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Sexual Obsession or Lust Scrupulosity Wants to Know with Steve and Carrie

132. Sexual Obsession or Lust? Scrupulosity Wants to Know with Steve and Carrie

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

In this week’s episode, Carrie brings back her favorite co-host, her husband Steve to discuss the difference between sexual obsession and lust in the context of scrupulosity, offering practical, faith-based strategies for managing these thoughts.

  • The distinction between sexual obsession and lust within the context of OCD and scrupulosity.
  • The different ways men and women process visual stimuli and attraction.
  • Practical strategies for men to avoid falling into patterns of lust.
  • The importance of recognizing and addressing unrealistic expectations regarding sin and temptation in the journey of sanctification.
  • How to differentiate between genuine conviction from the Holy Spirit and compulsive confession driven by OCD.

Explore Related Episode:

118. How Do I know if this Thought is an OCD Obsession? with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Transcript:

Episode 133, I am bringing back my favorite co-host, my husband, Steve, because we are talking about an important topic that affects a lot of men and not that it doesn’t affect women, but we wanted him here for the male perspective. So I appreciate him being willing to do this episode with me We’re talking about is it sexual obsession or lust and your scrupulosity wants to know

Hello, and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ-follower wife mother, and Licensed professional counselor who helps Christians struggling with OCD get to a deeper level of healing. When I couldn’t find resources for my clients with OCD, God called me to bring this podcast to you with practical tools for developing greater peace.

We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you. So let’s dive right into today’s episode.

If you haven’t heard, we are running a freedom from mental compulsions challenge on August the 5th at noon central time. You can sign up at www. hopeforanxietyandocd.com/challenge. We’re going to be giving away some cool stuff like free coaching with Carrie, and maybe some coffee gift cards thrown in there. You’re not going to want to miss it, so I will see you there.

Carrie: Steve, welcome back.

Steve: Thank you. It’s good to be back.

Carrie: You and I talked a while ago. This episode was really born out of a conversation where I started working with more men dealing with OCD and I came to you and I said one day. Please explain to me this struggle, this battle that men have with lust, just in general. That just really led into a really great conversation. I wish I had a recorder right there and we could have recorded it. But do you remember anything that you said just about how difficult it is like in society for men dealing with lust?

Steve: Word for word, no, I don’t remember. But I do remember the conversation. I agree, men definitely struggle more so with that, it seems because they are visual thinkers. Trying to remember more of the words that we had said, and I just don’t.

Carrie: When I actually came to you and I said, I need you to explain the struggle to me, you said, you’re not gonna get it, was actually the first thing that you said. I just thought that that was really profound. Just talking about how men and women’s brains work differently. Women can see an attractive guy and it’s like, “Oh, he’s cute” or “he’s hot,” and move on versus we’re not necessarily just going to jump into fantasizing about sleeping with somebody or going down that route.

Steve: I can’t say this because I’m not a woman, but I think women tend to think more so on that’s somebody I could have a future with or think a lot of women probably when they look at a man, they might not even be thinking for themselves and maybe simply thinking.

I bet he’d make somebody a good spouse. I bet I got a girlfriend that would just be a good guy for her. I bet. And this woman is probably only seeing this guy shopping in Publix or something hasn’t even spoken to him, he could be terrible, but just by looking at him, he looks nice, he’s probably a nice guy, right?

There’s an innocence there, whereas the guy, he doesn’t give a rip sometimes, I don’t think. Maybe some guys do. I shouldn’t speak for all, but he’s looking and thinking, she’s pretty. Then it goes to, if I were single, da da da da da, or, she’s, man, when I was younger I would, you know, whatever. And that’s never a good way to start a thought. You should just run right there and be done with it. I think that’s a big difference between men and women, not all.

Carrie: Right, and so you’re inundated with it all the time, like, in our culture. They say sex sells, it’s on commercials and billboards. And I had one client tell me that Instagram is basically soft porn. I know that you were trying to, like, follow volleyball at one point and had this.

Steve: That was a horrible idea. I was like, I can’t even see the ball going over the net cause they keep zooming in on who’s playing. so I just stopped. I deleted that. I didn’t want to look at it. I still have Instagram up, but I don’t use it. I mean, I should delete that, but just the same, it was awful.

Carrie: Yes and I know specifically that app, I’ve been told by other people, it targets younger men, like, even if they were just to get on there and depend on their age, it’s, it’s going to show them images that they’re going to want to look at and click on and things like that.

There’s kind of two different pathways in terms of a lot of the men that I’m working with. Some are actually addicted to pornography, and I’m very interested in that overlap between pornography addiction and OCD. I think there’s something to that, the way the brain works, and kind of just getting stuck on things.

That’s not necessarily what we’re talking about today as much. We might touch on it here and there. But those men are saying like, “Okay, I do have this struggle, but I’m working through it. I am Seeking godly accountability or I’m in some type of support group network that’s helping me work through the pornography addiction.”

A lot of times, it’s not something we’re working on directly together But they may talk about it what I really wanted to focus on today is that sometimes men with OCD are so concerned about whether or not they have lusted just by Looking at a woman That then they will go into doing mental compulsions, like, for example, they’re gonna immediately confess that as a sin, like, Oh, I don’t know if I lusted or not, so I better go ahead and just confess it anyway.

This can lead somebody down a loop. They may even just avoid interacting with other women in their life, or I can’t go to the grocery store because then I might see a woman and I might lust and things would be awful. Now it goes from that to OCD is now telling me that I’m going to leave my wife and it’s going to have these horrible consequences because I ran into a 20 something at Walmart, for example.

I wanted for you to give this male perspective on, I know it may be hard to know sometimes, but like, how do you know if “Hey, I just saw someone. She looked attractive. She had nice curves versus it’s going down like that last path.” What do you do?

Steve: Well, and I’ve told you this before. I heard a long time ago that the first look is there’s a person in front of me. It happens to be a woman. She has long hair, whatever. What’s a descriptive look? That’s it. It’s when you keep looking. That’s the problem. When it grows, when you begin to think more intimately of what could or couldn’t happen, and it could start probably innocently, like, Oh man, I bet she’d be fun on a date.

Then it goes from there, and that, I mean, that’s not the worst thing you could think of, but boy, it can really get you down the wrong path, I bet. I think it’s easy to get trapped one way or the other. I don’t know the OCD side so much, but I know on the pornography side, or the thinking lustful thoughts, it would be so easy just to keep going down that rabbit trail.

It just keeps growing. I think God gives you an out all the time, like the little voice, like, “Hey, stop it,” or the phone rings or something. But we don’t stop it. We keep going.

Carrie: I guess your recommendation would be for guys to like look away then. Like if you really think that you’re starting to get into that.

Steve: Stop looking at your Instagram account if that’s the problem. You’re going to make up every excuse to stop, I bet. Just do it. For us. For a lot of the guys that I know, we’ve gotten accountability partners. Whether we had the problem or not, one guy told me, he said, Steve, we’re men. That’s just the way our brains work. We get to stop it. Now, I don’t want to say that because if God made us in the perfect image, I really don’t think he made us, our first words be “Ooh la la.” But, not to be funny, but to be funny, to make the point. I think that you have to be careful. And so, holding one another accountable, I mean, it’s not easy.

Carrie: But what you’re saying is like, lust basically takes a second glance that may not take long, but it does take a little bit of time. So if you’re finding yourself avoiding everybody or just feeling like you’re having a hard time functioning, even Interacting with maybe other women at work or interacting with women at church because you’re afraid like, oh, I might lust after that person.

What happens is a lot of times the fear that we fear we then create, right? So then you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh, am I thinking about it? Oh, maybe I am. Well, you know, well, I can’t do that. That’s bad.” And it just creates this mental spiral and you get sucked further down into that OCD. So being able to really recognize what’s actually happening in the present is what we try to teach people.

I also think at the same time, too, that if this is a common struggle, it’s unreasonable to think that you’re just never gonna struggle with it ever again, like, especially if this has been an issue in your past, like, say, there’s a guy that’s come out of pornography addiction or come out of sexual addiction to think that person is never going to lust again seems unrealistic. Sometimes people with OCD will set themselves up with unrealistic expectations. We have to be able to, just like any other sin, we have to be able to deal with that in our life in a healthy way.

Steve: Yes. I think it’s on the addiction end of it. It’s like anything else. You don’t set yourself up to fall back into that. Could it happen? Yes. absolutely. But when you’re not setting yourself up. When you are like, “Oh, I’m going to look at this webcam today. It’s got girls on the beach playing volleyball,” but, you know, to go back to the volleyball thing, but, “Eh, it’s no big deal.” Then before you know it, you’re right back into it, I bet. So, I think you have to really, like, “I don’t need to do that.”

I’m not trying to be guilty here of anything, but, I think I’m going to avoid that today. On the OCD side, I don’t understand that as well as you do, obviously, but I really feel bad for somebody who has that fear. All he’s doing is not wanting to lust, the thing he’s not doing to begin with.

Carrie: Right.

Steve: But the fear of it is telling him otherwise, I suppose. I feel bad for that person. That’s tough.

Carrie: If you have lusted, if you have gone too far, making sure that you’re getting right with God is important. Making sure that you’re confessing your sins and restoring that relationship with God.

I think sometimes we perceive God, get so frustrated with us because We confess some of the same things, maybe that we have the same struggles over and over, but that is how we are becoming more and more like Christ is going through that sanctification process. We have to take that seriously. And at the same time, not feel like, Oh, I just keep running myself into the ground and keep making the same mistakes. You’re still loved even if you’re struggling.

Steve: Yes. This is a little different, but on the forgiving note, I am studying right now in the Bible where Jesus tells Peter, “You’re going to deny me.” He just calls him out flat out. “You’re going to deny me not once, not twice, but three times before the rooster crows.” I guess in the AM hours. Sure enough, he does. And yet, God took that. Peter realized, “Boy, I really messed up”. He felt shame. He didn’t feel worthy. I think of us with our sins. We don’t feel worthy. I can’t break this. I said I wouldn’t do it, and I did it just like Peter did. God uses him. He starts out those churches. Amazing. He is a great encourager to others. So, I think God can flip that script for you, just like he did for Peter.

Carrie: Right.

Steve: You’ve got to make the change.

Carrie: Absolutely, and I would encourage people that if you have been through something similarly like this, that if God gives you an opportunity to share your testimony, to encourage others, maybe who are having similar struggles, to do that.

It’s hard for us to admit things that have happened in our past or things that we’ve done, but God can really use those in a powerful way to impact other people. I would encourage people to think through what type of person OCD is telling them they’re going to become if they don’t obsess about not lusting because we know that OCD attacks people’s character.

Sometimes someone may believe, “Oh, I’m a perverted person because I’m struggling with this. Oh, I’m just disgusting.” Like I said before, there may be this imagined scenario. I’m going to run into some lady at the coffee shop and then run off with her and leave my wife and my kids and just ruin my entire life. It just doesn’t work. It becomes this whole rumination spiral that involves a lot of confessing, maybe reassurance seeking, confessing to your spouse, maybe, “Oh, I lusted after someone today,” and that can then cause some relationship rift.

In ICBT, we’d really encourage people to look at like, what is, we call the feared self. What is that feared self that you’re trying to run from? There are definitely ways to address that and get back to who you really are, the real self, which as Christians, is the amazing integration of like, we know who we are. The Lord tells us who we are. We’re called, we’re chosen, we’re loved, we are forgiven, we are free in Christ.

Just so many great promises and so many identity verses really in the Bible. I don’t know if we were to tease all of those out. And that’s how OCD sometimes gets people roped in or stuck into doing the same things over and over again.

What would you say to somebody who really struggles to see themselves as Christ sees them?

Steve: I would say, talk to people. Talk to someone who is a Good mentor for you, or just a friend who’s going to be honest with you though and truthful. And I think that you’ll find if they’re steering you in the right direction and giving you good godly advice, you’re going to find out that God does have something great for you.

They’re going to name your great qualities that you do have. Now God’s already maybe used you. You may not even realize it, but that he will continue to. And that honestly. You can’t do anything on your own. You need the strength of others. You need the strength of God.

Carrie: Yes, that’s good. If we’re questioning whether or not we have sinned, then certainly like we have verses in the Bible and the Psalms that talk about, you know, inviting God to search our hearts. Search me and know me, see if there be any wicked way and lead me into the way of everlasting. we really can rest and trust the conviction of the Holy Spirit as a Christian. The conviction is actually a really good thing because it means that we’re connected with God and that God is revealing to us things that we need to bring to him, that we need to give our best.

If we’re over-confessing things, it’s almost like saying I’m sorry to someone too many times. You have people who walk around and they’re like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and after a little while, you don’t know what they’re apologizing for. You have no idea what they’re apologizing for. It’s almost like they’re apologizing for existing.

I would encourage you if you’re confessing all the time, you find it like it’s a compulsion that you’re engaging in all the time, to be intentional about pausing once or twice a day, maybe in the morning, at night, and be intentional about your confessional time with God, that’ll get you out of that constant confession.

If you find yourself urging the urge to confess something to maybe shift that prayer into a thankfulness prayer or down a different route so that you can get out of that. And like we said before, too, if it is less than you’re struggling with, if it’s pornography, if you are fantasizing about somebody that you’re not married to, or you’re watching videos you shouldn’t be, you’re on, your Instagram is just full of soft porn, then you need some godly male accountability in your life. There’s Celebrate Recovery, there are other things that you can do to get the help that you need.

Steve: I think too, you were talking about your prayer life, praying to God and you’re saying you’re sorry and It doesn’t seem like the sincerity is there even, or like it’s more fear than realistic. I think there’s definitely something to be said about just sit in peace. Just sit in his presence, don’t say another word. Just sit in peace. See how long you can do that. And I’m not saying meditate solely. I mean meditate on his word. That’s great. That’s good. Just sit in peace. And then when you’re done When time’s up, if you’ve sat there for 5, 10, 20 minutes, whatever it is, what has he told you? What’s the clear thing in your mind? And there’s probably a good answer for you, a good direction, a good conversation with God in a sense, but we don’t listen enough. I mean, we come up and just, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Our daughter, for instance, does that all the time. She comes up to me. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry, Daddy.” “What have you done? You haven’t done anything. You’re okay. You just think you’ve made me upset. I’m not upset with you.” I think God’s the same way with us. You need to just sit and listen and think about what you’re saying. Think about the problem. Think it through.

Carrie: Yes.

Steve: But that’s hard.

Carrie: We have the front porch life now. We have a small front porch with two rocking chairs on it. Love it. Two wicker rocking chairs that you worked really hard to put together. I think about something like that, like you and I could sit out on the front porch, for example, and we might not say anything to each other for a while.

You just relax and kind of sit there and we don’t always need words all the time. So these are contemplative forms of prayer. We’re going to talk about some of that in a future episode, and I think that that will be awesome. So stay tuned in for that one. If you struggle with obsessive praying.

Steve: That’s good. Those are my favorite times, or at the end of the day, or any time that I can sit on the rocker. I’m such an old man now, and I own it. I own it, and all the neighbors that we’ve met know, I like to sit in my rocker and just sit in a nice, peaceful sway, listen to the birds, and rock. That is my life. And I love it. It’s just, it makes me feel good.

Carrie: Thank you for coming on and sharing your male wisdom. I can always count on you to hop in and be a co-host when needed.

Steve: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. As always, I’ve enjoyed it.

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

Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling.

Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

105. Joy Comes in the Morning: 3rd Year of Marriage

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

In this special episode, Carrie and her husband, Steve, reflect on their three-year marriage journey and the joy of overcoming difficulties. They share insights on the importance of open communication and their experiences as parents to their daughter Faith. They also offer practical tips for maintaining a solid relationship while looking ahead with optimism and gratitude for each day.

Episode Highlights:

  • The significance of finding joy and hope in difficult situations as inspired by Psalm 30:5.
  • The importance of open communication in a marriage, even when addressing challenging topics.
  • How to navigate and adapt to life’s unexpected changes and challenges, such as health issues.
  • The value of adjusting and accepting new norms in life and relationships.
  • Their experiences in parenthood, including insights into their daughter, Faith, and the joys and challenges of raising her.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Episode 105 of Christian Faith and OCD!

In this episode, we dive into our year of challenges and growth, centered around the theme “Joy in the Morning,” inspired by Psalm 30:5. We explore how we’ve navigated trials and found hope and joy through our faith and resilience.

Highlights of This Episode:

  1. Reflecting on Our Journey: Steve and I look back at our dating days, the trials of our first year of marriage, and our growth as a couple. We share how our experiences, including Steve’s diagnosis of spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), have shaped our relationship.
  2. Adapting to New Normals: Steve discusses how he’s adjusted to life with SCA, including his memorable Crazy Hair Day at Vacation Bible School (VBS). Despite the challenges, Steve’s involvement in ministry and our lives has been a source of inspiration and joy.
  3. Mission Trip to Guatemala: Steve shares his incredible experience on a mission trip to Guatemala. Despite the obstacles, he found purpose and connection, highlighting how disabilities don’t have to limit our ability to serve others.
  4. Communication and Growth: We delve into how effective communication has been crucial in our relationship, especially when addressing and resolving issues that arise. Steve and I discuss the importance of understanding and patience in our journey together.
  5. Parenting and Faith: With our daughter, Faith, turning 18 months old, we reflect on the joys and challenges of parenting. We explore how our faith has guided us through these experiences and strengthened our bond.

Listen to this episode to gain insight into how faith, communication, and resilience have guided us through our journey. We hope our story inspires you to find joy in your own challenges and embrace the morning light after the night’s trials.

Keep listening with this related episode!

81. On Becoming Parents: Year Two of Marriage with Steve and Carrie Bock

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 105. I am joined here once again by my lovely husband, Steve.

______________

Carrie: Hi Steve.

Steve: Hey. How are you?

Carrie: Welcome. We’ve been doing this as a tradition almost every year. It started before we got married. We did an episode about our dating experiences, and then, in the first year of marriage, I was pregnant. I remember crying a lot in that episode because we didn’t know what was happening to your eyes other than we knew you had lost vision. It was super scary. Thinking about all the uncertainties there, then you had just been diagnosed with neurological conditions, spinocerebellar ataxia.

We sat down and thought about what we wanted to discuss for our third year of marriage now that we’ve been married for almost three years. This scripture had come to mind: Psalm 30 verse 5 says, Weeping may stay overnight, but there is joy in the morning. And so, we thought about titling this episode Joy in the Morning. Do you want to tell our audience a little bit about why we chose that?

Steve: Yes, because I think going through trials, as everyone does, our trials that we have dealt with, there have been tears, and there have been difficult moments, but the joy that comes out of that, being able to look back and say, oh my goodness, I’ve made it through this. And it gives others hope that they may be going through the same thing. That’s the beauty of going through something difficult: when you make it to the other side, to a better place at least, you can share that with someone and help them. We have been through a lot; it has been difficult, but we’ve done it with a smile. As best as we can anyway, so, that’s kind of, it’s a good verse.

Carrie: Yes. Some of the highlights of this year of you adjusting to the SCA diagnosis and realizing that you can still be involved in ministry with which you’d like to be involved. And I wish we had a picture of your crazy hair day at VBS.

Steve: That was so much fun. They’d asked me to, at church, well, they didn’t ask me, but I signed up for VBS, which was a challenge at the time because I’d yet to serve in any way by myself amidst all the chaos of all those wonderful kids who were having fun. And here I am, with my walker, trying to hurry through and make it work but having a blast. They had different themes for each day, whether it be sports, and one of those days was crazy hair day, so I said, why not? So, each night, I participated, but that was probably the best one for me because, as a bald man, I could wear a wig with blue hair. I think it was. Was it blue?

Carrie: No, it was all white.

Steve: All right, there we go.

Carrie: But you had a blue headband.

Steve: That’s what it was. I knew something must have been blue, but A, there’s my memory for you, and B, there’s my eyesight for you. But yes, it was all white hair. I remember that now. And it was crazy. It was out there. And I got so many comments on that. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

Carrie: Right. Yes, and then this summer, you took a mission trip to Guatemala, which was the first time that you had been really since COVID and us getting married, having a baby, all these different things happened.

Steve: That was one of those experiences I did not know if I would get to continue with. But the team I went with was so gracious and so giving, so compassionate that they knew where my heart was. They knew they wanted me to go on that team with them and invited me, which was humbling. I never had to ask for help, whether I thought I needed it or not, and more times than not, I did need help.

They were right there, by my side, to grab a bag and help me up and down the stairs, which is funny because I took a walker with me. A smaller walker that would be easier to pack and carry and all that stuff takes up less space. I never got to use that thing, except in the airport once, because flat ground didn’t exist where we were.

There was no way of using that: there were so many stairs and different things. Anyway, the team was so good though to help me. I made sure I got from point A to point B and got to teach with people, and the people in Guatemala were so gracious with their time and compassionate, too, so it was a blessing.

Carrie: Great. And I think you got some positive feedback from people there that your story was just inspirational and that you had sacrificed to go to another country because you could have easily said, I’ve done mission trips for years; my time is over, and I have this disability. It’s time for me to kick back and rest.

Steve: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I’ll never forget this. Pastor Mark, who led the group, commented when we discussed whether I should go or not that we have people with club feet and different things that come to see us. Why not have someone else come to see them with a problem, whatever, a disability? I hadn’t thought about it that way. I just thought, how will I be able to do this? That’s all I was focused on. That changed the way that I thought about it. When I got there, the people were just so, I don’t know, I think it was a different way of looking at things for them too. Someone who has a disability came to speak with them. It was a cool thing in the end. It was very humbling, though.

Carrie: This year has been about adjusting and accepting our new normal. I guess you could call it our new life situation, and it comes with many changes and challenges in relationships and daily life. What’s been your experience of that?

Steve: I had to adjust and change to, you can sit on a couch or sit in the bed and cry and give in, or you can tweak how you do things. You can change or adjust to the new normal. And that’s what I’ve done, and I still do what I like. I don’t get to go outside as often, and I don’t get to go hiking. However, there are ways that I can do things.

I’m very happy with the life that I’m living, getting to do those things. I still get to meet with my friends occasionally and can’t just get in the car and drive there. But I still get to go, so there are no complaints. It’s still a blessing to play with our child and do all the fun things that I think are important.

Carrie: Faith just turned 18 months old, and she’s a little firecracker sometimes. But it’s been a journey, lots of learning, lots of adjustment, lots of growing as parents. And I think all these things that we’re talking about related to your marriage are, like, these are things that can either bring you closer together or create conflict and drive you farther apart.

Steve: Definitely. I think that for us, you always have to look forward. You have to pick your battles. I constantly tell myself that, not so much with you, but with Faith. Just with our daughter, trying to figure out, okay, she’s upset. Why is she upset? Or, she is, like most children, she gets her mind set on something.

I want to carry that blanket around. And drag it while we walk outside. I want to drag it through the dirt and never want to let it go. She reminds me of Linus with those blankets, but sometimes, you must decide how important it is for me to take this blanket away from her. Or to take whatever this toy or whatever it is.

Is it a deal breaker if she hangs on to it? Am I training her incorrectly if I let her hang on to that? Or, there’s a lot of decision-making there, but sometimes I’ve learned it’s okay to let her hang on for just a minute longer. And then, whenever she forgets about it, take it away and hide it; she’ll never think of it, and you won’t have to deal with the fuss. I don’t know if that always works, but picking your battles is very important.

Carrie: I think that’s true in a relational sense. And what you were talking about before, essentially honoring your limitations, is helpful for all our listeners, just listening to your body. There are some days that you can do more than others and some days you’re very fatigued and have to take it easy, and all you may get done is one load of laundry, and that’s it.

That’s a hard thing to accept. And just in terms of the mental health realm, it’s like, okay, some days I may be prepared to socially interact in a certain way with others, and some days I just may not be able to do that and respecting and honoring, like, my body and where I’m at today.

Steve: You have to decide sometimes if you’re going through fatigue, are you not feeling well, and you need rest, or are you just depressed and pushing away people? Because that’s a big difference. There are days, I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like doing the people thing, but it’s just me being whatever, me being me, or wanting to avoid people. And then there are other days I want to be around people, but my body is too tired, and I need to rest. Those are decisions that you have to think about, I think, for me, in the sense of, is it me, or is my body just really needing the rest? And so more times than not, for me, it’s my body really needs the rest, and so I have to force myself to lay down. I’m not a very good stop-and-rest person. I’m getting better at it, but not by choice, because I have to.

Carrie: Usually, other people tell you to sit down rather than you decide to sit down.

Steve: And anyone who knows me knows I was always a person that just wanted to go. Not that I couldn’t stop, but I didn’t like to sit down. I like to fix things. If something is on my mind, I want to finish it. I’m not a procrastinator, but when you have something like I have, you have to sit down. It’s not procrastinating; it’s resting until you can.

