Tag: OCD recovery

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

Written by Carrie Bock on June 5, 2024. Posted in OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

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.

Explore related episodes:

https://hopeforanxietyandocd.com/92-harm-ocd-in-pregnancy-sent-me-to-the-er-with-author-amber-williams-van-zuyen

Transcript:

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.

125. Help For When You Can’t Stop Googling Everything! with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on May 29, 2024. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie talks about the downsides of Googling too much, especially for those with OCD and anxiety. She shares how seeking reassurance online can actually make things worse and offers tips for resisting the urge to Google.

Episode Highlights:

The risks of excessive Googling, particularly for those with OCD and anxiety.
How seeking reassurance online can escalate anxiety and spiritual confusion.
The importance of accepting uncertainty as a part of finding peace.
Recognizing the urge to Google and making intentional choices to step back.
Practical strategies for resisting the urge to Google and maintaining mental well-being.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 125 of Hope for Anxiety and OCD! I’m Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor based in Tennessee, and I’m thrilled to have you with me today. If you find yourself caught in the habit of excessive Googling, you’re not alone. Many people with OCD struggle with this same issue, and in today’s episode, we’re diving deep into why this habit can be harmful and how you can start to break free from it.

Are you constantly Googling for reassurance? Perhaps you spend hours reading articles, watching videos, or searching for answers online. While it’s okay to research things in moderation, excessive Googling often exacerbates anxiety and leads to confusion rather than clarity.

We’ll address the cycle of reassurance-seeking that many people experience. Just like asking others for validation in relationships or at work, Googling is a way of self-reassuring. But instead of finding peace, you might end up trapped in a maze of conflicting opinions, especially in spiritual matters.

It’s crucial to recognize the urge to Google as a potential sign of OCD. When you feel a strong, anxious need to find an answer immediately, it’s often a sign that OCD is driving your behavior.

Remember, not everything needs an immediate solution. It’s rare that Googling will provide you with the certainty you’re seeking. Often, the answers to your questions are not readily available online, and learning to sit with uncertainty can be an important step in your healing journey.

Tune in to discover how to manage your Googling habits, set healthy boundaries, and find peace without relying on endless searches.

Explore related episode:

131. Relationship Obsessions Combined with Scrupulosity: Pierre’s Story

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 125. I am your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

I’m glad that you’re here. I just want to remind everybody, we have some exciting news, we have some revamping of the podcast that is going to be happening this summer and hopefully, we will have some new artwork, a new website, and a new name. For more information about that, make sure to hop on our email list so that you can be an insider and be the first to know. It is hopeforanxietyandocd.com/free. We’ll get you any of those free resources and to be able to be put on our email list.

This episode is for some of you that really struggle with your relationship with Googling. Maybe you are Googling what you feel like is everything or you’re spending hours and hours reading articles, hours and hours researching things on YouTube. If you haven’t figured this out, this is not incredibly healthy for you or your mental health. It’s okay to research things in moderation, it’s okay to look into things. But there is a point where it becomes unhealthy and creates more and more anxiety. Googling is a common OCD obsession that I see in clients that I work with, and when I first started working with OCD, It was one of the red flags of maybe this person needs some more assessment if they are Googling all of the time.

Maybe we need to start assessing them for OCD. Googling is a way that people seek reassurance. You may have seen, or heard of reassurance seeking in OCD, where you’re asking someone in a relationship, “Hey, are we okay right now? You’re asking your boss, am I doing everything the way you want me to? You’re asking doctors like, am I going to be okay? Are you sure that I’m going to be all right? Googling is a way we have done to self-reassure, to find out from some article, or expert video that everything is going to be all right, or we’re finding for or against what we think is okay.

Now we want to talk about how this can send you down a bunch of different rabbit holes where you see a bunch of different people’s opinions. It can cause you, especially in the spiritual realm from what I see with clients is it can cause you to become more and more spiritually confused, like, “Okay, well, this person about this scripture says this, and this person over here says that. You can get stuck on who is right, and who’s wrong.

If this person is saying this, does that mean I need to be doing that? If that person is saying I should stay away from seeing movies that are rated PG-13, does that mean that I’m a bad Christian if I go see this movie over here, the latest film? If this person over here says I should only listen to Christian music, does that mean I’m a bad Christian if I listen to secular music? What it does, the reality is, especially spiritually. It leaves you confused and causes you more disconnect from your actual relationship with God. Your relationship with God needs to, there’s a balance here. I’m not going to say it’s based a hundred percent. on just you and God because I do believe based on the scriptures that Christian community is an important part of our walk, that we can lovingly correct each other when we’re outside of bounds.

We need to just be very guarded and cautious about the people that we allow to speak into our lives. We need to make sure that they are aligned with the Word of God and our beliefs and understandings about the character of God. We don’t want to go too far off the rails and be following someone that is using obscure scriptures to make a major life change point.

