In this episode, Carrie revisits insights from a previous conversation with music therapist Tim Ringgold and shares practical tips for crafting a calming playlist to ease anxiety.
Episode Highlights:
How to select songs for a calming playlist based on mood and tempo.
The importance of engaging actively with music to ground yourself in the present moment.
Tips for incorporating uplifting praise and worship music into your mental health practices.
Practical techniques for using music actively during anxiety attacks.
Insights on building a personalized “Battle Playlist” to combat mental and spiritual challenges.
Episode Summary:
In this episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I discuss how to create a three-song playlist designed to help calm an anxiety attack. This idea originated from my conversation with music therapist Tim Ringgold in episode six. We revisit his insights on selecting the right songs and understanding the power of music in managing anxiety.
The key to building an effective playlist lies in understanding the role of tempo and rhythm in regulating your emotions. Tim explains that when dealing with anxiety, it’s essential to start with a song that matches your current state—usually something more up-tempo—then gradually transition to slower, calmer music. This approach, known as the ISO principle, helps to guide your body from a heightened state of anxiety back to a more relaxed one.
However, it’s not just about listening passively. Engaging with the music physically—whether by tapping along with the beat, humming, or singing—can bring you back to the present moment, making the music more effective in reducing anxiety. This active engagement is crucial, as simply listening to music can sometimes trigger past memories or future worries, pulling you out of the present.
I also touch on the spiritual aspect of music, emphasizing the power of praise and worship in overcoming difficult emotions. Incorporating songs that help you focus on God’s promises can be a powerful tool in managing both mental and spiritual health.
Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, OCD, or both, having a tailored playlist can be a valuable addition to your mental health toolkit. I encourage you to start building your own three-song playlist and even consider adding praise and worship music to uplift your spirit during challenging times.
For more information on this topic and other mental health resources, visit carriebock.com
Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 128. Today on the show, we’re talking about how to develop a three-song playlist that will calm an anxiety attack. This nugget is way back from episode six when we interviewed a music therapist and speaker, Tim Ringgold.
Before we hop into today’s episode, I want to let you know that the Christian Faith and OCD Summer Learning Series is going great. It’s off to a good start, and I’m starting to think about what’s next for the fall. I am loving inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy so much. Um, just breathing it in and allowing it to sink in, teaching it to my clients. It’s been amazing just to see people’s awareness and how their awareness has been able to shift their behavior.
It’s a very present, mindful type therapy. I want to know if you are interested in hearing more about it. If you’d be interested. So, if you’re interested in participating in a group this fall, either to interact with others, like a support group type where you’re learning about ICBT and then talking with others about implementing that in your life, or if you like the learning content.
I’m going to have a survey out that’s being sent out to my email list over the next few weeks, and you’re welcome to hop on the email list, fill out that survey, or you can contact us through hopeforanxietyandocd.com. We’d love to send that survey over to you as well. Stay tuned and be on the lookout for some potential group options this fall.
Now let’s hop right into the episode. We are going to start by looking at what types of music you might want for your three song playlist. Tim will share how to order them and then why it’s important to do more than just press play.
Carrie: Do you encourage people to listen to certain types of music for when they’re anxious or when they’re depressed?
Tim: When it comes to the material that’s in the music, here’s what we know from research. Typically, if you are struggling with depression or anger, Particularly, what’s going to happen is the music you reach for might do one of three things. Typically, people will reach for music that matches their mood.
That’s normal. We want to validate where we are intuitively. So angry people, if they listen to angry music, it may do one of three things. It may reduce the anger. because they now have this resonance with something they feel validated. It’s cathartic. That actually reduces the anger. Sometimes it doesn’t do anything to the anger.
It has no effect at all. They just engage in the music and they feel as angry as they did beforehand. Sometimes it actually exacerbates the feelings of anger. And I would submit that anger and anxiety are more related than anxiety and depression because I feel like anger and anxiety are hyper-regulated, hyperactive states, whereas depression is a hypo active state.
There’s this correlation, but not identical, but correlated. So if you’re in a hyperregulated, hyperactive state, There’s the chance that you could exacerbate that, and we’ve read from research with teens where, same with depression, they listen to sad music when they’re depressed. The music doesn’t make them sad.
They were sad, and they reached for the music that matched their sadness. The music either makes them feel better, doesn’t change the sadness, or actually exacerbates it, makes it worse. It’s really important for people to notice what’s happening in their body as they’re listening to the music they reach for because there’s no stamp of this than that when it comes to music.
Carrie: Jumping in here to add that we are instructed in Philippians 4. 8 to focus on whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is ever is admirable if anything is excellent or praiseworthy to think about such things. We want to make sure that when you pick songs for your playlist, that they pass the Philippians 4 8 test.
Tim: There’s a couple of things. One is with anxiety, a lot of times your focus is no longer in the present. You’re kind of wrapped up. It’s a kind of a disembodied experience as a trigger to an embodied sense of panic. But the disembodied part is you’re up in your head, perseverating over a future that you’re convinced is going to happen.
Carrie: Since anxiety and OCD take you out of the present moment, like Tim is talking about, this is why learning to be in the moment is so helpful. Guess what? I have a course where you can learn mindfulness practices as a Christian. Check it out on my website under courses. You can get 10 percent off by using the code LISTENER.
Now, Tim is going to tell us about finding the right tempo for our song selection.
Tim: When it comes to music listening, music listening is very nuanced, and it’s very complex. And that’s why I try to encourage people, music making. Because the music making, it’s a motor cortex embodied physical experience happening in the present moment.
It is not really subject to these nuances of context. It’s just, here’s the beat. The beat’s happening now. Oh, the beat’s getting faster. Oh, I got to keep up with the beat right now. There’s no emotional discussion about the beat. There’s the beat. Okay, I’m going to tap along with the beat. If you’re feeling elevated and you want to slow your heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rhythm down, the principle we use is called the ISO principle and the law of rhythmic entrainment.
So you start with music that’s up tempo to match how you’re feeling, and then you pick music that gradually slows down. Your playlist would be like the first song is the fastest of the three. The second song is a little bit slower in tempo, and the third song’s a little bit slower in tempo. than that, but not shocking.
Carrie: Just gradually going down.
Tim: If you’ve ever been to any kind of cardio class or DJ, if you really pay attention, the music they pick usually starts slow during the warmup. And then it picks up, but gradually, and then it peaks. And then at the end, during the cool down, the tempo, the speed of the music slows down.
The intensity of the music slows a little bit because we’re warming down. We’re bringing it down at the end. So that kind of tempo arc or speed arc, if you will, that’s really what your body responds to more than anything. It’s going to respond to that.
Carrie: Okay, hopefully you’re starting to get some ideas on what songs you want on your playlist. Maybe you have an idea of a fast song or a slower song. In this next section, Tim explains why it’s important to do more than just listen to music if it’s going to help you during an anxiety attack.
Tim: If I’ve got my phone and I’ve got my earbuds in and I put on a playlist of music that inspires me that I’ve already put in there for just such an occasion.
What I want to do is I want to either tap along on my body with the beat, with the music. I want to hum along with the melody. I want to actually audio, which is like when you sing in your head, but not out loud. You can sing along with a song in your head and you’re not actually using your mouth, but your brain is doing all of the calisthenics to produce the pitch and the tempo and the words in your head.
What happens is you just activate your vocal cord. If you want to release that out into the environment, you can just sing along in your head. You can sing along out loud. even better, but any way that you can activate your body to match the music, then your body is involved. That’s a huge component for people with anxiety is because getting back into your body brings you back into the present moment because the only place your body is is in the present moment.
The challenge with remembering that is you got to remember it, but if you just turn on music and you try to play along with the beat or tap along with the beat, you’re just trying to keep the beat. And by virtue of trying to keep the beat, now you’re back in your body and you’re back in the present moment because music’s time based.
When we play music in order to keep the beat, we have to be present. The challenge with listening to music is listening to music can become a very disembodied experience.
Carrie: Passive versus active.
Tim: Yes, it engages your imagination and your memory. So you can be listening to a song and you can float away. You can, the song can take you to where the song is with a disembodied experience. When you just listen to the song, you’ve had this experience where you listen to a song that you have heard before and you have a memory associated with that song. You’re no longer in the present moment. You are back wherever that was.
It could be good, could be bad. Same thing can happen in the future. You can hear a song and it can trigger your thoughts and your feelings and your emotions about the future because there’s nothing holding you. The song itself isn’t holding you in the present moment unless you try to engage with it, with your body.
