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55. Surviving the Holidays with Anxiety

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 55. Surviving the Holidays with Anxiety

I’m going solo today to talk about how to survive the Holidays when you have anxiety.

  • Polite ways especially for introverts to leave a party early.
  • Tips to reduce stress while traveling
  • How to reduce stress around Thanksgiving and Christmas
  • Saying “no” to gatherings you’re not comfortable with.
  • How to budget for the holidays and control your spending 
  • Keeping the Holidays simple yet meaningful.

Related episode: Thriving as an Introvert in an Extrovert World with Holley Gerth


If you enjoy the podcast and want to support what we’re doing, or if you’re looking for self-help materials to assist you on your journey of managing your anxiety and OCD in healthier ways. Audio teachings, relaxation exercises, and my book on how to find a therapist are provided for self-help via monthly subscription, go to www.patreon.com/hopeforanxietyandocd
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Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD episode 55. If I’m looking at my calendar correctly, this episode is going to be coming out a week before Thanksgiving. I wanted to let you know that at the podcast we do take off the week of Thanksgiving and the week of Christmas. So I don’t post episodes on those weeks before we get into celebrating these important holidays towards end of the year. 

I wanted to talk with you about surviving the holidays when you have anxiety because there are specific challenges that people with anxiety face in regards to parties, gatherings, gift giving that it can really increase your stress this time of year. And I wanna help you really reduce some of that stress so that you can have a restful positive holiday season. 

If you would consider yourself an introvert and you haven’t listened to episode 19, Thriving as an introvert in an Extrovert world, I would encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. Holly Gerth and myself talk about surviving big gatherings and parties as an introvert. And that’s the first thing I wanted to talk with you about is when you have anxiety, sometimes these large gatherings, even if there are family gatherings, there may be extended family that you don’t see very often. Or you may be gathering with say like your husbands, coworkers, and you don’t know them, obviously because you don’t work with them every day. Sometimes those types of environments can be a little bit more anxiety-provoking. Definitely go back and listen to that episode If you haven’t. 

Some of the tips we talked about in there were take an extrovert with you to the party, get there in the beginning, because then you can kind of slowly acclimate yourself to the environment and see people come in versus coming into an already overwhelming situation.

Knowing your limits and knowing when it’s time to go is important. And if you’re with, um, a friend, spouse or erode with somebody, definitely knowing how to communicate to that other person that you would like to leave is important. Sometimes you may have a code, word, or phrase that you want to use with your spouse like “Hey, don’t we need to get by such and such store before it closes. Oh, we really gotta get home and let the dog out.” I’m sure that you can come up with something where you and your spouse will be on the same page and kind of be in line with each other, like, yeah, we’re ready to go. 

I find when I go to large gatherings, sometimes just taking a moment to sit down, maybe away from where the big crowd of people is that really seems to help me in particular. So that may be something that helps you just standing requires a little bit more energy. I know that that sounds silly in itself, but you may just need to kind of take a miniature time out from all the activity you could go to the bathroom. You could step outside if there’s a, you know, indoor-outdoor element to this gather.

My overall point is that it’s good to have a plan going into some of these social interactions to help make them less overwhelming for you. You may not want to plan too much before the gathering so that you have time to rest and relax a little bit versus rushing from this thing to that thing, to that.

If you’re traveling for the holidays. One of the things that I have found the most helpful, whenever I take a trip and I understand you can’t always do this, but if you’re a highly sensitive person, introvert person with anxiety, It’s helpful to have a half a day to a day before your trip. And then definitely a day when you get back before you have to jump into your work or school routine, a lot of times we’re just. It’s like we’re out the office door and then we’ve gotta go straight to catch the plane and then get back in the Sunday night before gotta go back to work on Monday. That’s highly stressful. Try to give yourself a buffer on the edges of your trips to be able to get things in order. You know, there’s always these last-minute things that we end up having to do before a trip or after a trip. 

We have laundry and different things that we have to do. Give yourself a little bit of a buffer of time if you can, if you’re going to reduce your stress around Thanksgiving and Christmas, you want to prioritize the gatherings and parties that are most important for you to attend.

I know there are some people, stepfamily situations and maybe there’s stepparents on both sides of the family and they’re ending up going to three and four Thanksgiving gatherings. That’s just a lot, that’s a lot to deal with. It’s a lot to bring food for, and that can be too much for your system.