Certain people may be convicted about some things. that you are not convicted about, and that is okay. Back to Googling and spending lots of time on YouTube, you need to be careful about that urge, so it starts with probably some type of obsession, and then there’s an urge to get on Google. There’s an urge that like, I need to know, I need to have this answer, I need to have this settled. What OCD is telling you is that you need to know and have that answer settled right now. That’s what you need to be cautious about. It’s not bad to know information or to try to research, but when there’s a strong, anxious, emotional urge that says you have to know it right now, go on and Google this. That’s probably OCD telling you or urging you to do those things. Then you can sit back and you have a crossroads, a choice at that point. Do I pick up my phone? Because now it’s so easy for us, we don’t even have to go to a computer anymore. We just pick up our phone. We can voice search in there.

We just say, “Hey, look up this for me.” We can ask it all kinds of questions. We don’t even have to touch our phones. I mean, people have Alexa in their home or they can say, “Hey, Alexa, look this up for me.” It’s so so easy for us.

Be intentional. Maybe you need to leave your phone when you feel that urge, leave your phone in another part of the house and literally walk away from it or walk away from your computer. Make intentional decisions not to get on those things when you’re trying to go to sleep because that is going to activate your brain in a way where you’re trying to problem solve and figure everything out right now Here’s the truth that we can sit with it is very very rare that we need to have a solution Right now that we would need to Google Maybe there is a solution right now like in an emergency situation where We might need to call 911.

We might need to tell someone to stop doing something. We might need to walk away from a situation. None of those involve googling. A lot of times the things that you’re searching for are things that are hard to know right now. In this present moment, or you’re trying to find certainty about a specific situation that you’re dealing with, instead of sitting with, maybe the answers to your specific situation are not on the internet.

You’re trying to find other people who have been through similar experiences. I have done my fair share of Googling, especially when it comes to medical experiences. I did a lot of Googling when I was pregnant with my daughter. I had some various complications. I wanted to know, was she going to be okay? Was I going to be okay? Ultimately, that Googling gave me some information, but it really didn’t give me certainty.

That’s what you’re wanting to know is, can Googling actually give you certainty? No, it can’t. It can give you more information, but can it tell you what’s gonna happen 100 percent of the time? No. As you’re learning through this process of dealing with OCD, part of that is learning to know, Hey, I don’t have 100 percent certainty. What’s going to happen in my experience? I didn’t know what it was going to be like to give birth to my daughter. Even though that was my first and only child, other people have had vastly different birth experiences, even who have had multiple children.

Just because you’ve had a child before, that doesn’t mean it’s going to go exactly the same as it did the last time. Googling about it can give you some broad strokes, some general ideas, but it’s not going to tell you the specifics of your situation. Keeping that in mind, you’re wanting to know, what is it that I actually need, and can Google actually provide that? Most of the time, the answer is a no.

You may, if you do need some legitimate information, but you are struggling because you know that you’re going to spend two hours on it, It may be something where you ask someone else to get you, like, one or two articles to read that are informative, that is from a healthy, good source, not just something that someone obscurely wrote that’s about two pages down the search engine. A reputable source where you can gain that information without feeling overwhelmed by all of the information that is out there. Typically, we do not have to consume as much information as we believe that we need to consume. You do not have to look at all different sides or angles or videos. You can glean some information from one or two things and then allow that to be the information gathering and moving on.

If you were going to Google, you would want to examine for yourself, “What is it that I am needing to know?” That’s one thing. “What am I actually needing to know? What am I hoping to gain from this? If I’m really Googling just to reassure myself, Or just to get some sense of, like, obscure certainty that’s out there.” Then you need to put the phone down, put the mouse down, walk away from the computer or phone, and say, okay, I’m going be okay even if I don’t get the certainty right now. I have to sit with some of the unknowns that are in my present experience about the future. Typically, it’s almost like we’re trying to get Google to help us figure out the future and be able to have some false sense of control. I think that’s what OCD is trying to tell you that you can have. You can have some false sense of control if you just get a little bit more information about this. Maybe you’ll understand it. Maybe you’ll be more confident in your decision making. Maybe you’ll know what to do.

There may be times where you gather all the information and you don’t know what the right decision is exactly. I had to make a hard decision about whether or not to be induced with my daughter and that was tough for me because I didn’t want to. Looking at all the information and then being able to say, okay, well, at some level, I have to make a decision and so many times I see people with OCD being concerned in a perfectionistic way about making quote the wrong decision or feeling like there’s only one right decision to be made in the situation.

Sometimes life is about praying and waiting for the peace of God to steer us in the right direction. And sometimes we have two okay options that are not in violation of our spiritual nature or things that, they’re not moral decisions to be made. And sometimes we just need to go with one of those, and that may be really hard for you or feel scary.

