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38. What is Self-Care all About? With Monica McLaurine

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 38. What is Self-Care all About? With Monica McLaurine

Today’s special guest is a certified life coach, author and motivational speaker, Monica McLaurine. Monica and I had a great conversation about what self-care really means and why it’s so important. Monica also shares some insights on how to help kids deal with bullying based on her book, I Told My Kid To Fight Back. 

  • What are examples of self-care?
  • Learning to do things a different way
  • Self-care is for everybody. How do men practice self-care differently than women? 
  • Counseling as part of self-care
  • Why self-care is important for Christians?
  • Jesus models self-care
  • Small ways to start practicing self-care

Links and Resources:

Monica Mclaurine
Books:
       Becoming Comfortable In My Own Skin: The Journey To Loving Me
       I Told My Kid To Fight Back


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Transcript of Episode 38

Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 38. On today’s episode, I am talking with Monica McLaurine (see our show notes for spelling on that) about self-care. What in the world  is self-care all about.  We hear a lot of people talk about it. It’s a big buzzword. And I feel like this episode is timely right now because people are coming back to their rate of busy-ness maybe that they had before COVID, hopefully not as busy, but getting back into routines and activities that we were doing prior to all of the shutting down and restrictions, more places are open and more activities are available. 

Monica is also going to talk with us a little bit at the end about some books that she’s written and talks she’s given on bullying.

Carrie: Monica, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Monica: Hello Carrie. Thanks for having me. My name is Monica McLaurine. And I am a certified life coach, and I’m also a two-time author, two books, and I also have some motivational speaking experience. So I am a lover of Christ and a follower of Christ.

And I’m just excited to be here to talk with you on today.

Carrie:  I’m excited to have you on, I think we’re going to have a good conversation today on self-care. So, this is something that a lot of people are talking about. You know, it’s a buzz word. “Oh, you gotta take time for yourself. You gotta have self-care.”

So how do you define that for people? 

Monica: When I think about self-care is simply what it says is taking care of yourself. And most times people don’t even realize that they’re not taking care of. They don’t realize it, it comes in many forms. There are several different types of self-care, whether it’s physical mass, where you may get out and take a walk or go sit under the stars at night, bird watching whatever it is out and about, or whether it’s emotional, saying no, which is sometimes some things that I struggle with saying no, whether it’s social.

When I say social, this is one of the things that I’ve really, really struggled with is asking for help. A lot of times, like myself, I’m just going to talk about myself. I am happy to help anybody else until I just can’t do anymore. People will ask me, do you need some help with that? I’m like, oh, I’m okay. I’m fine. I have it.

Asking for help, that’s a partisan, right? A lot of people are still working from home currently. So when you think about your environment, decluttering your office or your home. That’s a big thing. My sister-in-law, bless her heart, she is an organizational, very clean person and things are in disarray. She can’t tolerate it.

It pushes her into anxiety. And also going along with that, when you think about professional self-care, if you’re working from home, are you actually taking a lunch break? Are you actually taking a break? Oftentimes I’m guilty of going downstairs to give me something to eat. And then I turned around and come right back upstairs and I’m eating and I’m working.

And so don’t take that mental break and it’s a necessity for self-care or even if it’s just spiritual, meditating. I just recently started meditating because I didn’t understand it at first like what is that? But the sittings feel and allowing yourself to get in the process of being calm because I do suffer from anxiety. So I had to try some different things to make sure that I took care of Monica and meditation was part of that. 

Carrie: Just the concept of slowing things down. I think that’s probably our biggest barrier to self care is learning how to hit the pause button. That was something essentially, in some ways we had to do it during this time of pandemic and Coronavirus, things did have to slow down. What I’m seeing now is that like, when we’re recording this, we’re approaching the summer and people are getting vaccinated and they’re getting out more and it’s like I turned to my husband like a week ago and was like, I feel like we’re in pre-pandemic life like our calendar is actually filling up with stuff.

And so it’s an opportunity for us to have a conversation and to say, Hey, where’s our date night at on this calendar?  We’re running over here and doing some for church. And then we’re doing something with our friends over here. We’re married. This is important. This is a priority. And part of that, what you’re talking about with the relationship in the social domain, like making sure that you have time for the people that are most important to you life.

Monica: We had to learn to do things a different way. If you did a date night, date night might not be out of the restaurant, but it might be in the backyard. Or if you’d like to go out with your friends and do a happy hour, do do it on zoom. You really had to learn to do things a different way.

Carrie: Right. And those social connections. I think what this has taught us are so important for ourselves like we were made to live in community. And that’s an important thing. I loved what you said there earlier about boundaries and saying no to things in order to take care of yourself. It’s that whole, you’ve got to put on your own oxygen mask on the airplane before you put one on your child. And it’s interesting to me that on the flights that I’ve been on. I haven’t flown in a while, but the flights that I’ve been on, they come around and they look at each person it’s like a real serious thing. It’s like, okay, now I understand that you need to put on your own oxygen mask first 

Monica: And we help anybody else until you help yourself first. I

Carrie: f you can’t breathe, that’s not good situation. And so many times we find ourselves in the busyness or the rush of love whether it’s owning our own business or raising kids or serving at the church. And the next thing we know, we’re like emotionally have no time to just sit and rest and breathe and reflect. For me, I know that those periods are what I need to get refueled and recharged to be able to go out and do the other things that I do, especially because I’m an introvert. So there’s this balance. And we had a whole podcast on introversion. If you haven’t listened to it, you know, definitely go back and listen to it because I loved that one. That was one of my favorite, just so identified with it, you know, just needing the time away from people. So that you can go back and engage, you know, with others is yes. Yes. At your own space and your own speed. One thing I did in terms of boundaries recently for self-care. I’ll just share a personal example.

Mother’s day, this year was really hard for me. I have a history of having foster children. I wanted to go to church, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be balling all over the place and, you know, snotting on everybody. So I kind of made this agreement with my husband because he was gonna be greeting that day.

And I said, Hey, I’m going to come to church and I’m not going to greet with you. And I’m not going to stay around and hang out after I’m probably going to be pretty emotional. It’s just a day where I think about, you know, my foster children and missing them. And that’s my context of being a mom since I don’t have my own little.

And this is kind of what I need. I need to just kind of go in, right when service starts, sit in the service, get the word, get the worship, and then I need to leave. I don’t need to kind of hang around and, and cry or anything like that because I know other people are going to be super happy and celebrating.

And I certainly believe there is room there’s room in church for tears. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s kind of just one of those situations where for me, that was what I needed to take care of myself. I needed to not be around people at that point, I needed to go to the car and get my tissues and cry and have a conversation with God and kind of finish up.

That was my finishing of the worship service was in the car and that’s okay. And I didn’t have to feel bad or guilty about that whereas I think in the past, I would have felt like. Oh, I’ve got to feel happy because everybody else around me is happy and I need to be really like celebrating moms. And, you know, you have a mother and you should be thankful.

You have a mother. I mean, there’s so many conversations I think I would have had with myself in the past, but I just like created this space in this room to just have my feelings and take care of myself and do what I needed to do. And that was really the best fit for me. 

Monica: Absolutely. And it’s great that you realize that it’s okay to feel like that.

 A lot of people like you said, feel guilt or feel like you have to be a certain way. Everybody’s entitled to how they feel. And that’s how you felt at the moment. And you empowered yourself to set those boundaries. That allows you to feel how you feel and that’s awesome. And it’s great that you were able to do that for yourself.

Carrie: Thank you. Why is this topic important for you personally? Is this something that you had view struggled with burnout in the past or with not taking care of yourself? 

Monica: Absolutely. I was always on the go go, go here there. And working in my daytime job. I was all over the community, going to the office of one over here that they’ll do this particular program.

And then I’m fighting traffic to go to work. I’m fighting traffic to get home from work. I mean, that would be so many times that I will pull in front of my house. And I would just sit there for like 20, 30 minutes. It’s like I couldn’t move. I was like exhausted. And one of the things that I realized that my body would get to the point where it’s really sick of me.  It’s like, oh, okay.

You won’t slow down? Okay. I’m going to slow you down. And it shuts me down for like two weeks. I’ll get bronchitis, I’ll get like really sick and why I have no other choice but to sit down. So if I can avoid that, I had to do something different in order to avoid that because I don’t like being sick. I like being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it.

So it was very important for me, not only for my physical, it was important for my mental, I mean, just burning out, just exhausted, just getting to the point where I had nothing else to give. I was like there’s gotta be a different way. It’s got to be a different way. I can do this. And so that calls me to really look into, see what self-care really meant and what it involves.

Carrie: I’m glad you brought up that physical aspect of illness because there was a lady that I worked with many, many years ago. She was in her thirties and she got shingles and it was really due to stress because she was working seven days a week. And our bodies, we have to listen to that. God gives us these cues that when our bodies are run down, they’ll let us know.

Oh, I just feel like I need to rest today or I need to slow down or I’m getting sick all the time like you were saying.  We’ve got to listen to those cues and signals of like a warning sign to take better care of ourselves. 

Monica: Yeah. Shingles is very painful. I’ve had shingles, you know, my mom had had. As has shingles is a very painful experience to go through.

And so we have enough hustle and bustle as it is. So why get yourself to the point where you got to add on where you get sick or you get shingles or your blood pressure goes up, or you have heart issues. We’ve got to learn to do things, to take care of ourselves because if we don’t take care of ourselves, who we are?

And ultimately we can’t take care of anybody else or be there for anybody else. If we are not mentally, emotionally prepare and rested and whatever it takes to make sure we’re getting that self-care that we need. 

Carrie: Right. One of the things that you and I talked about before we had you come on, the show was that there’s this concept, maybe with males where they hear the word self-care, and they’re thinking about some women that are painting their nails or going and getting a pedicure. Tell us a little bit about that like, how do some of the men maybe that you work with, or that, you know, practice self care? 

Monica: It’s really funny that you asked me that. I guess a couple of months ago, I did an experiment on my Facebook pack page asking me, and what do you do for self-care? And the responses were all over the place.

They didn’t really think about it like what is self care? And then you had somewhere the guys were saying, well, that’s girls, that’s not something that. You know, we as men do, then some talked about it. They’d like to go get a hair cut or they like me, and like to get pedicures too. I had a lot of people that said that they said they go and work out or go play video games.

But only if you said that they will take the time to go and talk to somebody about what they’re going through. That is kind of what I expected, but it makes me sad because everybody needs to be, everybody needs to talk through something with someone else. Everybody needs a confidence, I don’t a confidant.

I don’t care who you are. And that is a part of self-care. All of that is a part of self-care. It is in no way strictly for female. It’s is for everybody. And it really made me think what I add a suggestion yesterday, just yesterday. They said, well, maybe we need to call it something else. So it doesn’t seem like that’s just for women, but it also makes me sad.

I’m wondering if we, as society has created an environment for me and when they feel like they can’t do certain things. That they masculine traits them that they shouldn’t do certain things like I saw something today. They said, what kind of man goes to celebrate has a birthday dinner?

I’m like, what you, yeah, 

Carrie: just these, like, I don’t know, man-made expectations that we put on men. Like somehow you have to be a Superman. 

Monica: Right. And when you think about it and I have been fortunate and I’m honored that some guys feel like they can talk to. And they’re going through something and they’re frustrated and of course, you know, the life coach had me and I’m trying to talk to them while they’re going through.

And then they’re so in a zone while I realized I had to just stop and just listen. Met them, you know, they will say, well, who are we supposed to go to the top to where we’re going through something we’re frustrated, what are we supposed to do? We don’t have the opportunity. And they’re so afraid that if they allow themselves to become vulnerable, that it will be brought up later and thrown in their face, you know?

So I wanted them to see the different options and what self-care looks like. And not only that, they’re entitled to do it as a human being and it is needed. It’s okay to go to sit. I call it couch time to go and sit on someone’s couch and have a conversation and to talk to someone to help you think through it because counseling is not anything for somebody to tell you what to do is to help you to work through it, to find out what’s best for you.

And I am very open about my experience of going and getting my couch time, going to therapy. That was the best thing I ever did in my life. It amazed me because me sharing that I’ve done it. Other people said, well, I went to cause it was like almost like a shame.

So I was like, yeah, I went to and I mean, I’ve helped other people close to me and I’ll help you look for something. You know, if you have insurance, it’s just like getting insurance, you know, in most cases, you know, find you somebody who might take your insurance, or even if, you know, they don’t, a lot of times they will work with you, you know, or maybe offer some free sessions, anything.

So just trying to get where their mind is to get them thinking about what that is, and then not being afraid or shame to do it so that the men, it has been interesting talking to them and listening to them and what their thoughts are, what they felt like society felt like that’s and stuff.

Cause it’s not for me. They should just be okay. That should be there, man, up. Just do it. So  it’s pretty interesting.

Carrie:  Counseling can definitely be a part of self-care for sure. Mental and emotional health. There’s something about just saying it out loud, sometimes all these things that you’ve been thinking in your head or that you’re convinced of and needing an outside perspective to say I’m not so sure about that. What about, you know, what about this way? Have you thought about it? You know, this way or, oh, that’s, I know you’re convinced of that, but that’s not how I see it. When you tell it to me, you know, you kind of say it back to them. Okay. So you’re saying this it’s, it’s just interesting and can be really freeing.