And so some people would say, well, I mean, but, but we just have to, I mean, the family is expecting us and. We have to be there. And I would really argue that and say, you can see your family any day of the year. A lot of times, unless you’re traveling and they’re out of town, then that’s not necessarily the case.

Obviously, we have family that’s in Florida, but we can’t see them any day. But if it’s a situation where maybe you can plan to have more quality time with those family members around a different date or where it doesn’t have to be holiday related so that you’re not rushing from, “Okay, well, we’ve got mom’s Thanksgiving.” That’s from noon to three, and then we’ve got dad’s Thanksgiving, which is from four to six and we have to drive in between pick up a pumpkin pie on the way over there. All of that just can be very stressful for you. Let’s talk for a moment about challenging family relationships. I’m not gonna assume that you get along well with everyone in your family.

And so some of those relationships may cause you stress. It’s important to know just internally within yourself, how much of certain people that you can handle. And what I mean by that is that if, you know, you can only handle a day or two at a time around a certain person don’t plan to spend five days with them. That’s just a recipe for disaster. 

Oftentimes it goes back to, we do things out of obligation or we feel bad, but you have to know within yourself like what you are capable of. It’s important to be. Gracious towards other people as much as possible. And we have to love everyone, but I understand that there are going to be people that rub you the wrong way. And you may not like all of your family members or your in-laws or other people that you’re interacting with in gatherings. 

It’s understanding that you are an adult and you have a choice. You can decide that this Thanksgiving or this Christmas that you want to run off to boa Bora, just you and your best friend or you and your spouse. And you do not have to go and do all the things that you normally go and do. I worked with a client on this one year and it was incredibly freeing for her. She didn’t believe me at first that she could say no to some of the family gatherings, but then decided to go away for the holiday instead and see her family at different times where she could really invest more time in those relationships.

Have more quality, depth time versus just seeing this family member for a few minutes and that one for a few minutes, while they’re running off to do something else. Letting go of the half twos is important. So many times we convince ourselves that we just have to do things that we don’t have to do.

I remember there was one time that they had moved a holiday event. I was planning on going to with the foster children. I think it was a Thanksgiving event and we completely missed it. I did not go. And I wanted to. However, what I realized was that it wasn’t the end of the world that I missed that event.

Yes. I was a little disappointed and yes, there were some people that I was wanting to see and would enjoy their company. But at the end of the day, the world did not crash down because I missed one holiday event. It was okay. Don’t be afraid to say. If you know that what someone is asking you to do is going to be too much for you.

We all have different limitations at different times in our life, and sometimes we’re going through things and we can only do so much. And it’s okay. It’s really okay to acknowledge that to ourselves. It’s okay to communicate that to other people as. No is a complete sentence. That’s something that I tell my clients regularly when they’re having trouble saying no, you don’t have to give a lengthy explanation.

You can just say no or no. Thank you. So when you’re prioritizing your gatherings and parties, it’s very easy to get overloaded. I talked about the step-family situation, but there’s also just situations where you may have a Christmas party for your work Christmas party for your spouse’s work. The church is throwing a big Christmas production over here, and then, you know, your, your kid’s school has a function over there.

You really just need to put everything on the calendar and evaluate it and say, okay, Are we really able to give our time and energy to these things. Maybe we really want to invest more time and energy into our kids’ function and maybe just make an appearance at the work party. You know, you know how that is just kind of, yeah, we’re gonna show up a little bit later, say hi to a few people. Be a part of maybe a gift exchange and then head out and that’s okay. 

It’s okay. That you don’t have to be 110% for all of these events decide what is most important to you that you’re putting on your calendar. Let go of expectations. That’s going to be a perfect Thanksgiving or perfect Christmas. 

The reality is that we’re in a COVID world.

Still. We were hoping that we would be out of it before this holiday season, but this is where we understand that ships are sitting in ports right now, and they’re not able to get there or unload items. There may be Christmas presents that you want to buy for your kids, certain toys that aren’t available. And your kid is not gonna die if they don’t get that perfect toy on Christmas morning, you know, Santa Maye have to write them an IOU shipping delayed will come in January. I know there have been times in the past for Christmas, where I really wanted to give people little gifts, packages of cookies. And I spent so much time and energy in my kitchen making hundreds of cookies and cake balls and all of this type of stuff.

And I look back on that and I was. That was just for that season of my life. When I had foster children, that was a little much, I was trying to do a little bit too much and went overboard and now granted people did appreciate it. And I do try to do nice things for, for other people that I know around Christmas.

