Skip to main content

Tag: Mental Health Awareness

Carrie Bock - By The Well Counseling

138. The Connection Between Trauma and OCD

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

Carrie delves into the profound connection between trauma and OCD. Drawing from her experience as a licensed professional counselor, she discusses how childhood trauma and family-of-origin issues often overlap with OCD symptoms.

Episode Highlights

  • How childhood experiences can impact mental health and contribute to OCD.
  • The surprising statistic that many individuals with OCD also meet the criteria for PTSD.
  • How trauma affects the nervous system and manifests in physical symptoms.
  • The role of healing trauma in improving OCD symptoms.

Episode Summary

Welcome to episode 138 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host, and today we’re delving into the connection between trauma and OCD.

Many people I see in counseling have been impacted by childhood experiences or trauma but might not meet full PTSD criteria. In fact, statistics show that about 25% of those with OCD also meet criteria for PTSD. Given this, it’s surprising that trauma often isn’t considered in OCD treatment. If we include those affected by trauma but not meeting PTSD criteria, that percentage might exceed half of the OCD population.

Trauma, as defined by the American Psychological Association, includes disturbing experiences that result in significant fear, helplessness, or other disruptive feelings that have long-lasting negative effects. This can overlap with what people with OCD experience, such as intense fear and behavioral impacts.

Often, clients describe early OCD symptoms as traumatic due to a lack of understanding and stigmatization, especially if their family didn’t recognize or know how to address it. This can create a sense of shame and confusion.

Today’s episode explores how trauma influences OCD symptoms and offers practical strategies for addressing both conditions. I also discuss how faith can play a vital role in the healing process, providing a holistic approach to overcoming these challenges.

You’re not alone in this journey. There is hope and healing available, and I’m here to support you every step of the way.

Explore Related Episode:

107. Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) with Diana Rice, LMHC, CIMHP, CTP, QS

Transcript

Welcome to episode 138. Many people that I see in counseling, they’ve been impacted by their childhood, or they’ve been impacted by trauma, but they wouldn’t necessarily meet criteria for a full blown PTSD diagnosis. Not only do we have one fourth of the people, if we were to add in people that were affected by trauma, I would imagine we’re probably over half of that OCD population.

We should be talking about this. We should be taking it into consideration in terms of treatment. Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and mother, licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing.

When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith.

I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode. We are going to have our first podcast hangout via zoom. on September the 9th at 7 15 p. m central standard time. This is just an opportunity for me to meet you, the listeners, to hear what’s on your heart, maybe answer a few questions that you have in the time that we have.

So if you’d like to get involved in that or receive the zoom link, definitely subscribe to our email list and we will put that link in the show notes for you. Our email subscribers are insiders. They know things first before anyone else, before you hear it on the podcast. So if you want to be one of our email insiders, definitely sign up for our list and we would love to have you.

Today we’re talking about trauma, the connection between trauma and OCD. I know it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot and some people will say things like, My childhood wasn’t really that bad. I don’t know if I necessarily have trauma. I wasn’t getting beat in my household. or I didn’t grow up with a parent that was a raging alcoholic, we didn’t have massive things happening, we were just your normal average everyday family.

We weren’t living in extreme neglect or poverty. However, a lot of times you can grow up in an environment that impacts you profoundly and impacts your relationships profoundly in a way that you have to process through as an adult in order to move. Beyond how you were raised. This is especially true if you feel like you are repeating the same exact patterns that you saw in your family that you don’t want to carry into your family right now.

So we would call those types of things family of origin issues, things that you saw growing up or experienced growing up in your family, but you don’t want to repeat that pattern or pass those same things on to your children. The main reason I wanted to do this episode on the connection between trauma and OCD is the statistics that I heard recently that 25 percent of people who meet criteria for an OCD diagnosis also meet criteria for a PTSD diagnosis.

Now I was surprised and not surprised by this at the same time. If you’ve been around here and you’ve been listening for a little while, one of the overlaps that I see quite frequently is a history of childhood trauma and an OCD diagnosis. So I wasn’t surprised, but I was surprised at the same time in the sense that oftentimes when people are talking about OCD treatment, They don’t ever talk about trauma and we’re talking about one quarter of the people meet a PTSD diagnosis.

