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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.

95. Healthier Theology of Healing with Pastor Mark Smith

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 95. Healthier Theology of Healing with Pastor Mark Smith

We are privileged to have Pastor Mark Smith from Refuge Church on the show today to discuss the topic of healthier theology surrounding healing and suffering.

Episode Highlights:

  • Why God doesn’t heal everyone who prays for healing
  • The struggle between relying on God’s control and the reality of coping with pain and suffering in this world.
  • Pastor Mark’s personal experiences about how he has learned to depend on God through difficult times.
  • The need to address mental health and counseling in the church and finding a healthy understanding of emotional health and spiritual health.
  • How Christianity is unique in its approach to suffering and death.

Scripture verses mentioned in this episode:

Mark 9:14-29 – Jesus Heals a Boy Possessed by an Impure Spirit
Luke 9:46-47
John 14:2-3
1 Timothy 6:5
John 1:14
Isaiah 53:5

Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, Episode 95. Today, I’m joined by Pastor Mark Smith from Refuge Church in Nashville, a bilingual congregation where Pastor Mark preaches in both English and Spanish. Steve, my husband, actually attended this church before we got married, and while we now go to a church closer to home, we loved visiting Refuge, especially during COVID when my regular church was closed.

In this episode, we revisit an important topic: healing. It’s something that keeps coming up in my work as a therapist and on the podcast. Many people ask, “If God can heal, why am I still struggling with anxiety or OCD?” We dive into the deeper meaning of prayer and how it’s not just about getting what we want, but connecting with God. Pastor Mark shares insights on the spiritual tension between trusting God’s sovereignty and grappling with pain. Together, we explore how God’s plans often unfold behind the scenes, even when we can’t immediately see the results.

If you’ve ever wondered why healing doesn’t always come in the way or timing we expect, this conversation is for you. Don’t miss the rich discussion on how suffering can deepen our relationship with God and reveal His glory in unexpected ways. Tune in now!

Explore Related Episode:

2. Unanswered Prayers for Healing with Pastor Troy Powell

Transcript

Welcome to Christian and OCD episode 95. Today on the show I have with me Pastor Mark Smith with Refuge Church in Nashville, which is a bilingual congregation and Pastor Mark preaches in English and Spanish, which is pretty cool. This was a church that Steve was going to prior to us getting together and getting married. Since you guys are so far away from us, not too far, but you’re far enough that it’s hard to get there. We made the decision to go closer to home, but enjoyed coming quite a bit during Covid, while the church I was attending was shut down because they were meeting in a school. So it was a joy to be with you guys during that time.

We, on the podcast, had a very early episode on Unanswered Prayers for Healing. One of the reasons I wanted to do that episode was because so many people were coming to me and saying, I’m praying and my anxiety’s not going away. I don’t understand why God isn’t healing me. But that’s a great interview if people wanna go back and listen to it.

We talk about the value of prayer more than just kind of getting what we want. It’s about our connection with God and communicating with him. God’s always working behind the scenes and a lot of times we don’t know what he’s doing or how he’s using these situations in our lives. And I wanna bring up this topic of healing back around.

I don’t know Pastor Mark if pastors do this, but as a podcaster and as a therapist, I’ll see themes of things that keep coming back around, coming back around. And I’m like, maybe we needed to talk about that a little bit more because it seems to be something like God’s bringing up over and over again. Do you find that’s true?

Pastor Mark: Oh, without a doubt. There are moments when, for example, for years I felt like I was butting up my head against the same. Issues over and over again, and I felt like that was part of the Lord telling me that, we needed to address it as a faith family whether it was mental health issues or marriage issues, relationship stuff, or whatever. There are themes that come up and with every new kind of season in life, things change and I feel like it’s really important for us to be sensitive enough to it to follow the Holy Spirit and say we need to deal with this.

