare ourselves to the people that we knew, the people that were around us and in our inner circle.” And now we can compare ourselves to anybody in the world. We just get online, get on social media. And it’s rough, it’s hard.

Sporty: In fact, even with my New York roots, one of the ways that I keep myself grounded, crazy things go on and I will say, “ You know what? This has been going on all along. We didn’t know it.”

Technology has, this is a part of, this is what technology did.  Put new stress and anxiety into our life because now we have more information that we didn’t have before. So that whole thing of a simple life that’s gone 

Carrie: You’re Amish.

Sporty: Yeah. There’s a joke that you cannot or can make . Is it a striking joke?  It’s not. It’s one of those, they are proud of what they do. And I say, Therefore. Yeah, that’s right. That’s the thing. And, I didn’t know what was going on in California, so I didn’t have to care about it. And so now, like you say, you’re on all this technology and you’re modeling yourself out of somebody who you don’t even know their real, true persona, because who they’re showing you on the screen may totally be the opposite of who they are.

Carrie: Right.

Sporty: One of my favorites when I do my presentations and I’m talking about stress, cause I always say, if you don’t like the way things are changed, the way you look at them. And I open that with a slide that shows a jail cell and empty jail cell and the caption is she met him on the internet. He said “ He lived in a closed community.”

Carrie : Oh my goodness. That’s a closed community. Maybe not what you thought. Tell us how people can find you and get in touch with you. 

Sporty: Sportyking.com. It has all of my connections to all of the social media.  I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, “ Fussbook” . That’s what I call a Facebook because everybody’s just complaining. 

Carrie: My dad has come to call it,  “ Face lift” ,  and he’s not on there, but that’s what he likes to call it is facelift. I don’t know why. 

Sporty : But also, I might say, at Sportyking.com, I do three audio broadcasts a week. So similar to you. It’s a podcast. Well, Monday I do a quick 2-minute Inspirational message.  Wednesdays,  I do one of my Wednesday messages is called GLUE Wednesday, and my glue is G L U E. God’s Love Undoes Everything where I’ll, I’ll talk about how we have to recognize that Wednesday is not hump day.

Wednesday is actually the middle of a traditional seven-day week that keeps things together. So we don’t need to honk. We don’t need to get over it. We need to find ways to keep it together. So again, just playing on words and bringing the calm. And then Friday, I call it a GIFT Friday and gift,  G I F T , to God Is For Today.

You know, because everybody says,  T G I F but I, I say, well, “ TGIT, Thank God is Today.”  And , “ Thank God Is Tonight.” Let’s make sure that we recognize that God is for today. Do you know what you took when you talked about it  earlier about how, when you’re going through something and you’re in the middle, poetry is how I started my speaking business.

And I wrote a poem called, “ How far is the middle?” Because see, we don’t really know when we’re in the middle, because we don’t know when that situation starts and or when it’s going to end, it’s going to end, right?

Carrie: Yeah. That’s huge.

Sporty:  So you’ll find those three broadcasts on it and people can subscribe to them.

It’s free. In fact, you don’t even have to subscribe. You just want to watch one and enjoy it. That’s fine. You have options. 

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

Sporty: That one is actually very easy for me. It’s the hope of how He has allowed me to, to handle grief. When my mother died, I was the one in the room with her to see her take her last breath. I had to turn that and I was able to turn,  flip it very easily, actually. And that’s again, that’s the gift of God.  I said, “  You know, I’m the only one in the family that could have handled this.”

Yes, I was torn apart and yes, I went through my whole crying bit and everything like that, but I had said, you know what? And my sister and I had just switched changing of the guard. Who’s turned. Was it the watcher? Uh, about an hour ago, my sister would’ve lost her mind. But I had to see that as the gift that God gave me, even though your listeners can’t see it right now, you know, I’ve got on a shirt that says faith and faith is F A I T H Feeling As If There’s Hope,  recognizing that the only thing you cannot do is give up.

And that’s what God has constantly allowed me to feed into my life and then share with other people’s lives. In fact, let me do a quick thing with you. I want you to answer me. This is a cliche. This is what I would say. Also control your vocabulary. This is a cliche and I want you to finish it. Okay. All right.

“ When one door closes…”

Carrie: Another door opens.

Sporty: Good. But now the Sporty King remix, “ When one door closes, go for the windows”

Carrie: There you go. Don’t wait for the other door to open.

Sporty: That’s right. ‘ Cause it may not be your door. And what we do is we have to recognize that, they’re using more doors than they are windows in a room.

And once you see what you have to choose from, once you make better choices in life, see that, that’s why I say the cliches. We gotta be careful of those cliches and the comparison of ourselves to someone on the other side of the world, because they’re saying things that may not apply to what’s going on in our lives.

So really be careful about that, but definitely go for the windows. You get another chance. To make one more choice because each of us does. And my closing comment is that, “ We do the bravest thing that we can do every day and that is lay our heads down and go to sleep.”  

Carrie: Yeah, that’s good. I really appreciate this conversation and I know that our listeners do too as well, so thank you for being on the show.

Sporty: Thank you so much. 

Carrie: Just a reminder, no episode next week for Christmas week, but I hope that you have an amazing Christmas holiday celebrating with family, friends, church, community. We’re going to be back the last week of December to talk about new year’s resolutions and goals. And then I have several interviews coming out in the beginning of the year that I think you’re going to enjoy.

If you would ever like to give a gift to the podcast, you can find out how to do so. In our show notes.  We have a subscription through Patreon and we also have one-time gifts that can be given through, “ Buy Me A Coffee.”  All of that money really helps to go towards editing. Our social media is assisting to support us, continuing to be able to do the show.

Thank you so much to those who have supported us.

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

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

42. Dealing with Anger in a Godly Way with Ed Snyder

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 42. Dealing with Anger in a Godly Way with Ed Snyder

Today’s special is a pastor and anger management expert, Ed Snyder.  Pastor Ed not only talks about his knowledge and insights about anger but also shares his personal experience with anger that nearly destroyed his marriage.  

  • How Pastor Ed recognized his anger problem and its root cause.
  • The turning point in his marriage that prompted him to find ways to deal with his anger.
  • Using your anger as a force for good and other anger management tips
  • The connection between anger and anxiety
  • Main triggers of anger
  • Ed Snyder’s book,  Control the Beast

Links and Resources

Ed Snyder

Control The Beast: A Guide To Managing Our Emotions
True North Podcast

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and like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/hopeforanxietyandocd for the latest updates and sneak peeks.

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 42

Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 42. I am your host Carrie Bock. And today on our show, we’re talking with Ed Snyder, who is a pastor, author and anger management expert.  I know he has his own experience with anger that he’s going to be sharing with you. And talking about incorporating spiritual principles.

Some people may wonder why are we talking about anger on a show that has to do with anxiety? Well, anger can be a complex emotion and often time runs alongside other emotions. So hang on. And if you deal with anger or know someone who does this content may be really helpful for you. 

Carrie: Ed, thanks for coming on the show and talking with us today.

Ed: Well, thank you, Carrie. It’s an honor to be here with you on your podcast. 

Carrie: When or how did you realize that anger had become a problem in your life? 

Ed: Wow, that’s been a minute ago. Well, let me start here. I was always the overweight kid. That was the bully magnet in school. So I was always getting made fun of. Speed up all that good stuff. I was quiet. You’d never tell that by knowing me now, but I was the quiet, shy type. Again. I knew I was overweight and all that good stuff. So I went through a lot of trauma there that was early on in my elementary school year. I think it was about in junior high. The is when I realized of course back then I took it as, Hey, I got some aggression here because my junior high football coach approached me and said, man, I want you on my team because of my size, you know?

And of course, I had a growth spurt at 12, so I stood six foot at 12 and husky. That’s what my mom always says. You’re just husky. So I think like a good old mom. And so it was then that I joined the football team and realize the aggression that I had pinned up inside of me. In fact, to the point that my coach handed me this weird looking pad, and he said, strap that onto the back of your hand beause I was center or nose guard. So I lined up with the center. Knocked that center out of the way and go sack the quarterbacks. And so I did because, and I was successful at it because I was angry and I didn’t identify the anger at that point so much as I identified the aggression that I had, it wasn’t after four concussions and I played in my seventh grade, my eighth-grade year and in my freshman year, I had made it to the varsity team that I realized this is a little more than just skill and aggression. This is anger because I get up, if I got tackled or knocked out of the way I got up and I was ready to beat somebody down, that’s when identified. And then, of course, after my fourth concussion, I created a brain bleed and ended up in the hospital for three months and was facing some surgery.

That’s a whole another testimony of what God did in my life, but that’s about the timeframe that I noticed the aggression and then realized what it really was, is the years of being bullied and, and the anger buildup. 

Carrie:  And being that you were playing football, was that aggression celebrated or did your coaches feel like, okay, this is a little bit too far, this is a little too much. 

Ed: Well, back then it was celebrated. It was like go after a man. That’s the way to sack them quarterbacks, you know, and all that stuff. Although I earned him a reputation among the other teams, especially locally that you’re going to have to go after Snyder because we can’t allow him to get in there.

And so they, they came a little extra hard against me because of the aggression, but it was celebrated, which didn’t help me. Sure. It kind of endorsed my vibe. Very negative behavior. 

Carrie: Okay. What was that process like later on in life when you did seek out help for the anger spiritually, mentally, emotionally.

Ed: Okay. Great question. And of course going along with my story, I was in high school then I got in my freshman year and of course, like I said, I was in the hospital three months. That  was a major interruption in my life. And that kind of made me realize, okay, you need to settle down. And I knew I had an issue because.

In my uncontrolled anger, there was two things you did not do to me. And that was hang up the phone on me or slam a door in my face. And my own mother was mad at me and, and we were having a heated conversation, but that way it was teenage rebellion that she was trying to deal with. Anyway, she slammed the door in my face and, it angered me.

And I put my fist through the wall beside the door. That’s when I’m like, this is not going well for me. So I just kinda dealt with it the only way I know how, which wasn’t much, but my turning point, Carrie was in, when I got married, I got married. I met my wife when I was. 15 and knew that’s her, that’s the girl I’m going to marry.

And my best friend Burt said, Hey dude, remember you’re only 15.

Carrie: You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You don’t have to settle down yet. 

Ed: Another neat story, but you know, we’ll stick to the subject. It wasn’t until Gail and I got married and of course I hid it because I didn’t want her to know about this.

You know, I might lose her. She’s the love of my life in our first marriage discussion. And God’s got a real good sense of humor. He put together a hard-headed German descent and Irish descent. I mean it, a red headed Irish woman, just fun. Anyway. So we made a vow when we got married that we’ll never go to bed angry at each other that we’ll get it resolved.

And of course she really didn’t know. She knew I was. Irritated quote unquote, but she didn’t realize I had this issue. And so we agreed to that. We agreed and we valid each other. We’re never going to go to bed or go to sleep angry at each other. And then also she told me, he says, look, when I get upset, Just leave me alone.

Let me go for a while. Let me cool off, which is classic textbook anger management technique is to breathe, go intellectualize the situation, come back, deal with it. You know, I’m, the type. No we’re going to deal with it now. And so for the first 10 years of my marriage, I spent chasing her around the house and stop.

We got to fix this and I’m only fueling her fire, but anyhow, in our first marital discussion, you know, she walked off or tried. And, again, slammed the door in my face and she not only slammed the door, she locked it. And I went into outer space. And of course, in my anger, I put my fist through that door and unlocked it now for your audience.

Clarification. I have never, ever laid a hand on any woman, especially that of my wife. And of course my mother I’ve been raised better than that. So I never laid a hand on her, but I put my fist through the door and we finished the quote unquote conversation. Well, it wasn’t until the next morning that we got up, we were having breakfast and she said, I don’t know if I can do this.