It’s not easy to get a PTSD diagnosis. There’s very specific criteria. Many people that I see in counseling, they’ve been impacted by their childhood or they’ve been impacted by trauma. But they wouldn’t necessarily meet criteria for a full blown PTSD diagnosis. Not only do we have one fourth of the people, if we were to add in people that were affected by trauma, I would imagine we’re probably over half of that OCD population.

We should be talking about this. We should be taking it into consideration in terms of treatment. Let’s start by defining trauma. I like this definition from the American Psychological Association. They said trauma is any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, that’s where you’re disconnected from your present moment experience, confusion.

or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long lasting negative effect on a person’s attitude, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. They often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place. When we look at this definition, I see a lot of overlaps between the definition of trauma and what people with OCD experience.

Looking at disturbing experiences, having OCD, Is that traumatic? That’s a very interesting question. It’s very disturbing to have these thoughts. There is significant fear, that was in the definition. Feelings of helplessness, for sure. Intense emotions that have an effect on someone’s behavior. Obviously, OCD is a behavioral disorder.

And they often challenge the individual’s view of the world. Certainly, The individual’s view of the world is affected by OCD. I never necessarily, early on, thought of OCD as traumatic until I started to hear more and more stories of my clients explaining to me what it was like when they first had an onset of symptoms.

This usually happens in childhood, Or adolescence for most people and they discussed with me trying to having this intense fear inside, trying to communicate that to parents who weren’t aware that this is what their child was experiencing. Maybe they were in a system where their parents didn’t have OCD and so they didn’t really understand or know what to look for.

Then this process of getting help, sometimes that felt very stigmatizing to them, or they were looking at their life, recognizing, I’m erasing my paper so hard I’m burning holes in it, but none of the other kids around me are doing that. I’m spending two hours studying for a math test, but nobody else is doing that.

Or, my family is able to go into a public restroom, but I feel like I can’t. All these little pieces cause a shame to build up and oftentimes they didn’t really understand. What they were experiencing and so we’re able in the process of going through like some EMDR or trauma therapy to go back to those places where those experiences first started to happen and Unravel and provide this level of adult care and compassion to their younger self of hey You didn’t know that this was going on back then but now we know And if we could just even paint this like perfect scenario of healing what would have been what you absolutely needed in that point was somebody to come and tell you, Hey, this has a name.

You’re not crazy. It’s called OCD. Let’s get you some help. Let’s figure out how to manage this. Fortunately, we’ve come so far now that people are starting to get diagnosed earlier than they used to, but for many people listening to this, you may have lived with OCD for years without even knowing it.

Another thing that I would point out that I’m seeing in a lot of clients I work with, as a family of origin issue, as a trauma issue, But probably is not going to meet full criteria for PTSD would be a rigid family systems that people grow up in. Let me give you some different examples of this. A lot of times what I see is there’s a rigid religious rules, maybe even just the structure of the household of we go to church every single Sunday, every single Wednesday.

Doesn’t matter if you feel up to it or not. Doesn’t matter what else is going on in our household. Could be there is only one right way to do things. And if you don’t do it that way, you’re made to feel bad or feel a sense of shame. If you know that dad is coming home and you’re anxious every day because dad’s going to find that one spot in the house that’s not clean or that one thing in the house that’s not put away, the one surface that isn’t wiped down properly, that’s obviously going to put you in a state of high alert.

A state of watching for potential danger if mom goes off because she felt like you didn’t clean the dishes exactly the way they were supposed to be cleaned or you didn’t follow an OCD ritual, you didn’t come in and take a shower right after school. That’s very stressful to a child to experience those types of things over and over again.

It has a cumulative effect on your nervous system versus a one time, very scary, very intense, I almost died type of trauma. There’s also this sense of developmental trauma, and we do not have a diagnosis for this in the DSM, but we absolutely should. That is another tangent. I won’t fully go down. There is a difference.