Carrie: One of the themes that keep coming back around for me, whether it’s in counseling or people that contact our podcast, is, okay, we understand from reading the Bible that there were people that they just, they came up and they touched Jesus and they were healed, or Jesus even spoke a word and said, okay, go home. This person is healed. They’re no longer sick. From our self-centred view, I’m gonna call it that. We look at it and we say, okay, God, you could heal me. You could take this away. Why am I still suffering with this? And so if God’s all-powerful and he can just heal me at any point.

Why doesn’t that happen then? People fill in answers. May or other people sometimes will fill in answers for them if they’re talking to people. Maybe you’re not praying enough, maybe you’re not praying the right way. Maybe you’re not studying your Bible enough. What are your thoughts on this?

Pastor Mark: I was telling a few people we were doing this podcast and my only fear in doing this is this is a big issue. And it’s not an easy one. I will tell you even among what people would consider maybe the healthiest of concepts of theology or spirituality, there is a healthy tension between trusting in the sovereignty and the grace and the beauty of God and dealing with pain and suffering on this side of eternity.

How do we deal with that? You’re absolutely right. It’s the most natural thing to look in the scriptures and say, man, every time Jesus turns around, he’s healing someone. He’s helping someone. Why doesn’t he do that for me, I think there are a few things, as I was kind of walking through some of this, there were a few things that I thought were helpful.

One, I asked the Lord, and I said, God, there’s so many scriptures of healing in the scriptures. Is there one place that I can go that I think would be helpful to your listeners today? One of the things that I found was the story of the healing of, and if you remember the boy with the unclean spirit in Mark nine.

Now, I will say this also, there’s very little distinction in the scriptures, especially New Testament between physical illness and spiritual sickness. Sometimes Jesus says, get up. You’re mad and walk. Sometimes he says, your sins are forgiven, and the Bible doesn’t give us a clear picture. Sometimes it’s both.

Sometimes they may be dealing with mental illness or demonic depression, or a combination of the two. I think it’s really important to understand that this is not a simplistic issue at all. That story in Mark chapter two. Jesus and the disciples are coming out of this mountain of transfiguration where it’s been an amazing scene and they want to build these huts and tents and like camp out there. God says, no, I’m no time out. You’re just supposed to experience this and see it for what it is. And then they come back to reality. And the reality is that the rest of the disciples, crowds, and religious leaders are all in this big major debate over the disciples not being able to heal this boy. Now there are some confusing things I would love to help explain because there’s a lot of, I think, misunderstanding about that scripture. Once again, the argument is that disciples can’t heal him and Jesus calls He, it’s kind of a blanket statement to everybody, but he calls them a faithless generation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re faithless because they cannot heal the boy.

Faithlessness comes because they want to use Jesus as a means to an end. You know what I’m saying? It’s about, it’s kind of a results faith. Mm-hmm. They must not have faith because they don’t see any results. And I know we’ve seen that with people suffering through anxiety or OCD, that they’re like, I’m praying this, but I’m not getting the results that I’m looking for. So there’s either something wrong with the Lord or something wrong with me. Right.

Carrie: So many Christians that have memorized scriptures on God’s not giving me a spirit of fear, pray, and peace of God will pass all understanding. I mean, they know these verses inside and out, taking every thought captive, and they are praying and they are seeking the Lord and they’re still in this wrestling place of suffering.

I think. We miss the big picture though, like what you were saying about what Jesus was here to do and what he’s here to accomplish, and it’s not about me and my individualistic theology. I find it interesting, and I’ve shared this with clients as well in the past, in the beginning of Mark chapter one, verses 29 through 39.

Jesus is healing many people. Essentially he sneaks away to go be with God and the disciples are like, “Wait a minute. Everybody at the house is looking for you. What are you doing?” He doesn’t go back to the house and heal the people. He just moves on. I thought that just kind of shows Jesus’ mission, not that he was not compassionate towards these people because obviously, he healed many people, but he didn’t show up on earth to be a healer. That’s something that I think we’ve gotten our theology of healing a little bit confused on, especially in certain circles.

Pastor Mark: Without a doubt. It’s interesting that Jesus, often we see, especially in the gospels, that Jesus shows his power and his strength or his position as the Messiah. But there’s a testimony part of that.