Carrie: I know I can definitely relate to what Tim was just saying right there, there are certain songs that since my parents funeral that were sung at the funeral that I really have a hard time listening to at this time and trigger a lot of sadness from me. And there are other times that songs come up that remind me of happy times or sad times and it can be challenging to navigate through those. So be careful what memories you may have attached to some of your music. I hope this episode has helped you put one more tool in your toolbox when it comes to dealing with anxiety or OCD. Typically, we don’t recommend people with OCD use relaxation type strategies when dealing with anxiety. anxiety from OCD specifically.
However, I also know that many of my clients with OCD also have anxiety or panic attacks from time to time. We could all use with a little more nervous system regulation. I want to talk with you for just a moment about the power of utilizing praise and worship music for your mental and spiritual health.
Psalms 34 1, I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. If you know much about the life of David, he went through a lot. He praised God in the good times and in the bad times. When Saul was out to kill him, when he mourned the loss of his best friend Jonathan, he was praising God.
Praise is powerful because it puts God over our circumstances, and over our feelings. I know I’ve talked about this before on the show, but I’ve been through some tough bouts of depression in my life where I did not think that I could get out of bed and face the day and I would play music in the morning to get me up. Beautiful Day by Jamie Grace was one of those. I now have a playlist that I’ve saved on YouTube called The Battle Playlist, and these are the songs that I sing along to if I get into a spiritual or mental funk. Raise a Hallelujah, Waymaker, and Jirah are just a few of those songs that are on there. I just pray that you get a battle playlist together and that the this episode helps you to start doing that.
I’ll be back here with you next week for another episode.
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
In this episode, Carrie interviews Sarah Brown about her experience with postpartum OCD. Sarah shares her struggles with intrusive thoughts and compulsions after childbirth and how she found ways to cope and heal.
How Sarah identified early symptoms of OCD throughout her life, even as a child.
Sarah’s initial experiences with therapy and the challenges of finding appropriate treatment.
The impact of postpartum OCD on daily life and motherhood.
Practical advice for family members on how to support someone dealing with OCD, including managing reassurance-seeking behaviors.
Practical advice for new mothers who may be experiencing similar challenges.
Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 126. I’ve been slowly starting to tell you about our rebranding process that we’re going through on the podcast. I’m super excited to tell you that I’m in the process of interviewing different web developers who are going to help bring part of this new branding vision online.
I hope to have all the pieces in place this fall to share with you, and I’m excited to talk with you about all that God is doing through this process of helping me refine it. the show to be focused on what I believe he wants me to go in the direction of. If you’ve been following along with the podcast, you know we love personal stories, you know we’ve talked quite a bit about postpartum, anxiety, depression, and OCD.
So if you’re experiencing any of those things, we definitely want you to know that there’s hope and that you’re not alone. You may feel alone inside your head with a lot of different thoughts that can be quite terrifying at times. Our guest today is Sarah Brown, and she is going to candidly tell us her personal story of dealing with postpartum OCD.
Welcome, Sarah. Tell us a little bit about your story. When did you start to notice yourself having symptoms of OCD?
Sarah: I would say actually growing up over the years I would have symptoms like as a child there’d be times where I’d really fixate on something and feel like I had to confess it and even through my teenage years and then into my marriage.
I mean, I remember dealing with this even over the last Winter Olympics, a situation where I just felt like I had to confess it and now I see that that’s probably definitely OCD starting to like seep through the cracks. So I guess throughout my life.
Carrie: Were there thoughts in your head that you were confessing to other people that you were having?
Was that how it was showing up? Or things that you had done and you were like, Hey, I did this and I just want to let you know, or want to apologize for it?
Sarah: Yes. Things like that. I would say as much as a Christian can say this insignificant lying, somebody asks you a question and you respond off the cuff because it’s, maybe it’s an embarrassing question and you say, Oh no, I never did that, or I never would have done that. Years later being like, “Oh, I have this unconfessed lie in my life when you probably don’t need to confess that to that person.”That’s how it would come up. I did have, I remember a few persistent thoughts, phrases that were shameful that would run in my head and I was like, “What is going on?” Maybe about other people’s children or things like that. I think my anxiety level was not high enough to cause me to fixate on it which would cause it to be a recurring issue.
Carrie: So it was a little bit easier to allow those to move through, it was strange or unusual, but then you didn’t get as stuck on them as you did later in life.
You said that the postpartum OCD really set in and peaked when you weaned your fifth child. Tell us about that experience.
Sarah: I had dealt with anxiety through my motherhood, but never really did much to treat it, but I think I can look back and see patterns now. So anyways, after weaning her, this was one of the first times within my motherhood that I was not pregnant with another baby.
She was my fifth baby, so we decided to take a break. I weaned her right before Christmas, and then my anxiety started to ramp up in February and in March. I think it was probably like a hormonal situation because later on, I found out that my progesterone was off and my periods were long. I had PMDD where I was just extremely anxious right before my period would start. I think it was all working together to bring on what I would know later as postpartum OCD.
Carrie: What you’re saying is you had your kids pretty close together and so almost your body was used to being pregnant and then when it wasn’t, it kind of messed with your hormones or things got out of whack.
Sarah: I think that it brought to light my hormones being out of whack.
Carrie: How did that show up for you? Were you having OCD thoughts about your children?
Sarah: It started, the whole onset when it got just super bad was my husband and I were watching a TV show and there were subtitles on the screen because more than half of the show was in a different language. Some spy show. Every time the words, thank you, would show up on the screen, I would see a different word. It wasn’t actually seeing it. It was the word like, was that there or not? Was that in my mind? Why was that there? Of course, it was this word associated with something that was shameful for me that we continued to watch this show over the next couple weeks. Every time somebody would say thank you, it would pop up. As my anxiety went up about it and my shame, I felt like I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because it was just shame inducing. It just made the whole situation worse and worse. And then it came to a head. One night, I had what I like to think was probably just a couple hour panic attack, where I started having one particular intrusive thought about molesting my son during a diaper change.
I could not get rid of it. It was just over and over and over and over. It felt real. I could see him laying on the rug. I could see the rug itself and the sunlight coming into the room and I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I couldn’t sleep, had high anxiety, and couldn’t eat, which is when I finally went to my first therapist to try to find some help.
I said I have no idea what’s going on. I promise I don’t want to do this, but I have this thought I can’t get out of my head. And with that were other thoughts right in that same time. Also, like, fear of, what if I’m homosexual? Where did that come from? It was just so out of the blue. I feared I would just be out of control of my body and that I would do something to hurt my family and I wouldn’t be in control of myself, like I would basically go insane. I had all of these kind of recurring things, but the molestation thought was the worst one. And it hit right, as OCD does, it hit right home with my only son. Of course, this very precious, all of my children being precious, but I only have one son. It would be on this particular child that my thoughts were centered.
Carrie: Okay, that makes a lot of sense, actually, just this in this terms of OCD being attached to things that you value. I imagine that you probably hadn’t heard maybe of other mothers having these types of really scary thoughts.
Was that something that you felt very isolated in or like, “Okay, I can’t tell anybody about this.It’s so horrible.”
Sarah: Extremely isolated. In fact, I only knew of one other person in my realm who I didn’t even know, knew of, an author’s child, who had grown up with OCD, and to be honest, the thought of a diagnosis of OCD was just, I couldn’t even carry that burden at the time.
I thought, well, maybe it is OCD, But I couldn’t even look it up because everything was so heavy. I thought I was going crazy and I really had fears that if I told somebody I was going to be locked up, taken away from my kids, those were like my core fears of being misunderstood in the whole thing. So very isolating.
Carrie: I think that is a common fear that I’ve heard from other mothers too is all of your worst fears seem like they’re going to come true. I’m going to be taken away from my kids or they’re going to be taken from me. I’m going to be determined to be somehow like an unfit mother because I have all these thoughts that I don’t even want that are just there out of nowhere.
That’s an interesting time period too After you’ve been married for however long and have five kids to all of a sudden have thoughts about what if i’m homosexual? That’s a pretty good indicator that’s an OCD thought just completely like out of the blue. Were that one any easier to dismiss or what did it just seem really bizarre? Why is this coming now?
Sarah: It was bizarre. It was easier to dismiss, I think because my brain was, look, the bigger threat here is obviously to your wonderful kids that you love. That was where it was. Even I would have other thoughts right around the same time, like, God isn’t real, I don’t believe in him.
This is coming from a person raised in a Christian home who never ever doubted the existence of God. And suddenly, I would pray, or I would read my Bible, and, which I could hardly do, everything was so raw. I would just have this thought, I don’t believe that. And that’s coming from somebody who had believed this, from a child.