Carrie: I wanted to bring something up, and we can always cut this out if you don’t want us to talk about this, but without going into a lot of details, we had an, like, a communication issue come up in our marriage this year where we were both unhappy with like one aspect of our life. Do you know what I’m talking about? And neither one of us said anything because we’re both conflict-avoiders. And then finally, I got up the courage, and I said, “Hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of unhappy in this one area, and then it was surprising for you to say, yeah, me too.” We were able to, like, do something about it. And so, I just wanted to share with our listeners that sometimes it’s hard to bring up those difficult topics in your marriage and talk about hard things that make you feel uncomfortable or your concern that’s going to make your spouse feel uncomfortable or that they might be mad at you.

Steve: That was one of those things when you said it. When you said something to me, I thought, yes, I agree and it wasn’t a bad thing.

Carrie: Right.

Steve: It wasn’t like she was acting this way, and I’m annoyed. No, it wasn’t that. It was literally a communication issue. It’s like mentally sitting at that four-way stop, and neither one of us is going. But we’re both annoyed with the other because we think it’s their turn or we think it’s something not right here, go when you said something “Oh, good, good, yes” and we dealt with it, and everything went well.

Sometimes I think I tend to be the go-with-the-flow type of personality, and something will bother me. I’m like, it’s not that big of a deal. Just suck it up. And really, you don’t want to gripe every time something comes up. And I’ve been that guy, too. I’ll be honest, but you also don’t want to just, no big deal, and keep pushing it away, and pushing it away, and then one day, you’re going to blow up. It’s not pretty, so sometimes it’s better to talk, and the struggle is, how do you bring it up? How do you say it? That always comes up because when I say things, I tend to be a very sarcastic person. I’ve really had to work on that, and nowhere near success in that department. I’ve worked on my sarcasm because I like to be funny and sarcastic, but it doesn’t work when communicating in a profound moment. It’s always taken as a negative, even though I may not mean it that way. For instance, if you say, Steve, I really need to go to the store or the library, and my response is, oh, goody, I can’t wait. I may think nothing of that. I meant simply as humor but when you say that enough, it bleeds out as this jerk doesn’t even want to go, and he doesn’t have the guts to say, I don’t really want to go carry. Is that okay? Instead, it’s, Oh, goody. The sarcasm doesn’t help me and I’ve had to work on that honest moment.

Carrie: Well, I think coming to a place of when you say this, I hear this. In your marriage relationship, men and women communicate things differently, and there are times when you’ll say something, and I’m like, I heard this, and then you’ll say, no, that’s not at all what I said.

Steve: Yes, and I am so caught off guard in those moments but again, it may be how I’m saying it, orr the pattern of how I’ve said it before. I think that really you could set a tone.

Carrie: Yes, it also taps into what I’m learning, like your past relational baggage because it’s like, okay, I hear him talking like my dad or my ex or something like that, and then I’m absorbing it through that lens. I don’t even realize that I’m doing it at that point until maybe later, and I have moments of self-reflection. I think that piece comes up in marriage a lot.

Steve: I think that’s why I’ve always heard the first two years of marriage are the most difficult. I think it could go beyond that. I don’t know, but I think the reason is that you’re getting through communication and likes, dislikes, and all of that stuff. You’re learning about your other half. I hope we can be one of those cute older couples that everybody wants to go to. Oh my gosh, you’re going to make me throw up, or they say they’re so cute. The old couple that’s kissing and holding hands. Anyway, so you hope when you’re older, you don’t even have to say anything. You know what the other person would think.

Carrie: In this process of growing together, I always tell clients that you’re either growing with someone or growing apart from them because you might be growing at different levels. I’ve seen that happen in friendships; I’ve noticed that it occurs to various people in romantic relationships. So always, like, keeping those lines of communication open, being self-aware and knowing what you’re contributing to the relationship, what might be detrimental to your relationship, and how to work on those things. And I think if we can look at it as we were talking about our communication, It’s not always bad, like sometimes we need some enrichment in certain areas. There’s not a problem yet, or there’s not a crisis. If you can catch it before something becomes a problem, or becomes a crisis, or before we feel like we don’t talk about that at all, if you can address it on the front end, it’s a lot easier than waiting for things to, like you said, build up and build up, and then somebody blows up, or somebody withdraws or walks away.

Steve: Absolutely. I think, too, that sometimes we get angry in our head, and that builds up, and to the point where, and you say this about faith all the time, she doesn’t even know why she’s angry. Something triggered you, and then your state, not you, but in general, and I’ve had this to me, and I stop, and I think, why in the world am I even angry? I don’t even know why. And it may simply be I don’t feel well, and I have to stop and say, okay, I cannot take that out on anyone. That is not fair. I just need to shush, not say anything, let it go. Try to remember those techniques of how to calm down or how to relax. And then there were other times when I did have something that bothered me, but I didn’t want to say anything. And I held it in, and then, kaboom, it’s not pretty, all over something really silly.

Carrie: I think timing is vital in terms of bringing up topics. In your marriage, it’s hard to know. You can’t necessarily bring something up when there’s all that heat of the emotion on both sides. You have to take a break, like pause. Okay, let’s talk about this. Let’s go to our separate spaces, reflect on it, pray about it, and then come back together and talk about what in the world just happened with that last interaction. I don’t even know, but we went from a happy couple to all of a sudden. We’re at each other’s throats or something.

Steve: That would be those moments when I have to say, okay, Steve, calm down. Why are you upset or okay? Maybe your reasoning for being upset is justifiable, but there are two of us in this marriage, so what can I do? What can I say to try to calm this down? There’s no hero, no winner, no individual here. How do we do this together? How do we work? That’s hard because we always want to win; we always want to be right. As humans, you always want to be in the right, and we never stop and think; it seems most of us don’t; maybe I’m wrong here. Perhaps I need to change the approach. Maybe I’m not wrong, but my path is wrong, or how I’m saying it. And that’s where it’s difficult because the focus is on you to change. And that’s hard. We always want the other person to change.

Carrie: Right, and I think working with our daughter and trying to help her when she has these completely age-appropriate meltdowns because she’s been teething or refused her nap that day or her stomach hurts, and we don’t even know about it. You know, all these things come up, and at the moment, it seems like it’s, you know, I want the banana over the strawberries; really, it has nothing to do with that. It’s all these other factors and knowing that we can have the opportunity to bring the calm into the situation and like get down on her level and talk to her and like, okay, you know, I can see you’re really upset right now.

Steve: Well, and that isn’t easy in general. And it’s easy for a couple, I think, with children. They have problems because they have a child or children, in our case, a child, who may have been screaming for 20 minutes at the top of their lungs. You’re just at wit’s end to please make it go away, just stop, not the child, the screaming, and then the communication between the two of you can be rather snappy. It’s not personal, just give me the sippy cup, take the child here, do this, and it’s nothing personal, it’s just, oh my gosh, have you checked your diaper lately? There’s always something. And what are those moments you look at later and go, I’m sorry, I may have been a little snappy. It’s hard to focus on how to calm her down, and you’re going off on your spouse—just a tricky thing.

Carrie: I think, too, there’s that element where sometimes we’ll be trying to have a conversation in the car, and then all of a sudden in the backseat is because she can’t talk fully.

Steve: She wants to join in.

Carrie: Yes,

Steve: Those are the moments I kind of smile myself and then begin to insert her name every fourth word, maybe asking you when we go to the store, are we going to buy this, that, or the other, and then I insert her name, which makes no sense in real-time, but when talking with her, she hears her name and is happy to be a part of the conversation, I’m hoping.

Carrie: Despite all the difficult things that have happened this year, in terms of our themes of joy coming in the morning, we will talk about where you see things going.

Steve: Yes, I think there are so many opportunities that have come up already, be it with church or missions or whatever; there’s just so much to look forward to. And I know that there will be, as the song said, mama said, there’d be days like this. There are going to be those days. But I look forward to good things as well, and I think that some elegant stuff is coming up the pike, so I’m excited about that; I’m excited that some of my doctor visits, my annual checkups are already behind me, got my eyes taken care of, and no significant change there, and that’s a blessing. Some of my neurological visits and all that are coming up have already passed. They’ve already passed for a while. So those are good things. I look forward to those. Most people don’t like the doctor’s visits, but I like them because I get the news, and I’m done with it for a while. Get it behind me. I’m looking forward to what’s coming up the pike for sure.

Carrie: When you have this generative disease, stability is a blessing; staying the same and not deteriorating further is always a positive. So, we appreciate that whenever we hear that. Just in general, your health numbers are doing well.

Steve: Those are doing really well. On top of that, knowing that I am doing as well as I am is a blessing in the sense that we didn’t know when we first got this diagnosis, we didn’t know. It almost gave me the feeling like golly, I could die tomorrow. But now I’ve heard some individuals have the same thing. Maybe we don’t necessarily know which type, yes, thank you. Which type that I have? But we know that I have it. And the lifespan, again, I thought, golly, I could die tomorrow. Who couldn’t die tomorrow? I hear about people who have been living to be 80 years old. And I hear about, because of what they’ve discovered through studies for Parkinson’s disease, they’ve been able to say, hey, that’ll work for SCA as well. And now I’m not on this medication, but for certain types of SCA, they can take this medication, which slows it down a little bit, they think. I don’t have all the details on that, but I know that it’s exciting that they found something. Those types of things are exciting to me. That’s definitely something to consider a joy, and I can get up and spend time with my family, enjoy the days I have now, and make the very best of each day. That’s exciting.

Carrie: We got involved in an SCA support group and have just learned so much through the other individuals, things that have worked for them, been helpful, not helpful, and then been able even to take some of that information like to your eye appointment and say, hey, This was recommended to us, or we found out this doesn’t work as well with SCA. That’s been a blessing, I think, for me and just this whole podcast journey and our relationship. I want to impact more people positively for the kingdom, just continuing to spread messages of hope. That people can get the help that they need out there. I know that you have stepped in and been a big support in promoting the podcast, even sometimes talking to people or supporting me in going to the AACC conference when that happened.

There were some long days there, and you had more duties and responsibilities at home or with Faith. I appreciate everything that you’ve done to help support this podcast. It’s been a wild ride, and it’s hard to believe that it’s been about three years. Just all the things that God has done indoors that he’s opened and to be able to launch the course recently, and I hope this next year to work on a book I’m thinking it’s going to be for Christians with anxiety some focus on OCD. They want to do some writing about anxiety, So I’m not exactly sure what direction or bent I’m going to go with that. I want to provide some practical tools to help and support people experiencing that. Still, I’m just excited to see what the Lord is going to do, and we are hopeful to be able to move in 2024 possibly. Praise the Lord. So, we are looking for better accessible housing than we have right now. Not that our accommodation is terrible as far as you’re getting around. It’s just not going to serve us in the future. And we know that. And so, we are trying to get something that’s more one level or flatter yard or something. That’s going to be more,

Steve: Flat is the keyword there, at least as far as the yard goes and fewer steps. Also, I’d like to say that I’m proud of you for how much effort and time and all of that you’ve put into the podcast and your work and what you do, and knowing you as I do, of course, I’m going to brag on you, but you put a lot of heart into what you do. And I think it shows, I definitely think it shows.

It’s exciting that I remember when you hadn’t even started the podcast. And now you’re on number 105 or something crazy like that? That’s wonderful, and there are days, I’ll be honest, I listen and think I will need a dictionary. I don’t know what that means because I’m not in that world. And then I’ll listen and say, “Oh, well, that’s really interesting. I never knew that.” I tell people if I’m talking to someone at the doctor’s office or wherever, and they say I have a problem with anxiety. I have perfect help for you here. I always try to remind them that if they look through the episodes, one may stand out to them. It’s not focused on one little thing, and even when it’s not something you’re necessarily interested in, as you listen, you find, wow, that’s got a lot for me to take away. I had no clue that that also pertained to me or that I would get that much out of it. So, it’s not boring. I’ll give it that. It’s very informative, and I enjoy that—so good job.

Carrie: Well, thank you. I want all of our listeners to know that I made some great connections at the AACC conference. So that means more interesting guests to come next year. And kind of now that we’ve had over a hundred episodes, we’re able to just branch down different rabbit holes.

There are still more things to talk about. It’s kind of surprising that there are always new topics and ways that we can apply what we’re learning to help with anxiety and OCD. Everyone, definitely stay tuned. We have some free resources on our website. I’d love to tell you about it, too. You can go to Hopeforanxietyandocd.com. We have our download from our hundredth episode on A Hundred Ways to Help You Manage Anxiety. We have an OCD resource: five things every Christian with OCD needs to know. We’ve got a few different things going on there and would love to have you check those resources out. Thank you, everyone, so much for listening today.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

88. Relationship OCD and Anxiety with Samara Lane

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 88. Relationship OCD and Anxiety with Samara Lane

On today’s episode, Samara Lane, a relationship and ROCD coach, joins me.

Samara shares her healing journey through relationship OCD. We also talk about how to overcome anxiety and OCD in relationships.

How does OCD manifest in relationships?

How to distinguish OCD from real feelings?

What can cause OCD to develop in relationships?

Some helpful ways to help you cope with anxiety and OCD in your relationship. 

www.samaralane.com

More Episodes on OCD:

87. OCD FAQ

26. A Personal OCD Story of Experiencing God’s Presence and Grace with Peyton Garland

13. Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

8. One Therapist’s Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 88. I didn’t plan it this way, but it just so happens that this episode is coming out around Valentine’s Day, and it’s on anxiety and relationship OCD, so that seemed to gel together well. I have on the show with me today Samara Lane, who is a relationship anxiety and ROCD coach.

Been wanting to, for a little while, have this episode about relationship OCD because it’s a very hot topic. First of all, a lot of people don’t even know that it exists. Am I correct?

Samara: That is very correct, including the people who start experiencing all the symptoms and wondering what’s wrong with them.

Carrie: Right. There’s this very stereotypical view of OCD that it’s somebody like Monk that you see on TV concerned about germs and concerned with order and cleanliness of things, but that’s really only one subtype of OCD. There are several different subtypes, so it’s often that people will believe, “Hey, I have anxiety,” and certainly, anxiety in OCD is very related.

But often, I have people come to me and say, “Hey, I have this anxiety.” They start telling their story, and then I realize, do you know that you’re actually having obsessions? These types of thoughts and, do you know that what you’re doing, intense Googling on the internet that’s actually a compulsion or seeking reassurance from your partner all the time is a compulsion, and they don’t realize that until somebody kind of puts a name and a label to things and it helps so much being able to know kind of how to move forward with that.

Samara’s Personal Relationship Story

You have your own personal relationship story about what led you to become an anxiety and relationship OCD coach. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Samara: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was my own journey through Helen back, really, because I’ve never experienced suffering as much as I have with really intense spikes of OCD.

I’m sure all of your listeners can relate to that. For me, it comes on differently for everyone. It came on the worst; the biggest initial spike that made me realize something was going on here was right before and during my partner’s proposal. I could tell, I just knew that he was about to propose, and I had this wave of anxiety.

We were at this beautiful, lovely dinner he’d planned for us. Many years ago, I remember being flooded with thoughts like, oh no, I have to decide the rest of my life right now, and what if this is the wrong choice? Or what if I’m settling? There are some things that aren’t perfect in the relationship—so much pressure.

I felt I was hyperventilating, going to have a panic attack, while he pulled out the ring and popped the question, and I said yes at the moment. And I think also because the anxiety was so intense now in hindsight, the OCD thoughts were so intense, I felt really guilty and like I was faking it when I said yes because so many doubts were coming up.

So I felt like I was lying and just saying what he wanted to hear, but I was like, yes, and then I was like, I need to go home and sit down. It really our engagement; our proposal ended with both of us sitting on the kitchen floor, and I was crying and doing all the compulsions without realizing it, seeking reassurance, confessing everything, telling him all of my nitpicking, intrusive thoughts, all of my doubt.

That, of course, didn’t feel good to him. I don’t recommend doing that. And it wasn’t really the romantic engagement experience that either of us had planned on, and up until this point, we’d been together for over two years and lived together. And the relationship was great, right? We wanted to be together, but it felt such; it just whew flooded me with most people.

Yes, it was an unconscious compulsion. I just started Googling. I was like, what the heck is wrong with? Fortunately, at least the one good thing that can come from our initial Googling is finding help and education and realizing that we’re not crazy; we’re not alone. This is a thing. Relationship anxiety and relationship OCD are a thing.

I’m so grateful that relationship OCD is now even a term and is even recognized by so many more people as a subtype because for me, this was 12 or more years ago, I don’t even remember, 13 years ago, maybe now, I didn’t see anything on relationship OCD back then. It was one person was talking about relationship anxiety and had a blog, and that was it.

But yeah, that really started my journey, and I cut a long story short, I felt like I tried everything under the sun to feel better. I read books, and I saw therapy and counseling. I took courses and really was through trial and error because I didn’t have a set system that was proven that I knew would work. And frankly, I didn’t know what resources were available to me, even if there were any back then.

So, just doing my best, I pieced together a system that really freed me. It takes time, of course, and it takes a lot of practice cause we’ve been having these OCD tendencies for so long. But that’s the practice I now teach my clients. I certainly wish that I had known then what I know now, right? It would’ve saved me years of suffering because it was years; it was many years that I suffered without really knowing how to handle it. And now it’s night and day different, of course, but it was really hard.

How Does OCD Show Up in Relationships?

Carrie: I’m curious: before this manifested in terms of your relationship with your fiance, did you have other concerns about other relationships? Like close friends, teachers, or family members?

Samara: Yeah, like anxiety with other types of relationships? Great question, and one that I’ve done a lot of reflection on, and in hindsight, absolutely. I never thought of it this way because I think it stayed mild or moderate enough that I just kind of coped and worked, tried to cope, if that makes sense. But yeah, I look back and see now there have always been tendencies to, like, oh, my best friend gets me really angry.

Well, maybe I don’t want to be her friend anymore. Running away and avoiding the things that are triggering, upsetting, or make me feel bad. And I also did this in many romantic relationships with past partners.

Carrie: Avoidance is definitely a big piece of anxiety and OCD that people have to work through. And it’s hard because the natural tendency when we feel discomfort is to say, “Hey, let me pull away from that.” But it only feeds and heightens anxiety and OCD more to avoid things. I call it the avoidance cycle. It’s like the avoidance confirms that you really do have something to be afraid of versus facing that fear and walking into it, even though you feel uncomfortable, helps you know, I really can do this.

I can handle this situation that I don’t feel I can handle. I’m curious as far as when you’re talking with somebody because it’s normal. Everyone who’s been in a romantic relationship knows that maybe if you’re looking at getting married, it’s normal to have what people cold feet before the wedding and have some trepidation.

It is a big commitment, and we should take that seriously. Now, how does somebody know? Is it at a level where it’s problematic versus this is just kind of normal relationship concerns that everybody goes through?

Samara: Such a good question and one that we really struggle with when we’re trying to discern what’s the anxiety and what are legitimate issues or challenges that we’re having.

I think you’re absolutely correct when making a big life choice, especially for those of us who are prone to OCD tendencies or anxiety. of course we tend to overthink, but even anyone without OCD or anxiety is going to possibly, potentially have a cold feet, like you said there. And all relationships have challenges.

My partner and I have had to work a lot on communication and how to navigate a relationship and a partnership. How do we navigate conflict? So those are really common challenges that aren’t red flags. They’re just part of being in a relationship, and it tends to happen when there’s anxiety triggers us.

It spikes something within us. It could be thoughts without sensations. It could be sensations without thoughts. It could be both together—sensations, meaning facing heart, panic, fear, and things like that. Our body is different in the sense of how we respond to it. It’s not just like, oh yeah, we had an argument earlier.

I think we’ll revisit that soon and maybe continue talking about it and working through it together. The average non-OCD mind might think it’s more common if we’re in the ROCD to go immediately into, oh, it’s a bad sign. Maybe I don’t love them anymore, or maybe we’ll never make it work.

Maybe I’ve made a terrible mistake. Maybe I’ve already wasted the best years of my life trying to be with the wrong person. Maybe we need to break up, even though I don’t want to. There’s a part of me that really doesn’t want to, even though there’s also a part of me that feels that the only answer is to break up.

And so it’s this back and forth, this inner war within ourselves. I hate to use the word red flag because I think that alone can be overused, misconstrued, and highly triggering. The things we would want to take really seriously are untreated addiction, any kind of true abuse, ongoing, repeated dishonesty or cheating or something like that, of course, and anyone would want to take those seriously. But those aren’t the things that relationship anxiety glows onto the minutiae. Another thing I can share about this real quick is that there are two sides to the relationship anxiety to the ROCD coin. One side is the I’m not enough, and that’s how it’s expressed. It’s a little more obvious, in a way, easier to tell. This is a “me” thing. This is about my relationship with myself.

For those who have ever experienced it, my partner hasn’t texted me back. Do they like me? Do they love me? Something changed. For example, on the other side of the relationship, the anxiety coin expresses itself as What if my partner’s not enough? Or what if my relationship isn’t enough? What if this life choice isn’t enough?

And at the root of it, it still actually is an us thing, and it’s very clever how the ROCD is expressing itself, but that’s when we have intrusive thoughts like, am I settling? Is there someone I’d be a better match with? Am I really attracted to them? Do I really love them? I don’t feel the way I thought I should feel courageous enough to keep going within and practicing our mindfulness and our awareness; we’ll see underneath this is really, again, the same, oftentimes the same core issue. Am I enough? Is my choice enough? Am I safe? Is there danger? I must protect myself.

How People with OCD View Conflict in Relationships

Carrie: The need for safety, getting down to the root of the issue, and feeling unsafe. Not necessarily because your relationship is unsafe like you talked about; we’re not talking about abusive and unsafe relationships. We’re talking about safe relationships, but our perception due to intrusive thoughts can get that shaken up and make it feel unsafe when it’s okay. For example, conflict, all relationships have conflict, but if you have this high level of anxiety and intrusive thoughts, conflict can feel 10 times more threatening than it does to the average person. So you have to learn how to deal with those things and how to navigate them.

How long have you been together with your husband now?

Samara: It’s starting to be easy to lose count. We became a couple 13 years ago, almost 12 and a half years ago. We’ve been married for over eight of those years now.

Carrie: Was it a big learning curve for him to learn kind of how to navigate some of these issues?

Samara: Oh yes, absolutely. And bless him. Not everyone has his experience, but he was so confident in us and remained so confident and committed to us that even if I was in the early days of it, seeking reassurance or doubts.

“I don’t know about this. Are you sure he’d? Oh, I’m positive. We’re great. We’re going to do wonderful.” And of course, then my OCD just, instead of feeling grateful, it was just, well, he’s too confident. I don’t really trust his judgment. But he has been such really forgiving.

There have been times when what I expressed was really hurtful and really hurt him deeply and emotionally, and he has just stayed committed. I’ve done a beautiful job of just trying not to take it personally, acknowledging this is a thing, and being honest with me about his feelings and how it affects him, right?

I definitely learned early on not to divulge all the things anymore.

Carrie: I’m curious about your process, and I also have some thoughts about this. How do you feel this develops, or where does it come from, the bent towards relationship OCD specifically and anxiety?

Samara: Totally. Yes. I would say I have a predisposition to OCD. Not all of my clients, but I know for me, as an example, when I was little, in hindsight, I didn’t know what was going on, but I was ruminating and , really worried about moral scrupulosity if I’m saying that term correctly, something wrong, oh, I have to confess to my mom right away, and then I’d get immediate relief from it.

So, I see those tendencies in me from a young age. So, just in general, it can be a predisposition to OCD. In general, oftentimes people have had other OCD themes, and then it switches to ROCD or vice versa, or maybe they just always had social anxiety, and now suddenly it’s expressing as a more severe form of OCD or more noticeable form, other things that it can come from.

So again, just like biology, how are we wired right? Do we have anxiety in our history? Do we have any predisposition to this? I also often see that there is some wounding, some emotional wounding, that could be trauma, big or small, even things that we don’t necessarily think of as trauma. Sometimes, they’re very clear-cut and dry, but it could be when you got teased on the school bus, and that is still this unhealed part of our shadow self, right?

Our inner child really needs that love, compassion, and healing. It can also be wounds in our adulthood if our last relationship or one of our prior relationships ended badly or painfully. That can certainly affect things: attachment styles, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganized, and any kind of insecure attachment.

We sometimes see it as a factor. Also, just general life stressors, right? If we have a predisposition to OCD, then if we’re in college and it’s really stressful, or we’re moving or switching careers. Life stressors can bring up this feeling of being unsafe, unsettled, or in limbo. And then, often, it just wants to glom onto something outside of ourselves.

