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140. Help! I Don’t Feel Close to God

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

In this episode, Carrie explores the feelings of spiritual distance and how to navigate those times when you don’t feel close to God.

Episode Highlights:

  • Understanding the connection between OCD and feelings of spiritual distance.
  • Insights from Elijah’s story and how it relates to modern struggles with faith.
  • Practical steps for reconnecting with God during times of doubt and anxiety.
  • Encouragement and biblical wisdom for Christians dealing with OCD and spiritual uncertainty.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD! I’m Carrie Bock, a Christ follower and licensed professional counselor committed to helping Christians struggling with OCD find healing and peace. 

Today, we’re diving into those difficult seasons when you don’t feel close to God—when life feels chaotic, and you’re left questioning His presence in your struggles. Many of us, especially those battling OCD, have been there, wondering if our faith is faltering because we don’t feel that initial “on fire” connection with God anymore.

I discuss how sin can create a sense of distance between us and God—not in our standing with Him, but in our relational closeness. Yet, through confession and repentance, we can restore that intimacy. The story of Elijah, who, after a significant victory, found himself in despair and needed God’s gentle care, serves as a powerful reminder of how God meets us in our lowest moments.

I also share some personal reflections on times when I believed lies during difficult seasons—whether it was thinking my life was over after a divorce or feeling the deep sense of loss after my father’s passing. In each of these moments, God gently reminded me that He sees the bigger picture, even when I can’t. These experiences have taught me that our feelings, no matter how strong, don’t define our faith.

If you’re struggling today, I hope this episode brings you comfort and reminds you that God is with you, even in your confusion and pain. You’re not alone, and your current feelings don’t determine your relationship with God.

 For more resources and to stay connected, visit my website at carriebock.com.

More Episodes to Listen To:

2. Unanswered Prayers for Healing with Pastor Troy Powell

Transcript

What do you do when you don’t feel close to God? Maybe you just feel like you’re praying and your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. We’re going to look at one character from the Bible and try to apply some biblical principles to our own lives when we feel this way.

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

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

If you have not checked out our new website, karybach. com, I am so So proud of this thing. It has been such a big process combining my By the Well counseling website and the podcasting website into one after we went through this rebrand from Hope for Anxiety to OCD into Christian Faith and OCD. For those of you who maybe haven’t been around that while or are just now tuning in, that’s where you can find all things about my counseling, the Christian Faith and OCD podcast.

Click on the podcast page for more information. You can also leave comments there and let me know that you’ve been listening and what you think about the show. Any guest suggestions or topics you want me to cover. I love to hear from you guys. One of my favorite things. I’ve definitely had times like this in my life, I don’t know if you’ve had times like this in your life, and if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you probably have.

You probably have said, I’m going through a season and I just don’t feel close to God right now. I don’t know where he is, I don’t know what he’s doing, everything seems chaotic or a mess. Maybe you’re feeling lost, going through a grief and loss process. So if you’re feeling that way right now, I just want you to know you’re not alone.

Anybody that’s been a Christian for a while has probably experienced this. And also sometimes we just feel this in general in our long term relationships, right? OCD is going to use that as evidence, like, oh, well, you’re not a Christian because you don’t feel close to God, or you don’t feel connected to Him, or you don’t feel the same way you did when you became a Christian.

This is something I hear from a lot of Christians who struggle with OCD. Well, I don’t feel as on fire. As I did when I first became a Christian. Well, that’s an emotional high time in your life. Just like when you get married, that’s an emotional high time in your life. You ask anyone who’s been married for five years, do you feel the same exact way that you did on your wedding?

They’re going to tell you, no, I mean, your love grows and it shifts and changes and that’s not always a negative thing. Sometimes that can be a really positive thing. We may not get the butterflies in our stomach over our spouse. But we can be very committed and devoted and caring and show concern for them.

So hopefully that parallel helps give you a little bit more of a glimpse or make sense to you that our feelings can change over time. That doesn’t mean that they’ve gone away or have dulled or that we don’t really love God anymore because we don’t feel the same way that we did before. I’m going to say just a short piece about sin, but this is not the main focus of this particular podcast in general.

We know that sin separates us from God in a relational sense, not in a positional sense. So you can still sin and you’re still going to be God’s child. You’re still going to be in the family. Now, OCD may tell you otherwise, OCD may say, Oh, well, because you messed up over here, God doesn’t love you, you failed, you’re going to hell, that type of scenario.

That’s not the case. What sin does is it does create a level of separation, just like if you hurt someone’s feelings like family member or friend, there’s going to be some relational distance possibly between you and that person until you come back together, reconcile, talk it out, forgiveness, and so forth.

This is how it is in our relationship with God. Sin separates us from Him. Isaiah 59 1 says, Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, or his ear dull that it cannot hear, but your iniquities, that’s sin, have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

We also know that 1 John 1, 9 tells us that if we confess our sin, He’s faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So just as sin has that ability to separate us from God in a relational sense, that confession of sin brings us back into right relationship with God.

Today, I want to talk to you more about those times where you’re in the midst of your sanctification process. You’re doing your best to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, as it talks about in Philippians 2. 12. You don’t feel like God is there. Maybe it’s a confusing time in your life, maybe you’ve been going through suffering.

Why is God allowing this situation? You might be really struggling with your OCD right now. Like, why in the world is God allowing me to go through this process right now? Why is he allowing this to torment me? And sometimes in life situations, we understand things better on the other side of the suffering or on the other side of the situation.

But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes there are things that we may never understand until we get to heaven. And that’s okay. We’ve got to live in that wrestling. Paul talks about, we look through the glass dimly, but one day we’re going to see face to face. We’re not going to understand everything from our position here on earth.

But how do we get through these situations where we don’t feel close to God? We don’t know where he is and what he’s doing. We’ve We pray, but it feels empty, or our spiritual practices, we’re just going through the motions. I want to talk to you about Elijah, who’s an Old Testament hero of our faith, and how he made it through a similar situation.

So Elijah was a prophet during a time where Israel had a wicked king and queen. And his story starts out in 1st Kings 17, if you want to look that up later. God calls Elijah to prophesy about a drought that’s going to come on the land. And this really makes Ahab and Jezebel, that wicked king and queen, quite mad.

He ends up having a showdown in 1st Kings 18, amazing chapter. with the prophets of Baal to prove to Israel that God’s real and this false god that you’ve been serving, Baal, he’s fake. He’s not real. God prevails, sends down fire from heaven on the altar, and Elijah goes and slaughters the false prophets.

Jezebel’s not happy about the prophets of Baal being slaughtered, because remember, she’s not following Israel’s god, she’s following these false gods. So she threatens to kill Elijah, and Elijah ends up fleeing for his life. So in 1 Kings 19. 4 it says, But he himself went on a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree.

And he asked that he might die, saying, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my father’s. He was serving God, but he felt like he couldn’t go on, and so if you’ve ever had a time where you felt like you couldn’t make it anymore, I mean we did an episode a while back on suicide, there were people that struggled with this in the Bible, there were people that cursed the day of their birth.

I think Jeremiah did that. I know Job cursed the day of his birth. I mean, look at this. The people in the Bible were just like us. They had struggles. They had human emotions. We need to stop acting like they didn’t have struggles, or they were somehow superhuman people. They were wrestling with some of the same stuff that we’re wrestling with today.

It’s how we handle it and what we do and how we bring it to God. So interestingly, here’s how God handles it. Elijah ate and drank and slept, basically was fed by an angel in the wilderness, which shows us that God cares about our physical needs. And that our physical needs are connected to our emotional experience.

If Elijah was eating, drinking, and sleeping, and he goes through a process in verses five through eight, and this happens about three times, to me that says that there was something in his physical body that was lacking. He needed physical nourishment, he needed water, he needed food, and he needed sleep.

Some of y’all would be feeling a whole lot better if you could just get some sleep. I have been sleep deprived. I know what that feels like. It’s horrible. I know what it feels like not to be able to fall asleep because you got emotional stuff going on. It’s not fun. And I also know that when I’ve been relieved at points, that when I’ve been able to get that sleep, it has impacted my mood profoundly.

So keep that in mind as well. Going down to verses 9 14, God corrects Elijah’s thinking. This is the next piece. So he meets his physical needs, and then he corrects his thinking. And the word of the Lord came to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? He replied, I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty.

The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword, and I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too. Elijah says, I’m the only one left God, I’m the only one here serving you, they’ve killed everybody else, and the people that are still around are the people that are not following you, and they’re killing the people that are trying to follow you.

And interestingly, down in verse 18, God says, Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal, and whose mouths have not kissed him. So God says, Elijah, you’re wrong. You’re stuck on this thought that you were the alone in serving me, that you have worked so hard and you’ve done all the things I’ve asked you to do, and now it’s over.

But Elijah’s mission was not over yet. So my question is, are you thinking something right now that’s not true? Are you stuck in a lie? I wrote down just a few times in my life where I believed a lie. I’m sure there are more than these. But these were times where I was really low and I was convinced during these times that something was true when it wasn’t.

So back in 2015 when I went through a pretty rough divorce, I remember having the thought, My life is over. And I was just so fully convinced of that. I was like, this is it for me, Lord. I now have this scarlet letter on me. Divorce gal in the church. I’m not gonna have children. I’m not gonna be able to get remarried.

Nobody’s gonna want me. I mean, the whole multitude of thoughts that went past just that thought of my life is over were not true. Not one of those things was true, but I was so down and I was discouraged and felt like, Hey, I have tried to do the right thing here. God, I tried to marry somebody in the church.

I’ve tried to serve you. I’ve tried to read my Bible and pray and do the Christian thing. Right. And it just didn’t work out the way that I wanted it to, or the way that I hoped it would. I remember being a single woman for several years and saying, Lord, there are no good Christian men left in this world.

I don’t see them. They’re not on the pews of the church. Nola, we have photos. I should pull one up. Where we had like a row of single women at my church is like, where were the guys? And there were maybe a few, a handful, but it was mostly single women who were there, who were devoted, who were trying to serve God.

And I thought, where are the men? Where are the good Christian men? I don’t see them around. And I think about this time in my life and how I’m telling God, right? God knows the future and he knows his plans for me. And I’m telling him. Lord, you’re not going to be able to find me, a Christian man, I don’t think you can do it.

And there isn’t one around here. And God’s like, hee hee hee hee. I don’t know, God’s just like chuckling over there going, Carrie, you have no idea, I got one saved right up for you. You just don’t know yet. He hasn’t been brought into your life, because it’s not the right season for you. I remember when my dad died just really thinking I am alone in this world.

I’m just alone. I’m an orphan. I have no parents left. Losing my mom was hard for sure, but when I lost my dad six months later, there’s something about losing that second parent that nobody prepared me for this, probably because most of the people I’m around hadn’t lost both parents. When you lose that second parent, you go through this, like, lost moment where you’re like, Who am I?

Like, I know who I am. It’s very strange. I don’t know that I’m doing it justice, but you do feel like an orphan and like, I don’t know, someone pulled up your roots or something and you have to kind of re find them. It’s like, you go through a little bit of an identity crisis, I think, almost. Even if you have a good sense of who you are, it’s just like, Man, I don’t have any parents anymore.

Like, I had parents my whole life and now I don’t have any parents. It was a strange thing. I felt very isolated and alone because even a lot of my grandmother on my mom’s side is still living. Well, I was like, my aunts haven’t even lost both of their parents. I was like, this is a really weird phenomena situation here.

Like, who do I talk to about this? It did feel very isolating alone, but God got me out of that pretty quickly because he brought just supportive people around me to let me know, like, I’m not alone. I don’t have to go through this alone. But I do remember feeling very isolated and alone during that time, even though I was married, even though I was in church community, I was just felt very lost when we’re going through hardships, tragedies, traumas, whatever it is.

We can’t always think clearly. Elijah fled for his life. I’m sure that that was a tough experience to go through. Having this evil, wicked woman who’s in charge of the country tell you, I’m gonna send somebody to kill you. Obviously, that’s scary. He ran from Jezebel. He’s not thinking clearly. He’s saying, I’m the only one left.

And sometimes God needs to come in during these times and correct our thinking. We have to be open though. We have to be willing to say, God, am I believing a lie right now? Can you show me in my life what I am believing and let me know, is that the truth about my situation or do you have something that you want to speak into this situation that is the truth?

Sometimes, we can’t sense God or know what he’s up to because he’s not where we think he is. I’m going to show you. In 1 Kings 19. 11, the Lord said, Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. This is after Elijah stated his complaint initially. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of a cave. God is not always where we think he is.

We want to look for God in the big moments of life. Sometimes people will even say, I want to see a big move of God, but you don’t realize all the small little pieces, the tiny interactions. If you are having an interaction with another human being, that can be incredibly powerful. You don’t know if you’re the only person that is going to smile at that person today, or maybe they’re in a difficult customer service role and you have a way to just bless them or speak kindness to them.

You might be the only one that handles it that way. You don’t know. And we can’t miss these opportunities that God gives us, but also in the hard times when you’re in the valley, look for the flowers because there are usually some type of small bright spots that God gives you. I’ll give you a little bit of example.

I don’t know if I’ve shared this before, but It was during that single season where I was struggling, I was having a hard time because of just the lack of touch in my life, for lack of a better way to say it, but I think physical touch is just an important human need that people have, and when you don’t have a built in husband at home, it’s hard to get those needs met, right?

So I was just talking to my friends about buying this. Pillow. It was almost like a pregnancy pillow that like wraps all the way around you or something. I was like, maybe I should buy this pillow. Maybe that will help me. And was just talking about some discouragement over still being single and not being able to find anybody.

They were like, yeah, maybe you should get pillow, whatever. You got to figure out ways to get your needs met in a healthy way, right? And I went into the grocery store. This is going to sound so weird, but I’m going to say it anyway, because somebody is here. So I went in the grocery store and there were like the first pomegranates of the season, and I was like, Oh, this is just so great because pomegranates have just a short season that you can get them in the winter, and it’s like they’re really good.

And I love pomegranates. It’s hard to find a good one sometimes, but I was just so happy, like, that I had found these pomegranates, and it was this little flower in the midst of my desert, or like, a flower in the midst of the valley. It was something beautiful, and I was just like, thank you, God. Thank you, God, the pomegranates are back.

It just kind of made my day in such a small way, and it was just this glimmer of God’s love for me and God’s grace. So I would encourage you to look for God in the small pieces. If you can’t see him in the big puzzle pieces of your life, know he’s working behind the scenes. But look for him in the small, good pieces.

There was a period of time where I wrote down one good thing about my day. And let me tell you, if you practice that exercise, it’s not always an easy one. Like some days, it’s easy. Oh, wow, this thing happened, it was so great. There’s other days that are rough, and you have to really search, like you have to really put your magnifying glasses on to find something good about the day.

But if you’ll do that, what it does is it creates more thankfulness in your life, but it does, it causes you to start to look for those small things. That are God’s goodness all around you that oftentimes we don’t recognize. That’s another exercise for you that you can do if you think it might help you.

One good thing about your day, jot it on the calendar somewhere, or one area that you saw God that day. Back to the story of Elisha in verses 15 through 17, God gives Elijah directions and next steps about where to go. So if you’re feeling a little lost, maybe you’re praying about wisdom, about a decision, you don’t feel like God is pulling you one way or the other, just know that God will give you directions and next steps about what to do.

And in that way, God was saying, once again, your life’s not over. I’m not done with you. Keep moving forward. So, what do we learn from this? What do you do if you don’t feel God in your life? Is there a blatant sin? This episode is not mainly on sin, but what if there is? I’m not talking about OCD telling you that you didn’t confess that you stole your third grade teacher’s pen.

Okay? That’s not what I’m talking about. Are you living in a pattern of sin where, that you have not repented from, that you are not working on getting right? Get that right first. See if there are any physical needs you need to pay attention to, like sleep or eating or exercise. Diet. Continue to spend time with God.

Look for God in the places where you might least expect Him. Talk to Him about how you feel. Be submissive to God in correcting your thinking. Sometimes when we’re going through hard things, we’re just not thinking clearly. You may need to go to counseling to bounce some ideas about what’s going on in your head with somebody else.

Or you may say, I know I’m not thinking right about this, but I don’t know how to shift it. It’s okay to get help for that. Reflect on the past things that God has done for you. So important. Just remember, remember, remember areas where you’ve seen God show up for you. If He’s shown up for you in the past, He’s going to show up for you again.

He’s going to do that again. And keep moving until God steers you in a different direction. Elijah had done the specific things God called him to do, but he didn’t know quite yet what his next direction was. 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. Thank you. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

How Do I Pray about OCD Besides Take it Away - Carrie Bock

136: How Do I Pray about OCD Besides Take it Away?

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

Carrie explores four ways to pray about OCD that go beyond asking for removal. She shares how praying for key aspects of your journey can bring new strength and perspective to your path with OCD.

Episode Highlights

How prayerful guidance can help you navigate your personal OCD treatment journey.

How asking for spiritual clarity can help you manage and respond to persistent OCD doubts and fears.

Ways to build resilience and trust in God’s plan throughout your recovery from OCD.

Episode Summary

Hi, I’m Carrie Bock. In Episode 136 of Christian Faith and OCD, we explore a question many of you have grappled with: how to pray about OCD when it seems like God isn’t removing it from your life. As a licensed professional counselor and someone deeply rooted in faith, I understand how difficult it can be to find relief from OCD through my work with clients. Over the years, I’ve learned that there are several effective ways to approach these prayers.

Here are four ways I believe can transform how we pray about OCD:

  1. Pray for Wisdom: OCD is tricky, and it’s not always easy to distinguish God’s voice from the intrusive thoughts. James 1:5 reminds us that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God, who gives generously. I encourage you to pray for discernment in recognizing what is truly OCD and what is not.
  2. Pray for Guidance in Treatment: Whether it’s deciding on therapy, considering medication, or finding the right support, pray for God’s guidance in every aspect of your treatment journey. I’ve seen firsthand how God provides exactly what we need when we need it, so don’t hesitate to ask for His direction and provision.
  3. Pray for Courage: Facing OCD requires courage. It’s hard to move forward when uncertainty and fear are holding you back. Just as God called Joshua to be strong and courageous, I believe He calls us to take bold steps of faith in our recovery. Pray for the strength to do the hard things, knowing that God is with you every step of the way.
  4. Pray that God is Glorified in Your Weakness: This one isn’t easy, but it’s powerful. I’ve learned that God’s power is made perfect in our weaknesses. When we allow God to work through our struggles, He can use them for His glory. Remember, you are not disqualified from serving or ministering because of OCD—God can still use you in amazing ways.

In this episode, I also share some exciting news—we’re starting monthly Zoom hangouts! This is a chance for me to get to know you, answer your questions, and build a community of support. If you’re interested, make sure you’re on our email list to get the details.

These four ways to pray about OCD are just the beginning. I’d love to hear from you—what other ways have you found to pray through your OCD? Visit our website and share your thoughts. Let’s continue to support each other on this journey.

If this episode blessed you, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews help other Christians struggling with OCD find the show and start their own healing journey.

Thank you for being part of this community. Until next time, may you find comfort in God’s great love for you.

Explore Related Episode:

134. Three Strategies to Help Stop Obsessive Praying Today

Transcript:

Episode 136. I know so many of you who I’ve talked to have just said I have prayed over and over and over for healing from this OCD. I have been praying that God would remove it from my life and take it Out of here.

Hello and welcome to Christian Faith and OCD with Carrie Bock. I’m a Christ follower, wife and 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.

I’m really excited to let you know that We are going to have some monthly Zoom hangouts. So this is just for me to get to know you, the listeners, a little better, answer any questions that you have. If you are interested, I will be sharing the Zoom link with our email subscribers at the time of this recording.

I’m not sure day or time of this event, but if you want to become an insider of these types of things, definitely get on our email list. I always enjoy hearing from our listeners. I thought about activating up and firing up a Facebook group, but I just don’t think that I have the bandwidth for any potential drama that may come from that.

We are going to just hang out on zoom maybe once a month, see how that goes and go from there.

I’m excited for today’s episode to be talking with you about four ways. to pray about your OCD differently. So if you just feel like you’re stuck in this repetitive cycle of asking God to take it away from you, asking God to heal you, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for that.

I think that that is a beautiful prayer. But after a little while, you may just become frustrated if God doesn’t supernaturally take that away from you, or maybe you’ve been in treatment and it just still feels like that thorn in the flesh. So I want to give you some different ways that you can pray through this that I think will help you as part of your recovery process.

One is to pray for wisdom. James 1. 5 says that if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. Let me tell you, OCD is tricky. Module 10 of ICBT, we go through all the tricks and cheats of OCD. One example is maybe this time. So you think it’s OCD, but then OCD says, maybe this time I’m not actually OCD.

And this is a real threat. So you actually do need to pay attention to it. My personal favorite is living the fear. You hear about the norovirus and your stomach starts to hurt. You experience a headache and you’re like, maybe this is a brain tumor. And then all of a sudden you focus on that headache. The more you focus on it, the worse it feels and you worry some more.

And just your, your mind and your body are interacting in that way. The more afraid. you are, the more your head hurts and vice versa. I believe that if you pray for wisdom, the Holy Spirit is going to guide you in those moments to build awareness of what is OCD and what is not. What is God’s voice? What is OCD?

And we’ve talked about this on the show before. So pray for wisdom. Two, pray for guidance in terms of your treatment process. What types of treatment should I pursue? If you’re thinking about getting a medication, pray about that. You know, there’s so many different options, and I know a lot of people have reservations about medication.

But what if that’s something that God uses to help you? You know, each person is individual. And so pray about the decisions that you make in regards to your treatment. And if you’re looking for a therapist, praying that God connects you with the right person. Pray for financial provision to get the help that you need.

I know therapy can be expensive. And also I know God is amazing at providing for exactly what you need at exactly the right time. So pray for guidance in terms of your treatment process. Number three is courage to walk in faith and do the hard things. God calls us to God sized tasks and we need faith and his strength to be able to do those hard things.

OCD recovery can be really hard and scary to move forward in faith and dealing with uncertainty and not knowing. God told Joshua after Moses died, before they went into the promised land, to be strong and courageous. And the strength and courage Joshua had came from his connection and partnership. In God’s work, God knew he was giving Joshua a God sized task, so while he told him to be strong, he had to be dependent on God to be able to have that strength.

It’s interesting how those two things play together. So pray for courage to walk in faith and do hard things. Number four, pray that God would be glorified in the midst of your weakness. This isn’t necessarily an easy prayer because we don’t want people to know about our weaknesses. We’re all about hiding those, but sometimes we just can’t.

We have story after story in the Bible of God using insignificant, broken people to accomplish his purposes. In 10, this is from the famous Thorn in the Flesh passage, Paul is speaking and says, But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I’m weak, then I am strong. Paul had a thorn. We don’t exactly know what that was, but I think there was a reason that God didn’t put it in the Bible for us is because we all have something in our life that feels like it’s holding us back.

But also in this passage, Paul talks about that being given to him to create a sense of humility. I’ve spoken to many of you who are involved in vocational ministry or para church ministries, missionaries, all kinds of different people with OCD, even people who are volunteering in their church, and I want you to never ever think that you are disqualified from ministry because you struggle with OCD.

That is a lie straight from the enemy, so do not give in to that. You’re not qualified by what you’ve done, or by worldly success, or trainings that you’ve had, but by what God has chosen to do through you. And when you are weak, He is strong. If there’s someone who exemplifies this really well, it’s my husband.

There are plenty of times where he’s physically weak, struggling with fatigue. Can’t really walk very long distances, but this summer he had the incredible opportunity to go to Guatemala with his former pastor and preach the gospel to kids and teenagers. And he allows God to work through him even when it’s not a good day physically for him.