But my point is, whatever you do it doesn’t have to be perfect. And it’s not going to be perfect most likely, especially with some of the challenges that we’re dealing with in our world today. The last thing I want to encourage you with, which is also very important, is to have a budget and stick to it.

Oftentimes people really overextend themselves at Christmas, go into all kinds of debt. It’s just not healthy. It causes us a lot of financial stress and in turn emotional stress. One thing I learned this year is that in the Philippines, employees have something called the 13th-month payment, where they get basically an extra paycheck towards the end of the year.

And that helps pay for Christmas and things like that. End-of-the-year bills. Maybe I thought this is an incredible idea. Everyone should have this. However, in America, we don’t have that as a standard level of pay and so forth. So we have to create our own 13th. We have to make, be diligent about setting aside some for savings every single month so that when you get towards the end of the year, you have some money to spend on Christmas presents for the family and so forth.

If you sit down and budget, you know how much you’re going to pay for Christmas gifts, who it’s actually important to buy a Christmas gift for? I think sometimes we have this perception that we have to go overboard and buy a gift for every single person that we interact with. And obviously, that’s not the case, but sometimes we put this pressure on ourselves or we think, “Oh, I’ve got a bad Christmas gift for that person.”

But because they’re gonna get me a gift and there’s this, this obligation and emotional stress, you know, I can’t think. Of a single time that I’ve ever been offended, that I didn’t get a Christmas gift from someone. I’m pretty sure there probably have been times where I received an unexpected gift from someone that I, I didn’t think that they were gonna give me a gift, but you know, it, we’re just in a spirit of giving.

And that’s the important thing to remember. It shouldn’t be out of like obligation or we have to, you know, some families to, to help with finances will maybe like draw names and each person gets a different person in the, in the immediate family or the extended family. And then that way we’re reducing the amount of money that we’re spending around Christmas.

And we’re also able to get good gifts for each other. I think sometimes when it comes to holiday spending like we way overthink things or we make them more complicated than they actually have to be. So have a budget stick to it. That’s gonna reduce a lot of your stress. I know it’s a little late to be saying to save money, you know, all throughout the year, but now, you know, going into next year, save a little bit of money every month for Christmas, it will help you out tremendously.

You can put that towards presents, towards travel. If you’re having to travel with family. It’ll be great. And finally, let’s take the opportunity this Thanksgiving and this Christmas to not forget what it’s all about. We can get so caught up in making the food, attending the gathering, spending time with people that we miss the point.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity for us to be thankful to God for everything that he has blessed us with this year. And to be thankful for our friends and family that we celebrate with Christmas is an opportunity for us to celebrate Christ. Birth is an opportunity for us to reflect on the fact that he chose to come into the world in the humble way possible as a baby.

To be a part of our world and eventually give his life for us. 

Don’t get lost in the commercialization that you forget, the simple and that you forget what’s most important. If you have children talk with them regularly about why you’re celebrating these holidays, read the Christmas story, focus on those things more than opening presence.

Find opportunities to give to others who have less than you. I think this is such an important part of the Christmas season. One thing that I’ve done for the last several years is adopted. A foster child through Casa to be able to buy Christmas gifts for them. And I know that when I was a foster parent, this was super helpful for us to be able to have other people who would buy Christmas gifts for our foster children.

And I know it meant a lot to them to receive those gifts while they were going through a hard time of being separated from their family members. For the last few years, I’ve bought Christmas gifts for teenagers. And oftentimes they want things like name-brand clothing because they just wanna fit in like every other child that they’re interacting with and going to school with.

And sometimes they want really simple things. Like hair ties. You may be, you may be in a really difficult situation this Christmas and. Not feel like you have a whole lot to give, but I’m sure that even in those situations, there’s something small that you can do for someone else. Even if it’s just take them a meal or bake them some cookies, just to let them know that you care and that you love them.

Christmas is about love, joy, and giving to others. Let’s not lose celebrating our Savior. Let’s not lose our focus in the midst of all the activity. 

I hope this episode was helpful for you. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. I want to encourage you to get on our email list. You can do that on our homepage@wwwdothopeforanxietyandocd.com towards the top.

You can put in your email address and you’ll actually get a audio relaxation to listen to as well as a gift for signing. I’m trying to email out once a week information about our upcoming episodes and other things that are happening with the podcast. So don’t miss out and sign up for our email list today. Thank you so much for listening. 