I know that there are things that come out when I either start talking about something or writing about that I didn’t even realize consciously, I was thinking. Just all of a sudden it was like, oh, oh, I guess I do. I guess I do feel angry about that now that I’ve said all that, but I didn’t realize that was bothering me so bad.

Monica: Right. Until you brought that up. Yeah. I don’t like that either. 

Carrie: Right. Yeah. So I know that sometimes Christians can push back against self-care and say, okay, well, we’re really supposed to care for other people, love one another. And that needs to be our primary focus. We’ve got to push this focus in on yourself.

That’s selfish and we need to kind of shove that to the side. What would you say to that? 

Monica: Yes, like I mentioned earlier, It seems to be a stigma attached to self-care and going to get help and saying that you need help. And I think it’s unfortunate because I am a believer. I am a love of Christ. I’m a follower of God, but I also believed the God allows in his place, people on this earth to also reach us on the earthly level.

He allows us to access doctors.  People have different specialties and he allows that to happen. And he put those here for us to use them. And it’s not a bad thing. It is okay. It doesn’t minimize your relationship with Christ. It doesn’t say that you don’t trust your belief. You don’t trust your relationship with Christ. It has no negative relation to your belief or your relationship. So those things they help, they give you somebody that you can go and talk to. That is completely safe. Whatever happens in there, unless you’re talking about hurting yourself and somebody else. You got to put that in there.

It’s a safe place. You don’t have to worry about spilling everything and then going outside and your friends know what happened, but I went to my first therapy session, it’s crazy because I went because I was encouraging someone else to go. And I was like, okay, well, if you go out, go right. So I go in with what I wanted to talk about and what I was going to discuss in there.

And while I was in my first therapy session, I heard God speak to me clearly and said, she cannot help you unless you tell her everything. I heard him. He said that to me. 

Carrie: It’s huge.

Monica:  it was huge because things that I thought no longer were an issue or issues that I had in my childhood, all that had to come up out. All of it had to come up.

And I remember I was in tears. I was just like, oh my God, how am I supposed to go to work after this. But you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.

Carrie: That’s true. 

Monica: And one of my favorite people, I say, she’s my mentor, but she doesn’t know it. And she doesn’t even realize it exists. Yama, Vanzant, where she said, villains buried alive, don’t die.

Carrie: That’s true. 

Monica: So I had to get all of that up because that affected how I was in adulthood, things that happened as a child. I had to get that up. I had to get it out so I could deal with it, acknowledged that it was a problem. And now I can start my healing process. So I think that was important for me to hear because like I say, going to get therapy or sitting down, talking to a life coach or any of that, you don’t have to worry about being expressed or shared with anyone else, but my therapist and I love her, she helped me talk through it. She helped me to see it. Okay, well, this is what you’re doing. If this is what you want to go and do in the future, how can you do it? And you’re doing this and this, how can you have this and this?

And how are these things going to help you get to what you’re wanting to do? It helped me to map out, okay, well maybe I need to cut something else out or maybe I need to carve some time out for myself so I can think, or maybe I need the carve some time out to where I can’t always go and take care of someone else that I need to do some things for me in order.

So I can share those things with other people. And the biggest thing I remember is just hearing God clearly say she can’t help you, If you don’t tell her everything. I felt like that was God giving me permission.

Carrie: One of the things that I realized when I was looking at self-care and the Bible.

I think it’s the beginning of Mark. There’s a point where everyone’s trying to come to Jesus and they’re trying to get healed, you know, and they’re hearing about some of the miracles that he’s doing and he actually quietly slips away from the crowd and goes away to like pray and to be with God. So there’s this sense that Jesus even models for us, times where people really needed him or wanted something from him.

And he chose at that moment in time not to give it to them or not to continue to give until he got recharged through prayer and through that connection with God. I think that that’s a great model and example for us. The other thing that I think about, and I wrote a blog post on self-care a while back, I don’t know if I ever transitioned it over to the Hope for Anxiety and OCD blog, but I’ll try to do that if I haven’t already. It’s on self care.

And I talked in there about, you know, there, the second greatest commandment is love your neighbor as yourself. And if we don’t love ourselves, what does that mean for our neighbor? Kind of thinking of it, the verse in reverse in a way. I know for me, the times in my life where I was the least gracious towards others, or I was the least forgiving towards other people or loving, I was also that way towards myself.

It was like a mirror. And so the same, thing’s true for self-care, I can speak kindly to myself. I can speak kindly to other people. Sometimes self care begins in the mind in terms of what we put in our minds and what we receive in there. So that was just a couple of thoughts that I had kind of Christianity and self care.

Let’s talk about, if people aren’t engaging in self-care, maybe they’re listening to this and they feel like they’re living the life that you used to live, where they’re just going all the time and doing everything for everybody and feel like they can’t cut back. What are some small ways that people can start practicing self-care if they don’t feel like they have a lot of time to do this. Because I think sometimes when I tell my clients, you need to start practicing self-care they’re like, I don’t have time for that.

Monica:  Yeah. I have one client in particular where we’ve been talking about that for a year, and then finally it took her a minute to get it.

But when I say to people who feel like they don’t have time, the first thing is, and it might sound cliche is just to sit there and to breathe.

Now people and myself included, I was like, I’m breathing already, what do you mean

what I’m doing that next, but actually sitting there or laying there and purposely just hearing your breath, concentrate on your breath. It’s kind of taking your mind away from what you may be dealing with, would you want through? And like I said, I do have anxiety in my trigger. My main trigger is anything medical.

Imagine going through the whole coronavirus thing, going to the, I mean, it affected my sleep, it affected everything. So the first thing is just to breathe, just sit there and purposely breathe. Not thinking about anything else, just breathe. That helps me a lot with my anxiety as well. And then next people feel like they don’t have time, but sometimes this go for a five-minute walk, five minutes.

I’m in, well, I’m not talking about walking from one building to the next it work I’m talking about Just a brisk, you know, not even a brisk walk, just a walk and allow God to speak to you. I know sometimes when I haven’t worked out in awhile, I might be working out or walking and I just hear God speak to me.

I’m like, okay, hold on, hold on. I can’t get it off. You know, it allows me to clear my mind and just really question yourself when it comes to self-care. Think of yourself as worth it. You are worth taking 10, 15, 20 minutes a day. I don’t care. Another thing I like to do, I have an adult coloring book.

Now, I have a coloring book. I’m not thinking about what I’m going through. I’m like, okay, well, what color am I going to color this flower? Oh, am I stand in between the lines? It helps me to get my focus on something else. And away from something that could cause me to go into my anxiety attack or causing me not to sleep.

It’s another calmed down method.

And there are several things that you can do to help you, whether it’s decluttering, whether it’s going to spend time with your friends and family if they’re a source of peace. Just find out what gives you your peace. Everybody is worthy of peace.

And everybody is worthy to take the time to get to your peace.

Carrie:  I had a client one time that said, I don’t have time for all that self-care stuff. And this was an individual that was working 12 to 14 hour days. And I said, okay. I just want you to try one. We try one thing for me. Will you see when you get to work in the morning, we just take three deep breaths before you get out of the car and they agreed to do that.

And sometimes when you start small, you’ll see how it grows into something bigger. And maybe that might grow into that individual saying, Hey, I’m actually going to take my lunch break today. I’m actually going to take my 30 minutes or an hour and you may have to leave the property to get that lunch break.

But if that’s what you need to do, then that may be what you need to do.

Monica:  If you need to take a break from social media and on my personal Facebook page, That’s mine. And most of you take it as something that’s funny, something laughing. I’m sharing pictures of my niece and nephews, my family, my personal page.

It’s fun for me. And if stuff starts to get too bad or I see something negative, or I feel like I’m taking in too much of something. I can turn away from it because you, I give myself permission to that or that, because it can take me, is this too much? Sometimes people say, have you watched this movie?

I’m like I can’t handle that right now.  You have to do it and notice, okay, it’s not girly. It’s not,  basic feminine is something that you need for your emotional, physical and your mental health. You have to do it. And it’s like if I have something said, or whether it’s writing, writing something down or as my meditation, or if it’s just sitting and doing nothing.

I quite enjoy that. Sitting there and not doing anything. I know that that’s okay. And I know it’s necessary. So just small little things, take a breath, go for a brisk walk, start journaling, do some meditation, visit with friends and family, whatever it is that can bring you some peace or center you, start there.

Carrie: And if you’re looking for those pockets of time, you’ll find. I definitely believe that we spend so much time on our phones, scrolling through social media. And a lot of times that’s not a good way to relax.  It’s almost a way to disconnect, I believe from whatever’s going on around us in the moment.

But a lot of times its too much input and it’s too much stimulation and going on, especially before bed or things like that. We’ve got to watch out for that. And I definitely agree. Sometimes you just need to put the phone down, get off social media and say, okay, I’m going to go do something helpful and productive in my life right now that brings me peace and joy. Oh, that’s good. Tell us a little bit about your books and speaking opportunities that you’re involved.

Monica: Thank you for that. As I stated earlier, I am a two time author and it was interesting. My pastor spoke into me, you know, I do a lot of things on bullying and social media and empowerment, and self-esteem things of that sort.

And he was like, you should write a book about that. I was like, who me? What a book, who am I to write about? Right on my first book, which is called Becoming Comfortable in my Own Skin: The journey to loving me. it helped me to evaluate myself. It starts from me wanting to lose weight. And I saw a picture of myself and I just really wasn’t happy with that.

And I said, okay, well maybe I have this medical condition and that can help me give me a. You never take care of it. Right. And I was healthy as a Lark and the problem lie within me. So I was working two jobs and I was working out five days a week. And during that time, you don’t have a lot of time to do other things.

But at what I did have time for was to deal with Monic. I realized how I didn’t love myself like I should out. I didn’t even like looking at myself in the mirror because I didn’t like what I saw. So during that time, it was not so much about losing weight, but it’s the discovery of myself at 38 years old.

And while I was on that journey, I was share certain things, which I believe God led me to do. And I know he did because of the inbox starting. And people just like, okay, well, what are you doing? Or how did you get through this?  There were a lot of people who never said anything but will come ask up to me.

If they saw me in church and say, you’re really doing a good job. You know, just there was a purpose behind that. So that was my first book sharing my journey and what I did. And that’s also devotional at the end of it to help you, to start a new habit. I said 21 days, you create new habits, but I’m giving you a 30 day to put what in there, whether it is starting a new business with it as a weight loss journey, whatever it is, 21 days for 30 days to start doing something, to accomplish a goal.

And I was embarrassed at first, but when we go through things like we go through our testimony as far as testimony and that is to be shaped. So my first book is my testimony. It is my journey. And then my second book is called, as I said earlier, I do a lot of things on bullying in social media.

And while we’ll be out and about doing things, I would encounter a lot of parents who came up like I did. Somebody hit you, you hit them back and so forth and so on. The title of the book is called. I Told My Kid to Fight Back. Examining generational differences in bullying yesterday and today trying to let people know we cannot do or handle bullying or social media like we did when we were coming up for one.  We didn’t have social media.

We didn’t have those pressures. Thank God for that. And then if you’re telling your kid this view, know that they can even defend themselves.  Have you even talked to them about that? Do you know if they can defend yourself? And 99% of the time when I asked that question, they said, well, no, I don’t know, but they got to learn.

But when you’re doing that, you’re creating an environment where your kid may feel like they cannot come and talk to you because maybe they’re not prepared. There was a mother who talked to me and her daughter was getting bullied at school and she was like, you need to start taking up for yourself. You need to fight back.

You need to do this. And the daughter burst into tears. She was like, I don’t know how.

So I’m trying to show how things were when we were coming up and how things are now, and they’re completely different and you cannot handle them the same way. If you want your kids to fight back, that’s fine. But at least prepare them. Think about the repercussions and even parents discipline their children.

I talk about that in this book too. There was a particular young lady where mom was disciplining her. And of course it went viral. I talked about that in the bottom of video that I saw that was CNN, which is international news. What type it is out there on social media, on internet, out there forever. So that following your child for the rest of their life, you gotta be careful in how we do things.

So what we did in my program and around bullying and social media, that led me to write this particular book. Oh, those are the two books that I’m really. And both on Amazon and paper back and on cable and you can get them on Amazon, or you can go to Monica, lauren.com purchase some there.

Carrie: We can put the link in the show notes too, to your website so people can follow you there, or if they want a break tonight. Yes. And if they’re interested in some life coaching sessions, they can also contact dot com there as well. So we can set up some things. 

Monica: Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my little trick. 

Carrie: Yeah. So at the end of every podcast, since our name is hope for anxiety and OCD, I like to ask the guests to share a story of hope, which is a time where you received hope from God or another person.

Monica: I was really thinking about that question, really thinking about that.

What comes to me is right before I started writing my book. I had been encouraged to write my book. And within six weeks I had lost like 20 pounds. Right. And I kept hearing from God, I need to share my story, share my story, share my story. Like I said, I was embarrassed and I was also a same problem was never the best student.

I was an, a, B, C, D student all throughout my life. So share my story, write a book. I was like, I was my worst enemy. I kept doubting myself, but I believe that if God gives you the vision, he will qualify you to do what he asked you to do. And I believe I went through what I went through and go to, to share my story and encouragement that I got from God is to share my story, which is what I started in doing.