I think because the very worst thoughts were about my kids, I think those ones hit home the worst and therefore the other ones kind of receded back and they weren’t so terrible. That makes sense.
Carrie: That does make sense. Tell me what that process was of getting help for you.
Sarah: I went to my first therapist for two sessions and she said, look, you’ve got to get a grip. I realized that this person was not for me. Six months later, after struggling so much, I mean, I was reassurance seeking all the time.
Carrie: Did that therapist not know about OCD? The therapist, was it kind of like a Christian based therapy?
Sarah: She was a therapist and she did do EMDR with me for the first session and maybe even that second session that I went to, but it definitely didn’t flag OCD for her right away.
Carrie: Interesting. Okay.
Sarah: Which I think is unfortunate. I know that there is a statistic out there that says takes like six years to get diagnosed.
Carrie: Sometimes longer, kind of depending on how long, what age people started at. It’s hopefully that number is getting less, but I mean, I’ve heard, yeah, even higher to get a diagnosis.
Sarah: Yes. I really hope that goes down for people because I can’t imagine suffering for six years with it, especially because your compulsions tie you into it. It just reinforces it if you’re doing those compulsions. I think because maybe my compulsions were invisible, which is trying to pick it apart, reason with it, make sure in my head.
Carrie:A lot of ruminating?
Sarah: Yes, tons. I mean, that’s what feeds it for me. I think maybe because it’s not like I was walking in there and saying, “Hey, I feel like my child’s going to get sick and die if I don’t wash my hands 100 times a day.” Maybe it would have been easier for her to see that it was OCD. I suffered for the next six months with it, and finally it got to the point where I was having obsessions about suicide which, I would say, intrusive thoughts. I’d see my deck, we have an upper deck and a lower deck, and I would glance up at it while playing outside with my kids and I would see myself hanging from it. That is a very hard thought, but the worst one was just an intrusive thought of sitting in my car in my garage, turning on the car, and Going to sleep.
I think what made it hard to distance is because I was so measurable, but at the same time, very afraid that I would ruin my life in some respect or another. Either I would hurt my kids, I would leave my marriage, or I would just kill myself. There are so many avenues to ruin your life, but all the worst-case scenarios.
All of them, all of them, so many. I finally having a hard time with that thought. I don’t know how long I dealt with it, maybe two weeks. Finally I told my husband I’m having to start. He got mad at me. Not mad, but like a righteous indignation. He said, “I can’t read your mind. You have to tell me that you’re struggling.”
I said, “I know. That’s why I told you.” The next day, I decided I’m going to go to therapy again. I’m going to try it again and I’m going to take medication until I’m better. Coming from the background that I came from, it was very hard for me to accept. The idea of taking medication, but it did help tremendously. And then to come back around to your question, I didn’t get diagnosed with postpartum OCD until a year and three months later after the onset, when I finally found out, Oh, this is actually something that other moms struggled with on a regular basis. I found that out through a perinatal therapist and started EMDR and kind of talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy with her.
Carrie: Okay.Awesome. I’m curious, was there specific traumas that you were trying to process with the EMDR or just working on some skills to get to a more relaxed space in your body?
Sarah: The trauma that I was trying to work through definitely had to do with thinking that I had caused myself to have OCD. Like it was my fault. Oh yes, definitely. It’s still, even today, sometimes something that haunts me, and I just have to respond back. Maybe it is, maybe not. Just leave it there. But I found out about sex from a, another like five-year-old girl when I was about five. We were just playing in our neighborhood, and it was a conversation I happened to walk in on, and anyway, it kind of opened this curiosity about it over my childhood.
When I started having intrusive thoughts as an adult or even as a teenager, I always thought, well, it’s because I was so curious, or I wired my brain to want to think about this type of thing. It must be my fault type of thing. EMDR did really help me to work through how I couldn’t have helped being in that situation.
It was not, it was not, and I couldn’t have helped being curious, very natural for a child to be curious. There could have been different responses from my parents, but they just didn’t know how to help me work through these things. EMDR did help with that trauma processing.
Carrie: That’s great. And then at some point you did some work on the rumination piece. You did ERP therapy, exposure and response prevention.
Sarah: Yes, I did about three months with the perinatal therapist and then I felt a lot better for the next six months, seven months. I was doing great. I really could even process it. I would think about OCD here and there throughout my day and it wouldn’t bother me, it wouldn’t suck me in or drag me down.
It really started ahead of the month where it just surged back up again. And so I started doing some research and I had just heard all over, reassurance seeking is bad, and ERP is the gold standard. I just spent some time praying about it, really felt God leading me to find a a Christian therapist because my other therapist was not a Christian. Well, she was Catholic, let me say that.
Carrie: There were some faith differences between you and your first therapist.
Sarah: Yes. With my perinatal therapist, she and I had different viewpoints about some things. We had some differences in our faith. I really felt the Lord leading me to seek out a therapist that had a more similar viewpoint about Christianity and worldview because with OCD, you want to be sure about so much, right? I didn’t feel like God was leading me to find someone who had the same viewpoint as I did. So he graciously provided someone who was willing to do ERP with me. I actually did all my sessions virtually. I did that for two months and it was extremely helpful and has given me so many tools that I still use today.
Carrie: Awesome. Tell me about some of those things that you use kind of in the moment when those obsessions come up.
Sarah: The first thing would be to recognize what it looks like for me. I actually have a notebook where I write down when I realize I have a theme that’s coming up. Themes for me would be like hurting my children, ruining my life, ruining my marriage, disappointing my husband in a way that would like leave him as.
It’s in a place where he is at a complete loss as to what to do in despair. Other themes there would be bringing shame on God’s name, God not being who he says he is, God planning evil. I would really say like the first thing that I learned from ERP is to just know your enemy. So then when you have a new thought that’s coming in.
You can go back and say, “Oh, look, it falls under. I’m going to ruin my life. Look at that. Happens to be OCD. It’s very sneaky.”
Carrie: It’s very helpful to identify, even though it may be like a different obsession, like there may be different wording that OCD throws at you, like you said, it’s still under that theme of like, “Oh, I’m going to ruin my life.” That was one of the things that I had shared kind of in a recent episode about, is this thought OCD is like, well, does it fit in with your themes that you usually have? Now people can jump themes, but typically there falls in things that they’ve heard before.
Sarah: Yes. The second thing I would say would be Learning how to respond, learning how to not engage with an intrusive thought or, you know, an obsession.
You find a phrase that communicates to you, like, challenge. So mine is, bring it on. Whenever I have something that triggers me, I might be changing a diaper, I might be bathing my kids, I might be sitting in church, somebody’s talking about God’s sovereignty. And something will trigger it, and I’ll just say, bring it on.
Another one is, maybe, maybe not. I’ll be triggered by the same thing, and it’s like, well, maybe I will, maybe I won’t, maybe I will ruin my life. And then, another thing would be to kind of chase it back down the alley that it came from. Not just, maybe God is real, maybe He’s not, but it would be like, maybe He’s not real.
Maybe I’ll waste my whole life doing things and worshiping something that’s not even real. And then when I die, I’ll just be buried in the ground and my whole life will kind of have been a waste in that way. Which is not true at all. I don’t believe that. But I’m taking the fear and I’m ramping up the anxiety, choosing not to engage in the desire to pick it apart.
What that’s doing for my brain is saying, this is not a valid threat. She’s actually thinking about it and working through it. Well, I guess we don’t need to bring that back up anymore. Yes. Another thing, script writing has been so helpful. Script writing is, you know, Basically writing a short story about your own personal nightmare.
Again, I have a notebook I keep it tucked away so that it’s not accidentally discovered by my children, but it has several of worst fears and so it might look like this and I’m just going to give la try to give a more mild one But they can be very hard to write down and I think the harder they are to write The closer you’re getting to helping yourself because OCD doesn’t back down.
It gives you really hard, terrible thoughts. And so you have to get right back at it, but it might be like, I trusted God my whole life, but he’s actually not trustworthy. If he really was trustworthy, he wouldn’t let that things happen to children. I cannot trust God, he is a liar. Of course for a Christian that sounds extremely blasphemous, and it is, however, what you’re doing is you’re taking that intrusive thought that says, I can’t trust God, what if I can’t trust him?
Well, if you really could trust God, then he should be more trustworthy, like he should not let bad things happen. And instead of being sucked into the desire to pick it apart and theologically and every time this thing comes up. By reading this script several times and going back to it when I have this fear come up again that God isn’t trustworthy, it helps to shut that down in my brain.