Oh, it’s the relationship. I know it is. It must be the relationship. I’ve had a moment of clarity. So there’s a lot of different things. And then, even when we are struggling with our self-esteem, self-trust, or self-worth, I have seen that play a role in it. It could be one, it could be a variety of those things.

Carrie: I’m glad that you brought up a few different things there in terms of working with many people with OCD and a trauma overlap connection. Yes, there is that propensity towards OCD, but then there are also these wounding childhood experiences. Sometimes it’s not as dramatic as abuse, or sometimes it is.

Sometimes, it’s not as big as being physically or emotionally abused or something like that. Sometimes, it’s more what you didn’t get. It’s more the lack of somewhat of emotional neglect or the lack of engagement by caregivers or others when you need it the most. And we’re looking at not just what people received but what they did not receive in relationships.

And there can be a fear of vulnerability of getting too close to somebody. And then, if I have to find a way, my brain’s trying to protect me and find a way that I won’t get hurt again. So I’ve gotta kind of push back against that and, oh, there must be something wrong or must be something nitpicky about this relationship that needs to be fixed or worked on. It also can be a perfectionistic tendency because we think, oh, well, this happened, or they did this small thing to hurt us, and they may hurt us in a really big way. Or maybe it means they’re not faithful in the future because of this one little thing they did to hurt my feelings. That type of thing kind of blows up. So, I think we have to conceptualize that anxiety in any form is trying to keep us safe from hurt. And that’s especially true in the relationship OCD aspect and past romantic relationships, whether it was a divorce. Whether it was a bad breakup or a toxic, narcissistic relationship you got out of. Those deep wounds can last for much longer than we would like them to.

That needs some healing and needs some attention. We can’t just gloss over that and say, well, now I’m with Joe over here, and he’s nothing like Bob. He’s not hurting me, or he’s not abusing me. You can tell your brain that, but your body may still be going haywire. This is unsafe. I know from our conversations before you said I’m not a Christian, but I have a lot of coaching clients who are Christian.

What have you seen in Christian clients, specifically those struggling with this relationship? Anxiety, OCD?

Samara: It can feel; the number one that comes to mind is this fear and this feeling or belief that this is God saying that they’re not the right person. And how do you know? Sometimes, there can also be a lot of guilt.

I seem to have lots of clients that find me, not all, but some of them may be exploring. They’re doing their religion, they’re practicing their faith maybe a little differently than how they were raised. They can also feel this guilt and shame, and is this relationship bad? Or if they have premarital sex.

Then, they can really feel a lot of guilt and shame around that. It can really fuel a lot of the OCD if that’s not something that they believe is right. But the number one that I see is, how do I discern between is this God telling me this isn’t my person, versus this is just anxiety.

Carrie: That’s a really huge one that I run into and hear a lot is people say, is this God, or is this OCD, or is it the devil?

What is this that’s going on in my mind? How do you help people discern some of that?

Samara: I think each of us, it’s really coming to our own discernment and understanding and what resonates with us, what my clients have found most helpful, and what I personally believe is God doesn’t communicate through OCD.

Carrie: That’s not God.

Samara: It is different. And the more we learn about the OCD mind, as I’m sure so many amazing listeners here learn from you all the time and how it works and the signs that we’re having intrusive thoughts, signs that we’re doing compulsions and feeding the cycle, the more easily it’s we’re able to identify this is the pattern, this is the thing, and that’s not God.

I believe that God communicates. God can communicate in a firm way sometimes, but not through riddling us with crippling fear. And I believe that God is a really loving being and forces there to meet us with compassion as we go through these things, not to beat ourselves up. That’s really the mind.

Carrie: Absolutely. I like how you put that. I know you mentioned mindfulness a little bit earlier. Is that something that you practiced as part of your process?

Samara: Absolutely. Yes. It’s such a critical part of it. The way that I love to think about it and describe it is when we’re in active OCD thoughts and panic, it’s we have forgotten that there’s just a story playing in our mind.

It might as well be a movie that we’re watching, but we’ve gotten so sucked in and hooked by it that we feel like we’re a character. We think the movie is real, right? It’s like a bad dream. Like, oh no, all these bad things are true or might be happening or might happen in the future, and we forget that we’ve just fallen into this story that’s totally made up.

It’s just a story, and we have the choice and the ability to step back and really look at the thoughts, watch what the mind is doing, observe the judgments that it’s making, observe the sensations and emotions in our bodies and just let the movie play without hooking into it.

Carrie: Almost like you fall down into this Alice Wonderland world, but everything feels super real when you’re in the midst of the OCD thought storm. That’s definitely relatable, I think, to a lot of our listeners who have experienced that. I think this has been very informative for us because a lot of people may be listening to this and realizing I didn’t realize that those were OCD obsessions that I was actually having about my relationship, and now this will be able to help them kind of find a pathway towards healing as I think is really important.

Samara: Absolutely. I mean, I suppose the good news, if there is any, is ROCD is a subtype of OCD like you said, and so we heal it in a lot of ways, just like we would other types of OCD. It can, and I think one of the trickier parts about it is all the societal conditioning that is so perpetuated and prevalent in movies and media, Hollywood and fairytale stories that we grew up with, and social media memes all over the place.

So weeding through the relationship myths and unlearning and debunking those along with, like you said, any trauma or wounding, whether around relationships or anything that’s coming up around this. Usually, it is related to other people. In my opinion, these are what make ROCD one of the most, if not the most, complex OCD subtypes to weed through because we’re also sent all these messages that no doubt mean don’t you really do have to leave. You should leave. I would leave, right?

And that’s a lot to weed through, but it’s a beautiful invitation and doorway to breaking free, recognizing and breaking free from the OCD cycle, and practicing deeper and greater levels of self-trust because no one knows what’s best for you, better than you do.

Carrie: At the end of the podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person since we’re called Hope for Anxiety and OCD.

Samara: I’d be happy to share. I’m sure there are so many that I could, but the one that’s coming to my mind really has to do with my relationship, but not necessarily the ROCD because it happened after I had really come to a level of mastery around the ROCD.

But a while back, my husband was diagnosed with OCD and ADHD. We’re a fun bunch over here sometimes, and he had a really rough mental health year after just a trying time in his life, and his mental health was really struggling. I noticed the toll it was taking on me and our family, and there was a point at which I just felt some hopelessness as a part of me knew.

Of course, we’re going to get through this. Of course, as a resilient human, everything will work out and be okay. But it’s almost it was more of a surrender. I don’t know how to solve this. I’ve tried everything I can. It’s really many ways out of my control. And I wrote a letter to God, and I just journaled and wrote out in present tense words like how I was deciding my life was now, and the ease around it and the joy around it.

Not that it was perfect at all, but there was a lot of connection, and it felt healthy and grounded for me, him, and a kid for everyone. I believe that this wasn’t a coincidence. Literally, two or three weeks later, his prescription had changed. This was a prescription that was really common.

It’s always been known about his psychiatrist already knew about it. And he just got on this prescription that managed it to the extent that it was night and day different. He was then able to, and the tools he used to manage and regulate himself finally worked. I’m not saying medication is for everyone, but I felt my letter had been received and then just kind of forgot I even wrote the letter.

The energy of practicing that surrender and being it’s, I can’t do this alone. I need help. Our family needs help. My husband is in pain and struggling, and just seeing the difference night and day and feeling so much better. It’s been a gift and a blessing.

Carrie: Thank you for sharing that.

Glad that your husband is doing better, too. Well, it was great having you on the show today, sharing your wisdom, and having a dialogue about this. I think it’s an important conversation. And what better time to put it out than around Valentine’s Day?

Samara: Exactly. A triggering time here for many.

Carrie: Yes.

I’m glad we were able to have this episode because relationship OCD doesn’t get talked about enough, and probably more people struggle with it than they actually realize.

Regardless of your relationship status this Valentine’s Day, I want you to know that you are fully and completely loved by God regardless of what you’re struggling with or how you feel about yourself. He’s absolutely crazy in love with you.

As always, thank you so much for listening. If you haven’t received our free download yet, Five Things Every Christian Struggling with OCD Needs to Know, please check it out at hopeforanxietyandocd/free.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum.

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

82. Trauma-Informed Ministry with Suzanne Burns

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 82. Trauma-Informed Ministry with Suzanne Burns

Suzanne Burns, founder and executive director of  Foundation House Ministries and BeCharityWise. Today on the show, she will share with us about creating a trauma-informed ministry. 

  • How Suzanne started her work with mothers in crisis situations
  • What led her to do some more research about trauma-informed
  • How to effectively minister to people
  • Reframing the role of ministry
  • More about BeCharityWise 

BeCharityWise

Foundation House Ministries

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 82. I am your host, Carrie Bock, and if you’re new to our show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. Today on the show, I’ll be talking with Suzanne Burns about creating a trauma-informed ministry.

I feel like this is so important people in the church to understand and know about, and we’ve had other episodes about helping people with anxiety in the church. So I’m excited about this episode as well. Suzanne, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Suzanne: Yes, I am the founder and executive director of a maternity home, residential and non-residential program for mothers in crisis.

We serve women coming out of jail, out of rehab, pregnant, and a. Sometimes they’ve lost custody or are working towards reunification, whether that’s with family members or with the state. And so we’re part of that process towards getting them to a place of being able to build sustainable stability. And out of what we’ve learned through doing that for the last eight years, we’ve also launched a kind of a side to other churches and nonprofits to help them understand how trauma and poverty mindset and addiction affect the people that they serve so that they can serve more effectively as well.

Suzanne’s Journey and Mission to Support Women Coming out of Difficult Situations

Carrie: Awesome. Now, how did you get started in that work in, you know, mothers in crisis pregnancy situations?

Suzanne: Yeah, I was actually a single mom for a number of years, myself.

I had a crisis pregnancy when I was in college, and then, um, got grew up in a very, very Christian home and found myself by the time I was at a junior, at a Christian university, I was smoking, I was drinking, I was experimenting with illegal drugs, and then I ended up pregnant. And we did get married and it was not good a marriage as it wasn’t a dating relationship, which led to divorce when my son was just right at two.

And then several years of single parenting, I met and married my current husband. We’ve been married now almost 20 years, had a second son.  And as I began to kind of rebuild and restabilize, I wanted. Be able to give back to women that were in the same situation that I had once been in. And so I began volunteering at a local pregnancy health center, and I was there for seven years.

I ended up really, really loving it, loving what I did. But we just began seeing more and more women coming through that needed a deeper level of support. They were pregnant and living in their cars. They were afraid of being kicked out by, you know, angry stepdads. They were 24 and didn’t have a g e d kind of floating like a leaf in the wind.

So many of these girls, one particular mom that I recall, she came in one day and she was really frustrated because she had been looking for a job. And so I’m kind of a fixer. So I was asking her, “You know, maybe, are you applying for the wrong kinds of jobs? Are you a poor interviewee? How can I help you fix the problem?”

And she said. “Well, you know, at some point in the interview the baby gets fussy or he needs a diaper change and you know, I’m pretty sure the interview is kind of over at that point.” And of course, my first thought was, “Oh, I’m pretty sure the interview was over when they saw you pushing in the baby stroller.”

But I had been there long enough that I knew that’s never the full picture. So as I began asking more questions, I realized that the reason she was taking her child with her in the first place was because she was living with the baby’s father who was a violent drug dealer and people in and out all day and night.

And so she did not trust him to watch their son even long enough for her to get a job. And I went home that day and told my husband, We have got to do something. It has to be. No one else has stepped up. It has to be us. It took about two and a half years of fundraising and developing, and we opened in 2014 and that conversation was in June of 2011.

Getting Started and Early Challenges

Carrie: Wow. Tell us about, as you started that ministry and were working in it, some of the challenges that you had earlier on that led you to do some more research about trauma information.

Suzanne: Yeah, it was pretty much everything I’ve learned has been because a client came in that we didn’t understand or we didn’t know how to handle, and that is what sent us then to the research.

The Lord is so gracious in giving me a picture and then giving me the education behind it, and then bringing others who need me to know that information. So first it was a poverty mindset, understanding how chronic poverty kind of reshapes. Thinking the worldview of individuals living, especially those living in generational chronic poverty.

Then we started getting some clients coming in who had a history of trauma, but we didn’t understand what that meant at the time because I was used to seeing clients like. One hour every three weeks. You know, living with them is a whole lot different. And so we were getting frustrated and, and we were having a lot of girls come in and go right back out again.

We had one girl come in and she was sick constantly and it was always like an E.R  worthy trip. She would go in to, you know, about every three to four. And we began to like time. We began to say, Okay, well it’s been, you know, this period of time we’re about due. And it was always like bladder infection, urinary tracted infection.

It was always something similar but not exactly the same thing. And it was always validated by the doctors, because of course we were like, well, you know, at some point she’s gotta be faking it. and simultaneously with this, she was also losing jobs because of the time off that she was having to take her cycles was six weeks.

And so we were seeing that about every five weeks she was, you know, getting sick, not able to go to work. Her work isn’t happy. They end up firing her, she goes to the er and then we start the cycle all over again. She ended up that year with 13 different W two. And we were so confused. We were so frustrated cuz she was super, super sweet.

And then we had another girl move into the house who like used unbelievable amounts of toilet paper just by herself. This was way pre-pandemic, way before there was an actual toilet paper black market. But we were just like, how is this disappearing? How can one person be using this much? What is going on?

Understanding Trauma-Informed Approach

And then we had a student intern, a Masters in Social work Intern, doing her their practicum with us, and she had us watch a video by Bessel VanDerKolk, who is the author of The Body, Keeps the Score and instantly pieces fell into place. Immediately, we began to realize that this is the physical outgrowth of the trauma that these women had experienced.

That was the big awakening, eye-opening. We were immediately addicted to absolutely everything, trauma-informed to the point that we began teaching others just because we knew so much. We just saw the vast needs. There’s such an ignorance and such a lack within the church to understand. It was so fascinating and it was also such a relief that, “Oh, that it can be fixed.”

There is reason why her stomach issues were so constant. There is the reason why she was unable to process, to digest the healthy nutritional foods we were giving her. Her body had actually acclimated to Mountain Dew and Cheetos for lunch because that had been for years. So when we’re having salads and you know, fresh fruit and.

That was what was abnormal to her system. So layering for me, layering the poverty mindset with the trauma made it so much easier for us to then deal with women coming in with a past of addiction. Those coming in with a history of mental health because it, to me, it’s just like a layer cake based in the generational chronic poverty thinking that then the trauma is, it is components, you know, it’s either affecting or affected by the client and.

That leads to addiction as a coping mechanism, right? It leads to mental health as an epigenetic response to the trauma. It, it’s all interrelated, but it’s all rooted in their trauma, but also rooted in poverty thinking. Just from learning all of that, we have radically revolutionized how we work with.

And we now boost a 97% success rate of our clients being able to maintain their stability at least a year post-graduation, which to us is a housing, transportation, employment, and childcare.

The ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Study and Its Connection to Chronic Health Conditions

Carrie: Wow. That is really amazing because those are a lot of pieces and a lot of times what we see is people come into programs and they’re doing okay and then they leave the program and they relapse or something happens and you know, they’re back into that cycle again, like you were talking about. We wanna talk a little bit about the ACEs study, and I’ll have to kind of explain this a little bit to people, and then I have a question for you. So many years ago, I think this was actually done maybe in the nineties or early two thousands, Kaiser, the eighties early is when it started.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, so Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare company that’s out west in the US, they said, we really wanna look at these people with chronic health conditions. We weren’t even talking about mental health. They were talking about physical health, things like high blood pressure, and diabetes, and looking at the connection between what they called adverse childhood experiences and these chronic physical health condition.

They had a scale where there’s 10 items on the adverse childhood experience scale. Some of them are things like parental divorce, obviously types of abuse, you know, physical sexual abuse. I think maybe having a parent with an addiction, isn’t that on there? These types of experiences that people had in childhood, and what they found was that okay if you had one or two, there was maybe a little bit more of a risk for you to have a chronic health condition, but once you got four and above, all of a sudden it was like a graph skyrocketed at that point like “Whoa, for these people to have addictions and actually end up with not just addictions, but that was one of the things they were looking at. Like I said, the high blood pressure and cholesterol, and so. and looking at people who have had more adverse childhood experiences may even have a shorter lifespan because of some of these chronic health issues that also arise.

What you had told me when we had talked previously. The average church attender has zero to two adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs are usually and the average range for your ministry is seven to nine, so obviously, that’s a big gap to bridge in people kind of understanding what some of these women have been through like can you talk to us about like the challenges of bridging that gap?

Suzanne: Yeah, exactly. So many of them have this significant trauma history. Someone with an ACEs score of seven to nine means that they have experienced at least one instance of seven to nine of those items on the ACEs study. And just for your audience, they are physical, emotional, sexual abuse, physical or emotional neglect, and then household dysfunction category is a family member with mental illness and incarcerated relative domestic violence, mother treated violently, substance abuse or divorce, but that also can include fatherlessness. What we found was that these women are coming in and they’re carrying this load of trauma.

They’re carrying the past pain, they’re carrying the physical effects of this. They’re carrying the social and emotional and cognitive impairment because of that, you know, many of our moms about 70% did not graduate with a high school diploma or GED because all of this trauma is happening as children.

And so that is significantly affecting them as far as school goes. Then you get labeled a bad kid, and so then you begin adopting those risky health behaviours, whether it’s teen boys that are driving too fast, whether it’s dating the wrong kinds, whether it’s, you know, drugs and alcohol and, and all of these different things that then lead to disease, disability, social problems, you know, in and out of jail, in and out of rehab programs, which can then lead to early death. It can also lead to chronic heart disease, to certain forms of cancer, to COPD and so many different things that we don’t even associate usually at. For an 18 to 22-year-old, the ACEs study does demonstrate.

So we have women coming in from the church who want to volunteer. You know, in this world that have experienced, like me, the ACE questionnaire asks you from birth to age 18 that to answer that I was a zero. All of my ACEs occurred during this one single relationship. And I went from a zero to a seven and then kind of back down again once I began to get my life back together.

Challenges in Ministry and Volunteer Engagement

I have a certain degree of experience, but I cannot relate to the majority of our clients. In the fullness of what they’ve experienced. And so these little volunteers from the churches would want to come in.  I experienced this when I was young, you know, I did that. And so they think that that is enough to balance out the relationship.

It really isn’t because they can’t understand the depth of the brain changes that have occurred. So one of the most important things for us when we’re talking with new prospective volunteers is to really get them to understand what has changed in the brain development of our typical client. They think differently. They respond differently. They have been conditioned to think in these certain ways, and so their behavioral patterns.  It takes a long time to change those. So you’re going to see more rapid outbursts of anger. You’re gonna hear foul language as just as common. You’re going to see and hear things that you’re not going to expect in a typical ministry, and you don’t necessarily have permission to address it.

That’s usually the hardest part because that is hard. They haven’t built trust with our clients. We have, many of our volunteers want to come in and they wanna do bible. Well, many of our girls just flat aren’t interested first of all, and second of all, even if they are interested, they’re not ready for that level.

There’s a great deal of biblical illiteracy, but there’s also a lot of church hurt and church abuse that has to be gotten over before they’re ready for these types of things. And so many times they wanna come in and volunteers from the church want to come in and do these big deep Bible studies with the.

That impacted them, but they’re not a good fit for our clients because maybe they can’t read that well. Maybe they’re not equipped to do the amount of homework that is associated with some of these types of programs. Maybe they’re not ready emotionally for what is going to be unveiled. Maybe they’re not ready as far as just being able to read scripture specifically.

Some of those Old Testament names are really complicated, especially if you accidentally ask one of ’em to read out loud because you’re wanting to draw them in. You’re doing the things that in a typical church environment you want to do, it can backfire. And so we have to be really, really careful to equip our volunteers wisely so that they’re not set up for failure because our mission is not our volunteers.

Our mission is our client. And so our volunteers cannot run off our clients, but there have been several times where our clients run off volunteers.

Carrie: Yeah, I can imagine that. Yeah. If you haven’t been used to that, kind of, that experience of what those people have been through in terms of the emotional reactivity that can happen with PTSD over something that, to you seems very slight, but it was a huge deal exactly for that individual.

It was a huge trigger and I think, one of the things that you’re touching on is a lot of times what the church can be guilty of is in these types of ministries going in and trying to like clean people up, like, “Here, let me help you. Here’s some money, or here’s a job, or here’s some clothes and you know, we’re just gonna fix you all up and everything’s gonna be good.” When really true transformation has to happen from the inside out.

The Importance of Understanding and Patience When Working with Individuals in the Healing Process.

I’m curious in terms of like what you’ve seen regarding that may be in your work with other ministries, kind of how you’ve helped them to like reframe that like their role.

Suzanne: Exactly. A lot of times. Well, so it’s two-fold. One is the focus internally and how you work with clients, and the other one is how you message that to the greater community, to your donor base or to your volunteer pool, or like your occasional volunteer pool.

A lot of times, I’ll use the analogy of a pound, because sometimes if you can change the picture from people to animals, it’s a little bit easier to process. Not that I’m equating our clients with. But sometimes it’s just an easier word picture to process. You find a, you know, a stray dog on the side of the road and he’s dirty and matted and, and filthy and you know, you’ve got all sorts of insects and everything crawling all over him.

He’s just really unhappy, starving. And you pick him up and you take him to the pound, they’re going to do a lot of work. They’re. Be checking him out by a doctor. They’re gonna be cleaning him and, and de fleeing and debugging him. Whatever’s crawling on him, they’re gonna be getting him the nutrition that, that he needs.

That’s a process. It’s not an instantaneous, “Oh, I found a dog on the side of the road and now he’s ready for adoption into a new home”. They have to see what’s his temperament. What kind of personality he has. Does he get along well with other animals? Does he get along with small children?

Before they can put this animal into the adoptable population, they have to do some rehab work. But when we look at people on the side of the road, it’s like we have the expectation that all you need is a shower, a hot meal, and a change of clothes, maybe a haircut. But you ought to be fine now and go get you a job and let you know.

Start paying your own way, and it’s not at all the same. The women that we work with are so broken and they have been holding themselves together for so long that a lot of times our first few months is just giving them space to finally acknowledge their broken. And finally, feel all the feelings that they have been hiding from for so long before we can even begin the process of rehabilitation to get them to the place where they can then learn, then grow, and move forward.

Our motto is rescuing mothers, rebuilding lives and restoring futures. And that is very much the progression that we walk through with these women. Rescuing can take upwards of six. Rebuilding. That’s the point where she’s finally ready to start working and getting the job skills that she needs and figuring out, you know, credit and starting to save money to buy her first vehicle because we, we live in a semi-rural area where there is not public transportation, and so a car is almost always her first goal.

And then getting daycare and getting healthy, getting her into the ob-gyn office and, and checking her out, making sure the baby is doing well. And then as she begins to kind of master some of these things and start looking towards the future. Now we can start thinking about what does rebuilding look like for her.

What does living independently look like for her? And that whole process. Overall, pre-pandemic, we were looking at six months to a year for most. And since that time, it really is more like 18 months to two years, partly because of economic changes and partly because we are seeing a significant increase in the severity of the women that come to us.

And just for a frame of reference, we’re the only maternity home within 150 miles. So we serve 13 counties by design and several others by default. So it’s a really vast population that many, many, many are in this boat, but they are not being served because we are so limited on staff in size.

Carrie: Where are you located at?

Suzanne: Right outside Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Carrie: Okay, great. Tell us about BeCarityWise.

Suzanne: Yeah, that is our training arm. We have online videos and we also do in person, whether live via Zoom or local trainings to help other churches, and nonprofits understand how trauma and poverty mindset and addiction affect the people that they serve so that you can serve more effectively if people are interested in going to becharitywise.com.

I’ve written a short little book called The Accidental Social Worker that helps you get a feel for the why behind some of these things, why poverty mindset is an issue, and why trauma is affecting [hysically. Many times we just assume that, okay, well you’re not in trauma anymore. I’ve rescued you out of that. I’ve got you a safe bed to sleep in. I’ve got new food. You know, that should be enough. But the trauma carries with them because the trauma is not actually the event that happened. It’s the emotions associated with the event that happened, and that can carry through really for a lifetime until these women are able to find healing.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s huge. A lot of overlays between what you are talking about and foster care. You know, this sense of like, okay, so we’ve removed this child from the home where there was addiction and poverty, neglect, and now we’ve put them in the suburbs with this. Nice family and everything’s safe and good, but they’re still responding as though they’re in that abusive, neglected environment. You know that that happens.

Suzanne: Exactly.

Carrie: Quite frequently and a lot of times people, they’re very confused by that. Like, what in the world is going on where? Responding this way? I think that what you’re doing is so important in terms of us being able to effectively minister to people out in the community, like the real world, real life stuff that you’re seeing, and so I appreciate you sharing with us about that.