Whereas I’ve started doing and sharing it on social media. I’ve also, I’m in a process of starting a Facebook group out by my anxiety, and for the people who love me to help people who are suffering from anxiety and also help the people who love us, who don’t understand what anxiety is, how they can help.

Good support system. So I’m in the process of putting information out there to share it. And I invite other people I’m hoping. And hopefully you, I can invite you to that particular Facebook group and you can share some things, some tips and things. So my hope was that allowed me to go through these things to be an inspiration and share my testimony to others.

So even though I was my own self-worth, I mean, my own, my own worst enemy and self-doubting myself, he encouraged me and created opportunities for me to do what he asked me to do. I pulled that together by saying, be your best to. Your best believe in yourself, never give up on yourself because where you started doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where you’re going to eat.

Who would’ve thought that I would have written two books? Like I said, I wasn’t a good stuff. I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t all that, but when I stopped giving my feelings, doubting myself, being my own worst enemy, as I have accomplished and plan on accomplishing more than I ever thought I could by just allowing myself to be a vessel for God, always believing.

Carrie: Thank you. I always believe in you. And believe in what God has called you to do. If I didn’t believe that God really wanted me to do this podcast and spread these positive messages, I would have quit it a long time ago, because I can tell you that it’s not always easy. And there’s definitely been a lot of roadblocks. And it’s been a huge learning curve for me along the way. But what the piece that’s kept me going really believing that God wants me on this path and I will be on it as long as I feel like he’s leading me to do that. And the day he says, it’s time for the podcast to go, you know, the podcast will have to go, but I really just kind of wanted to echo some of the things that you were saying about that.

There’s all kinds of things that we don’t believe that we can do, but if God has called us to them and we have spiritual confidence and assurance in our faith then God will give us the tools that we need to be able to move forward and do those things that he’s asked from us. 

Monica: He will put you in the right position, right?

What you need in order to accomplish. 

Carrie: It’s been a really great conversation on self-care and just some good encouragement at the end. So thank you so much for sharing with us. 

Monica: Thank you so much Carrie for having me. I appreciate you.

_______________

I hope this interview sparked some ideas about how you can better care for yourself.

I want to say a special thank you today to two of our supporters on buy me a coffee, Tony and David. If you aren’t familiar with the, buy me a coffee website, this is a website similar to Patron. If you’ve heard of that one where people can go on and donate to podcasters and other creative. There’s a lot of time, energy and yes, money that goes into hosting a podcast.

So if you feel so inclined to donate, you are welcome to, and the link to that will be in our show notes. I am so thankful to God for his provision of resources, to be able to do this podcast.  Thank you for listening to this.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee.

Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum and audio editing is completed by Benjamin Bynam.  Until next time it may be comforted by God’s great love for you.

23. Acupuncture and Anxiety With Encircle Acupuncture

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 23. Acupuncture and Anxiety With Encircle Acupuncture

Today, I had the privilege of having not one, but two guests on the show! Alexa Hulsey and Trey Brackman, both licensed acupuncturists came on to talk to us all about acupuncture and how it can be helpful for anxiety among other things.  

  • What is acupuncture and how does it work?
  • What happens during an acupuncture session?
  • Modalities acupuncturist use for patients who feel anxious about acupuncture needles.
  • Some theories about how acupuncture helps with anxiety 
  • Acupuncture and spiritual connection

Links and Resources:

Alexa Hulsey, L.Ac, Founder of Encircle Acupuncture
Trey Brackman, L.Ac

Encircle acupuncture
Community Acupuncture 

Support the show 

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript of Episode 23

Hope For Anxiety and OCD, episode 23. Today on the show we are talking all about acupuncture. I was able to interview Alexa Hulsey and Trey Brackman from in circle acupuncture. They are both a licensed acupuncturist and they talk to us about what an acupuncture session looks like and how acupuncture can benefit anxiety.

So let’s dive right in.

Alexa: My name is Alexa Hulsey. I’m a licensed acupuncturist. I have been practicing since 2005. And I am the owner of Encircle Acupuncture here in Nashville. We have two locations in Nashville. I like to say that I became an acupuncturist because I wanted to help people. And then I became a community acupuncturist because I wanted to help a lot of people. Community acupuncture is set up in a way to make acupuncture affordable and accessible to really anyone who needs it because we offer our services in an affordable way. 

Carrie: Awesome and Trey?

Trey:  How did I get into acupuncture. That’s almost 30 years ago. I got my first acupuncture treatment right out of high school and decided that that’s what I wanted to do after my own experience. I’ve been practicing now for 18 years in a community-based setting. And I did private room acupuncture for a long time and was really hard for me because I couldn’t do it with enough people and it wasn’t affordable enough for them to get it enough to be beneficial to them. And when I found Alexa, nine years ago, I actually went into one of her clinics to get acupuncture and I was like, this is what I want to do and how I want to do it. I’ve been with Alexa full-time for nine years this year. 

Carrie: So tell us a little bit about the difference between what you just said there about maybe a private acupuncture versus a community acupuncture clinic.

Trey: So private room acupuncture is one person in one room, typically on a massage table and community acupuncture, we have a big room and pre-COVID, 21 or two chairs in east Nashville. And in Bellevue, 13, 14 chairs recliners, and you’ll have a patient every 10 minutes and in a community acupuncture setting. Typically in private room, you’ll have a patient every 30 or 45 minutes. So you can treat a lot more people in a day than you can do in community acupuncture than you can in private room. 

Carie: Awesome. 

Alexa: Community acupuncture really gets back to the root of how acupuncture has been traditionally practiced for thousands of years in China and in other Asian countries. Acupuncture was typically done in groups. In some areas, an acupuncturist would travel to a village and just treat people in somebody’s house. And so our set-up, it kind of feels like a living room. Everybody’s in a comfortable chair and it makes it so that we can see more people and that way we can charge less.

Carrie: Awesome. I really liked that concept in terms of receiving care and receiving health in a community setting. Whereas a lot of times in America, our healthcare is so individualized and isolated at times too, because of that. That’s really neat. A lot of the listeners probably have never had an acupuncture session so we just want to talk with them a little bit about what does that even look like? 

Alexa: Sure. I’ll walk you through what a typical acupuncture session is like. We start like pretty much any medical appointment with you, filling out some paperwork, we’ll ask about your medical history and then we’ll do a brief intake with a new patient.

The goal of our intake is really to just figure out why are you here? What can we help you with? What’s really bothering you. And we try to really focus in on a patient’s chief complaint and what is going to be the thing that we really want to focus on. What patients will find often is that if we focus on one or two things for their first few treatments, then all of these other things that they might not have even mentioned to us also start to feel better because everything is connected. So it’s kind of fun when that happens. We really focus on a patient’s chief complaint.

We will recommend a treatment plan based on what they’re seeking help for and what our experience is in treating that condition. A treatment plan varies, but generally people need a course of treatment and not just one acupuncture treatment. So it’s like taking vitamins. You can’t just take one vitamin, you got to take a lot. So you’ll need a course of treatment. Usually, sometimes we have people come in once a week. Sometimes we want them to come in every day if their pain is so severe that they can barely walk. So we talk about a treatment plan.

And then we’ll have a patient, they’ll be in a recliner in our clinic we use points on the extremities. Patients will just roll up their sleeves and pant legs. They don’t have to change clothes or anything like that. And we will needle a few points on the head, arms, and legs. Usually, we’ll use somewhere between 10 and 20 needles during a treatment. Once the needles are in, we cover up the patient with a blanket and walk away. And then that’s when the real magic happens is when a patient is resting with the needles in. We typically let them rest for about an hour and then we’ll take the needles out and, and the treatment is done. So really most of the acupuncture treatment is the patient lying there, relaxing, doing nothing.

Carrie: That sounds like a good time to me, just relaxing and doing nothing. I have had acupuncture and I did find it to be super relaxing. And that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to have you both on the show because we’re talking a lot about anxiety. 

It’s interesting. The point that you brought up there, Alexa, about how when you work on one issue, you don’t always realize the domino effect that’s going to happen If you’re working with someone in terms of pain and then all of a sudden their pain is relieved. They notice they start sleeping better and then they notice it’s like a ripple that happens and that’s really neat. Or then maybe they come up with some other things like therapy, they come up with some other things that they want to work on once one thing is relieved. It’s like, “well, maybe can you help me with this too?”

Alexa:  Yeah, that definitely has, 

Trey: I would say 90% of the time. Yeah.

Carrie:  Yeah. In terms of anxiety and pain and other physical issues, sometimes when you have physical issues the anxiety surrounding dealing with those issues can be so great and almost worse than the actual medical problem that you’re having right now.

I know that happened to me a couple of years ago, I was dealing with some digestive issues and someone said, “Well, maybe you’re just stressed about it.” And I said, or “maybe you’re just stressed in general and that’s causing these digestive issues. And I said, “I don’t think you understand my stress is from the digestive issues” because I can’t figure out what’s going on and how to fix it. This is not a psychosomatic complaint. 

Alexa: Anxiety and depression are huge components especially of pain conditions. Dealing with pain for a long time that does become depressing. You start to think my life is never going to be the same again.

You become anxious about what the future holds.  And then those anxiety and depressive feelings can compound the pain that you’re feeling and taking a pain medication can help the pain, but it’s not going to do anything for your depression and anxiety. Whereas what we do with acupuncture is a much more holistic approach.

Carrie: Can you explain a little bit of from maybe what’s been studied about how does this actually work? 

Trey: Well, there have been a lot of modern-day studies that through MRIs and thermal imaging, that show that it reduces inflammation, improves blood flow, can stimulate hormone releases, balance your hormones, but how the body actually knows to do that when we take the needles and put them in these specific points, there is no definitive answer as to how the body knows to do that when we’re doing acupuncture, but it works. It’s been working for thousands of years and just in the 18 years I’ve practiced, just observing people come in and get better and reduce their pain or help their anxiety or their OCD or their arthritis in their knees, whatever it is, how it’s doing that, I’m not sure anyone has really discovered the real true one answer to that. 

Carrie: I’d love a good mystery and intrigue, but I’m also very intuitive. So I’m kind of in that camp of like, well, if it works let’s use it. You know, I don’t need you to always explain everything to me on a scientific study level.

Testimonials are very valuable. Do you think that this is a little bit of an offshoot of a question, but things like acupuncture and chiropractic and holistic wellness, a lot of times aren’t valued or paid for by insurance companies. Do you think that we’ll get to a point where we shift from a disease model to a health model at all? Do you think that we’re making any strides towards that?

Alexa:  I do think that we’re making some strides. Acupuncture is being used by the military and is being paid for by the military. There is talk of acupuncture being used by medicare to treat acupuncture specifically for treating lower back pain is going to be covered by medicare one of these days. Trey probably has been hearing the same line too, since he went to acupuncture school. I’ve since I enrolled in acupuncture school, I’ve heard insurance reimbursement for acupuncture universally is just around the corner. It still hasn’t happened. 

So our work around has been just, well, let’s not even worry about insurance. Just charge a price that everyone can afford. Our prices are less than a copay and now we don’t even have to worry about insurance. We don’t have to fill out insurance forms and that gives people a lot more flexibility because insurance will usually limit, some insurance does pay for acupuncture.

We will usually limit the number of treatments a person can get or what it can be used for. The way that we approach it is, let’s just let the patient decide what they need and just make it available to them. 

Carrie: And the community based acupuncture model, I just wanted to point that out that that’s not just in the Nashville area that people can actually go online and find community-based acupuncture in their area.

Trey: Yeah, worldwide. 

Carrie: Oh, worldwide. That’s awesome. 

Alexa: Worldwide, absolutely. There are clinics everywhere. If you do an internet search for community acupuncture, type in the name of your city. Not every town has a community acupuncture clinic, unfortunately, but it becomes more and more prevalent. 

Carrie: Whenever you guys want to come to Rutherford county, you’re welcome. It’s open invitation. 

What about if people are anxious surrounding needles, if people say, “I don’t really know if I can do that acupuncture thing, because she just said she was going to stick a lot of needles in me.”

Trey: We actually see that quite a bit and my personal approach to that is I’ll use four needles on somebody who’s typically a little bit anxious.

You can do a really good treatment with just four needles, especially for someone who has anxiety surrounding needles. And that first one or two treatments for them is about them getting used to the idea and feeling acupuncture needles go in and realizing that it doesn’t hurt. I have several patients that are still needle-phobic, but they come anyway because it really helps them, but they just put in their earbuds, turn on their meditation or whatever, their music, and they close their eyes and they just don’t watch and then they’re fine. Usually, I start very slow with them and just do four, maybe four, sometimes six needles, and go from there. 

Carrie: It could be a really good exposure for some people that have that specific phobia, it might help them have a more positive experience. But also the needle size that you’re talking about is a lot smaller than a typical needle.

Trey: Yeah. Two of your hairs together. They’re like 36 gauge. They’re tiny. 

Carrie: Yeah. So maybe that helps relieve some people’s anxiety here thinking about trying acupuncture. It’s not as bad.