And I’m like, do what, what are you talking about? Because, you know, angry people, once they have their fit, they’re rant, it’s over it’s water under the bridge, move on. And it wasn’t. So her, it shook her to her core that to see my fist come through that door and unlock it.

And then, you know, all the unnecessary shouting and screaming and all of that. So that was a wake up call when she said that I did not want to lose this lady. She’s the love of my life. She’s the one. And I wanted to stay married. And by the way, we’re celebrating this October 41 years. Yeah, I always tease and say, she’s such a blessed woman.

I’m actually the blessed one. So anyway, how did I realize? Or when did I realize that I had the problem? It was the progression and of course the process at that moment, that, again, that was the turning point for me. And I said, look, I don’t know how to do this. I’ve been fighting it for years. My teenage years.

All of that, I’ll get help wherever that is. Carrie, this was 40 years ago. Anger management classes wasn’t even in the universe, it didn’t exist. Printed material was rare, books on anger management, things like that. So I went to my pastor and I said, look, I need to chat. And so I went to him and.

And got an appointment with him. And I said, Hey, I need help. I got an anger issue and his advice was, well, son, get in the altar and pray and you’ll be okay. Let me clarify. I don’t want to ever take away the power of prayer. Sure. Pages things. I started. My journey in the learning is faith without works is dead.

I mean, we can pray all day long and fast until our tongues fall out. But if we don’t put some action, some works to our faith. We’re not going to get very far. So I took his advice. I got in the ultra and I really prayed and, and a man felt better got up in a day or two later. I’m I’m throwing things again, I’m yelling and screaming.

I’m back into the same mode. So Gail and I really just started a journey. Of trial and error when I’d get upset or get crazy, I’d cooled down. And of course we amplified not going to bed angry with each other, and we really worked on letting each other walk away and breathe and intellectualize the situation.

Then come back and talk about it. And I allowed her to tell me what I did wrong. So again, this whole process was started right there on 58. And that was when I was 18. I turned 18 September 10th and got married October 4th. I mean like I’m done. Let’s, let’s get this done. 

Carrie: That was probably hard in the beginning.

You were saying, I let her tell me. What I did wrong, really receiving that feedback of, Hey, even if it was how she perceived the situation and that could have been totally different than how you perceive the situation.

Ed: Yes. And it took a lot of discipline on my part to listen to her because she, even though she was inside the emotional circle, she was outside of my anger circle.

She was able to see what I, how I was reacting to things. What I was reacting to. And was able to help me troubleshoot that and define why did you get angry with when I said mashed potatoes, that’s an example that, but you know, sometimes we get mad over the most ridiculous things. Big, not because mashed potatoes, but it’s the emotional time.

Way back in the subconscious mind. 

Carrie: So there wasn’t a whole lot of help out there for you. Like you really looked for books and materials there weren’t classes. Now you’re actually involved in teaching some of those classes, correct?

Ed: Yes. I’ve. I’ve professionally taught anger management and emotional intelligence. Probably about 17 years give or take. Yeah. And again, back then 40 years ago, again, printed material was just virtually, almost non-existent. I found very level classes, training, teaching on it.

 Non-existent so as soon as stuff started being printed, I kept an eye on the shelves, I’m kind of a book freak anyway, so I know my Barnes and noble days was long and I’d go in there.

And look around and when I found something, I bought it and I read it and I digested it and I tried everything I could to apply to my life to help me. 

Carrie: Good. That’s good. Because anger can be destructive. And you already talked about that, like, putting your hand through a door or. Breaking things.

Christians sometimes try to suppress it or avoid it like we’ve labeled instead of labeling that behavior as sinful, we’ve labeled the emotion of anger itself as sinful and how can Christians develop a healthy, biblical understanding of anger? 

Ed: Well, you really hit a great nerve there that,we, as Christians, we’ve got a criteria to live up to we’re spirit-filled and we’re supposed to be having the fruits of the spirit and to represent Christ on the earth.

And so we’re not supposed to have any flaws or any, setbacks. So I know I did, I suppose. I didn’t want anybody to know. I was an angry person that I was this crazy raging dude that would put my fist through a window or a door or wall or whatever. And that was really part of my problem. I never let anybody know I was in trouble.

And so for years I went through all of this and only to realize that in my journey to manage this. You do not get rid of anger. Anger is an emotion. It’s a part of your psychic. It’s just like love and, and joy and happiness and all of that. It’s identified as a negative emotion, although that could be turned around into a positive direction.

Using your anger to force you to go positive. However, the understanding and in fact, I’m big on the power of understanding when we understand the who, the, why, the what, how come, where they’re coming from, where it’s coming from. It helps us deal with a lot of things. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay. Jesus was angry when he come into the temple and found the money changed.

Buying and selling. He got angry and drove out those money changers and said, my, my house will be called a house of prayer. So again, it’s okay to be angry. The Bible says be angry, but sin not. And there’s, there’s the key, right? We can get upset. We can be angry with some situation, but here’s where we need to be.

Careful. Don’t send that it don’t start violating. Somebody’s cussing using foul language or whatever. That’s going to bring a reproach on your walk with God. People’s understands that if somebody disrespects you, it can upset you. People understand that whatever happens, it upsets us. It angers us. There’s an injustice going on.

For example, one of my friends on Twitter posted out that this kid, a young man and in Montana, him and his family, his mom and dad are church planters. And they’re trying to plant a new church in Montana. And this is a good kid when school bullied and the group that bullied him. Stabbed him 10 times and put him in there and, you know, I cared, I was angry.

I wanted to fly to Montana and find the bullies, but I, okay. God, I can’t bring bodily harm, although I want to, but you know, it’s okay. That’s what we’ve really got to understand. It’s okay. To be angry. It’s what you do with the anger. That makes all the difference in the world.

Carrie: Absolutely. I think that anger can be very powerful in terms of creating beautiful change in the world. Like what if we never got angry about things like human trafficking or child abuse? I mean, we should be angry about those things that are going on in our society and. I know that there was some anger for me that fueled the start of this podcast.

Cause I got so tired of having people say, well, somebody told me anxiety is a sin or depression’s a sin. That means I don’t have enough joy in my life and I just need to pray. Through it. And, you know, it was just so frustrating that people were getting misinformation that wasn’t biblical from spiritual leaders and it was causing extra distress on the distress that they already had, that they were already bringing into therapy.

Ed:Have you got a minute? Let me tell a little quick little neat story about how anger compelled us to, to do a positive bank like yourself, fired of spiritual leaders, basically not bothering to study out or research. Anxiety. It’s not a sin. Anyway, years ago, I learned this story when I was doing some research of a beautiful family in suburban LA.

Nice suburban LA had a 13 year old daughter and daughter asked mom, can I go to whoever’s there? Her friend had just a few blocks over in a very nice suburban. And of course, sure. Not a problem. So only about two or three hours later, LAPD shows up on this lady story. To tell her that her child, her 13 year old is dead, been killed by a drunken driver in, in the neighborhood, in the suburban area.

Of course, that went through it. They caught the guy and the guy got a little bit of probation and 30 days in jail, it was, wow. This guy killed this girl and got off way too easy. And so this woman in the story that I read had a choice, she was very angry. 

That her daughter walked out the door and she never got a chance to say goodbye.

You know,  she’s never coming back. She was in a very safe, nice neighborhood in suburban LA and her life was taken by a drunken driver, cutting through the subdivision to go somewhere swerved. She was on the sidewalk and the dude swerved up onto the sidewalk and hit her. She had a choice to make, whether she was going to allow that anger to make her bitter probably ruin her marriage and relationships to other children.

However, she chose to allow the anger to drive her to a positive direction and make a difference. Her name is candy and she created mothers against drunk drivers and has literally changed the world. And when it comes to DUIs, the laws have changed the punishment stiffer. They get what they deserve because one woman said, I’m not going to let this destroy me.

I’m going to create something good out of my anchor. 

Carrie: Absolutely.

Ed: Hopefully little encouragement to your audience. 

Carrie: That’s good. Oftentimes we hear people say anger is a secondary emotion, meaning there’s some other emotion underneath it. Tell us about the connection between anger and anxiety. 

Ed: Sure. And, and that is correct.

Anger is always a secondary emotion. It’s a, by-product, there’s always a primary in place, such as loneliness, anxiety in other word, fear, the big kahunas is stress and frustration. When we don’t manage those primaries, then they escalate to anger. Then if it’s not taken care of escalates to rage, rage goes to blind rage.

I had a client years ago that I dealt with that went into blind rage and literally. $5,000 worth of damage to his mother’s kitchen and denied it. He said, I didn’t do that. There’s no way I did that. He was in blind rage. He didn’t even know what he was doing so it can get ugly real fast. But again, let’s back up.

We have anxiety now of course. Anxiety is a lot like, or it has one common thread with the other primaries. We all have stress in our life, the stress of driving in traffic every day to work stress in handling family situations. It’s okay. And we all have frustration in our life. We all have a little bit of anxiety in our life.

A little bit of worry, a little bit of stress. You know, we’ve got something major coming up, whether it’s a certification test or whether it is a presentation that we got to make it work, or we’ve got to deal something with our children, we all have what we would call normal stress, normal frustration, and even normal anxiety.

The challenge comes is when. It doesn’t become normal anymore. We’re stressed out more than we usually are. We’re frustrated more than we usually are. We’re experiencing anxiety more than we usually do. So is the fears and the worries becomes extreme. It becomes excessive. And that right there.

The connection is, is when we don’t deal with frustration or stress or anxiety, we start getting angry because we don’t like the emotion. We don’t like to feel stressed out. We don’t like to feel frustrated. We don’t like to feel the fear, the intense fear, what’s wrong with me? Why am I feeling so afraid?

Why am I worrying so much about this thing? This ain’t that big a deal? And everybody’s saying I’ll just calm down. You’ll be fine.No, I’m not fine. So as you can see, anxiety really kind of ties into the frustration that primary. And of course, if we don’t get something to relieve it, then it’s going to escalate to anger and we’re going to start being mad at ourselves.

We’re going to be angry at other people trying to give us. And they mean, well, they’re trying to help us, but they’re not helping. Then we start getting angry with that. And everything kind of blows up from there. Does that make sense?

Carrie: Yeah. I mean, it’s like a domino reaction, you know, if you don’t back up and deal with the, the initial dominoes that cause the cascade to go, then you’re not going to be able to resolve the issue.

Whereas I think sometimes people in. Anger management situations. We’ll just say, okay, well, I’ve just got to catch myself before I get to that rage point, but they don’t ever deal with those emotions that come before the anger point, which came before the rage.

Ed: Yes. Ma’am. That is exactly right. Again, it’s a.

It’s a cascade. It’s just, it starts falling and you know, we’ve got to stop it somewhere. We’ve got to say, okay, wait a minute. Stop right now. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Ed: Absolutely. 

Carrie: Probably the worst thing that you could do for an anxious or angry person is to tell them to calm down that does not usually help at all. Usually causes more frustration or anxiety.

Ed: Yeah.Do you remember years ago? The movie that came out with Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson, anger management, 

Carrie: I’m not sure if I saw that one. 

Ed: Go back and dig it up. It’s a great movie. And of course it’s a movie, Adam Sandler. I think he got thrown off a plane because he was angry. I’m not angry.

Nicholson is the therapist that’s going to help him overcome his anger. Everything wrong in getting the character that Adam Sandler is playing a good friend of mine in LA was the consultant for anger management. And it was kind of knowing anger management. And Jack Nicholson was always saying, you need to just calm down.

Okay. Just calm down. And, and then, the character that, um, Adam Sandler’s playing, it just goes through the roof. It was hilarious, but you’re right. When you say to an angry person or to an anxious person, just calm down, you’re throwing fuel on the phone. 

Carrie: Right. So tell us about your book control the beast.

Ed: Oh boy. That was fun. As we’ve gone through this podcast, I’ve totaled bits and pieces of my story. The control of the beast is a book that we have just put out on the market. That is really, for me, it’s 40 plus years in the making because I was, angry kid, young adult, and then Gail and I started when we got married on our journey of trial and error, trying to help me get rid of anger.