Can God be glorified from OCD? You may be thinking, that’s ridiculous. I don’t even see how God could use this or use my situation to help anybody. It’s just so messy. But if you’ve been through something, God wants to give you a testimony. And we don’t always get to see what that looks like right now when we’re in the middle of it.

But know that maybe one day you’re going to be sharing that with somebody else, and you’re going to be able to help them. Maybe they don’t know they have OCD, and you’re going to be the one to say, yeah, all those spiritual questions that you have. I had all of those and here’s what it is. I found out it’s scrupulosity and I don’t want you to suffer one moment longer than you have to know that you can go get help for that and that this is not a spiritual issue of what you’re dealing with.

Like how powerful would that be if that was your experience, if you were able to help somebody or just to say, Hey, I know what that’s like. I’ve been there and I’ve wrestled with some of those same things that you’re wrestling with right now. And I just want you to know that there’s hope. And maybe you’re sharing your story with somebody, or God prompts you to share something that you struggle with, like OCD.

Not because that other person is dealing with the same thing, but maybe they’re going through something hard too, and they think, Oh, I don’t wanna, you know, go to therapy, I know I probably should, or I probably have a lot going on. Maybe you can help them work through that stigma. You know, there’s so many things that I don’t know why God allows them, but I have learned to say, okay, God, I want you to be glorified in the midst of this difficult situation.

I know this is a short episode and I gave you four different ways to pray about your OCD besides take it away. Certainly this is not an exhaustive list. There are so many things that you could potentially pray to God about. regarding your OCD. So I’m curious, what else would you add to this list? Find us on the website.

We’ll put a link in the show notes. You can let us know maybe some ways that you’ve prayed about your OCD that you feel have enriched your prayer life or your connection with God. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you. Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review.

This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

Looking for an Alternative to ERP - Find out if ICBT is Right for You - Carrie Bock

133. Looking for an Alternative to ERP? Find out if ICBT is Right for You

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

Carrie discusses Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) as a helpful option, explaining how it differs from ERP in addressing OCD symptoms and integrating faith perspectives. 

Join her as she explores ways to find peace and faith while managing OCD through these therapeutic approaches.

Episode Highlights:

  • The principles of ICBT and its approach to mental compulsions.
  • The importance of respecting someone’s faith in OCD treatment.
  • Common misconceptions about OCD treatment options and their effectiveness.
  • Practical tips for considering ICBT over traditional ERP methods.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Christian Faith and OCD, I discuss an alternative to Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) called Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT). While ERP is the gold standard for treating OCD, it’s not always the right fit for everyone. Some find ERP too overwhelming or not trauma-informed, especially those dealing with co-occurring conditions like PTSD. ICBT offers a different approach, focusing on challenging the obsessional doubt at its core rather than just managing the anxiety it produces.

ICBT helps you recognize that OCD weaves facts with imagination, creating a story that feels all too real. By identifying the crossover point where you shift from the present moment into this imagined scenario, you can begin to break free from the cycle of obsessions and compulsions. What I love most about ICBT is its focus on the “feared self” versus the “real self.” The feared self is who OCD tries to convince you that you are or will become, but it’s a false identity. ICBT helps you reconnect with who God says you are—loved, valued, and free.

If you’re wondering which therapy is right for you, it’s essential to choose the path that aligns with your needs and challenges. Both ERP and ICBT require dedication and hard work, but the reward is a life of greater freedom and peace. Remember, you are stronger than you know, and you can overcome the struggles of OCD with the right support.

Thank you for joining me today. If you found this episode helpful, I’d appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps others find our show and begin their healing journey. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Explore related episodes:

111. Using Humor with ERP with Judy Lair, LPCC
74. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) and NOCD with Stacy Quick, LPC

Transcript

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

with practical tools for developing greater peace. We’re here to bust through the shame and stigma surrounding struggling with OCD as a Christian, sharing hopeful stories of healing and helping you replace uncertainty with faith. I’m here to help you let go of the past and future to walk in the present abundant life God has for you.

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 and we’re going to be giving away some cool stuff like free coaching with Keri, and maybe some coffee gift cards thrown in there.

You’re not going to want to miss it, so I will see you there. Welcome to episode 133. Have you been looking for an alternative to exposure and response prevention, ERP? I know that this is an important thing that many individuals with OCD are looking for. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience with ERP. Maybe it just feels too big or too overwhelming or too scary to do.

Maybe you’ve heard stories from other people and don’t feel as comfortable with the therapy. Well, today we’re going to talk a little bit about exposure and response prevention and then talk about ICBT as a potential alternative. I don’t want you to get stuck on black-or-white thinking, like one of these therapies is right, one is wrong, one is better, one is not better. Both of these therapies have been researched and are evidence-based treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Both therapies have helped people heal, so we’re not in the interest of putting one above the other. We’re just letting you know that there are options out there that some people in the OCD community don’t know about.

What is exposure response prevention? This is a behaviorally based therapy. that focuses on developing a treatment hierarchy, things that you are avoiding due to OCD, things that you fear engaging with, and then you develop exposures, gradually exposing yourself to the things that are scaring you in order to overall reduce the anxiety, decrease the compulsions because you’re engaging in the activity.

You’re feeling the anxiety and you’re not engaging in the compulsion. It’s a way to retrain your brain so that when you encounter those things in the future, the triggers, you know, okay, this is OCD. I’m fully aware of what it is. It’s very uncomfortable, but I can sit with this and not engage in the compulsive activity.

Exposure and response prevention is referred to by the International OCD Foundation, among others, as the gold standard for OCD treatment. We’ve talked more in depth about ERP on the show. You can go back and listen to episode number 74. with Stacey Quick and episode 111 with Judy Lair, who both talk more in depth about what exposure and response prevention is and how it can be helpful for OCD. Both of these individuals work for NoCD, which is a online therapy group, and NoCD specifically hires therapists and focuses on using strict ERP as their main focus of treatment. Like any large online therapy practice, it really depends on the therapist that you get connected with and whether or not you have a good connection or relationship as far as what your success may or may not be.

If you’re going to be doing hard things, obviously feeling comfortable with the person you are doing those hard things with is really important. This is true for any type of therapy, not just ERP. I have a much older episode about ERP not being the only treatment for OCD where I talk about utilizing EMDR to really get down to the core fear and the inadequacies that people feel about themselves to create a sense of healing and that as we treat the trauma and those core fears that a lot of times the OCD symptoms would go down. I definitely need to update that episode now that I am engaged with doing more inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy, or ICBT, as we’re going to call that. This episode has been pretty popular. People have searched and found it on Google because they’re looking for alternatives to ERP. If this is the gold standard, then we have to ask ourselves, why are people looking for alternatives?

There’s several different reasons for that. ERP is effective, but it’s not perfect. I’m a therapist. I can tell you that no therapy is perfect. EMDR is not perfect. ERP is not perfect. ICBT is not perfect. This is why therapists often use multiple modalities of therapies with their clients in order to help them find the greatest level of healing. That would make you a somewhat eclectic therapist if you’re using multiple therapy modalities. When you get too stuck on one and try to pigeonhole everyone into the same type of therapy, I’ve probably done it myself, admittedly, then you run into all sorts of problems because people are complex beings and they come in with complex presentations.

One quarter of individuals who meet criteria for an OCD diagnosis also meet criteria for a PTSD diagnosis. There are times where ERP is not always trauma informed. It may exacerbate PTSD symptoms. I’ve had this happen with clients who saw a prior therapist to myself, and they were really just kind of encouraged by the ERP therapist of like, hey, well, this is a treatment for OCD.

We’ve got to keep doing this. We’ve got to keep going down this road, and unfortunately, they may have failed to look at the entire clinical presentation of that individual. Another reason people are looking for alternatives to ERP is that it’s hard. The reality of sitting with all of these uncomfortable anxieties, emotions, fear, body sensations that come up connected with that, it’s hard, and a lot of people end up dropping out of the process.

Just as ERP is at times not trauma-informed, it can be depending on the therapist. At times, it’s not religiously sensitive. I’ve also seen cases of this and that’s highly unfortunate because the International OCD Foundation has a great page on their website about religiously sensitive exposures.

They’re also very open and focused on working with clergy of a variety of different faith communities to help people who are dealing with scrupulosity or religious obsessions be able to get the best care and treatment possible. Let’s say that you’re doing ERP and maybe you cannot find a Christian therapist in your area who does that.

You may want to ask if that therapist would be willing to connect with your pastor to help you create appropriately religiously sensitive exposures so that you’re not feeling like you’re going against your faith by engaging in treatment. That is not what any ERP therapist would want you to do.

Another potential issue with ERP is that it can be harder to target mental compulsions. This is where I feel like ICBT has an edge over ERP. If you are targeting mental, like, worst-case scenarios, a lot of that’s imaginal exposure, where you’re having to write imaginal scripts and read those over and over.

A lot of times you’re writing down things that are not true about yourself, things that are not true about God. Some Christians struggle sitting with those things, to be quite honest, and I would be as well if I was the one having to engage in that type of therapy. The goal of that imaginal script is to retrain your brain to recognize that it doesn’t have to have a hold on you, and it doesn’t have to continue to create anxiety. You are sitting with the anxiety and essentially making it boring. I find that sometimes people end up playing whack-a-mole with their symptoms, doing a lot of different exposures over a variety of different themes, but they’re not really getting at the core fear. This is something that I feel ICBT does a little bit better job of.

Before I really knew about ICBT, like I said, I was using a lot of EMDR to really help people drill down what is it that you are really, really afraid of. Not just, I’m afraid of getting sick or I’m afraid of getting somebody else sick if I touch this doorknob. But. Like this deeper level of that, that deeper layer might be something like, I’m going to get so sick that I won’t be able to take care of my children and my family and other people will suffer.

At its core, exposure and response prevention is focused On feeling the anxiety, not engaging in the compulsion. So they’re focused on that piece of the equation. ICBT is different. It focuses on recognizing that the obsession is really irrelevant to the present moment right now. So if you resolve the obsessional doubt than you resolve the need to engage in the compulsion.

There are 12 modules to ICBT, so obviously it would take a long time to go through each of those modules. That’s another plug to join us in the workshop on August 5th where we’ll be able to talk about this more in depth. ICBT is based on the idea of inferential confusion. People with OCD overestimate possibility. They make irrelevant associations. They disregard sensory information, not just your five senses, but also your sense of self, who you are as a person. ICBT requires you to really slow down and focus on your thought process in a different way. It’s validating to a lot of my clients because it lets them know the obsession isn’t just coming out of nowhere.

There are reasons that you’re thinking these things that you’re thinking. It’s based on information that you know to be true that’s just a plain fact. Like germs are real. As a Christian, we have certain facts that we believe about forgiveness, repentance, salvation. Obsessional doubt may come from your own personal experience as well as hearing about the experiences of others, whether that’s people you know or whether it’s just another YouTube video you watched or something you read on Reddit.

What ICBT does is it helps you recognize that OCD is taking those facts and weaving them in with imagination to create a story. And this is not just any story, it is like a lifetime movie based on a true story that really sucks you in. and causes you to feel intense emotions, intense level of fear, even though nothing bad is happening right now.

ICBT helps you identify that when you get triggered, there is this crossover point from the present moment experience over into the imagination. And learning that crossover point helps you not to continue on with the obsessional story. But here’s my favorite part about ICBT. It causes you to look at identifying the feared self versus the real self.

The feared self is who you believe that OCD is telling you either that you are right now or that you’re going to become if you don’t engage in these compulsions. For example, someone may believe that if they don’t read their Bible enough, that means they are not a good Christian. Of course, reading your Bible enough is very relative.

I only read one chapter today, does that mean that I don’t really love God or don’t really care about Him? This belief system about self Whether it’s that I’m unworthy, not enough, that I’m going to harm other people, that somehow I have these, like, deep-seated desires to do things that are inappropriate.

That is a feared self, and it’s a false self. It’s not who you really are. Who you really are is who God says that you are. You are loved. You are valued. God wants you to have abundant life. God wants you to have joy. God wants you to have joy, even in the midst of difficult circumstances. You are a child of God. You are forgiven. You are free.

There are so many different things that I could say here about who you are in Christ. I encourage you to search the scriptures for those yourself. So let’s talk for a moment about, well, which therapy is best for me? How do I know? Here’s what I know. OCD recovery is no joke, okay? It’s hard either way. So whether you do ERP or whether you do ICBT, it’s going to be difficult. It’s going to require time. It’s going to require dedication. So choose your hard. You know what’s even harder? Living with unmanaged OCD symptoms that sucks the joy out of your life when God is calling you toward an abundant life with Him where there is joy and peace and freedom on the other side. I want you to know that whatever you choose to do to engage in, in your recovery of OCD, that you are strong. Stronger than you know. You can do hard things and I pray that you find the help that you need and the support that you need to be able to walk through these challenging times as you’re struggling as you know,

We’re in the process of of rebranding a bit and getting our website fixed. So until then, we are still at hopeforanxietyandocd.com or you can find me at my counseling practice, bythewellcounseling.com. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

Were you blessed by today’s episode? If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would go over to your iTunes account or Apple Podcasts app on your computer if you’re an Android person and leave us a review. This really helps other Christians who are struggling with OCD be able to find our show. Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be a substitute for seeking mental health treatment in your area.

Four Steps to Healing from Spiritual Abuse with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

129. Four Steps to Healing from Spiritual Abuse with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

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

In this episode, Carrie explores the profound impact of spiritual abuse on mental and emotional health, outlining red flags and steps to healing.

Episode Highlights:

  • What spiritual abuse is and how to recognize it.
  • Common red flags of spiritual abuse in religious settings.
  • The importance of identifying and addressing abusive elements.
  • The value of surrounding yourself with solid biblical teaching.
  • Strategies for re-engaging with a supportive Christian community.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I discuss a four-step process to heal from spiritual abuse. I first explain what spiritual abuse is and the red flags to watch for, such as the misuse of scripture or church authority for control, promotion of non-biblical theology, or using a position of power for personal gain. Healing from spiritual abuse takes time, especially if the abuse was prolonged or part of a rigid religious system.

The four steps to healing include:

  1. Identify Abusive Elements and Seek Trauma Therapy: Recognize the parts of your experience that were abusive and seek professional help if you’re struggling to move past them.
  2. Commit to Solo Time with God: Spend time with God to understand His true character, separate from the distorted teachings you may have encountered.
  3. Surround Yourself with Sound Biblical Teaching: Ensure the teaching you receive aligns with scripture and helps you build a healthy spiritual foundation.
  4. Re-engage with Christian Community: Once you feel ready, reconnect with a Christian community that embodies Christ’s love and provides healthy relationships.

Healing from spiritual abuse is a journey that requires time, reflection, and the support of both God and a loving community. If you’re dealing with the effects of spiritual abuse, remember that God’s love for you is unwavering, and it’s possible to find hope and healing.

If this episode resonates with you, I encourage you to reach out and explore intensive therapy options. For more information, visit my counseling website at bythewellcounseling.com or learn more about the podcast at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

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

Explore related episode:

92. When Ministry Becomes Toxic with Steve and Carrie Bock

Transcript:

Hi, welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 129. I’m your host, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. I wanted to share with you today a four-step process that I came up with on recovering from spiritual abuse. Before we get into that, I’m going to walk you through what is spiritual abuse. What does that mean? What are some red flags? If you think you might have experienced spiritual abuse, then we’ll go through the four-step process. My husband and I also did an episode called When Ministry Becomes Toxic in episode 92. If you want to go back and listen to that one as well, it may be relevant to you.

I want you to know that I am excited and looking ahead to the fall to get some ICBT groups together. This is inference-based cognitive behavioral therapy. You have an impact on what these groups will look like, whether you are wanting more interaction among each other in practicing the skills or whether or not you want to come learn about it and then have a self-help application to your life. Please take our very short survey on ICBT. If you’re an insider on our email list, you have already received the survey. Please go in and take it. If for some reason you’re not on our email list and haven’t received the survey, you can definitely reach out to us through the website at hopeforanxietyandocd.com

Let’s talk about what is spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse is when someone uses the Bible or non biblical theology or their position in the church as a pastor, mentor, leader to control you in some way. Some red flags would be they’re promoting non-biblical theology. For example, “God heals everyone who comes to Him for healing. If you’re not healed, it’s due to a lack of faith.”

If you look in the beginning of Luke, Jesus actually walked away from people that were coming to the house for healing because he went away to spend time with the Lord. That may be the beginning of Mark. Jesus was in a house and he had slipped away. People were looking for him. Even when Jesus was on the earth, that was healing was not his number one ministry. He was leading people to the Father. That was his main point of view, but there are some teachers out there that say, “God heals everyone and if you’re not healed, therefore it must be a lack of faith.” That’s not what we see in the Bible. We also see that Paul had a thorn in the flesh. He was an incredible man of God and God did not fully heal him. God told him, my grace is sufficient for you. That would be one example.

Another example that we see a lot of times in church is “God wants to bless you. That blessings means God wants to give you financial wealth and make you a great person. If you have faith or if you give to this ministry.” A lot of times that’s not what it is. Unfortunately, people looking for money, If you give to this ministry, then God is going to just bless you and make you super wealthy. That is not what we see in scripture. Once again, going back to Paul, Paul was preaching the gospel and there were churches that donated to him, but he also made tents for a living. I don’t know if you knew that. That is in scripture as well. Jesus said, I don’t even have a house to lay my head. There were some wealthy people in the Bible. Don’t get me wrong. You look at Abraham, had quite a bit of wealth, which back then was in terms of flocks. Solomon had a lot of wealth. So there were wealthy people in the Bible, but there were also some people that weren’t wealthy and they were just had given up a lot in the service and ministry of the gospel.

Just because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean that God is going to bless you financially. I do believe that if you’re following God, God will bless you, but that’s not always in dollars and cents. Sometimes that’s a relationship blessing. Sometimes that’s a joy that you’ve received from the Lord. I believe, that God does bless his children, just like we want to bless our children as earthly parents. That’s not always a financial or a material blessing, and that should not be our main focus of what we’re trying to receive from God.

Another red flag would be using a position of power or influence to gratify their own sexual needs. Sexual abuse does exist in the church. Let’s not try to pretend like it doesn’t. I wish that it didn’t. Not all abuse involves touching. Maybe inappropriate comments that are sexual or flirtatious comments that shouldn’t be going on with between two people who are married, or it may be inappropriate flirtatious comments going on when you know clearly that other person is married or they clearly know that you’re married. It may be like exposing themselves in some sort of way or exposing you to sexual material or pictures. Know that not all sexual abuse. involves actual physical contact.

I think this next red flag kind of goes along with that one. Someone may lead you to do something that you know in your spirit or you know based on scripture is wrong, but they may use some type of spiritual justification for it, saying God wants us to be together. This is God’s will for your life, that you do this, and you know in your spirit they’re asking you to do something wrong, like have an affair or have an inappropriate relationship with them.

Another red flag, they’re the only ones that you can get spiritual answers from. No, I know that in the early church, there was a church who would listen to what the disciples were saying, and then they would go back and they would search the scriptures for themselves. That’s something that we all should be doing, even if your pastor is using scripture. Examine it for yourselves. The Holy Spirit interprets the Word of God. Some of you may say, “Well, I read the Bible, but I don’t fully understand everything that it says.” Okay. Welcome to the club. I think it’s a difficult book for a reason. God wants us to wrestle with it, not to be completely mysterious, but that we have to seek him in that process of reading the Bible and receiving that interpretation of the word by the Holy Spirit. You don’t need a pastor to tell you exactly what it says. Some things in scripture are just very clear and very black and white.

Some things are a little bit more gray where we have to wrestle with it a little more and people may come to different theological conclusions. But some things are very, very clear. If someone is telling you, “Well, you need to run that decision by me,” and you’re kind of like, “Why would I need to do that?” That’s creating an unhealthy level of dependence on for you to, they’re wanting you to depend on them or feel like, You can’t think or make decisions for yourself. That’s not a position that you want to be in.

Last red flag that I came up with is an important one. It happens, unfortunately, a lot in families where people withdraw love if you do something that they don’t agree with. I’m not talking about something that’s morally wrong, but you make a decision. Or set a boundary in such a way where they’re not in agreement with what you’re doing. It could be something completely that you feel like God has called you to do or wants you to do and your family is kind of giving you the cold shoulder.

You’re the one that’s not invited to the family dinner and there’s a sense of withdrawing love. It’s kind of like Well, we really don’t approve of you, and so therefore we can’t love you. Those things are not mutually exclusive, right? Because as Christians, we should be loving people that we don’t agree with.

Newsflash, hold the phone if you haven’t heard that before. We are supposed to love our enemies. We can love people that we disagree with, or that are doing things that we know are blatantly wrong. We can still love that person and say, Hey, I love you, but your behavior is really off course right now, or I love you, but I’m really concerned about you.

You’re headed down a dead-end street here, and if you don’t turn around, then I’m afraid for your safety or your health. Those are healthy conversations, not withdrawing love because someone is doing something that we don’t approve of.

Let’s get into the process of healing. Yeah. Now, healing takes time, especially if the spiritual abuse was ongoing. Maybe you were a part of a cult or very rigid religious system. Maybe you were a part of that for a long time, like years. It’s going to take you time to heal from that. That’s just makes sense, right? You’re not going to be able to unravel all of that overnight. Give yourself the time and space that you need to heal.

I think the number one step that I put down was identify the pieces that were abusive and seek trauma therapy if needed. What I’ve seen with my clients is that so many people are suffering in this world. From bad theology. Yes, I’m going to use the word bad because it’s not biblical believing that we have to be perfect in order for God to love us. That’s completely antithesis to the gospel, but that’s how some treat other people, believing that God is angry with you. If you have one sin or one small mistake, you are God’s child. That’s something that is important to keep in mind. There’s always this balance that we have, obviously, between sin and grace. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about situations that are extreme. Identifying the pieces that were abusive in that maybe church context or in that relationship context and seeking professional help if you keep running against a wall or you feel like you’re not able to get to a healthy spiritual place that you want to be or you’re not able to get to a healthy relationship place with others.

You don’t feel like you can be vulnerable in your relationships. You don’t feel like you can be safe to be vulnerable with God. Maybe you’re having a lot of flashbacks back to that time or intrusive memories where you feel like you’re just constantly ruminating or thinking about various things that have happened to you.

Those are all flags that you need to get a professional to help walk you through that journey. If you are seeking to like to rebuild and re-engage with a healthy faith situation and relationship with God, it just makes sense to have a balanced, healthy Christian therapist who can walk you through that.

Even though that may be challenging if you feel like you were hurt or abused by the church, what is it going to look like? Or what is this therapist going to be like with me? I will say that I’ve seen people do incredible trauma work surrounding hurts that they experienced in the church so I know that people can heal from that.

I know that EMDR has been an amazing tool for some of those individuals to allow their nervous system to clear that out. So that something goes from, hey, it’s in the short-term memory and feels like it’s happening right now to it’s in long term storage. I don’t have to worry about that right now.

The other thing I put on here is to commit time. Step two, commit solo time with God to get to know Him personally. In the Bible, it talks with us about seek the Lord and that if you seek the Lord with all your heart, you’re going to find him. God is not going to just remain mysterious and hidden from you. If you are openly saying, “Okay, God, I want to know your true character. Maybe these are things that I’ve been taught in a very unhealthy situation. Maybe scriptures were twisted. It was kind of use the scripture, but they also There was some truth and there was some not truth mixed in there. Getting to know God on a personal level. “Who are you really?” This is so important. This should be a question we’re all asking in a lifetime process. Who are you, God? I want to know you more today than I did before.