At the end of every podcast, I like to ask our guests to share a story of hope, which is a time in which you received hope from God or another person.

Suzanne: The one that sparks me is actually what got me out of my first marriage and on this long journey, even though at the time I really didn’t realize it. I was so, I was still in active addiction with my first husband, but I was managing it, You know, he was a musician, which meant he didn’t have to work apparently.

and so I was doing what I could to earn more like I had sold mortgages at this time. I was selling insurance and I had had a really frustrating day and I went to go to my mother-in-law’s to pick up our son, and I was just kind of complaining, you know, these were good little church people as well. And so I was still talking the talk when I was around them, and I just said, You know, it was so frustrating.

I just, I don’t understand why God just won’t bless me. My mother-in-law just very graciously turned around and said, Well, What are you doing that God can bless? And then she just went back to filling my son’s little backpack as we got ready to go home. But in an instant, I was just stripped naked. I was so raw and open and vulnerable.

I finally saw myself through the Lord’s eyes, and that was the day that I had to shift everything. That was November. 2000. And from that point forward, it took several weeks for me to quit smoking. But uh, that was the only thing I was really personally addicted to. But the cigarettes, the alcohol and the drugs just stopped immediately.

My marriage was, was more of a challenge. But by February, my son and I were living independently because I couldn’t stay any longer. The veil had been, And I couldn’t unsee it. And I knew that if I stayed in my first marriage because my first husband was not willing to leave that lifestyle, I knew that I would not be strong enough to stay stable on my own.

It was either with him and clean or without him and clean. And he chose without. And so, that to me is one of the defining conversations of my life. And it was probably 15 seconds long.

Carrie: Yeah. Sometimes all you need is that like kind of one or two sentences and it just sparks something within you.

That was huge, Sounds like a turning point. And change the whole trajectory of your life.

Suzanne: It sure did. Yeah.

Carrie: Wow. And we’ll put links in the show notes to where people can find you and hopefully, some people will kind of take advantage of these trainings for their churches and, and ministry sites.

Suzanne: Yeah, I would love that.

81. On Becoming Parents: Year Two of Marriage with Steve and Carrie Bock

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode. No Comments on 81. On Becoming Parents: Year Two of Marriage with Steve and Carrie Bock

Steve and I wanted to share some personal updates with you as we reached another milestone in our marriage.  

  • How becoming parents changed us and affected our marriage
  • Our child-care setup
  • Staying positive while battling a rare chronic condition
  • Relying on faith and finding blessings amidst life’s challenges

Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope for anxiety and OCD, episode 81. I am your host, Carrie Bock, and I am here with my husband, Steve Bock. Say hello.

Steve: Hello, this is actually our second-anniversary episode. We came on episode 10 to talk about dating. That was right before we got married. We sat on the floor in the closet. Now the recording set-up is a little bit better but still in the closet, we are still in the closet. That’s a dream for the next house is we have a place to put the podcast studio. But until then, here we are.

A Long-Awaited Diagnosis

And we also did episode 50, which was on our first year of marriage. You talking about we had just gotten back from Vanderbilt, discussing, trying to figure out what was going on with your eyes and all of that. All of the tests that they did on you six hours and really didn’t find the results. Now we’re here. We’re gonna be married for two years. Yes. Yeah. And this will come right out shortly after our anniversary. So you finally got a diagnosis as of last week?

Steve: That’s correct. Finally. Yeah. It took a year and a half. I think something like that. After several visits to several places, long story short, we got a diagnosis. Knew that something was wrong, but did not know what, and a diagnosis is good in one sense, because you now know what you’re fighting against and then a little scary in another sense because you know what you’re fighting against.

So yeah. But yes, we got a diagnosis, which is, let’s see, I’ve been practicing on this one, cuz it’s a long, long name. First time I heard it, I went do what and I had to look it up, but the abbreviated version of it would be SCA, which is Spinocerebellar ataxia

Carrie: Good job.

Steve: And for the record, that is the first time I’ve said that correctly without having to look at it first. But yes, I’ve been working on that. I don’t know why that’s so difficult to say, but it is. Yes,

Carrie: Yes it is. You had been referred to a neurologist and then specialty neurologist back up at Vanderbilt and they were the ones to figure out that this actually wasn’t an eye issue. This was a neurological issue affecting your cerebellum. And part of that was you started to have balance issues that got worse progressively. Right. And that was like one indicator that we knew. “Wait a minute, what else is going on here?”

Steve: And the eye issue was secondary.

Carrie: Yeah. And this is a genetic condition that we have no idea about.

Steve: There’s I think three ways that you can get it, but we think that it’s genetic because the other two options, and I can’t even remember what they are off the top of my head, but they don’t match up. Exactly. So it could be one of those, but I don’t think so. Mm-hmm yes. It’s genetic. I don’t know where to look. The family tree was. I don’t know where to go with that because it only goes back so far for me. I can tell you who’s who to a certain point, but I don’t know their health situation at all.

Carrie: And as far as we know, none of them had this.

Steve: No. We had some other things going on. Mm. Yeah. Lou Gehrig’s and Alzheimer’s, but not this.

Carrie: Recognizing that this is a chronic condition, something that they can treat symptoms for, but there is no cure for right. What was it like to get that news?

Steve: Somewhat shocking, somewhat not. Initially, we thought when we just thought it was the eyes we thought it was, if I’m saying this right Leber’s disease because I also had the symptoms for that.

Some but that, I don’t think there’s a cure for that either. And so with thinking about that for some time, when they told me that again, we kind of, weren’t sure about that one and that was kind of a, eh, maybe not, but it mentally prepared me for the concept of having something that’s not curable. Mm-hmm and just because it’s not curable.

That doesn’t mean that I’m going to die tomorrow. There’s no guarantee of how long anyone lives for that matter, but that’s true. Very true. Also when this type of ataxia, there are 40 plus variance of it. So some of those start at childhood, some of those start later in life. Some people live to be somewhat older. There’s no way to know. And until we get further along, we don’t have enough to go on to know exactly which one that I would.

Carrie: Yeah, I think that’s the hardest part about it for me is that there are so many unknowns. They really can’t tell us anything about how this course is going to go. We’ve even heard, you know, Hey, you could plateau and not decline.

Right? We’ve heard some people decline more rapidly than others and one hopeful. That was made. Was that because it has taken you so long to show these level of symptoms that most likely your decline would be slow? Sure. In a sense, the past is a predictor of the future. That does give us some hope.

It’s hard for me not knowing if our daughter has inherited this. Right. And whether or not she will be affected by it later in life. They won’t test her because they want that to be. Her decision when she turns 18. So as long as she doesn’t show any symptoms prior to she won’t be tested, unless she decides to be through genetic counseling and so forth, that is a hard piece because when we were looking at, you know, is this disease or not Li’s disease actually has a very much quicker onset than the symptoms that you were experiencing. People tend to be legally blind pretty quickly with that, right?

Steve: That only runs through your mother’s side. So in that case, and it affects mostly, I think all males, so comes from your mother affects the males that made me feel a little better for her. Now I do the math in my head and I think of how many family members I have.

And I think, well, I’m not good at stating the odds on any given thing, but I would have to think that the odds are a little better for her only in the sense that none of my family has shown anything like this. so that would tell me maybe it’s skipped so many generations. I don’t know, but that gives me some hope.

It’s a tricky one for sure. And it’s scary. Yeah. In a lot of ways, honestly. Am I scared? No, I don’t know that I am trying to deal with it. That’s where the focus is. What measures do you take for balance? And then we’ve worked on that and that’s kind of where my focus.

Carrie: Yeah. And I just appreciate it, I think that you have had a sense of humor about the whole thing. Tell them what you asked me today,

Steve: Which one? Naming the cane?

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: Well, I thought of a couple of names. I think the first one that I asked you was what if we named it able. Because, you know, Cain and Abel, if you know your Bible, if you don’t, well, you’re gonna have to look that up and find it and learn it.

That’s a good story, but yes, I wanted to name it Abel. And then the second one, I think that we may have chosen was Walkie or the assistant but that just, I don’t know. I can’t imagine being in a restaurant, losing the cane and going where’s the assistant , you know, that just, I don’t know that that’s gonna work out well. Although, I don’t know that where’s walkie is gonna be any better. They’ll be looking for a dog or something. But anyway, we thought about, you know, submitting it to the Wally show to see if they would name the cane, but what would they name it? Yeah. If you have any good names for the cane, you can write into the show and that’s a Christian radio show.

Carrie: Yes,

Steve: Yeah. Where they try to name it for those who aren’t familiar with that

Parenting and the Joy of a New Baby

Carrie: We mainly wanted to update people on that, but then also shift gears and talk about our second year of marriage had a lot of joys to it and had some sorrows, but also our greatest joy of course, was having our daughter who is now sleeping in the crib. We had to wait till she fell asleep.

Steve: Yes. The FOMO is real. Is that a phrase? It ought to. Yes, I think so. Yeah. She definitely has a fear of missing out

Carrie: And she definitely feels like has been teething forever. Yes. I did not realize how much of a labor-intensive process it was to get teeth in your mouth before having a child.

What has it been like for you becoming a parent? How has that affected you and changed you?

Steve: Oh, goodness. I have always been a person who likes routine and a person who has had some structure. I get up early in the morning. I brush my teeth. I do certain things in order, I get my breakfast, get my coffee, give everything in order.

And everyone that knows me, knows that well, have a baby goodbye routine. Pretty much. Yeah. And the thing you have to do with a baby is what form a routine. So it’s difficult, but you know, I learned to work with the. And be prepared for any interruption because it, it happens constantly. When I was trying to make my routine work, I was constantly annoyed with the idea that I couldn’t get anything done.

And then we got some patterns going and I learned routines and what worked with her now I can actually get things done, but having the baby definitely changed my world completely. And honestly for the better, definitely. I wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world. She is just absolutely wonderful. Always happy, always smiling and sticks her tongue out at me a lot, which is just kind of funny. yeah. So it’s definitely changed me. It’s been a good experience, but getting out even to do something is like mowing the grass. If she’s fussy and having a bad day. I may have to put that off a little longer because you have things to do too.

We both have to share that. And so you just learn, you know, if your mowing day is always it on this day at this time. Well, if you have a child, you can kiss that goodbye, but it’s been good.

Carrie: I would say that if you do it right, it helps you realize how much you have to give and how much you have to sacrifice what you want for the sake of your child.

And it’s helped me really learn to let go of some control. I think that that’s something that I still struggle with, helped me learn to go with the flow a lot more and just kind of take things as they come. There were definitely some early days that were really, really hard. She was amazing for about the first three weeks.

And then she started cluster feeding. I was exhausted. She had gas and probably about that week three through, I don’t know, week seven or week 10, it was just, I thought, how in the world am I ever gonna be able to go back to work? I took three months off. And fortunately, right around the time I went back to work, she started sleeping more through the night. So that was been a blessing thing.

Steve: And she is a great child. Like all children, you know, she has her moments and it’s nice now that she’s sleeping through the. It was difficult when she wasn’t. And I would say when she doesn’t get her naps throughout the day. Oh my goodness. That’s a difficulty for starters. I miss my nap when she doesn’t.

Transitioning to Stay-at-Home Parenthood

Carrie: We have a unique situation childcare-wise too, because I stayed home for three months with her, for maternity leave, gave my clients kind of alternative people to see if they needed to check in with somebody or see someone for that time period. And then as. We were in that process of looking at daycares.

And I had looked at daycares when I was pregnant, put myself on several waiting lists. Middle Tennessee is just exploding. Booming places are short staffed, you know, right now. And it was hard to. Find a daycare that was a quality place that had an opening for an infant because, you know, the ratios are so much lower too for that age group, far as they can only have four infants per one adult.

And at some point very early in her life, I’d say probably within the first month, I just looked at you one day and, and we were both sitting there and I just said, you know, will you pray about staying at home with her? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you remember that?

Steve: I do. And you know, my first thought was, I just don’t see myself as a stay-at-home dad.

I’ve always been, go, go, go, gotta work. Like if you’re only working one job, something’s wrong with you? No, I do not think that any longer, but I used to bit of a workaholic. And so for you to ask me that I thought, wait a minute. So I’ll be home with the baby. Not that, that isn’t a lot of work. It is, but being stuck in the house just didn’t seem like me.

Yeah. And then I decided to do it because of health situations and financially it made sense. Mm-hmm and also I got to thinking, you know, we can raise this child with the values that we have and we want, so after I got to thinking about it, it was kind of a no brain. Why wouldn’t I do this? I thought about how many children grow up without a dad?

Yeah. Or dad’s just too busy because he’s working so often. And I thought, you know, I can be that dad that’s there for, so not that I’m trying to be the hero, but I want her to have her best life possible. So it was a no-brainer after that I had to do it. Yeah. And I have no regrets. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Carrie: I think when you’re an older parent, it’s like you have more of the mental and emotional capacity for the child, but less of the physical capacity. Yes. We’re just both like, “Ah, I’m so tired.”

Steve: Yes. There are days I’m like, I am just, I don’t even feel like eating dinner. I just wanna go to bed, but it’s good.

Carrie: Yeah, we really evaluated it and looked at how much working full time was affecting your health. And you were getting more headaches from looking at the computer screen. You were exhausted at the end of the day. And we thought, well, you know, you’re really gonna be working to pay for daycare and. what sense is that we were able to get some health insurance and that was an answer to prayer for sure.

Steve: Definitely

Carrie: That worked out. And then it was like, okay, once that piece was in, you were like, what am I gonna put in my notice? And you were excited about kind of the new venture. Absolutely. It was harder for me going back to work and really trusting that you were gonna have things taken care of?

I think because I had just been so focused on her for so long and then having to switch gears into focusing on my business, rebuilding things, finding out which clients wanted to come back and which didn’t. and I will tell those of you who do not know. So I came back from maternity leave on June 1st.

This summer was probably the slowest summer on record. And summer is typically a slower time of the year for therapists because people are gone on vacation. You know, kids are at home from school, people are busier and it’s sunny outside and they. Go outside to the lake and have a good time. Whereas the winter months, times in October or in February, tend to be a little bit busier than the summertime.

So it was rough in the beginning trying to build a caseload back up. And then I would hear faith crying in the other room and I wanted to like go run and get her, but I couldn’t, That is super super tough for me. It’s easier now because you’ve had some time and I trust you that you’re taking care of it. But in the beginning I felt like this need to like to go run and rescue you and her at the same time.

Navigating Challenges as a Married Couple and Parents

Steve: Sure. It will. And when you are as a guy, I wasn’t used to that. You know, I love babies always have, but getting one to stop crying and knowing the specific cries, which is a language all in itself, but learning that and how to cope.

And if I get annoyed, that affects her. And so changing the routine around and making that work. Oh my goodness. That was a hard thing to do at first. There is a bit of a baby bootcamp to go through, I think, but once you get through it and you know, it, I don’t know if it becomes easier. It is more manageable though. Yeah. I guess it’s easier, but. I’m scared to say that, cuz I’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll just be crazy or something anyways.

Carrie: Raising a child is a little bit like doing therapy in the sense that as therapists, we go to these conferences and they teach us something. Right. And they’re like, “This is amazing. It works so great with clients. It’s awesome.” You know, you’re just gonna see life transformation and you’re all pumped. Right. And you’re like, okay, I got my three-step process. I know what to do. And then you try it out. First client and it does not work. It like falls flat either. You, you know, you did something wrong or it just didn’t work the way it was supposed to.

And parenting for me has been very much been like that. I have the baby books I read, you know, okay. It says do this, or it says do that, but then really you have to learn your baby and you have to learn like what they respond to what’s best for them. And trust me, it is totally not always gone by the book and.

At different points made me anxious like there was a, I guess I just wanna share this for other moms too. There was a period where she just would not sleep in the bassinet. It was just like, hang it up. She was not gonna do it. And the only place I could get her to sleep was to swing. And I was so felt just this sense of angst and guilt going, but the rules say I’m supposed to lay her on her back and I’m supposed to lay her in the crib and she’s not supposed to sleep in the swing.

And you know what, if I harm her and what if she stops breathing or something, but we did it and you know what she slept. And it was important for her to get her sleep. And it was important for us to get our sleep. So our first trip away from the home with the baby, we took the swing with us.

Steve: Thank goodness we did.

Carrie: Yes. We had a little Memorial day getaway before I went back to work and you became a full-time dad. So yeah,

Steve: We traded places there. I will say the swing worked great. And also, and whoever told me this, I just, I owe you like a thousand hugs or a million dollars or something, but put the baby on the dryer,

Carrie: I think that was somebody at your work that done that.

Steve: Yeah. And yes, it was. And when I first heard, I was like, put the baby on the dryer. That sounds crazy. but then you hit this moment where, okay, this baby, she is screaming at the top of her lungs. I cannot stop her. She’s hyperventilating. I don’t know what to do.

I think I’m hyperventilating. So I pick her up and we go down to the dryer. I think you even said, didn’t you say something about the dryer? Sure. Let’s. We go, we put the baby on the dryer. She stops, she just stares at us and it actually worked. So mom’s out there. If you’ve never tried it or dads do it, it worked.

Carrie: Yeah. Something about, the vibration. Yeah. When you turn it on, they really like it. How do you feel like becoming a parent has affected our marriage?

Steve: I think, honestly, bears with me on this statement, but it will either make you or break you.

Carrie: I would agree with that.

Strengthening Communication and Support

Steve: And for us, I think it’s definitely strengthened us. The problem, I think it is is everyone has a way that they think is right. But as a married couple, you have to work together. And when the baby’s screaming, you don’t have time to figure out. Okay. What do you think? Well, what do you think? No, you gotta calm this baby down. The longer you leave the baby crying, the worse it is.

And so in most cases, I feel like, so we really had to work together and just roll with things and not get angry with one another. And we just had to make it work. And I think that we get to a point where we just know we’re like, oh, the baby’s hungry. We know that. Let’s feed the baby or whatever. Whereas initially, that wasn’t the case.

It was, why is this baby crying? What did we do wrong? And I think some couples could easily say, it’s your fault. You did this, you know, but we figured out a way to make it work

Carrie: or to give each other ideas without getting defensive,

Steve: Yes. Which is so easy to do, especially when you have this little tiny being that is screaming in a way that should not be humanly possible. I do not know how she screams that loudly. The other thing that worked really well. When we had company over, she was like the best. I don’t know how that works. Not that she’s ever that bad, honestly, we’re very blessed, but she rarely cries with company. She’s just even happier. She’s just a social butterfly. And so, yeah, we love company now.

Carrie: I knew that you were gonna be a good dad because you were so supportive. And so open, like during the pregnancy process. And that was really great. You went through the classes with me and,

Steve: Oh, those were so much fun. I remember when you said, oh, we’ve got classes, let’s do them.

And I said, all right, that’s fine. You know? And then I found out that they were gonna be on Sunday, which during Sunday evening that yeah. And I was like, oh, But, you know, you get over. That’s so stupid. I sound like an old man. I can’t miss my nap, but I did. And you know, I learned a ton out of it. I really did.

And we even went to CPR class and we did a couple of things that were just. You know, I like to learn, so it was good. it was good. And you’ve been a great mom for that matter while we’re dishing out compliments here. You’ve been a wonderful mom.

Carrie: Yeah. And there is a doula actually took a couple of pictures while I was in labor. I didn’t realize that she took these pictures, but it’s basically of you like supporting me during the labor process. And I look at those and I’m just like, oh, like it just kind of, you really like makes me. You know, warm and fuzzy inside, because that was a very hard time for me. The pregnancy was actually much tougher than the labor was. But going through labor is not super fun,

Steve: And you know how they show it. I’ve never had a child before. Well, I guess technically I still never had a child, you know, you’ve never birthed a child. Right. I’ve never birthed a child before, but that’s probably a good thing. The way that they show it on TV is not reality clearly.

Carrie: Yeah.

Steve: And man, no one gave me a cigar. Not that I’d have smoked it, but no one gave me one of course, whatever, but I wasn’t sitting, waiting in some outside lobby, some. I was in the room with you and there was no break. I remember thinking, well, I think I’ll go get lunch now. And then I looked at you and you’re like, oh no, you won’t

And I was like, no, I won’t. And not that you were rude. I just, I thought things were good and Nope, snack borrow work, or just, well, nevermind, I don’t need anything, but we worked together and that was the first sign that, you know what? You got a parent together. I guess the birth thing you were doing, 99% of the work ladies don’t get like, oh, what’s he think.

But no, you were doing all the work, but it starts there. You know, you, you do what you gotta do. If somebody’s hurting, you gotta be there for ’em, especially if it’s your spouse, And during the labor process, my goodness, I can’t think of it a better time to give support. So we met at work. We had to work together.

Carrie: There used to be this belief that husband shouldn’t be present during labor. I can’t remember why the doctors had some theory on this. And I read in a book that this man actually handcuffed himself to his pregnant wife, smart man. So he could be with her during labor and really changed that process. And how doctors looked at it now.

Steve: Absolutely

Carrie: Most fathers are in the delivery room that are involved anyway. We’ve had some other stressful experiences this year. And I would say that those aren’t necessarily things that were ready to talk about or appropriate to talk about, but it seemed like when it rained, it poured.

Steve: Absolutely. It’s been a challenging year, but at the same time in those challenges, there’s always growth. Yeah. You know, you really, when you’re up against something, you find out who you are, you find out that you cannot handle all of this by yourself. And I’m very thankful that we have one another, you know, to lean on because without church and God, and, and being married and, and those things and having that support system that we have, man, I don’t know how we’d have made it through some of this,

Carrie: Right. Just people that have lifted us up in prayer and talked to us and checked in on. You know, even people that know about your health and waiting for a diagnosis, just being able to tell those people like, okay, well, here we are. This is where, where we’re at and what we’re facing. And this is what we’re looking at in the future.

I think you and I have had to lean on each other a lot. For venting about various issues and processing different things as they’ve come up in a way that spouses should do. But I don’t think everybody does. Right. I don’t think everybody opens themselves up fully vulnerably to their spouse to process through what they’re thinking and feeling about the situations in their life that happen to them.

Learning and Growing Together

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve learned too that it’s impossible for me to have all the answers mm-hmm so I don’t try to have answers for everything. And usually, the answer to the problem is listen. And so I’ve had to really work hard. Not that I was a terrible listener. But I’ve had to work really hard at listening, which I’m still working on.

That takes time. That doesn’t happen overnight. But a lot of the things that we’ve dealt with have required listening. Yeah. Because there’s no easy answer. Mm-hmm you just, sometimes you have to get it out of your system and vent. And if I’m venting, you listen. And if you’re venting, I listen. That’s just the way that it is.

But listening is, is a big deal, you know, that’s, that’s just, I, I always hear it and I always believe it. I hear people say all the time, you know, God gave you one mouth in two years, so you probably should listen twice as much. Right. It’s true.

Very true. Yeah. And I think those things have grown us closer to God in prayer and closer to each other as we’ve kind of weaned on each other, through these processes. And having our daughter there has been helpful too, because. When you’re down or something’s just difficult. And you’ve got this baby that is just giggling and smiling and sticking her tongue out at you, you cannot be mad. You cannot be upset with life. I really believe our daughter has this gift and that is to be an encourager. She doesn’t even know words yet, but we just kind of pass her around for the hugs and smiles and it just really lightens the mood. It changes the focal point from your problem to just this happy little girl that just wants nothing more than to make you happy. Just been a blessing.

Finding Blessings in the Midst of Challenges

Carrie: I think about that too. And just that Faith was conceived and born really during some dark times and some emotional struggles, but. She’s a reminder of the goodness of God and of the faithfulness of God. You know, when people ask, like, why did you name your daughter faith? It’s like, well, you know, it took a lot of faith for us to get to this point to be alone and then to be older and find each other, not know if we could have a child or not and have her, I really believe that she was born for a purpose in, in God’s plan. And had we received this diagnosis before we got pregnant? We probably would’ve said, you know, I, I don’t think we should do this. I don’t think we should go through with this. So she showed up at just the right time and part of my process right now.

Just trusting God one day at a time to be able to give me the strength to make it through the day, but also to know that he’s in control, that he loves us and that he’s gonna take care of us, regardless of what happens that he’s gonna provide for our needs. That hopefully next time, you know, when we record this in a couple of years, that we’ll be in one storey house.

Just believing that very excited for that day. Yeah. yeah, that she won’t have to traverse the stairs that are in her home and yeah, just knowing that God is good and he loves us. And even in the dark times that he’s still here, he’s still present he’s for us. And that keeps us going just one day at a time, one step at a time.