In fact, in Mark chapter nine-story, the parents finally come up to them and it’s clear that they’re not even believers. They don’t even, they, they said, Lord, help us in our unbelief. And Jesus waits to heal the boy. Because he wants to make it a clear testimony to them, so it’s, and though he does have compassion for the kid, he wants to help him, but Jesus is seeing a bigger picture that sometimes when I’m in the middle of my problems or my suffering or my issues, it’s hard for me to see the bigger picture that God may have that I can’t see.

Carrie: Yes, and I was thinking too, as you were talking about that, how many different types of healing stories there are in the New Testament, like you said, some of them are clearly more of a physical nature. Get up your mat and walk and other ones. Say like the man that was lowered down into the house that actually says, like his friend’s faith that brought him there were responsible. Another one I was thinking about was the man who was born blind. Mm-hmm. And they asked who sinned that this man was born blind. Really it was for the glory of God to be revealed. In that situation, and oftentimes we don’t realize how God’s glory can be revealed even in the myths of our own suffering experiences.

Pastor Mark: One of the things I think through my own struggles and issues that I’ve had, one of the things that I’ve learned over the years is how my personal suffering, maybe Jesus hasn’t taken away yet, or maybe I’m still walking through that Dark Valley. It causes us to kind of pay attention to our soul care, to our art. And obviously, the go-to for the disciples in that story you were talking about was blame, right? Yeah. Assigning blame. And we see that in mental health issues all the time. Why is this happening? Is it because of my parents? Is it because something’s wrong with me? Do I not have enough faith? We play all these blame games when if we can get to a healthy point, I believe when we can pay attention to our heart. And our soul, and listen, truly listen, and I’m not trying to find the silver lining and everything. That’s not what this is about. But I do think it’s an opportunity to enlarge our soul through paying attention during that suffering or that reprocess.

Carrie: It’s interesting just working with people, finding what I call the gift of anxiety, the gift of OCD or even trauma. And people will tell me, I really have become a more compassionate person because of these experiences that I’ve had, or it’s caused me to seek God even more than I would have before. It caused me to get to a place of salvation because of these things that I’ve been through and the depths of the disparity.

I know that there’s many things that we’re not gonna understand, probably this side of heaven. And I think if our lives were easy and perfect on earth, there might be that lack of longing for heaven. What are your thoughts on that? Like if we became a Christian and God said, okay, I’m gonna make your life easier.

You’re not gonna have the same types of physical pain and suffering that other people have. I wonder if we would have as much longing for heaven

Pastor Mark: or a depth of compassion on this side of it either. But yeah, I agree. We are promised is that God is preparing us a place. I think that that as much of a physical space, I think a, an emotional space where there is true peace and true freedom, but the longing to get there and the journey that we have to get there along the way.

You know, you mentioned someone that may have come out of anxiety or is still dealing with it, but they’re able to relate to somebody else that’s walking through the same thing and there’s a brotherhood and a sisterhood. That takes place with that. I was talking to a group last week. They were actually talking about how she was a breast cancer survivor, and when she was going through that process, she would never have wished that upon herself or, and not even thanking God necessarily for that.

On the other side of that, the sisterhood that she has with other cancer survivors, she wouldn’t give up on anything. We think about the suffering that you and I walk through that other friends and family walk through, and the longing and the desperate desire to be at full peace with the Lord forever in eternity. That’s an amazing thing to look forward to.

Carrie: Yes. I know there are definitely been times when I can look back for things I’ve prayed for and I’m like, oh, I’m so glad God didn’t answer that. Like, yeah, that was not what I needed. Yeah, it was what I wanted maybe and what I thought I needed, but it wasn’t actually. What’s best for me I think about my daughter a lot because she’s one. I mean, if you let her do her own devices though, like she need cat food and all kinds of things and put stuff in her mouth. She wants to mess with the carbon monoxide alarm. There are all these things and she doesn’t understand like, no, like you can’t stick your finger in the socket. Like that’s not appropriate.