As you really seek the Lord, soaking in the scriptures, literally reading the Psalms, seeing the depth of the emotion that people experienced with God, and knowing that that’s a welcome and safe place, God Is a safe being to connect with, because even though he is incredibly holy and incredibly above us and distant, there is also a scripture that tells us that God wants to have an intimate relationship with us to have a closeness to have a friendship with us.

That’s all because of Jesus, not because of anything we’ve done. I don’t deserve that at all. You don’t deserve that. God allows us to have that opportunity to seek Him, to know Him in a personal, intimate way.

Third step, surround yourself with solid biblical teaching, really examining, and for all of these, you have to be in the Word.

You’re not going to know God if you’re not reading the Word. You’re not going to be able to be surrounded and know that you’re surrounded by sound biblical teaching if you’re not comparing it with what God’s Word is saying to you. I think it’s an important reparative experience for you to Have a positive experience with the church.

I know a lot of people have given up on church. They’ve walked away. They’re like, “I’m not doing that anymore,” but I’ve also met some other people who have said, “I’ve had some really painful church experiences, but I’ve gone somewhere else now and God has restored my belief in the church and the importance of that.”

There’s a verse that God, like, is bringing to mind where it talks about, I will restore the years that locusts have eaten. There was this locust plague, basically, and that was God’s promise. “I’m going to restore that.” Even though it takes time for things to grow back, it takes time for fields to recover. God promises us restoration and redemption if we’re seeking him.

As you’re surrounding yourself with sound biblical teaching, when you feel ready, step four is re engaging with the Christian community. I believe that the love of Christ is so powerful, and one of the amazing gifts is that we get to receive that love from other believers and other Christians, it’s just a small picture, a small portrait of how much God incredibly loves us.

It says that we will be known, Christians will be known by our love for other people. Unfortunately, a lot of times that’s not what we’re known for in today’s world, but that is what the scripture tells us, that people will know us by our love for One another. When they see you reaching out to someone who you know is having a hard time or bringing them a meal when they’ve had a child or bringing them a meal and leaving it on the doorstep when someone’s sick, that is a powerful witness and testimony.

We like to believe that we can all survive on our own. We’ll be fine. Everything’s good over here. The reality is, is that we need each other. We need relationships. We need people who can tell us, “Hey, you’re walking sideways there.” We need people to encourage us. We need people to speak truth into our lives. We need people to just have a taco with every once in a while. You know what I mean? Or have a slice of pizza or go out and eat a plate of vegetables, if you’re a vegetarian, whatever is your flavor.

We need people in our lives. God has wired us that way. He didn’t wire us to just be in relationship with Him. He wired us to be in relationship with each other and within community and so many people are missing out on that, and that’s such a hard piece. I know sometimes people feel like, “I’m too busy for that, or I have too much going on, or I’m working too many hours.” You will feel that void, you will feel that sense of loneliness and loss when you’re not connected in the community.

We saw this huge with COVID-19. There have been studies, Cigna did a major study on loneliness. found out it was a major killer of people worse than heart, heart issues and chronic conditions were people that just didn’t have a lot of interactions with others. They tended to die earlier. Amazing, absolutely kind of mind-blowing when you think about how much the interaction between our physical health and our mental health is and that sense of interconnectedness within community.

If you’ve been through spiritual abuse, I want you to know that God loves you. That if you’ve had a bad experience with the church, that those were people who were sinning, don’t put your view of God onto those people, because God is not other people. That is something that you have to remind yourself, or as you’re re-engaging with other Christians, “Okay, these are not the people that hurt me. I’ve been hurt by other people.” That is where I need to allow that to lie and taking the time to heal from the wounds, it allows you to experience forgiveness. I think that’s something that I didn’t list on here, but forgiveness is an important part of the healing process and allows us to be able to open up to other healthy people. to be able to receive love and to give love in the future.

If we remain angry, bitter and remain in unforgiveness, then we won’t be able to move forward and experience health for everyone out there, know that you are very much loved and cared about if you’re interested and you had one of these experiences and you say hey, I want to take some time aside to heal from that.

I do intensive therapies on Fridays in my practice. You can always check that out at bythewellcounseling. com. You can check out more on the podcast at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

Thank you so much for listening.

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

99. My Grief and Loss Journey

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Podcast Episode.

On today’s episode, I want to take a moment to open up and share my personal journey of grief and loss over the past year. It’s been a challenging road, but I find purpose in sharing my story with all of you, knowing that it might help someone going through similar challenges.

Episode Highlights:

  • The profound impact of losing both parents and navigating the complex emotions that arise from such a significant loss.
  • The importance of allowing yourself to grieve and acknowledging the unique challenges that come with losing both parents.
  • Honoring your loved ones’ memories and finding ways to keep their legacy alive in your own life.
  • The transformative power of surrendering to God’s plan and finding peace amidst adversity.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 99. I’m Carrie Bock, and today I’m sharing a very personal story that’s been unfolding over the past year—a journey through grief and loss. As hard as it’s been, I believe there’s value in sharing these moments because grief touches us all in different ways.

My journey through grief began in March 2022 with the birth of our daughter, Faith. Just a few weeks after, my mom came to visit, and we discovered that she was battling pancreatic cancer. At first, we thought it might be pancreatitis, but the diagnosis quickly turned to something more serious. We were hopeful she could undergo surgery, but unfortunately, the cancer had already spread too fast. It was an overwhelming and crushing realization, coming at a time when I was still recovering from childbirth, processing the emotional and physical toll of bringing new life into the world while confronting the reality of losing someone so dear to me.

As I reflect on this past year, I’ve come to see how deeply intertwined joy and sorrow can be. While there have been moments of profound pain, there have also been moments of grace. God has met me in unexpected ways, showing me that even in the midst of heartache, there’s room for healing and growth. I know many of you are walking through your own journeys of grief, and my prayer is that through today’s episode, you’ll find comfort in knowing that you’re not alone and that God’s presence can sustain us through even the toughest of times.

More Episodes to Listen to:

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

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCOD, episode 99. I am your host, Carrie Bock. If you’ve been following along with our podcast, then you know that I’ve experienced some pretty significant grief and loss over the last year. And even though it’s a hard thing for me to talk about, I wanted to share because I feel like since having this podcast, I’ve been through a lot and every time I go through something and learn something new, I definitely want to put that out in the world and share it with you.

I don’t want to just suffer in vain. If this can help someone else who is going through grief and loss, I really want to share that with them. All of us are going to experience grief and loss at some point or another. It’s just a part of our lives now. And it doesn’t matter how young you are, how old you are, how rich or poor, whether you live in America or in Australia.

At some point, you’re going to go through grief and loss. Whether that’s the loss of a person that’s close to you, the loss of a job, divorce, a move that was stressful, involves loss of relationships, there’s definitely something that we can all learn from each other as part of this process in the joint collective human experience.

I wanted to start by going over, just the bird’s eye view of what’s happened since Faith was born, our daughter.  In March, 2022, Faith was born and my mom flew up a few weeks after my in-laws were here right after she was born. And mom was having some problems with her stomach. She was saying, “You know, I’m not eating certain things.”

She had been treated for pancreatitis. The doctors didn’t have answers as to why she was continuing to struggle with her stomach issues. Just a couple of months later, Memorial Day in May, Mom got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had to wait to have all these scans and different things. I guess several doctors had to be involved in the ultrasound process to look at the mass on our pancreas, and Steve and I had gone away at that point for the weekend.

We just wanted a little mini vacation before I got back to work. I had been on maternity leave for 12 weeks. Things were just a little bit different in our life. We had support system that felt a little bit shaky, somewhat isolated from staying home with the baby for the first few months, but then also we were trying to get connected with another church.

We ended up making a difficult decision towards the end of 21 to leave the church that we had been going to, and so we were in the process of trying to get in a small group or some type of Sunday school or ministry at the new church in mid-July of 22. On my birthday, we flew down to see my mom.

At this point, I knew things weren’t great with my mom. They had told her that she could have surgery to have the cancer removed and only about 25% of people with pancreatic cancer can actually go through the surgery. I think it has to do with a certain blood vessel in that area, and once that gets wrapped around surgery is too dangerous.

We had this surgery that my mom was supposed to be able to have or that we were hopeful that she would be able to have and then have a longer life. It turns out that the cancer spread too quickly, and so she had to go back into the hospital. They were not able to do the original surgery to remove the cancer, but of course, she was having other problems and they were trying to work with different tubes to get things straightened out so that she could function.

I remember telling my mom that I didn’t want to wait until she was on her deathbed to come out and see her and let her know how much I loved her, Steve Faith, and I ended up getting a one-way flight to Florida and we stayed down there for three weeks while I was working online, trying to rebuild a practice after coming back for maternity leave.

In a summer, in which no one wanted to be online because everyone had Zoom fatigue from COVID, they would have rather run off and gone on vacations understandable than see a therapist. That was tough. I really just made sure that everyone else was taken care of except for me. I would go visit Mom in the hospital. I would pick up dinner for Dad or make dinner. Sometimes I was seeing clients. I was making sure that my husband and my daughter were okay. During that visit, we kept hoping that my mom was going to be able to get out of the hospital where she would be able to spend more time with my daughter. And unfortunately, mom was only out of the hospital for a couple of days and then things happened with her feeding tube.

She had to go right back in. It was unfortunate that we didn’t get more. Time with her outside of the hospital, but we decided to celebrate all the summer birthdays in our family, which is myself, my brother and my dad all have birthdays in the summer. And then towards the beginning of September after we had gotten back, my husband was having a little bit of some mild balance issues, more when it was dark or couldn’t see very well, or the lighting was bad, but most of the time he was getting around pretty well. When last year, in July and towards the beginning of September, the day Faith turned six months old, Steve had an appointment with the specialty neurologist. He was diagnosed with SCA or Spino Cerebellar Ataxia and that was like a big hit as we are dealing with my mom dying and a few weeks later my mom dies on the evening of September 22nd.

My mom really suffered a lot with this cancer and that was so hard to see my mom go through that. She was always just a very devoted person to the Lord, to church ministry, and I really had a lot of spiritual wrestlings about moms suffering towards the end of her life. It just changed the way I have viewed a lot of things, which I’ll talk about a little bit later.

Losing Mom was really such a big hole because she was a person that I would talk to about everything. She was a go-to person. I talked to her every week and let her know kind of what was going on with my business efforts that I was trying to do.

She was my biggest fan for the podcast. Absolutely, just an incredible woman of God. I know that she struggled in her own faith journey towards the end just wondering, do I have enough faith for God to heal me? And of course we were praying so hard during this whole process of my mom being sick and having cancer and okay, praise God, she can have surgery. Like, “Oh no, she can’t.”  Now what does this mean for our family? It was tough. It was really tough going through all that, but knowing also that because my mom had a relationship with the Lord that when she died, she would go to heaven and it was a hard piece kind of, there was a little bit of role-switching in a lot of ways towards the end with my mom because I felt like I had to be strong for her as she was going through everything and.

I’m dealing at the same time with this new diagnosis for Steve and I don’t really have the support of anyone to process that with or talk to them about it. And in this process, Steve, his balance was really declining and started using a cane. Got him in October, I think, into a vestibular therapy. It was just a tough time.

And in October, it was about a month after my mom died that we had her memorial. That timing was hard waiting a month because it felt like I was trying to work through things. But then also there was this lack of closure because we knew we had to go back to Florida and deal with the funeral and everything else and eally the silver lining of the whole situation was being able to have Faith there to spend so much time with my extended family and with my dad while she was in her first year of life. Obviously, we didn’t plan to go back and forth to Florida that many times in her first year, but it was just a good time with my immediate family. But my dad’s extended family, most of them are in Florida as well, and both my parents came from pretty big families.

It is nice to have the support of aunts and uncles and others. Since we had already planned to come down for Thanksgiving and I think had already booked flights or made arrangements to come down, we went ahead and came down for Thanksgiving. That was ended up being about a month later, and I didn’t know that at the time. That would be the last time that I’d seen my dad in person. He was struggling, of course, as we all were with like the first holiday without mom, and he told me that he. I was gonna really miss this cake that she used to make.

It’s a family recipe that we always make around Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s horrible for you. It’s mostly Crisco and eggs and flour. But anyway, we made this cake. I told Dad I would make the cake for him, and I’m not lying. That is a hard cake to make and not get dry. It was like the best one I’ve made probably ever, which was just really cool, so everyone appreciated it, and of course, it was all eaten. I didn’t last on the dessert table very long, but that was a good time and just a good memories with my family.

We spent Christmas with Steve’s family and it was super cold in Tennessee and March. We had Faith’s first birthday. My dad had been telling me, “Okay, when Faith turns one, I want an updated picture of her, like an eight by 10.” I was like, “Okay, well you’re gonna have to tell me like which picture you want of her?” And he said, “Well, no, she has to turn one first.” So I was like, “Okay, dad.” And we ended up having a video call with my dad, aunt, brothers, and nephews, and my dad got to see Faith walk on the video call, and then Dad died.

A week later, after Faith’s birthday, we were back down in Florida about a week later for the funeral. We decided not to have so much time in between and where it was gonna be close to Easter. So we didn’t want to interfere with Easter plans and those things. My dad wasn’t in the best of health, whereas my mom had been in really good health, so when she got cancer, it was a huge shock because she’d always taken such good care of herself, was into vitamins and eating vegetables, all those things. She didn’t drink soda. She didn’t drink a lot of coffee. She just lived a pretty healthy lifestyle. She was walking on a regular basis. When mom got sick and died before dad, it was a shock for all of us as a family because dad hadn’t been in the best health for years, and my dad had a stroke several years ago and he’s had trouble with his blood pressure and weight.

He had been overweight for probably the majority of his adult life. I had always thought for the last few years when I would visit my dad or he would come to Tennessee, I would have thoughts like, what if this is the last time I see my dad? And wanted to let him know obviously that I loved him and he was one of these people that he never thought about, like his own mortality.

He was just kind of, I think, expected to live forever. He wasn’t, didn’t seem to be really worried about those things, but when Dad died, even though I knew he wasn’t in good health, I didn’t really understand the weight that I would feel over no longer having parents at all. It just felt like I was in this child orphan situation.

I kept saying I feel lost and used the word weird more than once to describe the feeling. There’s just no other feeling like that when you lose both of your parents, especially in such a short time period. My head was super, super cloudy. Right after that, I had to write everything down for my reminders. I know I wasn’t functioning at max capacity.

I wanted to tell you a few of the things that I did during my grief process that I felt were helpful for me. One was I showed up in my relationship with God even if I didn’t have the words, or I couldn’t even think to pray. And I can’t explain to you what happens in those moments spiritually, but I know that the Bible says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. And that brought me a sense of comfort because I really didn’t know what to say and couldn’t think straight.

When mom got sick, I made the decision to go back on antidepressants because I knew that I had to function and when I was crying for like an hour straight, it just wasn’t functional at all. And I just made that decision that I was gonna be on them at least the first year after mom died to get through all the first pieces, first holidays and things like that. I made the decision to go to bed at the same time every night. You wouldn’t think that’s like a major life change, but it really has changed my life. Steve jokes with me about it. He is like, “Hey, it’s five minutes till your bedtime.” I used to be one of those people who were like, one more thing before I went to bed, and It didn’t work out for me well because it was usually my one more thing somehow engaged my mind and required some mental activities. So it was a little too stimulating before I needed to go to sleep. So now my nighttime routine is much more mellow and I found that by going to bed around the same time every night or by a certain time, has helped me to get more restful sleep and helped me to feel better and more refreshed in the morning.

I haven’t had problems falling asleep since I started doing that. And as many of you know, from a prior episode, I cut back where I could on work to take care of myself and reduce mental energy. It meant saying no to some clients that wanted to work through grief and loss issues. It meant saying no to all clients for a short time period.

I struggled with this because I had some type of imaginary deadline for this course that I wanted to put out for Christians with OCD, and I just emailed everyone on the list and put the whole thing on hold. If you’re not a part of our email list, you can join by going to hopeforeanxietyandocd/free, if you want the OCD resource. It was tough to have to slow down because I enjoy living at a little bit faster pace and I’m naturally like a goal setter and I have things that I want to accomplish and things that I look forward to around the corner. But, That wasn’t where I was at at the time.

I had a severe lack of motivation. I would tell my counselor, I would tell other people I get out of bed right now because I have to because I have a daughter and a husband who need me and need my help. Other than that, if it wasn’t for them, I probably would have spent a lot more time in the bed just moping around and being sad and a lot less functional, but because I essentially had to put one foot in front of the other and do the basics, I just really focused on the basics of making sure that we were eating, sleeping, and the house was relatively clean, somewhat.

I learned in this grief process to engage and enlist my support system, and it’s so humbling to ask for help, and I realized I wasn’t gonna make it through without the support of others. I asked for more help on our last trip to Florida than I had on any of the others. If you want to help someone going through grief and loss, what can you do?

Make them food or bring them food because the last thing you want to spend mental energy on at that moment is what is for dinner. It’s almost like your brain is just constantly trying to multitask, working through the grief and loss process. It’s very taxing mentally, physically, emotionally.

You can mow someone’s lawn, you can watch their kid, and there are so many different little things that you can do. One of the sweetest things that someone did for us was give us a few groceries when we got back from Dad’s funeral since we’d been gone for a couple weeks and I was helping clean out my parents’ house at that point too. I didn’t have the perishable food, the basics, bread, milk, eggs. They bought us just a few things and it was simple, yet incredibly thoughtful. So just know that even if you can’t relate to what someone’s going through, or you’re not sure how to respond, those little acts of kindness and love will really stick out to them.

There’s been so much that happened in the last 15 months as I wrote all this down. I was just overwhelmed, That was a lot to go through, and I’ve learned a lot, not just about some healthy things I could do for myself, but some things about grief. Some I knew from the experience of going through my divorce, but to be honest, I had forgotten how tough the grief process is.

Grief is exhausting. It takes time. There are no shortcuts. I went back and started reading the book, “Life After Loss” again, that I had read after my divorce. The author talks about how you can’t get over grief, you have to go through it. I highly recommend that book. It’s about losses of many different kinds. He talks about death, divorce, moving to a new city, starting over. I learned that in terms of family members, other people may be at a different phase of grief process than you are, and that can be really challenging. My dad never really accepted that my mom was dying, even up to the very end saying that he was shocked when she did die, and that she’d been very sick for some time. But I think that he was still holding onto a lot of hope that they would be able to do chemo and get rid of the cancer, and Mom just was never strong enough to do chemo. Her body just wasn’t in a place where it could handle that due to all the drains and different things she had going on. You may be in a stage of grief where you’re angry about the grief and loss and someone else is really sad.

You may be in a place of sadness and somebody else is in anger and it’s. Sometimes it’s hard to meet your other family members on that level. That definitely was something that came up for me. I had a lot of anger about my mom’s care, or somewhat lack of care that she experienced while she was in the hospital by her doctors.

I felt like they weren’t really honest with her about outcomes. You know, just were insensitive. There were some things that were said that were pretty insensitive, and I became very angry and frustrated in that process. I really just tried to advocate for her wherever I could. When I would go there, I was reminded that grief is hard when you know it’s coming, and it’s hard when you don’t.

One isn’t better than the other. They’re just different. With Mom, we knew she was dying. We got to have a lot of goodbye conversations. Just a lot of time spent in the hospital talking about her as a mom and even my parents were able to have conversations about, you know, being a spouse and all of that.

With Dad, we didn’t get to say goodbye. It was just suddenly he died of a heart attack in his sleep, basically. I’m glad that he didn’t suffer, even though we didn’t get those opportunities necessarily in the same way that we got them with Mom, when you have the sudden grief and loss, it’s shocking. It jolts you in a way and when you know it’s coming, you still don’t know when it’s coming, so you’re anticipating something.

I remember even telling some people, I didn’t tell them the whole story, but I was trying to kind of make plans and letting people know, “Hey, I may have to travel at a moment’s notice and I may not be able to fulfill that responsibility just without trying to tell them the whole story of what was going on with my mom. So definitely grief is hard either way. I realize that you could have a lot of different conflicting emotions and grief that mess you up like I was talking about before. One moment you might be intensely sad, and then another moment you might be super angry.

Another moment you might have some regret. I think that regret is probably the hardest emotion to have. I really try mostly to live my life without any regrets. I think that’s why I wanted to come down and see my mom when I did, and Steve was definitely a strong supporter and proponent of that. He was like, “Just do what you have to do to be with your family.”

Even though it was hard, I know on him and Faith just change of schedule and routine and location, that I’m glad that I did that in that situation and I’m glad that I saw my dad, you know, at Thanksgiving. I’m glad that we had that time to spend together and I’m thankful for that. In my own ways, I always tried to communicate to him how much I loved him and valued him as a parent. I had a much probably closer relationship with my mom than I did with my dad, even though I know he still loved me in his own way, but I just had different feelings about the situations and the deaths.

Definitely, there’s a lot of spiritual questioning that can come in these situations. Why did my mom have to suffer this way?Why did on the way out of her life, especially when she served God and served the church, you know, why didn’t God answer our prayers? For healing in the way that we wanted to so that we could still have Mom here with us. I don’t know. I don’t have full answers for those things. I know that God gave me peace about my mom’s suffering because my mom was very open about her faith to people in the hospital, and she was open about, She loved telling them that she had a granddaughter who was actually born on my mom’s birthday, believe it or not.

We did not plan it that way. That’s just the way it happened. But she was supposed to be born several weeks later. My mom was very open with people about her faith and she would give out these little Billy Graham tracks. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those. I’m surprised there are still tracks out there really, to be honest, and people still use that.

If it works and it brings someone to Christ, that’s great, but she would hand out these little steps to peace with God. Billy Graham tracks. I know that there was one time I was in the hospital sitting with her and one of the nurses came in and she said, “Oh, I took that booklet that you gave me and I showed it to some of the other nurses.” I told God, during this process of prayer, I really hope someone in that hospital got saved up in there and I probably will never know this side of heaven if what the impact of my mom being there was. God gave me the piece, that was her last mission field on this earth was just sharing the love of Christ with people on her way out, and that’s just how she was.

My mom went to school actually to be a missionary. She never left the country. That’s a long story, but she spent most of her time in her career as an ophthalmic assistant working for an eye clinic.

I learned no one wants to have the hard conversation about death, not even the doctors. Whereas I think I’ve heard other experiences where doctors were quick to predict how long a family member had. They definitely weren’t in my mom’s situation. In some ways, that was good. But in other ways, it was really to the detriment. I think when she got down to the final weeks and days left, we were able to get her home with hospice for a few days to spend those time with my dad, but then she actually went back to the hospital and passed away there. I think for some reason she didn’t want to pass away at home. I don’t know if that had to do with, she was concerned about how it will affect my dad, but I’m glad that she had some time at home before she passed away.

It’s tough because I don’t think my mom fully faced her own mortality until palliative care came in and started talking with her about if she wanted to sign, do not resuscitate or what she wanted her final wishes to be for her living will. She ended up being very upset by that conversation, and I fault the doctors for that because I don’t think they prepped her for how little time that she had left and how her body was essentially shutting down at that point. This, especially with Steve’s diagnosis and all the uncertainty, it’s prompted us to have a lot of conversations about death, living will, final wishes, and those conversations are so important to have. I can guarantee you that your loved one does not want to sit there and think about what song you might like at your funeral, because when you’re going through grief, just thinking about something like that, it sounds so simple, but yet it’s so hard in that moment to know like, I don’t know.

Well, would they have wanted this song or am I just picking that because it sounds good or It’s easy? I would say that’s one good thing that has come out of the situation for Steve and I to have honest conversations about, do you want to be kept alive by a breathing machine? Do you want to have a feeding tube? What do you want? If things get really bad or you’re in a coma and nobody thinks you’re gonna wake up, those are. Hard conversations to have, and we also had a lawyer that really walked us through the entire process of getting a will and making sure that our daughter was taken care of in that process.