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Mangrum. Until next time may be comforted by God’s great love for you.

40. Life Lessons From 40 episodes of Podcasting

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 40. Life Lessons From 40 episodes of Podcasting

We are on our 40th episode today! I’m flying solo to share my podcasting journey and life lessons from the previous episodes.

  • It’s impossible to have figured out everything before you start something.
  • Find your why on those days that are more difficult and you will feel like you can finish what you have started.
  • It’s the mess and the difficulty that drives us to dependence and reminds us that we can’t control everything.
  • I don’t need to worry about what’s going on with everyone else.
    I need to be worried about staying on the path that God has called me to.

All these valuable life lessons and more that you can apply in your life while you’re finding and fulfilling God’s plan in your life. 

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Transcript of Episode 40

Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 40. Now, if you’ve been following along with the podcast, it’s been a little while since I’ve had a solo episode. So here I am. I wanted to talk with you about my podcasting journey, but more so in the sense of the life lessons that I’ve learned, I think these life lessons are going to be very valuable for you to hear and figure out how does that apply to your own life and maybe some of the things that you’re facing today.

So bit of encouragement, because it’s been a big hurdle over the last year or to not only start this podcast but to keep it going. There’s a term in the podcasting community called pod fade. Essentially pod fade is when people get super excited about their podcasts, they have this great idea. They get rolling and then they’re done before they even have 10 episodes released because the work that’s involved becomes overwhelming.

Whenever you’re looking at starting something new, I think there’s two different pits that people fall into like ditches on the side of the road. So one ditch on the side of the road is the people who never get started with anything because they feel like I have no idea how to do that. I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m even… They feel like they have to have everything figured out before they start something. And so if that’s you, I would say that’s impossible. So if you’re looking to start something new in your life, there’s no possible way you’re going to know everything that you’re going to run into when you face that situation or that task.

On the completely, other side of the road, there’s this other ditch that people fall into another extreme, which is more likely what I’m to fall into, which is, oh, I can do that like that it shouldn’t be too hard. I see other people doing that. Why not me? This sounds really good in the beginning. Right?

However, sometimes when you start out with that mindset, you don’t have the problem with starting the new thing. You have a problem with continuing and keeping going on the new thing. When I got into podcasting, I was like, oh, you know, you get a microphone and you turn it on. You start talking. There’s a there’s books on this. I can go read a book. I knew someone who had a podcast. So I was just like kind of approaching it pretty casually like. This shouldn’t be too difficult. I look back on that now this hilarious guys is absolutely hilarious. There’s a lot more that goes into a podcast other than turning on a microphone, talking and reading a book.

There were so many aspects that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The thing that kept me going on the days that were more difficult or the days that I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, or the days that I felt like I couldn’t finish was understanding why I started in the first place. Going back to finding your why. We do all kinds of things in our lives and a lot of times we don’t even step back and take a moment to reflect why am I even doing this? 

One of the beauties of the COVID-19 pandemic was that more people took that time to take this step back and to say, what have I filled my life with? And is that a valuable investment of my time, of my energy, of my money?

Life is short. We only have so many hours and we don’t know how many hours or how many days we have in this life. We want to make sure that we’re filling them with things that we believe God has called us to as Christian. That God has called us to.  In a personal sense of calling. There’s a general calling.

There’s a specific calling for me for a long time. I’ve believed that my calling was to the church. I may have talked about this on one of the beginning episodes, but I really felt like I was going to become a therapist in a church somewhere. I actually have a degree from a seminary, if you can believe that or not, it’s a counseling degree, but it’s from a seminary.

So here I was thinking that that was how my calling was going to look and that’s never happened. I’ve never, actually, I’m not in a paid sense of the word I have. I’m sure counseled some people in church in more of a lay type fashion. However, I’ve felt this burden for a long time, for people with mental health issues who are struggling in the chruch.

And this concept of them being given false information was so troubling to me.  Hearing over and over and over, somebody told me I wasn’t praying enough. Someone told me I wasn’t reading the Bible. I didn’t have faith. I didn’t trust God somehow because they were struggling. They were somehow a less than Christian.

Not only is that concept completely non-biblical because you don’t have to turn the Bible very far to find people who struggled with doubt, with fear, with depression. Elijah by the Brook wanted to die. Job cursed the day of his birth. I mean, There are so many Psalms where David cries out and is wondering where God is in the mess of his circumstances.