Embracing the Present and Looking to the Future

I think for me too, living in the moment, learning so much about mindfulness, applying that during my pregnancy, just trying to get through the back pain that I was dealing with at the time it’s allowed me to manage these situations much better because I realized I can only deal with what we have today.

So today was about getting your cane in the mail and you starting to learn how to use it. Today wasn’t the day to worry about, are you gonna end up in a wheelchair because we’re not there? No, and we hope to not be there for sure. but you know, when those thoughts enter my mind, it’s like, okay, you know, pause right now.

We’re thankful every day that Steve can walk, we’re thankful for every day that you get to see your daughter grow up. There was a time period, you know, where it’s like praying that God would preserve your sight. That you’d be able to see her even be born. We just didn’t know. Right. There was so much, we didn’t know at the time that God has allowed you to do that. And learning about this diagnosis has just really reinforced the decision to have you be a stay-at-home dad because now you’re getting more quality time with her. Right. And I love being able to work from home and online and kind of see her during lunch and in between clients.

I don’t have a commute. It’s just been a huge blessing for our family to be able to. Involved in her life. And there’s so much, I think that could have derailed this podcast from continuing, but we’re still here, you know, it’s, it’s still here two years later. That’s right. And after just everything that we’ve gone through, I’m so thankful for that.

I’m thankful for the people that find us that tune. And you know, are willing to listen to me, ramble and fumble through interviewing people. And just have, you know, an amazing teammate as well, that works behind the scenes with me to do our editing, social media and those types of things.

Steve: We are so blessed.

I hope that as a listener, you don’t hear this or someone doesn’t hear this and think my gosh, they got some problems. No, I, I hope you see that we are. That. Yes. There’s something I’ve been diagnosed with, but God’s still blessing me and I was thinking I can’t help, but think of our dear friend who you just had on recently, I don’t remember what the 76 is that it, I can’t remember, but..

Carrie: Don’t remember the number was John Bennett.

Steve: Yes. And we actually spoke with him recently. He and his lovely wife. What an encouragement. He says with what he has, that God’s blessed him. He wouldn’t trade, change it for anything. And when I first heard that, I was like, “Are you crazy? No one wishes cancer on themselves.” But he has such a good attitude about it.

And I thought, my gosh, if I can just have that attitude and see the blessings and not the bad and see that I have a wonderful wife who supports me and I have a beautiful daughter and we just have a good support system. We go to church here. We just love what we have and God has blessed us dearly.

It hasn’t always been. But it’s just better and better every day. So there’s a purpose in it. And that’s the part that I have to see.

Carrie: Yes. And if anybody happens to know anybody with SCA, because it’s just so rare and we’ve looked into some support groups, but we have yet to really meet anybody that’s dealt with that.

So if you wanna drop us a line at the podcast we’d love to hear from me too and learn about your story. I think when we try to explain it to other people, they’re just like what? I’ve never heard of that. And we’re like, well, we hadn’t heard of it either. So right. We’re in the same boat with you.

Steve: And you know, the other thing is I thought when I heard of this, what’s the first thing you do. You try to find somebody famous that has it that way you can say, “well, you know, so, and so has this, you know, the actor or the singer.” There’s no one that’s famous that has this. And so I don’t know, maybe famous people, if you’re famous, you don’t get it.

Maybe that’s the key to get rid of it. I don’t know. But, there are no famous people that have it, that I’m aware of and I’ve looked and I’ve gone on to different groups. And that’s the key thing I hear is who’s famous that has it. And everyone says no one.

Carrie: If we were to ask you a closing question, this has kind of been a story of hope so far. So we won’t ask you the story of hope question, but what would you tell your younger self? Like if we could fast forward, back to our interview a year ago, when we were at first year of marriage, six hours of appointment, no answer. What would you tell yourself?

Steve: Just be patient and know that God’s in control that no matter the outcome he’s in control because there was definitely a time where even just right until I found out what this diagnosis is that I thought this is useless.

We’re spending time, money, effort, resources, whatever to find out an answer that I don’t, I’m not convinced we’re ever gonna find out. And when you have a rare disease that makes it more difficult to diagnose it. Yeah. That might be the reason it took so long. And, and when you’re going to the specialist, the people that should know, and they can’t find out and you keep, you get referred to these places and you get all these tests and they just aren’t getting answers.

You feel like a pin cushion after a while or at least I was getting, I don’t know if I was discouraged just to the point where, okay, enough’s enough. I don’t think we’re gonna find the answer.

Carrie: You actually looked at me and told me that probably about a month before your neurology specialty neurology appointment, you said, I don’t think they’re gonna find it.

Steve: I didn’t, I really didn’t. And you know, they did, and that changes me because now. As I said earlier, I know what I’m fighting against. So I think if you’re in a situation where you don’t think you’re gonna get the answers and you’re not getting the answers, you know what be patient, because God knows the answers.

God knows what you need. Yeah. And the anxiety from it is just not worth it. The amount fret that you have, if that’s a way to say that the worry that you have from it is probably not worth it.

Carrie: I would encourage people not to give up hope and to keep seeking the person that has the answers that you need, or the knowledge base that you need in order to have a diagnosis or to get better.

I know from clients that I’ve talked to in the past who were misdiagnosed, or, you know, maybe they had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but they really had PTSD. And you explained to. You’re telling me about all these traumatic things that you’ve been through. Here are some of the symptoms of PTSD.

This is actually something that’s highly treatable. We can work through this trauma and we can help you get to a better place. That’s so encouraging and so hopeful for them or for somebody who is dealing with obsessions, that makes them feel like, well, I must be crazy or I must be horrible. But then when they learn, they have O C D there’s this.

That comes to it as well. Like, oh, this is a condition. It has a treatment, you know, I can get better. I may be waxing and waning throughout my life, but I can be in a better place than I am right now. I know that we had people tell us, even like, Hey, if you have to, you know, go to the Mayo clinic, then go to the Mayo clinic.

Like don’t give up on yourself. Find the answers. Thankfully, we just had to get to the correct specialists at Vanderbilt. Yeah. That we needed to see who was just incredibly nice and compassionate were appreciative of him.

Steve: I would say too. And you said this to me before that it would be difficult if I were still single. I don’t know how I would’ve handled this. It would’ve been very, very difficult. And I would say if you are single or in a situation where you feel like you’re alone with something, don’t do it alone, get a prayer partner. You know, you can call your church. If you have one and say, “Hey, would you pray for me?”

Do not do it alone because that’s the worst thing you could do. I support the people who have prayed for me, the people who have stood beside me, Carrie, who’s been right there the whole time. That means so much. That’s what gets you through your day sometimes when you really want to give up, you’re like, I’m done with this.

This is so terrible. And then they’re right there, cheering you on. You can do this and it just, makes a world of difference. So don’t do it alone.

Carrie: Yeah, of course, as always. It was great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you everyone for tuning in and listening to us ramble about our second year of marriage.

Steve: Yeah, thanks for having me, by the way, I enjoy this.

Carrie: We had no script for this. We just kind of rolled with it off the cuff, which is not something either one of us normally does. We normally have a list of questions.

Steve: A list. Yes, I have no notes whatsoever. That’s rare.

Carrie: Yes, but I think it turned out the way it was supposed to went to encourage everyone to subscribe to our newsletter.

They can do that by going on the hope for anxiety and ocd.com website, there’s a free relaxation download for you there. And I’m gonna be working on some other free downloads for people, maybe PDFs or things like that. So when I have those. I will let y’all know about those as well. We have a goal to really double our email subscribers by the end of the year, to get to about 150.

So if you can help us with that goal, we would so appreciate it. And we’ll be giving away. T-shirts exclusively to our email subscribers. We never heard back from our last winner. Lisa. We’re gonna try to reach out to you one more time, but then I don’t know. We may have to give your t-shirt away to somebody else.

Don’t miss out on your free t-shirt

Steve: you know, Lisa, please call her and tell her

Lisa claim your t-shirt please claim your t-shirt. You don’t wanna miss that.

Carrie: You know, I really thought maybe she thought it was a scam. When I emailed

her.

Steve: She may have,

Carrie: this is not a scam. You really get a t-shirt. Anyway, thank you so much for listening.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By the Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

73. What are Boundaries and Why are they Important? with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. 1 Comment on 73. What are Boundaries and Why are they Important? with Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP


Today’s special is my good friend, Erica Kesse, LPC-MHSP.  Erica and I have an interesting conversation about boundaries and why they are so important.

  • Why do you need to set healthy boundaries 
  • Reasons why people find it difficult to say no
  • Examples of internal boundaries
  • How to create boundaries between work and personal life
  • Boundaries and Christian faith
  • Erika’s book: Honey, You Need Counseling Skills and e-book on Boundaries Guide for Leaders

Links and resources

Erica Kesse
Honey, You Need Counseling Skills
Heal yourself, Ignite your Leader, Grow your Business
Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud

More Episodes

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Transcript

Carrie: Welcome to Hope For Anxiety and OCD episode 73. I just have to do a little short shout out before we get started. Cause it’s actually coming out on my brother’s birthday. Happy birthday Paul, and hope that you have a good one. I am here with my good friend, Erica Kessie who we have known each other for over four years now. Did you realize that because.

Erica: Great.

Carrie: Erica actually through my business. It’s very first birthday party. When my business, By The Well Counseling, turned one and we were in the suite together. So that was just a really fun time. And my business just turned five this year. That was exciting too.

Erica: Wow. Five years old. What they say about five years, it takes you about five years to become profitable in your business.

Carrie: Wow. Well, fortunately for counseling, we’re able to do that a little bit earlier. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here. Most businesses don’t last to five years though, right? 

Erica: They don’t.

Carrie: So that’s, that’s exciting.

Erica: Yes, it is. Congratulations.

Carrie: Thanks. I wanted you to give us an update Erica, on your business, because I know that some things have shifted changed from when we recorded last, that was on episode nine, which was the very end. The very end of 2020, what’s been going on in your business in the last year and a half.

Erica: So many wonderful things. The more that you’re in business, the more that you get clear on who you serve and how you want to serve them. I have coined myself now, the leader’s healer, cause I wanted to broaden my target out to all leaders. Be mothers, doctors, nurses professionals, because I recognize with my own experience that sometimes leaders feel lost and in order to not be lost. It’s important for you to make sure you take care of yourself. That’s so important and putting yourself first, those who have servant hearts, right? They are leaders and they put everyone before themselves. So it’s important that they take care of themselves, do their own work. 

Carrie: Right.

Erica: About own anxiety and their depression and imposter syndrome. And also if they do their own work, they will also be doing something that’s so important. And dear to my heart is to do no harm. I think a lot of people don’t talk about that. But there are many circumstances in which Carrie knows that counselors and therapists and even other leaders do harm in ways, because they haven’t did their own work. So I’m the leaders, healer and the entrepreneur therapist. I provide professional training and speaking, as well as civil little counseling and coaching alignment, executive coaching.

Carrie: One of the things that you do that I really appreciate is you help businesses and leaders, like you were saying, “understand the importance of counseling skills and how those can be useful in their business environment”.

Erica: I have a book called “Honey”. You need counseling skills. And these are soft skills as well as life skills. It is vision casting. A lot of even entrepreneurs don’t know the difference between vision and mission. So vision casting, mission creation, time management, communication skills, and thrive planning, which is it’s a strategic and personal plan to thrive. We have a plan for everything else. Why don’t we have a plan to thrive?

So there’s thrive plan for that.

Carrie: Awesome. Today we’re talking about boundaries, which I’m really excited about, I just.

Erica: I’m so excited.  

Carrie: I’ve decided to dial some things back on the podcast and do some like 1 0 1 type episode. Let’s consider this boundaries 1 0 1 there’s lots of conversations we could have on boundaries. We’re gonna keep it really simple today for people because it’s a word that’s thrown around. And a lot of people don’t really understand what it means or how they can start to begin to even look at boundaries in their own lives or setting them. We’re in a society right now, unfortunately, where all, all kinds of lines are being blurred, lines between work and home, lines between professional relationships and personal relationships.

I asked a group of therapists today, I said, is professionalism dead. And we kind of had a chuckle about it, but I was serious, you know.

Erica: Yes. 

Carrie: Because there’s a lot of people that are in professional roles that are acting in unprofessional ways. So this conversation on boundaries. Is super important in the same way between client and therapists. There have been lots of different ways that receiving therapy has changed. Whereas maybe, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago we would never have texted with a client. And I still don’t text with clients in that way, but some therapists, that’s how they set their schedule. We have to kind of talk about some of these things of boundaries lines, and we won’t get into all the ethics today.

Although that cause that’s gonna be another episode. I know that’s something that Erica is really passionate about is, good ethics for professionals and leaders. Let’s talk about what is a boundary, how would you define that for somebody? 

Erica: I wanna keep it as simple as possible. There’s a book called it by Henry Cloud. He’s an older book and it’s called “Boundaries”. And the way he explains it is like having a fence in front of your house. Certain people can come in the fence. For example, your mailbox is outside the fence. The mailman only goes and handles that particular part of your property. Then you have individuals like the Amazon man. He comes to the door and he drops your package he’s off, but he doesn’t come in. Correct? Or you can even say, leave it there and don’t knock. Right? When you send message, when you create your package, then you have people that can come be in your living room, your kitchen. 

They can even walk down the hall sometimes and be in the spare bedroom, but only certain people can be in your master bedroom, in your bathroom. Think about it that way. It makes it really simple on how we have to isolate out who deserves to be where in our lives we are our house. This is our temple. Okay. And only certain people should be able to come through our eyes, through our ears and to allow them to be a part of our space. These are guidelines for ourselves and for others to keep us safe. 

Carrie: There’s internal boundaries. I think that we can even set within ourselves. I think a lot of times we think about boundaries with other people, but there’s internal boundaries that we can set within ourselves. Just kind of knowing our move and groove of life. For example, and I know this has to do with other people. But for therapists in terms of like how many sessions that we choose to do in a day, or, you know, how many clients we see, how many of them are going to be new clients. I know for me, it’s harder to meet with new people than it is to meet with people that I’ve known for a long time. 

I already know how they’re going to act, to flow. They’re not gonna read me the wrong way or if, if I say something funny, they’re gonna be like, what is that? You know, they’ll call me out on it. Whereas if I have a new person, I have to be a little bit more cautious about what I say, how are they gonna receive this and so forth. So that’s kind of maybe an internal boundary within myself that I might set for myself, or I could tell myself, you know, a boundary is that I’m gonna shut off all my electronics at a certain time so that I can get a good night’s sleep. Can you think of any of those that you have for yourself? 

Erica: Oh yes. Internal boundaries. AKA your discipline, your own discipline. I have a certain discipline as 12:00 I take lunch. No one has that time. One o’clock is usually my nap time. If I don’t have a nap, I usually have a nap another time during the day. I am Adam adamant about it.

I need a nap. It’s just good for me to have my siesta every day. And those are internal boundaries, but I have other boundaries regarding myself as far as making sure that I don’t overextend myself. I have to watch myself every day. Not to have the savior complex. I’m sorry, I’m adding in things that are more complex.

This is the perfect actually podcast to talk about the savior complex. None of us is Jesus. We need to not try to be Jesus.

Carrie: That’s right. We’re not out here to rescue everyone who’s in crisis. 

Erica: Yes. And so we have to decide to remind ourselves. I have to remind myself every day, I call my reminder not to overextend myself, to watch all my obligations and watch my schedule to make sure I’m not doing too much boundaries of making sure that physically making sure that I eat. And I’m cognizant of everything that I put in my mouth. So really being intentional is my internal boundaries.

Carrie: Why do you think that boundaries are so important? Obviously what you’re talking about is boundaries relating to self care. Why else are boundaries important?

Erica: Boundaries let you know exactly where you end and somebody else or the environment begins. It’s a great way to make sure that you have all the things that you need and that you’re cognizant of all the components of your life in order for you to have harmony. It’s important for you to have harmonies physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, professionally, all these ways. And we have to be cognizant of doing that. That’s the hard work. That’s a lot of work actually to do, but it it’s the kind of work that we should be doing instead of putting ourselves out there. To help other people. It’s so easy for us to extend ourselves, to help other people and neglect ourselves. 

So it’s so important to have boundaries with yourself and to be cognizant of taking care of yourself, because guess what, you know, everybody’s heard this, you gotta put your option mask on in order to help other people, or one thing that I say, going back to that vision, that we were talking about my vision for myself, which that’s why this is a boundary as well. Is, I will if I like and love myself so authentically and thoroughly that I overflow onto those who stand close. Part of that boundary is, I’m not gonna seek out people to help. They will stay close if they want my help. And I will make sure I focus on loving myself and going a step more into liking myself.

So sometimes we may love ourselves and we may not like ourselves. Right? So we have to like ourselves too, and know what we know like and trust about our self.

Carrie: Boundaries really connect with our values. We really connect with what’s important to us. So if I say that my daughter is important and you have a daughter too. 

Erica: Yes.

Carrie: If we say our daughters are important to us, and then we don’t set up boundaries to protect that time that we have with our children. If I don’t take the time, set up boundaries to protect time that I have with my spouse or time for church and investing in my spiritual health. Not just church, but time at home where I’m reading, where I’m praying, then my values are not in alignment with my actions.

And then that causes all kinds of anxiety and internal conflict, right? I wanna be with my daughter, but I’m doing all of this over here. I’m taking on extra responsibilities. I don’t need to, you kind of call me out and say, you know, you’ve just had a child. Your normal is changed care. You have to accept that. You’re not gonna be able to go back and do all the things that you used to be able to do, which was a good call out, by the way, you know, you need to have friends like Erica in your life to call you out. 

Erica: Well, you call me out too, is the end goal. Why are you doing this? This is so helpful for me, who run off trying to help people like what’s the end goal. We gotta get our money. We need to make sure we are. Moving towards getting money, not just doing all these things, because that’s how we need food, clothes, and shelter. That’s why we work. She calls me out too.  

Carrie: Don’t do too much. I wanna talk about examples of situations that the people experience in life. That cause them to have difficulty setting boundaries. It caused them difficulty to be able to say no, or say, man, that’s an excellent opportunity, but it just doesn’t fit in my life right now. You know, maybe later, let, let’s talk about that another time. I mean, there’s lots of different ways that you can say no to something or say yes to something, but what are some situations people go through that cause them difficult their boundaries.

Erica: That’s a great question, Carrie. I don’t think people talk about the situations, 

Carrie: Right? 

Ericaa: When you grow up, you as a child, sometimes don’t wanna do something, right? And then your parent tells you you’re gonna do it. Okay. I have to abide by this person or I have to please. Most children spend time wanting to please their parent, guess what? Then they grow up being people pleasers. Then you have a problem saying no that’s having poorest boundaries. When you are unable to say no and get yourself involved in everybody trying to help people. Then if you have some kind of trauma or you’re a pain that happens in your childhood, you’ll have rigid boundaries around certain things.

Scenarios would be, you have a balls. 

There’s a power differential between you too. You don’t want to what lose your job or being seen in a negative way or retaliation in any kind of way. So you say yes to things that are against your values. You can’t go spend time with your daughter because your boss wants you to work extra hours. There’s so many scenarios with our partners. We may not want to do something like they wanna watch anime all night. You’re like, I gotta go to bed and they’re like, we don’t never spend no quality time with me. That’s a guilt trip, FYI. Let’s going into those manipulative tools. Anyway have to be able to say the boundaries, but you may have a rift in the relationship that you don’t wanna experience because you had to assert yourself and say, “I don’t wanna do this”.

So you have to have good communication skills. You have to be able to assert yourself. You gotta be brave to hold your boundaries. 

Carrie: Let’s talk about parenting for a little bit, because this is a huge issue. If you had parents who were like, I’m right, you’re wrong. I’m the adult, you’re the child. It reminds me of that dad in Matilda.

She’s smart enough to realize that some of the things that he’s doing are wrong. Right? As a child, she’s like, wait a minute, dad, that’s wrong. You’re cheating people up to go into a movie analogy, but that’s basically what he tells her, you know, I’m right you’re wrong. Then we’re not teaching kids to think for themselves.

And there’s no autonomy there that’s learned. So it’s, it’s finding this balance. You wanna set boundaries for your kids, but you wanna help them understand why those boundaries are there. 

Erica: Yes.

Carrie: There’s a reason. There’s a difference between saying don’t you ever talk to a stranger, you know, and, and threats and those types of things, I’ll spank your behind If you do that and a parent who says, Hey, we don’t talk to strangers and let me sit down and tell you why I’m telling you, you don’t just run up to the guy that says he has puppies to show you. There are people out there that want to do your harm. Here’s the lines that are drawn. You know, I’m asking you to pick up after yourself because one day you’re gonna be an adult with a house and you’re gonna have it. Learn how to manage a household, not just your room. So if you can’t pick up your room, you’re not gonna be able to manage a household.  

Erica: Oh my goodness. You understand this because also you used to work with children as well. And I also, we both specialize in planning, express for arts therapies. We understand that we need to respect them and honor their thoughts and honor their behavior and try to empathize the reason behind the behavior that they’re exhibiting. I always find that it’s the parents. If I need to get the parents straight, cause it’s not the kid, the kid does need a healthy relationship with somebody who was going to honor them, who was gonna respect and listen to them. You have to teach your children communication. You have to let them know the reason behind it. You don’t just say it’s because I said so. 

Carrie: Right. Everybody at one point or another, I’m sure there’ll be some point where I say it, you know, so , I’m not gonna call anybody out for that. But I think growing up in a type of household where the boundaries were not just strict, cause a lot of people grew up in a strict household, but where the boundaries were too rigid really. I mean, you got in trouble practically for breathing in some of those households. It can be, people have a really, really hard time setting boundaries because they were always told, no, you can’t do that. And it was very much that authority position. 

They probably felt less than. And, you know, growing up in some of those environments or let’s talk about something even further where there were environments of abuse, there were boundary lines being crossed. In that person’s childhood, it doesn’t matter what kind of abuse it was, physical, emotional sexual. There was a line that was crossed and it was basically told your rights, your needs, you know, were not valued, were not important at all. And there was a violation there. And so people who have had their boundaries violated often have a hard time setting them for themselves. I mean, is that something that you’ve seen as well.

Erica: Definitely. They don’t understand what healthy boundaries is. So let’s explain what that is let’s define that. And then also go and look things up. One thing that I say is don’t listen and wait for someone to define things for you. This is what I tell my daughter. Go and find out for yourself. Look it up, go to the library, Google it, ask around. That’s one reason how abuse happens is the isolation of the information and your experience with an exposure to things. So always define things for yourself. Let’s define healthy boundaries. That’s when you are able to say yes to something or no to something based on how you feel, you understand how you feel about the circumstance and it aligns with your values. Going back to what you said, your values, and you understand how to assert your boundaries and say clearly and not have a problem with saying clearly. Yes, I can do this because, or no. And guess what period. 

You don’t even have to give any definition. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t wanna do it. It’s simple. You can say no and that’s it. And I know may, sometimes people feel like, I can’t say no, there’s gonna be backlash if I say no, but a lot of time. It is you that’s stopping you from saying no, it’s your fears. So you have to interact with your fear and ask that fear. What’s why are you coming up? What’s going on? There is fear and there’s love. So how can we bring love into this circumstance to kinda dissipate this fear that you have that you can’t say no for something you don’t wanna do. 

Carrie: And it’s okay to have physical boundaries with people. I think I wanna throw that out there. 

Erica: Yes.

Carrie: If you don’t feel comfortable, some people are huggers. I like hugs, but I’m more of a person that I want to hug people that are close to me, that I know really well, that I’m really comfortable with and have had that kind of relationship. Some people just wanna hug you the first time they meet you. I’m not quite Into that, you know, but, I’ll probably have an uncomfortable look on my face and kind of do one of those tap hugs or something like that, where you just kind of lightly tap ’em on the back. Hey, it things, things like that. If you have somebody maybe that you feel like is too touchy, you know how the, some people just wanna touch you when they talk to you. 

Maybe this is not as much cause of COVID maybe we’re we’re keeping a little more distance. I don’t know. I remember there was one time where I was talking to somebody. And a kind of a dinner thing and they just kept touching me. And I didn’t say anything about it, but I thought, well, this is really, you know, kind of odd and thinking about it just in terms of interpersonal context and things. But if you don’t want somebody to hug you, or if you’re in a dating relationship and you’re not comfortable.

Erica: I’m think about that Carrie all the way.

Carrie: With certain things, then it’s okay for you to say, I’m not there yet in the relationship. I don’t wanna kiss you yet. You know, I’m not there. Those are examples of physical boundaries that we can set for ourselves. And if you’re in a dating relationship, you probably need to have some of those conversations pretty early about where you’re at, what your expectations are, what you want, what you don’t want, because those can really go south fast. If you’re not upfront with the other person absolutely.