You may not feel like you have the confidence to make those decisions. That means there’s a little bit more inner work that needs to be done within yourself to be able to say, “Yes, I can make decisions. It’s okay.” That’s a thing that all adults do. Sometimes we are not sure of ourselves and sometimes there’s just a decision to be made and we have to stick our neck out and make it. Sometimes it’s okay, it works out well, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s a part of our life.

OCD wants you to believe that somehow you can have this absolute certainty if you have an abundance of information. More information typically does not give us more certainty. It can actually lead us to more confusion, especially if we find conflicting information.

Look at your past experiences with Google and see how they have turned out. Sometimes people will tell me, “Well, I looked this thing up and it actually relieved my fear or my concern.” I found out that it’s very unlikely that this scenario would happen. If it was just something like that and then you stopped and you were able to let it go. If it’s something where there’s a lot of gray area and you’re Googling about it more than once or you’re almost looking for new information on it, Is that contributing to your mental health and saying no to OCD? It Doesn’t sound like it. I would encourage you to take some steps to be able to prevent yourself from going down that rabbit hole so often. As you do, it may feel uncomfortable at first, but you’ll notice that it gets easier and easier and easier the more that you resist that urge to Google. It truly is an urge, there is a feeling, you know. associated with it, but also you can say no to OCD and not give in to that urge to Google.

Hopefully, this helps some of you who are struggling with this area and the Googling.

117. Demonic Oppression or OCD? A Personal Story with Jessica Ray

Written by Carrie Bock on April 3, 2024. Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode.

Carrie interviews Jessica Ray about her experiences with OCD and faith. They discuss how OCD developed alongside Jessica’s newfound faith after childhood trauma.

Episode Highlights:

The challenges of navigating OCD within Christian community.
The importance of recognizing the difference between demonic oppression and mental illness.
Jessica’s journey of finding relief through diagnosis and treatment.
The supportive role of Christian community even at times they didn’t understand mental health struggles.
Specific things that helped her along her journey of healing.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 117 of Christian Faith and OCD. For the past three years, I’ve seen firsthand how sharing personal journeys can deeply resonate with our community. Many of us facing anxiety and OCD may feel isolated, but connecting through shared experiences and faith can be incredibly uplifting.

In this episode, I’m honored to speak with Jessica Rae, who opens up about her personal battle with OCD. Jessica’s story is remarkable as her symptoms began in her late teens, right after a profound conversion to Christianity. She describes how her OCD manifested through relentless obsessive thoughts and paralyzing panic attacks, particularly around her role in evangelism and her personal relationships.

Jessica’s path to healing has been both challenging and inspiring. Initially, she encountered some misconceptions about mental health within her church community, which complicated her journey. However, Jessica’s perseverance led her to seek professional help and receive an accurate OCD diagnosis. This pivotal step marked the beginning of her significant progress in managing her symptoms.

Jessica’s experience highlights the critical role of recognizing mental health issues and finding the right support. It also emphasizes the power of faith and community in the healing process.

Explore Related episode:

108. OCD personal story with Michael Kheir

Transcript

One thing that I’ve learned over the course of three years doing these podcast episodes is that you guys love personal stories. You find them very relatable because so many people dealing with anxiety and OCD feel isolated They feel like I’m the only one that’s going through these things.

So it really helps you to hear from other Christians who are also struggling and how they’ve seen God in their redemptive story. They’re still in process of working through some things. You know, we’re all on a journey to become more like Christ and in pursuit of healing from him. Today on the show, I have with me Jessica Rae and Jessica had emailed me when I was looking for guests and just offered to share her story. If you would like to be a part of our email list, definitely go on www.hopeforanxietyandocd/free. Hit up any of our downloads and then you can kind of be in the know and get random questions thrown at you sometimes.

Carrie: Jessica, I appreciate you responding to that and welcome to the show.

Jessica: Thank you for having me. Excited to be on.

Carrie: Tell me a little bit about how OCD showed up for you when you were younger.

Jessica: Whenever I was very tiny, under the age of two years old, I was a victim of sexual abuse. And I can remember having anxiety attacks, probably starting around four or five years old.

I also had an issue with food at a super young age. As a whole, I wouldn’t say that anyone ever recognized that I was an anxious child, but I definitely remember having things pop up like anxiety attacks if I was away from my parents or in a place that I wasn’t comfortable in. Anxiety really didn’t pop up for me until I was around 19 years old.

So my story’s probably a little bit different from other people. I didn’t really have any OCD type symptoms manifest until a little bit later on, until around 19, 20 years old.

Carrie: Okay. Do you feel like the people in your life just kind of saw some of these maybe as Age appropriate behaviors, like it’s somewhat normal for children to go through separation anxiety, and maybe they didn’t realize internally how much that was affecting you or how troubling that was for you?

Jessica: I would say so. I can remember having a very black and white bend in my thinking. And a shame oriented type thinking, especially if it had to do with getting in trouble or rules, or if I’d done something wrong, I could only hold it for so long and I had to go and confess it. I can remember going to church off and on as a kid and somehow I only heard hell.