If we think we have to have it all together as Christians, we’re completely missing the whole point. The whole point is that in our mess, God enters in and we have communion and a relationship with him. And it’s the mess and the difficulty that drives us to dependence and reminds us that we can’t control everything.

And we need him every single day. I knew people in the church needed messages of encouragement and hope, people who are struggling with anxiety, OCD, or any other mental health concerns for that matter. I also knew there was a void of people speaking into these types of experiences. How did I know there was a void?

Well, because I looked. I looked for bloggers. I looked for people who had written books. I looked for people who are speaking about mental health struggles not just from a personal experience, although I think some of those are helpful, but also from a place of professionalism to say that professional counseling works. We have tools that can help people that are not in opposition to our faith.

I see so many Christians who are terrified of professional counseling because they think they’re going to be steered away to something non-biblical. All that to say, that was my why. And it was so good, even for me as I’m recording right now, just to repeat that out loud and to remember that. To remember the stories that I’ve heard from people who have told me about the messages they’ve heard in the church, I’m so glad that this podcast is part of changing some of those messages. 

When you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, that changes everything. So I want to ask you today, if you’re married, why are you married? It doesn’t matter if you’ve been married for two years or 20 years. Ask yourself that question. Why are you married? Why are you getting up and going to work today?

There can be many different answers to this question. And believe me, I have answered this question so many different ways in my life. I remember just crying to someone shortly after I graduated because I was in this job that wasn’t a good fit for me at all. Just crying and them telling me, you know, you’re getting good experience right now. You’re getting experience that is going to help you get licensed. So at that point in my life, I was going to work to pay bills and get a counseling license so that I could hopefully do something differently.

I won’t get into that tangent, but one of these days I may do a podcast on life lessons. 

I learned from my many jobs.

I’ve probably had about 30 jobs in my life. That’s not an exaggeration, I’ve done many different things. Some of them were very short-term obviously, but there have been days where I have gone to work because I needed to pay. And there have been days where I’ve gone to work because I wanted to make a difference and everywhere in between.

You can apply the why question to why are you parenting your kids a certain way. Why are you involved in that ministry at church? During the pandemic, I really evaluated my why I had spent much time involved in counselor training and education. While I’m so thankful for that time and don’t have any regrets. I realized that God was directing me back around to ministry, to the church for people who have mental health struggles and getting involved in some type of creation of self-help materials.

Your why can direct you to get started and your Y can keep you going on the hardest of days. 

Now we’re going to shift gears a little bit and talk about struggles with comparison. Comparison is huge in the podcasting community at times, not with everyone, but there are these Facebook groups out there where people will get really obsessed with their download numbers. They will ask questions like how long did it take you to get 1000 downloads? I made the decision early on not to become obsessed with my download numbers. One of the reasons for that was because I was in some ways surprised when anyone listened to this. I had a blog prior to the podcasts and I’m pretty sure that very few people ever went on there and read anything that I had written. If you are on social media at all, it doesn’t even have to be social media, It could be the break room at work. It could be after church on a Sunday morning. It’s just so easy to compare yourself to other people. 

One thing that I try to tell myself that I hope might help you as well is I have to say I’m on my own journey. This is a journey that God has called me to, and I’m accountable to him. I’m accountable to my husband, to myself. I’m accountable to my listeners and my clients that I see every week for counseling. I’m not accountable to some kind of invisible standard or to Susie Q the most amazing podcast or out there. I don’t need to worry about what’s going on with everyone else. I need to be worried about staying on the path that God has called me to. Don’t get me wrong. There have been plenty of times on this journey, whether it’s been through my business journey or whether it’s been through my podcasting journey, there’s plenty of times that I’ve become jealous of other people or of what they’re doing, their success.

Recently, I made a decision to change the way that I approached that jealousy. When it would come up initially, I would just be so disgusted by it like, oh gosh, I’m feeling jealous. And I don’t like being a jealous person and it just feels slimy and gross. There would be like this self-deprecation I guess that came after the conviction and the experience of the jealousy.

Then one day, I thought this is not working as a helpful way to approach this because I’m still getting jealous of people. I decided to do something that we call “act opposite of how you feel” in the psychology and counseling world. And I decided that I was going to pray for that person that I was jealous that.