Erica: It’s all about having the right fit. If you feel like you can’t say no to someone, then you probably need to investigate that relationship about why you feel unsafe to say no.

Carrie: And regardless you brought up bosses earlier, and if you were an adult

to adult relationship. That’s what we’re trying to seek out. Even though there is some power differential there, you do have to respect your boss. You do have to listen to them. You do have maybe, probably some things from your job that you can’t say no to, but let’s say for example, that your boss hires you. This happens all the time, America, right?  Your boss hires you and says, “Hey, you’re gonna work Monday through Thursday, 10 hour or you know, you’re only gonna put in 40 hours a week. That’s all we’re gonna ask from you”. And then next thing you know, you’re into the job two months later. Well, you know, we need somebody come in on Fridays. We just don’t have anybody come in on Fridays. And can you please, we really are gonna need you here this Friday. That’s an example where somebody has a freedom, perfect freedom to set a boundary, even though that’s their boss, even though they’re in authority role.

Erica: Yes, very much so like right now we have the great resignation that’s happening. Cause most people recognize that I don’t wanna be disrespected. I don’t wanna be disregarded for my personal life. And this is my job description. I’m supposed to be able to deliver this, but you also have to be courageous enough to speak up and say, that’s what it is.

Everybody knows the 80 20 rule when you’re working 80% of the people are not working or lacks of days old on how they work. And 20% are doing most of the work, right? Don’t be 20%. You have to decide that I told plenty of my clients, you should probably work. Give them 20% of your energy. And she actually got an award for her work ethic. After she did it, but also I told another lady who was having heart issues and stress and anxiety about working to slow down and only give them 20%. And her heart palpitations stopped. 

Carrie: Wow.

Erica: Sometimes we do it to ourselves. A lot of this. Is, we have to step back now. It’s hard to do it in a job that you went in there and I’m gonna fix it all. And now everybody think you gonna keep on fixing it all. But if you go to another job or you could try to fix help with the boundaries, boundaries are easier with new circumstances sometimes because. 

Carrie: That’s true. They’re definitely.

Erica: You can say this is who I am and they don’t know you to be a pushover. They don’t know you to be a doormat or a people please. But when you really wanna decide for yourself that boundaries need to happen, sometimes environment has to an environment change has to happen too.

Carrie: I don’t think I can stand behind giving your employer 20%. I think you’ve got to really work as an unto the Lord, you know, as a scriptural principle. And so I think that you have to put forth the effort to do a good job, but there’s, there’s a difference between doing a job where it’s like you said, kind of killing your health. And, and if you’re at that point, then I think that a conversation needs to happen to with your employer or your spouse. If you need to take a step back or whatever, to be able to say, you know, this job really is affecting my physical health, my mental, emotional health. And sometimes people have to either work less or they have to pick a less stressful job or different work environment. Maybe they need to be working from home. 

Whatever the case is there are a variety of different boundaries and it’s okay to say to your employer, you know, I feel like I’m doing too much. I feel like the workload is too heavy. I don’t think that I need some help with this. How can we delegate some of these responsibilities? Is that okay? That those types of conversations I think are super important because unfortunately not just employers, but if someone sees that you are willing to have your boundaries crossed time after time after time again, like if you come in on that Friday, just this Friday. And then next thing you know, two Fridays later. You know, we need you again on Friday. It’s like, no, I agreed to work Monday through Thursday was our agreement. I’m not gonna be able to come in on Friday. 

I had a friend a long time ago who, one of his first jobs he worked at McDonald’s when he was a teenager. And he said to the people, when he got hired, he said, “Hey, I just want you to know that I will work any day, but Sunday I’ll work, you know, the evening shift I’ll work late at night. I’ll I’ll work in the morning whenever I can”. Obviously it was the summer or something. He wasn’t in school. I’ll work here, but I will not work on Sundays. And so is that okay with you? I just want you to know that, is that okay? They said, “sure, that’s fine we can accommodate your schedule”. So the first time they scheduled him for a Sunday, he said, “now you remember that I told you I’d work any day, but Sunday and I’d work all these different shifts. I’m going to church on Sunday and I won’t be here. I just wanted to let you know that ahead of time, because that was our agreement”. And you know what, they had to honor that at the end of the day, cause that was what they had agreed to. But had he said, they put me on the schedule. I’ve gotta do it. I’ve gotta go in. They would’ve probably continued to schedule him for some days. And then that would’ve been a violation of his, not just his boundary, but his values of church and spiritual rights.

Erica: His religious rights as well. I wanted to go back really quick to say that most of my clients are really high functioning individuals that give like 200% work. So I have to say 20% to help them to edge off.

Cause if I told them only give them 50%, they would still give them 150%. So I’m trying to get them to edge off and not do so much because they’re a lot of their energy, cause they’re just high functioning individuals who feel like they have to work very, very hard. Those are usually my clients. I have the high functioning anxiety clients most of the time.

Carrie: So you, you have to throw out something drastic to get them to dial it down just a little bit. Okay, let’s talk about how do you know a boundary has been crossed? 

Erica: Great question. First of all, you can feel it. It’s a gut feeling. 

Carrie: Yes.

Erica: You can feel it. The thing is we ignore our feelings because going back to what we said about growing up, we had those good feelings and our parents shut it down. We were silenced. So you think, this is the feeling that I always have here, but I had to do it anyway. So I’m just gonna go ahead and do it anyway, like surrender to.  I’m saying if you have this feeling, listen to it and acknowledge it. I feel statement is amazing. Go ahead and figure out what the feeling is. I feel irritated, frustrated. It doesn’t matter who this is, whoever you’re talking to, you can say this statement. I feel when you, whatever they did, I would like you to there’s that boundary. I would like you to whatever you would like them to do. That’s very explicit on what they can do to help you not feel frustrated. Now sometimes people do not respect your boundaries. 

First of all, if they don’t respect your boundaries, then you have to go ahead and recognize that in this relationship, this person does not respect me. You have to decide if you’re gonna continue to be disrespected, or you’re want to figure out a way that this relationship is something that you maybe need to not have in your life.

And the other thing is, other than disrespecting you, you have to make sure that the individuals are clear, very clear on the boundary that you set. A lot of times, we’re kind of, you make me unhappy. I will like you to make me happy no like.

Carrie: What in the world does that mean? 

Erica: Right. What does happiness to you? So that means that you gotta do some internal work to know what your boundaries are. I think a lot of times people wanna have boundaries. But they haven’t figured out what they like, how they want people to treat them. What do you want? I ask you for that. I ask a child that what they like want they know.

Carrie: Yes. 

Erica: I know because they’re so accustomed to accommodating others, especially women, Carrie, let’s talk about that, that story that you said it was a man.

I haven’t heard many stories like that when a woman doesn’t  to it and go ahead and go with. 

Carrie: I mean, you look at women are much less likely to negotiate their salary going into a job. Because they just feel like, well, someone’s giving me a number. That’s what they’re comfortable with.That’s just what I’m supposed to take. And going from there, you know, that’s a boundary. If you say, you know, I have the skills and experience and I can show on paper that I should be making this much money or somebody else offered me this, are you able to match that? Or I need to be making my current salary. That’s okay to have that boundary. I think in terms of going back to like, feeling like a boundary has been crossed for me, it usually comes up as anger. 

A lot of times, like, I’ll feel this feeling of anger. And a lot of times, you know, I’ve been in business five years. I talked about that. And so when I feel like something’s not working and it was frustrating me, I would say, okay, Something’s frustrating me about this process or this system, what do I need to change? But that anger came first and that was a good gut check for me. Okay, I’m frustrated, I’m angry. Why am I frustrated and angry? Okay. Well, because maybe I took on this client that wasn’t the best fit for me. You know, maybe it was a referral from a colleague and I felt like I really needed to take that person on.

Maybe it was somebody really begged me. They couldn’t find a therapist. And so those days are long gone. If I don’t feel like people are a good fit, I don’t have any problems, you know, referring them out or something. 

Other things, I’m just thinking of other things that came up were phone calls. I was spending a lot of time on the phone with, you know, people that hadn’t really researched who I was or what I do and was trying to, I literally was trying to help everyone that called me on the phone, whether they wanted anger management classes. And I didn’t have anything to do with that, whether they wanted, you know, something for custody issues with their children, which I didn’t do. And so here I was trying to find resources for people and pick up the phone every time I called, because I thought, well, these people really need help and I need to be the one to help them.

I had to really let that go because. I recognize you cannot help every person that calls you on the phone. That is impossible. You’re not the right person to help everybody that calls on the phone. Some of them need other things and it’s okay. You don’t have to pick it up every time it calls, you can let it go to voicemail and you can return the call later. It’s gonna be okay. It’s not gonna be a huge thing, but that was some hard boundaries for myself in terms of, setting boundaries just in my business, interpersonally in terms of working with clients. I just know that for me, a lot of times it comes up as anger or as a gut feeling, the gut feeling is like, you know, it’s just like this. Something’s just not right about that. 

Erica: Dare they did that to me, you know.

Carrie: You feel that sense of like and dictation.

Erica: It does not feel good. It’s like a gut and hard feeling. And I immediately, I think about my feelings, like, what is that? What is that? I immediately go to what’s the feeling. Okay. And I do, and I feel saving, even if I don’t say it to that person, I have to write it. I have to say it to get it out of me. Otherwise it’s going to just eat at me. And then I figure out a way to talk with them. Sometimes I just write it in my journal and it’ll all work out on its own in some kind of way in a conversation without me specifically saying anything, especially if I’m really mad about it.

Carrie: Okay. That’s good. I mean, I think that that’s a really good pathway. Of like teaching people how to do that work, how to tune in internally and then try to figure out like, okay, what’s the next step? What is that next step that I need to take here? 

Erica: Usually when you feel that you’re triggered in some kind of way, what is it taking you back to going back to a scenario where you were disrespected or dishonored or felt the same feeling before?

Carrie: That’s good talking about trauma trigger. That come up for people.

Erica: Because you didn’t set a boundary. So then it’s always gonna keep showing up, cause the boundary’s not there.

Carrie: Let’s talk about how do boundaries align with the Christian faith? I think people have this view that if I’m a Christian kind of going back to, I’ve gotta help everybody.

I’m to be loving towards people. And if I say no to them, I’m not being loving towards them. But I mean, we kind of gave that example of parents and their children. You can’t always say yes to your children because that’s gonna lead to disaster. There are times where you need to say no for their own, even personal safety.

Erica: Boundaries is part of the Christian faith. I know that it says, okay. And we kind of capitalize on that part of being selfless and don’t be selfish, but the Bible does talk about, like, there is boundaries, the 10 commandments are boundaries there. 

Carrie:Yes they are. 

Eric: You know, there are other things that are told to us lot and his wife don’t look back. Right? That was a boundary. And then we saw the consequences. You have to have consequences too, to your boundaries. You can’t just have these boundaries. It’s like you are a Chihuahua, Chihuahua. You’re a Chihuahua barking saying you, this is your boundary, but you’re not doing anything. And people are gonna keep pushing over. What’s the consequence that there has to be some kind of consequence. To pushing over your boundaries. 

I just wanted to mention that, but in nutrition faith, we have boundaries. They are parents throughout the Bible. I don’t think people look for those because I’m gonna say some, I’m gonna say some, I think that a lot of people who may be leading flocks want them to follow along with what they are saying. So if you tell them, empower them in too many ways. They then are thinking for themselves and not following along. So they’re now share that kind of information. 

Carrie: Well, I, and I think that’s why we have to go to following Jesus in the Bible versus following man, you know. Because not everyone is following Jesus in the Bible who is in leadership.

Erica: Too many times. I’ve had some scenarios of, man, pastors doing many things that should not have happened or I felt it. I was like, this is not supposed to be right. But it wasn’t like no one said to me that this person is not supposed to do it, but he’s up in front of me telling me that the gospel telling me the way to go, but it doesn’t feel right. You always have this feeling. It doesn’t matter what kind of leader it’s there. You have to listen to yourself. You gotta tap in and find your own answers.

Carrie: I picked out a couple of Jesus examples for how do boundaries align with the Christian faith? There was in Matthew 12 Jesus refuses to perform a miracle.

So people were saying to him, perform a miracle to show us, you know, that you’re the Christ. And the funny thing is Jesus was already performing miracles. By this point, it wasn’t like this was gonna be a new thing. They had already seen evidence that he was a Messiah and he told them, no, I’m not gonna do that because you’re basically you’re unbelieving. And you’re showing that you don’t have faith. You know, and I’m not gonna give you a sign. 

Erica: I’m not gonna be a politic for you like. 

Carrie: Not gonna perform miracles on demand. There was a time in Luke nine 60 that the verse, you know, let the dead bury their own dead. There was a man who he had said, Jesus said, come follow me. The man said no. First let me bury my father. And Jesus said, well, let the dead bury their own dead. It wasn’t, a cruel heartless type of thing. He was wanting to wait around for like some year long ritual that was gonna be happening. It was, what do you call that? It’s more about tradition than actually. Just a regular funeral. We have, we have probably really quick funerals compared to what they did back then in the whole process.

So Jesus was like, no, you really need to come follow me. You know, you don’t need to basically make an excuse about why you can’t come at this point. I mean, Jesus told the rich young ruler, he had to sell all his stuff too. It wasn’t really about him selling his stuff. It was more about your heart’s not in the right place. 

Erica:Yes. 

Carrie: To be following me. So these are all different examples where Jesus really put people in their place in a lot of ways. And times that we look at that and we’re like, that’s really radical that he said that, or I don’t know if you do that. Sometimes I read the Bible. I’m like, I can’t believe he just said that. Wow. That was. 

Erica: I love it. 

Carrie: You know, that was intense. . 

Erica: My daughter has the Bible now we’re reading again. I loved reading the Bible. It’s great like if you read it, so I think people take, read it as if it’s a book and it’s great. It”s so much going on to so many heroes. It says that Jesus is a first superhero and that there’s sons of other heroes like Ruth and like, Esther, it’s just like, it’s radical. It’s a, it really talks about all the situations that we have even now in trying to relate to others. Jesus does plenty of parables talking about boundaries and how you should interact and what’s your value system and how to have your certain Christian values that I feel like are not upheld. They should be in a real authentic way. 

Carrie: I was so glad that we are having this conversation, you know, essentially a, a boundaries 1 0 1, because there’s so many people that misunderstand what a boundary is, or they don’t think that they can set them with a boss, with a parent, with a spouse and boundaries are for many different areas of our lives. We have to learn how to set them respectfully and so fort. Let’s talk about boundaries with a parent, because I think that’s another one people carry their childhood into their adulthood of, you know, well, this person is my parent. I have to honor them and I have to respect them according to the Bible. So I can’t say no. If my parent wants to call me at all hours of the night or if my parent wants to just drop by, I just have to be okay with that because that’s my mother. That’s my father. 

Erica: I’m the one to talk to about this. Or I was in my internship, I was trying to create this group called “Toxic mom relationships and how to manage them”. So when I talk to every people, just, you know, one on one, every last person has some kind of issue. With they mama or they daddy, or both of.

Carrie: We call those family of origin issues. Everybody has to deal with their family of origin issues. 

Erica: This is actually the first, I think people they’ll have problems in their relationships, their intimate relationships, you know, sexual intimate relationships.

And it be the same problems that they have with their parent, like the same boundary issues, being people pleaser, or thinking that you have to say yes to everything. When you become an adult, like first of all, you were supposed to be  expect  when you were a child, maybe didn’t happen. You have to understand.

Now you’re an adult. Okay. And you’re taking care of yourself. And even if you’re not, cause I have a lot of college students, I have individuals who are still on their parents’ insurance until they’re 26 and they’ll think, I can’t say no, cause  I’m still tied to them. You have to decide. What’s right for you.

Your life is your life. It’s not your parents. I think a lot of times, some people have issues with feeling like they are connection or, you know, a part of their parent instead of them being a whole person and they have their own thoughts and their own feelings and their own way of doing things that fits best for them. And you have to going back to being brave. Being brave to say and speak up for yourself. Now, let me just tell you if your parents love you, love transcends all of this, and it’s opposed to transcend all of this. And if they reject you because you asserted your boundary, then maybe later on, they will think more about this relationship and not. Let it be severed, but you get to have your boundaries and it’s important that you have them and you have to assert them. You have to be clear on what and who you are. 

Cause a lot of clients say, my parents don’t even know who I am. You haven’t shared who you are with them because you’re afraid to share who you are with them. And then a lot of parents say, all my kid only calls me once a week or I only see ’em on holidays, probably because you have no idea who they are and they are afraid to show you who they are. And it’s such a sad circumstance to live in a life where a person brought you into this world, but you can’t share who you are with them.

Carrie: That is a sad state. This has been such a good chat and I hate to cut it off, but I know we’ve gone a little while and maybe at some point I’ll do boundaries 2.0 or, or we can do it or something like that. We’ll figure it out. But I think that this has been a great intro for people to understand really what’s a boundary and hopefully it’s got people thinking like, maybe through the podcast, like maybe there is a boundary that I need to set with myself or with other people in my life and knowing that. Not only is that okay to do so, but that’s a healthy thing. And we can follow, you know, in Jesus’ example, in terms of, of setting boundaries. 

Erica: Yes. Going back to the book I recommended was Henry Clouds “Boundaries”. It is actually Christian based. So if you’re listening to this podcast, it puts a lots of information in there about Christian examples of how you should move in your boundaries in that you are not meant to be selfless, but you have boundaries. And I do wanna be before I end, is to talk about hunting unique counseling skills, because that book is a book that you can get on Amazon that I wrote and boundaries is in that book. 

So I talk about it in that book, as well as other counseling skills that are needed, like communication and time management.

And lastly, I have a freebie. Because it’s, I am this boundary thing is so important. So I have a freebie it’s 11 page ebook called “Boundaries guide four leaders”. You can get that at www dot heal yourself, grow.org. Heal yourself. grow.org. And you can get free freebie on how to even discover and set boundaries under eight categories and even affirmations in order to hold your boundaries and reiterate your boundaries to others.

Carrie: Okay. And we’ll put those links in the show notes too. If people are listening to this in their car and didn’t have a chance to write that down so they can go back to the show notes and, find the links in there to your book and to the, boundaries resource that you have there. That’s awesome.

Erica: It’s so great. I love, I love talking with you. 

Carrie: We have good times. I had so much fun having this conversation with Erica about boundaries 1 0 1. Stay tuned for boundaries 2 0 2. I may do that as a solo episode another time. We do have some great interviews coming up in the next month on breath prayer and on exposure and response prevention. So stay tuned for those episodes. If you like our show, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with someone else. So I know that you know, someone in your life probably who’s having difficulty with setting boundaries or they feel like if they set a boundary, that’s somehow un-Christian of them to do so. So feel free to forward this episode onto them. Thank you so much for listening. 

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee, opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the use of myself or By The Well Counseling.

Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

50. Doctor’s Offices, Prayers, and Our First Year of Marriage

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 50. Doctor’s Offices, Prayers, and Our First Year of Marriage

As promised, I’m bringing back my favorite guest in celebration of my 50th episode, it’s none other than my husband, Steve Bock! 

Steve and I are happy to share with you the ups and downs of our first year of marriage and how we remain constant in prayer.

  • Adjustments we have made as a married couple.
  • Funny and weird things we learned about each other
  • Dealing with a health scare and coping with stressful health issues and never-ending doctor appointments
  • Walking through life together and giving God all the control
  • Our shining light in the midst of a hard time
  • Our goals for the podcast 


Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/hopeforanxiety)

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Transcript of Episode 50

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD Episode 50. I promised to bring back my favorite guest, my husband, Steve so we can talk about our relationship ups and downs and life that happened in our first year of marriage. 

Carrie: Welcome back, Steve. 

Steve: Thanks for having me. 

Carrie: You are my biggest fan and support, so I really appreciate you being here. We wanted to start off with a couple of fun questions. First, we got married and then we moved in together and we were adjusting to living life in the same household. What was the biggest surprise for you? 

Steve: Well, I initially thought that it would be the dishes because you put your dishes in a different place than I’m used to. The biggest adjustment was you are a sheet stealer, a blanket taker, so we can be in the same bed trying to sleep and somehow I find myself or was finding myself thinking, oh, my toes are cold. What happened to the nice sheet that I had on me? And so we had to resolve that we have separate sheets now, which seems weird to say, but otherwise, you just roll and roll and roll and roll and suddenly you’re all nice and toasty. 

Carrie: Yeah. Somehow I’m like a burrito on the covers.

Steve: A human burrito.

Carrie: I am definitely a cover hog. I will admit that. So I would say for me, the biggest surprise was related to combining households in that Steve actually has more shoes than I do. I know that women are usually the ones that are super fashionistas and do have a lot of shoes and different sites, styles, and colors. But Steve likes to have a variety of shoes and a variety of clothes and so he’s looking around the closet while we’re reading. So that was a big surprise for me and what’s bad about that is that I got rid of shoes.

Steve: I still have more than you, even though I got rid of shoes, but I want new shoes and I’m not a materialistic person. Probably my only thing is wanting more shoes. 

Carrie: Yeah. You’re not, not big into stuff. Overall. What would you say was the biggest adjustment that you feel like you had to make when we got married?

Steve: Well, there are these two fur balls that like space, like the couch and the bed and the couch I could get over, but the bed, yeah, that was difficult. They don’t know that they wanted to give up that spot next to you. Right? So that probably honestly, that was an adjustment for me. I’m used to sleeping just me and not having to worry about something jumping on me in the middle of the night, and the sound of meow outside the door or whatever the case is, but just having my place on the bed, fighting for that place with it.

Carrie: But you made friends with Lilo and Stitch because you started feeding them shortly after you moved in, Which was interesting. I was like, oh, okay, he’s taken over this responsibility. And so now when it’s dinner time, they don’t look at me. They look at you, they know who brings the food.

Steve: That’s right and I like routine. So it just made sense in the morning I get up, I get them. At night before bed, I get them food. It was an easy transition and they’re good. They’re, for the most part, they are well-behaved. They have their moment. 

Carrie: That’s true and one of the things that we did after we moved in together was we redecorated because I had been living in the house here with my roommate and just overall, the house needed a fresh coat of paint and the furniture was thrift store stuff. It was pretty run down or old and just needed to freshen things up. So we were able to, that was one thing that we did this year was, did some redecorating. This is funny in regards to the cats because now we have these accent chairs in the living room and it’s like Stitch has his chair that he likes to sit in and Lilo has her chair that she likes to sit in.

They don’t ever trade places, which is kind of funny to me. It’s like if we go out there in the living room, it’s like, sit, you’ll be in one chair and Lilo will be in the other chair. And I’m like, you guys are hilarious. So they’ve come to sleeping in the chairs now instead of trying to get in the bed with us because that way our foot doesn’t roll over on them or kick them or anything like that on intention.

We had a very unexpected year. Health-wise. Kind of wanted to share a little bit about that on the podcast. I got your full permission to talk about these things. And I said, you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about, but I think everything that we’ve been through together and that you’ve been through has been really inspiring and has taught me a lot. I want to just talk about that.

Steve: Absolutely. 

Carrie: But it actually started out with a Kerry health challenge in the spring. I went to a very routine exam with an OB-GYN because we were talking about getting pregnant and then she said, hey, there’s this. You need to go get a mammogram and an ultrasound on that. And I thought, oh gosh, that sounds pretty serious and pretty scary. This is the timing of everything we were about to lose our insurance for about a month. So I had to kind of hurry and get this ultrasound before we lost the insurance. And I thought I don’t know if they’re going to want to do follow-up testing or biopsy something.

I don’t know that we’re going to be able to do that. How is it all going to work out? What was that like for you while we were kind of waiting for me to get the testing and then the day of the kind of waiting for me to contact you back?

Steve: That was scary because you’re not yet not knowing and your mind can play so many tricks on. Also just hearing that, we’re wanting children, we’re just dealing with life, we’re newly married. We’re all those things. I just got a new job. The insurance just changed over. It was about two and it hadn’t even changed yet. Like you said, and now I have this thought of, oh my gosh. Forget all that. What about your health? Who wants to hear that? Sure. I don’t want you to have to go. So yeah, I was a little bit scared.

Carrie: We both certainly have known people who have been younger and people who have gone through breast cancer. So it was like, oh gosh, you know, that couldn’t be me. I don’t know. I have to get this checked out. We got to check it out. It turned out to be nothing. It was fine, but a clear bill of health there moved forward. And then shortly after you started your job, you went for what was supposed to be a relatively routine eye exam and you had been telling me, my eyes hurt, my eyes hurt. And I said that’s just not normal. You need to bring that up when you go in for your eye appointment, you want to kind of tell a little bit more about that story. 