I didn’t hear the gospel. My brain focused in on the idea of hell and I just thought I was going there. I can recognize internally that I had some issues. Very black and white thinking and some shame based thinking, but outwardly, I would say I appear pretty, if you want to call it, normal. Right. So it would make sense that my parents didn’t think to take me to a professional or anything like that.

Carrie: Yeah. What showed up when you were 19? What happened there?

Jessica: 19 is when I was born again. 19 is whenever I began my relationship with Jesus. I had a very, very radical conversion for lack of a better way to put it. Things changed for me overnight. God really just changed my heart and I was truly born again.

I was all in 100 percent and that is when the obsessive thinking, the panic, the anxiety started to manifest. I would say the first, after two or three months in going to church regularly. Being in the scriptures, starting to be discipled, I started to have some behaviors and some ways of thinking, looking back on it, that I’m like, there’s OCD.

Some examples that I could share would be, a few months in, I had a thought that I needed to end a relationship that, a friendship that I’d had from childhood. And this person wasn’t a believer, but she wasn’t bringing any sort of that influence into my life. And I just had this thought that I needed to end this friendship.

Even after talking to my youth pastor and them encouraging me not to do that, the anxiety, the obsessive thinking that what if that was God’s voice and I’m being disobedient, that sort of thing. Just was so intense that I ended the friendship. That was kind of the beginning of it. After that OCD latched on to evangelism.

I was a baby, baby Christian. I’m introverted by nature. I’m not somebody that just walks up to strangers and let me tell you about Jesus. It usually happens in a relational form for me, but it seemed that anytime I would hear a teaching. And it seemed that I was deficient and are not doing things that I should be doing, quote unquote, not doing things the right way my brain would latch on to it.

So very early on, I had an evangelism obsession. The anxiety of walking up to a stranger probably outweighed the anxiety of OCD in most points, but I remember going and knocking on doors at my grandma’s apartment complex in absolute torment. Praying for people having a pure heart wanting to honor God, but just not knowing what was going on And having thoughts and every thought that I have, I think it might be God.

I was in quite a bit of torment the first year of my walk with God because of undiagnosed OCD.

Carrie: Wow. The people that were discipling you, did they pick up like something just doesn’t seem quite right here? Like, were you asking for a lot of reassurance or, but maybe they couldn’t put their finger on it of what was going on?

Jessica: Yes. About three or four months in, the evangelism compulsions hit. I was living in Northeast Texas, which is not where I’m from. I’m from Houston area. And I started going to this church. I went to church by myself. My dad would drop me off and I would just go because nobody in my family was really following the Lord.

On my journey, God’s really put people in my life really to protect me. People that were very kind, but were also very patient and would kind of deal with the reassurance that I needed. I had a pastor that I would call at seven o’clock in the morning. He was so kind and patient, but yes, I had the wife of my associate pastor and then the pastor of the church that I was going to, my best friend, I would call her at three o’clock in the morning because I couldn’t sleep, I was just absolutely tormented and they would try to direct me and give me reassurance.

You have to be led by the Holy Spirit. All these things, I was so new in the faith and I’m dealing with this anxiety disorder and. It was like dropping a quarter into a bottomless pit. It just, it would come back. I don’t think anyone around me knew what OCD was. I don’t think anyone around me even thought, Oh, this is a mental illness, which kind of tells you the lack of awareness that we have in the church.

Definitely, I think maybe what was going on with me at first was branded as like legalism. I come from more of a charismatic background and so maybe more of like thinking it was demonic oppression or things like that. No one really even thought, Oh, this could be something that maybe she needs a doctor. That conversation never happened.

Carrie: I really wish that we could put out more educational materials to the church to let them know some of these warning signs of scrupulosity. So that if they have someone who seems quite distressed and is coming and asking a lot of questions, instead of saying like, okay, this person is really trying to figure everything out, or they’re dedicated to their faith, or, and like, it could look a lot of different ways.

That they really have some information to point that person in the right direction to say, Hey, this is potentially what it’s called. Go to a mental health professional and see if you can get assessed and get some help so that you’re not living in such a high state of distress. I wonder if when you got saved and then there was all this psychological torment, was there a part of you that sensed there’s some kind of peace in here?

I know God’s with me. Like even in the midst of all of that that was going on because you kept following Christ, like you didn’t give up on your faith.

Jessica: I think that I had such, for lack of a better way of putting it, I had such a supernatural experience. My conversion experience was very much, I knew nothing about Jesus and I just came to God in absolute surrender and I was changed.

Literally overnight, I fell in love with Jesus. But in a sense, I fell in love with the God that I didn’t really know yet. I know I was absolutely convinced that Jesus was it for me. I didn’t want anything else. But honestly, the first couple years, I didn’t have that peace. It was several years down the line of the Lord really intervening in these places where I was super tormented.