If something should happen to us before she’s 18 and how she will be taken care of, who will take care of her? We both have living wills now and some paperwork if we need to get medical records from each other. It’s just really good. I feel a lot more at peace having that prepared now, and hopefully we won’t need our wills for quite some time, but you just never know.

It’s important that we have these conversations about death. My counselor told me about a book, and I don’t exactly remember what it was called, but it’s a book where you can fill out even what you would like to have happen to your pets and what type of funeral or burial would you like to have? Those types of things. Are you wanting to donate your organs or your body in some way to help others? I would encourage you to have some of these hard conversations, especially if you have older relatives in your family. Ask them, “Hey, do you have a living will or have you thought about what you might like or not like? Do you have any plans that you would like for your funeral?” Of course, nobody wants to talk about when they’re gonna die, but these conversations are just so vital for our families because it really, not having to plan all that stuff or not having to make the decision for you because you’ve already made the decision on paper, that is just a great gift that you can give your family.

I learned that grief is best shared. One of the most powerful things I did as part of my grief and loss process was going to an all-day grief intensive, which sounds bad, I guess, to some people, but it was nice. It was at the Refuge Center for Counseling in Franklin, and I spent all day with a small group of people really to process various griefs and losses that we were going through. And even though everyone’s story was different, it’s like we understood each other on a certain level of shared experience, and that was such a gift. We were able to go through several different experiential activities. We did art projects and other things. We were able to process information in different ways, and it really got me thinking about how those experiential in the moment, Therapy exercises can be so helpful and wanting to do more of those with my clients.

I think my biggest takeaway was that I got to be the client again, and nobody knew that I was a therapist, which was so beautiful. With the grief intensive brought out that I’m not sure that I would’ve gotten there in just an individual setting or just by talking about it if we weren’t doing these different activities. Was that because Steve got his SCA diagnosis? Just a short time before my mom died was that I never had an opportunity to grieve that. I never had the opportunity to grieve the change of my life, the big change of becoming a mom because I became a mom and then my mom got sick, so there was no sense of me like adjustment period to becoming a new mom.

There’s grief and lost with that because you rarely leave your house after seven o’clock. There are so many things that revolve around nap times. Whether or not your child got enough sleep the night before, if they’re teething, how they’re feeling. It just really kind of restricts your activities quite a bit, and I don’t think I had ever taken the time to even process through that.

Who am I now that I’m a mom? There was that piece that came out, but also, this piece of who am I now, that I’m also caring for someone who’s disabled and even though my husband is at a place where he can do a lot of things for himself, things are changing and there are some things that I have to be more responsible for we’re definitely remind him of.

The thing about grief and loss is that you end up with a new identity in the end because there’s this missing space in your life of someone who used to be there who used to be such a big impact on you. I felt that when I went through my divorce process, and I also felt that after my parents passed away, I really needed to feel the depth of that related to the life that I thought Steve and I were gonna have in the life that we have now.

It’s still a great and amazing life, and I can say that in a place of acceptance, but I needed to really be sad and frustrated about what it’s like to have, of course, a very rare diagnosis that most people don’t get. I can’t say, “Hey, my husband has Parkinson’s, or my husband has MS.” People know what those things are. I have to say my husband has SCA, or my husband has ataxia and hear people say, “What does that mean?” And then you have to go into this explanation of what it means, and it just can be pretty frustrating. Of course, everyone wants to be helpful and a lot of times doesn’t know what to say or how to act or how to be helpful.

There were a lot of different things that I was able to process that. I realized there was some completion around, or acceptance around the grief and loss of my parents because there was some pre-grieving that happened before they actually died, but also because there was some finality to it and I knew, okay, they’re in heaven, they’re okay. Whereas with my husband and my daughter even too, it’s like sitting on the edge of uncertainty. What is next month going to be like? What is next year going to be like? Even the doctors can’t tell you that no one knows, only God knows. We really have to sit in a place of trust with Him and just say, “Okay, you got this.”

We’re just so thankful of how well Steve is doing all things considered, and he’s come just such a long way in therapy. He was able to graduate through that and has been walking well.  So far, so we’re just, every day we’re thankful. Having faith really keeps them active, which is good as well, cuz that’s an important part of this particular diagnosis is just staying active.

If you’re grieving right now, what I want you to know is that there is hope on the other side. That if you take the time to process this, to talk about your loved one, whether that’s in individual therapy or group therapy or some type of art therapy process, that you can come to a greater place of peace about losing your loved one, even if it was a challenging relationship or even if it was a traumatic loss for you.

The main thing is that you have to stay the course and stay with the process. You can’t just shove it down or try to ignore it, or pretend like something didn’t happen. Really being able to acknowledge this hurts me, or I’m angry about this, or I’m confused. I don’t understand. That expression is so important and vital to your grief process.

If you can find a support group or other people that are going through it as well, I think that’s an incredible opportunity too. One of the reasons I chose to do the intensive was because I just couldn’t seem to get it together to fit a support group in my schedule. And I didn’t want to go in the evening somewhere after I hadn’t seen my daughter and had been working all day.

That just didn’t quite seem right and some, I couldn’t quite fit the Zoom group in. Then my schedule, I was just having problems making space for this. So when I saw the intensive option, I thought, okay, this is good. I do some intensive work with my clients and it’ll be good for me to see what that’s like.

On the other side, I will say that the next day, I don’t know if this was related to the intensive or not, I had the worst headache that I had had in a really long time, so I don’t know if that was just from all the mental and emotional processing that I had done the day before. That piece was a little rough, but I definitely left feeling a lot lighter.

It’s great to be in an environment where people are just holding emotional space for you. And that’s a lot of like what we do in therapy, and my friend and I talk about this, who’s also a therapist, is that a lot of times we don’t know how to sit in that space with people to just say like, “I’m here. I’m here if you want to talk. I’m here if you want to be silent.” I think most importantly, “I have no advice for you because there’s really no good advice that you can give in that moment” or to say like, “I know how you feel” because you really don’t know how that person feels even if you’ve been through a loss. Their loss was different than yours in so many ways. That was one of the best parts about the grief intensive was being told, “Hey, here’s one of the rules.” You can’t give advice or just make platitudes.

Another rule was that we had to own our own grief process instead of making general comments. Grief or saying, well, when you go through grief, but we had to say like, when I’m grieving or my experience with my grief process is, and that was really good too for us to be able to take ownership over the process.

You aren’t in control of all the feelings that come up. You aren’t in control of the actual grief situation, but you can be, take ownership for the process of healing, and that piece is hard. Hard, but a good process and a good journey to be on.

My story of hope right now is that even though my daughter’s going grow up in, she’s not going to remember grandma and grandpa as far as my side of the family goes, but know that I want her to know them, so I know that I will keep talking with her about them, and I will keep expressing to her, how excited they were to have her as a granddaughter and how loving and supportive they were towards her. 

Thank you everyone for listening and really just being a part of this process on the journey with me. I think God knows exactly what we need at the time that we need it, and to be just completely frank with you, I think if I didn’t have this conference coming up, Where I was going to promote the podcast to a bunch of counselors and hadn’t already paid that money to do so. I may have just thrown in the towel on the whole thing.

I don’t want to do that unless it’s something that God tells me that, “Hey, we’re done and you need to stop doing this.” But that was so tough for me to keep going. And what I really thought about was all the people who said, this podcast has helped me in some way, shape, or form, or, it’s helped me understand my loved one better.

So many people have written and said, “Hey, I knew I had anxiety, but I didn’t know I had OCD until I started listening to your podcast. That’s such a beautiful story and journey because then now they can get proper help and proper treatment and know how to deal with it. Their situation is different than they did before.

It’s such a beautiful thing just being able to share these things with you guys each and every week and spread that there is hope for anxiety. There’s hope for OCD. Of course, our ultimate hope is in Jesus Christ. So know that even though we may have never met, you are a blessing in my life, and I enjoy the opportunity to be able to share parts of my life with you.

Stay tuned because I’m doing something very special for our 100th episode, and that’s bringing you 100 tips for managing anxiety. Come listen along with us in a couple weeks. 

Christian Faith and 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. 

83. The Power of Gratitude and What I am Thankful For

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 83. The Power of Gratitude and What I am Thankful For

Today’s special is a solo episode about the power of gratitude and how it can help us through hard times.

  • Things I’m grateful for
  • How to be grateful in any circumstances
  • What the Bible teaches us about gratitude
  • What are the benefits of gratitude
  • How to practice gratitude and enjoy the simple things in life

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 83. Today on the show, we are talking about the power of gratitude and some things that I am thankful for in this season. It’s been a unique season to be writing a list of things that I’m thankful for because we’re definitely going through some challenges right now, but I thought that working through this with you might kind of help you think through some things that you are thankful for as well as we go along the process.

Biblical Teachings on Gratitude and Thankfulness

You can think of people in situations, positive things that are going on in your life right now. Throughout the Bible we are told to be thankful and I just wanted to go over a few verses with you that express this. Of course, there’s many that we could cover together obviously, but I just picked out a few that I thought would be good. 1 Thessalonians 5: 18 says, “Give thanks In all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” All circumstances. It’s not always easy to be thankful. That is a tough one, but we’ll talk about that a little bit more in-depth later.

This next verse literally changed my life. I’ve probably talked about this on the podcast before. In fact, I know I have is James1:17. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” This first changed my life because I read it while I was going through my divorce in very dark time of my life, and I realized that if there was anything good in my life that God put it there, and it just caused me to be so thankful and really just pour out a lot of gratitude towards God in prayer for all the little things I had to be intentional in that time to be thankful and to find those things that were good in my life.

When you’re intentional and you look for things to be thankful for, you will find them. Where most of us are pretty familiar with another scripture passage in Philippians 4 that talks about don’t be anxious about anything. Oftentimes we don’t rewind a couple verses before where it says, “Rejoice in the Lord. Always. Again, I will say rejoice.” So when they repeat things in the Bible, it’s for emphasis purposes. When you’re reading something, it doesn’t have a tone of voice to it, but if you repeat it, it’s like, “Oh, hey, that’s important.” This sense of like finding joy in the Lord. That is can help us with our anxiety and a lot of times we don’t take that into consideration. I talked about this on a blog post, I believe a while back that’s on our website and maybe my assistant can link that to in our show notes for you guys. In Hebrews 13: 15, it says, “Through him, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.”


Sometimes praising God does feel like a sacrifice. Of course, in the biblical times in the Old Testament, people actually did like provide physical sacrifices For us, it’s a sacrifice of our time. It’s a sacrifice of our energy, and it’s a sacrifice sometimes of laying down things that we. For things that God wants, but we want to be a grateful people, which is hard in our society because advertising constantly tells you about what you don’t have, and they try to tell you what you should want and need.
We are inundated with advertisements, whether from the internet, from tv, from media that are constantly telling us, you know, “You need this car because it’s gonna make you feel like a million dollars,” or You need this product because it’s gonna help you get a member of the opposite sex,” whatever the case is.

Finding Gratitude in Challenging Circumstances


So we’re constantly put in this state of like, “Oh, I don’t have that.” Or like, “Oh, I want that.” And it is not so healthy for us, and we have to shift gears out of that. To really look around us and be thankful for the blessings that God has given us the simple things maybe each and every day, and I know that for me, I never really used to be a thankful person.

I struggled a lot with that since I was a child. Really just with this the glass half empty instead of half full mindset. My parents, I would be kind of like grumbling and complainy and they would say, “Carrie, tell us something you’re thankful for. ” And when you’re grumbling as a child, that is not exactly when you want to be thankful.

Gratitude and its Positive Impact on Mental and Physical Well-being

I do appreciate that they tried, but I don’t think it really helped me become a thankful person. What probably helped me the most were those dark times in my life and having use gratitude to pull myself out of them. I have told you what the scripture said about being thankful in gratitude, but also wanted to tell you what the psychology says about it, which shouldn’t surprise you, but here we go. “People who practice gratitude feel better physically and emotionally.” That’s awesome. They’re happier, they have better immune function. Whoa! That just blows my mind like our body works better in terms of our immunity.

If we are practicing gratitude, they sleep better, they have more ability to be in the moment and cope with life is really where mindfulness comes in. This sense of just being in the present moment. Gratitude is a present-moment activity. You can’t be stuck in past regret or be worried about the future and be grateful at the same time. Those two things can’t coexist inside your system.

Incorporating Gratitude into Daily Life

So how can we practice gratitude? I used to have this, I think it’s called the Five Minute Journal, something like that.
And you do maybe five minutes in the morning or five minutes in the evening. I can’t remember. But I ask you the same exact questions every day, and one of the questions it asks you is, I believe, like three things you’re thankful for, which is great, but I think it gets a little mundane after a while because you tend to kind of think about some of the same things, right? Like if somebody were to ask you, what are you grateful for? Like, “Okay, well I’m grateful for this person in my life, or I’m grateful for my child. I’m grateful for waking up today.” You know, it’s a new day and it’s hard to get specific. So I would encourage you if you struggle with gratitude, I’ll just tell you some things that I did that helped me.

I had a little one of those pocket calendars from like the dollar store. It’s not even the dollar store anymore. That’s sad. But anyway, I had one of those pocket calendars I would write on each day. Something specific about that day that maybe had happened that I was thankful for, or maybe that I noticed, like, “okay, I was thankful today that I got to smell some flowers outside and they smelled really good.” Or I’m thankful that you know, I got gift today from somebody, it was just a card, them telling me they cared about me, whatever the case is, and a lot of times I could go back and read those and you forget, you know, if you don’t write something down, a lot of times you forget that some of those things have even occurred.

It’s just a really great activity as a practice and it doesn’t take very long at all like two minutes to write something down on the calendar. I do think it’s important to be very specific. In your gratitude practice, even if it’s not about that day, just being in prayer and meditation of, “Okay, I am thankful for these very specific things.”

Personal Examples of Thankfulness and God’s Provision


So I thought I would go through some of that for you guys of what I’m thankful for in my life. Maybe to give you examples, I am specifically really thankful for my husband. You guys have heard Steve on the podcast before. If you’ve been around for a little while, if you’ve listened to any of. Marriage episodes together, he has an incredibly positive attitude, even though he’s going through some intense physical balance challenges right now. He got in what’s called vestibular therapy, which is for balance walking, those types of things. It’s a very specific type of physical therapy, and I really see how hard he works, how much effort he puts towards that, and his therapist tells him, “You know, a lot of people with your condition, they just sit down and they stop working and if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Those types of things. So I really see how he will tell other people, a lot of times if they feel bad or say, I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.

Oftentimes people will say, everyone goes through something and this is my something that I have, and you know, it’s.
He has this incredible gift and ability that he doesn’t worry about things. I wish he could give me that. I don’t know how he does that, but he just somehow he knows or has his just like internal confidence compass that it, it’s like everything’s gonna be okay. I’m like, can I get some of that? That is a gift.

Steve is also has a great heart just desiring to help other people. He writes me little encouraging notes around the house. A big thing that he and I are thankful for is that he went back for. His follow-up after a year of working with his eye specialist and he hasn’t had changes in vision, so we are so thankful for that, even though he’s had these other balance challenges.
I think at least I lived in fear for a little while that he was going to go blind, and so I’m just thankful that he’s not blind and he’s able to see his daughter grow up and at this point he’s not in a wheelchair. He’s still able to walk and still able to get around and have some levels of I. We are thankful for that every day that he has that ability. We have been told recently that it’s not really if you’re in a wheelchair, it’s more of when you’re in a wheelchair, but nobody can tell you if that is 10 years down the road or two years down the road, or six months down the road, which is hard for life cleaning.

Of course, I am also incredibly thankful for my daughter Faith. She just has this smile that lights up the entire room when she wakes up in a good mood. You love it. And she doesn’t always wake up in a good mood, cuz you know, a lot of times she’s hungry, but sometimes she wakes up from a nap or after she’s, you know, gone back to sleep and woken up and just smile at you like, she’s so happy to see you. That’s the best thing that happened to her day, which is really great. She is pretty easy baby, like pretty easy going and she just adapts. You know, I have to take her. We go to various appointments and things for Steve, and a lot of times I will take her and stroll her around while he’s in an appointment or something of that nature, and she just kind of goes with the flow. She sleeps really well in the car, so thankful for that because if she didn’t sleep well in the car, or wasn’t able to get her naps in that way, some days, that would be really tough on her.

I think one of the favorite things, blessings, in terms of her right now is just being able to hold her. She’s going to sleep and rock her, and just kind of like that sense of gentle trust that she has in us right now. I know that one day she’s gonna get older and not wanna cuddle up to me, so I’m trying to enjoy all the cuddles while I can.

We are very thankful that we have a house to live and that’s in good shape. We have been praying about a one-storey house and it looks like we may be able to move into one pretty soon, possibly in January. It’s kind of a still a possibility, not a for sure thing, but so thankful for that, that God seems to be answering that prayer. If for some reason that doesn’t work out, I know that he will provide something else for us that was really going to just take a lot of pressure and stress off of us with all of the balance conditions that Steve’s having. Our driveway is crazy and we have stairs and then some more stairs when you get into our house. It’s just people are kinda like, “Why don’t you build a ramp?” And I’m like, “It’s not that easy.” I appreciate those people that have wanted to do that for us. However, we really just need to get into one storey with some flat land and it looks like God is opening up that door and providing that for us, and also will be able to still be, you know, local. We’re not moving super far or anything like that, so that’s nice.

I am thankful for my car. Let me tell you this, I got the opportunity to drive this, let’s call it a small SUV. It was a 2002 and we drove it to Florida for a family funeral and had to bring some stuff back with us and so forth. So that was why we didn’t choose not to fly for that one, and I so enjoyed driving this car. It does all the things that like my car does not do because my car is a 2013. However, I will tell you that I’m so thankful that our car is paid off. I joke around that it’s the only car I know of that has a walker and a baby stroller in it, and we really have to kind of cram stuff in there. It’s not a big car and so enjoyed driving that, that small SUV because we just had room for things. So thankful for our car and that God has provided us a way to get to Steve, to his medical appointments and Faith when she has appointments and checkups and things that we can take her there, that we can get to the grocery store, other things. So I’m really thankful that our car is running well and that it’s paid off.
It’s not the newest thing in the world, but it gets us from point A to point B, and we’re thankful for that for sure.

I’m super thankful for God’s financial provision in this season. We’ve had a lot of medical bills, obviously for everything that’s going on with Steve, and I wanna tell you a quick story because this is just a story of faith. I want to write down for my daughter to let her know that God hears and God understands and he knows like exactly what we need. I had an unexpected expense come up recently that I really, you know, did not know I was gonna be hit. And it was $300. I was like, Okay. You know, trying to think through where is this $300 gonna come from, so forth. So I just, I prayed to God and I said, “You knew that this $300 bill was gonna come. I didn’t know it was gonna come. And so, because you knew it was gonna come, I just believed that they’re gonna get the $300 and I don’t know. Like how we’re gonna get it. I don’t know where it’s gonna come from.: I just pray and I believe that you’re gonna provide it for us because this is something that we really need.
And no lie, literally the next day we get a card that has a hundred dollars in it. We get another card that has $200 in it. Completely was not expecting that, and it was just like God showing me like, :Yes, I’m taking care of you. I know exactly what you need. I’ve got you.” God will do that for you.

That’s not just like a God does that for care thing. God will originally supply all your needs according to his glorious riches and Christ Jesus. Philippians, I believe that’s 4:19 tells us, and that’s just something that I have repeated to myself over and over. You know, as we get these different medical bills and therapies and things like that, I’m like, You know, God will supply all my needs. God will supply all my needs. It just almost has become like this prayer that I have repeated and has helped me really calm during those seasons where I get anxious about bills. I am super thankful for our church in this season.

Something happened to us and I actually asked Steve if he wanted to talk about this on our marriage episode, and I don’t think that he wanted to talk about it, but I feel like it’s important and it’s important to talk about for the Thanksgiving episode, God uprooted us from a church, a place that I had been in for several years. Steve had been in since we were married, and I believe that God uprooted us because he wanted to plant us somewhere else. But I will say that there was a time period in between where we were a bit lost, going through some hard things that were going on in the family. And didn’t really have support like it was just rough, trying to kind of reach out to people even emotionally and say, “Will you pray with us? We have this and this and this going on in our families.” And it was just, it was tough. We weren’t getting the support and even just the prayer support that we needed in that season. And I’m telling you that God did what only he can do. He planted us in a completely new church that someone had invited us to. We knew the moment we walked in the door that this is exactly where we’re supposed to be. This is what we have wanted for months, um, for a long time. And it was around the time where Steve got his diagnosis shortly after we started going there. And there’s just been this outpouring of love of people that barely know us, really. I mean, that brought us over meals that have taken, driven him to appointments that have just, you know, brought us things that we needed. Absolutely incredible. Totally blown us away. We feel very undeserving but just incredibly grateful that God has put us in this place to be really wrapped around and loved by these people in a big way.

We have a great small group through that church as well, and it’s just been good positive relationships for us in this season. And with that, I will say that I am thankful, even though it’s been hard this year. I am thankful for my friendships.
I’m thankful for the people that God kept in my life and I’m thankful for the people that have walked away, which may sound super weird because it’s definitely not comfortable. It’s actually pretty painful when people walk away from your life or when you know you, you have a friend and they’re just kind of, they’re disconnected and not really there for you.
That can be super challenging. However, I think what I’ve learned over the year is that God brings different people into our lives for different seasons, and some people are meant to go that one or two miles with us, and some people are meant to go that those 10 miles or 10 years with us. And not everybody is meant to go that far with you, but it’s definitely a blessing when you have one of those longer-term relationships.

I’m thankful that the people in my life right now are people who are really invested in mine and Steve’s wellbeing, and that I feel incredibly thankful and blessed about. I am thankful for going through some of these challenging things recently because it has made me be a stronger person and draw me closer to God.


When Steve first got diagnosed, I remember thinking like, I don’t have the prayer life for this. I don’t have the dependence on God that I need in my life to get through this. So that has been something that I have been actively cultivating. Definitely still in process. But I know that even though it’s hard, each day brings me closer and closer to God and to knowing who he is and understanding his purposes for our life.

And this year, how do I explain this one? Because I am not thankful that someone died, but I had a close family member pass away this year. It’s not something that I’m ready to talk about in-depth, but I believe that I will at some point in the podcast because I think it’s important to share that story with you and my process of that grief. The piece that I’m thankful for though is not that I lost a family member. I am thankful that that family member is in heaven. I’m very thankful that they’re no longer suffering because they were suffering with cancer really badly, and I’m thankful that God in his sovereignty at the right time, took them home and didn’t allow them to suffer than they already did because it was just, it was a lot. And I’m thankful that even though that family member isn’t here with me anymore, that I really feel still very connected with them. And I feel like I know kind of what they would say to me in different scenarios, in different situations in my life.

So I’m thankful that even though I’ve lost that family member, I still feel close to them. It’s very bizarre because I haven’t ever had this experience before with anyone else that I’ve lost. I think it’s because I was not as close to other family members that I have lost before, but since I was very close to this individual, it’s allowed me to still feel very connected or having some kind of sense of presence to them. And that’s the only way that I can explain it. I don’t really know what it means other than maybe we are somehow connected in on a spiritual level. I don’t know.

So that’s the roundup on what I am thankful and grateful for. I hope that it helped you make your own list or helped you think about how you can incorporate gratitude into your own practice, spiritually and emotionally which will also help you physically as we learned earlier.

It’s so incredible how God has created our systems to interconnect emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It’s just so intertwined and it makes so much sense when we read the Bible and then we look at these psychological studies. They’re not in contradiction to each other, right?

The Bible says, Give thanks and then the studies say, “Hey, giving thanks causes all of these positive health benefits.” It’s just so cool when we look at things like that. I think just confirmation of things that we know to be true. We’ve got one more episode this year on how to set a boundary, and it’s a good one.