We realized I’m not going to get rid of it. I’ve got around a manage. It just like anxiety. You don’t get rid of anxiety, you manage your anxiety. And that’s what you do with anger. As you learn how to manage your anger, how to identify and diffuse. So the book is based on a 17 years of training. I still do training of sharing this because my whole mission and purpose, I felt like God wanted me to give back.

I was this person I managed, I’ve gotten better. And now I need to give back. So, as we talked about earlier, when books and things started coming out, I started ingesting everything. When I did find some kind of training seminar workshop on anger, I took it. And then when certification classes actually came out.

I did it and became certified and then just started teaching. We taught with probation and parole court services. Several chambers of commerce have brought me in for lunch and learns companies, brought me in for identifying and diffusing, angry people, working with their management, et cetera, et cetera.

So control the beast is what is that? 12 chapters. And we’d start out with the power of understanding or discovering the beast. When we understand who we are, what’s going on, what’s our past and everybody around us, again, the power of understanding helps us deal with it. Then chapter two is starve the beast.

We’ve got to clean up our environment, there’s triggers. And I end the book I talked and I also taught it. There’s six main triggers. That exists, that that’s the six popular ones starting out one with pornography, the addiction to pornography, television programming, what we’re listening to music, what we’re reading all could be triggers of anger.

I imagine in your field of dealing with anxiety, that could be, there could be some crossover there. So we talk about the importance of cleaning up our environment. Then it’s not really a book about anger management, as much as it is. Yeah, guide a manual. Uh, how to, I felt like people needed, okay, how do I do this?

Because when I started I’m like, what do I do? How do I handle this? And so I wanted to develop a guide, a manual to say, okay, read this and start following it. And practicing it and you can get your anger under control. So with that, we talk about how the beast works. And of course the beast is our negative emotions and that is emotional mechanics that how does emotions fire, what triggers them?

The biology of emotions. And then Mr. Beasties game, that’s the blame and responsibility we always get in the blame game. Well, I wouldn’t get angry if they would keep their stupid mouth shut, things like that. And so you cannot go into the blame game and blame everybody and everything around you for your bad behavior, you got to own it.

You got to take responsibility. Chapter five is the TMZ of the beast world, and that is the emotion, anger, and emotion unveil. We rip the lid off of it. And we expose the beast for who it is, what it is. And then chapter six is kind of the pinnacle where we don’t play games with the beast and that’s diffusing negative emotions.

That’s the tools, the mechanisms that we can use to help like walk away, breathe, intellectualize the situation, get help, things like that. The beast. Is ambushes and disguises where it hides such as a drug addiction and alcoholism attempts at suicide. People are angry at people around them. Like teenagers will attempt suicide because they’re very angry with their parents and they want to inflict pain upon them.

And so we discover, we talk about the ambushes and the disguises that the beast does time to confront the beast. That’s the answer to the question of self-identity who are. Where are we, it takes a team to control the beast. And that, that is a chapter on vital relationships. I wrote a piece and I taught it and I put it in the book called nine levels of relationships and how to handle toxic relationships.

So many times we get confused with the levels of relationships we have. For example, we have an acquaintance that we don’t really know, but we want to make them a best friend. What can they be trusted with best friend status. Or we have a best friend that violates our trust. We can’t keep them there. They have to move to a different category.

You know, spousal relationship. Of course, the number one relationship that I talk about nine levels is our relationship to God. That’s gotta be strong. That’s gotta be powerful. And then of course, we work our way down to level nine, which is the toxic poisonous relationship. That we’ve got to deal with because the only thing happens when you mess with a toxic relationship is that you get poisoned, you get hurt over and over and over, and you’ve got to get rid of that relationship.

Not to say that it won’t heal not to say that you can’t detox that relationship and put it back up into one of the other levels of relationships. That’s good chapter. I just did two or three podcasts on that chapter alone. Rebuild what the, these destroyed is rebuilding our self-esteem. From our past, the shame that anger brings negative emotions bring.

And of course, then chapter 12, we talk about train the beast and that’s revitalizing the positive inner person. 

Carrie: Okay. Wow. There’s a lot in there. It sounds like. 

Ed: Yeah. Packed it with some meat. 

Carrie: And sounds like very practical information, certainly takeaways that people can implement in their life and step-by-step instructions on how to do that.

I like that. I like practical materials. I don’t philosophical ones are nice, but if you don’t know how to apply it, then sometimes it’s completely worthless. If you can’t put it into practice in your own life, then it’s like, well, what’s the point there? So. 

Ed: That’s right. And of course we want to say to God, be the glory for all of this.

We are getting a lot of great feedback. When people read the book, they’re hitting me on Instagram or Twitter. Hey, I just got your book, man. This is fantastic. And they use the word practical, which I’m like, yes, yes.So that’s good. 

Carrie: Well, I think it’s just beautiful that you have used your.

Difficulties and struggles and challenges to allow God to use those things for good and then to bless other people and help them along their journey. So as we’re kind of wrapping up our time together, I like to ask every guest to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Ed: Wow. Let me go. And we’re going to talk about probably a lot of anxiety that I experienced in my life with everything else. That’s going on. Somebody being bullied like I was, or you’ve got somebody in your life that is, they may not physically be bullying. You beating you up physically, but they’re beating you up emotionally and make you feel small, making you feel.

Insufficient. It really messes with my emotions and kind of makes my eyes water a little bit. When I think about the kid ed Snyder, and I knew me, I just love everybody.  I just wanted to get along with everybody and everybody’s making fun of me and tormenting me and all of that stuff. And it literally, Carrie destroyed my,self-esteem.

I couldn’t see my way up. And if it was. For God, putting somebody in my life that I called mother where every day I come home from school, after going through a day of it’s supposed to be a day of learning, which was a day of abuse. She was there telling me, Hey, you don’t need those people. You can do anything you set your mind to do.

God’s got great things for you and your life. He’s got stuff in you that you’re going to do great with.She was constantly just hitting me with that and it really was a saving point in my life. I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for the time that God used my own mother. To tell me you don’t listen to them.

You’re better than that. You’re a good kid, et cetera, et cetera. And so, as I grew, God just kept putting people in my life. One being my wife we’re together. I mean, we’re, peanut butter and jelly. I mean, we just, and of course she knows. And that’s what I think everybody needs in their life as somebody that knows them inside and out.

And she knows when to back off of me, she knows when to get in my face and wad up that Iris face or hers and get, straight. And I take it because I know she loves me. And so it’s amazing how God puts people in your life. That will help you. They’re there to be a blessing to you to build you up. And of course, again, I don’t want to take anything away from God, but God uses people.

God uses work, have your faith. God can do anything. He is everything. But sometimes he uses the hands and the voices of people to make that. And of course we’re responsible for putting in the work. Faith without works is dead. I went to the altar and I prayed after my pastor preach the message and I cried and I wanted God to heal me of this and get rid of it.

I don’t want to be like this anymore. And I get up in a day or two later, I’m back at it again. I had to figure out the work, what do I need to do myself? To partner with God’s power and prayer to make it happen. Maybe that’s what I need to help. So a listener of yours and your audience, whether you’re dealing with anxiety or you’re dealing with stress or frustration, or even anger, God’s putting people in your life, this podcast, perhaps get back to this podcast and get the help that you need so that you can put the work with your faith.

And God’s going to do great things in your life. 

Carrie: That’s great. So we’re going to put links in the show notes to the book and to your website so that people can reach you. And this has been a great conversation and I think really valuable for our audience. I appreciate you being here today. 

Ed: Well, if there’s anything I can do for you or any of your listeners, please reach out to me.

Our emails on the website can hit me up on social media, whatever it is, but thank you again, Carrie, for the opportunity. And the privilege of being on your podcast, I’ve enjoyed being with you. 

Carrie: You can find us online any time@hopeforanxietyandocd.com. I would love to hear from you. You can head on over to the contact page and let me know what you think about these episodes.

Thank you so much for listening.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

40. Life Lessons From 40 episodes of Podcasting

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 40. Life Lessons From 40 episodes of Podcasting

We are on our 40th episode today! I’m flying solo to share my podcasting journey and life lessons from the previous episodes.

  • It’s impossible to have figured out everything before you start something.
  • Find your why on those days that are more difficult and you will feel like you can finish what you have started.
  • It’s the mess and the difficulty that drives us to dependence and reminds us that we can’t control everything.
  • I don’t need to worry about what’s going on with everyone else.
    I need to be worried about staying on the path that God has called me to.

All these valuable life lessons and more that you can apply in your life while you’re finding and fulfilling God’s plan in your life. 

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Transcript of Episode 40

Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 40. Now, if you’ve been following along with the podcast, it’s been a little while since I’ve had a solo episode. So here I am. I wanted to talk with you about my podcasting journey, but more so in the sense of the life lessons that I’ve learned, I think these life lessons are going to be very valuable for you to hear and figure out how does that apply to your own life and maybe some of the things that you’re facing today.

So bit of encouragement, because it’s been a big hurdle over the last year or to not only start this podcast but to keep it going. There’s a term in the podcasting community called pod fade. Essentially pod fade is when people get super excited about their podcasts, they have this great idea. They get rolling and then they’re done before they even have 10 episodes released because the work that’s involved becomes overwhelming.

Whenever you’re looking at starting something new, I think there’s two different pits that people fall into like ditches on the side of the road. So one ditch on the side of the road is the people who never get started with anything because they feel like I have no idea how to do that. I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m even… They feel like they have to have everything figured out before they start something. And so if that’s you, I would say that’s impossible. So if you’re looking to start something new in your life, there’s no possible way you’re going to know everything that you’re going to run into when you face that situation or that task.

On the completely, other side of the road, there’s this other ditch that people fall into another extreme, which is more likely what I’m to fall into, which is, oh, I can do that like that it shouldn’t be too hard. I see other people doing that. Why not me? This sounds really good in the beginning. Right?

However, sometimes when you start out with that mindset, you don’t have the problem with starting the new thing. You have a problem with continuing and keeping going on the new thing. When I got into podcasting, I was like, oh, you know, you get a microphone and you turn it on. You start talking. There’s a there’s books on this. I can go read a book. I knew someone who had a podcast. So I was just like kind of approaching it pretty casually like. This shouldn’t be too difficult. I look back on that now this hilarious guys is absolutely hilarious. There’s a lot more that goes into a podcast other than turning on a microphone, talking and reading a book.

There were so many aspects that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The thing that kept me going on the days that were more difficult or the days that I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, or the days that I felt like I couldn’t finish was understanding why I started in the first place. Going back to finding your why. We do all kinds of things in our lives and a lot of times we don’t even step back and take a moment to reflect why am I even doing this? 

One of the beauties of the COVID-19 pandemic was that more people took that time to take this step back and to say, what have I filled my life with? And is that a valuable investment of my time, of my energy, of my money?

Life is short. We only have so many hours and we don’t know how many hours or how many days we have in this life. We want to make sure that we’re filling them with things that we believe God has called us to as Christian. That God has called us to.  In a personal sense of calling. There’s a general calling.

There’s a specific calling for me for a long time. I’ve believed that my calling was to the church. I may have talked about this on one of the beginning episodes, but I really felt like I was going to become a therapist in a church somewhere. I actually have a degree from a seminary, if you can believe that or not, it’s a counseling degree, but it’s from a seminary.

So here I was thinking that that was how my calling was going to look and that’s never happened. I’ve never, actually, I’m not in a paid sense of the word I have. I’m sure counseled some people in church in more of a lay type fashion. However, I’ve felt this burden for a long time, for people with mental health issues who are struggling in the chruch.

And this concept of them being given false information was so troubling to me.  Hearing over and over and over, somebody told me I wasn’t praying enough. Someone told me I wasn’t reading the Bible. I didn’t have faith. I didn’t trust God somehow because they were struggling. They were somehow a less than Christian.