Carrie: After reading it so many times, you feel internally calmer. Basically, your brain gets bored with it. It’s kind of like, Oh, yeah, I heard that story before. I don’t really believe it now. You feel like it becomes less real, like when you’re in the OCD zone, whatever you want to call it, bubble zone like mode.
Everything feels really real that’s not real, and so then I wonder if, as you’re reading that story, it becomes less real and more like a story?
Sarah: It does. It becomes more like a story. You do definitely get bored with it. That’s exactly what my therapist would say. And initially though, it does increase anxiety and you will have the itch to perform the compulsion.
So for me, I would write down my script and then it would be hard after a therapy session not to assure myself, Oh, but I can read the scriptures and it’ll say that you can trust God and that he’s perfect in all his ways. Instead, you choose not to do that. If it feels like a deep need, Then that’s like your OCD saying, okay, this is, you need to do that compulsion to feel better.
So choose not to engage with it. And over time reading that script, your brain gets bored with it. After many times of reading the script, you start to see, oh, look, there’s the core fear or look, there’s my theme or wow, I can totally tell that’s not true by just reading it over and over again.
Carrie: Yes.I think that’s the struggle Mitzi Van Cleave a long time ago talked about. She researched that and did a lot of those on her own kind of over and over. I’m researching imaginal script writing and I think that’s the hardest part for Christians is feeling like, okay, I’m putting in something that’s not true maybe for myself or, or reading that over and over again. I think it’s easier, I don’t know if easier is the right word, but maybe to take the kind of maybe, maybe not stance at times.
It’s like, okay, why is it that I’m needing like assurance or needing to ask somebody a reassurance on that right now? I’m curious how this has impacted your spiritual journey with God. I know you talked a lot about struggling with that commitment to take medication until you got better, the commitment to kind of, sounds like you had to work through a lot of shame related to even having OCD in the first place. How did all of this interact spiritually in your relationship with God?
Sarah: I would say first of all, God was so gracious to me. I did find myself, especially through the first six months, a lot of tears, a lot of wondering, like, God, when are you going to show me the way out? This is just so awful. But now I look back and see that he was doing, like, really deep healing work in so many ways that I would never have imagined. trade out. I’m just so thankful for the way that he’s healed me. I did spend a lot of time, especially in the first six months, wondering when God would heal me or help me to get better or lead me out of it.
Now I see that he was doing a lot of great, deep healing work in many facets of my life. I think the greatest thing that I’ve learned through it all is just the voice of the Holy Spirit being different from the voice of OCD, a calm and gentle spirit. There’s a podcast that you did, FAQs about OCD, that was very helpful for me in just remembering that God spoke in a still small voice and it wasn’t a driving force, you have to do this right now.
I think it’s easy for a Christian to get OCD mixed up with the Holy Spirit. Definitely helped me with that. And I would also say, just God is so faithful to bring me to the other side where I can mother my children and be around them all day long because I’m a homeschooled mom of six and know how to deal with my intrusions. I don’t have so many anymore now that I’ve done exposure therapy and there are seasons where I have to come back and do more just to kind of, sometimes I get out of practice, but I’ve just found God to be so faithful to me in taking just what was so shameful and turning that into glory for me. Just that whole beauty for ashes thing about how God redeems, he takes terrible, awful things and he makes them for good and then he’s using it to help me even, I’ve had a couple friends that. Since I’ve shared my story, they have said, I’ve had the same thing. I had no idea it had a name. I’m just like, so grateful that God would ever use my story to help somebody else, maybe not have to suffer as long as I did. God is faithful.
Carrie: I think it’s very redemptive too. If people feel like they’re in. An unmanageable place with OCD. It’s very hopeful and helpful for you to say, yeah, these thoughts come into my mind every once in a while, but you can get to a place where you’re still functional. You’re still able to raise your family.
You’re still able to do things that are important to you. You’re not where you were before. And I hope that that gives someone hope, maybe who is in that sad, dark time of am I ever going to get out of this hole? Are things ever going to get better? So I hope that people hear that today. There’s hope on the other side of what they’re facing and what they’re dealing with. I wanted to ask you one more question, because we do have some family members that listen to the show. We do have some friends and people that are trying to be helpful to a loved one who’s suffering. What was that conversation like with your husband when all of this was going on?
How did you help him help support you in terms of like reassurance seeking and things like that? Was that hard for him to know? What do I say or how do I respond?
Sarah: I would say, first of all, it was so hard for me initially to share that I was having these thoughts. I didn’t even know that these thoughts had a name, intrusive thoughts.
He was very gracious when I did tell him about it. He didn’t freak out like I expected him to. But, I would say, if a family member shares with you that they’re having some deep dark thoughts like this, and you know that this is not true of their character, Just listen with an open heart and mind, and I would say support them in their journey to find healing, whether that’s through therapy, which they probably will definitely need, or medication, which might be a really helpful way to support them.
Another thing I would say with the reassurance seeking, my husband is good at this, saying, well, Sounds like you need to just face your fears, but it can also translate into motherhood. I have a child who deals with some, a lot of anxiety over sickness. So whenever we have the stomach bug running through our house, she says, Oh, I hope I don’t get sick, mom.
And I can pray with her and reassure her all day, but that’s empty reassurance. And really what’s helpful for me to do is say, Well, Eden, maybe you’ll get sick and maybe you won’t. But we’re going to make it through it and I have actually seen it with my own eyes that it’s kind of helped to, it increases her anxiety, but that releases it later on.
It helps her brain to deal with it. I would say the family member is constantly coming to you for reassurance. Try your best to lovingly not give them that reassurance. Ask the Lord for wisdom as to how you can support them without giving them reassurance because it does feed OCD.
Carrie: It’s a hard balance to strike, right? Being supportive.
Sarah: It’s so hard because I did tell my mom at one point. I said, the best thing that I can hear is just like, you’re a good mom, and you’re really doing a great job. And she’s the most supportive person in the world, so she will say that. But then my OCD says back, she doesn’t know these thoughts.
What if I really am a terrible mom? So it really doesn’t help. Or maybe you say it once. I really believe that you are a great mom. But you don’t need to say it 20 times to them. I would say, look, I’ve already told you that. I’m not gonna tell you again. It’s a hard balance. It’s really hard.
Carrie: Yeah. Kudos for all of you who are supporting your loved ones who have, are dealing with OCD.
Maybe if they need to hear it, they’re doing a good job. Sarah, I know that you told me that you went through a mentorship program as well that was helpful for you. Can you tell us about that?
Sarah: Yes. My perinatal therapist recommended Postpartum Support International, I think it’s psi.org, but they have a peer mentor program, which basically, if you want support, you can interview with them and tell them what you’re dealing with, which they recognize that there’s postpartum OCD and postpartum psychosis and all of these different diagnosis And they’ll basically hook you up in a relationship with another mom who has dealt with the same thing, who has decided that they want to mentor someone going through the same thing.
They’re not a Christian organization by any means. They have all kinds of support groups out there. Like I said, I’m a Christian. I would like somebody who has faith to be my mentor, and they hooked me up with somebody who had, like, faith. And that was helpful, obviously, because if you’re a Christian, you want to be careful who you get your support and your counsel from, but the great thing about that is that you can have somebody who’s gone through the same thing, if you don’t know anybody else, which chances are we all know somebody who’s been through it, but we’ve never shared our stories because they’re just so embarrassing, but it hooks you up with somebody else who’s been through the same thing that can be a support to you.
For the next three to four months, you either have phone calls or you text. You stay in communication and that person is just there to be a support. That was a helpful resource for me. Now I do mentor other women through that same program.
Carrie: That’s awesome. I think that that’s really great. Sometimes, you know, we need somebody to just come alongside us who understands and there’s things that they’re shared experience that we don’t have to explain. Yes. Thousand percent. All right. Thank you for sharing some of these really vulnerable thoughts that you had with us. I think that that helps people because there’s going to be other people who listen who go, Oh, I’ve had that thought too.
Maybe I’m not a horrible person because I’ve had that thought. Maybe this is OCD talking. So thanks for sharing.
Sarah: You’re welcome. I do hope that it brings somebody so much hope, even if it brings one person steps forward to getting help, that will be God getting the glory for that.
Carrie: Hey, if you want to be in the know here on the podcast, you’ve got to get on our email list, okay? These are the people who know about the latest happenings even before they hit the airwaves. It’s super easy. You can go to hopeforanxietyandocd.com/free. Put your email in to receive any of the free downloads. You do actually have to click the download in your email when you receive it, otherwise you won’t be subscribed.