Steve: Sure and I knew that for a long time, I had sensitive eyes. So I didn’t think as much of it, but yes, I had been having a lot of eye pain. I just kept telling you that I had these eye headaches and so I go in for the routine checkup and they noticed a few things immediately. One that I had been dragging my hand across the wall while I was walking and I didn’t even realize really that I was doing that. It was such a habit, such a normal thing.

And also the bottom line, my vision was less than wonderful. We’ll just say it that way and so what seemed to be just a regular eye checkup? Nothing new, Hey, you’ve lost a lot of vision in your right eye, there’s a loss of blood flow, there’s this, there’s that we have so many things to check and you may have had an eye stroke. We went through a lot of scenarios. 

Carrie: Yeah. In the beginning, we were told it could be all kinds of things. We were originally told that your blood vessels were constricted in your eyes. We were told you could have had an eye stroke, which caused the vision loss. This seems strange because it wasn’t like you woke up one day and couldn’t see as well from your perspective. Now, we knew that you had other eye issues. You’ve had some issues with peripheral and colorblindness, but we didn’t know that that this was going on pretty much. They were like, whoa, you know, you could have a brain tumor, it could be causing this. You could have a clogged artery that could be causing this and we’re just starting to think here. Oh no, like what’s going on. 

There was another kind of fluke test that came back and we thought maybe there was something wrong with your kidney. So there for a short light, like two weeks to about a month period, we were gone, oh my gosh, are you going to die? Are you going to be okay? Like some of this stuff sounds pretty life-threatening and we have to get a handle on it and figure it out. 

Steve: And every time they would say something, it could be this, it could be that your heart starts racing a little bit. Part of me just wanted to know what, if you get to a point where you like, just tell me, just let’s figure this out and jump ahead, we still don’t really know fully, but, it’s always scary. Just not knowing is the worst part and I’ve heard people say about different things and that is so true. But we’ve got a great group of people around us, through friends, family, of course, church people who call us and tell us, or text us and tell us, Hey, we’re praying for you daily. Someone told me their child was praying for me, which was really sweet, just the different things. My good friend with cancer is praying. So it’s just helpful to hear those. 

Carrie: It’s definitely an encouragement when you’re going through something to have other people that care about you that are like lifting you up to God. So to make the long story short, you got a bunch of testing done. You had MRIs, ultrasound of your neck, you had follow-ups with doctors, you had visual testing. And then you got to this point where it was like you were going to have to see a specialist and a neurological ophthalmologist and got an appointment at Vanderbilt, but then we had to wait 10 weeks for the appointment.

Steve: Yes.

Carrie: It was a long wait. 

Steve: It was.

Carrie: Yeah, there were a lot of times where you were having pain and it was so hard for me because I couldn’t really do anything about it. Like I make it better or take that away from you. And based on some of the other things that we had been told, I was so scared that you were going to lose more vision. I know there were times when we were going through that where I just get up in the middle of the night and I’d read verses about trusting God and I just cry to say, God, you got to help him get us to the right doctors and get us where we need to go, because it’s just so sad and so painful.

Steve: And I think, honestly, that’s the hardest part is knowing that I said it was the not knowing, but seeing your spouse have to deal with it is worse because that’s not fair. No, that’s not fair to them. I have to wake up in the middle of the night. Well, it’s not fair to you. Let me say this correctly. Not fair to you to have to wake up in the middle of the night, worrying about me. I know that’s part of, we said for better or for worse, we did that in our vows. Right. But I get it. It’s still, I kind of get to the point where I’m like, man, whatever, but it’s not fair for you. That’s the hardest part. 

Carrie: You’re also that kind of personality where you don’t want anybody blessing over you or worrying about you or you don’t want to be bothering anybody or affecting them in that way. So this week was the week that we went to the neurological ophthalmologist. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced and I’m sure nothing like you’ve ever experienced. 

Steve: No, I wouldn’t recommend that for the family funding.

Carrie: Yeah. You’re keeping your sense of humor about you. It’s in essence that they had this long hallway with multiple waiting rooms. You meet with a resident first, and then they send you off to one of the waiting rooms or, and somebody will pull you for a test. And then you’ll go to a different waiting room and be pulled for another test. You go back and you meet with the resident and the doctor. And then it was like, well, we need to do this other test. So we were literally up at Vanderbilt for four to five hours.

Steve: Yes and I will say this, Vanderbilt did a great job. They really did. Everyone there was so nice that I could, we could probably spend a whole episode just talking about all that they did and I’ll spare you. But it was probably the most difficult thing of it all was just one, I was hungry, even though we brought snack bars, you can’t prepare yourself for that kind of stress in that many hours of it. And having an ultrasound on your eye, both eyes. That’s interesting. So that was stressful, but yeah, I didn’t even know that was possible. That was a thing fairly new and it’s strange, all that goo in your eye is just, I’ll leave it at that because somebody is squirming right now. 

Carrie: Yeah. We get to the end of the appointment and he says probably, I think one of the worst things that he could say here we are bracing ourselves for, oh, gosh, you’ve got a degenerative eye condition, you’re going blind, you’ve got glaucoma, you’ve got this serious eye issue and we’re kind of bracing ourselves for something like that like you need surgery. He literally says I have no explanation for this pain that you’re experiencing and I have a couple of other hypotheses, but you’re going to have to go elsewhere to get that treatment.

You’re going to have to go to a different specialist because it’s not actually eye-related and that was rough. 

Steve: That was rough. You know, there was a moment we thought it could have been glaucoma and that was difficult to hear. But at least, in this case, you kind of want to label, or at least I did because then you can prepare for it. But not knowing is again, that’s difficult. Not why, why is this happening? Why do I not have a vision in my right eye or peripheral vision or the pain or whatever. And hearing also him say, well, it’s just weird. Your eyes are weird. That just seems like a strange word to use for that. I’m glad that I get to be a weird anomaly as he put it. That’s not what I wanted to hear. Right? 

Carrie: It’s hard for doctors when they’re looking at your symptoms and they don’t have a neat clean category to put you into. It’s like, okay, well, this kind of this piece looks like glaucoma, but this other piece over here does not look like it at all. And this piece right here, it looks like this, but this other piece, it doesn’t quite, it’s something that doesn’t quite fit with the diagnoses.

And so we’re trying a couple of different avenues. One, they gave you a different eyeglasses prescription that we’re hoping will help a little bit because maybe your eyes were strained somewhat from having an incorrect prescription from a previous provider. You’re going to be looking at some physical therapy on your neck, head to address may be a nerve that runs behind the eyes that could be upset or inflamed.

So those are kind of our next steps and we essentially got told, hey, come back and for months and we’ll see you and see if anything’s changed. Now, we’re back in January.

Steve: Which is difficult now and it’s so many people praying and they want an answer. And the best I can say is I’ll be back in four months and we have some other options. It is what it is. 

Carrie: I know that I’ve had a lot of spiritual wrestling, I think, through this process. And I talked about that a little bit earlier because you can have faith and you can pray. And certainly, people have prayed over your eyes that your vision would be restored and you wouldn’t have any more pain and sometimes it’s really hard to sit with that. God has not fully answered that prayer yet. God has not healed you yet. What is your process been like around it? 

Steve: I’ve said for me total healing, of course, that would be great. If there’s not total healing, let me just be who I’m supposed to be as a Christian, with it. I don’t want to be angry or bitter over something that nature. And it’s funny because this morning, but yesterday I’ll be honest. I was so angry. I really was because I wanted an answer. I wanted them to find something to say that, yes, you’ve lost vision in your right eye.

Carrie: And here’s why. 

Steve: Yeah and here’s why would have been great. Here’s why you had the pressure, but to sit down and ask me three or four times about the pressure with no answer is just gosh, this isn’t helping me at all, and no offense to the doctor because they’re just doing their job. 

Carrie: Right. 

Steve: But it’s just hard to hear that. So then this morning I wake up and I do a group devotion that we’ve been doing, and it talks about just relying on God’s grace and relying. Sometimes God is there with you. I forgot how I worded it and how you feel it most, in your worst times, or in your times of struggle or pain or whatever.

And I thought, well, gosh, that’s kind of now. I have to look at it and say, okay, you got this, I can’t, this is out of my control and I just have to deal with it. It’s what it is. It’s not a lack of bubble leading or that. He could heal me anytime He wants, and yet I have this and so that’s the lot that I have let’s roll with it. Let’s do with what we have. I cannot be a Christian because my eyes are hurting. That’s not an option. 

Carrie: Right. And you’re still serving in the church like that. You can be involved there. That’s another story, but we actually became the outreach directors, as I guess in December of last year, so has been great.

Steve: We get to meet so many neat and wonderful people. So that’s been a neat kind of takes my mind off things sometimes, it’s something else to focus on. So that’s good too. 

Carrie: I think it’s hard when we’re waiting on God for an answer or to move or for guidance. But I know that these really hard times also grow our character more than anything else and I’ve learned so much from just watching you and how you’ve handled your vision issues, the pain that you’ve experienced. And it’s really taught me a lot about humility. There are times where you have had to acknowledge other people. These are my limitations. These are some things that I’m not able to do, or I can’t see right now.

And that’s, that’s hard to say because you’re around a bunch of other people that can see. Okay, and maybe it’s too dark in the room or it’s too bright. And you’re having to say, yeah, I just, I can’t see that right now. 

Steve: I don’t know if it’s a pride thing, a guy thing. I don’t know what it is, but I always want to be able to do what everybody else is doing. You don’t want to say, that’s difficult, or when there’s a group of people, like the guys that say, hey, we all want to go here tonight. Oh, I can’t go because I don’t drive at night. So Carrie’s already somewhere else. I’m just going to hang out here at the house because that’s my safe space.

I don’t want to put anybody out and I don’t want to drive. So yeah, there are so many instances that I could give where it’s difficult in that sense. But it is what it is and it’s cool in a way though, because I am able to relate with a group of people that maybe others can’t.

So if there’s an older person who doesn’t see very well, I totally get that. Not because I’m old, although I’m getting older by the day here, because I get, I know what it’s like to have cataracts. I knew what it’s like to not be able to see. It’s difficult to give up the privileges of driving at night, even that was such a task. That’s very difficult. 

Carrie: It’s really been a big one. There will be times where we’ll be out and you can’t see because it’s too bright, too dark, some of your eyes are really bothering you that day. Something’s going on. Sometimes you have double vision and things are kind of blurry and you’ll just like reach out and grab onto my shoulder or onto my purse or something like that and just hold onto me. I think that that’s, that’s a picture of our Christian life. Like it’s dark like right now, things are somewhat dark and we can’t see and we have to hold on to Jesus. 

It’s not easy because, at that moment, you’re totally trusting me to take you where you need to go. I remember there was a time where we were at some fireworks for the 4th of July and we were trying to walk through this area. You said, I just can’t, I can’t anything about where we’re going right now, just make sure I don’t step at all or something. Sometimes the other thing you’ll do is you’ll watch my feet and where my feet are going, and that helps guide you in and we have this pattern of Jesus.

Jesus has already walked on the earth. Like He’s already done all the things. It’s like if we will pattern our lives, like after Jesus, it’s hard. If this not, I think for me, I’m a doer, I’m a get it done. I’m an advocate. So not having the control and really having to let go and say, okay, God, this is your department. You’re going to take care of this. I want to fix it for Steve, but I can’t and You love Steve more than I do. So I have to trust that You’re going to do it. I’m sure You’re going to, however, this is going to happen. Obviously, we pray that God’s glorified through this experience and we pray that whatever happens that we trust and know that He’s going to use it for good somehow in your life, in my life, and in the lives of other people.

Steve: It’s been, I don’t know how to say it, but as, as we have grown as a couple, it’s been such a blessing to see. I can brag on you for just a moment, you have man, you’ve scheduled my appointments for me. You advocate for me at a time when I don’t know what to ask. I don’t even get to a point where you just don’t even care anymore.

You do, but that’s how it feels sometimes. I’ve even had where my parents have said, oh my goodness Carrie, thank you, and it’s true. I feel the same way that they do. It’s such a blessing to have you there to help me there. Even just like the other night, we went out with church and, they decided to go to the family fund center or whatever that was. It was a good time but I couldn’t bowl. We tried to play some video games and that was, I guess, that was good, but you had to kind of walk me around in some cases and I didn’t get to a bowl, but I enjoyed watching you bowl and kind of forgive me, but kick butt and take names because you’re a pretty good bowler.

I feel like you hustled a little bit, but it was good. It was good to watch. Anyway, we have really learned some couples walk side by side and we walk me behind you and it’s just the way it is. That’s how much trust I have in you and faith and it’s worked out really well. Thank you.

Carrie: Yeah, it’s for me, I think it’s just really been a joy to have you in my life and it does. I know a lot of people probably would look at it as a sacrifice. I don’t, like, I just don’t feel that way because I feel like you’ve done so much for me as well. I know that if the shoe was on the other foot if something had come back and that screen and I was going through cancer.

You would be doing all those things too, you would be gone to the doctor’s appointments with me. You would be taking notes and asking questions, or I know that if things were reversed that you would be helping me out as well. It’s what you do as a married couple and some of you may have heard this or listened that marriage is not 50-50, because it just can’t be. Sometimes it really has to be like a hundred percent and a hundred percent, but there are times where your spouse may only have 25% to give because they’re sick, they’re hurting, they’re going through something. You have to help lift them up and provide that. You may have to provide that extra 75 that you need to stay strong as a couple.

It’s just part of the deal so we’re going to switch on a happier note and say that I was tracking my calendar and trying to figure out when I was ovulating, trying to get all the stars aligned because that’s what has control for people do. Right? Then I had bought some ovulation test strips, so forth, and then this stuff started happening with your eyes. I put the ovulation strips under the sink and I said, I can’t do this right now. That was the month that we got pregnant. 

Steve: That’s right. The moment you stop worrying about it and trying to control it as when God’s like, and now go. 

Carrie: Yeah. So at this recording were 13 weeks along and so when this comes out, we’ll be a little bit farther than that, but we’re super excited there. You just feel so blessed. Like this is our shining light in the midst of hard times is that God has blessed us with a child where we’re entering the old parents club. 

So we didn’t know if this was going to happen or be possible in, I think just knowing everything that I’ve been through in regards to losing my foster children and everything that you went through in a long period of singleness. Just coming to this point, we were able to say like, okay, this is really a gift. Like God is showing us a gift and everything I’ve been learning and reading about trust, I think has helped me in terms of the pregnancy. Just say, okay, if God has given us this gift, then I’m not going to worry about the baby or what’s happening because there obviously there are so many worries that you can have in pregnancy and wondering is everything gonna be okay and all of that. I’ve kind of slowed all of that down and being able to say like, okay, this is from God. We’re going to be okay. 

Steve: Yeah and it’s been kind of fun, kind of interesting. I’ve learned so much. One day I’ll come home and the baby’s the size of a raisin. Oh, isn’t that nice? It’s such a big, big baby and then the next thing you know it’s the size of a kumquat. Oh, what the heck is a kumquat? Wait a minute. I have to figure this out. How big is that? Then the next thing I know, hey, we’re the size of a lemon and by the way today, the baby has fingerprints and my fingerprints that’s amazing.

So it’s been fun and she tracks it, the things I learn and this is our baby, and dear God, I hope this baby doesn’t look like me. I hope this baby looks like Carrie. 

Carrie: But they are gonna at least start out looking like you because they’re not going to have a lot of hair.

Steve: They’re going to have more of the hair than me. I bet you. Anyway, s so many people ask me and us, do you want a boy or a girl. Maybe it’s because I’m older, I don’t know, but I’m like my answer every single time, I just want a baby. 

Carrie: Right?

Steve: I want a child. That’s what I want. Boy, girl, whatever. I just want a child and I’m excited about that. 

Carrie: Yeah. We’re just, we’re like, we’ll be happy with either one.

Steve: And I think the joy of seeing our parents’ faces. I know that my mom was so excited, so I’m sure mom will be listening to this and amen on that one. She was very excited to hear as was your mom and, and both of our dads. So it’s neat and they are excited. 

Carrie: Yeah. We had some fun with our families, for sure. We got them little onesies with their grandparent names. Obviously, because we’re having children later, we’ve had siblings that have had children. It’s not the first grandchild by any means, but still, they’re very excited for us because they know everything that we’ve been through and they knew that we were wanting to have a child.

So here we are big steps and I guess I just want to say in relation to that, I don’t know what things are going to look like for the podcast in the future. I’ve struggled because my first trimester has been pretty rough. There’s a lot of sicknesses and a lot of tiredness. I think I’m coming out of it at this point, which feels really, really good.

I’m feeling a lot more energy and less nausea. I know that there’s gonna have to be sometime off and focus on family and different things. So we’re going to do the best that we can and obviously kind of evaluate over the next year, what the podcast is going to look like, but also, what the continuation of it is going to be in January.

I’m planning to release episodes every other week, instead of every week. You have episodes to catch up on that will give you time to go back and listen to some of our older episodes. But I’m always looking for ways to expand and let other people know about the podcast. I’ve been a guest on different podcasts that can get the word out. We’re at a place where I really want to continue. I’m enjoying it. I love the interviews that I’ve been able to do. But obviously, there are definitely question marks about what is that going to look like with a baby and childcare and so forth and so on and time timing-wise to do things.

We may just have to get better about working ahead and figuring out what that looks like. I also want to make sure that being wise financially and invest resources the way that God would want me to. My goal for this next year is to have the podcast be fully fund itself. We don’t have, as we don’t have sponsors, but when we do have is a buy me a coffee opportunity where you can give money to the podcast.

I am hoping very soon. I keep dragging my feet on it, but maybe by the time this episode comes out, I really want to create a subscription service where people feel like they’re getting value every month. They’re not just donating money but they’re actually getting some relaxation audios. They’re getting question and answer time with me once a month. They’re getting maybe some workbook pages that I really want to be of value to people. Hopefully, we will be able to get enough subscribers that the podcast will be funding itself in a year. That’s the goal. What I’m shooting for God is good and He’s definitely provided the opportunity for us to be able to do this so far.

So I’m trusting Him with whatever the feature is. If I need to put it down for a season and pick it up again, or if I need to let it go, I just have to be open to whatever God wants me to do. I guess I just want to end on hope obviously because that’s how we like to nourish. I feel like the hope for me is obviously that we’re having a child. The hope is that you’re going to be able to see them and see them grow up. I’m hopeful that God is going to just protect you and protect your vision so that you won’t lose further vision and that God will relieve you of this pain. We haven’t seen it yet, but we will definitely keep you guys. 

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s I hope that you can do this for a long time because I know that you enjoy what you do and I’m biased, but I think you’re fantastic at it, but yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited. That’s been such a blessing or from the day we got married, even before that. But from the day we got married till now, and I’m excited for what the future brings and what great things you get to do with this platform as well. 

Carrie: Yeah. Thank you for sharing your story. I think it can mean being so open and vulnerable. I think it helps people because there are people going through their anxiety right now, or their OCD. They’re wondering some of the same questions like we have, like, why isn’t God healing me or why do I go to these doctors?

And I can’t get help or maybe they tried medication and it’s not working. I think it’s whenever you have a chronic condition, like anxiety or OCD, it’s a process really to get that help. I’m reading a book right now, which I really love and I won’t spoil it because I want to have the author on, but he talks about how we, our coworkers with Christ in our healing process in the journey. He’s talking specifically about anxiety, how God does His part and we do our part in that, which gives me hope that God knows obviously our limitations. God knows that we can only do so much on our part and we need that. We need Him, we need to rely on Him and we need that divine intervention.

As always, I hope this podcast really just encourages somebody today, to keep going. And if nothing else to know, like you’re not alone in your struggles. So there’s always someone who cares about you. There is even if you don’t feel like it. Yeah. Maybe if you feel isolated.

Steve: If you’re, maybe you’re like me and you don’t want to bother anyone. This is my 2 cents for what it’s worth. I’m not Carrie, don’t get me wrong here, but you’re not a bother. Somebody loves you. Somebody wants to see you better. They love you. They don’t want your problem to hold you back. Be a bother, be a smile and get better.

Carrie: Well, thank you to everyone who tuned in today. If you’d like to reach out to us, you can find us at www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our original music is by Brandon. Until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Podcasts Carrie has been on

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on Podcasts Carrie has been on

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Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP has appeared on several different podcasts to cover a variety of topics and to promote the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast.

Ayan Robin Dixon of Circle 31 International Women’s Ministry interviews Carrie about her experience as a former foster mom.

Joe Sanok interviews Carrie about how to start a private practice and transition off insurance.

Adam Kol asks Carrie’s advice on how to use insurance coverage for counseling, how to obtain low-cost or free opportunities for counseling and how to find a therapist that’s right for you.

Tracy Lowery asks all kinds of questions about everything from finding a counselor to understanding suffering as a Christian.

Brian and Carrie discuss prayer and anxiety by using the movie War Room as a jumping off point.

Carrie breaks anxiety down in an easy to understand way in Jeff Allen’s first episode.

Carrie discusses the process she has created for attracting and onboarding the clients she enjoys working with most.

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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. 

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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.

Find out how to support your anxious spouse on this podcast episode!

15. Supporting Your Anxious Spouse with Summer McKinney, LMFT

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 15. Supporting Your Anxious Spouse with Summer McKinney, LMFT

I haven’t done any marriage counseling since my internship in graduate school, so I asked my good friend Summer McKinney to be on the show to talk about how you can support your spouse who is struggling with anxiety. She provides some excellent tips such as

  • When is it a good time to pursue marriage counseling? Hint: not when most people do!
  • How to be present for your spouse
  • What they might need from you when anxiety hits
  • What to do if you are driven nuts by your spouse’s anxious behavior or OCD rituals
  • Anxiety as a third party in the marriage 

Resources and links:

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Transcript Of Episode 15

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, Episode 15. I am your host Carrie Bock. Today we are talking about supporting your anxious spouse. I was able to interview my good friend Summer McKinney who is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist to have a conversation just in what do you do if you have a spouse who’s struggling with anxiety or OCD. How can you be supportive and helpful to them in that process while at the same time working through maybe some of your own frustrations that you might have with how the anxiety is affecting the marriage? I think there are some good takeaways from this one. So let’s dive right in.

Carrie: So tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Summer: My name is Summer McKinney and I have a private practice here in Smyrna in marriage, family, individual counseling and I’ve been practicing therapy for the past eight years. 

Carrie: Awesome. How did you decide to become a marriage and family therapist? There are many different types of therapists and many different specializations, and some people are licensed clinical social workers. Some people are licensed professional counselors and so you chose this licensed marriage and family therapy route. 

Summer: Yes. I started out working in church high school ministry as a high school girls director. I had gone through and got my master’s in education. I had taught missions and stuff, and God put me in that position, opened up those doors for me to be in that position. I was working a lot with youth and a parent had asked me as I was talking with her child and stuff, she said, “well, what are your credentials?”

I had always wanted to do counseling, but I guess not confident and stuff I had already gone through and I went back and furthered my education, secondary education, thinking that I was going to teach. In the back of my mind, I’d always loved counseling. My dad does counseling at a school corporation and so that was always kind of there but I was really nervous. Just not really confident like, “Do I have what it takes to go and get this degree?” And stuff like that. That kind of question, “What are your credentials” really hit me a lot because I wanted to be able to be credible in that. That pushed me to go and pursue the degree. 

I chose marriage and family because that just hits home with me more so. Relationships, working amongst the family system, the units that people are in. My parents did foster care when I was in high school and so just seeing how systems impact a child or a whole family unit whether does that family system itself or extended family or extended systems. To me, that just made a lot of sense. So that is why I chose marriage and family therapy. 

Carrie: It’s really interesting when you look at how much we’re impacted by other people and other relationships in our life. Looking at somebody as a whole person, who do they have surrounding them and whether that’s supporting them, or sometimes, unfortunately, that’s leading to some of the dysfunctional behavior that they have. It’s interesting to me to what you were saying of when that lady questioned you about your credentials. You already had a master’s degree in education, right? 

Summer: Yes. I’m a life learner, whether it’s back at school or just self- learning and it’s just me, I value education. I value knowledge. Of course, I totally agree with that saying “The more you know, the more you don’t know.” It’s just like, “Wow, there’s so much out there.”  I want to be able to say yes, I have the right to speak into this because I have training. I have knowledge. I have wisdom in this. It’s not just my opinion and so that especially I think in today’s culture is really important because everybody has opinions. Where’s the facts? Where’s the research? Where’s the truth and all of this but it can’t be found. Sometimes there’s multiple truths and things, but that’s really for me that’s something I value.