Alexa: It’s truly not as bad as you think. A lot of patients report that they don’t even feel the needles. Which if you’ve never had it, it seems impossible, how can I not feel the needle going in me, but it is because they are so, so thin and fine. We did this more before the pandemic, but if someone wanted to bring in a friend or a family member who was anxious about the acupuncture, we would invite them to come in, just like say, “Hey, come sit next to your friend and watch what happens and just relax. See what it’s like.” It’s more difficult to do that now during the pandemic obviously because we have a lot more restraints on how many people we can have, but our model does allow for friends and family to come in together. So if somebody wants to try it and they want to bring a friend for moral support and the two of you get treatment at the same time, we can do that.

Trey: And we’ve had lots of children over the years and teenagers who have come in to get it and their parents will come and sit with them and hold their hand while they get their first few needles. We’ve done that as well for four kids. 

Carrie: Yeah, I think that’s really helpful for people to know that this is a good option for children and adolescents too. A lot of times people are looking for more natural remedies because they don’t necessarily want to put their child or teenager on medication right away, and this might be a good alternative option for them to look into. 

Alexa: Definitely. 

Carrie: Anything else that you wanted to say in terms of how you’ve seen acupuncture be helpful for anxiety?

Alexa: I think we could probably both speak to a lot of cases where we’ve seen acupuncture be helpful for anxiety. I would say that, that is probably the number two thing that brings people into our clinic. The first being pain. We do treat a lot of pain and the second is probably anxiety. We see so many people with anxiety. People don’t always have great results with some of the pharmaceutical options that are out there to treat anxiety.

They might have side effects, or they just don’t want to be taking that and they’re needing solutions. I don’t know how much we want to get into sort of the theory of how it helps anxiety. 

Trey mentioned that there’ve been some studies showing that acupuncture reduces inflammation, increases circulation. The way that we look at it is that acupuncture is going to basically remove blockages in your body. So we look at the body as a system of energetic flow and we call that energy Qi in Chinese medicine. Qi reaches every part of your body and it’s really what makes us alive. Qi gets blocked easily by lots of different factors.

And so we’re really using the needles just to remove those blockages and restore balance, and then the body does. The work on its own that it needs to do to be into a balanced and harmonious state with something like anxiety, a lot of times we’re working on the heart system and that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone with anxiety has heart disease, their blood pressure might be fine.

Their blood flow might be fine, but there’s an imbalance there in that system. The heart is the center of the emotions in traditional Chinese medicine and it gets out of balance easily when there’s a lot of external stressors. And so a lot of times we’re working on restoring balance to that system.

The heart system also is related to sleep. So people with anxiety often experience a lot of problems with sleep. So we can work on those things in tanem. Sleep is one of those things that we’ll often get better without someone expecting when they’re coming in for acupuncture. And then they’ll come back, like you said, after a few treatments and say, “oh, I’m sleeping better. And I wasn’t expecting that.”

Carrie:  That makes a lot of sense to me in terms of what you were saying about the heart because a lot of people who experience anxiety have a more rapid heart rate and their stress system is getting over-activated in times where it doesn’t need to be activated. It’s also connected to pain because the pain pathway in our brain also runs through that limbic system controlling the fight, flight or freeze response. It’s interesting how all of those things are interconnected and then when we’re out of balance, as you said, and something gets stuck, if you can release that it’s like the body already knows what to do to heal itself, which is very similar to a type of therapy I do called EMDR, which works at the brain level. And it’s kind of from the same premise like your body and your brain already know what to do to reach that point of healing. It’s just a matter of getting you unstuck. So that’s really neat. 

Alexa: Yes, absolutely. 

Trey: I always referred to it as getting out of your own way and letting your body do what it already knows how to do.

Carrie: That’s good. Let’s talk about maybe people who are coming from a Christian faith perspective. I did a previous show on mindfulness, which was super fun and we talked about origins of mindfulness and how that can integrate with Christian faith. I think when things come out of Eastern origin, some Christians are like, “Oh, that’s not Christian.[00:20:46] That’s more rooted in Buddhism and we have to watch out for that. It could be a spiritual practice that goes against our faith.” Would you mind speaking to that concern a little bit?

Alexa: Sure, absolutely. Our approach, first of all with acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, spirituality is a huge part of health. And so it’s important that a person feels that their whatever practices they’re doing are aligned with their spirituality because that’s going to promote healing. Traditional Chinese medicine comes from a tradition of Daoism. It’s really rooted in Daoism and Daosim isn’t a religion, it’s a philosophy.

And it’s a way of looking at the world and the body and health based on observation of nature. So we take those observations of nature and then apply them to the body. So for example, we talk about the pathways of chief low in the body. We relate those to bodies of water, and some points are described as being like springs or like rivers or like wells because those points behave the way that those bodies of water would, it would behave in nature.

So Daoism can really be in alignment with any religious beliefs. And for that reason, a person of any religious faith can get acupuncture, can be treated by an acupuncturist, and still rest assured that the treatment is going to support their spirituality. It’s going to support their religion. It’s not going to be in conflict with anything that they believe.

Carrie: Do you find that some people have spiritual experiences, like when they’re receiving acupuncture like having a sense of spiritual connectedness? 

Trey: Yes, and that was one of the things I was actually just going to touch on in all the years I’ve practiced. I’ve worked on a lot of people who have come in and are Christian and a great many of them over the years have told me one of the things that they love about coming to acupuncture is that it allows them time to pray and when they get their needles because it clears out all the rest of the chatter that goes on in our heads. They turn their phone off. They take their smartwatch off and they truly just rest and it allows them to really actually be clearer about what they’re praying for, or who they’re praying for. And I have seen and heard that a lot over the years that it just clears out the clutter of the brain and it allows them just to focus on that one thing and in that way. 

Carrie: That’s awesome because I think I have had that experience in terms of receiving acupuncture. I don’t remember why, but I remember that I ended up crying one of my first few sessions and it was just this, I can’t really explain it other than there was a sense of spiritual connectedness to God in that moment through prayer. And just that sense of being able to just be and just rest and be present is really powerful. Something that we don’t do enough in our society is just allow ourselves to be and to rest and to give our bodies space and openness to heal or to connect with something outside ourselves. 

Alexa: It’s so powerful and it’s so healing when you can get into that state where you’re feeling connected to the divine and you’re feeling really in alignment with your own spirituality. It’s a huge part of healing and also when people are going through a difficult time with their health, they really rely on their faith to get them through that.

I love what Trey was saying about people using that time to pray because faith is what gets many of our patients through their most difficult challenges.

Trey: And when there’s a lot of people in the clinic when the clinic is full and everybody’s in there, and they have their needles in and they’re all in their space, you can feel the hum of the energy in the room where all the people in here are doing the exact same thing.

They’re there, they’re resting, they’re healing. They’re letting go of their stress, their anxiety and you can feel that hum when there’s two, three, four, five, six, seven, 10, or 12 people in the room, all doing the same thing. If you’re paying attention, you can feel that hum of all of them trying to heal and whatever level they’re trying to get it to.

Carrie: Does that feel like a lot of energy or does that feel like a release of energy? I’m just curious.

Trey:  It depends on the people. Sometimes it’s really heavy and strong and it’s like you’re parting it to get to the people and sometimes it’s light and airy. It depends, I think on who’s in the clinic and why they’re here and what they’re praying about or meditating about or focusing on while they’re here. So the feel of it actually changes. 

Carrie: That’s very interesting. 

Alexa: And it’s cool because in that way, each patient in there is contributing to the healing of the other patients as well. You’re creating this collective healing space. So we’re all helping each other, which is not a typical approach in healthcare.

Like you said, it’s usually very individualized, very isolated, but our approach is we all have something to offer. We can all give and receive in the process of healing. So it’s beautiful to be able to be a part of that. And Carrie, you mentioned about having an emotional release and that is not unusual at all for someone to have an emotional release during a treatment or after treatment crying. Sometimes people laugh.

And I noticed that especially with patients who are dealing with anxiety because anxiety can be so much work to manage just in your daily life. Just trying to navigate situations that people without anxiety wouldn’t find difficult when you have anxiety. It is difficult whether it’s going to the grocery store or having a conversation with a coworker.

So it’s so much harder to do some of those things that when you finally do get the chance to rest and relax, you don’t realize how much emotion you’ve been holding on to and then that release feels great and it’s an important part of healing. 

Carrie: That makes a lot of sense to me because it does take a lot of energy when you have anxiety, too, whether it’s to get through the day or sometimes that energy is used to suppress other painful emotions and that makes sense to me. 

So we’re kind of winding down to the end of our interview, but I do want to say that I’m going to put some links in the show notes for those who are local to look up Encircle Acupuncture and for those who are not local to look up community acupuncture near them so that people can join in on this experience.

Since the show is called Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope at a time that you received hope from God or another person.

Alexa:  I’ll go first. I feel so lucky because I get to hear stories of hope pretty much on a daily basis from our patients. It is very inspiring to be around. One patient in particular, who has really inspired me as a patient who a couple of years ago received a very scary cancer diagnosis. She had been coming to the clinic for a long time, just for various ailments, and then she received this diagnosis and it was so scary but she was determined to do what she had to do and she followed her doctor’s advice to the letter.

She did all of her chemo. She does all of her radiation. She did all of that. She put a lot of trust in what her doctor was recommending and at the same time, she also said, “I’ve got to do more. This is the fight of my life and so I have to be all in.” She did more research and homework than I’ve seen most patients do.

And she really became an expert on healing her cancer and she did, she beat it, and she’s more than a year cancer-free now. Even some of her nurses have made comments to her, like, “wow, you are really doing so much to heal.” And her response has kind of been like, “well, you know, I have to.” She’s a very spiritual person and really relied on her faith to get her through

the scariest time in her life. And I still see her every week and she’s doing great. She’s just to me, an example of courage in the face of something really scary and using that as an opportunity to learn. She’s come out of this even healthier than she was before. She’s a huge inspiration.

Carrie: That’s awesome. 

Trey: I have several. I could probably filter through but mine is oddly more personal, which is normally not what I would share. Nine years ago, Alexa and I hashed out an agreement on a little over nine years ago, hashed out an agreement on a napkin actually. And I lost the job that I had and I called Alexa that same Friday at like noon.

She called me back at two o’clock and I started the following week and it really has allowed me to do something I was ready to walk away from because it wasn’t fulfilling for me. And that totally changed in the nine years I’ve worked for you. We’ve treated hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s brought a lot of joy to me personally, and by extension to my wife and kids.

Carrie: That’s awesome. 

Alexa: And Trey I just love that we’ve been working together for so long, but I think everybody can relate to that feeling of just being in a place where it’s just not right and you want to change and it’s scary to make a change, but you can do it. It can transform into something that you love. [00:32:00] So that’s an inspiration to me too, I’m glad you shared that. 

Carrie: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing with us, your wisdom and your experience with acupuncture and kind of letting all the newbies know what it’s like, and hopefully, it’ll encourage people to try it out sometime.

Alexa: I hope it does. Thank you for having us. 

Carrie: You’re welcome.

_______________________

I know I talked on this episode a little bit about my own experience with acupuncture. I wanted to do that because initially going into it. I was really nervous like is this going to be something that’s not in alignment with my Christian faith? And I did a lot of research, read everything on the website, as well as some other information on the internet about acupuncture and how it works and what the process was. And I said you know what, I don’t see anything for me personally that goes against the Bible or goes against the major tenants of Christian faith. I believe that acupuncture is one of the tools that God has given us to help heal our bodies and lead us towards a place of greater health.

And for you, it may or may not be for you and that’s okay. Hopefully, I won’t get any hateful emails on this issue. If I do, I’ll just ignore them and pay attention to the people that are enjoying the show. 

Speaking of people who are enjoying the show, did you know that we have people who are listening all over the place, including Mt. Juliet, Tennessee? Which is not too far from here. All the way to West Lake Stevens, Washington, and Paradise, Nevada. I know that we have some people who are listening in Europe, Africa, and Australia as well. So, where are you listening from? Let us know by messaging me on Instagram or Facebook, I would love to hear from you. And if you aren’t following us there, please do.

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

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

20. Overcoming Sexual Anxiety and Dysfunction For Women with Kelly Ehlert, PT

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 20. Overcoming Sexual Anxiety and Dysfunction For Women with Kelly Ehlert, PT

Discussion with Kelly Ehlert, PT, DPT, OCD, COMT, CDNT. Kelly is a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist who works with women experiencing pain during sex. Kelly also opens up about the issues she experienced after giving birth to her daughter.  

  • Different messages about sex that can trip women up (moral, medical, media)
  • Common sexual issues in women
  • What is pelvic floor physical therapy and how can it help women?
  • Connection between stress (fight/flight/freeze response) and desire
  • Why we’re all normal in our own way

Kelly’s PT practice: Priority Physical Therapy
Book: Come as You Are

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Transcript of Episode 20

Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 20. If this is your first time with us, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. You can find us online anytime www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com. 

Today’s show has a special disclaimer that it may be distressing for some listeners and if you have little ears listening you may want to stop the recording and pick this up at another time when there aren’t children in the room. I have an interview to share with you that I did with Kelly Ehlert. We talk about something that I believe the church doesn’t talk enough about and that is sex. 