There are some pretty wonderful stories that I have in ways that God just supernaturally would just drop things in my life to be like, hey, this isn’t who I am. This isn’t me. But it was rough. It was rough for quite a while. That’s that piece, that anchor didn’t come until a little while down the road.

Carrie: It seemed like you held on to your salvation experience though. I find that even in the midst of like all of the OCD distress, usually, people can name a time or two out of their life where they really saw, whether it was their conversion experience or whether it was experiences after that as well, like, okay, I know that God is real and I have encountered him in this experience in a positive way.

It’s almost like the Israelites when they picked up stones from the river, it’s like kind of remember that you crossed the Jordan and you each get a stone so that you can remember that God did this miracle for you. And I feel like we need those markers in our own lives as Christians. To say, hey, things are really rough right now, and I don’t have stable footing, but I know God did this back here, and so I know that he’s going to be able to do, lead me through the next part of life that feels scary or uncertain or troubling.

Jessica: Yes. I would say at the beginning stages of my walk with God, he really showed up for me through people. I had wonderful people around me who loved me really well, and who were very patient. It’s kind of mind-boggling the way that looking back, I can see how God protected me. It was almost like I was in this little bubble, but he did it through people.

That was one way that I definitely look back and go, “wow.” There are a few other just short moments that I could share. One, I was in Northeast Texas and my best friend was around Houston area where we lived and she knew what was going on with me, what I was experiencing because I was calling her at three o’clock in the morning, which she was really in it with me, which I’m so grateful for her.

We’re still best friends. She was driving home from work, and she said the only way she could describe it is she felt internally like God yelled at her. Hell, Jessica, this. And what she felt was, stop trying to answer all of your questions. Give me all of your questions. Look at what this does to you. Look at the fruit of this.

If it tears you up, it’s not for me. When she told me that that was like, okay, I held on to that for about like 10 years. I held on to those concepts. And so anytime I would have these looping thoughts or I would have this. Anxiety that I felt like I couldn’t manage. I would literally just be like, God, I have no idea.

I don’t have the answer to this. I would just say, you have it. He just carried me that way. I live pretty normally for about 10 years. Okay. Using those few things, and of course, if you look at scripture, scripture backs that those concepts up. And the way that you traditionally treat OCD, in a sense, kind of lines up with, you know, surrendering things to God, the Ian Osborne, Catholic Christianity Cure OCD, I think he calls it something along the lines of, I can’t think of the word, but the whole concept is just surrendering these.

Formenting thoughts and doubts up to God and letting him be big enough to carry them. So I was really applying these principles before I knew I had OCD, which is a testament to the faithfulness of God. That’s one thing. One other story that’s really close to my heart is I was cleaning a room one day in my mom’s house.

This was about five or six years into my walk with God. I’m still wrestling with these tormenting doubts about certain theological issues and there’s a Bible on the floor and the room was a wreck and I was cleaning it and I opened up the Bible and it opened up to a scripture that God had highlighted to me and Isaiah about a year before.

He’s speaking to the Israelites. And he says, “Oppression will be far from you for you shall not fear.” And it’s all these promises of God establishing them in righteousness and them being free from fear. And he had used that scripture before to show me like, your life is not going to be what you’re experiencing right now.

This is not going to be your life. And that day when I was just in the muck and the mire of anxiety and obsessive thoughts. And we all have those moments when we’re dealing with that kind of anxiety, where we think we’re not going to make it. And when I opened up the Bible and it was right there to that passage, I was like, okay, I mean, how could that not be God?

I’ve had a lot of those stories on my journey, but that’s one that I can really highlight is that was just maybe a small but a supernatural act of God to keep me going really.

Carrie: You talked about having a period where OCD didn’t bother you. It bothered you really intensely and then you were able to surrender some of those doubts and having to figure it out to God and you kind of had a more peaceful period there and then things came back and that happens with OCD sometimes.

The symptoms kind of wax and wane. It depends on life change and stress and other issues. Tell us about when that came back. What happened? Was that closer to you getting a diagnosis?

Jessica: Yes. I had had some pockets off and on in my twenties where I would have those looping thoughts and that anxiety. But every time that that would happen, I would eventually just say, you know what?

The way that I was taught was it was just demonic oppression. And so I’d be like, Oh, this is the spirit of fear. And I’m going to choose not to listen to this. And then I would come back up for air and kind of go on about my way. When I was 30, I got into my first serious relationship as a Christian adult.

That’s when OCD was triggered, and really, that’s when everything came to a head. So one of the major themes that I wrestled with is relationship OCD. Relationship OCD and scrupulosity have been the two, a little bit of body image issues, body dysmorphic disorder type issues, but those are the two main themes that I’ve struggled with so I got into this relationship.