So that’s an important tip that you need to know. Until next time, 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 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.
In this episode, Carrie explores how compulsions can evolve into habits and routines, especially within the context of OCD. She shares insights on how these patterns can impact daily life and offers practical advice on breaking free from their grip.
Episode Highlights:
The progression of compulsions into habits and routines.
The impact of compulsive behaviors on various aspects of life.
Strategies for identifying compulsive behaviors and understanding the motivation behind the desire for change.
Techniques for developing awareness of compulsive actions and acknowledging engagement in rituals.
Episode Summary:
I’m Carrie Bock, your host and licensed professional counselor based in Tennessee. Today, we’re diving into how compulsions can evolve into habits and routines. If you’ve been managing OCD, you might have noticed that compulsions start small but can gradually develop into extensive rituals.
For instance, you might begin with a few simple actions before bedtime, but before you know it, these actions can stretch into a 15-30 minute routine involving checking locks, windows, and appliances. This isn’t about typical bedtime routines but rather compulsions that grow more demanding over time.
Similarly, rituals before leaving the house can become time-consuming and interfere with your daily life. You might find yourself repeatedly checking things, which can delay work or social engagements.
Here’s the deal: If you recognize these patterns in yourself, the first step is to avoid self-blame. OCD can be sneaky, and what starts as a small request can balloon into an all-consuming ritual. The key is to acknowledge the issue and decide why you want to change it. Whether it’s reclaiming time for loved ones or personal care, understanding your “why” is crucial.
I encourage you to listen to the full episode to gain insights on managing these rituals effectively and to learn practical strategies that can make a real difference in your life.
Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 124. I am your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Today, we’re talking about when compulsions become habits and routines.
If you’ve been dealing with OCD at all, you may notice that compulsions start out a certain way, but then they just develop once you do them so often, or you do them in certain situations or scenarios so often then, they eventually become routines, rituals, habits, however you want to say it. For example, people may have certain things that they feel like they have to do before they can lay down and go to sleep at night. Here’s the problem with OCD, it’ll start out with like,” Ah, just do this one or two things before you go to bed, and you’re like, “Okay, that’s not that big of an ask,” and next thing you know, you’re doing this.It’s like 15 to 30-minute routine and ritual stuff, and it’s all OCD functionally related. I’m not talking about normal things that people do to get ready for bed. It’s like checking the locks a certain number of times or making sure all the windows are closed and the doors and that the oven’s off and all of a sudden it becomes this whole thing.
There may be some similar rituals that people have about leaving the house. I have to do these specific things before I can leave the house. The problem is that it may interfere with getting you to work. It may interfere with getting to social functions or other things that you need to be at because you keep going back and keep checking and looking at things.
Your rituals may involve things like cooking, cleaning, or the trash, and maybe washing your hands a lot during those types of rituals. First, I would say, if you notice, “Okay, Carrie, yes, what you’re talking about, I’m dealing with some of those things.” The first thing I would say to you is don’t beat yourself up. You didn’t get here overnight. OCD probably was like a little demanding, and then a little more demanding, and then a little more demanding, and next thing you know you have this whole giant ritual. You Just to take out the trash. It happens. It’s sneaky like that. We don’t want to beat yourself up or be in a place of shame.
If you’re identifying like, “Oh, I have these things that I need to change because now it’s gotten to a level that feels out of control for me.” What I would say is to identify the compulsive habit, routine, ritual, whatever you want to call it that you want to change and why you want to change it. It’s important to know why you want to change it. Maybe there’s something that you want to use that time for instead. You realize I’m being robbed of time that I could be connecting with other loved ones in my life.
I’m being robbed of time that I could be using to for self-care exercise. Maybe your why is that you realize OCD is taking way more control in the reigns over your life than you want to give. And you say, “You know what? I don’t want to fulfill OCD’s demands anymore. I can’t stand this no more.”
Now, if you recognize yourself in the middle of this routine. You develop awareness even over that you’re doing it. Some of you may just kind of check out and you’re just going through the motions and that’s what you don’t want. You don’t want to check out and go through the motions.
You want to recognize like, “Okay, I am thoughtfully choosing to engage in this compulsive ritual right now.” Instead of just it being like muscle memory for you, we all have that if we do things over and over and over again. Eventually, we don’t have to think about that we’re doing it. There are many tasks involved in driving that you don’t think about just because you’ve driven so much and it’s become a routine.
You know when to check your mirrors, when to push the gas, when to push the brake. When you’re going through this compulsive ritual, you’re going tell yourself, “Okay, I’m choosing to engage in this right now.” Maybe you can’t stop it right away and that’s okay so that you step by step know what you’re doing.
The first step is to really even recognize and slowing down. “This is what I’m doing and I’m identifying to myself, even if to no one else, I’m identifying to myself that this is a compulsive ritual.
Now, like I said, number one was, you’re not going to beat yourself up for it, but then when you get to the next kind of phase, You can plan to somehow mess it up. If you are telling yourself you have to do something a certain number of times, maybe you start by doing it. The ideal is that you wouldn’t engage at all, but that feels really hard or too big. You say, “Okay, well, I’m going to do this maybe one less time. If I normally do it three times, I’m going to intentionally mess it up and do it twice.”
Also know that OCD is going to be really irritated about that. It’s probably going to be disruptive and tell you it’s not going to feel right, and it’s not going to feel okay, and you have to be able to tell yourself that that’s all right, that this is part of the process of saying no to OCD, is that it’s going to get upset, just like boundaries with anyone.
You set your boundary with OCD, it’s going be mad, it’s going to push you back, and it’s going make you feel uncomfortable. Let’s say, it’s okay, this is how I’m getting out of this brain obsessive compulsive loop. That somewhere in that process, I have to intervene and mess that, that loop up. Every time I go around the loop, it gets stronger. And because that’s ingrained in your brain, You can’t just say no once or twice and expect it to be gone. You have to consistently be able to work through that in a way. If you usually say your part of your ritual is pulling on the doorknob, maybe you leave that part out. Maybe you make sure the door is locked, but you don’t pull on the doorknob.
If you have mental compulsions, make an intention to not do them perfectly like you would normally do, or not doing them until they feel right. Subtract something until you get to a point where you say, “Okay, I’m going to completely disengage from this activity. I’m not going to do this anymore.”
Make that an experiment, maybe see, so if I don’t do my entire ritual before I leave the house, are things still going to be okay? I may not feel like they’re okay, but are they still going to be okay? You’ll probably find that nothing bad happens that day if you don’t do it. It’s okay, but the idea is that if you can’t stop the compulsion right away, try to see if you can somehow mess it up or delaying the compulsion. Maybe you tell yourself this is not really as workable for bedtime or something like that, but if there’s something that you’re doing immediately, like A lot of times I’ll have clients who are confessing many, many times throughout the day.
They’re confessing stuff. They’re not even like taking a pause to know if it’s a sin or not. It’s just like, “Oh, I had a thought. I must confess that. Oh, I had an experience that maybe might have been a sin and I’ve got to confess that.”
One of the things I’ll tell people to do in terms of delaying is say, okay, why don’t you take some time either in the morning or at night and be intentional instead of just repeatedly confessing everything, be intentional about what do I need to confess today? Stick it to that time period. If you don’t even remember it, or the Holy Spirit doesn’t bring it to your mind, it probably wasn’t important enough for you to confess. That’s okay, you can let those things go and not have to be stuck up on them. You’ll probably find that you’re confessing a whole lot less. Does that mean that you’re less spiritual? No, it means that you’re being present and intentional with God with your spirituality to be able to say, okay, like I want to have a relationship with you. I don’t know if you could imagine having a relationship with anybody else where you were constantly saying that you’re sorry. That does happen sometimes with people and usually they’re saying sorry unnecessarily after a while. Pretty soon people aren’t really hearing the apology anymore. All I’m hearing is I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s like wait a minute do you even know what it is you’re sorry for anymore?
Think about that relating that over to your relationship with God you want those times where you are confessing To be meaningful for you, I hope that this clarified some things of if you’re going to get out of something like an obsessive compulsive loop, you have to be so aware of it and so aware of the trickiness that OCD gets you wrapped into.
If you’re not aware of those things, it’s really hard to intervene and make changes. So many of the times we’re going through life, we’re just going through the motions, we’re just doing things, we’re not thinking about it. Mindfulness is something that I teach my clients that really helps you to be able to slow down, be intentional, be in the moment, be present, to be aware of what’s going on.