Not only is that concept completely non-biblical because you don’t have to turn the Bible very far to find people who struggled with doubt, with fear, with depression. Elijah by the Brook wanted to die. Job cursed the day of his birth. I mean, There are so many Psalms where David cries out and is wondering where God is in the mess of his circumstances.

If we think we have to have it all together as Christians, we’re completely missing the whole point. The whole point is that in our mess, God enters in and we have communion and a relationship with him. And it’s the mess and the difficulty that drives us to dependence and reminds us that we can’t control everything.

And we need him every single day. I knew people in the church needed messages of encouragement and hope, people who are struggling with anxiety, OCD, or any other mental health concerns for that matter. I also knew there was a void of people speaking into these types of experiences. How did I know there was a void?

Well, because I looked. I looked for bloggers. I looked for people who had written books. I looked for people who are speaking about mental health struggles not just from a personal experience, although I think some of those are helpful, but also from a place of professionalism to say that professional counseling works. We have tools that can help people that are not in opposition to our faith.

I see so many Christians who are terrified of professional counseling because they think they’re going to be steered away to something non-biblical. All that to say, that was my why. And it was so good, even for me as I’m recording right now, just to repeat that out loud and to remember that. To remember the stories that I’ve heard from people who have told me about the messages they’ve heard in the church, I’m so glad that this podcast is part of changing some of those messages. 

When you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, that changes everything. So I want to ask you today, if you’re married, why are you married? It doesn’t matter if you’ve been married for two years or 20 years. Ask yourself that question. Why are you married? Why are you getting up and going to work today?

There can be many different answers to this question. And believe me, I have answered this question so many different ways in my life. I remember just crying to someone shortly after I graduated because I was in this job that wasn’t a good fit for me at all. Just crying and them telling me, you know, you’re getting good experience right now. You’re getting experience that is going to help you get licensed. So at that point in my life, I was going to work to pay bills and get a counseling license so that I could hopefully do something differently.

I won’t get into that tangent, but one of these days I may do a podcast on life lessons. 

I learned from my many jobs.

I’ve probably had about 30 jobs in my life. That’s not an exaggeration, I’ve done many different things. Some of them were very short-term obviously, but there have been days where I have gone to work because I needed to pay. And there have been days where I’ve gone to work because I wanted to make a difference and everywhere in between.

You can apply the why question to why are you parenting your kids a certain way. Why are you involved in that ministry at church? During the pandemic, I really evaluated my why I had spent much time involved in counselor training and education. While I’m so thankful for that time and don’t have any regrets. I realized that God was directing me back around to ministry, to the church for people who have mental health struggles and getting involved in some type of creation of self-help materials.

Your why can direct you to get started and your Y can keep you going on the hardest of days. 

Now we’re going to shift gears a little bit and talk about struggles with comparison. Comparison is huge in the podcasting community at times, not with everyone, but there are these Facebook groups out there where people will get really obsessed with their download numbers. They will ask questions like how long did it take you to get 1000 downloads? I made the decision early on not to become obsessed with my download numbers. One of the reasons for that was because I was in some ways surprised when anyone listened to this. I had a blog prior to the podcasts and I’m pretty sure that very few people ever went on there and read anything that I had written. If you are on social media at all, it doesn’t even have to be social media, It could be the break room at work. It could be after church on a Sunday morning. It’s just so easy to compare yourself to other people. 

One thing that I try to tell myself that I hope might help you as well is I have to say I’m on my own journey. This is a journey that God has called me to, and I’m accountable to him. I’m accountable to my husband, to myself. I’m accountable to my listeners and my clients that I see every week for counseling. I’m not accountable to some kind of invisible standard or to Susie Q the most amazing podcast or out there. I don’t need to worry about what’s going on with everyone else. I need to be worried about staying on the path that God has called me to. Don’t get me wrong. There have been plenty of times on this journey, whether it’s been through my business journey or whether it’s been through my podcasting journey, there’s plenty of times that I’ve become jealous of other people or of what they’re doing, their success.

Recently, I made a decision to change the way that I approached that jealousy. When it would come up initially, I would just be so disgusted by it like, oh gosh, I’m feeling jealous. And I don’t like being a jealous person and it just feels slimy and gross. There would be like this self-deprecation I guess that came after the conviction and the experience of the jealousy.

Then one day, I thought this is not working as a helpful way to approach this because I’m still getting jealous of people. I decided to do something that we call “act opposite of how you feel” in the psychology and counseling world. And I decided that I was going to pray for that person that I was jealous that.

Not only was I going to pray for that person, but I was going to ask God to bless them more than he’s already blessed them. That has shifted my perspective so much and cut down on a lot of the green-eyed. How does that saying go the green monster of envy, something like that a big life lesson I learned on the podcasting journey was that I can’t do it all myself and I need help. This was so hard to admit and sit with because I am a very independent person. I’m the type of person that says I have to do this in order to make sure that it gets done right. I can’t really let go and trust other people. And if I want to get something done, I have to be driven and find a way to make it happen.

And this concept of recognizing when you can’t do something, yourself is applicable to so many different areas. It’s applicable to mental health for people that are looking at getting counseling or getting on medication. It’s applicable for working mothers, maybe who are trying to keep up with every household responsibilities and are taking on more than they can handle. It may be time for you to start using grocery pickup, hiring a teenager to help with your laundry. Anything that you can reasonably and feasibly get off your plate is going to help you in the long run. It didn’t take me very long to figure it out. That I was not going to be editing these podcast episodes.

Yes, you can watch some YouTube videos on it, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be very good at it. It’s interesting to me how many people will be okay with paying for someone to do their taxes, for example, or fix their computer, maybe mow their lawn, but when it comes to mental health help, people think “I should be able to figure this out myself.”

I know I’ve done that in so many areas of my life and what I’ve had to learn, especially over the last several years of having a business even is that you can’t do all the things. And when you admit that and you sit with it, you can go to the next step, which is finding help.

I struggled for such a long time with a negative belief that I can’t get the help that I need. That one, I’m not even sure where it started or how long it had been lingering around in my mind, but I was convinced that that was the truth. Through this journey of finding an editor. as well as finding a podcast assistant to help me with things like social media, getting in touch with perspective guests, scheduling interviews has been so healing for me because it’s healed this negative belief that I can’t get the help that I need.

Maybe that’s something that you struggle with. And I just want you to know there is help out there for you. You can’t always find it on the first try. Sometimes you have to do a little bit more searching and a little bit more work to get yourself the help that you need, but it is out there. If you are willing to look for it and know also that I would not be able to continue this podcast without support from key people in my life. As you all know, my husband, Steve has been incredibly supportive of my podcasting journey. He’s the one behind the scenes, just speaking life to me, reminding me of my why, reminding me of my calling speaking just truth to me when I need to hear it when days get hard or long, or I just want to throw in the towel.

He’s right there. Also have this incredible family support and, and friends, we need other people in our lives. It’s a huge lie of the enemy that we can do this on our own and that we can’t get close to other people. We can’t trust other people. I know that you’ve been burned and I’ve been burned in my life too.

I’ve had people who were close to me, hurt me very deeply. However, I also know that there’s power in community. There’s power in support of other people being able to say, Hey, I’m here with you and I love you. And I just need you to know that. Just keep going, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

That prayer support is so helpful as well. Steve and I were able to get involved in a small group recently, and that has been such a blessing to us, to be with other believers, to have people speaking truth and praying for us and pouring into our lives. As we seek also to pour into their lives. If you don’t have that type of support network, really evaluate and look and see what can you do to start creating that?

Even if it’s just a small way that you can add interaction, even with other people, we can’t say we want other people in our lives and then go to work, go home crash, get up in the morning, hit, repeat, and do it all over again. We have to be intentional about our relationships. We have to be intentional about reaching out to other people about saying, Hey, I want to spend time with you.

Let’s get coffee, come over to the house. You know, let’s play a game together. Let’s go for a walk in the woods, whatever it is that is going to help you get to know somebody a little bit better and connect with them. See how you can do that today. We need other people, not just surrounding us, but people that are doing what we’re doing.

Sometimes we have good support, but like nobody gets it. If that makes sense. And being a therapist can be isolating at times if you’re in private practice. Being a podcaster can be isolating at times. If you’re just sitting in a closet with a microphone, like I am right now.

 I’m so thankful that I’m going to be going to a podcasting conference for the first time this year, and continue to make connections with other podcasters, whenever I’m able to do that. Just can kind of breathe, a sigh of relief because it’s like, oh, somebody who really gets it, who knows like what the struggle that I’m going through is like. I hope that you’re able to find that in the sense of your community. Finding some people who understand what it’s like to struggle with anxiety, finding some people who understand what it’s like to have obsessions on.

Repeat in your head. I know that sometimes it’s hard to find support groups or other avenues like that. I don’t know. Maybe you need to look at starting one because if you’re sitting here and you need that. I guarantee you that there’s somebody else sitting by themselves thing, man, I really wish I had somebody to talk to about this who really got it, who really understood. I spoke about this on a previous episode, but the podcast has really given me the gift to know that I don’t have to be perfect to help people. I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I want you to know that this podcast is far from perfect. Sometimes the audio has been less than stellar.

I’ve tripped over my words, repeated the same words over and over the website is not perfect. The social media is not perfect, pretty much. Nothing’s perfect about this podcast because it’s run by imperfect humans. And the beautiful thing about that is it doesn’t have to be because people are being helped.

People are being encouraged. Our downloads are growing every day. We have now over 5,500 downloads at this recording. It’s just incredible to me. I’ve, I’ve really been blown away by all of you listeners and the people that I’ve heard from that have said the podcast has been helpful. I appreciate you so much.

It leads me to believe that something we’re doing here is working and thank you for allowing me to be imperfect and still listening. Anyway, this is the last, the life lesson, but also one of the most important is that it’s okay to be vulnerable. Well, I knew it was okay to be vulnerable. When I started the podcast, I had this barrier of being a therapist.

I was concerned about sharing personal details, putting them out there for the whole world to hear. But most specifically, I was really concerned about my clients, hearing them to understand that you have to understand that when I was going to school. I was taught not to talk about yourself. It has to be about the client and listening to them, your story at that point, doesn’t really matter.

Unless somehow sharing it is going to benefit the client more than it’s going to benefit you. However, I was always taught to err, on the side of caution, in terms of sharing things about myself in therapy, different therapists have different views on this. And some end up talking about themselves, more in therapy maybe than I would, and that’s not necessarily right or wrong.

That’s more dependent on how the client feels about it. I. When I started the podcast, I had this big worry and fear that somehow my clients were going to look at me differently, treat me differently. Some become sidetracked in their own work, because they wanted to ask me about my own personal experiences and that big fear, like so many of our fears did not become a reality.

Actually, the clients who listened to the podcast may have said a sentence or two about how they appreciated me sharing my story or some aspect of my story that they didn’t know about me. And it didn’t derail our ability to work together. And it didn’t derail us on to them. Trying to ask me a bunch of extra questions and sessions about what I had shared.

I would have been very pleasantly surprised that this podcast has helped me overcome this barrier of being vulnerable as a therapist. When we share personal parts about ourselves, it’s an opportunity for us to be able to connect with other people. Who are going through difficult situations or who have experienced similar things.

There’s this sigh of relief. There’s this understanding like, ah, okay. They really get it. And I think that is so important in the therapeutic relationship often overlooked. I still don’t talk a whole lot about myself in my therapy sessions with clients. I still make it about them. The clients who have never heard this podcast, um, probably know very little about me other than I’m married.

And they see that I have cats because stitch likes to pop in every now and then to say hi to people when I’m on my online session. Having the podcast as an opportunity to talk through some of the struggles that I’ve dealt with in the past, as well as things that I’m still processing in my own life has been a gift of allowing God to take all the experiences, the pain, the hardships that have happened to me and turn them into something good.