It was not a bad relationship. It was not abusive We were both believers. It was good. It wasn’t we were young and whatever but I began to obsess over Every little thing everything he did everything. He said I was terrified that I had to break up with him I was terrified that he was crazy, that there was just something horribly wrong with him, with his character.

At that time, I was living in a house with some ladies from the church I went to. The woman who owned the house, she was like a mom to me. There was a good two month period where I was in just an absolute panic and torment constantly, almost every single day, and it got to the point where I was sleeping in bed with her because I didn’t want to be alone.

I wasn’t eating very much. I wasn’t sleeping very much. I probably lost 20 pounds. Kind of one of the parts, I think, that kept me from getting help a little bit sooner was that the church culture that I was involved in at the time really believed that any sort of mental illness was demonic. Not that the person was doing anything wrong, but that this was demonic oppression or however you want to say that.

There was no awareness of, hey, mental illnesses are actually demonic. Medical and biological. This could actually be something that needs medication or a doctor. There was no grid for that. I started having panic attacks multiple times a day at work because I’m single, never been married. I didn’t have a lot to fall back on financially.

I had to get up every day and go to work. There’s no option there. So I’m having panic attacks. I started having really horrifying, intrusive thoughts. The worst thoughts that you could imagine. Blasphemous, violent, those kinds of things. That was really the breaking point where I thought that my life was over.

I literally thought that my life was over. I don’t know how, I didn’t know what I thought was going to happen to me, but I just thought one night after getting one hour of sleep, I called my pastor. Everybody loved me really well through this, even though they weren’t, but they still love me very well. I called my pastor.

I had gotten one hour of sleep and he just said, sweetie, I think it’s time for you to go to the doctor. I had been involved in a ministry that referred me to this psychiatry practice in my area that was Christian, that they kind of worked in tandem with. I called, I set up an appointment. On my way to work, I dragged myself out of bed and went to work, and on my way to work, a friend sent me an article on harm OCD.

She had been kind of Googling, praise the Lord for Google sometimes, unless you’re using it for a compulsion. Yeah. She googled my symptoms and she found an article on Harm OCD. And I got to work and I read it and I was like, Oh my gosh, not just the thoughts, but the OCD cycle, the obsessions, the looping thoughts, the reassurance and the anxiety coming back.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is what’s happening to me.” I have this article in hand, and I show up to the psychiatry practice that I still go to, and met my psychiatrist for the first time, such a wonderful man, I’m just so thankful for him, and he confirmed this is textbook OCD, and so I got the diagnosis.

Carrie: Where you more shocked or relieved, or how did you feel at that point?

Jessica: I was relieved to know what was happening to me.

Carrie: To have an answer finally.

Jessica: Yes. I’m very much a solution-focused person, and so I’m like, okay, this is what’s happening. All right, give me the tools. What do I do? I texted my pastor and said, “Okay, this is what’s going on.”

He was really supportive, and I just started devouring anything and everything I could surrounding OCD and how to treat it. I remember that night coming home after being diagnosed and finally sleeping, finally having a good night’s sleep. That’s where my recovery journey started was right then.

Carrie: It’s hard to have mental health issues, but I find it more terrifying to think Evil is constantly oppressing me on a daily basis.

Jessica: Yes, and having an anxiety disorder, and having this thought in your head that this is a demon, well, I mean that, in and of itself, that just runs them up internally. I remember being afraid that my sanity was going to be stolen from me because panic attacks, a genuine panic attack is from what I understand is your fight or flight response, just going crazy.

You feel like you’re going to die. You feel like you’re going to go crazy. I was experiencing derealization. I felt like I was coming out of my skin, like it was horrifying. And so to not know my body’s doing this. I’m not being taken over by some demonic entity and having a panic attack to not know that in that moment. That’s even more terrifying, I would say.

Carrie: How did your theology, I guess, shift after that point? Or did you end up like switching churches or changing things at some point? Like, what was that process like? Because I think that we have different experiences and not that your experience is the litmus test of God. That’s the scriptures, but God works in our lives through experience, sometimes to teach us about him. I do believe that’s biblical. So what was that process like?

Jessica: All of the above. I do go to a different church now. The house that I was living in, the woman who owned it, wonderful, godly woman, loved me so well, was so patient with me.

I guess my church community didn’t have, like I said, a grid for mental illness. I guess. I’m a truth person, I’m a justice person, and if I know something to be true, then I’m not going to say that something else is going on. I’m a very open book. I jumped into recovery headfirst and embraced that I have obsessive-compulsive disorder.

This is a thing. I started to learn, well, naturally, if somebody asked me how I’m doing, or if I’m having a conversation, I’m going to share. I just got this diagnosis, or whatever. I stayed at my church for a couple years, but these things that I had learned just started not to line up anymore, and the more I understood mental illness, not just OCD, but schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a brain disease. I just started to realize these things that I’ve been taught, they don’t work, they’re not helpful, they’re not necessarily 100 percent scriptural, and I felt such a peace on the inside of me from God. I just started. That hey, this is what’s going on. This is your avenue of healing.