For those of you who are trying to make some intentional changes to your routines. I hope that this information was helpful for you. You can always find us on hopeforanxietyandocd.com. You can click on courses to find out more about the mindfulness course there. We are winding down on time to sign up for the OCD summer sessions that you can find at my counseling practice, bythewellcounseling.com. That’s an opportunity for you to learn this summer. You don’t have to be in Tennessee to participate. We’re going to have some webinar series to cover a variety of issues. I hope to see you there.
Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 90. I am your host, Carrie Bock and here we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. A little note since we recorded this episode is at the date for the faith and OCD conference that Erika is gonna talk about today is actually on May the first, not May, the eighth, and we will put that link in the show notes for you guys if you’re interested in attending.
Today I’m very excited to be here with Erika McCoy from Kansas City, Missouri and she’s gonna talk with us about her personal story of dealing with OCD as a Christian and in the church, some unhelpful things that have happened and some later on, helpful things that have happened in support that she’s gotten at this point, and her advocacy with the International OCD Foundation.
Welcome.
How Erika’s OCD Developed and Why it Took a Long Time for Her to Get Diagnosed
Erika: Hi. Yes, I’m Erika and I’m from born in St. Louis, but my family moved here when I was three years old. So pretty much this is my hometown. And I remember having symptoms of OCD when I was about eight, just from my memory and I did not get diagnosed until I was 24.
Carrie: Wow.
Erika: And yeah, it was a long time.
Carrie: That’s a long time.
Erika: It took a long time. I think it’s about it’s almost average. I know, I think the statistics are anywhere from 11 to 17 years from people when they first start showing symptoms. But a lot of people I talk to now since getting better, they’re getting treatment a lot earlier. That is really exciting news to hear.
I was diagnosed about eight years ago and Kansas City is a pretty big metropolitan area. But there was not a lot of great treatment options. So I was hospitalized the first time when I was 14, but they did not diagnose me with OCD. I think it was a general panic disorder is what I was diagnosed with.
Carrie: Do you think they just didn’t ask all of the questions? Is that how they missed it, or were there certain thoughts or themes maybe, that you were scared to share and you were like, oh, I don’t wanna tell them that that’s really going on?
Erika: I mean, when I look back at it, I feel like it was pretty obvious. I mean, they asked me to put things on scale from one to 10, and my biggest thing was being late or being on time.
And then of course, that’s also when I went to a different high school, a private school. My parents were really big on making sure I was going to a Christian private school. And I went to a private school that was a different faith tradition and that is when the first time that somebody, a priest there told me that I was going to go to hell just because I was a different faith tradition than faith that I was at and that really just rocked my mind. I mean, I just could not believe that was my grand offense and I was gonna be doomed to hell for that. There were some other things that were going on with me at that time.
Carrie: Like a different denomination of Christianity. You went from one denomination to another and all of a sudden it was like, you’re going to hell. Because you don’t believe these exact things here.
Erika: Yes. My family didn’t think it was that big of a deal and I didn’t either, but I went from Luther to Catholic. But Martin Luther is the one that originally broke away from the Catholic church. I guess they’re kind of salty about that.
Carrie: They’re still upset about it.
Erika: Yeah. And they’re doctrine. I don’t know. I’m not trying to like put any other faith down or anything like that. That’s just what happened in.
Carrie: With your particular experience. Yeah.
Erica: There was a lot of other things happening at that time. My father, they said that he had six months left to live and I mean, it was just a lot of things happening at once. What sent me into like a total breakdown at that point in time was my therapist was late. I mean just like five minutes late. It wasn’t even a big deal, it was just five minutes. But that caused me to go down into like a total spiral. Thought the world was ending cause my therapist was late and that’s totally irrational.
And I just felt like I was gonna die. I just looking back on it, I’m just like, what’s going on? And then when I was in the hospital from a scale of one to 10, 10 is World War 3 and one is nothing. What is being on top? How important is, or what is the offense of being late? And I was like, oh, definitely World War 3. And I don’t know, I mean, to me that’s obvious that that’s like OCD, but they did not diagnose with it at that time.
Carrie: They just thought that you were really into punctuality and then that was just a high priority for you?
Erika: Yes. Just a high-priority thing.
Carrie: So do you have any family members that were super, like, we gotta be on time? Was that a thing when you were growing up? You could get in big trouble for.
Erika: My dad. There’s a certain percentage, I don’t know, that have the genetics factor for OCD. My father had it. He passed away. My mother has it, my aunt on my maternal side who passed away as well, and my grandfather on my mom’s side as well.
Carrie: Okay. Yeah. So it’s definitely running through the family there.
Erika: Yes. But my dad was very big. He would always stay all the time that saying, if you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. And if you’re late, you might as well not even show up at all and he would say that all the time to me. I don’t know that was just a big thing and my dad had a lot of things like that, and he was also in the military. It was very much a military run house.
Carrie: A lot of rigidity
Finding Help for Her OCD
Erika: When I grew up. I finally found a psychiatrist that got my diagnosis right when I was 24. And that was a sigh of relief, and I was hospitalized again at 24, and then I had to do three different intensive outpatient hospitalizations.
They didn’t do ERP, but the CBT cognitive behavioral therapy helped quite a bit for what it was. But as far as finding a therapist, my psychiatrist knew a lot about OCD. I had to work with my psychiatrist, not on a super regular basis because he’s psychiatrist and very busy, but he gave me the tools and he did psycho-analytical therapy on me to help with OCD.
He taught me what ERP was and then I got like the my OCD at workbook and I kind of had to do a lot of the exposure response stuff by myself, which I do not recommend. Do not do that.
Carrie: That was overwhelming for you to not have the support of therapists or somebody else to do it with you.
Erika: Yeah, like an actual trained clinician, like a weekly basis and do that. I mean, it was very touch and go for me. Because I could only meet, meet him once a month.
Carrie: But you’re not the only one I’ve heard that from. I’ve heard several other people say, oh, I tried to find a therapist in my area that was versed in OCD either didn’t have connection with that person, or I couldn’t find somebody that had some kind of proper training or proper experience level in order to help me through this. We had a guest on very early in the show, Mitzie Van Cleve. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of her. She’s done quite a bit of writing on OCD and Christianity’s Scrupulosity.
She had said, “I tried to find a therapist for a long time and essentially I looked online and watched videos and used workbooks” and kind of had to do a lot of the imaginable exposures on herself in order to get the help that she needed. I don’t think that your story is incredibly uncommon.
It’s a sad state of affairs, and I think that’s why we’re talking so much about this in terms of increasing awareness is people are literally suffering for years without help, without even knowing what they’re struggling with. And then when they do finally figure it out, it’s, there’s this uphill battle to try to get the help that they need. And I hate that for this community. It’s not good at all.
Erika: I was relieved when I got diagnosed, because honestly, at that point in time I thought I was really losing my mind going insane. I had this, I mean, it was irrational, but I really thought I was gonna end up locked away in some sort of 19.
Carrie: Institution or something.
Erika: Institution or something. Like, I really had no idea. I mean, I knew what OCD was. I have no idea it could get that bad. I was really relieved when I found out that I had OCD thankfully. But now though, in my area, it’s on the Kansas side, but there is a Kansas City Anxiety Institute or something like that. That just got accredited for OCD.
So I mean, making waves now, which I think is really great for the people that get diagnosed and I’m talking about eight years ago.
Carrie: Sure.
Erika: It’s, it’s been a long way. A lot of progress have been made.
Church and Community Response to OCD
Carrie: Yeah. Tell us about the church’s response to OCD. I’m sure there’s some people that kind of just, they just don’t really know how to respond when you share that with them.
What are some unhelpful and helpful things that you’ve experienced in terms of trying to connect with faith community as a Christian?
Erika: Sure. In my blog that I wrote, I didn’t totally stay away for 16 years, but I did not go to church for 16 years because I was having really intrusive, horrible thoughts.
These things that were happening in my life, my aunt going missing, being murdered, having to take care of my dad that had abused me my whole entire life. All these things that were happening were rightful punishments from God. For something that I’m not quite sure of what I did, I mean, I know we’re, I’m a sinner and I know I’ve done bad things.
I mean nothing like terribly bad because we’re all sinners. And so I kept wrestling with this fact that I know I’m not perfect. I know I haven’t done the right things all the time, but what have I done that’s so horrible for God just to keep punishing me with these things. Thing after thing after thing in that 16 year break when I was just really felt really scared and I didn’t know it was going on.
I would go to certain, sometimes it was Christian friend. Sometimes it was different pastors, different elders, stuff like that. And I would go to them and kind of, I mean, not tell them everything cause I knew that would probably be too much, but just a little bit of what was going on in my mind. And they were a little shocked.