I really feel like those sufferings are being used in a positive and healthy way versus just going through it, not talking about it at all and moving on so many times, we want to just forget where we’ve come through from, or we don’t want to talk about it because it stirs up these negative emotions that we have.

What I would say to you is everyone has a story. Your story may be very different from mine. And maybe there’s someone in your life that needs to hear it. Maybe there’s someone that needs that spark of encouragement before Steve and I got married, there was a lady in his church that came to me. Asked to meet with me.

And I thought, oh gosh, what is this about? I don’t, I don’t know. You know, when you’re a therapist, um, obviously sometimes people want things from you and it can get a little uncomfortable. I thought maybe she was like trying to get advice for me. And it was completely the opposite. Actually. She wanted to sit down with me and talk with me about her own marriage, some of the struggles that she went through with her husband, how she stayed, married, how she worked through some difficult things.

And she was able to give me a book that had been an encouragement to her. It was just this beautiful thing of how she used difficulties and struggles in her own life. To be able to say, I don’t want to see you go through what I’ve been through. Let me try to help you on the front end so that you don’t have to experience some of the pain and suffering.

That I’ve dealt with. And if you do get to that point in your marriage and you feel like there’s nobody I can talk to you, nobody will really understand what I’m going through. That she gave me her information. Like, please reach out to me. Honestly, that was of all the wedding gifts I got. That was one of the best ones.

Just the gift of someone else’s personal experience. And the time that she took to talk with me about it. So never underestimate your ability to encourage and love on someone else through the use of your own story that God has given you. Usually at the end of every episode, I like to do a story of hope.

So my story of hope today is about this whole thing that we’ve been talking about. It’s about the podcast. I want to share with you my hope for the future, for the podcast. You’ve heard the hope as a result of the things that I’ve learned through this process, initial journey of 40 episodes. And now I want to talk with you about the future.

I know I don’t talk about this enough, but hope for anxiety and OCD exists to reduce shame, increase. And develop healthier connections with God and others. I have a whole host of interviews lined up for people to talk with us about all kinds of different things, everywhere from personal stories of overcoming trauma, working through anxiety, processing that spiritually.

Working through the struggles of why did such and such happened to me in my life. I also have some professionals that are going to come on and talk about the connection between addiction and anxiety, how we can use our breath to tap into the calm down, uh, center of our nervous system. And it’s more than just take a deep.

We’re going to be talking about managing anger and sleep habits. They’re just, the possibilities are endless. And those are just the people that I have booked. I also have other ideas that we’re trying to get people on the podcast to discuss. Of course, you’re always a welcome to be a part of this process.

I had a college students reach out to me on Instagram, wanting to share her story, which is so awesome. If you know of other professionals who might want to be on, or if you have a topic suggestion for us, I’m definitely all ears as more and more of you are finding the podcast. I’m getting more inquiries through my, By the Well Counseling website of people seeking counseling.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to see anyone outside of the state of Tennessee due to my counseling license, being specific for Tennessee. We have hope as therapists that someday those laws may change due to the expansion of talent. There are still so many people in underserved areas in rural communities that don’t have access to adequate mental health treatment, especially for specific things like OCD.

While we are far from having a national counselor license, we are also closer than we’ve ever been. So we’re still holding out hope for that. When I do want to say to those who have reached out, maybe from other states to me, that I’m not able to see is that I am in the process of creating some self-help materials for people who struggle with anxiety and OCD.

Of course, you all will be the first to hear more about that once it’s complete. And once I have things set up and ready to go, I’m recording some audio relaxations as well as teachings that I think are going to be beneficial to many people. The best way to find out when those materials come out is to get on our email at hopeforanxietyandocd.com. I know I have failed miserably at emailing you guys on a regular basis, but I will definitely let you know when these materials come out and also check our social media. If you follow those pages. My hope is that people who don’t have access to counseling services or need something to work on in between sessions.

Maybe that are going to counseling. We’ll have more Christian self-help materials available to them that they feel comfortable, that it’s aligned with their faith and belief system. It’s scary even to put this out on the podcast, right? Because now I really need to follow through with what I’ve said I’m going to do.

And that’s all for today. I’m so thankful for each and every one of you here, listening. I know that there’s a reason that I’m here and there’s a reason that you’re here right now.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Maingrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

31. Using the Gospel to Overcome Negative Self-talk with John Stange

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 31. Using the Gospel to Overcome Negative Self-talk with John Stange

I had the privilege of interviewing John Stange, a lead pastor, professor, coach, counselor, certified speaker and author. John has written several books and his recent one is called “Dwell On These Things.”

Pastor John Stange shares with us his struggles with anxiety and his great wisdom and insight on overcoming negative self-talk through looking at God’s perspective toward us. We also talked about dealing with perfectionism as I am also a recovering perfectionist. 

  • John Stange’s personal journey through anxiety, having sleepless nights, negative self-talk and excessive worries about “what if’s.”
  • Analyzing the root of his anxiety and preaching the truth of the gospel to his own heart
  • Factors that make people who are serving the ministry quit their role after a short period of time
  • “Why walk a defeated life when Christ already secured victory over our sins?”
  • Questions to ask yourself if you really want to understand Bible scriptures
  • Helpful concepts about seeing yourself through God’s eyes based on John Stange’s book, “Dwell On These Things”

Links and Resources:

John StangeDesire JesusDwell On These Things 

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Transcript of Episode 31

Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 31.  Today’s episode is with John Stange who is a pastor and author. He’s recently written a book called Dwell On These Things based on Philippians 4:8. John has some great wisdom and insight into overcoming negative self-talk and seeing ourselves the way that God sees us.

So let’s dive right in. 

Carrie: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. 

Pastor John: Well, happy to be here, glad to be with you.

Carrie: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Pastor John: My name is John Stange. I have been in full-time pastoral ministry for 23 years and my wife and I have four children. Two are in college, two are in high school. And in the midst of my ministry, serving as a pastor I’ve also gotten quite involved in podcasting and writing and have really been pursuing both of those as avenues where I really have a great opportunity to hopefully encourage people in their faith and hopefully help in a variety of ways. But that’s where I’ve been spending a lot of my time in addition to my service to the church and my ministry, just to my family. 

Carrie: One thing that I’ve found really interesting about you in my research is that while you do have a degree in the Bible, you also have a master’s degree in psychology. How did that process develop? 

Pastor John: Well, one of the things that I noticed when I became a pastor is that a lot of your preparation to become a pastor trains you to teach and preach the Bible and teach and preach theology. And that’s very helpful, but there are two other aspects to your role as a pastor that you really need to figure out a way to invest in one is leadership. So I spent a lot of time just studying leaders and going to leadership training and reading books on leadership and really invested in that. But then the other thing that is typically asked of you is that you be involved in a lot of counseling. And so when I was deciding what to do for a master’s, I decided to pursue counseling and psychology because so much of my task as a pastor involves counseling.

And it probably wouldn’t surprise you to discover that over the course of this past year in particular, I had more counseling than at any other time in my ministry. To the point where I actually had somebody tally up in one given week how much time I was spending on counseling when things were at their worst. And they said a full 29 hours of my week is being spent just counseling. In addition to all the other things that you have to do. So I actually had to figure out a way to balance that a little bit better because it was becoming quite excessive, but that is definitely a role that pastors are asked to actually step in and help out with. And so I wanted to make sure I did it well. And when I got my master’s, I thought, you know what? I’m going to pursue counseling, psychology. Learn these tasks and learn these skills so that I could serve our church even better, hopefully.

Carrie: I think that’s an important point because you can be a really great teacher and lack people skills and being a pastor, you have to find that balance between being able to communicate the word of God and also being able to relate and lead people, like you just talked about.

Pastor John: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And I’ve seen that a lot where people are really skilled in a particular task, or they have a lot of knowledge in a particular area, but they really struggle to take that from their brain to another life. And because that relational piece seems to be missing, so yeah, I agree.

Carrie: I’ve also interviewed a few people on the show who started out as pastors and ended up becoming therapists. And those stories are really interesting as well as kind of like an outflow of just the ministry that they were doing. 

Pastor John: Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me. That’s great. 

Carrie: We’re talking about anxiety today and incorporating that with spirituality, obviously. And I’m curious about your particular struggles with anxiety. 

Pastor John: Yeah, it’s interesting because I don’t know that at one season of my life, I would have really thought of myself as being particularly anxious. In some respects, I tend to think I’m an easygoing person. And then as life went on and I took on more responsibilities and as I was trying to lead my household well and try to lead our church well, I started to notice seasons where I would really struggle to sleep. 

I’m not a great sleeper to begin with. So I’m just going to confess that I think there’s something biological there that factors into that, but it was even worse than normal. And I can remember certain times where I would just find myself looking out the window of my bedroom, just looking outside, wondering in my mind why can’t I sleep.

And then as I try to lay my head down on the pillow, I would be thinking about all these what-if scenarios. What if this happens with your family or what if this happens with the church or what if this happens with your finances, all sorts of things. And I realized that I was becoming a rather anxious person.

I don’t know that I always demonstrated that to other people, but within my own mind. In fact, I actually think I tried to make a pretty strong effort to not demonstrate that to other people just to kind of portray that everything was fine. But in my own mind, I have to admit to you I really have gone through seasons where I felt particularly anxious and kind of went on a journey to try and figure out what’s at the root of this and what can I do that would be actually be helpful so that this doesn’t become such a dominant feature in my life.

If I’m going to be doing the things that I think God’s called me to do, I can’t be paralyzed by anxiety constantly. And I can’t give this full sway over myself. So I need to call it out into the light and I need to do something that’s going to actually help me overcome it.

Carrie: What was that process like for you? 

Pastor John: I had to kind of analyze what was at the root of it at first. And what I noticed about myself is that I was trying to control too many things, and I was trying to do too many things without help. And I don’t know if that was a pride issue. I think that’s part of it. I, you know, I think certainly it was a pride issue in some respects, but I also think it comes from this thought of not wanting to burden other people with your problems.

And then also just this thought that sometimes you get in your mind when you’re trying to lead, this is your responsibility. So you just think, look, this is my job. I have to handle this. I can’t give this to somebody else. I just have to do it. Right. It’s just my role. And so the first thing I needed to do was just figure out what was at the root of this.

And again, it was just control issues and a desire not to burden other people and just, you know, the burdens that come from leadership. But the solution for me was multifaceted. And a lot of these things I think come back to preaching the gospel to your heart, where sometimes if you’re trying to do too much, it’s almost like you’re trying to take Christ’s job and do it instead of relying on him to be the strength that we need. And so it was almost like a works-based false gospel that I was starting to preach to my heart that can be very unhealthy. And when I phrased it that way in my mind, my theological triggers went off and said, “Wait a second. You can’t preach something false to your own heart. You have to stop this.” And so I thought, all right, well, what does it look like to actually apply the truth of the gospel to my own heart? What does it look like to be content in Christ and to trust him to do the things that I can’t do and to rest in the fact that he is perfect? I am not, and I’m fine with that.

And so this was part of the journey that I went on, but when I started analyzing that seeing what was at the root and then preaching the truth of the gospel to my heart, that really made a huge difference. 

Carrie: I can really relate to that because I started this podcast and I was doing entirely too much. And I ended up hiring an assistant this year and it was super scary in the beginning.

Just the sense of like, “Okay. I’m like, yes, it’s a great thing that I have help, but I’m also like having to let go of control of things that I’ve been doing and what’s going to happen if I start letting go of that control and somebody else is gonna take over, and I think we do that with God so much in our own lives. We try to take control over things that we have no control over, even things like our own health like I’m up at night worrying about all of these things that could be happening to me are going on. And instead of saying, okay, I don’t have control over this. God loves me. He cares about me. He’s for me.

And I think that’s what you’re talking about in terms of having a theology of how God sees us. And really speaking that into ourselves is so important. 

Pastor John: Yeah, exactly. I agree. A hundred percent. 