This is where I’m leading you Is to understand these things I slowly but surely just really started to feel like I couldn’t fully be myself anymore in this beautiful church family that I had been in because there was this part of me that was seen as, well, I experienced it to be seen as she’s oppressed demonically.

Carrie: The primary problem is spiritual, not the problem is medical, mental health, emotional And so many of those things overlap, right?

So it’s hard for us to sit here and tease out and determine sometimes, what’s medical? What’s mental health? What’s spiritual? What’s going on? I personally do not believe that we need to be afraid of demons because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

There may be times where we are tempted and thrown off track or discouragement comes our way. And we know certain things are clearly not from God. So those pieces are hard to tease out, but I think it removes kind of like what we were talking about before. It removes some of the fear if you’re able to say, “Hey, I know at least that I do have this medical mental health diagnosis, and I don’t need to be afraid of that, I can actually, like you said, embrace it as, okay, this is what I’m dealing with now that I know, now that I can do something different about it. What is that recovery process been for you like, and just kind of share with us where you are now.

Jessica: Like I said, I began to really just devour any and all resources that I could get my hands on.

I found a book by a local pastor named Jeff Wells. It’s called breaking free of OCD and it’s about his 30-year-long battle with OCD and how knowing God as a father and applying scriptural principles and he had a lot of recovery. I read that book and I found Jamie Eckert. She has scrupulosity.com. She has a coaching group. I joined that. I really started to get some tools in my tool belt and really apply the standard OCD tools, like how we treat it with acceptance and commitment therapy, some ERP exposure-response and prevention tools, Jamie Eckert, her materials helped me probably more than any of them.

Things like, I’m going to put this on ice for two days or for a week. I’m having this obsessive thought, you know what? Put it on ice. It’s going to be okay. You know, that kind of thing. So I would just say workbooks, online resources. I do have therapists, but I never sought classical OCD treatment. There are so many resources that are free.

I’m an advocate for therapy, 100%. If you have that, and if you can afford it, and if it’s accessible, 100 percent go for it, but there’s just a lot of online resources. I refuse to be debilitated, and there’s so much hope in the OCD recovery community. No OCD doesn’t get to run your life.

I just really started applying tools. I got to a good place. I was diagnosed in June of 2020. It took me probably about nine months to a year to get it back to like, I would say more normal everyday living. In 2022, I had this reemergence of evangelism, compulsions, and scrupulosity that took me out for a couple of months. During that time, I had been feeling the Lord. He just orchestrated some circumstances that kind of booted me out of my church. I started going to a local church, and Jeff Wells is the pastor of that local church, that book that I referenced before.

So he understood OCD. It’s called Woods Edge Community Church. They offer a recovery group called Regeneration, or for short, Regen. In that place of crisis, I started attending that church, and that first week after I had left my church, I went to a Regen meeting, I signed up, I was like, I need something, I need help.

I don’t even know fully what I’m doing, but I need help. It’s a 12-step program. It’s very biblically based and the basis of it is we are powerless to overcome these things in our own strength with the power of the Holy Spirit. God can transform anything that we might be going through. And so the recovery group was different from other 12 step programs.

It wasn’t just about addiction. It could be codependency, mental illness. I went through the program, and God really confronted unbelief in my life. I had this lie that I lived in for all of these years that I’ve been walking with Jesus that He expected me to fix. My own issues that he expected me to solve my own problems.

I finally got to probably the end of myself realizing I cannot fix this. There are parts of me that just feel utterly broken. There are parts of me that feel disabled, the way that my brain works. When you have OCD, your brain tends to be so black and white that you genuinely at times, at least for me, still can’t discern certain things.

This foundation, the first three steps are admit, believe, and trust. Admit that you’re powerless. Believe that God is all powerful and can change and transform anything that you’re going through and trust that he actually wants to and that he will and that the believe and trust. I was like, “Oh, man, I don’t trust God at all.”

It pushed me into the scripture in a way that nothing else ever had. And if you really look at scripture, there is this ongoing theme of as humans, one, we can’t fix ourselves apart from me. You can do nothing. We don’t have the power to overcome these things. God doesn’t expect us to, and his willingness to help come alongside and heal those that simply look to him and trust.

I mean, it’s everywhere in the scripture. I just came to this point of, are you going to believe what this book says about me? Are you going to believe your circumstances? Your circumstances look really dire to you. They look really big and really hopeless, but is that what my book says? He really started to heal this view that I had of him.

Slowly but surely, I’ve come to a place of, John 15, 4 through 5 is one of my favorite scriptures and it says, “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” And it goes on to say, for apart from me you can do nothing.