My job is to keep you alive. I think sometimes we’re that childlike in our experience. We think we know more. Like she thinks like, oh, I could just grab this. I can do that, it’s fine, but there are so many things that we have no idea what is coming around the bend in our own personal lives or professional lives.

Sometimes God doesn’t give us things because we’re not ready for them or because he is wanting to do something greater down the road, we’re not at the end of the story till we get to heaven. And so that piece is encouraging to me that God’s always continuing to work in our lives regardless of what suffering we’re experiencing.

This is more of a personal question, but how have you seen some of this play out in your own life, just kind of as you’ve wrestled through struggles of why has God allowed me to go through certain things?

Pastor Mark: Well, for example, some know that we served on the mission field in Guatemala for, lived there for nearly five years. We lost two pregnancies while we were there and there was a lot of spiritual baggage for us. I really question, Lord, we’re here because we’re serving you. We’re here because we’ve sacrificed. We sold our cars, and our home. We moved over here and why is this happening to us? We’re trying.

I’ve walked through trying to blame and trying to figure out, but I will tell you the depth of pain does not match the depth of grace and love that I’ve also experienced through some of that difficulty. Uh, and I know, uh, during, right at the height of Covid, uh, about two years ago between what was going on with the isolation and just in church life and homes and we were all quarantining and, and that kind of stuff. Between that and some isolation that I had with some family members, I developed panic attacks about two years ago. And ended up having to go into counseling for about six months or so to get to a healthy point again in my life. I really struggled with the Lord on why I was having to go through that.

Why did I feel like I was having a heart attack every time I went out on my bike and I went up this certain hill? All of a sudden I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was gonna pass out. I went through all the medical studies and everything and realized it was all related to my emotional health and the lack of control that I felt.

When I couldn’t change the situation, there was nothing I could do. Absolutely nothing that I could do. Now, I won’t say I’m fully recovered. I still deal with anxiety and there are still moments where I’ve been in tune to my heart enough to know, okay, I’m binging on this TV program because I’m avoiding something that I need to deal with or I’m falling into, or I’m eating too much because of this, or whatever.

This issue of control, God has really opened up a new window of spiritual understanding and trust in him that the lie was that I was controlled in control to begin with. Yes, true. Those are a few things that I’ve learned just through my own personal experience.

Carrie: I think for me, one of the things, and I talked about this on my first episode, really, is I had this kind of formulaic version of God and it’s like a vending machine.

If I put in what I’m supposed to, then I’m gonna get out. You’re gonna bless me like things are gonna go well. And then tragedy strikes and you realize, okay, well this is completely outta my control and it doesn’t matter that I’m going to church every Sunday, and it doesn’t matter that I’m trying to serve the Lord and do these different things.

Sometimes things happen in our lives and tragedy strikes and painful things happen, but it took me on a journey really of who God is. That was really the question. It’s like, okay, who are you? Are you really good and are you really kind? And how are you gonna show up in this season? He did and definitely changed so much of my view of God.

I think everything that I go through now has led me to a deeper place of trust, what we’ve been going through with Steve’s SCA, and I’ve talked about that on the podcast. I just remember like when we first got that diagnosis, just every day like. I didn’t understand what was going on. We didn’t have a clear picture of what the future was gonna look like, and I just got up every morning.

I said, okay, God, I trust you. I trust you. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I trust you, and God’s just been faithful and he’s been really good to us through this process. He definitely blessed us in many ways that were unexpected. I think we have this, like you were talking about before, this results in mentality about our spirituality.

Sometimes if I put in this effort, it should be successful, or if I do this, then God should do that. And I’ve been reading the book of Isaiah, which is super challenging. I’m just gonna say that it’s super challenging because basically, God told Isaiah to go preach to some people that weren’t gonna listen to him till the city fell down.