Carrie: So, talk to us about negative self-talk because I think a lot of people really struggle with that. And what have you found to be helpful in your life?

Pastor John: There’s a variety of things that I have found helpful. And one of the things that I’ve noticed that is helpful for me is to know that I’m not the only person that wrestles with this. So when you serve in a public role, right now you’re putting yourself out there publicly doing a podcast, right?

So you’re just basically, you’re subjecting yourself to the opinions of others. And that could be a challenging task to do no matter what role you do it in. So you can imagine when I became a pastor I was subjecting myself to the opinions of many, many people and my opinion being sometimes the harshest and frequently, I would find myself preparing a message.

So I’ll use a sermon as an example. I’d prepare a message. I’d have it all straight in my head. I’d get up and I’d preach it. And then afterwards I’d have this thought that it didn’t go as well as I thought, or maybe the feedback I got on it wasn’t exactly what I was anticipating. And I would find myself spending the rest of Sunday beating myself up over perceived weaknesses in my presentation or times when I tripped over my words or ways that I could have said something better or something that I forgot to share that I meant to share or someone’s reaction that I misinterpreted or whatever it may be. And I just have all these thoughts going through my mind. Just the imperfections of what I had just shared and all this negative self-talk about, oh, why can’t you be as good of a speaker as this individual or that individual. And that’s a very unhealthy thing to start drilling into your mind. And I would suspect that’s probably one of the contributors to a lot of people who serve in public ministry roles quitting after a short period of time because they just spent a lot of time in self-accusation instead of refreshing their heart with the truth of the gospel and preaching the same message to their own heart that they just preached to their congregation. And eventually, I needed to get to the spot where I started to see the opportunities that I was being given to speak or to lead as opportunities to help people, not opportunities to look good while you’re helping people. And what I mean by that is this: Yeah it was a big change in my mind. I thought I used to wrestle with after I would preach a sermon, or lead a meeting, or whatever it may be. “How did you look doing that? Did you do okay?” And it was basically “how did you look doing it?” And then somewhere along the way, the Lord helped me to flip that in my mind to say, “did you help somebody?” And judge what I had just done by whether or not I was seeking to glorify God and help people. And when that became the measuring stick that really helped me with probably the major area of negative self-talk that I was wrestling with. Just trying to understand what it looks like to glorify God and help people Instead of worrying about how I looked while I was trying to do it.

Carrie: I think that’s been probably one of the greatest gifts that this podcast has ever given to me, just like, you know, through the Lord’s work, it’s showing me that it doesn’t have to be perfect to help people and I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. So I know that I have to go back and listen to these episodes and we joked. Before I hit record, there was a squeaky chair in one of them and it drove me crazy like I can hear that chair. And probably other people are listening to this in their car or they’re in the bathroom getting ready in the morning and they don’t care. You know, they’re probably not even noticing that. And somebody is going to be really blessed by that episode. But here I am and all I’m focused on is that annoying chair in the background.

Pastor John: Right. Instead of thinking of all the ways that you’re producing helpful content, you’re just hearing that chair that needs a little grease or a little oil.

Carrie: Right. So now I’m like, you know what? It goes out. There’s some people that like it and it’s helping some people and that’s all it really matters and it doesn’t have to be perfect in order to benefit other people. So that has been an unexpected gift, I guess, of going through this process.

You actually were really gracious enough to send me a copy of your book, “Dwell on these things” and I am really enjoying it. So I appreciate you for writing it, and you encourage readers to dwell on 31 different truths in God’s word. It’s written a little bit like a devotional, right? To kind of read one each day.

Pastor John: Yeah, it could be used that way for sure. Yeah. I wanted it to be useful in that way. If someone wanted to use the chapters in that kind of fashion, they definitely could. 

Carrie: So would you be willing to share a few of these with us and how they can transform our thinking and self-talk. 

Pastor John: Sure. There’s a variety of things that are mentioned in the book that kind of point us to things that the Lord is trying to communicate to us that sometimes we forget to communicate to ourselves, or we forget to repeat to ourselves after he’s communicated them. And so when you look through the book, you’ll see on day one, we talk about the fact that you are loved more deeply than you realize, and we start off the book with that concept because we want that to be a baseline for what we’re thinking about as we start to adopt God’s perspective toward us as our perspective toward us, as well as we work through the book, we talk about the blessing of walking by faith rather than by sight to experience greater joy.

I think a lot of times we think that there are all sorts of things we need to see ahead of time or know ahead of time to be able to actually experience contentment in life. But scripture shows us that we can walk by faith. We don’t have to walk by sight If we’re going to experience the greater joy that the Lord wants us to have.

I think something else that’s in the book that is most certainly a helpful concept for any of us. If we’re feeling anxious or just worried about a variety of things is the fact that scripture encourages us to have hearts that are ruled by the peace of Christ. And so when we get into the third section of the book that we talk about letting your heart be ruled by the peace of Christ.  And I can tell you just from experience, there are all sorts of things that I have tried to soothe my heart within this world or all sorts of things that I have told myself, this will bring you peace if you just acquire this or achieve this or obtain this or whatever it may be. And there’s nothing this world offers me that has ever produced lasting peace in my mind or in my life.

And when you look at what scripture teaches us, scripture teaches us that we can let our hearts be ruled by the peace of Christ. And when his peace is ruling in our heart, we’re actually being ruled or led by something that’s everlasting, not something that’s temporary, not something that’s just here for a moment and then goes away.

Some of the chapters in the book talk about ways in which we can live out the things that the Lord has taught to us. And so there’s a chapter where we talk a lot about giving grace to those around you. And that can be a very helpful thing for us internally as well, because we start to realize that we don’t have to demand perfection from ourselves. And we don’t have to demand perfection from others. And as recipients of the grace of God, we can demonstrate the grace of God to other people. And I love what scripture tells us in the book of acts, where it reminds us that Christ taught that it’s better to give than it is to receive.

And in a moment like that, where you’re giving grace to somebody else. I think we even have the opportunity to see how that plays out where just giving grace to somebody that ends up being a blessing in our own life and in our own heart. So those are some of the concepts. There’s 31 different concepts that we focus on in the book, but those are just a few of them-just a sample of some of the things that are in the book that I truly hope will be helpful to others. If they’re trying to develop a perspective of what does it look like to actually talk to yourself like God talks to you and repeat a message to your heart that actually lines up with the truth of his gospel. 

Carrie: That’s good. I know that in my counseling practice specifically, I work with a lot of people who have OCD sometimes like there’s a form of OCD called scrupulosity. And we’ve talked about it on the podcast before. It’s where you have all of these intrusive thoughts about God. You know, maybe God is angry at me. Maybe I’ve sinned. Maybe I’m going to hell, even though I know that I’m saved, those types of things people tend to ruminate on. And a lot of times people I work with are somewhat spiritually confused because they’ve sought out teachings to try to soothe some of this from a variety of different sources. You know, this person says you can lose your salvation. This person says you can’t lose your salvation. How do I know who God really is? And I know a lot of times people say, “okay, well in order to know God read the Bible that’s his word that’s his love letter to you.” How do we form this healthy theology of an understanding of who God is if there are so many different teachings that are saying are based on scripture. 

Pastor John: Yeah, that could be a tough thing for a new Christian, in particular, to try to discern. Thankfully we have the internal witness of the holy spirit and he points us in the direction of truth. So I believe that any suggestion I give needs to come under the fact that the holy spirit will actively point us in the direction of truth. I do believe he does that. So I would encourage anyone that’s really wrestling with that to just begin with prayer and trust the holy spirit to lead you in the direction of truth. And then as we’re looking at scripture, I think it’s also helpful to know that when you’re reading through the Bible if you really want to understand the Bible, you need to ask the question, what does this section have to do with Jesus? Or maybe I could say it this way: how is this portion of scripture trying to point me to Christ?

So if I’m in the book of Genesis, I need to be asking that question. If I’m in the Psalms, I need to be asking that question, but I mean the gospels or the letters of Paul or the general letters or the book of revelation, the whole thing is trying to point our minds to Christ. And specifically, when you look throughout scripture, you see the message of redemption as the Lord is trying to redeem lost humanity. And he’s trying to redeem fallen creation, right? Like it’s all, there’s this message of redemption all throughout. And so that points us to the gospel and the gospel is if you want to summarize the gospel, you could summarize it this way. It’s the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ.

And so in Christ lived the perfect life that we could never live. He lived that on our behalf. He walked a mile in our shoes. He’s our merciful sympathetic high priest. He knows all details of all things, and he actually walked it and lived it. And he did it perfectly without sin. And then in his death, he paid for our sin.

He took our sin upon himself so that ultimately we could be justified so that we could be declared righteous because he who knew no sin became sin for us. And then in his resurrection, he defeated the power of sin, the power of Satan. And the power of death. And he shares that victory with all of us who believe in him with anyone who trusts in him.

So the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, I think it all comes back to that. So now, you know, let’s think about some issues that sometimes we deal with and let’s plug it into that metric. If I’m dealing with, and we were just joking a few moments ago about perfectionism and the desire to kind of get everything right.

You know, whether the chair’s squeaking or whether all the words we say are exactly right, or whatever it may be. We deal with perfectionism. Well, let’s plug that into the gospel. Well, scripture tells us that we are not perfect. But Jesus is, and he came to live the perfect life for us because we couldn’t do it, which tells me I need to stop pressuring myself to be perfect because I’m not perfect.

And if I’m pressuring myself to be perfect, I’m preaching a false gospel to my heart because Christ came to this earth and was perfect for me because in my own strength I couldn’t be perfect. And so, you know, so that’s one element of how I think preaching the gospel to our hearts. Actually helps and it helps point us in the right direction. But then when you get to issues like Christ’s death, you know, I think sometimes we think that we have to be some sort of sacrificial martyr who can’t ask for help or can’t ask for assistance that we need to somehow, you know, die for our own sin or suffer for our own center, whatever it may be. And yet Jesus came to this earth to die in our place because we couldn’t die for our own sin ultimately, and have any sort of redemptive aspect come out of that.

And so Jesus who is perfect died in our place. And then scripture tells us that he rose from the grave. He defeated sin, Satan, and death. And so that victory gets shared with me because I trust in him. He’s already secured that victory. So what sense does it make for me to walk a defeated life or to just spend all this time telling myself how I’m defeated in this area or this area, or this area? Christ already secured victory over my sin Christ secured victory over my faulty thing.

He secured victory over death. I don’t even need to live in the fear of death because he’s already secured victory over it. He defeated death and even the deception of Satan or the accusation of Satan scripture tells us Satan loves to accuse God’s people. And I think sometimes we repeat Satan’s accusations in our own minds, almost like we’re trying to do his job for him. And that comes right back to the resurrection as well because Christ secured victory over sin, Satan, and death. And so Satan is defeated. So I don’t need to act like Satan is victorious. He’s been defeated. And so for me, it comes right back to preaching the gospel to my heart and understanding that the message of the gospel is woven all throughout scripture.

And if someone teaches something that does not line up with the truth of the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ, then that gives me a good metric to know how I can actually filter that out and not welcome that into my thinking. 

Carrie: That was a lot. That was good though. It was a lot. I was really trying to filter in thinking through some of the things that we just talked about like is God mad at me? Well, you know, God loves you. God loves you. He sent his son to die for you. There’s no greater love than that. Nobody else is going to be out here giving their life for you. 

Pastor John: Right. When you look theologically, what scripture says, it says, you know, prior to coming to faith in Christ, we were under the wrath of God, right?

We were like, yes, you were under the wrath of God. It speaks of that in the book of Ephesians. Okay. But then Christ came to this earth and took the wrath of the father upon himself so that we could become objects of mercy. Instead of objects of wrath. And so scripture actually says, you’re an object of mercy now. So if scripture is telling me I’m an object of mercy and that Christ already took the wrath of the father upon himself, then why don’t I just believe what it says instead of just trying to make it up. You know, it’s like, we’re trying to make up the opposite of what scripture says because we want to make ourselves feel bad sometimes.