Sex is an amazing and wonderful thing, but a lot of times there are mixed up messages that we receive from a variety of sources. We’re going to talk about those on the show, and we’re also going to talk about sexual dysfunction for women specifically. What happens when things go wrong in the bedroom? What do you do about it? How to get help and hope for these situations. Kelly was open enough to share some of her personal story which I think just adds to what she does professionally, which we’ll get to a little bit later. So let’s dive into the interview. 

Carrie: Today on the show, we have Kelly Ehlert, and we’re going to get into what you do a little bit later. We’re going to maybe leave people in suspense for just a little bit to have this conversation about some of the messages that we receive in the media about sex through watching TVs and movies, but also in the church. Some of the conversations surrounding sex and baggage that women specifically can have from some of those messages and also experiences with sex maybe that weren’t positive because not everybody has a stellar, positive experience with sex.

Do you want to talk a little bit, maybe about your background or your experience like in the church, just in general and then surrounding these messages? 

Kelly: Yeah, thanks for having me. I grew up really conservative. I grew up at Church of Christ. I grew up outside of DC, so not quite the Bible belt but where sex was off the table. You did not do that till you got married. I heard things on the bus and behind the bleachers. You hear all sorts of things I don’t think I quite understood until later. I will say my mom was a nurse and I remember asking her about a blow job and why would somebody like that. I remember asking things, I don’t think I felt particularly shameful, but I also didn’t know what to ask or why certain things were. I went to Lipscomb. My husband and I met and we waited to get married. A lot of his background I think was the same. You meet, you wait, and then you figure it out when you get married. It’s kind of what we were joking about. We’re supposed to know what we do once we get married. There’s some magical thing that happens and your brain and your body know exactly what to do and in reality, it’s kind of a learned thing. Some of it to Nate there’s arousal, and there’s a certain procedure that your body goes through, but I think as women, ours depends on context a lot more than I think we realized.

Carrie: I think my messages were similar. I had messages in the church that were no, no, no until you get married and then somehow when you get married, it’s kind of like, “well, you know, sex is good.” All of a sudden this whole thing that I built up this idea around that maybe it was bad or shameful, or just not even knowing what to expect. And then all of a sudden it’s like, “woohoo” your wedding night’s supposed to be amazing and everything they’re following. And I had a really hard time in my first marriage trying to make that shift and switch of even seeing myself as a sexual being. I didn’t. And then from the school system, there was a lot of fear messages around sex and a lot of anxiety, like you could get an STD, you can get pregnant, something awful is going to happen to you if you have sex. So there was not really a lot of positive lingo about some of the things that we want to talk about, like God created us, women and men, as sexual beings. I had someone tell me when I was newly married, they said,” yeah, our parents talk about sex was kind of Adam and Eve figured it out and you can too.”

Kelly: And there’s so much more than that. It should be so much more and I think opening the conversation up earlier with your partner, your spouse rather than later is more beneficial. We have to be enlightened to the idea that communication needs to happen. I think we just assume. We put our assumptions on them when you know my husband and I’ve talked through quite a bit, I’m a physical therapist and we’ll get into some more of that, but I had a lot of issues after I had my daughter and there were several things that, the things that I didn’t like about myself, he had to tell me, “Kelly, I don’t care” or “I still love you despite that.” So I think a lot of the things kind of what I said a minute ago about the context is we sabotage ourselves, assuming that what we don’t like about ourselves is something that they pick apart when in reality that may be something they enjoy about us, or it may be something they don’t even think about.

Carrie: It’s not like even on the radar, one of the things that bothers me about movies and TV shows is there’s this idea or this message that you can just hop into bed with anyone at any old time and have great, amazing sex. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t known them before today, you can have amazing sex that evening, and you’re all wrapped up in the sheets and it’s wonderful. I think that puts a lot of pressure on people to feel like, okay, so then what happens if it doesn’t work that way? For me, what happens if I start to, maybe there’s something wrong with me that I’m not able to do this thing that I feel like everybody else is engaging in and they’re having a pleasurable experience. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the common sexual issues that women face. 

Kelly: Okay. I guess in my field, when I get folks is more postpartum, because I think that’s when people around that area, even if it was an area that was very secluded, you have a baby and all of a sudden everybody’s messing with your stuff.

And so it makes it okay to, to kind of get things checked. So generally I see postpartum pain with intercourse, either penetration, just that initial touch and even deeper. I’ve had some it’s called vaginismus where it’s like the vaginal canal and even everything around it, it’s almost like it shrinks up or tightens up. So anything around that region that whole vulvar region gets super sensitive to touch and a lot of it’s kind of mental with it too, because the body knows it’s going to hurt. So if anybody messes with anything or even just sitting the body tends to cringe and further feed into that. So we’ve got to work usually with one of you guys, a counselor to work through some of the why. And I’ve seen fractured tailbones postpartum where the pelvic floor is attached to the tailbone and it hurts with intercourse that way. I guess mainly kind of to answer your question, I see a lot more pain-driven issues and then the causes can be different, but there can also be a lack of orgasm if the pelvic floor is really, really weak and orgasm is just a contraction of the pelvic floor. So there’s less sensation. The less sense of you that feels good and so if it doesn’t feel good, then why do it? And we kind of go down that rabbit hole, but I’d say the biggest factor and what statistically we see is just a lack of desire due to stress. Your body’s chased by a lion all day long. I wouldn’t want to have sex, but it’s still in that stress mode. And I think all of us can identify with that over the last year where we’re just not in our typical state of mind and workplace. 

Carrie: So tell us a little bit about what you do and then we’ll talk a little bit further about those responses in the body.

Kelly: As a physical therapist, my background is an orthopedic physical therapist. I’m board certified in that. So anything neck, backs, jaws, shoulders, any kind of joint, but then also with my kids, I went down the women’s health path. So that’s an extra coursework to look at the internal aspect of the pelvic floor and the pelvic floor is just the insides of your pelvis. So it’s the muscles that help control your pee and your poo.

It’s the muscles that allow you to have pleasure with sexual intercourse or anything around that. It’s the muscles that help stabilize your pelvis and it’s the group of muscles that also help you kind of support all your organs up and in. So this part of our body, I never realized how important it was.

And I think it’s just a part of our body that I appreciate a lot more after having kids. But when you realize what it does for us, it’s amazing. You don’t realize when something is working well, how much it does until it stops working and you start noticing leaking or pain or heaviness or issues with jumping, that kind of stuff.

Carrie: That makes a lot of, a lot of sense. So do you usually get referrals from say OB-GYN who know that their patients are having issues and they would benefit from pelvic floor physical therapy? 

Kelly: Most recently, I started off more cash pay model. We’re starting to delve into some of the insurance, but most of my clients find me through word of mouth. I have very few referring practitioners. If they are then it’s Kairos and Pilates and massage therapists because they’re dealing with that population. And honestly, a lot of us, I think our generation, the thirties and below are a lot more proactive, so there’s a lot more looking and searching. And this topic, this conversation is way less taboo than the generations prior to us. So I think most of my ladies have found me because they’ve asked questions or they’re on Instagram. So, yes and no. I would say a lot more word of mouth in the last six, eight months span like general providers, like orthopedists and that kind of thing because I am a smaller practictioner but yes, that in the bigger groups, that’s where they get a lot of their clients.

Carrie: How do people know if they might be a good candidate for this type of therapy? 

Kelly: So there’s actually a really good screen that I have on my website. Anything from pain with prolonged sitting, sciatica pain with intercourse, like we mentioned, any leakage, even like abdominal pain and discomfort.

If you have constipation, all that pertains to the women’s health, physical therapy world. Issues with breathing. Any abdominal surgery, I think would be good because what we’re finding is there’s a high correlation with abdominal surgeries even abdominoplasties that scar can add here down. And we get, I think it’s like as high as 40% chance of bladder irritation, like bladder issues and then bowel obstructions.

So there’s a wide plethora of things that we kind of see and work on. 

Carrie: Yeah, let’s kind of circle back to that. Talking about the nervous system response and this stress response that keeps us perhaps out of desire, I guess, is what you were saying like if we’re really ramped up, it’s hard for us to have a desire to engage sexually.

Kelly: I guess the best, I’m gonna bring this book up. You guys can’t see it, but there’s a book called Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski can never say her name and it’s almost 400 pages that she really talks a lot of levels on, one, know your anatomy, which is probably the biggest thing being on this side of it is if you don’t know yourself how are you going to expect somebody else to know you too.

That’s kind of first and foremost, but she talks a lot about the stress cycle and how we, how we either feed into it or how we can work out of it when your body is in that constant fight flight or freeze, or if it’s had a trauma and that’s more what’s your kind of world is, I feel like you can probably speak more to that.

Whether you recognize it or not, the body holds that trauma, or there’s usually something mechanical that occurs whether you consciously or subconsciously recognize that feeds in. So when you’re in that constant stress node, your body’s in fight that fight flight or freeze your body is in survival mode. It doesn’t need to procreate. It needs to survive. Like you said, the last thing we need is to go have an intimate moment. Now for some 10 to 20%, according to Emily’s book, that actually derives sex, like that’s a turn on for them where the rest of us, the 80, the 90% of us, that’s a turnoff when our brain is busy, we’re on that hamster wheel we can’t kind of actively, maybe enjoy and participate as much. And as a female, that’s really what there is no pink viagra because we are so context dependent. we need the sounds. We need the smells. We need the kids in bed. We need to be loved like we need all these things usually in order for that switch to really go off.

And she has a really cool worksheet in there on figuring out what turns your brakes on and what turns your kind of your accelerator on and stress for most of us is a really big break step around or where it just. Your system just dies down and that’s the last thing it kinda needs. You’ve just got to figure out how to break that cycle.

Carrie: That’s interesting because I have had women say, well, I just don’t want to, but they have a hard time maybe even being aware we’re breaking down some of these different aspects of things that keep them in that fight flight or freeze mode or they’re so used to just living in that heightened state. And I don’t know what your experience has been, but I don’t think it always has to be a sexual trauma to cause these types of dysfunctions, it can be other types of situations that were maybe chaotic in your family growing up that leads you to be in that state and that may affect you sexually.

Kelly: Even just your assumptions, kind of going back to our conversation about maybe our preconceived notions. In her book, she talks a lot about gardens like your sexuality is your garden and our society and our culture and our family puts all these little weeds in there and we have to figure out what within that garden is truly what we believe in what was planted there by however we live and whatever we live. And so I wrote this down because it kind of helps me, I guess, break things down and help me identify personally, and then professionally where I believe. So she talks a lot about there’s three types of messages, there’s moral, a medical message, and the media message. And so kind of going back to what you said is that doesn’t matter where you are, just identifying I think what your beliefs are is huge. So she talked about one of the moral messages being were damaged goods like if you have sex or you like it and you lose your virginity, then you’ve lost all value. Maybe a century-old mindset of once you give yourself away, nobody else is gonna want you. You just need to accommodate your partner. I’ve watched a movie on Netflix, it’s kind of their whole role in society is to appease the male and make him feel good. It has nothing to do with what the female’s body is wanting to do. You just check that box.  And the other one is the medical model where you can cause damaged goods. Like you said, you can cause STDs and you can cause pregnancy. And it’s just very medical where you get this, then this, then you get aroused and you ejaculate and then you’re done, but there’s no emotion. And then the third message is around the media where you’re inadequate. You don’t know what you’re doing. If you don’t know 15 different ways to have an orgasm or 15 different positions in which feels good to you and your partner. You’re too fat. You’re too skinny.

There’s all these little messages that feed in too. I think what we, once again, we sometimes can sabotage ourselves. I think we take the enjoyment out of it because we assume that I shouldn’t enjoy it. It should be for him or society says, if I enjoy it, I must let, like, we put these names to it, but why is that?

And I don’t know. I don’t know the answer, I think just identifying the thought, maybe important in the beginning,

Carrie: I think a lot of times we don’t evaluate the messaging has been and so then if we have negative messaging, it’s important for us to say, “what am I putting in that’s different into my mind?” And hopefully something like this is a start to that to help people evaluate. What is it that I really believe about sex? What have I taken from the media from morally, from the church, from my family, from the kids behind the bleachers? And some of that information is way off of where we need to be.

I’m curious for you, how you shifted your thought process maybe on sex or had a more positive view of sex? 

Kelly: So definitely more of a personal conversation, but I think a lot of it is going through that book. I had a lot of pain after my daughter with intercourse and telling my husband, “no.” Being able to say no, gave me more power than I think I realized I had. But then I remember asking the doctor about it and she’s like, ”Oh, well that’s just typical rub some cream on it.” And that was eight, 10 years ago before I think the pelvic health world became so popularized, I guess in the last four to five years, I would hope in the next five years, we’re the first line of defense for postpartum. They clear you and then you come to see us for anything else. But I think being able to shift that mindset of it doesn’t have to be penis and vagina intimacy. It can be anything else like sex doesn’t always have to be, and you don’t have to necessarily get off. Being able to talk through, “I just don’t want it tonight” because I think I went a long time with it. Well, he needs to initiate it like that’s just the man’s role. He needs to want it in order for me to be okay with it. And you know, I have another couple of stats here, but 30% of people are responsive,

My husband comes to me 30% of the time I respond to that, only 15% of us are like spontaneous, where it’s like, “Oh, I want sex like, let’s go get him the rest of us.” They’re like, “Oh, I kind of want it. Oh, but he’s there.” But it’s a combo of the situation. I think for me recognizing that he wants me to want him, like he likes that pursuit as well.