I asked our guests to go through some very specific scenarios with us on what she would say and how she would handle the situations that I brought up. I think it’s great, and it may help some of you as you’re going into the Christmas season or spending more time with family. We’re only putting out one episode in December to take a little bit of a break for Christmas and end of the year. We will definitely be back in January with some question-and-answer episodes on anxiety and then on OCD. So please send us your burning questions that you have either for the Q and A anxiety episode or the Q and A OCD episode. We would love to feature your question on the air. You may send those via our website at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

As always, 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.

Related Resources:

What About this Command to Not Be Anxious

72. How to Reduce Anxiety about Giving Birth with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 72. How to Reduce Anxiety about Giving Birth with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

In this solo episode, Carrie deep dives into the topic of anxiety and childbirth and her own birthing experience.

  • Creating a positive birth experience
  • Carrie’s pregnancy process – asking God what she wanted but He gave her what she needed. 
  • 5 ways to reduce anxiety about having a baby
  • Trusting God through the birthing process 

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Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, Episode 72. I am your host. Carrie’s Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. 

I think a lot of times on this podcast, I love to create content for the younger version of cure. What that means is things that I wish people had told me earlier on in life or encouragement that I wish I would have received at different points.

So for example, we had a previous episode called sending hope and love to the, not yet mothers. And I did it for mother’s day. That is episode 27. If you want to go back and listen to it, but I know how hard it is to be in the church and not be a mother or be waiting for that time in your life to come. So, therefore, I created an episode about it, where I had stories of hope combined together. Some that had already been told on the podcast. And then I added some new ones in for people who had waited a long time to have a family either because they were single for a long time or they had gotten married and were dealing with infertility. 

One of the reasons I want to do this episode on reducing anxiety about having a baby is because there’s so much negative energy out there and communication about having a child. It’s very interesting because at least it’s this way in American culture. I know it’s probably different in different cultures, but in American culture, when you tell someone that you’re pregnant, of course, people usually say, congratulations, we’re happy for you, et cetera. But then the other material that you get from people is some version of some horror story surrounding their birth. “Oh, with my second baby, I was in labor for 30 hours. Oh, I couldn’t get the epidural. I progressed. too fast, you know? Oh, I just couldn’t sleep that last week of pregnancy,” whatever it is. It’s almost like we have this badge of honor, if you’ve had a negative birth story.

So I wanted to put something out there just saying that I had a positive birth. Just let that sink in for a moment. If nobody else has given you that message. I have had a positive birth story. Therefore I can have a positive birth story too. I made the decision early on that I wanted to hire a doula and I wanted to try for a natural birthing process.

Things did not play out the way that I had planned them to. So I’m going to tell you a little bit about my story. Some things that went well, some things that didn’t go the way that I planned, but still turned out okay. In the end. So I’ve broken the how to reduce anxiety about having a baby into five points.

Point number one, educate yourself on the process of birth, and what to expect. Naturally and medically, regardless of what kind of birth you want to have, this is so crucial and important because I know many women come into the process of pregnancy going well, you know, I’m just not gonna worry about pain management because I’m just going to get an.

However, unfortunately, many women don’t even know what that means or what that process is like and what to expect there. On the flip side, there’s some women who say, “I want to go all-natural or I want to deliver at home.” And they have certain things that they’re wanting, and they’re very held onto that, but then they don’t research the other things.

So. Yes, maybe you want to give birth naturally, but if something might happen where you would need an epidural or a C-section, you want to be informed about those things as well. You can do this by very simple ways. Just going on the hospital page, seeing if they have some type of virtual tour classes, and educate yourself about the stages of birth and what to expect in each state.

Ask a lot of questions. That is what your OB is there for or your midwife. If you have a doula, that was one of the best things about really having a doula was I had the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and I’ll tell you just for a moment on kind of hiring a doula, what that is, who that. We had so many people who didn’t understand us when we told them that we were having a doula, they automatically assumed that we were having a home birth and that wasn’t the case.

So what is a doula? A doula is a person who supports you through the pregnancy and the birthing process. So they’ll come out and they’ll meet with you ahead of time. They’ll talk with you about what your options are related to birth. They’ll find out what you want. They’ll help you make informed decisions by giving you information, but they won’t make decisions for you, obviously.

That’s your choice about what you want. If you want to give birth at home, they will meet you at your home. If you are giving birth in the hospital like I did, they will meet you at the hospital when you call them and tell them to come. Doulas are not medical professional, like a midwife. They have a lot of information and experience surrounding being with women who are giving birth, but they don’t actually have medical training.

So that’s an important distinction to know you will still need to have. A midwife or an OB, whoever is actually going to go through that birth process with you on the medical side of things. One of the things that I went through with my doula was hypnobirthing classes. And this allows you to teach yourself self-hypnosis how to relax and really get in a good state of hypnosis so that when you go through the birthing process that helps you with pain management.  The classes were super helpful, not just for myself, but also for Steve because he was involved in all of the classes. So he kind of knew what to expect in the birthing process since this was also his first time having a child and going through that with him.

You want to make sure that your education surrounding birth and what to expect is positive. You don’t want to get on and read horror stories of other people’s birth experiences. Like I was talking about that people apparently love. For example, I was in a Facebook group for first-time mothers over the age of 35.

And I ended up having to either snooze that group or get out of it. I don’t remember. Maybe I stopped following it for a time period. There were just so many women in there talking about. Negative painful, unexpected birth stories that I really couldn’t handle all of that information. I noticed that it was turning up a lot of anxiety within me to hear these people say, oh, you know, I had this horrible labor and this was why, and this is how it went.

And therefore are other people being negative surrounding natural birth, which was something that I was wanting. You will find that if you are looking to give birth naturally without an epidural, that you will face even more negativity, more criticism, more people telling you, oh no, you’re not going to be able to do that.

So just kind of be prepared for. But I will tell you from personal experience, it’s completely possible. One of the things that I did was I got on a site called I think it was a mom and natural, and I read stories, positive birth stories from other people who gave birth naturally since staff was something that I was wanting to do.

And I felt like that was important and critical to my process. I will say that some of the materials on the website more her articles were not as helpful. And there were a little bit more fear-driven in my experience have made me very afraid of certain things. And I’ll talk about that a little bit later, in addition to taking the class with our hip, no doula, which was a very extensive six-week class theme.

And I also took a very. Class from the hospital, more so to become aware of their procedures in their processes of doing things. This helped me know more about what my options were. So for example, I knew that the hospital I was delivering at had laboring tubs, but their policy is they will not allow you to actually give birth in those tubs.

So that was important to know. I knew that if I needed to have certain medications like Pitocin, that I wouldn’t be able to be in the laboring. One of the best pieces of advice I got from the hospital class though, was to bring my own pillows. They said the hospital pillows are terribly thin and plastic-y not comfortable at all.

So I was glad that I brought my own pillows to the hospital. For sure. Educate yourself sometimes on the medications that may be needed during the labor process. The stages of labor, how your hospital birthing center does things, or if you’re having a home birth, what that is going to look like? For me being a highly sensitive person, just having the opportunity to have the visual tour of the hospital, to see exactly how the birthing room was laid out exactly how the postpartum suite was laid out. That helped me tremendously. If you’re giving birth at a hospital, you can talk with other people who have had experiences at that hospital. For me. I knew that mine had very high ratings year after year for people who’d given birth there. I talked to some people who had tremendous experiences told me great things about the nurses.

And so all of that really reduced my anxiety for people to be able to say, wow, that hospital is really great. The nurses are awesome. They really love what they do. That helped to reduce quite a bit of my anxiety. And then just knowing the process. This is where you go. If it’s during regular hours, this is where you go.

If it’s after hours, this is what floor you need to go to. All of that was super helpful for me to just kind of know what to expect when you have anxiety. Just knowing what to expect helps so much. I had some anxiety surrounding my doctor not getting there or someone from her practice, not getting to the hospital and having my baby be delivered by just whoever the general on-call person was at the time.

More. So the anxiety about that person being male, I had, even though I’ve had male doctors in the past that have had positive experiences with, there was something about my birth space that I really only wanted female medical professionals in there. People who had actually had the ability to give birth.

That just felt most right. For me. I had a lot of questions for my doctor because I had heard a story about someone that happened to from their practice. She really provided a lot of assurance to me that either she or someone else from her practice who were all females were going to be able to get there.

And that they very rarely had someone from the hospital deliver one of the babies. That provided me a lot more reassurance. My second piece of advice on reducing anxiety is to create a plan, but also to hold on loosely, I think it’s good to create a birth plan. Some people say don’t create a birth plan because you’re just going to have to throw it out the window.

Anyway, that doesn’t make sense. That’s kind of like saying, don’t have a blueprint for your house just because you can’t put the kitchen on the left side because of where the water line is, whatever. You still want to have some kind of plan, but also know that things are not going to go exactly how you have it on your plan.

So it’s important to have some flexibility and to hold on to things loosely. One of my fears was that my daughter would not come and then I would need to have an induction. This was a fear because I knew that I’m older and when you’re having a baby, when you’re older, they don’t want you to necessarily always carry to 40 weeks.

So I was praying and really wanted my daughter faith to come at just the right time so that I wouldn’t have to be induced. I had some serious anxiety about Pitocin. I had heard a lot of horror stories from people who had experienced induction. Pitocin or not just inductions, but also like, uh, trying to speed up their labor with it.

I had read a lot on the internet about the horrors of it and how it’s overutilized in America, et cetera, et cetera. I had read a lot of information about inductions leading to C-sections different things. Here was all this anxiety. My plan was. To really do some early laboring at home. Get to the hospital, allow things to progress.

Naturally, not have medication, not having an epidural, be able to give birth more quickly and move on with. I was also planning to use my hypnobirthing for pain management, those things I just listed pretty much did not go according to plan. I had done a lot of research about Pitocin and inductions, even though those weren’t routes that I wanted to do.

I was able to actually advocate for myself when I needed an induction. I was able to talk with my doctor about the concern regarding inductions leading to C-sections. She was able to provide me some reassurance that her C-section rate was actually a lot lower than the average that I had read about online, because I expressed to her my concerns about Pitocin increasing pain of contractions. We were able to come to an agreement to start me out on a really low dose and to gradually increase that through my birthing process. One of the things that my doula told me after that experience was that, you know, my level was started on a two, whereas she had seen other people’s level, just be started out on a 10 and.

I’m so glad that I did that research and expressed my concerns because I think it helped me have an easier labor process. I actually never got up to a 10. I only got up to eight before I delivered and everyone’s different in terms of what their needs are. And I don’t know how it translates. I just know the number that I was seeing on the medication, but my point is that doing your research allows you to make informed choices later.

And in doing that research, understand that everything you read online doesn’t mean that that’s how it’s going to go for you in your specific situation. Same thing with experiences that you hear from other people. Just because they had that experience. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to have that experience in the end.

I’m glad that I had a birth plan, even though I changed it last minute to adjust it for the induction related to my health concerns that I had at the end of pregnancy. The things that did go according to my birth plan were really being able to advocate for myself about wanting to have as natural birth as possible.

That was really respected by people in the hospital. And they didn’t try to push medication on me, which I really appreciated in terms of pain medication or epidural. I had a request that there were to be no male medical staff in the room while I was giving birth. And that was respected. I had been told by my doula that they usually bring over a mirror to allow you to see what’s happening in that pushing process.

I told them I was not interested in that. And fortunately, the hospital that I went to already practiced some good afterbirth things, such as, you know, skin-to-skin, contact, delayed cord, clamping, those types of things. I didn’t have to worry about putting that in my birth plan as much. Although you may want to check with your hospital and to see what their policies are on.

My OB had a saying about birth. That’s the only thing predictable about it is the unpredictability about it. With that being said, it’s good to have a positive relationship with your provider, where you can talk about what you would like, what your plans are, and with the understanding that there’s some give and take about what’s able to happen.

What’s not able to happen. One of the things that I did not want. Was an IB and that wasn’t really a possibility. They said, you know, it’s really just hospital policy, even if you’re not getting these IB medications that you still need to have one in just in case of emergencies so that they can get medication in you quickly.

However, I knew that going in ahead of time, which was good for me to know. I also communicated on my birth plan that I had negative hospital experiences in the past. And wanted this to be a more positive experience. One of the reasons I felt like experience was negative in the past was due to lack of communication.

And so I really wanted to make sure that they were communicating everything to me, that they were explaining things to me before they did them. I know that other people I had heard from had had experiences where things just kind of happened, or they were given medication without being told about it ahead of time and so forth.

And so. So create a plan, but hold on loosely, pray about it, but also know that God is in control and it’s going to be okay. Number three, visualize what you want, not what you don’t. Our brain has a way of trying to protect us from danger and negative outcomes. That means that we’re going to create all kinds of what if scenarios in our mind, what if this happens?

What if that happens? And when we worry, we’re basically visualizing what we don’t want to happen. Right. So we’re dwelling upon. Okay. And, and I had this very negative vision of, I go into the hospital. It’s some kind of medical emergency happening. People are rushing in there. And so then I was able to kind of talk through with my duel a little bit about what if that did happen?

What if there was an emergency. You know, you would deal with it. You would make decisions based on the knowledge that you have and the knowledge you’re receiving from the doctors. And you would, you know, go with the flow in that situation. But what if those things don’t happen? What if things progress very normally or expectedly, then you’ve wasted all of this time with this worry and this negative visualization in your mind.

So it’s important to be able to sit and visualize the type of birth that you want, not the birth that you don’t want. You want to be able to visualize how you’re going to manage the pain and discomfort that comes up from giving you. For me, one of the things that I really wanted was to be able to have letters from friends and family read to me while I was going through labor.

This was actually the most beautiful part of my birth process. Steve did just an amazing job of reaching out to people. Talking to various friends and family members and saying, Hey, will you write a letter of encouragement for Carrie? Will you write a note? So beautiful. Just people that had verses that they shared in their notes, people that wrote things like.

A funny story, maybe that they had experienced. I know several people mentioned in their notes that they would be praying for me and talked about how really conceiving our daughter was such an answer to prayer for Steve and I and how God was going to get me through this process. One thing that happened that Steve didn’t know that I did was I created a little book.

And in the book, I put scripture verses of encouragement. I put positive birth affirmations. And then after that I put little post-it notes that he had written to me left around the house. This is just kind of something that he does husband award here. He writes just little positive encouraging things for my day.

And so I had kept some of those that meant a lot to me. And during the process, when things got difficult, I asked him to read those back to me and he said, this is very strange. Like I’m reading something that I’ve written previously to you out loud, but it was just such a good thing. One of the things my doula said was that when Steve would read those notes to me, she just noticed like that my whole body would relax and they were able to kind of see on the monitors and things while my blood pressure was doing.

And she just. It was really healthy and really allowed me to kind of get through the process, letting go of the, what-ifs. One of the things that I really loved about the hip, no birthing process was that there were positive affirmations that we listened to every day. And it was 40 minutes of positive affirmations.

And at first, I was kind of like, okay, this is really cheesy and cheeky because of. Someone repeating things over and over, like you deserve to have a wonderful, beautiful birth, you know, and a lot of times actually they were in the first person. So I’m trying to think of what some of them were. So they would say things like, you know, my body is healthy.

To give birth. My body knows exactly what it needs to do. One of the sayings in hypno babies is each birth wave. They don’t call them contractions. They call them waves, you know, brings me closer to my baby is all very focused on the positive. They changed some of the wording, so that. You don’t associate birth with pain and negativity.

They don’t call it labor. They call it birthing time because labor just sounds like it’s really hard work and their whole idea surrounding it is to have a more easy, more comfortable birthing process for them. So these positive affirmations helped so much in, even though in the beginning, I thought they were kind of cheesy.

They helped so much in being able to shift my mindset and just remind me that my body is prepared to give birth. And that that’s already hardwired in just like other bodily responses, like breathing and sweating. It knows what it needs to do. And if we’ll just be able to back up and stay out of the way, then we can allow our body to do what it needs to do.

But what happens when fear takes over is that we create tension, which then causes us to be in more pain. So the more that you’re able to relax through the process, the more your body will just, your muscles will engage and do the things that they need to do. But that fear. Slows things down. And that fear actually constricts you from opening up, which is one thing you need to do, right.

I’ts open up quite a bit. Once you’re able to like relax and open and be calm, then things will just kind of follow as they need to flow. It’s easier said than done. But the more that you practice and the more that you put those positives in, and kind of even, they talk about visualizing your cervix, opening and dilating, maybe even like visualizing as you’re going through the birthing process, visualizing, you know, your baby moving through your body, those types of things.

As I was going through different stages. My doula would talk with me about, you know, okay, this is like face, like she’s moving now. Like, you know, her, head’s almost about to be out. Just kind of like talking me through that process. Like, this is a good thing everything’s progressing. Well, you know, you’re doing what you need to do.

Number four. Understanding that everyone has anxiety at some level about giving birth. And that’s a normal thing. Anxiety is not always bad. And I think we often label it as something that’s bad. But one of the things that we talk about on the podcast is that anxiety at some level is informative for us.

Anxiety causes us to lean into God, more anxiety causes to really seek after God and pushes us to do bigger things than we would normally do on our own. So anxiety in itself is not always bad. It was understanding it is your body and your brain’s way of trying to protect you. And when you’re able to say back to them, You know what I am a child of God.

I know that he loves me. I know that he cares about me. I know that he is not going to allow something horrible and awful to happen unless it’s somehow part of his redemptive plan. So if something goes wrong and something happens to me or my daughter, that God still has a plan for the future. And that it’s a good plan and I can move forward in that.

That is huge. There were things that I found out about my body, my physical health kind of declined, unfortunately very rapidly towards the end, right before I gave birth. And that was really hard to deal with. I got diagnosed with something called holy state. Of pregnancy, that’s something I heard, Michael Phelps, his wife, I believe talk about on a birthing podcast.

I think she also had that with some of her pregnancies with Cola stasis. There is a higher rate of stillbirth and I was already at higher risk of stillbirth for being older. That obviously was hard to hear and was anxiety-provoking. There were two things that I clung on to though they would always tell me when they did ultrasounds and so forth, that my daughter looked healthy, that everything looked okay.

They didn’t see any issues. And so I thought, okay, this is a good thing. Even if my body isn’t reacting well to the pregnancy, my daughter is still okay. The other thing that I held on to was I really felt like God gave me this baby. And I thought if God has given me this baby as a gift, then I just believe and have faith that he’s not going to allow this to end negatively.

This is going to have a positive ending to the story, going back to the positive affirmations for a moment, that experience caused me to really think. What if we, as Christians selected some verses about who we are in Christ and listen to those or read those every day because I probably did this for well, at least six weeks that I was in the.

That’s a long time. What if we really meditated on some of those scriptures that said that we are loved, that we are a child of God, that we are a part of his family. Would that make a difference in how we live our lives? Out of that, a love and acceptance from God. I really think that it would, and I challenge you and encourage you, even if you find a scripture too, that encourages you, that challenges you to really meditate on it every day for a while and see if that changes.

Number five, don’t get so stuck on the process of pregnancy giving birth that you lose sight of the outcome is kind of like a wedding. Weddings are beautiful thing, but they can be really stressful. There’s all this planning that goes into it. And then same thing with giving birth, something doesn’t quite go right.

You know, the caterer shows up late, you have a family member that can’t find the venue. Whatever the case is, there’s always something that doesn’t quite go according to plan. But at the end of the day, you’re married. This is what I told our wedding photographer. And when she was shooting some pictures of our wedding, I said, we’re very laid back.

And we understand that regardless of what happens at the end of the day, we’re going to be married. Did everything turn out perfectly or as we planned? No, but the outcome was very positive. The outcome was what we were looking for. Apply this same thing to your birth, visualize yourself, holding your baby.

Even if you don’t know what they’re going to look like. Although I will say those creepy 3d ultrasound photos are pretty accurate. If you happen to have any of those, they kept trying to get a picture of face, face. I was like, I don’t care because I had to have all these ultrasounds at the end because of the coleus stasis.

It doesn’t matter to me, however, I can go back and look. And she had those same chubby cheeks on the ultrasound that she had after she came out. So those things are pretty accurate and incredible. Visualize yourself, holding your beautiful baby. That is what you want to be focused on. Don’t get so stuck on the process and all the ins and outs of what could happen, couldn’t happen.

And then understanding. It’s hard. I think to fall in love with someone that you’ve never met before. You’re trying to kind of do this ahead of time, but holding your baby is a great thing. It’s almost, there’s a verse in the Bible that talks about how after you’ve had a baby, it’s almost like you forget the pain of labor.

And I think there is some truth to that. When I look back on my process, I don’t remember necessarily or tune into the hard thing. I remember her coming out and thinking like, oh, wow, like this is over now. I remember Steve reading me, those encouraging stories and some of the things that people said. I remember some of the hard things, but they’re not attached to paying.

If that makes sense. I don’t know any other way to describe that. It’s like when I look back at the process, I see the whole thing is a positive experience because I was able to birth my daughter. She came out healthy and it was amazing. I will say that anyone who’s interested in a more natural or a non-epidural.

That there’s something very empowering about going through that process and knowing that you did that people say that I have a high pain tolerance now, or they think it’s somehow amazing that I did that. I don’t really see it that way myself. I think my pain tolerance probably is higher than it was before.

I’m more look at it as this was something that I knew I could do and set out to do and wanted to do, and had very specific reasons for wanting that. And I was able to achieve that. So did my birth story go according to plan? No, because towards the very end. My health declined. I was diagnosed with Cola stasis, as I explained earlier, had a higher rate of stillbirth.

So my OB really encouraged me to deliver at 37 weeks as I was in the process of going back and forth with talking to Steve about, do we take that recommendation or not? Do we let her mature in there a little bit longer? My blood pressure ended up spiking. And about a week before I gave birth, I am. Being diagnosed kind of at the last minute with preeclampsia too.

So having those two health conditions, God really gave me peace about the induction that this was what we were supposed to be doing. There was a lot of prayer that went into that process and honestly, a lot of anger towards God, because. I was so mad that he didn’t answer my one prayer that I had kept praying that faith would come in her own time and that I wouldn’t have to be induced.

However, is one of those situations where God gives you what you need, not what you want. So the process of becoming a parent is hard sometimes. Things don’t go according to plan, it’s a lot of trial and error. You just have to roll with it, but being able to have my daughter, the way that I did and the way that things happened, and yet she still turned out, okay.

She still turned out healthy, just really gave me an increase trust in God and an increased confidence that even though things don’t go according to my plan, that he has a plan and that he loves me to not always give me what I want or what I asked for in prayer. He loves me enough to give me what I need, even when I don’t know that that’s what I need at the time.

So that was something that God gave to me through my birth process. I think that’s helping me as a parent now to just be okay when things are a bit out of my control or faith is crying and I don’t know exactly what to do. Okay. Maybe. Try this or try that, you know, why is she upset right now? Or had expected her to take a nap at this time sounds small.

And she didn’t or so forth. It’s just helping me be more go with the flow because of what I went through. And how hard that was for me to accept being acceptance of all my plans changing. It’s also allowed me, given me the opportunity to be able to live more day to day in a mindful sense of in the moment, teaching myself that I can only deal with the information that I have on the table right now.

That was something that happened throughout my pregnancy process. I could only deal with what was in front of me at the time. At first, my levels were elevated, but they weren’t at the threshold of cholestasis. I just had severe itching on my hands, on my feet, other areas. Actually, I didn’t really have as much itching on my hands, but that’s one of the symptoms.

I had more so the itching on my feet, I would have to run them under cold water at night in order to be able to just relax enough to sleep. And one of the things that got me through that was a story of hope on one of our very early podcasts, where one of my friends had shared a condition that she had during pregnancy that caused her a lot of problems.