And it’s like, let’s not torture yourself. You know, just believe what it says and believe what he is. 

Carrie: Or sometimes we try to take over maybe the role of the holy spirit and almost like over-convict ourselves. Sometimes people can air on one side or the other, right. Then they’re never open to correction or conviction. But then on the other side, it’s like, let me pick apart and confess every single thing I’ve done. Even the things that I know I’m already forgiven for. I keep bringing up the past sins over and over and over again. And we’re just really torturing ourselves at that point. 

Pastor John: Yeah. You’re absolutely right.

Yeah. We’re prone to extremes. 

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So tell us where people can find “Dwell on these things”.

Pastor John: “Dwell on these things” can be found literally anywhere. So you’ll be able to find it on Amazon. You’ll be able to find it at Barnes and noble. You’ll be able to find it pretty much any store you go to and which I’m really excited about the wide release that the book is receiving. But if you’d also like to find out some more information about it, or if people would like to read the first three chapters for free and just kind of see if it’s for them, just go to my website: desireJesus.com and you can read the first three chapters of the book right there on the website for free.

The publisher gave me permission to be able to post that. And so that’s right there. You’ll see a link to it right on the front page of the website. 

Carrie: That’s great. And we’ll put a link in the show notes too. So since our podcast is called hope for anxiety and OCD, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, a time where you received hope from God or another person.

Pastor John: Certainly. So in 2008, my wife and I feel like the Lord was calling us to move to Langhorne, Pennsylvania, which was a couple of hours south of where we were living up in the Pocono region of Pennsylvania. And we felt like the Lord was leading us to move here and replant a church that was just about to close down.

And you know, shut its doors forever. And so we moved here to get involved in church planting, church revitalization. And I remember at the time being very convinced that the Lord had called us to do that, but that doesn’t come with any guarantees. So when you’re moving to a new area, you’re not certain if you’re going to be able to connect with people. And I believe that the Lord was paving a way for us to do so. And in my heart, I did believe that it was all going to work. But I remember at one point very, very early in the process, this was just a couple of days or a couple of weeks, I guess I should say before we moved down to this area, I agreed to do a wedding down in this area, in the building that we were going to use. So in the church building. And I remember at that point, there weren’t really very many people that were part of the church. There were just about six or so active people that had been part of the church that hung on to help us plant the new church. And I remember as the wedding was about to get underway, I started watching people pull into the parking lot and I saw one car pull in and another car pull in and another car pull in and before I knew it, the parking lot was filled and I thought, wow, this is exciting to see for this wedding. I’m just hopeful that the day comes when we have worship services here, that people will actually become part of this church, that we actually have the opportunity to build a church. And I just remember looking out at that full parking lot and just praying to the Lord, just a very simple prayer.

I just prayed, Lord, may it be so. May this be the type of thing that we get to see again when this church really gets underway, not just for a special event, but for the believers gathering together for worship gathering together on a Sunday morning gathering together mid-week whatever, whatever the Lord willed. And so I just remember having filled with the hope of Christ in that moment. And just a confidence that the Lord was going to help facilitate that even though I was certainly tempted to drift toward anxiety in that process because it was certainly a big step of faith for our family to come and, and move to a new area and try and get the church going.

But I remember sometime after that, a few years after that, when the parking lot really was filling up on Sunday mornings and looking at that in my mind, coming right back to standing on that porch and thinking, all right, Lord, this is wonderful. You answered that prayer. You filled us with your hope.

You gave us confidence in you. And now we get to see with our eyes, the type of things that we were seeing by faith for the past several years. And that was a real blessing to me. It was confirmation that when the Lord leads you in a particular direction, it’s best to just obey because he’s got the details already figured out. And sometimes he asks us to make big steps of faith. And so we just go and we get to see what he has planned on the other side of that step. 

Carrie: It’s so beautiful when you’re able to just look back and see how far the Lord has brought you in a particular area and things, and all the challenges that there were, I’m sure along the ways of like, are we ever going to be able to do this? Is this ever going to grow? That’s awesome. 

Pastor John: Yeah. You’re right. Big challenges. 

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for being on the show and talking with us about preaching the gospel to our hearts. I think it’s been a great conversation. 

Pastor John: Well, Carrie, thanks so much for having me on. It’s been a real pleasure.

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I felt like we had a little bit of therapy on myself today on this episode, talking about my perfectionism and difficulty letting go of responsibilities and delegating them to my VA. In all seriousness, I really needed those reminders today that Jesus has overcome sin, death. Nothing is too difficult for him.

As I like to remind myself on a regular basis, God is way bigger than my problem. So allow that to encourage you today. If you would like to stay up to date with what’s going on on the podcast, you can join our email list at www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Thank you so much for listening. 

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

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

30. Developing Self Awareness with Lola Sodunke

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 30. Developing Self Awareness with Lola Sodunke

In this episode, Lola Sodunke of Joy In Purpose Podcast shares her wisdom and insights about self-awareness and how it can lead to a greater connection with God.

By listening to our conversation, you will learn about:

  • Self-awareness and its importance
  • Setting boundaries and learning your values and beliefs 
  • Ways you can become self-aware as a Christian 
  • Involving God in your self-awareness process

Links and Resources:

Lola Sodunke, MA
Joy in Purpose

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Transcript of Episode 31

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 30. Today, I got the opportunity to sit down with Lola Sodunke where she talks to us about self-awareness. She did a great job incorporating how God is involved in our self-awareness process as Christians and our Christian community that we’re around. I really hope this interview blesses you today.

Carrie: Lola, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lola: First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I’m really excited to be a part of your, this episode is a little bit about myself. So I will say that I am a child of a Nigerian immigrant. So I came to the United States with my parents.

I came with my parents. I was 12 years old. So I have what will be considered a bi-cultural upbringing. So being Nigerian and living in the United States, I am a fourth-year doctoral student in a counseling psychology program. It’s been an amazing experience. I’ve gotten opportunities to work with clients. We’re dealing with depression, anxiety, trauma. I’ve also got into the experience of administering psychological assessments to understand client’s strengths and weaknesses, and then potential problems and cognition or emotional reactivity. And most importantly, I really like administering psychological assessments because it also helps inform treatment recommendations. 

I’m very passionate about the field of psychology. So I like doing community outreach at my church and just providing opportunities for people to ask questions and provide psycho-education and mental health topics. 

Carrie: Awesome. That sounds really good. So are you hoping once you get your doctorate to focus on psychological testing? 

Lola: Yeah, I would like to because I really like how we can integrate that. Like I said with treatment recommendations and even for the older population, it’s helpful for assessing diagnosis for dementia, for the different types of dementia.

Sometimes some people have TBI traumatic brain injury to see where they’re at and then make sure to make recommendations to help improve their quality of life. 

Carrie: Right. On one of our first five episodes, we talked about assessment and about the importance of that and the difference between anxiety and OCD. Why it’s important to differentiate those in terms of getting the treatment and help and support that people need.

So that’s really awesome that you’re going to be contributing to that. Today, we’re talking about self-awareness, which I guess is a big concept. So how do you define that? 

Lola: Yeah, it is a big concept. I guess for some people it could be overwhelming. I became passionate about this topic because I realized how people become sufferers wherein therapy you see that light bulb moment.

I also noticed that it can also be a reason why people come to therapy when they realize some things about themselves that they would like to change. So self-awareness is a skill that we can work on. It’s basically a way to be able to understand yourself, understand other people, and understand how other people view you.

So when there’s something called internal self-awareness, think about being able to look at your personality. So looking at yourself as objectively as you can. Even though we have our own blind spots and biases, knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, your thoughts, your beliefs, your motivations. What emotions do you experience on most days?

Are you still one that is generally sad? Always anxious. Sometimes we just go through life and we’re just going. Self-awareness allows you to be able to pay attention to different parts of your life. You can focus on my feeling fitness-wise. How am I doing psychologically with my relationships, with finances, with friends, if you have kids with your kids, with your spouse.

So self-awareness is being able to look at yourself as objectively as you can. There’s also something called external self-awareness. Like I was saying earlier, external self-awareness is how other people feel about you. As much as some people might say, they don’t care what other people think. We also know that no matter how smart you are, if you don’t have a good social network, you’re not going to progress much in life.

You might be good at your job, but if you don’t have a good relationship, they don’t see you as a good leader, you might not get promoted in your job. So I’m not talking about when people just don’t like you because they don’t like you, but where people and we’re tribal, so we are made for human connection and social connection.

So it’s important to also know not to be hyper-focused on it to also to have people view you. Are you telling that maybe you just sit there and you’re smiling, but then you think you’re having a good day? So you’re just being yourself and throughout the day, people are like, are you upset? Are you okay? Because they’re interpreting your body language and your facial expression is different. In your mind, you’re happy. You might even think I thought I was smiling. Other people see it as if you’re frowning. Self-awareness, there are two components to it. How you see yourself and also other people see you. There’s a healthy balance and there’s an overboard, or sometimes you could be in a group in a social group where the social norm is gossiping, but then internally your values telling you that you don’t gossip.

You know that you don’t fit in with that crowd so you don’t associate yourself to that. Sometimes there’s a social norm, there’s a social group and it’s toxic. So being able to also navigate your own beliefs, your own values, and then navigating the values of this other external social group and seeing does it align with you?

Because sometimes some people they’re part of a group and because they’re so self-aware of the group and they want to please the group. They’ll just go along with the group. So there’ll be the one there’ll be gossipy, but internally it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t align or doesn’t align with their values.

So it’s important to know where you stand with how you view yourself and also how you view other people. And to some extent, how they view you. It’s important. 

Carrie: I agree with that. Let’s kind of break that down a little bit. I think one of the things that we learned from this pandemic was that in America we’re such a go, go society.

A lot of times we don’t take the time to just sit and maybe self-reflect and check-in with ourselves. How am I actually doing? Am I stressed right now? What are the signs that I’m stressed right now? How does that manifest in my body? And then I think too about what you said about other people and how they perceive you.

One of the things I had to learn earlier on in my life was that I have a thinking face. And that my thinking face really disconnects me from the people that are around me. And actually, they think that I’m mad, but I’m not mad. I’m just really lost and kind of deep in thought. And that actually inhibited some of my early client work. Someone came out with me and was able to give me some feedback on my session and found that was really helpful. Another friend from church who said, “you know, I wondered when I first met you if you ever smiled.” So then it was my effort really like, I probably need to smile more, especially when I’m around other people.”

And it wasn’t that I wasn’t happy, but that was really how I was perceived. And maybe I think maybe I wasn’t fully as happy as I am now, but I wouldn’t say necessarily that I was in a depressed state or anything of that nature, but people could have perceived me that way. And I think this is important in terms of anxiety and OCD.

Oftentimes we also have misnomers about how other people see us like, “Oh, well, those people think I’m a bother” or “I really shouldn’t speak up here because then they’re going to see me as too aggressive or mean.” Oftentimes that’s not even how people are perceiving the situation. If I set a boundary, people are going to think that I’m mean. That may be true in your family system, but it may not be true in the larger societal context, which is kind of what you were saying there a little bit earlier.

Lola: Absolutely. This is why it’s important to know your own values and your own beliefs because it’s not just about other people. First, it starts with you.

What do you value? What are your own beliefs? How do you see yourself? What is important to you? I gave an example earlier about gossiping. If gossiping is not something that you want to engage in, even if you are in a group of people and that’s what they do, they might not like you but you know that’s not something that I want to do. It’s the same with setting boundaries.

What is the most important thing to you? It’s important that I go to bed at a certain time. So you stick with that time. Sometimes you think that other people are going to be upset, but then you also have to give yourself time to stick to that boundary. To really see that other people are upset or maybe they were just using you and monopolizing your time.