And massaging is good like touch. Just being able to be okay with not just jumping into bed. And maybe I was just super, super rigid in my beliefs, and it was like, you give him what he needs and get out and go rinse off. We’ve been able to talk through some stuff and then being maybe more, let’s say, more experimental, whatever, but being more open with trying different things.

Carrie: I always tell clients, and I’m curious if you agree with this from the medical side of your work. I really believe that great sex requires great communication. I mean, you have to be able to have those conversations, even if they’re hard, or even if they’re uncomfortable to be able to say, “Hey, when you do this, that feels good.” Even just language that we use in the bedroom. I like this type of wording and not that type of wording or these are some things that would be helpful for me to hear from you.” And if you’re not able to have those conversations with your partner. I just don’t think that you’re going to be able to have this expectation that it’s going to be great if you’re not able to communicate and talk about what you enjoy because different people obviously enjoy different things.

Kelly: Yeah, and that was one of my big takeaways from that book too, is everybody is normal within their own realm. We all have similar anatomy. We all have similar kinds of patterns. Anatomically we go through this typical pattern of arousal on through, but we have different things that turn us on and turn us off.

And you can’t expect your spouse or partner to know that If you don’t tell them, “Hey, when you do that, that was good. Do that again,” They have to be told that like a little kid, like they go by your vibes in your words and so the words aren’t present, then you’re not validating them or yourself.

Carrie: Where do people start If they are noticing they’re having sex maybe less and less often? And that might be a warning sign for them or what would be kind of like a good first step if they feel like their sexual relationships declining? 

Kelly: I guess it would be kind of like you were saying as self-assess it. It’s situational because something else has taken that place in terms of time or the stress. There are specific sex therapists out there. I have one friend that I will refer folks to, but I don’t have anybody specific, so that may be better. I’m in kind of stepping back to say, well, I noticed this and figure out. I always like finding the why with everything within the therapy world. It’s I can work your neck out, but if it’s going to come back because you’re pastorally not correcting it, then kind of the same with this it’s I think backtracking to is it because I just had a baby and everything hurts? Is it because your kids just stressed you out and you had to go pull them out of jail and you’re in that fight-flight or freeze? Is it just because you’re tired? Isn’t it hormonal? What’s driving the bus and then from there it will be either probably finding the right practitioner to guide you in that direction.

Sometimes it’s talk therapy. Sometimes it’s an OB-GYN or somebody that can give you a hormone replacement. 

Carrie: I think it’s really important in these types of situations where this can happen for a lot of different areas, but specific sexually, there may be some medical components involved and then there may be some psychological components involved. And when we’re looking at the situation, it’s hard to assess what’s medical and what’s psychological. I think it’s important for the medical community and the counseling community to really work together for us to be able to say, Hey, maybe you need to follow up with a women’s clinic or with your OB-GYN about that.

And for the medical community to say, Hey, has there been any trauma in your past, is there anything that’s been unaddressed that you feel like could be contributing to this issue?” Or do you just need some skills to learn how to calm your body down to like learn how to wind down at the end of the day?

We’re running 90 to nothing too often and so really learning those skills is a good process. 

Kelly: I agree with that. I have a lot of patients that I’ll suggest things to, but nothing is going to change unless you actually try some things and the consistency, a little goes a long way. So being consistent with whatever you’re trying, give it enough time. Going back to your medical model, there’s some skin issues that can cause pelvic floor dysfunction, but that can, the skin issues can turn into cancer. So for me, being able to recognize, “Hey, this is not something that’s within my scope.

You need to go see some, you know, somebody beyond a therapist or a PT. You need to go get some medical treatments.” I think I would say most of us hopefully are able to determine some of that. We got to get a gut feeling in terms of when things are not going right. 

Carrie: But what is a usual treatment length for someone that receives, um, pelvic floor physical therapy?

How long does it take somebody to go through therapy? It’s probably similar. It depends a lot on the situation. 

Kelly: I would say most. So if it’s more of an incontinent. Let’s say the pelvic floor is influenced by your GI system, your endocrine system, your skin, musculoskeletal your integument. It has so many systems that cross up in, and then through that, I find that part of our body to be slower to learn than like a shoulder or neck or something that you can physically see because there are so many other little factors that go in. I usually say two to three months for kind of some of the women’s health issues.

If it’s postpartum, I’ll encourage them, a year and a half to two years for you to get back to normal, to feel normal. Not that they’re with me the whole time, but just giving them that timeline of kind of biological tissue healing, that kind of stuff. But it also does depend on do you need some psychological help. Can I physically help you here and I show you how to mechanically help your body move better but every time you’re stressed it feeds back in how do we take that stressor away or help you recognize when you feed in and in that talk therapy, I’m the catalyst and I see you a month or two, and then you go see somebody else and come back and we revisit or see a doctor. There’s a clinic in downtown Nashville called the WISH Clinic (Women’s Institute for Sexual Health) and they do quite a bit. They do pelvic floor botox, injections, trigger point injections. I’ve actually trigger point dry needled the pelvic floor. They do vaginal suppositories with valium for kind of decreasing. There’s a lot of options. 

Carrie: That’s really good for people to know. I mean, even if people have had problems in the past that they find reoccurring that the growth in treatment options in this area, like you were saying has probably grown exponentially in the last five or so years. I didn’t know that they were using things like botox for that.

Kelly:  Yeah, I’ve got a client right now who had endometriosis then a hysterectomy and everything just got locked up in response to I think the surgery and then all the pain prior. I’ve needled her and we’ve done some really cool stuff in terms of getting her pelvis moving. But she’s done the botox. She’s like 90, 95% better. Now it’s taken us a couple of months because it’s been a couple of year’s worth of issues we’re having to kind of delve through, but they’re phenomenal. And that just knowing the options that are on the table besides just don’t do not let somebody cut something out because it hurts that does not answer all the questions. If you have abdominal pain, do not let them do a hysterectomy without ruling out endometriosis and some of those other triggers or even pelvic floor tone can increase abdominal pain because it irritates blot like there’s so many overlapping things.

If nothing else, do not let them cut on you because scar tissue creates more pain and more attention and more adhesions like, “Can we just go down that cycle?” 

Carrie: That’s really good because I think doctors are just kind of like doing their best and it’s like, well, here’s an option and there’s an option and maybe we should do this. And you go down this rabbit hole sometimes of things that like you were saying potentially may cause more problems than what you had to begin with. But I guess the message that I would want people to take away from the totality of this conversation is if you’re having issues with pain during intercourse, Hey know that you’re not alone, that other women are facing these types of issues. People aren’t talking about it. So you may feel really alone, but these are relatively common things that you see in your practice that I saw in my practice and that there is hope, and there is help and keep knocking on the doors until you get the help that you need.

Go to therapy. See how that does or go to your doctor, talk with them. Talk with them about all the different treatment options that are there for you and ask questions and keep going until you find somebody that can help you. You may not find that person on the first or second try, but you may find them, the third person that you talked to.

So keep it hopeful. I guess from a spiritual, Christian perspective, I’m curious maybe some of your thoughts about that as far as what would you tell a Christian woman who’s struggling with these types of issues?

Kelly: I have a nine-year-old and I’ve been trying to figure out how do I give her the message of your body is beautiful. God created it just for you.

You need to keep it holy like keep it to yourself, but at the same time how do I get her to understand that? She needs to know what it is like. It’s okay to look at yourself. It’s okay. That is your body. You only get one. Kind of what I said earlier is if you don’t know it, you can expect somebody else to either that getting comfortable with your anatomy. Just knowing the difference between a vulva, vagina the canal, the vulva, that whole region and knowing where your pee comes out, where your poop comes out. Knowing you have three holes down there. Knowing just what things are. And I don’t think there should be shame around touching. Guys play, I mean, my son’s do that. He pulls off on that thing all night. Well, what I’m saying that it’s acceptable. Kind of going back to the societal, men are supposed to get off and we’re just supposed to help them. I think we need to have pleasure too and we need to, I don’t know the best answer like I don’t think that masturbation is bad.

I think that’s a message that I have to personally figure out how to communicate with my daughter. That’s something my husband and I have talked about in terms of what I like and what he likes and are we okay doing separate things? Do we want that to be like, that just needs to be a conversation piece within the relationship.

If you’re single, I think it’s fine to explore. You’re not denying. The Bible talks about not denying your partner and not saying being consensual, but not denying your partner there that pleasure. I can’t think of the verse, but something to that extent. And so that’s still a grey area and I don’t have a good answer for you. 

Carrie: Yeah, I think this sense of we were created uniquely by God with a purpose and God created us as physical beings as emotional beings, as sexual beings, as spiritual beings and somehow that’s all wrapped up in the same body and we have to figure out how those pieces in our work with each other. I do believe that sex is a spiritual connection when you’re married between you and your spouse and that’s a picture of our connection and our union with Christ and the church, and something really sacred and valuable and holy about sex. And yet at the same time, It doesn’t always work the way. it’s supposed to because we’re humans and our bodies are flawed and sometimes we go through surgery or childbirth and sometimes things don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

And knowing that, that doesn’t make you like, “Oh gosh, I’ve got this horrible thing wrong with me and I need to have a bunch of shame about it.” 

Kelly: You’re not letting this dysfunction define you. Acknowledging it and knowing you were meant for more.

Carrie: Yeah, and kind of like keep pursuing that journey until that your sex is restored in your marriage and relationship. I think that there’s hope there. 

Kelly: When you look through in Song of Solomon, I mean, he talks about her breasts. God let that be and God allowed that to be in that special and I think part of that is skewed I think, with how we grew up in terms of that, that gets twisted and it shouldn’t be that way, but my husband’s words are God made it and it’s not dirty if God made it that way. 

Carrie: Thank you for sharing some really valuable information. Today I feel like there’s so much that we could go into and really just like we’re able to scratch the surface on things, but I hope that it will be kind of a springboard for people to maybe go get more education or look into some different avenues. 

So since this podcast is called hope for anxiety and OCD at the end of every episode, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, a time that you received hope from God or another person. 

Kelly: Sure, I guess kind of what got me into this field, in general, was issues after my daughter and so in terms of that riff between me and my spouse since we’re on this topic, I couldn’t enjoy him. I remember laying in the bed crying and then going like being able to go through courses to help my clients actually helped. It did more, I guess. You kind of grow as your professional relationships with your clients grow. I think that’s why I am like, sex is better because that communication had to occur.

And I was able to mechanically in my brain, went through the coursework, was like, well, that’s why that hurts because this is scarred down and for my brain, I needed the biomechanical. I need somebody to explain it to me on my level that I could. It didn’t hurt just because I had a baby, it hurt because I had scar tissue because of muscle tore and every time he went through that spot, it made it tear more. That made sense to me and I think just being able to break things down on my level gave me that ability to be like, okay, I can do something about this. This is my body. I know how to help myself and that led me down the path of all right now I have a second kid, I want to do this for other moms. I don’t want them to lay in the bed being miserable, dreading, “Oh my gosh, he’s coming. Is he going to want it tonight? Am I going to just cry again?” I want to enjoy sex. I want my partner to enjoy me. I want it to be consensual.

I want to go on a date and come home and be ravenous like the movie. Like I want it to be that way and I want my clients and my patients to be able to understand that it can. It can be that way like there’s my hope.

Carrie: That’s how empowering just to have that knowledge about your own body and why it was responding, the way that it was, and then realizing it, doesn’t always have to be this way and I can get some help and help myself and move forward.

Kelly: That’s far back in your lap and understanding. I just think like you said, keep searching. Be your own advocate. If you don’t think something’s right, we have that good gut-fixed sense as women. I think we just have something, some intuitive, something innately in us that helps us help each other, but also help ourselves. Our body wants to thrive too.

We want that homeostasis, I guess. Keep searching. If you’re getting the runaround and help, there’s a ton of us out there on social media now, that you see something you can go down that path and search a little harder.

Carrie: We’ll put links on your information in the show notes and as well as for the book that you talked about too. Thank you so much for sharing today. 

Kelly: Thank you. I appreciate your time. 

_________________________________

There were so many good nuggets in that interview and I hope it sparks some further thought in conversation in your mind, if you’re a woman about how can I make my sex life better for myself and for my spouse.

Do you have lingering questions from either this episode or other episodes that we’ve done on the show? If you are leaving with unanswered questions or feel like you want to know more about a specific issue I would love to hear your feedback on the show because I want to make it something that you want to continue to come listen to. So you can drop me a line anytime through our website hopeforanxietyandocd.com and I promise to read those and respond to you. Thanks so much for listening. 

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

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

My Personal Experience with Antidepressants

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Blog.

I was staring at my computer screen, watching the cursor flash, almost as if it were coaxing me to finish my progress note. Running on a constant lack of sleep, my mind was fuzzy, and I couldn’t string words together in a way that made sense. What was I trying to write about this client’s session yesterday? My supervisor would be sending me an email soon about how my notes the prior day had not been completed. What would I tell her as to why? I must have stared at that computer screen for 30 minutes, getting nothing done, before I decided it was time to call my doctor. 