That’s a very condensed version, and I’m like, oh, that’s like a very far cry from American Christianity, right? I’m just kind of like cut to the core of, okay, God. So there may be some assignments that I have that don’t actually work out into this perfect, amazing success, and that’s okay. You’re still gonna be with me through that process, and I still need to follow through and do what God’s asked me to do.

Pastor Mark: I love what you said about that through some difficult or challenging times, it caused you to think about who God is and help maybe redefining that or understanding a little bit more about that. I think that’s a healthier approach than to say, what’s wrong with my faith right now? Or that results base of maybe I’m not praying enough and, certainly there are spiritual disciplines that we should all have, that ought to connect us to God in different ways. And sometimes our anxiety and our O C D or whatever can reveal some pax in the armor that maybe we need to work harder at meditation or work harder at Bible memorization or going on a spiritual retreat. I think anything that reveals more soul care for us personally is a healthy approach.

Often I find God expanding my understanding just of who he is and what his character is about. If I can share it real quick, I was just reading this the other day, but John Piper, who’s one of my favorite preachers, had an analogy between approaching God as a running spring or as a watering trough. He said, “You know, if you approach the Lord as this endless flowing stream, that’s always replenishing. That’s always there. That’s an amazing thing”. But he said, “Oftentimes we approach God like a watering trough, that we have to refill it. I have to work towards that. I have to perform, and I’m so grateful to the Lord for that.

He will not be confined by our limited understanding of that. Oftentimes I feel like we always want to put God in this box. And if we think of God just in those terms, then it’s always about me. It’s always about do I have enough faith. Am I performing enough? This kind of stuff, but if God is truly an eternal source of living water for us.

The only thing that we can do to honor that is to bow down and drink from it. We often think about offering God our best, but sometimes we need to offer God our thirst, our weakness. He says, when in your weakness I will be made strong. He says, “The prosperity gospel cannot explain what we just talked about.” That theology cannot deal with me coming to the Lord in my weakness finding strength in him and finding understanding that element of his character.

Carrie: That’s so good. True. This episode is not coming out anywhere near Christmas, but I feel like Christmas is so important to this conversation.

Just a sense of God becoming human. Jesus coming down to the earth and being with us in the midst of our struggles, that when God doesn’t take your suffering away, that he is always there with you in the midst of that. What are your thoughts on that?

Pastor Mark: Once again throwing me the softballs, but one of the beautiful things about Christianity and our faith, it’s that scripture from John chapter one where it says the word was made flesh and literally made his dwelling among us.

That means several things. We can talk about his divinity and his humanity and so many other things we can talk about that he is our high priest that understands and empathizes with everything that we’re going through. But I would say one of the most beautiful gifts of our faith is the gift of God’s presence in our lives where things may not be resolved, I may still be battling physical, emotional, spiritual issues.

I may be walking through a dark valley. But I sense the presence, the incarnation presence of Jesus walking with me, suffering with me through this. And I know there’s a promise of eternity. I know I’m going to get there at some point, but I know I’m not alone. And that is an amazing gift that we celebrated Christmas, that I think you’re right, sometimes gets overlooked.

Carrie: In the sense of Jesus being the suffering servant. Yeah. And if we are seeking to become more like Christ, that there are elements where we’re going to have to share in suffering within.

Pastor Mark: That’s another thing that’s very unique to Christianity. No other religion in the world talks about it. It’s our nature turn away from suffering and death. That’s a natural response. That’s sometimes what causes our emotional life to truly struggle bcause we want to avoid everything. We want to pack it away and we don’t want to deal with it, but Christianity is truly the unique faith. It says that life is found through death and that liberation and freedom are found through the crucifixion. You mentioned Isaiah 53, the idea that he was wounded and afflicted so that we could find life and peace. That’s an amazing promise that we have that is absolutely unique to our faith.

Carrie: I know we’ve gone deep on this conversation and thrown in a few personal nuggets too. I think it’s really good though, because this is how people who are struggling with anxiety and OCD think, and these are some of the questions that are rolling around in their heads.