I just have to realize I have to let certain people go. You have to have a balance in what do I think of myself? How do I view myself? How do I want to be in this world? And how do I want other people to see me? It can be tricky and it takes time. This is what I encourage people to do on their own. And when they’re still having issues with what they to seek the help of a therapist. We are always objective. And sometimes it was saying it out loud “I like to go to about a certain time.” And then Frank always likes to talk till midnight. After seeing it, I realized my boundaries are important for my own well-being and engaging in that. Another example that you give that was really helpful was you talked about how a client shared something with you or a friendship or something with you.

So those are like two people that their opinion was important. If a friend from church that they’ve already known you for a while. They know you’re a good person. I know they’re saying something to you. So you’re able to take it in and say, okay, they might be right about this. And this is not what I’m thinking. So I can change it. We want our client to know that, okay, this is my thinking face. It’s not about you. I’m thinking. I’m processing. Maybe thinking of the next question to ask you and things like that. Also, the people that we talked to that this feedback confirms is also important. I can help us to navigate where we want to make the changes and what changes we want to make.

Carrie: Right. Is this person giving me feedback because they’re trying to help me? And it helped me improve as a person or are they trying to tear me down or make me kind of go the path that they want me to go on. I think those are helpful questions for us to ask when we’re receiving any kind of constructive criticism.

I’m curious for you to put kind of like a spiritual lens over this. How do ourselves as Christians becoming more self-aware? Do you feel like that leads us to greater connectivity with God? 

Lola: You know what I think that’s a great question. I don’t think that you should go into self-awareness and leave God out of it. As a matter of fact when people ask me how do they develop self-awareness? I say it’s a skill that can be developed. Start in your prayer time. Ask God to open your heart to what he would like for you to change about yourself. Also, some of us are only focused on the negative. We don’t even recognize our strengths.

So going to a prayerfully where you take your paper, your journal, your pen, and even start with your strengths. Ask him to open your eyes. What are my strengths? Because some of us, we pick ourselves apart with our anxiety, with our worry that we don’t even know what we’re good at. So look what your strengths are. 

What are the things that other people have said that you’re good at? Write down your strengths. What are your weaknesses? I need them to address those weaknesses because sometimes I put focus on our weaknesses. It’s like there’s grace. Even start with one thing at a time.

What are scriptures that are aligned with the thing that you’re trying to change, and just also invite God into it. Invite your Christian circle, your support group into it. And also, like I said, go to someone that you trust. It’s easier for some people to be more self-aware than others.

So sometimes we have to ask a friend, trust a friend, not just anybody. Trust a family member. And if you’re someone that you feel like you’re sensitive to criticism, tell them that so that they can use that in their feedback to you. “I’m really nervous, but I want to grow. I don’t want to stay the same.”

What are some things that I can change? What are my strengths? my weaknesses? You tell me one strength. Tell me one weakness. If you feel like you’re going to be overwhelmed. You can also ask them what are ways that you think I can change.  How can you hold me accountable? So, this is why we can rely on our brothers and sisters in Christ. Whatever you want to share, whatever you’re working on, they can hold you accountable and be prayerful about this. Sometimes you’re focused on one thing. Maybe on giving back to other people. Maybe you’re someone that has internal self-awareness, you’re good there, but when it comes to reaching out to other people, making sure that you’re being kind, you’re being patient, you show other people grace. Maybe that’s something that God wants you to work on. So I would say be prayerful as you’re navigating stuff for when it’s and what to work on and also invite your brothers and sisters in Christ to hold you accountable. Someone that you trust, that you have a relationship with that you trust. Be gentle on yourself. Like I said, you can start with one strength and one weakness. We’re all working progress. So don’t feel like, “Oh my goodness. I have all these weaknesses.” Many of us have a lot of weaknesses and just take it one step at a time.

Carrie: I absolutely agree with that because I think some of the clients that I work with have multiple issues or multiple diagnoses. They have a lot of stuff that they’re working with. And so always starting small. The small changes in our lives and the slow and steady progress. That’s going to be the most sustainable.

But I like what you said really about allowing God to reveal those things to us in prayer in terms of behaviors that we might need to change in our lives. Oftentimes just having clients be able to develop the tolerance to sit with things that are difficult is really important. Sometimes we’re in a lot of pain and we use unhealthy ways to get out of it, whether that’s stuffing, whether it’s exploding.

Whether it’s just complete avoidance like I’m going to pretend like that’s not actually there. Do you feel like maybe knowing some of those things, the ways that we get out of self-awareness, do you think that that’s helpful for us as well? 

Lola: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll give an example there. People don’t want to hear any bad news.

Someone is like, the old teacher that you knew, something she’s going through, something that like, “No, I don’t want to hear it.” It’s like they put a blinder on. They just want to ignore. I don’t want to hear any bad news, only good news. You have to ask yourself. Okay. That’s good for the moment, but it’s not good with helping you build relationships. Self-awareness is paying attention to the patterns of your life. What patterns do you gravitate to? How do other people see you? Maybe when you’re by yourself you’re cool, but other people see you as angry as exploding. It’s important to know your patterns, but like I said, it takes time to work on those things, to move away from them. But even recognizing those patterns is powerful because then you can look at yourself in an objective manner and say, do I like being like this? Do I want to continue in this way? And then the next step is, what can I do about it? This is where your community comes into play and then seeking therapy to help you with that.

It might make you feel uncomfortable to know that while I am one of those persons that when someone does say something that might be sad news or bad, I just ignore it. And I just don’t want to hear. I just shut them down. How does that make that person feel? I don’t even come off as self-compassionate. It might make you feel bad in the moment, but the goal is to work on it and to improve because it’s going to help you to connect more with other people and help you to have more fulfilling relationships. 

Carrie: Absolutely. I think what you’re talking about is especially true in very intimate relationships. If you will have a hard time being self-aware and you have a spouse or boyfriend, girlfriend, that’s probably the person that you could ask first tell me one strength or one weakness. If you’re not married, just a very close friend that you spend a lot of time with.

It really knows you because oftentimes when we’re in relationships with other people, that’s where we notice our differences in terms of how other people approach situations. And we can become really frustrated by that because they don’t approach situations the way we think that they should or the way I like. They don’t do it the way I would do it.

And then it causes us to kind of look in the mirror and go, “Oh, well, why do I approach this situation this way?” or “Why did that make me so distressed when they acted in that manner? And that those types of times are really good for self-reflection. Anytime that you get really worked up about something or you have a conflict in a relationship instead of avoiding that really kind of trying to be curious about it and be reflectful on yourself as well as the other person. How were they impacted when I shared something? How was I impacted when they shared something? That’s good. 

Lola: Yeah, absolutely. 

Carrie: Do you feel like that it’s possible for people to be too self-aware because someone might say, “well, you know, in Christianity we really just need to focus on the needs of others and being giving to them. You know, I don’t want to focus on myself too much.”

Lola: Okay. Yes. Okay. I really liked that question. I think that sometimes we can be too focused on certain areas of our life. Like I said, some people know their strengths, some people know their weaknesses. I’ll give an example. Let’s say you’re prepared for a presentation as you’re about to get up, you realize you forgot to add an image to a slide and that’s all you’re focusing on. Oh my goodness. And you’re nervous. You’re focusing on your heartbeat. You’re focusing on the peak you have in your stomach. You’re sweating. In that moment, I will ask someone to pay attention to what’s going on in their body. Why don’t we try external self-awareness?

Are people in the audience connecting with the topic? How come you’re not noticing the person that is not in their head? The other person that is raising their hand to ask a question. So you have people who are focused more on external self-awareness. They care about pleasing other people more than what is their values and their abilities and their motivation.

So I think as Christians, and I think it’s the same criticism with this personal development. As a Christian, I would never tell anybody to focus on something without including God into it. We all have our own area of growth and you have to be willing to be open to what area of growth God wants you to focus on.

There’s some people that they’re so self-aware that they only notice the problem in certain situations. What about the positive things that are going on? They can tell you the problem. They can tell you the problem with the particular project and maybe they’re right about those problems that will come up in a particular project. Maybe you don’t have the answer to that problem and still want the answers to that problem. What about the good things that are coming out as a result of this? I think with anything we can pay too much attention on it, but the best way I can answer this question is to say, bring God into it.

There’s also a healing that comes in when you’re focused on yourself and focus on being the best you. You’re also more gracious to other people if you’re more patient with yourself. You’re more likely to extend that grace to other people by being patient with them. If know that you have flaws and weaknesses, you’re also able to be gracious like they have flaws and weaknesses.

Like the Bible says. I’ll put it this way before we correct someone else’s wrongdoing, it’s important to you to correct our own wrongdoing as well. And to be able to make sure that we’re making those changes in our life. When you know that you’re a human being and you’re a sinner, it’s easier for you to be able to say, you know what. I have baggage too. I have things I’m working on too. So I’m not perfect as I’m trying to correct you in what you’re doing wrong or whether I think that you could be doing better.

Carrie: Absolutely. Grace is one of the topics I’d love to dive into the podcast at some point in time. I absolutely agree with what you said, that when we are able to receive grace from God ourselves, it’s so much easier to give grace to other people like it has to flow through us and out of us. That’s very good. I know that you have a podcast. Um, can you tell us a little bit about your podcast? 

Lola: Yeah. So my podcast is titled Joy In Purpose. The name of that podcast came about because on this path of fulfilling your purpose, whatever it is, some people are at a stage where they’re like, I don’t even know what my purpose is.

We all go through disappointments and failures and good times as well. I noticed that sometimes when we go through road bombs or we’re facing people telling us no, it can really bring us down and make us question ourselves. So that’s why on this journey to purpose, on this journey of navigating our purpose and fulfil our purpose, there’s going to be disappointment along the way. So my podcast is talking about the journey of purpose and just finding the joy in purpose, finding the joy within ourselves in purpose. So I invite other people to talk about their journey of purpose. Just talk about what I call their purpose stories.

And I also curate conversations related to purpose and mental health.

Carrie: Awesome. So at the end of every podcast, I like for our guests to share a story of hope because our podcast is called hope for anxiety and OCD. So this is a time where you received hope from God or another person.

Lola: This past year, 2020, and even this year, societally, we’ve all gone through a lot. And for me also with my program, there’s a lot of work, dissertation papers, classes. Just this year has just been stressful, just a lot going on. And the previous year too. Recently, I got awarded a scholarship from my program and the scholarship was determined by the faculty and they picked myself and another applicant to receive the scholarship for the summer semester.

And I am so grateful for that. So in the middle, a lot of things going on. To me, it felt like, “Wow, hope.” That’s hope. It just really made me look up and just be appreciative of God and his faithfulness. 

Carrie: Yeah, it’s just always so good. And when you’re in that moment of provision of like, oh God came through for me in this situation. It just gives you encouragement that next time you’re facing another situation that he’s going to open a door, come through for you.

This has been a really great conversation on self-awareness and I really appreciate you being on the show and sharing your wisdom with us. We wish you the best in your studies. 

Lola: Thank you very much. I’m glad that you had me on to speak with your audience. I really appreciate it. 

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I hope this interview causes you to be curious about how you can become more self-aware and what that looks like in your process.

Something I realized that I forgot to tell everyone about is that we now have hope for anxiety and OCD t-shirts. Isn’t that fun?  I designed this t-shirt on Teespring. And so if you go to our hope for anxiety and OCD website, and then click on the store, it’ll actually take you to an external site when you click on the t-shirt.

I don’t actually print them here or mail them out or anything like that. There is another company that does. I did order one just so you know, I wanted to feel it and see how it looked. The color is great. The printing is high quality and it’s a super comfortable shirt. So if you are looking for a way to help promote the podcast, or you just want to add a t-shirt to your collection, you’re welcome to go onto www.hopeforanxietyandocd/store. You’ll also find my ebook on there as well, which helps you find a therapist that’s a good fit on the first try. Thank you so much for listening.

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

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