I think God used that to push me in that direction. Again, knowing that I was not confident in myself at that time and so he used the words of that parent to push me in that direction because I wanted it. I really did want it deep down. 

Carrie: It’s interesting how much overlap to between education and counseling because as counselors, we are educators, we are teaching people new skills. So we are informing them about research. We are talking with them about mind, body connection issues. So that definitely worked well together and you probably see how God has woven all of those things in your life to where you are now.

Summer: Absolutely. Just the marriage of the two. I do a lot of psycho-education and workshops and just speaking whether it’s a school or whether it’s a church. I just love that piece of bringing that knowledge to other people. It’s not like, “Oh, I’m this expert in this area” and counseling as well. You have the same skill sets and knowledge. It’s just we all have different population groups. We all have different spheres of influence that we can take this information that maybe other people don’t know, or maybe they know, but they don’t know how to apply it. I love the marriage between education and therapy. It’s one of my favorite things. 

Carrie: One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show was to talk a little bit about marriage counseling because that’s not one of my specialty areas. It’s funny and a little bit comical to me that people sometimes will email me or call me and say, “Hey, I’m looking for marriage counseling and we really wanted you to do that” even though that’s nowhere kind of on my online listings or profiles. I’m like, “if only you guys knew the last time I did marriage counseling was in my internship over 10 years ago. I’m pretty sure those couples aren’t together anymore. This is not a good situation.”

Maybe you could answer a little bit for people who feel like they’re struggling in their marriage in some way, shape or form, how do you feel like people know when it’s a good time to pursue marriage counseling? Just in general. 

Summer: I actually start back and I tell people that are even just dating, don’t wait for an engagement to start premarital therapy. You can back up therapy. If you’re really serious, go ahead and go in and talk about some of the things.  Communication is huge. We all think, especially in the initial phase of dating like “yes, we could stay up till four o’clock in the morning talking to the phone.” We’re great communicators and really that’s just talk. That’s not necessarily communication. When you get married, things just exacerbate things from before that maybe were not that big deal, or maybe you just kind of laughed it off, or oh, that’s so cute that they do this. And it really, it becomes that petty that you just want to, “Oh my gosh, just stop.” 

Things when you get married, definitely get bigger. Having some of those tools. It’s just all about utilizing the skill sets and these tools in ways that are going to help build communication, help bring resolve when conflict does come or when there’s differences because you’re not marrying a duplicate of yourself. You’re marrying somebody else with their own background, their own experiences, sometimes their own beliefs, their own values. You can have shared values but a different priority of those shared values, which can create conflict. I think that any time during the course of a relationship it’s beneficial to go to therapy. Don’t wait for a problem to happen.

We take vitamins or we work out. We do all these preventative things in other aspects of our life. So go ahead and do care and enrichment in your relationship, whether it is married or engaged, dating. Go ahead and do those things because it’s only going to help it. It’s not going to hurt it.

Carrie: Right. I know for Steve and I, we had a little bit of premarital counseling and we also met with someone that I considered to be a mentor and it was nice to get some of those hard questions asked by an objective third party. So it would be like, “okay, tell us about a fight that you got in?” How did you resolve that? Or I think they asked what annoys you about the other person. And we were able to hear each other’s answers so that you didn’t just look at everything like it’s all flowers and rainbows and wonderful, like you said with kind of some of the honeymoon glasses on. I appreciate what you’re saying going when you don’t necessarily have a major problem. Maybe you just feel like you’re not seeing eye to eye with your spouse when you’re trying to communicate things and you might be able to learn some skills that could help you moving forward so that you don’t have to get into those big problems. I think sometimes people wait to get marriage counseling until one or both parties is ready to jet out. 

Summer: Right. It’s an ultimatum or the rescue itself. A lot of times there’s such deep wounds there that it’s hard to repair. I mean not always. I mean, don’t lose that hope but it is hard if you keep pushing those things off.It doesn’t get better.

I’m glad that things are changing. The stigma around therapy is improving. The stigma around mental health is it’s getting better. We’re not there yet but I’m so glad that people are open. So many of my clients are like, “I tell everybody that I go to therapy because I want them to know that it’s okay.”

And I love that they feel free to do that and so many of their friends have looked up a therapist in their area to talk with. That just makes me feel good knowing that something that I do is helping another person and that they are then helping other people by normalizing that piece of therapy.

It’s not just when things are bad or you need mental health or whatever it’s like. This is really good for just health for life. 

Carrie: Yeah. That’s so good. I think that was one of the reasons that we’re on this podcast, talking about these things too, is because a lot of times in the church, maybe people haven’t heard those positive messages about therapy, or they think they have to have it all together because they’re a Christian and really we’re just broken people trying to follow Christ and figure out life and how to pursue Him and the calling that He has on our lives.

So that’s so great. The points that you pointed out about we are reducing stigma but we also still have a little ways to go too.

So we’re talking about supporting your spouse when your spouse has anxiety or OCD, or I’m sure some of these things apply for other areas as well like depression. I imagine maybe there are spouses who want to be supportive, but they feel paralyzed or like, “how do I really help my spouse with anxiety?” What kind of thoughts or advice do you have on that? 

Summer: Sure. I think the first thing is to listen and be that support. Listening to hear what are the needs. Don’t be dismissive or minimize the fear or the concern that’s there. Just being able to be a sounding board for them. When you come along you’re like, “Oh, that’s silly. Don’t worry about that.” You minimize something that is very real to them. I think it’s really important just to be that support. You had mentioned Carrie, about being in the church and things around stigmas in the church. A big one that I come across a lot with that anxiety is that “you’re just not trusting God” or “you’re just not praying enough or maybe your faith isn’t strong enough” and that creates even deeper wounds especially if it’s a spouse coming in and bring up or that positivity piece, “You just gotta be positive and think positive.” People with anxiety or really any kind of mental health issues, they don’t want this. They didn’t ask for this. To come at them in those kinds of negative ways just creates even more shame. I think being a good listener, being a good support for them through that is just really foundational. 

Carrie: I think we underestimate whether it’s in our relationship with our spouse or in friendships or in people that we encounter in the church.

I think we underestimate the power may be of presence, of just giving our time and our attention and really listening. Not listening for what’s the right answer, “Do I say back to you?” But listening for like, “I hear you. I see your story. I’m so sorry that you’re struggling with that. How can I help you?”

Summer: Absolutely. I think we are in a culture that’s busy. We strive to achieve and there’s so much stress. We wear stress as a badge of honor. 

Some of the things that I do with my clients is it’s just helping them to be present and to be able to know their bodies because we’re just so accustomed to stress that it’s normal. It’s like, wait, that’s not normal. Just because society or culture say that this is normal to feel this way but no. You need to be able to hear your body and, you know, “Oh my shoulders are really heavy. Okay. Well, I need to be able to rest or decompress or find some peace” because stress creates a whole lot of health issues. It can further that anxiousness. I think stress, the busyness, we don’t have time for people. We do those, those cordial, you know, “We’re in the south

and so it’s, “I’m just being nice and asking, but I don’t really care.” “How are you? If you go beyond fine. “I gotta go here or there.” And so we’re really missing connection on those deeper levels and so I do think that even a family unit could be like ships passing in the night with whether it’s kids or work and different things going on.

Being able to take time for each other to hear each other, to be present, as you said. It’s okay to not know, it’s okay to be there, “I don’t know what to say to you.” “I don’t know how to help.” I say that sometimes even just those words, “I’m not sure what to do” can be refreshing because too many times, people try to come and fix it. [00:17:32] I don’t need a fixer. You need somebody who can just be in it with you. 

Carrie: Right. Do you find that, not to pick on husbands, but I think sometimes husbands tend to be more of the fixers and women tend to be a little bit more emotional. Do you find that husbands a lot of times want to put a bandaid on it or say like, “Hey, it’s okay” or “Oh, don’t worry about it.” And they’re trying to keep it like you said, “positive and lighthearted” but really what the woman might be experiencing is, “Oh, he just totally dismissed what I just said or my feelings.”

Summer: I know that there is the stereotype of men being that way and women. I think it’s more personality because “I am the fixer” trying to help him fix things, but I’m the one that tries to solicit that advice that’s most of the time unwanted. I think it’s more of the personality traits that come into play on those things and so it’s being mindful. It’s being aware of, “okay, I need to step back. It’s not about me trying to fix it.” That’s not what that person needs. Well, actually, what I need to do is ask them what they need.

It’s both on communication. It’s the job of the person who is presenting whatever symptom it may be, whether it’s anxiousness or depression, or anything to communicate, “Hey, this is what’s going on with me.” And it’s also on that end of that person who’s receiving and hearing this, or even saying it to say, “Hey, what do you need?”

How can I help you?” rather than inserting what they think is needed because what I would want can be completely different than what my husband wants. And honestly, most of the time it is completely different than what my husband wants. So I think we need to do more of asking than assuming or fixing how we would want it fixed.

Carrie: I think you bring up a good point there of like support looks different for different people. And I don’t know if that’s related to love languages at all, but for some people, they may want someone to talk them through a situation. For other people, they may just want that person to not really talk a whole lot and just let them vent or let them get it out.

And so by saying, “What do you need me to do?” Like for example, when you’re having a panic attack, “how would you like me to respond?” “What do you think might be most helpful?” That person may not know right away. There may be some trial and error that has to happen in order to figure out what works best.

Summer: And that is a huge piece of being able to identify “What is my need?” This goes beyond me. This is anybody. When I can identify my feeling, what is that feeling communicating what’s going on? What is that anger saying? Or what is that fear saying? [00:20:52] And then being able to say, “okay, what does it need? What do I need?” Sometimes you’re right, we are not sure what it needs and how to help ourselves, but sometimes we do sometimes it’s “I just need a hug.” “I need that reassurance.” And it is scary to communicate that because we fear rejection. As people, no matter what age we are, we fear being rejected [00:21:18] and so it can be scary to communicate those feelings and those needs at that moment, but if we don’t take the risk and this is a huge part of marriage therapy is we have to take the risk to be vulnerable because if we don’t take that risk, then we’re totally missing out on something that could be amazing and great. The very thing that we need is that support, we could be missing out on that. 

Carrie: Yeah, it’s so good because I think a lot of times people may have been in situations where they felt guilt, either over having needs or guilt over expressing their needs. Sometimes telling clients it’s normal to have needs, that’s a part of being human and not only is it normal and okay to have needs, but then it’s okay for you to ask someone else for what you need. And that doesn’t make you selfish or an awful person, but sometimes we can get in this caretaker mode of that causes and creates insurance up anxiety of “okay I have to take care of everybody”

and then myself is like totally last. I don’t take care of myself and then nobody’s advocating for myself or what I want or need. 

Summer: Yeah. That self-care is so important. When you get on an airplane, put on the oxygen mask first, before you get other people, and it goes against our instinct especially if you’re a parent with children. It goes, we want to

[00:22:59] get to them first that were of no help if we passed out. And so that same thing in your relationship, or as a caretaker, any of those aspects of dynamics that come into play, if you’re not making yourself a priority, you are not going to be the best version of yourself that you can be for your family unit, for your relationship and so you have to have self-care. You have to make yourself a priority in that. I do want to say when you are being vulnerable and sharing those things, you need to make sure that it is a safe person. If you are in an abusive relationship or a relationship where there are certain areas that maybe it’s not safe emotionally or spiritually or mentally. That would only do further damage. 

Some of these skill sets, being vulnerable, sharing the needs and stuff, it’s important to be in that safe environment because if it’s not a safe partner or safe family member, it’s only going to cause more damage. 

Carrie: Absolutely. I think there may be people who are in situations as well that aren’t necessarily to that extreme where they’re unsafe, but they may feel like, “Okay, I’ve tried to open up to my partner before, or I’ve tried to talk with them about what’s going on with me and it just kind of falls flat” or “I don’t get the emotional response or the support that I’m looking for.” I think in those situations, it’s really great as far as having a marriage counselor who’s a third party to be able to comment and say like, “Hey, did you see what your spouse was just trying to communicate to you there?” You see what you need from this person now and it helps bridge a gap of communication for them to be able to receive that support. 

Summer: Absolutely. I think that part of my job is to feel those pieces where things maybe start to heighten a little bit, soften those areas, and allow that emotional engagement in a new way to take place. Because so many times we are in that negative mindset that it can’t happen because “it didn’t happen before and see all those times in the past when we tried and I was minimized.” And so being able to allow a new experience of doing that is still important. That’s why therapy is really great to help give new experiences to the old so that you know, “we can do this.” You’re setting up some wins in there for the relationship and it’s so beautiful to see those happen and the connection and just the love that takes place whenever couples finally, “Oh wow. He does care.” “She does respect me or love me and value me.” It’s just so neat to see some of those things take place because a lot of times these wounds have been going on for years and so to finally be met with what you’ve been desiring all along, it’s just beautiful to see. 

Carrie: Yeah. I know too that there can be situations and maybe you’ve experienced this with some of the couples that you’ve worked with, sometimes anxiety can drive the other spouse a little nuts because they feel like either the person who’s anxious is maybe asking a lot of questions or they’re trying to control things out of their anxiety. [00:26:56] They may be asking for a lot of reassurance and it might be exhausting or wearing on that spouse. And I’ll throw into for OCD, sometimes people with OCD will rope their spouses into their process, into some of their compulsions and want them to engage in some of those with them. So I guess talk a little bit about that. Maybe some help for those spouses who feel like I’m just being driven badly by this anxiety. 

Summer: I think it’s really important to have boundaries. Sometimes those can be hard to define and so I think again that can be where therapy can help. Individual therapy for the person with the anxiety, so that they can gather their own coping mechanisms and skill sets. Those self-regulating self-soothing kind of skill sets. Couples therapy can help them to communicate together, to help establish some boundaries. It’s not that you can’t ask any questions, but when you have 30 questions, that is exhausting.

Rather than being dependent on that person to rescue you or to somehow fix or change what’s going on, being able to say, “okay, what do I have within myself to help me where their support is an aid to it.” So the partner is not the savior, not the rescue.

It’s really important when you get into knowing your cycle. So if you’re anxious, knowing your anxiety cycle, that’s there knowing your couple dynamic and your couple cycle. There is going to be really important too because then you can start to identify it earlier and catch it before it spirals and so that’s really important too is to identify that.

Carrie: I think probably one thing that would be really loving for a spouse maybe to say to someone is, “Hey, I’m noticing that this topic of conversation or this situation that you’re dealing with, or maybe a problem that we’re trying to solve, it seems like, it’s ramping up your anxiety.” Because the spouse may notice possibly before the individual that they’re getting anxious, just depending on people’s awareness levels. A lot of times people can see things we can’t see in ourselves. 

Summer: Yeah. It’s when we identify those pieces, sometimes the other person’s maybe not aware of it, but we’re on the outside and we can maybe bring that to attention or if that person identifies those pieces, being able to communicate that. So for example, my husband deals with some anxiety. At night, if I bring up bills or money or financial talk, like it just kind of just gets his mind, he has a hard time shutting it down and so I have learned, and sometimes I have to be reminded not to talk about this at night. For me, I’m just so busy through the day that whenever I’m finally in bed and my mind coming down from the business of the day, all of the different things start coming into play and I’ll be like, “Oh, hey, did we?” and I’m gonna be up for a little bit longer just processing for himself.

We need to be respectful of the requests of our partner, whether it’s, “Hey, at this time of day, I don’t want to have these kinds of conversations” or, “Hey, I get really stressed out” or “we go on a trip.” I’m kind of a crazy person before we go on vacation. I want to make sure the house is good.

So whenever we come back home, I don’t have to do any cleaning, you know and just packing and all that kind of stuff and so my husband knows I just sometimes need space and so if he takes our child and goes out for a little bit just to give me the house to myself so I can be my crazy self by myself for a little bit.

It’s kind of knowing the needs of your spouse, knowing your spouse and being able to respect and give that space or whatever the request is that they have to help them in that process, whether it’s just stress or whether it is that full-blown anxiety or those panic attacks.

You know, if it’s social anxiety being able to say, “Okay, here’s a code word that we have a little bit like I’m, I’m starting to feel certain things.” Let’s start heading out kind of a thing. So it’s not like everybody else, you know, cause embarrassment is a big thing. It’s just between you guys, “Okay. I heard the code word. All right. We’re going to celebrate it by and we’re gonna start to head out.” 

So there’s different ways that you can accommodate and support each other based on those requests, those needs. It’s both communicating when you are aware of those things, but then also for the partner to maybe inquire like, “Hey, I’m noticing this, do you find that to be true for you?”

That way, because you’re exploring it together you’re a unit. Anxiety can be like the third person in the marriage. The worst thing is just to dismiss it and act like it’s not there. Acknowledge it and give it a name if you want to. I have a client that her anxiety is called “the jerk.” The jerk went with me today to the grocery store and I love it and I encourage that even the couple dynamic. Rather than pitting at each other, the blaming, and stuff like that, let’s call our cycle. It’s the cycle doing this. It’s not you. I think that that can really help to alleviate because it is a third-party in the marriage. It is a third party in the relationship and so I think that being able to put that some shift, that blame so to speak where it goes rather than the person allows room for grace. 

Carrie: Yeah. That’s so huge because if you look at it “as my spouse is not what I’m fighting against” like I’m wanting to maybe work with this anxiety and manage it differently, not my spouse. And so that takes the attention away and maybe eases some of those conflicts that may occur. I think accommodating each other in marriage is a huge thing and being willing to sacrifice your own interests at times. You may want to stay at the party for three hours, but you know, you’re like, it’s going to be amazing for your spouse to tolerate one hour. Sometimes you may just have to be like, “Hey, let’s just go to the party for one hour or we’re just going to quickly drop in and drop out.” And it’s not a big deal, but also encouraging someone with maybe some social challenges to still get out there, “Okay. Let’s not stay home because that would just be giving into the anxiety.”

Summer: Yeah, that only perpetuates the cycle. I think it’s identifying that there is a shame piece that comes into play here. You feel bad that you are impacting your partner’s life in this way. You feel guilty about different things and then you feel just an adequacy of yourself as well. And so while you’re trying to find relief from the negative and unwanted feelings that you have, the way that your partner interacts with you can really make a difference on that shame piece because it can perpetuate it. If you come at with those accusations or just that resentment and that bitterness, it can really perpetuate those wounds that are there.

Carrie: Right. So we talked a little bit about listening to your spouse. We talked and he like really, truly listening saying, “how can I help you and support you in this?” Maybe sometimes making compromises or meeting halfway there. Anything else that you’d add to that advice?

Summer: I think just the acceptance. Accepting them, accepting your partner for all who they are. That’s important regardless of having anxiety or not having anxiety. I think sometimes we forget, we only see the negative things that come into play or the external stressors that impact relationships and family units and we forget the good. And so I’ve seen loving, accepting all of who they are and anxiety is a piece of who they are. It doesn’t define them. That doesn’t define who you are, but it shapes an aspect of who you are and so being able to accept that piece of them and loving them through whatever episodes or symptoms they are displaying. It kind of goes back to just some pieces of those attachments of feeling worthy, feeling loved, valued. 

As spouses, as partners, as family members, as we interact with each other, being able to dig down into those deeper aspects of acceptance and love and, and worth I think that’s just really huge. 

Carrie: We don’t realize how accepting people where they’re at is transformative. We think if I accept you where you’re at then that means you’re just going to stay stuck, [00:37:24] but really it’s that beginning point that stirs up something within you of like, “I want to grow. I want to be a better person. I want to have positive outcomes because this person is really seeing me for who I am and they are totally loving me and totally accepting me and now I want to be a better person.” I think that that happens in marriage. I really think that that’s a parallel of what happens in our relationship with Christ, like part of this sanctification process. 

Summer: Yeah. I totally agree. It makes me think of Paul in Acts and he comes across, I can’t remember the name of the man that he was baptized by John the Baptist and he was teaching and he was having people that were coming to followers and he was teaching, but Paul approached him and he was like, “No, you stopped. You heard from John the Baptist and then you just stopped and you didn’t know about Christ.”

I mean he just stopped right there and it’s like, “Whoa! no hope.” A whole bunch of stuff has happened since then but he was stagnant. He was stuck at so he was misleading people based on the very limited information and things that he had and so Paul was able to tell him the truth about Jesus Christ and even John the Baptist pointed to Christ. He didn’t just stop there. I think that is so true. Don’t stop. Don’t stay where you are, even as a believer, don’t just, “Okay. Yep. I already know about Jesus. I know this. I know that. I’m good. I’m good.” It’s like, “Whoa, but you’re missing out on so much more.” 

I think that when you look at relational health, sometimes we’re like, “Yep. I got the tools. I got the skill sets. I’m done. I’m good” but wait, you’re missing out on so much more just because you have these things here. Are you actually applying it? Are you continuing to grow in that? Education is so huge with anything but especially mental health. 

I’ll ask people when they come in and said, “Okay, so you got this diagnosis. What do you know about it?” I am sometimes surprised at some people like, “I don’t know. This is what I was told.” And I was like, “okay, let’s explore.” or I will have a partner who says, “well, this is my wife she struggles with anxiety.” And I’m like, “okay, well, what do you know?” And like, “no, that’s her thing” like, “I don’t need to educate myself about it. I live with it.”

I’m like, “No, you need to educate yourself as well” and really that speaks volumes to your partner. If you were to say, “wow, okay, let me learn about this. Let me get in a support group with people who are married to somebody with bipolar or anxiety.” It builds a deeper support of like, “wow, you’re actually trying to understand me” and not just that, but you are accepting this part of me. You’re not just in this denial that this is going on. You’re actually accepting this and you are wanting to learn more about it, which is going to benefit the marriage itself. 

Carrie: Right. Absolutely. I love that. So we’re kind of winding down towards the end. So I’ll ask you the question that gets asked of everyone on the show. So since it’s called Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I’d love for people to share a story of a time in their life where they received hope from God or another person. 

Summer: It’s hard to narrow. I don’t wanna say narrow it down, but when we actually stop in and give that gratitude and that praise. It’s just amazing how much God is in the detail of things. A  lot of times when I think of the hope or just the faithfulness of God in my life, I have to look at my own marriage. I was single until 28. I got married at 29. I came from a very large family and always wanted many children and of course the older I got, I could do the math in my head. “Okay, Lord, this isn’t like going to happen. Of course, that was before like people in their forties started having kids and stuff but there’s like, “okay, wait my large family is going to happen” but God was in the details of my husband and I knew each other from way back when, but just went our own separate ways but we reconnected. I inherited three amazing children in our marriage.

My deal breaker was I wanted a child and so if my husband were going to get married, he would have to agree that we could have a child together and he said, “okay”. So again, “Okay, Lord. I have three children and I want that camaraderie. I want them to grow up with a younger sibling.” And so my timing was shortly after, “let’s settle in to married life and blended family life,” but few years were going by and it’s like, “Okay, Lord, is this going to happen?” Just a lot of questions. My husband kinda gave up like, “okay, it’s not going to happen around him” and it took us a few years. God knew again, being in the details and perfect timing. The bonding that I was worried about. The boys were in high school whenever we had our son and through college, one of the boys stayed home and commuted and the bonding was just amazing.

It was just all of those fears and all of those concerns or those questions. It wasn’t my timing but the timing was just perfect. It wasn’t always my way, but God knew what he was doing and just being in the details. And so that to me was just the hope of a large family, the hope of the bonding and that unity among the family and God just blessed it. When those doubts or when fears or things come into play, whether you’re single or whether you’re in an empty marriage or divorced, and you still have that desire I think that God is in the details and his timing is amazing. It’s not always our time where I think about the big things in my life where desire and hope and blessing come together. I would say it’s definitely my family unit.

Carrie: It’s amazing how God will give us those desires like for you it was for to have a large family and God totally filled that in a way that you couldn’t have imagined at that point in time like you were thinking that all of those children would be completely biologically yours and you ended up with a beautiful family picture and it’s amazing how God’s dreams are much better than things that we could dream on our own. And when we try to do it our ways or in our timing, it just never quite shakes out and we can become disappointed. I appreciate that story cause I do believe it’s hopeful and will be hopeful for many people listening.

Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show and share your wisdom with us now. 

Summer: Thank you for having me here. I appreciate that. 

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Summer and I have had lots of conversations off the air about reducing shame and stigma in the church in regards to mental illness. So it was an absolute treat to be able to have some of those conversations on the air to be able to share those with you all.

I wanted to share some feedback that I received today regarding the podcast. Erica writes, “I enjoyed your first podcast about your life. It was so inspiring. It had it all. I laughed. I cried and I got goosebumps with your transformation.”

Thank you so much Erica for sharing that. I really appreciate it. 

If you want to share what the podcast has meant for you, you can either write a review or you can go on hopeforanxietyandocd.com and reach me in the comments section. 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.