When something happens to you, when your brain is fully developed, Versus something that happens to you in the process of your brain developing. You’re going through trying to figure out who you are, who the world is, whether or not the world is a safe place. The people closest to you that are supposed to be providing safety and connection and support you may feel like I never can be good enough for these people or I have to be perfect in order for my parents to love me because they have such high standards or such unrealistic standards.

It could look like a situation where your parents demand that you bring home straight A’s, and if you get a B plus, they shame you for it and say, why were you so stupid? Why didn’t you study more? It’s really important in the process and development of children for them to feel competent, for them to feel like they can do something and do it well.

Part of kids learning to feel competent is allowing them to take healthy risk and make mistakes. The very beginning of that is when your kids are really young, obviously you’re not letting them run out into traffic or jump off, you know, a bookshelf in your house. Those things would be very unsafe. But you’re letting them make small choices to have a sense of agency.

And you’re the parent, you’re creating those choices. So for a toddler, for example, or a preschooler, you’re saying, would you like the blue cup or the red cup? And this gives the child a sense of like, oh, I get to choose. I get to make a decision. That’s the very beginning of teaching your children about decision making.

And then as they get older, And they talk about situations that are happening at school instead of just jumping in and saying, Hey, do this. Don’t do that. You know, that’s right. This is absolutely wrong. You can say, okay, let’s look at maybe the different options for how you could handle this situation and allowing them to evaluate the choices saying, okay, well, you could yell at your teacher, but what do you think will happen if you do that?

Okay, like, you’re probably gonna get in trouble, so do you think that that’s the best choice? Or as you’re guiding younger children, and they’re acting out in some way, or pouting, or stomping, or whining, you might prompt them, hey, can you say that a little bit of a different way? Or let’s try that again one more time.

You might say something like, is there another way for you to ask that to get what you need? But in very rigid systems, these types of conversations don’t happen, and as a result, kids don’t feel competent to choose. They don’t feel competent in making decisions. Because there’s been no guidance, literally all the decisions are made for them.

I’m going to tell you that to wear this shirt on this day, and there’s no options. Or, you know, absolutely not. You cannot hang out with that friend. You can hang out with that friend, but they need to come to our house because it seems like maybe their house isn’t the best environment for you to be in.

Conflict resolution is modeled in healthy family systems where we can have conflict but still know that we love each other or we can have differences of opinions and still be in the same family and still love each other. If you have an enmeshed family, you don’t have that freedom to make your own decisions or make your own choices and know that that’s going to be okay.

What does this lead to in adulthood? It can lead to overdependence on others. It can lead to massive amounts of reassurance seeking because I haven’t ever felt competent in being okay with what I’m doing or knowing that I can do something. I will talk with clients sometimes about how They may be going through what I’d call a delayed adolescent period.

A healthy adolescent period is where you are given some boundaries, structures, rules, but then you’re also allowed the freedom and you go out into the world. And yes, you have the freedom to make some mistakes. You know, we hand teenagers the keys to cars knowing that it’s quite possible they might get in an accident.

But before we let them do that on their own, we’re in the car with them, we’re showing them how to drive, we’re teaching them, we’re training them. But we also know that when we give them those car keys and give them the freedom, they may get in an accident. For some families, that’s just the It’s too much, you know, and they can’t handle it or makes them too anxious.

So then the kid is restricted from having that freedom because we’re so afraid that the bad thing is going to happen. And the idea here is not just in the driving accident sense. is that while you’re in the safety of your family system, you can go out into the world, you can make mistakes, but you can come back and process it.

You can say, Hey, I did this in a friendship situation. It didn’t go so well. How should I have handled it? Or what do you think? Or I have this paper due on Friday. I don’t know how I can break down my studying to make sure that I get my studies done and my paper done by this Friday. Like, you have this healthy accountability and guidance system while also looking at all of your options.

One of the trainings I received in working with teenagers is we would have the kids make a list of all the potential solutions to their problem. Knowing that as an adult, we just throw some of those out, right? Like, oh, that’s a really bad idea. It doesn’t matter. The idea was to get them to think through healthy problem solving.