I mean, the first reaction out of a lot of people is that I had some sort of spiritual battle going on with inside my mind or my prayer life wasn’t doing well, or I had some really bad experiences of people telling me I had demons inside my brain.
Carrie: Which of course is terrifying person to tell you that.
Erika: Absolutely terrifying. Because that was also one of my really horrible what ifs. When you have OCD people say, it’s also known as the doubting disorder. And for someone that has the religious scrupulosity theme to it. My mind, I was having these horrible thoughts of God punishing me, and then I was also worried that maybe Satan was taking over my life. When you go to a religious leader and then they are confirming.
Carrie: Your greatest fear at that point.
Erika: I don’t know how to explain that. Right? Oh, okay. Maybe I am, I don’t know. If this person that is really knowledgeable in these things confirms that to you. I mean, it’s, oh my goodness, maybe that is what’s happening.
I don’t know. That’s what really terrified me and scared me. And I would just try everything. I was praying. They were like, how’s your prayer life? Not knowing, obviously that prayer was a compulsion of mine. I would just keep praying more repeatedly. Are you reading your Bible right? I mean, I would read my Bible so much.
I was reading because reading my Bible is also compulsion. And I guess my thing is that I have a lot of empathy for faith leaders. Because I know that people come to them with outrageous amount of things, all problems, all the time. And I mean that is part of their job description.
That is part of their calling in life is to be there for people. I don’t want it to seem like I’m really coming down too hard on them and I don’t want them to be shut off when they hear these things because they can’t be a knowledgeable in all things with everything. Or they’d be God all knowing they just can’t be all those things. But I think a lot of, a little bit of knowledge can go a long way.
Carrie: Right
Erika: To me I sit around sometimes and listen to people talk, and when they start going a little too far, I’m just kinda like, “oh, maybe we need to investigate that a little bit, get a little bit further into that.” But I guess when I think about the things that I said to different faith leaders of my past, I just wish maybe they would’ve been like, “Hmm, maybe we don’t bring up statement in this situation.”
I haven’t been too seminary or anything like that, but maybe demon possession is real. Maybe it’s not. There’s that uncertainty there. Maybe, maybe not, but for me, I was born this way. It’s a genetic thing for me. That means that God made me this way. He knit me in the womb this way. He knew this was gonna happen.
We’re all made in his image. So there’s something about me and the people like me that deal with this. He’s wanting to bring delight and we all deserve. I mean, it’s just like the beatitude. We all deserve to have a beautiful, meaningful walk with Christ despite all these other things. And I wanna get across to faith leaders, other Christians, even though you don’t understand it.
Just a little bit of knowledge can go a long way and really help people get past their issues that they can’t control bring us all back to worshiping God.
Carrie: I think you just spoke to it right there. We’re on a journey with our faith. It’s a walk, and I think sometimes as Christians, we’re so concerned with getting people to a certain destination more so than we are of walking with them as they’re wrestling and as they’re going through the process.
And for some reason in the church, we’re terrified to say, I don’t know. I’m not sure why that is because I’m sure there were plenty of people in the Bible who at the end of the day, if you read the Psalms and you read the scripture, They didn’t know, they didn’t fully understand everything. And somehow in this context we go, okay, somebody has a problem.
I have the Bible, I have Jesus. There has to be a solution. Okay, let me give them a solution. And it’s this almost like this pressure that we put on ourselves. Instead of just saying like, Erica, I can see that you’re really struggling with this. Let me pray for you. I’m not even sure how to support you through this.
How can I support you through this? I don’t know that I have all the answers that you’re searching for, but I want you to know that I care about you and I love you. I think if we could get that response out of our faith leaders, that would be so much more helpful than trying to dig through all of the nuances of everything that’s going on.
And I think that’s why so many of the stories in the Bible bring me comfort because we forget. We know the end of their story. We know what happened to Joseph in the end. He didn’t know what was gonna happen to him in the middle when he’s in jail or when he’s a slave. He didn’t know that he was gonna have a beautiful ending and that he was gonna be reunited with his family in that same way.
We’re all in the middle of our story somewhere and we don’t know how things are gonna work out a lot of times. Talk with us about how you learned to maybe sit with some of the uncertainties or the mysteries of your faith that you experienced.
What Erika Learned from Her OCD and Her Life Experiences
Erika: Well, yeah, for sure. I think whether you have OCD or not, what I’ve learned is a lot of people have a hard time, just like you said, not knowing they want answers and they want them now.
I think life has just taught me along with having to go through the therapy that treats OCD or at least make living with life with OCD easier to live. That helped me. And then also just the experiences of my life. Nobody has an easy life. I’m not gonna pretend that is the case. There’s just been some circumstances in my life that is just, Or when I look back, it’s just like, “Why? What is happening here? Even with my father, the doctors told us when I was 14, he had six months to live. My dad did not end up passing away. I was 24.
Carrie: Wow. That’s a big discrepancy from what they originally told you.
Erika: For a long time, all of us were just always so constantly worried and we need to spend all the time we can. We have to do everything we can for him cause he is right at this door. Constantly. Every surgery he went into, we had to say goodbye to him as if it was the last time we were gonna see him. And I can’t even tell you how many surgeries he had between 14 to 25. I mean, we had to go and say goodbye to him, and that is not what happened.
That taught me a lot about sitting with uncertainty and not knowing when someone’s gonna go in that case. And then with my aunt, we actually were having a fight when this happened. I had not talked to her for eight months before she went missing. I think people, they disconnect from family members for all sorts of different reasons, right?
That’s a normal thing when, dynamics become unhealthy, sometimes we have to put boundaries in and disconnect. And that’s a healthy thing. One would never think that your loved one would go missing during that time. But that is what happened with my Aunt. And then it took seven months to find her body. And then normally how it goes when you find your missing loved one’s body, you get answers right away. At least some answers.
Carrie: This is what we think happened or this is who we suspect may have been involved or something.
Erika: Something like that. And that did not come and has not come and it’s been eight years. In May it’ll be eight years. That’s another thing that has, I’ve just been, I’m gonna say forced and I did a lot of things to try to find answers. I mean, I was always sharing her information, passing out fires constantly. I did a lot of things to try to bring awareness to that, and no matter what her other friends or other family members. Those answers have not come no matter how much we would like them to.
It’s just not the time and we’re just gonna have to wait it out and that took me a long time to be, I mean, I’m not okay with it, but just kind of like it is what it is.
Carrie: You’ve had to make peace with that at some level?
Connecting to God and Going Back to Church
Erika: Yeah, on some level. I mean, I can talk so I’m blue in the face and knock on doors and do all those sorts of things, and maybe it would make a difference, I don’t know. But at this point in time, I feel like I know the process and it’s gonna take whoever has intimate knowledge to come forward. And that is on them and God and the Holy Spirit working through them to wanna come forward with that. And it’s just outta my control. I don’t have anything to do with that. And then when it comes to my faith with all these different experiences in life, I was really scared when I first went back to church about two years ago because of the interactions I’ve had.
I just really didn’t with Christians and my Christian friends and stuff like that, and faith leaders. But you know, I just thought, been through all these crazy things. I’m still here and that’s gotta be for a reason. There’s gotta be a reason that I’m still here through all these things, and I’m still relatively unscathed.
I’m still attacked and I’m still doing pretty good here. I just really wanted me and my family to really have a connection with God, and I just went ahead and I was like, I’m just gonna do this. And the first church I went back to was actually really great in lots of ways. They gotta help plan Easter and help with their Facebook.
I mean, I did a lot of things that really brought a lot of value and that was the first time I prayed out, in front of a church. Let me tell you, it was not a great prayer. I was so scared to get up there and do that prayer. I think at the end I said, “well, anyway. Amen.”
Carrie: That’s okay.
Erika: It was an awkward prayer.
Carrie: God understands. It’s alright.
Erika: But I did it. It was a great place for me to practice a lot of exposures and I was really thankful for that personally. There’s some problems, but that’s okay. It showed me that there was just a lot of, still a lot of things with OCD and misunderstandings. But I’m still really thankful cause I got to exposures and a smaller place of worship and just be who I am.
I was able to meet a lot of great people that are very loving and kind, and it really was a good place to the stepping stone. It also taught me to stick with it because honestly, if you would’ve talked to me, I don’t even know how long in my, I don’t wanna say my former self, but in the. If I would’ve done that and went through that, I would’ve been like, okay, we’re done here.