Continue reading

3. Ruling Out Physical Contributions to Anxiety with Melanie Lowe, NP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 3. Ruling Out Physical Contributions to Anxiety with Melanie Lowe, NP

In episode 3 of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I interviewed Melanie Lowe, NP to discuss how undiagnosed physical conditions can contribute to anxiety. Melanie also helps Christians understand why there is no shame in taking medications for mental health issues.

  • Various health conditions that can contribute to or increase anxiety
    • sleep apnea, thyroid malfunction, or vitamin deficiencies
  • Why it’s important to have a Primary Care Physician 
  • Taking medications for mental health as a Christian 

Resources and links:

By The Well Counseling
Cornerstone Primary Care
Study on exercise and antidepressants

More podcast episodes

Transcript of Episode 3

Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 3. 

Today on the show, I am interviewing Melanie Lowe who is a nurse practitioner at Cornerstone Primary Health Care in Hendersonville, Tennessee. I was really excited to be able to speak with a medical professional on the show to talk about some physical issues that may be causing or contributing to anxiety. A lot of people don’t know that when you’re experiencing anxiety, a first stop to the primary care physician to get some testing and blood work is really in order. Melanie and I are also going to talk about being a Christian and taking medication for mental health. Let’s get to the show. 

Getting To Know More About Melanie Lowe

Carrie: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in the medical field and kind of the decision, the process to start your own medical clinic?

Melanie: Sure. My name is Melanie Lowe, and I graduated from Auburn University. That’s where I did my undergraduate in 1994. I practiced nursing in an Open Heart Surgery Center for three years and then decided to go back and get my master’s in nursing, but that was in nursing education. 

My ultimate goal was to teach in the nursing programs there in Auburn, which I did for three years. That was a great experience because as a nurse, we just love to be educators as well. So, after that period of time, we started a family. My husband and I have two children. I took eight years off from school to raise the kids and then once they got into school, then I said okay, it’s time for me to go back and get back into the nursing field, which I did. So I went to work. We moved from Indianapolis to Hendersonville, Tennessee, and I went to work for Vanderbilt in the cardiovascular unit there. And then I decided after two years that I was ready to go back and get my nurse practitioner degree, which I got in 2008. That’s the progression as I got to be a nurse practitioner and that is my ultimate, ultimate goal and love. I just love it.

Different Titles In The Medical Field

Carrie: Maybe you can help some of our listeners because I know we hear different titles in different fields. What is the difference between being a doctor and being a nurse practitioner?

Melanie: Doctors, of course, have different degrees: primary care provider, internal med, physician. They go through a course in undergraduate medical school. Some of them do different extended studies if they want to be an endocrinologist or specialist in cardiology, things of that nature. We have mid-levels, which are nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants. They do similar jobs. They work alongside doctors a lot of times in various clinics, but nurse practitioners and PAs can also go out on their own like I have and open up their own medical clinic in the State of Tennessee. We have to have a supervising physician. So you will see that sometimes when we write certain medications, narcotics, we have to have a supervising physician sign off on that. They have to be in our practice at least once a month just to sign, not to actually see patients but need to be overseeing us at least once every 30 days. Mid-levels can prescribe just like physicians. They can order imaging. They can make a referral. When it comes to medical care, we can all do the same thing. It’s just that nurse practitioners have less schooling than physicians.

Benefits of Seeing A Nurse Practitioner

Carrie: Do you feel like there are benefits at times to seeing a nurse practitioner over a doctor?

Melanie: Well, as most people probably know, generally, most nurse practitioners will spend more time with their patients. I think that’s one of the big differentiating things between mid-levels and a provider, that’s a physician. What you’ll find though is that in a corporate clinic, there’s a schedule that dictates how much time you can spend with each patient.

If you go out on your own and start your own clinic, you can decide how much time you want to spend with each patient, depending on how in-depth you want to go. For us being a Christian-based clinic, we have the opportunity to talk about emotional, spiritual, physical, all of the aspects versus it just being like you’re in here to get your medications refilled. 

We’re moving on to the next station, so we have a lot of flexibility with our schedule and how long we want to spend with our patients. That’s one of the biggest things. The tagline actually for my clinic is the full extent of medical care with the heart of a nurse, and I think that kind of encompasses everything so we can do the whole medical ground. With the heart of a nurse, let them understand that we want to sit down and get to know their families and their children and things that are going on in their life. That gives us hope, a little portion of the heart of a nurse.

How Melanie Started A Christ-Centered Clinic

Carrie: I think that’s really huge because health is so interrelated. Our physical health and our emotional health and our spiritual health are very interrelated and a lot of times, unfortunately, seeking help or treatment, we’re only isolated on one aspect of those when we really need an all-encompassing approach.

Melanie: Right. That’s why where the vision came with my husband and I. We decided in 2010 to start a clinic. We didn’t know what that clinic was exactly going to look like but we did know that we wanted to be Christ-centred healthcare, and therefore, that’s the name Cornerstone. We wanted Christ to be the cornerstone of the practice. The biggest thing for us was to do the physical, emotional, and spiritual health with that, and because that makes up each individual. You’re right, if you take out one portion of that, then usually if you’re great physically, then maybe emotionally or spiritually, you’re not doing so well and that affects us physically. Each one of those is so interrelated. 

I think that’s one of the biggest reasons that patients when they see a Christ-centered or Christian-centered clinic they’re more apt to come in, feel open to share their faith, discuss what’s bothering them, or maybe a struggle that they’re having, so that’s where we have found our biggest benefit we think to most patients.

We have lots of stuff around like we have lots of artwork that’s Christian. We have scriptures that are on the walls and I think one of the biggest things for us is we have a prayer board out on the wall. When patients come out, we have little cards that say prayers or blessings. If they have prayer requests, we don’t put anything, identifying who they are, but we put those on there, and we put them on our wall. As they come in, and we hear that their health issues have been resolved, or they got to buy the house that they didn’t think they were gonna get, then we move it over to the blessing side so that people can see how we’ve transitioned and how prayers are being answered. 

Other people are coming in because they just want to sit down and have you pray with them because they’ve gotten some bad news and maybe they have cancer. They’ve got some kind of diagnosis, and they will literally stop in and just ask if they can go to a room and pray. They’re not here for an appointment and so it kind of gives you that welcoming and inviting part. You’re right, that’s how this is all together physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Melanie’s Chosen Ministry

Carrie: Those are very unique practice concepts. I don’t think that I’ve ever heard of anybody that’s practicing medically in that way. So, that’s pretty unique.

Melanie: We have found that it’s a lot more accepting than most people would. I initially feel that we have believers that come in who are Christian. We have people of other faiths. We have non-believers, but if they’re struggling with something and you ask if you can pray with them, I have yet in 10 years had anybody tell me that they didn’t want me to pray with them. Amazingly, they’re very accepting of that. We don’t push it on them but we just say, “Hey, is that something that you would allow us to do with you?” They are very open. It’s our ministry. This is kind of a ministry. Each person has a ministry field and this is what it is for me. I can actually have my ministry field and my work all in one.

Why having a primary care physician is important?

Carrie: So one of the things that I see in my practice, I will always ask people, when they initially come in, “do you have a primary care physician?” And unfortunately, we’re living in this day and age where many younger people don’t really see the value in primary care. They don’t see the value in going to the doctor for just a general wellness checkup and so they’ll tell me things like “if I get sick, I just go to that little place in the drugstore and they take care of it.” Why do you feel that it’s important for people to have a primary care physician that they go to?

Melanie: That’s a great question. We have a lot of people that do the same thing, especially the younger people who maybe don’t have any chronic illnesses like you’re talking about. We’re thankful that the urgent cares are open on the weekends and after hours, but what we would hope is that someone would call their health care home. We want to be the home of the person so that they can go somewhere else if we’re not available. 

Ultimately, the importance of primary care would be to begin to build a relationship with the patients and then if there are changes that come along the way, whether it’s maybe something that you see, and then something physically you see or in the lab, you can watch trends, and you can start seeing those changes, but that’s overtime. It’s not something that you would normally know if you went in to get a sinus infection and then the next time you had a urinary tract infection. Well, nobody’s really keeping up with all the other aspects of your life. So that relationship would be one of the biggest things.  

The second thing would be trust. If you go to see somebody on a regular basis, you build that trust with them, and then they’re more apt to open up and tell you maybe some internal struggles that they’re having, or “hey, this is kind of embarrassing” or “I don’t really want to tell you about it,” but then they will feel that they trust you enough and know that it’s in confidence that they will tell you things that they won’t get a chance to tell somebody that’s in an urgent care. Something that is brought up with screenings, we see a lot of people who don’t get theirs once a year.  

Annual Screening Is Necessary

Annual screening and those screenings are so important because you can catch things really early, and so that you can take care of them and treat them before they become a more serious and more difficult-to-treat problem. Screenings are super important whether it’s wellness exams for just your overall annual physical, whether it’s a pap smear or mammograms. We try to do all of the screenings to keep people up to date on those. If you’re going and you’re not having that continuity of care, nobody’s keeping up to when your last mammogram was or when your last physical exam. It’s super important to have that relationship so that that can be developed along the way, and then there are ultimately better outcomes for the patient when you do that.

Ruling Out Anxiety and Other Health Conditions

Carrie: That absolutely makes sense to me that someone can see your whole health history across time and start to notice patterns maybe before you do or before a one-stop-shop would. Sometimes people come in, and they may feel intense physical symptoms, and you may rule out medical causes and it looks like it’s anxiety. Can you talk with me a little bit about that process? How do you know or differentiate if this person who’s maybe presenting with difficulty breathing or rapid heart rate? How do you know if that’s anxiety or not?

Melanie: Most people who struggle with anxiety know that some of the common symptoms would be things like a headache, or rapid heart rate like you mentioned, palpitations, difficulty sleeping, their mind is racing. They might have a lot of GI issues, diarrhea. Amazingly, that anxiety can cause symptoms and multiple body systems. Other things to rule out can be done through blood work, EKGs. You have to figure out if it is the anxiety that’s causing the physical symptoms, or if [it’s] something physically making them have anxious feelings. 

For us, if you rule out efficiencies such as vitamins like B12, B6, and iron, those deficiencies can cause people to have anxious feelings. If they have a hormone imbalance and that hormone could be the thyroid. Hyperthyroidism where your thyroid is in your neck, and it controls a lot of different parts of your body but one of those is how rapid your heart can go. If you have hyperthyroidism, you are in overdrive and so you have a lot of thyroids which increases your heart rate. If somebody comes in and they’re having no symptoms, and you do a simple blood test, you can find out if that’s the cause. You treat their hyperthyroidism, and then their anxious feelings all go away. Anemia is another one. If someone is either losing blood or maybe not making enough blood, so the red blood cell counts are low. They’ll have a rapid heart rate, they’re short of breath, which is very similar to what people experience with anxiety. If you rule that out as a cause and find out why they are anemic, give them some iron, build their stores back up. Amazingly, they can get rid of some of those symptoms. 

Some people actually have underlying heart issues where their heart will race or they’ll have skipped beats. That can be from electrolyte imbalances, like magnesium and sodium, and potassium or it could be an underlying heart issue. Again, once you take care of that, it will help with the anxiousness.

A lot of people drink too much caffeine. They’ll have caffeine in the morning, and then they’ll have some monster drinks. All of those caffeine or any other drug or alcohol abuse that they might have can cause withdrawal even from similar symptoms. 

Trust and building that relationship with a patient will let you ask questions like, “Do you struggle with taking too much pain medication?” or “Do you struggle with some of these things?” Obviously, you wouldn’t have that opportunity in urgent care.

Sleep deprivation, if somebody has sleep apnea, for instance, they don’t even know it, and they’re not sleeping well at all over time. When they’re sleep-deprived, anxious feelings, inability to think clearly, all of those occur. Simple things can rule out the physical and then you can determine if the anxiety is really the underlying cause, or if it’s something else.

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Sleep Apnea

Carrie: I’m glad that you brought up sleep and sleep apnea because I have had several clients that went through the sleep study process [and] found out they had sleep apnea. As they started to wear the mask at night and get that treatment, their mental health has improved dramatically, not to say that all of their anxiety or depression has gone away, but they feel so much better physically, which helps them feel better emotionally. A lot of times that goes undiagnosed for a while, right?

Melanie: It does and not everybody falls into the typical category of what you would expect somebody with sleep apnea to have. A lot of times they always say if your neck is greater than 17 inches, like if a man’s dress shirt is above that, then you might be apt to have sleep apnea. A lot of people wake up and they are just as sleepy when they wake up in the morning as they were before they went to bed. That can give some people some idea. Those who have partners or married, they’re the ones who can say “I witnessed them stop breathing, and they’re having issues.” 

Sleep deprivation and sleep apnea can lead to things like those we talked about other hormones. That can be lower testosterone, specifically, and estrogen. So if somebody has sleep apnea and they have the symptoms of low testosterone, they can feel anxiety, depression, things of that nature. If you take care of their sleep apnea, amazingly, a lot of other things fall into normal, and then they can rule out what’s left.

How Important Is Sleep To The Body and Mind?