Just put all of the options on the table and then we can go through each one to get them to think through. Okay, so if you did do that, what do you think the consequences would be? Would you have a positive outcome? Would you have a negative outcome? This keeps people, teenagers, from being impulsive and allows them to to think through their choices in a more logical, reasonable fashion, not based on emotion or just what they want to do right in that moment, getting them to think a little bit longer term.

What I’m finding is that many individuals who are dealing with OCD now were never taught how to make decisions as a child and adolescent. And know that if that’s your case, that’s okay. You can learn those skills in adulthood. It’s just a delay because it’s something that you should have been gradually eased into as a child and adolescence.

Our daughter likes feeding the cats sometimes. So she knows how to get the scoop and scoop the cat food and put it in the bowl and say, Hey, good job. That’s awesome. You scoop the cat food. If there’s a crumble or two that falls out, not a big deal. Who cares? I’m not gonna say, oh, you didn’t do that. Go back and do it again.

But if you’re in a very rigid household system, those types of things happen. It’s either the standard’s perfection or you’re nothing. And that can keep you on this performance, people pleasing hamster wheel where you’re just going around and around again. Trying to make someone proud of you. I was in this training eons ago, this was so profound to me, and one of the things they asked us to do, it was a little weird, to be honest with you, because I think it was some type of ministry development training, I can’t even remember.

But, we had split the table in half, and half of us were walking around the table to the people that were sitting down, and we were supposed to whisper stuff in their ear that we wish we had heard more of as a child. Like I said, this was a very strange activity, never seen it repeated. However, I’ll tell you the two things that people repeated most often.

One was, I love you, and another one was, I’m proud of you. So if you have kids, that’s your cue. Go find some way to tell them today that you love them and that you’re proud of them. Because those are just so important for us to hear. And when you’re trying to please your parents, it’s not just a matter of, Yes, I want them to approve of me.

Yes, I want them to love me. When you’re a child, you are dependent on these individuals for survival. You can’t just check out and say, Hey, I’m going to go live with the neighbor down the street because their parents are nicer. Or, I think I’ll get a hotel tonight because all y’all are doing is screaming at each other.

That’s another situation that can cause this being on the edge of your seat, feeling like you’re waiting for the next shoe to drop. In trauma therapy, we call that hypervigilance. If you feel like you’re in that fight, flight, or freeze mode all the time, there’s some trauma work to be done. I don’t care what you call it.

It’s not healthy for your nervous system. It can cause all kinds of problems to you digestively. Because your digestive system shuts down when you’re in that survival state, you’ll have issues, irritable bowel, constipation. You can have autoimmune deficiencies from complex trauma, fibromyalgia. I’ve had people come in and do EMDR surrounding chronic pain, constant headaches, things like that, really have been able to get some relief.

Because we can help them get out of that fight or flight state. Let’s say you’ve had some trauma from your childhood. Then we throw in OCD on top of that, which is already, can be traumatic in its own way. Now OCD is using the trauma and past painful experiences or memories as reasons for possibility. Oh, see, because this happened to you over here, that means that it’s gonna happen again automatically.

We really have to do some work to tease these things out as we’re going through this process of being trauma sensitive in terms of OCD therapy. And it depends on the situation. There are times where we really focus on the trauma first, and then after we clear through a lot of the trauma, we’re talking about, like, severe, ongoing issues, then we’ll see, okay, what remains of the OCD?

And a lot of times, Whatever’s left over is a lot easier to manage or to treat once the trauma response is reduced. In other situations, someone may say, No, like trauma’s not really on my radar. All I can see right now is the OCD. That’s all I can focus on, all I can think about. I really need some help with this.

Okay, so as we start to work through modules of ICBT, And we get to like reasons for obsessional doubt and we get to the obsessional story, then we’re starting to see family of origin issues or things be untangled. Oh, you were told this as a child and that really got stuck, like OCD latched onto that.

And then seared that into your brain as a truth. Is that really the truth? What you’re believing? And it could be something about God. It could be something about yourself. But being able to work through and dismantle some of these beliefs, look at, is there an alternative story that I can tell myself about the situation?