I think many people who are in Christian circles that are struggling with anxiety and O C D are struggling from non-biblical theology, from theology that’s coming from man or one or two scriptures pulled out of context instead of looking at the totality of scripture and who God is.

Pastor Mark: Well, I would say a few things about that. I think in general the church has had a negative view of mental health and counseling and it’s kind, it’s, it’s still, it’s crazy to think in our day and time that it’s still a taboo subject for some. And then obviously our church, we have multiple different ethnicities represented in each country. Each ethnicity involved has a different idea of mental health issues and those kind of things.

There’s a lot of baggage that we find here that we have to kind of unwrap to help people understand how to breathe. And it’s okay to say, I’m going to counseling right now, or I’m having panic attacks, or I’ve got issues of anxiety that I need help with. And that we can share that burden together and we can pray for one another.

I would encourage those who are out there if, obviously you need to pray about it, but find a church that has a healthy understanding of emotional health as well as spiritual health. Uh, look for that Lord has taken me on, a journey that I’ve made, a personal commitment to the award that I’m gonna at least.

There’s at least one series that we do every year that is specifically devoted to either anxiety or some other mental health issue. We don’t prop that up like it’s mental health month or anything like that. But we just wanna be conscious and aware of that. Some of the statistics that I read say that one in five adults in America is dealing with some kind of mental illness, and that means one in five in our churches dealing with that too.

What I often do is, I’m trying to teach or preach here in our ministry, is to always look at through a filter of, okay, God, I understand what this says spiritually and biblical, but even emotionally, God, where does this hit me and my heart? Where does it hit our people and how can we address that emotionally as well. Now, I think it’s a healthier approach because there is, and you were afraid to say it, but I will say it, there’s a lot of bad theology out there, okay? It’s detrimental to people who are just trying to figure this stuff out.

Carrie: It’s so important to have these types of conversations. Wrapping up on at the end of the podcast, I like our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Pastor Mark: I already shared some things about my battle with panic attacks a couple years ago and how God has helped free me from a lot of that. But I will say that I still deal with anxiety. I still react in ways that I know is not healthy. Or I will hear something and immediately I’ll go negative or I’ll come up with five different worst-case scenarios that aren’t even warranted.

My hope comes from being a part of a family of faith, and I’m so grateful, not because I’m the pastor of our church, but. I’m just grateful that I’m a part of a faith community, that I don’t have to perform, that I don’t have to be perfect, that I can have a bad day, and others can too, and we can walk in faith with one another, even with our baggage, even with our issues.

I’m just grateful that I don’t have to walk in this thing alone. And not only is Jesus walking with me, but I’ve got other believers that are walking with me, brothers in Christ, people that may not seem significant to the rest of the world. But man, they’re so important to my heart. They’re so important to our faith, and I’m so grateful for that.

Carrie: I think it helps a lot of people reduce stigma just to hear a pastor say, there are times where I struggle with anxiety or the worst-case scenario, and I’ve had a panic attack before, and I know it feels like you’re gonna die and counseling is okay for you. I’ve just appreciated all those messages that you shared with our audience.

I know pastors are busy and sometimes it’s hard to get them on the podcast, so I appreciate you taking the time to spend with me today. My pleasure and I love you and your family and I wish you guys all the best.

I know I asked Pastor Mark a lot of tough questions, but I really appreciate his being willing to take a stab and answer them in a short format version, obviously.

We only have a short amount of time on the podcast to talk about these things, but it’s so important that we do, and I hope this episode challenges you to step back and ask the question, okay, God, who are you? And that you allow Scripture and the Holy Spirit to speak and answer that. I know I’ve shared this on the podcast before, but we get at least one inquiry a week.

It seems now, for a Christian counselor who works with OCD out of the state of Tennessee. Since I’m not able to work with those individuals due to licensure laws. If you have a counselor in your state who you’ve come to trust in has provided really great quality counseling, who is a Christian and can treat OCD, please contact us through the website contact form at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

You may be able to help someone else that you might never meet, but it would just be a great blessing to us if we could get this referral list off the ground.

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