God has really just brought me to this place of rest. Where the situation comes in my life. I don’t have an answer for I go to him and I invite him into the situation and I’ve seen him just do amazing and just mind blowing things with these situations that I just give over to him and I simply make space. I make space for the Holy Spirit to do his work.

Carrie: That trust piece is, it’s so hard and it’s so huge. I know it’s something that God has really worked with me on in my own life. In our culture, there’s so much striving and so much working and so much self-improvement. Even, you know, we’re kind of self improvement junkies.

Sometimes, like you said, what God wants us to do is like, be still and know that he’s God, and take the step back and say, okay, I surrender, I give up trying to do it on my own, and I need you to enter in. But sometimes God has to get us to the end of ourselves. He’s like, okay, you’re ready now. You’re ready now for me to step in and to do that work because you came to the end of you.

Our pastor shared this quote recently by Jackie Hill Perry about trust. And it said this is because God is holy. He cannot sin, and if he cannot sin, that means he must be the most trustworthy being on the planet. It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around that because we’ve been so hurt and wounded by other people in our life, just from living life.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how old you are, you’ve been hurt and wounded by somebody or something that’s happened to you. Just recognizing that character of God is so different that we can trust him, we can rest, we can let go. But sometimes it means that we have to do the hard work of surrendering and letting go and trusting and embracing that God is here and is with us in the midst of this.

Jessica: Yes, I realized along this journey that I couldn’t actually surrender. I couldn’t even surrender in my own strength because you have these faulty beliefs. It could be because of trauma, like with me experiencing sexual abuse, especially being so young. I was under two. I mean, that shaped your worldview like nothing else does.

And I realized I genuinely don’t know how to trust you. I don’t know how to let this go. And he’s so beautiful and so kind. He gave me the power and the strength that I needed to even do that. That’s why I love to encourage and try and share this hope that you can do any of it on your own. And that’s actually wonderful.

We don’t have to, he doesn’t expect this to you. The other day I was reading, I can’t remember what book in the scripture it is. You hear about the Holy Spirit being our advocate. Well, the scripture also references Jesus as being an advocate as well. And I looked up the definition of an advocate, and one of the definitions was one who comes alongside.

That’s good. That just, it just gave me so much more hope, and it was so much more confirmation that I don’t have to do this life by myself. Paul said that I will boast all the more in my weaknesses, my sufferings, when I’m weak, He’s strong. His power has made perfect in weakness. I don’t wish mental illness on anybody or physical illness or any suffering.

I do believe, though, that when we come face to face with our weakness as humans, it’s beautiful because that’s when we really experience God in a sweeter, in a deeper way. I believe at least. That’s been my experience.

Carrie: Awesome. Thank you, Jessica, for being so willing and open to sharing your story, and I’m glad that you have gotten a variety of different support along the way, whether it was people just loving you, even when they didn’t understand everything, to getting more specific help medically and discipleship help through the church.

It sounds like God has really used a variety of different things in your life to bring you. to where God wants you to be. So thank you for being here and sharing all of that.

Jessica: Yes, thank you for having me.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee.

Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling.

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

103. Bouncing Back with Resilience with Donna Cox Gibbs, LCMHCS

Written by Carrie Bock on September 13, 2023. Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 103. Bouncing Back with Resilience with Donna Cox Gibbs, LCMHCS

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Donna Cox Gibbs, a licensed clinical mental health counselor and author. They explore the true essence of resilience – not just bouncing back, but moving forward through life’s challenges.

Episode Highlights:

Misconceptions about resilience and its true nature.
The significance of self-awareness in recognizing physical, emotional, and relational responses.
How faith and spiritual well-being contribute to building resilience.
Balancing emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects for whole-person resilience.
Practical tools for navigating life’s challenges and developing resilience over time.
Donna’s Book: Bounce: A 60-Day Devotional to Jumpstart Your Resilience

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 103 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host. I had the privilege of speaking with Donna Gibbs, a licensed clinical mental health counselor and supervisor from North Carolina. We delved into the concept of resilience—a topic that resonates deeply with all of us.

Donna simplifies resilience as the ability to keep moving forward through life’s challenges without getting stuck. Rather than bouncing back to where we were before, resilience is about bouncing forward, adapting, and growing through the trials we face. She shares a powerful personal story about a three-month hospitalization that tested her resilience and how the support and wisdom of a trusted physician and friend helped her navigate that challenging season.

Throughout our conversation, Donna emphasizes that resilience isn’t just a trait some people are born with—it’s something that can be learned and developed over time. She discusses the importance of a whole-person approach to resilience, integrating mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. This holistic perspective is central to her work and is the foundation of her devotional book, Bounce: A 60-Day Devotional to Jumpstart Your Resilience.

As we reflect on resilience, I’m reminded of how God uses our trials to build character and perseverance. Whether you’re facing a life-changing diagnosis, a significant loss, or any other form of adversity, remember that resilience is about moving forward with faith, trusting that God will bring good from our struggles.

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