I’m telling myself that. I have to perform for God or otherwise he’s not going to love and accept me because that was my experience growing up with my family. Is that the character of God that I know to be true in the scripture? We have such a hard time with this because our earthly father sets that tone for how we view our heavenly father, positive or negative.

I’ll tell you, it was a long time and process and healing that the Lord brought me through. Before I could even say, Dear Heavenly Father, that was tough for me for a long time. Not because my father was not loving, but because there wasn’t a lot of emotional vulnerability and connectivity. I carried that into my prayer life and had a hard time really connecting emotionally and authentically with God until he healed me from some things that I experienced.

So if you’re on that same journey or process, I just want to let you know that I’ve been there. It takes time. It does take a process with you and God and healing emotionally and spiritually, but you can get there. If this episode has resonated with you and you’d say, Yes, I have experienced trauma. I have experienced OCD.

Then what I want to encourage you to do is to make sure that you’re getting trauma informed OCD treatment. That may look a lot of different ways, but making sure that whoever you’re seeing is taking that into account and is able to treat both of those issues effectively and interweave what needs to happen.

I know I have many people who contact me from out of state that have a hard time finding a good fit of a Christian. OCD therapist in their area. And I just want to open it up and let you know that I do quite a bit of EMDR intensive therapy. I have done some multi day intensives with individuals who are out of state or out of this local area who were able to get to a deeper level of healing with EMDR.

We can certainly incorporate EMDR ICBT, parts work. Whatever it is that you’re needing, we can incorporate those things and customize a treatment plan to help you achieve your goals. If you’re interested in that opportunity, please go on the website and contact me, I’d love to hear from you. I want you to know that there is life on the other side of what you are wrestling with right now, so hang in there and don’t give up.

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

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

91. Harm OCD in Pregnancy Sent me to the ER with author Amber Williams Van Zuyen

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

Amber Williams Van Zuyen, author of Pregnant and Drowning tells about her struggle with harm OCD during her pregnancy.

Episode Highlights:

  • How and when did her OCD symptoms start
  • What happened the first time she sought help for her OCD
  • How her OCD symptoms intensified during her pregnancy and after giving birth
  • What helped her during her process of overcoming her OCD
  • How God helped her get through her struggles
  • Amber’s book, Drowning and Pregnant 

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 91 of Christian Faith and OCD. In this episode, I’m thrilled to share an insightful conversation with Amber Van Zuyen, the author of Pregnant and Drowning. Amber’s story is incredibly relatable for those who have struggled with anxiety and OCD.

Amber opens up about her personal journey with OCD, which began in childhood with compulsive rituals and obsessive fears. She recalls avoiding stepping on lines and constantly checking for lice. Her symptoms worsened in her twenties, especially after experiencing ocular migraines, which she feared were symptoms of a serious illness.

Amber’s story resonates deeply with anyone who has faced similar challenges. She describes her struggles with health anxiety, driven by fears related to her grandmother’s battle with MS and her own obsessive thoughts about having a serious disease.

Throughout her journey, Amber grapples with the stigma around mental health and the misconceptions within faith communities.

Amber’s reflections offer a poignant reminder that mental health issues are real and deserve compassion and understanding. Her story is a testament to the courage it takes to confront and manage these challenges while maintaining faith and hope.

Tune in to hear more about Amber’s journey and the insights she offers for those struggling with similar experiences.

Related Links and Resources:

Amber’s book: Pregnant & Drowning

Explore Related Episodes:

126. What if I Abuse My Child? Postpartum OCD Story with Sarah Brown

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 91. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a little while, you know that we love to tell personal stories of people who have struggled with anxiety and OCD. These are so important because they are relatable to other people who often feel so alone, and I think some of you are really going to resonate.

If you’ve ever experienced any type of harm OCD thoughts, you’re really going to resonate with our guest today. Here is my interview with the author of Pregnant and Drowning, Amber Van Zuyen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie: Did they recognize the OCD at that time?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie: Oh my goodness. Thanks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amber: Yes.

Carrie: Did your baby come out just fine?

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

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

Amber: 11 weeks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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