And, that continued even after she gave birth. So when my levels were elevated, I just had to deal with the symptom. Then it crossed the threshold and then there was new information and there were other things that happened. There were more conversations to be had. Then my blood pressure spike. I couldn’t really deal with how my birth was going to go way back, you know, several weeks before and really had to make a lot of shifts and a lot of changes to be able to get myself ready, business-wise even, and so forth to deliver three weeks early yet, everything was already in place that I needed to have in place. My clients had referrals. I had things ready to go, you know, by that point so that we were ready at that time. If there’s anything that I could leave you with it’s to know that if you follow some of these steps, it’s really going to help you have a more relaxed birth process.

It’s not going to be a hundred percent relaxed. It’s not going to be pain-free, but it’s going to be a process that you feel some more greater comfort level that you’re going to be able to get through and work through something about giving birth. And that’s a hard thing, but once you get through it and you’re like, wow, well, I got through that hard thing.

I can get through other hard things too. Thank you for tuning into my episode on what younger version of me and I, when I say younger version, I mean like a year ago, wish that she knew about giving birth and I hope that it helps somebody else. Maybe that’s in. Station of their life to hear something positive.

And even if you get nothing else out of this, just know that you can have a good birth experience. You can reduce some of your anxiety about having a baby. God is in control. He loves you and it’s all going to be okay, whatever happens. It’s going to become a part of your story. Thank you so much for listening today.

I know, even before I became pregnant, I was trying to get people on to talk about postpartum anxiety and depression, because it’s a big thing that happens in society that unfortunately people don’t always talk about. I haven’t had much luck on getting a guest for that. So if you know somebody that does that kind of work, feel free to have them contact me through the website. The best way to know about what is going on with the podcast is to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or sign up for our email newsletter. You can find us anytime at hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Thanks for tuning in and you’ll hear from me in a couple days. 

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 views of myself or By the Well Counseling.

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

69. Let’s Talk About Hoarding with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 69. Let’s Talk About Hoarding with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Join me in a solo episode as I talk about hoarding!

  • Hoarding as an OCD spectrum disorder
  • What causes a person to hoard things?
  • Criteria for hoarding disorder
  • How is hoarding related to trauma and grief?
  • Christian perspective on hoarding
  • Helpful tips to overcome hoarding

Related links and resources:

Book: Buried in Treasure

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Episode 49. Will Less Stuff Equal Less Anxiety? with Becca Ehrlich

More Podcast Episodes

Transcript

Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 69. If you are new to the show, my name is Carrie Bock. I’m a licensed professional counselor in the state of Tennessee, and our show is all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and other.

Today’s show is about learning to let go. And it’s for help for people who are struggling with hoarding. And I wanted to say a little bit upfront to give credit to where credit is. Some of this information is taken that I’m gonna share with you from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders also known for short as the DSM, as well as the Book buried in Treasures by David Tolin, Randy O. Frost, Gail Steketee. I hope I pronounce that last name specifically correctly. They have done a great job putting together research and provide practical advice in their book.

And then some of the material I’m going to share today is just based on my own personal experience of working with clients who have struggled with hoarding, I’ve made up various examples. They are not true clients examples, but they’re based on variations of things that I actually have.

Why in the world are we talking about hoarding on a show for Anxiety and OCD? Well, we are talking about hoarding because courting is an OCD spectrum disorder in the DSM five.
So there is a section on OCD followed by hoarding. Hair-pulling skin picking. So there’s a spectrum of some different things that are classified under OCD that the DSM is what counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists use to diagnose people. So there’s various criteria in there for those of you who aren’t familiar with the DSM, I should not just assume that you know what that is and I apologize.

A lot of people don’t realize that hoarding is part of the OCD spectrum of disorders. So let’s look at what are the actual criteria for being diagnosed with hoarding. There’s a persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. We all know someone who collects various things.

And some of those click tools may be really worth something a person hoarding things that are really valuable in their possessions that they could sell for money, but they also may be holding on to things that actually don’t have any value. It could be junk mail, recycling things, maybe that once had value, but have worn down and are no longer good. Or they’ve been sitting in an attic somewhere where they’ve overheated and deteriorate.

The difficulty getting rid of items is due to a perceived need to save the items in distress associated with discarding them. So there’s a need to say the item and we’re trying to not be in distress because when we try to get rid of things, there’s a level of emotional or psychological distress that comes with it.

The difficulty discarding, possessions results and accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas and substantially compromised their intended use. That’s the third criteria in the DSM. So for example, if you have a guest bathroom, but it’s so full of extra toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent that you extreme coupon found on sale that you can’t actually get in that shower.

That guest bathroom, or maybe there’s a kitchen that’s so cluttered that you can’t actually get in there and cook anything in that. The fourth criteria is that it inhibits functioning often, socially, for example, people who struggle with hoarding may not be able to invite anybody over. They may isolate themselves from other people due to their hoarding disorder.
And there is also a potential to add on what is called a modifier to the diagnosis, which is an excessive acquisition, meaning that they keep acquiring items, keep bringing them into the.

So let’s talk about how common is hoarding. Hoarding affects actually two to 6% of the population, according to the DSM, over 15 million people in the US. That’s a pretty high number and it’s actually a small percentage of people that struggle seek help. Usually, there are other people trying to seek help on their behalf. They see this behavior as a problem, and the people that do seek help may have some kind of external pressure on them to get better. So maybe their spouse is really upset is cause causing some intense conflict in the mirror.

Maybe they’re single and they want to have a relationship, but they feel like, okay, I can’t even invite anybody over. So I don’t feel like I can date successfully. Maybe they just want to be more socially connected in examples, such as retirement, maybe someone is trying to downsize and move from a full, you know, three bedroom house to a smaller town home, something of that nature, and they’re having trouble and they might kind of seek help for this issue. Or they may have. Some kind of government, external pressure, maybe the codes department has been called on them. Someone’s complained about, you know, rubbish in the yard. Maybe social services has gotten involved either our children and someone’s come in and said, Hey, you’ve really got to clean this area up.

Those people don’t necessarily want to seek help on their own, but they’re kind of backed into a corner and have to, or otherwise they’re not going to be able to get what they want. Hoarding typically runs in families. And about half of the people who struggle report also having a relative who hoards as well.
So whenever we’re looking at things that run in families, it’s kind of hard to tease out. Is that because there are some genetic components, is that because this is a learned behavior. If we’re seeing other people do something, obviously where you may have a tendency to pick up on. It’s quite possible that the individual grew up in a family where there were certain messages surrounding items that they internalize and then therefore are living out in their adult life.

Maybe some examples are that item was a gift. You can’t give that away. Somebody really thought of you and they gave you that item. You got a hold on. Or, you know, you need to hold onto this item because you might actually need that some day. Yeah. You’re not using it right now, but it may really come in handy later. We have to catch that sale. We’ve got to buy things, even if we don’t need them quite yet while they’re on sale. So how does. This hoarding develop will. It seems like there are some genetic and temperamental components and that’s where the authors of the buried in treasures did some research. They put people in MRI machines and they were having them make decisions while they were actively looking at the areas of their brain that were over-activated or under activated.

It’s actually really interesting. And I encourage you to go get the book and read on that. If you struggle with hoarding or if you know someone who struggles, there’s also a lot of advice in the book for family members and how to approach your loved one as well. So that may be beneficial if you’re listening on behalf of a loved one, who’s struggling.
What they found through this study was that there were different levels of activity and key parts of the brain between the person struggling with hoarding and the person in the typical population. They had a harder time categorizing their own stuff, but it didn’t interfere with them categorizing other people’s.

So seeing certain things as special kind of can be a common issue. And so then if it’s special, it kind of gets its own category. And we can’t put things together. In other categories, there are some common struggles and overlap that it’s seen in people who struggle with hoarding in terms of difficulty with attention, making decisions.

There you tend to be more creative because they look at items and think, oh, well, we could use it this way. Or I could use that to do this, that somebody else may not necessarily see the value in something. There may be a tendency to want to do everything perfectly like struggling with perfectionism and a tendency to procrastinate, to put things off, you know?
Okay. I really do want to organize this. I feel like it’s gotta be perfect. So then I put it off because I can’t do it. You know, it’s overwhelming. Maybe someone has, for example, a train collection and they want to sell this train collection, but first they have to organize the train collection maybe by type of year, the year that it came out.

And then I have to figure out how am I going to sell them. Am I going to put them in a yard sale? Well, no, that maybe seems a lot of work to label everything. And then who wants to do a yard? So with only trains, well, I could put them on Facebook marketplace, but then I have to take these pictures and figure out how do I list that? And if I listed on marketplace then I have to meet up with somebody and where am I going to meet up with them? And if I post it on another website to sell it online, you know, I’ve got to take these pictures and figure out how I’m going to get payment. The Venmo app, you know, what do I do?

I use PayPal and then there’s a sense of exhaustion and just feeling defeated like, oh, this feels like it’s going to be too much work to make this happen and ended up in decision overload.

We ended up in decision overload. What happens? We just have this tendency to shut down and not do it. Another issue is the sense of feeling sentimental attachment. Now we’ve all had some level of this, right? We have an item. It’s not necessarily worth anything to anyone else, but to us, it’s tied to a memory or a specific time in our life.

And we think, “Okay, I don’t want to let that go because the attachment to this object reminds me of positive things where it reminds me of an important person in my life.” Maybe it was something that they gave me or something that we did together. One thing I’ve noticed in my work with people who struggle with hoarding is that they have a tendency to view their better days as being in the past. So they have these items that allow them to reminisce about the past, where the better days were, for example, if an individual used to surf, let’s say they lived by the ocean. Now, maybe they don’t live by the ocean or they don’t go surfing anymore. Maybe they’ve had an injury where they can no longer.

But yet they have a collection of surfing supplies and you know, they’ve got the surfboard, they’ve got the wax that goes on the board. Other things that I don’t even know about surfing, but they have the wetsuits, everything that goes with surfing. They’ve got a whole collection of stuff yet. They’re not using it.

They’re not going to use it because they don’t surf. But when I look at that, I think, man, wasn’t that really great when I could get out in the water. Feeling the wind on my face and being catching a wave. It’s awesome. So that’s maybe just one example of how someone might hold on to items to really reminisce about good things that they experienced, even though they don’t need the items or they’re not using the.
We’ll talk about a little bit later in terms of healing from that people may hoard and hold onto things because it’s a part of their identity. They may view themselves as a collector like, oh, this is a collector’s item. I have all of these collector or board games from years and years ago that I want to hold on to probably are worth something.

I maybe a person holds on to craft supplies because they want to view themselves as an artist or painting supplies, even though they don’t paint, but they would like to be able to do some of those things. I know that for myself having been a foster parent, I had a lot of kid items around the house and it was hard to get rid of some of those things because being a foster parent obviously had been my identity for that time period.

And I didn’t know really what the future held for me. You know, maybe I would marry someone with kids and what if I needed some of these items? It was a process that I had to go through to realize, you know, I’m not living that life anymore. That’s not my identity. So I don’t need to hold on to things tied to that identity.

People may also struggle because they get a high from acquiring possessions. Oh. I saw a great sale at the thrift store. I got these pants for half off and I got this item and look, it was only a dollar. I went to this yard sale and isn’t this awesome. And they may buy stuff that they don’t need just because they feel like it’s a good price.
And then there’s this like elevation of self-worth and value that they feel of being able to find this good deal. Now I mentioned the book buried in treasure. This book is a CBT-based book. So it was based on cognitive behavioral therapy. And that’s the approach that they take to overcoming hoarding.

It’s very good material. And one thing that that approach hasn’t addressed really that I’ve seen is this tendency of something that I’ve noticed connected to hoarding and. The unresolved and at times traumatic grief and a loss that seems to come with it, this attachment to items that are tangible way of keeping a connection between the person and something or someone that they have lost.

It’s not always a loved one. When we talk about grief and loss. But it can be, it can be a situation where they’ve lost a loved one. A spouse has died and they feel like they just can’t get rid of their stuff. They’ve got to hold onto it because somehow that is connected to the memory of that person. And if they let it go.

They feel like I’m going to lose that person all over again. It also, the loss can be connected to things that they used to be doing, but aren’t doing anymore. So I gave the example of like being a foster parent in my own life. Other people, they may have been a Sunday school teacher when they were younger.

They may have coloring pages. They may have flannel graphs for anyone who remembers those things. Who are you? You stick the picture on the flannel. Nobody even uses that anymore, but someone might be holding onto it going, oh, that was such a good time. Like when I was a Sunday school teacher and pouring into the little kids and wasn’t that fun and awesome.

So really going through and grieving those losses. We’ll talk about this later is an important part of the healing process. Because if you don’t grieve those losses that are connected to these items, you’re not going to be able to get rid of the items. I remember another personal example for myself, of some things that I’ve struggled with getting rid of.

I had an entire room of play therapy tools. At my old office, this is now two offices ago. I had a specific room dedicated to seeing children and made a decision at that point in my practice that I didn’t want to work as many evenings. I wanted to kind of prepare for hopefully my own family life. At some point wanted to have more work-life balance.

I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of kids and it didn’t make sense to have this entire room full of. However, it was hard to let go of those things because I had acquired them over time. Over years of working with children, probably I don’t know, five to seven years. And that was hard for me to say, I’m no longer a play therapist.

I’m no longer doing this type of work. And what if I regret this decision? I, I get rid of all this stuff and then decide, I want to work with kids. Yeah, of course, that is a possibility, but that didn’t happen to me. I’m actually very happy and pleased with that decision. And I sold those toys to a friend who was going to do more types of play therapy, expressive therapy, and hopefully got some good use out of those.

Now that I’ve given you an overview, talk through some examples. I want to talk about the. Things that can be done to help. If you recognize that this is a problem within yourself, what are some things that can be done to learn, to let go of items, to not have to continue dealing with wording anymore?

Number one is recognize that this is a problem that you need help with. That is really hard for any issue that we’re facing to admit that we need help with something. As we talked about before, oftentimes. People who are struggling with hoarding either. Don’t recognize that they need the help, or they recognize that they have a bit of a problem, but they think they can manage it on their own.

Now you’re going to need different types of help and support. You’re going to need some professional support. Hopefully, you can find someone in your community or online, a therapist who has worked with hoarding in the past to give you that professional support and perspective, you’re going to need some personal support, not people who are going to come in and be overbearing or rushy to get rid of stuff but are going to come alongside with you and work with you at your own pace.
These are going to be people maybe that can help you bring some stuff to give away, to, to donate. Maybe they can help you move some furniture out of your house. Or they can just provide that encouragement in moral support of just saying, you know, I know this is really hard for you, but I’m so proud of you that you are tackling this issue in your life.
That goes a long way. Oftentimes we underestimate the power of personal support for someone who is struggling with a mental health issues. And we don’t need to underestimate that because it’s very valuable. Now you may need. Medical help. Um, you may need to look at medication as an option, especially if you have co-occurring disorders, something like ADHD, that’s getting in the way, anxiety, depression, then, you know, you may look at medication as an option to treat some of those things so that you can go through the behaviors and really tackle especially if you are working at this from a cognitive behavioral standpoint and you’re having trouble making progress, I always encourage people who don’t want to take medication to really, okay. We’ll try therapy, those tools, the self-help things for a little while. And then if you’re not making progress, maybe we’ll circle back around and evaluate whether medication might be an option at that point.

Step two, you’re going to have to commit time and I’m talking to them. Every day or at least five days a week to commit to the process of recovery, to commit to the process of cleaning up your space. Obviously, it didn’t get that way overnight and it’s not going to be cured overnight. You’re not just going to have an extreme home makeover most likely now.
The book. And then I talked about recommends really building up, I believe from maybe 15 minutes a day to eventually getting to a point where you’re working on this an hour a day to really make tangible progress, three, develop a positive view of the future. We talked about how people who struggle with hoarding can be very past-oriented.

The good times are behind me reminiscing. Wasn’t that awesome when we did this or that. So I really want to encourage you for a Christian standpoint to visualize yourself, blessing people with the items that you have and finding joy. In giving, because there really is a joy that comes from giving to others that would be beneficial for you to tap into and it’ll help ease the pain of getting rid of certain items.

I know that that’s been my experience in terms of getting things, when I was able to bless someone else with it, it was a lot easier to let those things go. Another way you can develop a positive view of the future is to really visualize what is it going to be like to have this life that you want, where you’re inviting friends and family into your living room.

Just really picture that in your mind there’s nothing on the couch, other than people actually sitting there and maybe a couple of throw pillows. Visualize that empty space, maybe where you have boxes right now, visualize your bank account, having more money because you’re not spending a bunch of money, accumulating things you don’t need at yard.

So thrift stores or on Amazon visualize your life without horses. Playing with your grandchildren more often finding a spouse, focusing on one hobby, instead of trying to focus on the things that you can’t do anymore, telling yourself that the better days are ahead of you and not all your good memories are going to be found in the past anymore because you’re going to be creating new, positive memories in the future.

And that’s going to be really awesome.

Step four. Figure out how to stop acquiring new items. There’s time dedicated in the buried in treasures book that helps with this as well. But if you don’t stop acquiring new items, then you’re fighting this losing battle, right? Because if you get rid of a bunch of stuff in your house, and then you go to the yard sale and you buy 20 more things, then you’re just going in circles.

You may have to stop going to the places that you acquire stuff temporarily. So let’s say that you are a shopaholic related to like Ross, TJ Maxx, some of those discount stores. Maybe you need to stay away from those places for a while, until you’re able to get some of the tools under your belt to be able to go in there and not acquire.

You may have to set up a rule for yourself if you’re an online shopper and you’re always having things mailed to you through Amazon or some of those other stores. You may set a rule for yourself where you say, okay, I am not going to buy anything until it sits in my cart for at least 24 hours.

And then I’ll reevaluate whether or not I actually really need that. If you put this into play in your life, I’ve actually had some clients that have tried this that just felt like they were shopaholics, not even necessarily hoarders. So they felt like they were spending too much money on Amazon on things that they didn’t need.

And I said, okay, well set a rule for yourself that it’s got to stay in your cart overnight, or it’s got to stay in your cart for 24 hours so that you’re not impulse purchase. Step five is to do the intellectual work. This is the cognitive part of the work, finding the belief systems that are holding you back.

What are the thoughts that are keeping you stuck? So it may be something like, I need this. We tell ourselves that we need things all the time when we actually don’t need them. They’re often a want the things that we tell ourselves that we need. The IMEI use this someday. If you haven’t used it in the last three years, you’re probably not going to use it in the next three years.

Some people have appliances for every kind of function in the kitchen when they don’t use them, they may use one or two appliances and have 10. I remember getting rid of some round cake pans awhile back because I realized, well, I used to do a lot of baking. I enjoyed it. It was a thing. And I thought, when was the last time I actually made a cake number one and there were two, if I do make a cake, I don’t tend to use the round pan because then you’ve got to stack to have the icing layer in the middle of like probably gonna use the rectangle pan and just make the cake that way. So I got rid of those and I don’t regret it in the slightest or miss them because I wasn’t using. Now the book has a lot of worksheets where you can ask yourself different questions to evaluate items of why you’re really holding on to them.

So if you want to dig in and do that work, you may have thoughts. Like, you know, this is a good deal, so I have to buy it or I can get some money out of it. So I have to sell it. This refers to things that you already own. Like, well, I can’t get rid of that yet. I’ve got to find a way to sell it. We talked about some of these things already, but to get rid of this item would disrespect the memory of my loved one or cause me to forget them in some way.
Or I can’t get rid of stuff until I can sort it out perfectly and put it into the right category. Realistically, you have to realize that whatever space you have, it can only hold so many items. Going back to the visualization. Let’s say you have 10 pictures, but you can only fit five in the room.

That means you have five to get rid of, because you can have a whole lot of especially decorations, decor type items that you don’t have the space to put up or show off. And it may be time to let those things go. Along with the intellectual work. Number six is you’ve got to be able to do the emotional work to either heal from the trauma or grieve the loss.

Some losses can be very traumatic to us, such as the loss of a loved one or pets. Now I have helped people process through things like watching their. Get hit by a car that is a very traumatic loss. It’s sudden it’s unexpected. There’s a tendency to blame yourself. And people may think, well, how in the world is that connected to hoarding or to holding onto things, but it can be when you are really sitting with a skilled counselor and you start to trace some of these things back, some of this tendency to hold on to things and the discomfort of letting it go.

Sometimes that’s where it goes back to. It could be a sense of a sudden move. Those can also be traumatic. Maybe you had to leave a place suddenly. Maybe you lost a bunch of items in a fire. I don’t know, but processing through that trauma can really be beneficial having a long-term illness or injury, a chronic health condition, an injury that has prevented you from doing other things.

There may be things that you’re not able to do that you used to be able to do. That’s a law. Then a lot of times we don’t acknowledge within ourselves and specifically within our society, that if you go through something like whether it’s cancer or whether it’s an auto-immune disorder and all of a sudden there are these limitations that you haven’t had before.
There is some grief and loss associated with that. You don’t have the energy that you used to have. You don’t have maybe the same supports that you used to have. There could be all different kinds of factors in there. Oftentimes when we’re talking about loss, there’s the big loss, right? Whether it’s the loss of the person and then there’s all the little loss that go along with it.

So for example, if I, worst case scenario lost my husband, Steve tomorrow, if he died in some way, then there would be all of these little things that Steve does and just kind of takes care of. It could be something as little as he feeds the cats in the morning and in the. Now every time I go to feed the cat, I’m thinking, oh, you know, Steve used to do that.
That’s a reminder, these bigger losses, there’s all these little things that can get wrapped up and connected into them. And if we don’t take time to really process that into cry and to journal and to grieve and to let go. Then we’re missing out on being able to work through that grief. Unfortunately, I don’t know how it is in a lot of other places, but in America, people rush through the grief process.

\They go from one thing and it’s like, tomorrow’s a new day and they just expect themselves to move on and not have any issues. Unfortunately, that’s not the way that we work, that our minds and emotions and body works. We need to be able to take time to process, to grieved, to elect. Number seven as with all forms of OCD.
Since this is an OCD spectrum disorder, a person with hoarding is going to have to learn to be able to sit with the discomfort that comes from letting go of items, because there is going to be some discomfort that. And the whole point of doing this work on the front end, the intellectual work, the emotional work, the spiritual work is to be able to get to a place where you can sit with discomfort, where it’s to a manageable level, that you can work through it so that it’s not a traumatic issue getting rid of. Because if someone just were to come in tomorrow and clean out your stuff and you struggle with hoarding, that would be traumatic for you. You wouldn’t want that to happen. However, you want to be able to pace yourself and go through this process so that you can get to a place we’re seeing.

You’re mindful in your space, how you’re feeling, what thoughts you’re having about getting rid of things. And then you can sit with the discomfort, work through it. So that it’s not as uncomfortable as it is initially looking at getting rid of an eye. Now, since this is a Christian podcast, I want to talk about this from a spiritual perspective.
For a moment, Jesus talks about storing up treasures in heaven, in not on the earth. There’s also a parable about a man who basically becomes rich, gathers a bunch of grain stores things, and then. Next thing, you know, he dies and none of it really matters that he had all these acquisition of items is because in the end, you know, he died and he had to give an

account for his soul at that.
We know that God doesn’t want us to have anything as an idol. That’s over him. You know, “you shall have no other gods before me or not have graven images.” And a lot of times we think that, oh, we don’t have idols like people have idols maybe in other places. But we all have idols in our lives that we have to confess and work through.
Whether that idol is stuff, money, relationship, it could be so many different things that people are putting above their relationship with God. And so understanding and confessing and recognizing that stuff can become an idol in your life. Even if you don’t want it to that, that’s something that can creep up on you.