I’m never trying it again. Prior to treatment, I would’ve been, we’re done here. I tried. I gave it a good effort, but nope, I would’ve taken that as a sign that God doesn’t want me to be in church or something ridiculous. But because of the tools where I am in my mental health journey, where I am in my faith journey, I knew that I just had to keep going and eventually, even if it wasn’t the next one, I would find a place that would be where I’m supposed to be. No church is gonna be perfect. Okay we know that we’re all people. There’s lots of people interacting and that’s another thing to keep in mind to, but thankfully it was just one other church that I stopped at and it’s been a beautiful thing.
There’s a lot of really understanding people. At least all the people I’ve come across are very encouraging. They might not understand exactly what I’m talking about or what I’m going through, but they’re very encouraging, loving. I’ve even got some questions about what it is that I’m talking about. Not in like a weird, judgmental way or anything like that.
Carrie: Healthy curiosity.
Erika: It’s just a healthy curiosity. It’s just such an amazing feeling to go into a place after all the things, preconceptions, being scared and all those things. And to finally find a place that you can just be who you are and just be able to work on your relationship with God. Even if that means that you do some weird OCD things while you’re working on your ERP and not have to be worried about the judgment of others, and you can just focus on growing the relationship between you and God.
Carrie: I appreciate that message. I think for a lot of people who are disconnected from the church right now because they’ve experienced spiritual hurt or even abuse in some cases, and I appreciate that. Don’t give up on the body of Christ and don’t give up on yourself and the community. That could be really healthy in supporting you, and we’ve talked about that in various episodes on the show.
I think supportive faith communities can be really transformational, like you’re saying. I think we weren’t meant to kind of do this whole walk and journey alone. We need other people surrounding us and to know that God’s with you in guiding you and leading you to that place where he wants you to be. So that’s, I think that’s really encouraging to a lot of people.
Tell us a little bit about your advocacy work with, the International OCD foundation.
Erika’s Advocacy Work
Erika: With the International OCD Foundation. Do most of my work in the special interest group of faith and OCD. That’s where my passion is for sure. We have meetings. It’s been a little crazy right now because we’re leading up to the conference, the Faith and OCD Conference in May 8th. So we’ve been having a couple of extra meetings to plan out each month. So in January the theme was it’s not about faith, it’s OCD and so that’s where my article came out of. And then February, we’re gonna be highlighting having the healthy amount of doubt versus certainty because you know, in faith it’s okay to have doubt. It’s how that can be challenging with people with OCD to understand that healthy amount of doubt versus getting in the loop of uncertainties. That we’re working on that and they’ll be themes every month leading up to May.
And I am really excited about the conference for Faith in OCD. I haven’t gone to one in the past. Here’s the crazy thing, so I’ve technically been an advocate almost eight years. I was in such a bad place. I’ve just been following all these things, but I haven’t really been doing much. One of the other advocates said to me like, so crazy.
You’ve known about all this stuff for eight years and you haven’t gone yet. And I’m like, no, but this year is the year. Okay, I’m gonna do these conferences. I’m gonna go to the.
Carrie: And that’s online isn’t it?
Erika: Yeah, it’s a Zoom, a virtual one. The Faith in OCD website via the International OCD Foundation has a lot of great information on it. It even breaks down per faith tradition. There’s one for Protestants, Judaism, I believe. I don’t know, it just breaks it down for a whole bunch of different faith traditions for people to get information, which I think is great. I don’t know that much about interfaith. I’m a Christian and that’s where I have most of my knowledge in, but their website’s really great. There’s a lot of great resources for Christian. Lots of slides and also really great ways for faith leaders. You can print off different things and if you’re kinda less vocal or more shy, you can just print it off and hand it to your faith leader, which I love that because like not everyone is as vocal or want to have face-to-face conversations so you can just put in their mailbox and go upon your way. They definitely recommend that if anybody wants to spread knowledge to their faith leaders, you can just print that off and sign it under their door or whatever, and then just walk along your way and they might not even know where it came from.
So then what I’m doing for this month and the months coming up to May is that I’m doing a rocking your values, navigating faith and OCD in the community painting workshop. I like to paint rocks.
Carrie: That’s awesome. That’s a lot of fun.
Erika: I like to paint just about anything really, but last OCD week in 2022, I came up with this OCD advocacy initiative where teal is the color for OCD awareness. You paint the base of the rock teal, and then basically you can write OCD facts on it, or you can paint. I mean, I can pretty much see anything in a creative picture type of way, so I paint lots of little pictures, on mine. Some people are more left or right brain. I don’t know which one’s more analytical.
Carrie: Whatever works for people. Do what works for you, whether it’s like writing something on the rock or, I did some of that during the pandemic because let’s face it, we were all at home. I ordered a few supplies on Amazon and see what I can do with some rocks here that’s from a rock place near me.
They were like, “you can just have some of these.” And I was, “Are you serious? That’s great.”
Erika: I know I got 200 rocks donated to me. So I have plenty I can do plenty of these rocks. You paint them, you put your OCD facts on them to make it like an advocacy thing. I mean, you’re more than welcome to keep them if you want to, but I’ve done quite a few of them.
The last time I went on a road trip, every place I stopped, I left the rock. And then on the back it has, it says at International OCD Foundation. So if they Google that, it brings up the International OCD Foundation. It also has my Instagram tag on it, but people, not everyone wants that kind of information out there, but my Instagram tag is specific enough where if you Google that, it’ll bring up screw velocity.
So that brings up knowledge and then it also has the hashtag rocking your values, but also bring up different things. That’s something that I start in, but if more people get into it, it’s a great way to advocate. And you can be kind of introverted about it too. Cause you can just paint your rock and then just drop it somewhere and then a random person can, whether they know about OCD or not, can pick it up and get some knowledge about it.
Carrie: I love options for introverts because a lot of times they feel they’re not out there, they can’t make a difference, but there’s plenty of small ways that they could make a difference by just dropping something off by their pastor or by painting a rock and leaving it somewhere and directing it to some helpful information.
Sure, yes, introverts unite. That’s awesome.
Erika: I’m an introverted extrovert.
Carrie: I would consider myself that a little bit too. Yeah, I can have some extrovert tendencies when I need to, but then I also need to like hold off and recharge sometimes and not see anybody or talk to anybody. This has been a really great conversation.
I probably feel we could go on for forever and ever, but one thing I like to ask my guests that are sharing a personal story is if you could go back and tell your younger self something, even your teenage self, something who is in the midst of all these difficult situations, what would you want her to know?
Erika: I guess the biggest thing would be that God loves you. Jesus loves you and the expectation to be perfect is not achievable, and just to have some compassion for yourself in the really hard times to come.
Carrie: Jesus was perfect. So we don’t have to be. That’s a nice realization for all of us, I think, that put pressure on ourselves or unrealistic expectations to achieve certain things.
We’ll put links to your article about your story and where people can find you on Instagram and so forth. If they wanna connect and find out more about painting rocks with you. That’s really cool.
Erica: Yes. I love that. Some people are like, “But I’m not a good artist.” Okay, well, one, I’m a firm believer that all art is good art. Okay. Even if you just make a little stick figure, or, I don’t even know what I remember art therapy was one of the big things that, well, it can be ERP I will say that, but art therapy is just so, so much for me when I was younger. And therapy doing collages and all these things. So for me, if you think you’re the worst artist ever, just trust the process, put a brush down on something and just let it go or make a collage, I don’t know. Just try it once. And just see how it feels. Just let it go and just try it once.
Carrie: Roll with it.
Erika: Yeah, roll with it.
Carrie: Erika and I had a short conversation off mic because I didn’t have a lot of time to ask her this when I was interviewing her about the connection between trauma and OCD since she mentioned several different traumatic events in the course of her talk. And it’s interesting to me, the more and more that I work with clients who have this overlap of childhood, also adulthood trauma and OCD symptoms is it seems like the trauma symptoms exacerbate the OCD symptoms which would make sense because when people are under stress, their OCD symptoms tend to flare up more.
So it’s just something to think about. If you’ve noticed in your own life that overlap between trauma and OCD, that getting some help for that trauma may help you as you’re trying to work through the OCD symptoms as well.
Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.
Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Maingrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.
Maybe this is a question you’ve asked yourself. Perhaps you have concerns about side effects, becoming dependent on medication, or wonder if this option is for you. My response to this question is always the same: It’s a personal decision. Each person has to decide what is best for their body depending on their own symptoms. Some of my clients are able to tolerate medication with little side effects while others try several different medications and react negatively to all of them. Some want to try counseling first before starting medication. I respect and honor each individual’s decision.