Carrie: I’m curious about what you think about this issue related to sleep is that we also are living in a society where people seem to think that sleep is optional like I can sleep six hours a night, and then down an energy drink in the morning, and then have maybe a cup of coffee in the afternoon, and I’m good to go, everything’s fine. What are we really missing out on medically and physically when we’re missing sleep?

Melanie: When you have very short spurts of sleep, or you’re using things such as caffeine to keep you awake, and then some people will use alcohol to get them to sleep, those things start to mess with your circadian rhythm. Your sleep cycle gets off completely. What happens with that is when people are using caffeine or other things, once that sleep cycle gets off, you have to go through a withdrawal period of those in order to get things to cycle back into normal. 

You’ll see some people who may need five or six hours of sleep, other people do not function well without seven or eight, if not more, so when you wake up in the morning, you can’t think clearly. You feel like you can’t even recall a name. You can’t think of what you did yesterday and all of those are symptoms of not having enough sleep in a long time. 

Sleep is really important. That’s the time your body has a chance to restore itself, heal up and reprocess, and put memories in place. It’s amazing what your brain does during that time of sleep, and it needs to have it adequately each night for you to feel that way.

Carrie: There’s definitely a connection between trauma and sleep disruption. That inability of the brain to process that information at night can really cause more problems during the day is something that I’ve seen from the mental health side.

More Patients Are Coming Out About Mental Health Conditions

Carrie: So do you see quite a few patients in your practice that present with anxiety? Is that something that you see on a regular basis?

Melanie: Yeah, we see it every day. I think one thing that surprises people is that probably 60 to 70% of patients that see us on a daily basis are coming in with some type of anxiety, depression, a combination of that. It is just amazing how many people and how prevalent it is, and even our young people. I think there’s a lot of pressure for young people to get into colleges. I think it’s starting out a lot younger now. I treat 12 and above, so I don’t see a lot of really young patients. In adolescence, it’s just that they’re all competing to get into a certain college, and they’re trying to study for certain tests. There’s so much competition, and that I think is part of that source. We’ve seen that starting in young people and then we have everything from it could just be life circumstances. It could be that during this COVID. 

We have noticed a remarkable number of people who are having the mental health aspect of it now not as much physical. We have not treated anybody so far with COVID but during this pandemic, we are seeing it escalate. People who have never been on medications before or starting them or those who are already on something, we’re having to increase it just to help them cope through this, but it is more prevalent. I think now it’s exciting that the stigma is not there anymore. We openly talk about mental health issues with patients every day, because it’s not that stereotype where we feel like we can’t tell anybody what’s going on. So we do try to make that something that we bring up in conversation, “Do you struggle with anxiety?” or “Do you struggle with depression?” and that opens the doors for people to discuss that with us. It’s a daily thing for us.

Presenting Different Treament Options To Patients With Mental Health Conditions

Carrie: I think that’s a great thing because a lot of times the medical professionals can be a gatekeeper to people seeking out counseling or mental health treatment because like you said, they do have a relationship with you, but maybe they’re concerned about going to a counselor and you can talk with them about it, that it could really benefit them and work alongside the medication that they’re taking to help them see even more improvements.

Melanie: Right. I think a lot of people end up either they get themselves shamed into not taking medication. They get shamed by friends or family, or even within themselves. They feel nervous about taking medications because they’ve been told “you need to pray harder and your faith is not strong enough.”

I think that’s very difficult for the patients when they come in here because they already are dealing with the guilt of having to come and ask for help. We try to make it as easy as possible and just present all of the options that they have and let them choose what’s best. Just making the decision to go on medication or to get counseling, admitting that they have an issue with anxiety is a huge thing for them but once they make that and commit to it, it’s amazing how much benefit they get from all of these, whether it’s medication counseling, it doesn’t matter. There’s a huge benefit with all of those together. Some people are open to moving past that and getting that help, which is what we love to see. We love to help them.

Explaining Medications To Patients

Carrie: Right. Because this is an argument I hear, a lot of people will say, “I’m concerned about getting on medication because I don’t want to become addicted or dependent on something” or “I don’t want to have to be on this medication for the rest of my life.” What do you say to someone with that type of argument?

Melanie: That’s one of the things that we discuss with patients when we start those medications because what we found is when patients start them, it doesn’t necessarily have to be lifelong. We tell them it all depends. It could be their life experiences. They could genetically be predisposed to have some of these mental health issues because of family genetics, life experiences, and so they may need to be on something long-term. They may have realized that they’ve been struggling with this since they went to kindergarten and so they are probably looking a little more long-term. 

The majority of the people that we started on may just be situational. It may just be that they have just lost a loved one or were recently divorced, and so they’ll take medication for six months to a year and try to see how they are doing through counseling, journaling, and all the lifestyle modifications and then come off of them. 

I think the other thing too is a lot of people still have that thought that the medications are going to somehow change their personality, that they’re gonna withdraw from people or people are gonna know that they’re on something. Amazingly, the medications are so mild that they just take away the symptoms. It actually gets rid of all the cloudiness or the things that maybe were suppressing their personality. It actually removes all that. That’s the old so-and-so that I knew before. They started to see those personality traits that they had, but they hadn’t seen those in a long time. So it’s not necessarily lifelong. Some people need to spend two or three years but a lot of times we can just use them to help them transition through some circumstances and then come off the medication.

Carrie: I actually did that in my own life. When I went through a divorce, I got on antidepressants for six months. I was in counseling during that period as well and I followed up and talked with my counselor and talked to my doctor about coming off the medication, and they were both in agreement that it was time and then I was feeling more hopeful and better and functioning better in my life. That was a huge help for me for those six months to have that because it made it so that I could continue to work and could continue to function and be a responsible adult.

Melanie: It is amazing like you said, there are so many different types of medications now that we aren’t just stuck with a certain class. So we as primary care providers, will start somebody on something and take care of them. If it ever escalates and needs further combinations of medications that we in primary care are not as comfortable in prescribing, that’s when we’ll send them to a psychiatrist or someone else who can put together medications that we do not feel comfortable putting together. The majority of the people, we can treat in primary care, just like with any other disease process.

That’s one of the things I would say, a lot of people feel that mental health medications aren’t as important. I think that’s why they try to tell people not to get started on because think about diabetes, that’s a chemical imbalance. Think about hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism, it’s a hormone issue and chemical imbalance and we would not look at those people and say “just keep praying.” We wouldn’t tell them and shame them into not getting help. We would never tell them that, “Hey, if you pray hard enough, your blood sugar is going to go down from 500 to 200.” 

We would treat them and I think we need to understand that and most people are on board with this and use this as another chemical imbalance. That’s why I feel like the stigma is gone and we just need to talk about this openly because so many people struggle with it. There are options. It would be different if we had nothing to offer, but there are too many things that we can do to help them.

Carrie: Right. I agree. I like that you brought up that there are different classes and different types of medication that people can be on because they may start on a particular medication and it just doesn’t work as well for them. People’s body chemistries are a little bit different and they may have to try a different medication or increase or adjust the dosage in some way in order to feel better.

Melanie: That’s exactly right. A lot of the times we get that information from counselors, like maybe a patient goes to see a counselor first and they’re the ones that say, “you know what, I think that this person would really do well with starting a medication” and that’s I think confirmation to the patient as well that they have two different people like you said, you got your counselor, and then you’re with primary care and now together, you’re gonna see them in your office. You can tell if you can think clearly, and you can see some improvement and benefits from the medication, or we can say from our end “okay, you’ve had a lot of weight gain, it looks like you are still really struggling, and you’re crying a lot”, and so together as a team, and this is, again, one of those team approaches where we just all need to work together. If there’s a side effect, speak about it. Tell us because there’s a lot of options, and we can change it up and make it work best for both.

Healthy Lifestyle Can Help Improve Mental Health

Carrie: Right. Awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about how lifestyle changes can impact us in a positive way, our physical health, and our mental health.

Melanie: That’s a great one. Because a lot of times people may not have given as much thought to maybe their diet and exercise and we asked them about that a lot. A lot of people don’t realize how that can actually impact mental health as much. If you think about diet, when they used to say,  “what goes in is what comes out,” but to be honest with you, there’s so many foods and so many different diet plans and stuff that people were on. Not all of them are best when it comes to nutrition. I would say, definitely read through and find out which diet plan is best for you whether it’s just losing weight, or is it just eating more healthy anti-inflammatory foods, meaning things like reducing your gluten, reducing your dairy, and reducing your sugar that is probably the three biggest things and those are the best tasting things usually. 

It’s hard to get people to realize that but if you just reduce those gluten, sugar, and dairy in your diet, amazingly, people feel more energetic. Their joint aches and pains, everything that can be inflamed, it amazingly helps that and so that is one huge dietary thing. If I can impress on anybody, it is to try to use that kind of diet. Don’t go strictly keto, and don’t go strictly whatever. I’m just saying, just do a balanced diet with a reduction in those three things. 

I think people would feel better overall, along with exercise. It’s hard. People are struggling with time. They can’t find enough time between family and work and other outside responsibilities, taking kids to their different activities.  I think part of that would be to find 15 or 30 minutes. It doesn’t take a lot. You can actually find videos that do 10 minutes of high impact in the morning or in the evening. I think each one of us could find 10, 15, 30 minutes a day but the goal is somewhere around 150 minutes a week. So if you can pick out 45 minutes, three to four days a week, or just 30 minutes, five days a week, and find out what you love. Just get up and move. It doesn’t matter. Just do something like gardening, mowing the grass lawns, that sort of stuff, walking the track and then along with this, as well as getting out there and having support. Get out with your friends and do something that you enjoy and get that accountability because it’s so much easier to do stuff with other people. Plus you can talk to them and solve all your problems while you’re walking and you’re doing your healthy stuff as well. Those are just some of the things that in addition to medications and counseling and things that would be helpful for mental health.

Carrie: Absolutely. Before the pandemic started, I was very involved in group fitness and that was just a lot of fun to get together with some other ladies and do a dance workout or a boxing workout and it’s just fun and it’s helpful. It keeps you going to have somebody else there with you exercising. I think it keeps you committed to it. 

I know that there have been studies done where they’ve actually compared people who were on antidepressants and people who exercise and people who did both. A lot of times the people that fared the best did both. But the people that had the exercise, sometimes they did as well as the people that were on antidepressants, so that’s pretty incredible too.

Melanie’s Story of Hope

As we’re getting to the end, I think this has been very helpful information that you’ve shared with us. I like to ask every guest to share a story of hope, which is maybe a time that you received hope from God or another person. 

Melanie: Mine probably doesn’t come from a specific person. I would just say that God has given each one of us certain gifts and talents that we’re supposed to use to bring others to Him and to further His kingdom and to glorify Him. I think if we find something that we’re passionate about and that we love, and we keep God first and focus on the perspective of putting Him as a priority. He will be steadfast and He will be the one that gets us through and makes us feel fulfilled. 

Back in 2010 just opening up this clinic, it was stepping out on a limb and it was stepping out on faith. There were times when there wasn’t a single patient when we first opened. There may be one patient in an eight-hour day. There could be two. There were times when there were financial difficulties, “when are we going to stay open?” or “are we just going to sell out to a corporate or just slow down?” 

There are lots of things along the way but continuously, God will put people in place or the patient would come in. It’s like “let me pray for you” and it was amazing how it became almost like a community. It was over and over. God was just like, “just be steadfast, continue on this path, even though you can’t see what’s going on, and then rely on me.” 

Now during this pandemic, here we are moved out of our old place where we rented. We built a building and during this COVID, when everybody else is furloughing people, we’re hiring and growing and the Lord says like, “just be patient, just continue and be patient.” 

I think that would be just the sign of hope for anybody that’s trying to think of something that they’re passionate about but they’re afraid to maybe step out. 

I would say just step out in faith, and just continue to pray about it. If it feels like it’s not gonna work out, just continue to be in prayer, and have others pray for you and amazingly, it’ll work out or you’ll find out what you need to do next. 

Carrie: God has a way definitely of coming through right when we need Him and that’s awesome. It’s an encouraging testimony. I appreciate you sharing all of this helpful information and taking your time to be on the show. I hope that this podcast really encourages people that if they don’t have a positive relationship with a primary care provider, they can have that and that they can find somebody that they can connect with and trust and have as their health home.

Melanie: Thank you so much and like I said, I agree with you. I just want people to reach out and ask for help and not go through this alone. 

Carrie: Absolutely. I enjoyed this interview.

I hope you found the information helpful. When we look at a symptom that our body is experiencing such as anxiety, it’s important to evaluate what is the message of the symptoms we’re experiencing. What is the meaning to it? Sometimes this may mean that we’re having physical issues such as a malfunctioning thyroid. It could mean that our body is responding in response to past trauma that we haven’t processed. Anxiety could be the result of constantly living in the future and worrying instead of learning and focusing on being in the moment of what’s actually here right now. 

Anxiety being such a broad symptom, I just really encourage you to look at what is that symptom or what is your body in a way trying to communicate to you.

You may need some medical help or some counseling help to help you figure some of that out and tease it out and that’s okay too. There shouldn’t be absolutely any shame in getting what you need. It doesn’t matter if that need is physical or emotional. 

I hope that this episode prompts you to think about how you can take better care of yourself too. 

Until we meet again. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram, or always at hopeforanxietyandocd.com. 

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