And so addressing this from a spiritual perspective, really working through in prayer and confessing to God that just stuff has become out of control. And that you want to give that control back over to him, that you want to be able to release these items and allowing prayer to become a part of this process, I think would be helpful and important for you.

Prayer can be a process also in processing through the grief and losses. Like really telling God how you feel, what you think, why you feel like you have to hold onto this stuff. And as we’re praying, and as we’re processing through those things, God works on our heart, allows things to be a little bit easier and a little bit easier as you commit to that work, to letting it go really praying through what is a good time of the day.

Maybe for me to work on this, whether it’s in the morning, whether it’s in the evening, whether it’s right after you get off work, how are you going to do this?

Allowing this spiritual sense of godly accountability in your life can fastening to someone else that this is an issue. There’s so many ways that you could incorporate spirituality in terms of healing from hoarding disorder.
God does not want us to be ruled or owned by anything. And that includes our stuff. We did another episode a while back, if you have not heard it, I would encourage you to go back and listen to it. And that’s episode 49 on will. Less stuff, equal, less anxiety. That episode is a personal story about Christian minimalism. It’s a very good episode that has a lot of spiritual in it as well.

So I encourage you to listen to that one for more spiritual applications in terms of getting rid of. So if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you know that at the end of every podcast, I like to share a story of hope, which is a time where someone received hope from God or another person.

And often I asked my guests that question, since this is a solo episode, I have to come up with stories of hope for you from my own life. And here’s one that came to me recently. I, if you’ve been following along with the podcast and myself and my own journey, My husband, Steve, you know, that we just had a beautiful little daughter named faith and she is fabulous.
We are so excited to have her in our lives and it’s been a really a long road to get to having faith. And so that’s how she got the name of faith, of course, because. There were so many things. I waited probably over 10 years to become a mother from the time that I started my foster care journey. So one day I’m holding my daughter and she’s asleep and looking absolutely adorable.

And it’s just really these beautiful times that we have for me to be able to pray over her and to thank God for her. And I was having this moment with my daughter that was just really beautiful and spiritual, and something happened where I started to really ponder God and being God, being all-knowing and God being sovereign.
In the world and I thought, okay. So God knew ahead of time that I was going to have this moment with my daughter. And I don’t mean like he knew ahead of time as in earlier in the day. I mean, God knew that I was gonna have this baby and be sitting here watching her sleeping feeling. Incredibly blessed.

God knew that 10 years ago when I lost my foster daughters and God knew that I was going to have this moment several years ago when my first husband wanted a divorce and walked out the door and wanted nothing else to do with me and all these painful moments of my life. I’m going to talk about my daughter’s birth story related to my pregnancy and in a future episode, but there were some complications that came up at the end, shall we say, where I had this higher chance of stillbirth. And of course, that’s very scary when a doctor tells you that. So here, I’m going through this crying and praying, like, don’t let me lose this baby. Now that I’ve gone through all of the. And in that moment, God knew I was going to have this beautiful moment where I’m thanking him because my daughter is here now.

So whatever you’re going through right now may be incredibly painful and you may not see anything good here. Or anything good coming out of it or anything? Beautiful arriving later because when I went through some of those painful experiences in my life, I didn’t see how they could be good on ever like on the other side and just really.
So angry or frustrated or sad with God and in how some of those situations turned out. But God had a plan. He knew what he was doing, and it’s so hard for us in the now to trust him. But that’s what I encourage you to do with whatever’s messy and uncomfortable and scary. In your life to really lean in and trust God to know that he wants to bless you with these beautiful moments. If you are serving him, if you are seeking to honor him, that he wants to make the beauty from the ashes and heal. You from this pain that you’re experiencing. And there is a beautiful and wonderful gift on the other side, at the end of our pain and suffering that we don’t see, we have no concept of at the time.

So that’s my story of hope for you today. I hope that that encourages you. I’m so glad that you decided to tune in today. If you are struggling with hoarding and you feel like you need additional professional support and you are in the state of Tennessee, I want to let you know that I plan to start a support group in the fall for people who are struggling with hoarding and really want to take action steps towards getting to a better place with this who want to do the intellectual, emotional work and want the accountability for putting the time and effort in.

So if that is something that you’re interested in, please contact me through my counseling website www.bythecounseling.com. I don’t have specific days and times for that group yet, but I will post information about it on my site and encourage you to contact me if you’re interested in being a part of that group, or if you’re interested in receiving individual therapy for hoarding.

I am back from maternity leave on June 1st and we’ll be taking on several more clients is since I’ve been off for a while. And if you’ve been looking to get into counseling summer is a great time because counselors often have more openings in the summer because people are on vacation and various things.

So if you need to go to counseling because you’re struggling with hoarding and OCD, spectrum issue, or any other mental health condition, don’t wait, go ahead and get that ball rolling.

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

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

Until next time be comforted by God’s great love f

64. How We Unintentionally Increase Our Own Suffering with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 64. How We Unintentionally Increase Our Own Suffering with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

In this episode, I talk about suffering and ways we have a tendency to increase our own suffering.

  • What I’ve learned from my recent suffering
  • Going through intense physical pain and how it led to emotional pain
  • How our thoughts increase our suffering
  • How acknowledging pain and emotions can make you feel better
  • What are primary and secondary suffering?
  • Seeking God for clarity and getting into a place of acceptance
  • How to decrease your suffering

Links and Resources:

 Is Mindfulness for Christians? with Dr. Irene Kraegel
Book: You Are Not Your Pain

Transcript

Hope for anxiety and OCD episode 64 today’s episode is a solo episode where I wanna talk with you about how we unintentionally increase our own suffering. This is something that I feel like God has taught me through a process of more recent suffering. And I wanted to share it with you because even though my suffering was physical and then it turned into emotional suffering was like secondary.

As a result of the physical suffering. What I realized through the process was that people do the same things with emotional pain. So they experience emotional pain due to anxiety, O C D depression, other mental health issues. And then there’s this increase in more emotional pain in response to that initial pain and suffering.

As I’m recording this right now, I’m about 32 weeks pregnant. But when I was going through some intense physical pain, it was a lot earlier in my pregnancy, probably around, you know, weeks, 15. 20. I started experiencing this back pain. That was unexplainable. I didn’t know where it was coming from. I didn’t think I had done anything specific to have the back pain.

It was in a weird spot, but I was trying all of the self-help things that I knew to do. To help it such as, you know, providing heat for the sore muscles, looking up exercises, you know, what are some good back exercises during pregnancy? It got to a point where it wasn’t getting better. It was just progressively getting worse and worse and worse to the point where it was a daily occurrence.

And then I was essentially living for. The time that I could lay down, I would sit up, meet with clients. And then if I had any kind of break lunch or after work, I’d just lay down and collapse and put the heating pad on me. And that was about what I could do for several weeks. I would try to stretch or do some light exercises.

Sometimes I ended up aggravating some other areas of my body. What I. As I was experiencing that physical pain was that then there came some emotional pain that got latched in and connected to it. I started having. All kinds of thoughts about my pregnancy. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

At my age, if I had known I was gonna have to go through all of this physical pain, I wouldn’t have done it. I was angry at my doctor, who I felt like had set me up for failure because she had told me going into this process that I was healthy. I was angry at myself for not knowing more or not knowing how to fix this issue.

I was angry at God. You know, why have you allowed so many people around me to have good and healthy and you know, relatively pain, free pregnancies. And I’m over here suffering with all of this discomfort. So early on, and I know I still have over half of my pregnancy to go, what’s going on with that?

These thoughts would just keep churning around in my head. I couldn’t seem to find some kind of resolution for them or some kind of landing point to get to. And the thoughts themselves increased my own suffering because. . I was starting to think things like, okay, I have this many weeks of pregnancy to go.

I’ve got 23 weeks of pregnancy to go. Am I going to be in physical pain this whole time? Because I’m at a certain size right now, but I’m only going to get bigger if my back can’t handle this point in time. Then what’s gonna happen when I am in the third trimester where everybody says you have back pain, like I already have back pain in the second trimester and I can’t handle it now.

How in the world am I going to be able to handle it later? I went through. A two week period where I cried every single day, I was completely depressed and hopeless. My doctor had told me, well, you know, maybe this will get better. Maybe it won’t. And that was not what I needed to hear at that point. I needed her to give me some hope of let’s try X, Y, and Z to help these things.

Get better for you so that you don’t have to continue in suffering. But I had really held onto that, that this pain might not go away for the rest of my pregnancy. I remember one day I was lying in bed and I just started crying before I even got out of bed. And Steve came by, I was like, you know, what’s going on?

I don’t even wanna get outta bed because I know I’m gonna be in pain today. And I know I’m gonna have to deal with that and I don’t wanna deal with it. I don’t wanna do. When I got to really my lowest point, which is very scary to talk about, but I wanna share it because, you know, we all have really, really low points in our life and we have dark thoughts that we don’t ever talk about.

And so I. Just wanted to share one of mine, I guess, for, to make somebody out there feel a little bit less strange or less crazy in some way. I remember just praying and, and asking God that, that I could not be pregnant anymore. And that he just needed to take my baby because I could not handle this pain for.

20 more weeks. I could not do it anymore. And just cried and cried and cried. And I felt so guilty. Like I must be this absolute, horrible person. Like I just prayed. And I asked God to take my baby. Like how awful is that? So in the midst of going through this whole process, I had these emotions surrounding knowing that I have other people in my life who have been unable to have children that I love very much and other people in my life who are in the process of trying to have children.

And I thought, you know, you’re really ungrateful. You’re awful for thinking these thoughts because these people would love to be pregnant and they would love to have children. Certainly compounded to the emotional distress. Then not only was I feeling certain feelings and having very distressing thoughts, then I was compounding it by telling myself how wrong I was to have these thoughts and how wrong I was to have these feelings.

None of that help. Whenever we tell ourselves you don’t get to feel that instead of actually acknowledging our own feeling, we’re increasing our own suffering. Similar to thought sometimes feelings just happen. They just come up and we don’t even know why they’re there, but instead of shoving them down, trying to ignore them, not acknowledge them.

It’s better for us to be able to say, okay, I’m experiencing anger. Where I’m experiencing sadness, I’m experiencing anxiety. It’s okay for me to acknowledge that feeling. And then it’s also okay for me to be able to say, what can I do to help myself express release this emotion? Let it go and allow myself to enter into a calmer space or a happier space.

Those two things are not incongruent with each other. I just want to help you understand that sometimes people think if they acknowledge their emotion, that they’re going to somehow be stuck in. That typically isn’t usually the case. It’s more typical that if you acknowledge it and are able to process it and kind of allow it to flow through you, like a wave goes up and then you express it in a healthy way, hopefully, and then it comes down.

You’re able to release it and get to a place of feeling better. The more that you try to fight the wave, the longer it tends to stick around in an unhealthy sense. During this process, I was seeing a counselor who I ended up firing kind of funny because I really didn’t like what she had to say, even though she was right.

She told me that I needed to work on mindfulness skills and I. I don’t understand this. Like I know how to be mindful. I teach people mindfulness practice. I have a podcast episode on mindfulness. Like what, why are you telling me about mindfulness? Like how is that actually going to help this chronic pain issue that I’m dealing with?

After I fired her, actually went on Amazon and started looking for a book on. Mindfulness and pain. I found this book called you are not your pain by Birch and Penman. That absolutely transformed my experience with my pain. Having the physical pain is one thing or the emotional pain, but what Birch and Penman talk about is that we have primary suffering and we have secondary suffer.

Primary suffering is a physical sensation of pain or for people with anxiety. There’s a physical sensation that comes along with that. So it might be like a rapid heartbeat or difficulty breathing. There might be just a lot of tension in your body when you’re anxious. And so that’s the primary suffering.

Your primary suffering could be mental as well. Like constant worry. You know, I just can’t seem to get away from my thought process. It’s just going all the time and worrying about the future. But secondary suffering is like that piece that comes next. It’s that piece that we add on. So for the person with the rapid heartbeat, the secondary suffering is they tell themselves I’m dying.

When really they’re having a panic attack and understandably so when people first start to learn that they have panic attack, sometimes they don’t know. Sometimes they really do think they’re dying, but after you learn, oh, okay, this is a panic attack. This is something different. Then it’s like, you can reframe it and say, you know, there’s a difference between telling yourself my heart’s beating really fast and telling yourself I’m dying.

So my primary suffering was. Physical pain, but my secondary suffering was, I’m never gonna get out of this. I’m gonna have it for 20 more weeks. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t face another day. God, why won’t you take this away? All of those things, the regret thoughts about I shouldn’t have ever gotten.

You know, I, I did this to myself. Why did I do this? Why did this happen? God, why did you allow me to become pregnant? If you knew I was gonna end up in this pain, all of that churning stuff is the secondary suffering. What I talk about in this book, you are not your pain is that mindfulness will help decrease your secondary suffering.

And as you decrease your. Secondary suffering then sometimes your primary suffering decreases as well. Not always, but at least you will have a different perspective on your primary suffering than you did before. One thing I learned for myself is that secondary suffering involves a process of grief and loss.

In my experience, I could remember thinking, I went into this thinking, I’m gonna have a healthy pregnancy. I’m gonna be a fit pregnant person that continues to work out. I had these expectations right. Of what it was going to be like. And then my expectations were completely blown out of the water.

Because all of a sudden I couldn’t work out. I couldn’t even do day to day life stuff that I needed to do. That was really hard for me to sit with knowing that when I used to be a member of the Y for example, I would go to these Zumba classes and there would be pregnant women in there dancing around and doing just fine.

And. You know, I thought that that was gonna be me one day and it wasn’t. I had to grieve that and be, really allow myself to be sad about that. I had to allow myself to be sad and also angry about the fact that I was now having to do extra things, such as go to physical therapy that I didn’t plan on doing and didn’t want to do quite frankly.

I didn’t want to go to physical therapy and do these exercises and have somebody poke on my back. I didn’t want to do those things, but that was what I needed to do. It was okay for me to be sad about that. It was okay for me to be angry. I really missed my workout. Endorphins a lot. I miss them so much.

And I realized that through that process, that was something that I had to grieve. I was never one that said, yes, I like to work out. I absolutely wanna do it. I would always tell people, I love the effects of working out. I love the fact that I can sleep better. I love the fact that I feel better physically and emotionally, I had to grieve loss of social experiences.

Things that I was invited to or things that I wanted to do where I had to tell people, you know, I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to commit to that or not, because I don’t know how I’m going to be legitimately feeling on that day. And I had to admit to people that I had limitations. That I wasn’t sure if my back was gonna be able to handle sitting for that long or standing for that long or whatever the situation entailed.

That was hard for me. I had always been so healthy and one of the things that God showed me through this process was how much pride I had put in my own physical health as something like I have control over it. I think that’s a very. Probably American mindset of like, well, you know, if you just eat the right foods and you exercise and you’re gonna be in good health, the reality is we don’t have control over that.

Guys. You could be a super healthy person and wake up tomorrow with cancer. We’re not in control of our health. A hundred percent, like we think we are. And that was something that I realized that it was out of my control, that was distressing for me. And I had to come to a place of humility and surrender to say, okay, this is where I’m at in my life.

This is a part of my process. I will tell you though, that during that two weeks where I was so depressed and so angry, I knew that I was in this grief and loss process. I knew that I hadn’t come to a place of acceptance. It was like, I couldn’t quite get there. I didn’t know like what I needed to get to that place of acceptance.

Maybe you’re at a point in your life where you’re dealing with anxiety and you hate it so much. Or you’re dealing with O C D and it’s like, you’re constantly trying to fight it because you hate it so much. And maybe. You need to get to that point of acceptance that for whatever reason, this is my season right now of suffering.

It may feel like it’s been a very long season and I hear you on that, but we can’t make positive changes and move forward. If we aren’t willing to first, except where we’re at really think about that. You can’t move forward. If you aren’t accepting of where your starting point is. You can’t run a marathon overnight.

When you’ve been sitting on the couch, you can’t expect your emotional self to be able to do certain things. If you haven’t exercised those emotional muscles, when you’re dealing with secondary suffering, you also have to guard your heart and mind in terms of what other people tell you because other people’s experience.

Are not your experience. If there’s anything that will teach you about the dumbest things people can say to you, it’s when you’re pregnant. I mean, it’s just absolutely unreal. Some of the stuff that people come out with, but I had different people tell me, oh, when I was pregnant, that was just the best that I felt in my whole.

Girl, granted, some of those people didn’t know that I was dealing with chronic pain when they said that to me, but I thought that is exactly what I don’t need to hear right now, because that’s certainly not my experience. Then you start to think to yourself, what’s wrong with me? If they had that experience, why couldn’t I have that experience?

And I’m sure this has happened to you. If you’ve dealt with anxiety for any period of time, you’ve had someone come up to you and say, oh yeah, I used to deal with anxiety. And there was this revival service at church and they prayed over me and I’m no longer anxious and I’m just walking in the Lord’s victory.

And if that’s someone’s story, like, that’s awesome. That’s great for them, but that’s not a lot of people’s story. Um, not the people that I’ve worked with anyway, that. Typically been their story. We have to be careful not to compare ourselves to other people. We have to say, this is a journey that the Lord has me on.

And he’s the one that gets to speak into that journey. And other godly people get to speak into that journey. But no one else can tell me exactly how my specific journey, whether it’s with pain, whether it’s with anxiety, whether it’s with pregnancy, whatever it is, nobody can tell me exactly how that’s gonna go for me, except for God.

He knows what that path is like. After I went through my two week crying period. I started to seek God for some answers. Okay. What does it actually mean to depend on you on a daily basis? What does it actually mean that your power is made perfect in weakness? Of course, these are things that I’ve heard.

My whole life, but I didn’t know how they applied to my specific situation. I’m not gonna say that that God showed up and spoke to me audibly or anything of that through that time, other than God just gave me peace to do the next thing. My planning self who loves to plan and set goals and knows what she’s doing next week and next month really had to reign back in and be put on.

And say, I’m gonna do what I can do today. I was in a bit of a survival mode. I had to be okay with that. Going back to that acceptance piece, I had to be able to accept, you know what, right now I’m just in a survival mode and I’m just looking at things day by day. Sometimes not even day by day, sometimes just morning, afternoon, evening.

What is reasonable? For me to accomplish right now, a lot of things fell by the wayside. During that time, I wasn’t super happy that they were falling by the wayside, but I also knew that I was doing the absolute best that I could do. There were a lot of dinners that didn’t get cooked. There were a lot of grocery shopping trips that didn’t get done, maybe laundry progress notes for therapy.

There were a lot of things that had to be done later. I came to a place of acceptance that I’m doing the best that I can do in this moment. And that’s all I can do moving forward. It’s super important for us to understand what kind of season that we’re in, because oftentimes we are longing for a different season.

We’re longing for someone else’s season. We’re longing for a season that we used to have in the past, instead of really examining God, speaking to him in prayer and examining ourselves to say, Okay. What season is it that you have for me right now, at this point in time, that applies to so many different areas of our life.

I knew that a lot of my secondary suffering had to do with catastrophizing futuristic thinking where everything’s horrible, terrible, awful. I’m never gonna be able to get outta this pain. You know, how in the world am I going to give birth? If I can’t even get around. All kinds of thoughts that were happening to me after that two week period of crying, I don’t know what the shift was for me.

I know I was able to talk with my doctor who recommended that I get on an antidepressant genuinely. I was depressed. Maybe that was my wake up call that I wanted to shift and change things and look at them differently. I didn’t want to get on an antidepressant at that point. Not because I don’t believe in antidepressants, you know, we’ve, we’ve certainly talked about reducing shame surrounding medication on the show.

I’ve, I’ve been on an antidepressant in the path. That’s not a problem. But what I realized was that my depression was secondary. To my suffering with pain. And if I could work towards reducing some of my suffering surrounding pain, I wouldn’t be depressed and I would be able to move forward. I was able to talk with my doctor about why in the world did this happen, or how did I end up here?

Because I think I was taking responsibility for somehow being in this position. Like I talked about before, just kind of that feeling like I should be in control of my own health. What my doctor told me basically was that we don’t know how people are gonna react or how their bodies are gonna react when they get pregnant.

There’s lots of things that happen with hormones that I learned about that can affect your ligaments and your muscles, and really just throw things outta whack all over your body. Even though they’re trying to help certain areas of your body be prepared to give birth. That conversation I know was healing for me.

I know I also had some conversations with Steve and with our doula who I had recently hired at that point that were healing conversations for me to help me get back on track. All I can say is that God gave me some type of clarity of mind at some point, to be able to sit down, write down specifically some of these repetitive thoughts that had been coming up.

Some of the things that I had been thinking over and over and over, such as I regret getting pregnant was one of them that I wrote down. And God gave me these words to counteract these thoughts. Instead of saying I regret getting pregnant wish I had never gotten pregnant. And then I wouldn’t be dealing with this painful experience.

I wrote down that I’ve waited many years to have a family. I didn’t choose chronic pain or difficult pregnancy, but I choose my daughter and it’s not my fault that I’m in this pain and I don’t understand why it’s happening, but I know that it is happening. I had a thought about this pain will last the next 16 weeks until my daughter’s born.

It’s only going to get worse as I get bigger. And then I wrote down, but God knows how the next 16 weeks are going to go. It could get better. It could get worse. I can only deal with today’s pain today. If there’s pain tomorrow, I will not be able to deal with it until tomorrow. That for me was probably the biggest revelation and goes back to that place of mindfulness, right?

Like I can’t deal with tomorrow’s anxiety. I can only deal with today’s anxiety that I feel right now here in the moment. You cannot predict how O C D is going to go for you in one year. In two years, you can only say, okay, what can I do about these obsessive thoughts today? What can I do about the compulsions that I really wanna engage in today?

As you’re more mindful, you notice that some days are better than others. That was my experience. I did go through several weeks of physical therapy. My process, I thought was going to be much more linear than it actually was. I thought, okay. I’m gonna go to therapy, I’m gonna do these exercises. I’m gonna practice like I’m supposed to, and then it’s gonna be kind of this straight diagonal line upward.

Why I had this idea. I have no idea because I work with people all the time on emotional pain and I. Tell them constantly. That’s not how it works. You know, you have some ups, you have some downs, you start to feel a little bit better, and then you have a setback or you have a major trigger that happens.

And that doesn’t mean that you’re not making progress. It just means that it’s not that neat diagonal line. So kind of comically looking back on it. I’m like, why did I think that my pain was going to be any different, but I really did. And that was interesting because, you know, no one had really communicated with me what this process was going to be like in terms of physical therapy and, and working through this pain.

And this discomfort, I did have some pretty significant setbacks of experiencing pretty intense, pure forms, muscle pain, and spasms. If you don’t know what your pure form muscle does, it basically turns your leg from straight to out and it’s in your butt. Let me tell you when that muscle is in pain. You know it because I could not even roll over in the bed without that acting up and aggravating, that was very disheartening to me to have my back start to feel a little bit better.

And then this muscle completely go out of whack. I had one side that I was able to get better and then, you know, not too long after the other side majorly acted up and was got me down kind of in the bed for a little while. Even through that experience, I was able to learn if I sit too long, that’s not so good for me.

If I stand too long, that’s not so good for me. If I alternate heat. Nice. That feels a little bit better. I just had to try out a lot of different things. I really relate that over to anxiety as well as you start to kind of notice. What your experiences, what your triggers are, what kind of things have, have been helpful to you?

What kind of things haven’t been helpful to you? Then you can start to adjust how you approach the anxiety. One of the things that they have you do in the book, you’re not your pain is kind of go through some different activities and look at, you know, did your, did your pain increase with these activities?

Did it decrease? Did it stay about the same. And as you’re really kind of like just tuning into that whole process, then you’re able to have realistic expectations for yourself. A lot of times what we do is as we start to get better, then we put too much on our plate. And then we have a setback because we expected too much out of ourselves.

This can be a yoyo cycle, like for anxiety where maybe you engage and then you withdraw. And then you engage and you withdraw because you engaged a little bit too much, for example, or you tried to do too much. Besides mindfulness. Another thing that can be helpful for secondary suffering is gratitude. I had to get to a place where I was thankful for the things that I could do or be thankful for the days that I could do them because there were some days that I couldn’t do them.

And as I was able to develop more gratitude that allowed some of that pain to lessen, there is this interaction we have to understand between our mind and our bodies. There’s a two-way flow to it. Right? So our body is listening to what our mind is telling it. And then our body’s experience is kind of.

Traveling back up to the mind and informing it, you know? So there’s this two way street that’s happening all the time that we’re inter interacting with. And if we don’t take care of both of those components, then we’re going to be missing something. I’m really thankful that. I got to share this part of my story with you today, because it makes me feel like I didn’t go through all that in vain.

And maybe when somebody else has a thought that is, is really dark or out there, they’ll go back. And remember this episode, you know, maybe you feel less alone today in your experiences. I think if there is something that I could go back and encourage my earlier pregnant self with, it would be to go ahead and embrace physical therapy.

I had a really hard time with this for some reason, which is ironic because I’m always telling people that it’s okay to get help. But for some reason, in this experience, I was super ashamed of going to physical therapy. Somehow, I was supposed to be able to figure this out myself because I had been doing fitness and stretching and yoga and different things for years.

And I also didn’t fully understand the concept of physical therapy. Nobody took the time to. Break it down for me and explain these people are specifically skilled to be able to diagnose where exactly your pain is coming from. And in my case, it was being referred from a different area, which is why it didn’t make sense.

They can help you with specific exercises to target those specific areas. I think my concept of physical therapy prior to pregnancy was. Well, you know, if you have surgery, you get physical therapy, or if you had an injury, you get physical therapy. But I thought who gets physical therapy for being pregnant?

Apparently it’s a thing. And a lot of people do because there’s so many things that happen with your muscles and all of that and ligaments and different things, stretching out. If I could go back and tell my earlier self something, it would be it’s okay to get this help. And it doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong.

It just means that you need the knowledge, skills, and abilities that these people have in order to get yourself to a better place. I think in a similar way, some people don’t understand exactly what mental health therapy is all about. They have these pictures from TV, like, oh, you’re gonna lay down a couch and someone’s just gonna ask you about how you feel.

There’s a lot more to it than that. If you’ve been listening to our show, you know that, but we have these misperceptions right. About what getting help is like, and that keeps us from actually getting the help or we think is that really gonna help me? Or can I do this on my. I want to let you all know if you didn’t know that we have an email list where I’ve been really striving to send out emails every week.

This has also been a one step forward, two step back I’ll I’ll do it for a few weeks and then fall off the BWA and do it for a few more weeks, but I’m really striving to be consistent in putting things out there that are helpful and beneficial for you guys. If you want to join our email list, you can do that by going to hope for anxiety and ocd.com.

There’s a way on the homepage for you to be able to subscribe. And as a gift to you, you also get to listen to my color breathing, exercise that some of my clients have really enjoyed over the. I have some great interview episodes that I’ve been saving up for you guys on different types of therapy.

We’re gonna talk with someone about somatic experiencing therapy and about acceptance and commitment therapy. So I’m super excited to share those interviews with you guys pretty soon. So stay tuned. Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of by the well counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bach, 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 Mangram until next time may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

More Podcast Episodes

61. Overcoming Financial Anxiety and Shame with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 61. Overcoming Financial Anxiety and Shame with Carrie Bock, LPC-MHSP

Join Carrie in a solo episode as she speaks about anxiety and shame around money and how to cope with it. 

  • Common financial traps
  • Evaluating your finances and making good financial decisions
  • Thought processes and limiting beliefs about money and how to reframe them.
  • Honoring God with your finances  
  • More helpful tips and advice on dealing with financial anxiety. 

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Transcript

Hope for anxiety and OCD episode 61. On today’s episode. I am choosing to fly solo to speak with you about anxiety regarding finances and overcoming that as well as shame. That people carry around related to their finances. One thing I want to say in regards to this episode is that I am not a financial planner or advisor by any means.

So take that into consideration as you listen to this episode and make decisions about whether you want to follow any of this advice or not. I had a guest that I interviewed that I was going to air. Um, to talk about this issue and it just, I didn’t really feel like it jived with our audience or was going to be relatable to all of you, especially since we have a worldwide audience.

And I felt that that position was a little bit more Americanized. I also want to point out though that it doesn’t really matter how much money you have. You still may have anxiety about your financial situation. There are people with a lot of money in the bank, maybe who have obsessions about having a certain amount in their savings because they’re afraid of something catastrophic happening to them. Maybe they’re afraid of losing their house or losing their job. Maybe not having family members that they can fall back on to help them. So understand that it’s not just people who. Are struggling financially or who are dealing with poverty that have anxiety about finances.

But I really do believe that it affects people across the demographic range, whether you’re in poverty in the middle class, or whether you’re even rich, you can get anxious about your finances. This topic is really relevant for everyone. I wanted to talk about shame in this episode as well. People who are very well-meaning are trying to help others with their finances, even within the church context, unfortunately, can at times perpetuate shame.

It’s a little bit like people who are trying to lose weight and someone comes to them and says, well, it’s easy. I mean, all you have to do is eat less and exercise and that’s really, and that position may really be minimizing the struggles that that person is having emotionally. Maybe they’re dealing with emotional eating, or have some type of eating disorder.

They may be obsessing over eating or not eating certain things. There may have been some traumatic experiences in their life contributing to their weight gain. So it’s not as easy as, okay. Here. Let me give you the two to three-step process and it’s gonna change your life and you just have to implement it.

Anytime we approach someone with that type of quick fix scenario, or someone comes at you with that, I think you have to be very careful because typically our problems are not that simple. Many of our financial decisions unfortunately are made emotionally or impulsively. If we don’t take this time to really stop and think about what is it that we want for our family’s future, then we can just kind of get blown in the wind in bad financial decisions. And unfortunately, the thing about finances that I’ve realized is that it’s very easy to get in a difficult spot financially, but it’s a lot harder to get out once you’ve kind of fallen in that financial.

And there are so many different things that people face that can get them in a difficult spot. Financially. One is the reality that the rent mortgages, the cost of living increases overall has gone up drastically. I think about the first apartment that my first husband and I rented was probably, maybe $600 a month, maybe a little bit more than that. And in the process, we were looking at staying there for another year and our rent was going to go up a whole hundred dollars a month. And at that point in time, that was like, whoa, like, I don’t think we can do another a hundred dollars a month and ended up looking elsewhere for a place, cuz we weren’t super happy there.

But I promise you that if you go to rent, that is probably same apartment right now. And this is granted, we’re probably 15 years down the road, but the price has probably doubled. It probably would cost you about 1200 and it was a one-bedroom apartment with a loft. It wasn’t anything huge or special. If you are in a place where your rent or just cost of living has gone up drastically.

And oftentimes our salaries don’t follow that. You may really have to take a hard evaluative look at what do I need to do in order to save money. Do I need to move farther out? But then with that consideration, you have to consider gas expenses and. Do I need to look for potential opportunities to work from home where maybe I can live a little bit farther out from the city easier.

I think since COVID, a lot more people have those opportunities and have been able to live in an area, maybe that’s a little bit more rural or more outside of town where they’re not having to be so close to a city center, having to drive into work every day. And that may not be a possibility for you.

That’s not a possibility with everyone’s career. Some people have to go into work in order to do their job. I had to take a hard evaluation when I went through my divorce, looking at my mortgage, do I sell my house and go rent somewhere? That would’ve possibly been maybe the easiest case scenario. When I started looking at how much rent was at the time, it made more sense for me to keep paying my mortgage.

And even though I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pay my mortgage on my salary alone, I knew that I could get a roommate. Was it the most ideal situation or my favorite thing ever to have roommates? Not necessarily. There were bumps and challenges in the road at different points as happens whenever you live with people.

If you’re in a position right now where you have to live with family because that’s what you can afford and maybe it’s not the greatest, but you know that that’s the best financial decision for you. Sometimes we have to buckle down and do what we have to do, and it’s not easy. Another way sometimes that people can get into a difficult spot financially is they may have made a poor investment.

They may have whether that was in a house or a car, and now you’re upside down. You owe more than what it’s actually worth. You’re stuck with this extra debt, whatever the situation. The biggest thing I would say from the emotional side of things is to not beat yourself up, if that’s you, because I think it would be so easy to go back and live in that guilt shame of saying, “Oh gosh, I wish I had never bought this car or I shouldn’t have made this investment over here. I should have gotten a house in a different neighborhood.”  

Whatever the situation is, you can’t go back and change. Beating yourself up is not going to help. The problem is really just adding insult to injury. It may be a situation where you get some good financial help, coaching, talk to a financial planner, get some advice on what’s my best step oving forward here. Maybe you’ve had a situation where you’ve had a lot of medical bills, maybe you’ve been sick and had to miss some work. This is something that Steve and I definitely can relate to right now because we have a lot of medical bills coming in for what was happening with his eye issues.

And now pregnancy issues. There’s always some kind of medical bill coming into our house at any given time. Those are things that you can’t fully plan for. You can plan to have savings, but oftentimes that can get quickly depleted if you have a high deductible plan, which a lot of people in and speaking from an American context, lot of people have a high deductible plan now that maybe several thousand dollars.

And it might be hard for you to save up that money or to have that in the bank ready and available at any time. I know for me, it’s a situation where I’ve had definite thoughts recently about, whether are we going to be able to take a vacation next year. Like what’s going to happen. But, you know, you just have to take those things one step at a time. I’ve found in the process that some places are more willing to work with you than others. That’s just a situation that you’re in. So if you can talk with someone from the billing office about what the expectations are, having them let you know ahead of time, you know, is my amount that’s going towards my deductible.

Do I have to pay that? When I come in. Is that something you’re going to bill me for later? Can I set up a payment plan? Unfortunately, what I’ve seen with a lot of people who maybe have big bills or have medical bills coming in is that overwhelm can lead to an eventual shutdown. For example, I’m overwhelmed about this medical bill.

It’s large. It’s more than I can pay. So then I just shut down, avoid it. I put it in the back of the drawer and I don’t pay anything. That’s definitely not what you want to do. You want to take a moment, breathe, evaluate, say, what can I afford to pay on this medical bill right now? One thing that’s helpful with medical bills is that typically you can’t be sent to collections.

And look this up on your own, because I did a little bit of research a while ago. As long as you are paying on that bill and making a good faithful effort to pay on it regularly, you’re not going to be sent to collections. Some of that may vary by company to company because some companies will send you to collections after say 90 days. So make sure that you’re aware. And if you have to call and talk with somebody, it’s better to do that than to avoid the situation entirely, because what happens when we avoid things entirely, they tend to get worse and you don’t want this situation to get worse for you. It’s already difficult enough that you’re having to deal with it.

You may be in a difficult financial situation because you’ve lost a job or had to make a sudden move. You’ve had a sudden life change. That’s happened to you, whatever the situation is if you would say, okay, I’m in a financial hole right now. And it’s absolutely stressing me out because I don’t know how to get out of it.

We always talk about hope on a show. And I think that’s so important that we talk about how. There is hope for your financial situation. You may have to make some difficult changes or hard choices, but you can get to a point where you get out of that hole and get to a different place. You may need some professional financial help for someone to look at all the numbers for you and map that way out for you.

I’d like to talk about two common, but completely different themes that we hear in regards to teaching in the church surrounding finances. And one, I talked about a little bit earlier, which is that it’s just easy. You should be able to do it, create a budget, spend less than you bring in, et cetera. And that creates shame, obviously, because we have all kinds of things that get wrapped up in terms of spending.

You know, some of us grew up in a family where finances were never talked about. Some people grew up in a family where every time their parents got money, they just blew it. So they never learned how to have restraint, self-control, how to budget, how to manage money. And obviously that puts you at a disadvantage when you’re trying to learn how to manage it on your.

Some people grew up in families where love was bought. So gifts were a big thing or a lot of money was spent giving to people. And maybe you wanted to continue that, but haven’t been able to, because of your financial situation. So you spend above your means to provide gifts and what you believe is love to other people in the family.

There are so many different thought processes that people can have surrounding money. And oftentimes these thought processes go back to childhood. For example, you may have a belief about yourself that I am no good with money. Now, if you tell yourself that you’re going to live by that principle. And so it may be better for you to say to yourself, I’m learning how to manage my money.

I’m growing in new financial knowledge. I’m talking to others who know more than me to try to learn about this issue. I’m reading books. If you are doing those things and you’re really seeking out the help that you need, I promise you will not continue to be bad with money anymore. Another belief that people may carry is that they never have enough money.

And this goes back to maybe growing up in a little bit more of an impoverished environment. Maybe now they’re doing okay though. Maybe now they’re in the middle or middle to upper class, and they’re still holding on to this belief of I’m never going to have enough. This can drive people to be anxious, workaholics, working multiple jobs, believing they have to have a certain number in the bank account or certain amount of income that can really create a lot of stress.

If you’re holding onto that financial belief, you may need to look at reframing that to, I am content with everything that I have everything that I need getting into a space of gratitude will really help you get out of a scarcity mindset. One thing we have to remember is that when we are in that fight-flight or freeze response, and we’re trying to make a financial decision, it’s not going to go well for.

The reason is when you’re in that panicked fight fight free state, your higher levels of thinking are turned off at that point because you’re in survival mode, short-term, thinking, what do I need to do just to get through this? versus a more balanced, long-term mindset. If you have ever bought a car, you know how this goes and how people really try to play on this, like car sales are very good.

They know exactly what they’re doing. They will convince you that you have to make that decision right now about whether or not you’re going to buy that. Because it is going to disappear into thin air and the $500 off they promised you is going away right now. And they tried to get you really into this state of worked up of making this decision.

And next thing you know, they’re showing you stuff that’s out of your price range. This happens. Anytime you go to buy something that you will tell someone, this is my price range, and they will show you something completely outside of it, case in point, Steve and I bought a mattress recently and I was choking with people about it later because I said, you know, she gave us several different mattresses to lay on after we told her our price range and the last mattress That we laid on was $2,000. I did not come in there with any intentions of spending $2000 on a mattress. It was a very nice mattress granted, but it was almost just comical to me that she felt the need to have us lay on that one, you know, see how wonderful it is, isn’t that great. And, you know, we have these financing offers and so forth and so on.

You have to be very careful and understand the psychology behind sales scarcity time limitations really educate yourself on some of those things before you go shopping, make sure you’re in as calm a state as possible when you’re making especially large financial decisions such as on a car house, furniture. Those things are gonna be more money for you. Another message that you may have heard in the church is similar to kind of a, you know, name it and claim it type of thing. God wants to bless you financially. He owns the cattle on a thousand Hills. He wants to open up the windows of heaven for you.

So this seed and give to our ministry and God will multiply it. Whatever the message is, that’s out there. I’m sure that you have heard some version of each of those. Here’s the reality based on going back to scripture, Philippians four 19, and my God will meet all your needs. According to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus. Interestingly enough, this verse is found in a passage on contentment. It says, God will meet all of our needs according to his riches. It doesn’t say that we’re going to have everything that we. It doesn’t say, if you accept Christ, you’re going to be a millionaire. Steve will tell you that some of the most blessed people that he’s met were not blessed financially, but they were blessed spiritually.

They were blessed relationally. They were blessed in many other ways. God does want to bless us, but it’s, doesn’t always come in the financial realm. We have to understand that there are many different ways that God can and does bless us. I do believe that there’s also the parable of the talents, that if we are responsible with what God gives us, we will naturally be entrusted with more to take care of.

The opposite is also true. If we don’t take care of what God gives us. We may not have it anymore. We are not always ready to receive what God has for us. I’m not just speaking financially. Although I do believe it applies financially, but sometimes we aren’t ready to receive a different job opportunity.

We may not be ready to receive a relationship. God may be working in our lives to prepare us for that next thing. But our character may not be where it needs to be in order to receive that. I want to say something here about giving. Oftentimes we hear about tithing and giving in the church. These are certainly biblical concepts and there’s plenty of scriptures to back tithing giving to the local church, as well as even above that giving to other organizations that are helping other people or other Christian causes. Why does God ask us to give certainly he can do anything and doesn’t rely on us to give money to the church or to give to other organizartion. He can meet needs in any way that he desires.

I believe that God asks us to give because it keeps us out of a space of greed. If we put God first in our finances and say, okay, I’m gonna dedicate this first 10% over to you. And I’m going to give how you’ve led me to, to other cause. That keeps us from making money a God. And a lot of times, if we’re obsessing, ruminating have a lot of anxiety about finances, you know, we have to be careful because maybe we’re making that an idol in our life.

That’s something maybe that you might need to just genuinely self-evaluate for yourself, have I put this money and this effort in paying my bills and getting certain things or accomplishing certain things in life above God, when we give it puts us in a state of gratefulness for all that we do have, and all that God has provided for us.

It’s really amazing sometimes when you stop and you go back and look at difficult, maybe financial situations that you’ve gone through, I was on someone else’s podcast and it was, it was kind of comical because I was trying to make this analogy right about coming to counseling and how. You know, if you’re having a problem with your car, you know, you don’t just lay hands on it, you take it to the mechanic.

And I was kind of saying, if you have these emotional problems, praying is good, but you don’t just do that. And you go to somebody that can help you with those emotional problems. So as I’m making this analogy, I say, no, no, wait, there was this time where I could not afford to get my car fixed. I had to get an emissions test that was coming up.

I knew there wasn’t anything majorly wrong with the car, but I was gonna fail because my check engine light was on. And sometimes those things can be temperamental. If you know anything about cars, sometimes the systems. Just kind of go a little wonky and one thing is off and your check engine light’s on and it’s not really anything to do functionally with the car.

So I said, “no.” I remember I prayed for my check engine light to go off and it did. It didn’t go off right away when I prayed about it, but it did go off several days later. And I really believe that God heard that prayer and came through for me so that I didn’t have to take my car in anywhere. And I certainly wasn’t in a space to get a different car at that point.

I say all that to say, you never quite know. Like how God is going to come through for you and never underestimate the power of prayer and the power of knowing that if you are a child of God, that he loves you very much, and he wants to make sure that you are taken care of that includes financially in terms of being able to make sure that your bills are met and taken care of what I would encourage you to do.

If you are anxious about your finances today, take a moment and stop, look around, start to become really, really thankful for all the things that you do have, whether it’s running water, electricity, a yard, a car, whatever it is that you can be thankful for today. One of the things that changed my life when I was going through my divorce was I read this verse in James 1:17  says “Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”  What I realized when I read that verse was going through a difficult season financially, as well as emotionally was to say, okay, if there’s something good in me regardless of what it is, whether it’s tangible or intangible. That means that God put that good thing. There it’s a gift from him. It’s something that I can be thankful for. Gratitude helps us with so many areas of our life, but specifically when we’re talking about financially, It helps us get to a place of contentment where we can step back and say, you know what?

I don’t really have a need of anything. Maybe you’re in a space where you’re anxious about finances because you genuinely cannot pay your bills or you genuinely do not have enough food. And what I would say to you is that it’s okay to get help. There’s no shame in that. If you go through a season. Where you have to go to the food pantry because you lost your job.

Don’t feel bad about that. If you are a single mom with no child support and your husband has left you and things are really rough for you and someone’s offering to help you don’t turn that help away. It’s okay. To receive that you need that in this point in your life, you may not always need it. And you know what, you’ll probably one day be able to give back to somebody else, even if it’s just a listening ear or to be able to say, yeah, I’ve been there.

I know how hard that is. If you’re consistently unable to make your bills, you may need to look at a major life change in circumstances, whether that’s moving, sharing space with somebody, getting a different job that pays you more money. These are all big changes. Sometimes that have to happen as hard as they are to do and to implement.

We touched on this earlier. But my other advice, if you’re feeling stressed financially is to really look at some of your beliefs surrounding yourself and your relationship with money. Are you the type of person that always has to have new things? Are you trying to keep up with some type of status? Do you believe that you’re just always going to be broke?

Do you believe you have to have a certain amount of savings and if it drops below that point, then you just panic. Do you think it’s bad to have money? If you do, you will not hold onto it. You’ll seek to get rid of it. Just so some people believe that Christians should be wealthy. Some people believe that Christian should live in poverty.

And somehow that gets you closer to God. Neither of that beliefs are accurate. You can have a lot of money and honor God with that money. You can have a little bit of money and honor God with that money that you have. Third thing I would say, if you are anxious about money is to pray and really seek God as a provider of all your.

The scriptures tell us that God knows our needs before we ask, but obviously, he wants us to have a relationship with him. He wants us to depend on him. He wants us to ask for those things that we need, start to keep track. Of those answered prayers of those ways that God comes through in the difficult times financially, you will be able to go back and look at those and see how God has worked in your life.

The fourth thing that we’ve already touched on is get help if you need it whether that’s reading a book about finances, going to a class, talking to a financial advisor, getting some type of financial or debt counseling. Allowing others to help you when needed, if you are dealing with financial shame because of maybe negative choices that you’ve made in the past or negative beliefs that you have about yourself related to money, know that God is gracious.

And loves you, wants you to learn from this experience that you’ve had so that you don’t make the same decisions in the future. Sit with the guilt, ask for forgiveness, and then move forward into new behaviors and actions. Don’t keep beating yourself up over and over again for the same. Recognize shameful messages that may be coming from the church or other well, meaning people and choose not to receive those for yourself.

There are many stories of hope that I could give you about finances. And I already talked about one a little bit earlier in the show. This story of hope is actually about giving and financial surrender around the end of the year in 2019. I talked with Steve about our church’s end-of-the-year offering.

That goes towards local and global missions. I had thought that it was going to be easy to give money to this end-of-the-year offering. Unfortunately, what happened was that there were several catastrophes that occurred right around that time period. I can’t remember exactly, but we may have had a home repair car repair and unexpected medical.

Come up. It was several things at one time that had depleted the money that I was planning on giving. I had a specific fund within my business account that I had set aside for a specific purpose. I felt like God was showing me that I needed to give that money to the end-of-the-year offer. I cried so much during this process because I knew that God wanted me to give this money, but I had no idea how that money was going to be replaced.

I was anticipating at some point in 2020, needing those funds for different things. Of course, at this time we had no way of knowing the pandemic was going to happen. That stimulus funds were going to be going. That money ended up getting replaced relatively quickly. My business was pretty busy in the beginning of 2020 because everyone was at home and ready to go to counseling.

So something that I was worried about and didn’t know how God was going to provide for. God already knew and saw into the future. That wouldn’t really be an issue for me. My business was going to be fine, to be honest with you, I can look back and say, I don’t miss that money that I gave to the church.

And honestly, I don’t miss any money that I’ve ever given for the Lord. And for things that I believe he’s called me to give to you, I believe at this point in my. It was about surrendering and trusting God with everything that I had and not holding anything back from him, really trusting that he was gonna be able to meet and provide all the needs for my business.

And for me personally, I hope that this episode has been an encouragement to you or provided some helpful guidance or tips. If you’re dealing with anxiety about finances, I know that it’s a real deal. I’ve experienced it personally in my own life at various points. And I am here to tell you that God is good and he is a great provider.

So last time we talked about making fitness changes. This time we talked about financial changes. What other changes are you seeking to make in this year? Let us know anytime @hopeforanxietyandocd.com. Thank you so much for listening. 

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

Opinions given by our guests are their own and not necessarily a reflection of the views of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Maingrum.

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