Not only was I going to pray for that person, but I was going to ask God to bless them more than he’s already blessed them. That has shifted my perspective so much and cut down on a lot of the green-eyed. How does that saying go the green monster of envy, something like that a big life lesson I learned on the podcasting journey was that I can’t do it all myself and I need help. This was so hard to admit and sit with because I am a very independent person. I’m the type of person that says I have to do this in order to make sure that it gets done right. I can’t really let go and trust other people. And if I want to get something done, I have to be driven and find a way to make it happen.

And this concept of recognizing when you can’t do something, yourself is applicable to so many different areas. It’s applicable to mental health for people that are looking at getting counseling or getting on medication. It’s applicable for working mothers, maybe who are trying to keep up with every household responsibilities and are taking on more than they can handle. It may be time for you to start using grocery pickup, hiring a teenager to help with your laundry. Anything that you can reasonably and feasibly get off your plate is going to help you in the long run. It didn’t take me very long to figure it out. That I was not going to be editing these podcast episodes.

Yes, you can watch some YouTube videos on it, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be very good at it. It’s interesting to me how many people will be okay with paying for someone to do their taxes, for example, or fix their computer, maybe mow their lawn, but when it comes to mental health help, people think “I should be able to figure this out myself.”

I know I’ve done that in so many areas of my life and what I’ve had to learn, especially over the last several years of having a business even is that you can’t do all the things. And when you admit that and you sit with it, you can go to the next step, which is finding help.

I struggled for such a long time with a negative belief that I can’t get the help that I need. That one, I’m not even sure where it started or how long it had been lingering around in my mind, but I was convinced that that was the truth. Through this journey of finding an editor. as well as finding a podcast assistant to help me with things like social media, getting in touch with perspective guests, scheduling interviews has been so healing for me because it’s healed this negative belief that I can’t get the help that I need.

Maybe that’s something that you struggle with. And I just want you to know there is help out there for you. You can’t always find it on the first try. Sometimes you have to do a little bit more searching and a little bit more work to get yourself the help that you need, but it is out there. If you are willing to look for it and know also that I would not be able to continue this podcast without support from key people in my life. As you all know, my husband, Steve has been incredibly supportive of my podcasting journey. He’s the one behind the scenes, just speaking life to me, reminding me of my why, reminding me of my calling speaking just truth to me when I need to hear it when days get hard or long, or I just want to throw in the towel.

He’s right there. Also have this incredible family support and, and friends, we need other people in our lives. It’s a huge lie of the enemy that we can do this on our own and that we can’t get close to other people. We can’t trust other people. I know that you’ve been burned and I’ve been burned in my life too.

I’ve had people who were close to me, hurt me very deeply. However, I also know that there’s power in community. There’s power in support of other people being able to say, Hey, I’m here with you and I love you. And I just need you to know that. Just keep going, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

That prayer support is so helpful as well. Steve and I were able to get involved in a small group recently, and that has been such a blessing to us, to be with other believers, to have people speaking truth and praying for us and pouring into our lives. As we seek also to pour into their lives. If you don’t have that type of support network, really evaluate and look and see what can you do to start creating that?

Even if it’s just a small way that you can add interaction, even with other people, we can’t say we want other people in our lives and then go to work, go home crash, get up in the morning, hit, repeat, and do it all over again. We have to be intentional about our relationships. We have to be intentional about reaching out to other people about saying, Hey, I want to spend time with you.

Let’s get coffee, come over to the house. You know, let’s play a game together. Let’s go for a walk in the woods, whatever it is that is going to help you get to know somebody a little bit better and connect with them. See how you can do that today. We need other people, not just surrounding us, but people that are doing what we’re doing.

Sometimes we have good support, but like nobody gets it. If that makes sense. And being a therapist can be isolating at times if you’re in private practice. Being a podcaster can be isolating at times. If you’re just sitting in a closet with a microphone, like I am right now.

 I’m so thankful that I’m going to be going to a podcasting conference for the first time this year, and continue to make connections with other podcasters, whenever I’m able to do that. Just can kind of breathe, a sigh of relief because it’s like, oh, somebody who really gets it, who knows like what the struggle that I’m going through is like. I hope that you’re able to find that in the sense of your community. Finding some people who understand what it’s like to struggle with anxiety, finding some people who understand what it’s like to have obsessions on.

Repeat in your head. I know that sometimes it’s hard to find support groups or other avenues like that. I don’t know. Maybe you need to look at starting one because if you’re sitting here and you need that. I guarantee you that there’s somebody else sitting by themselves thing, man, I really wish I had somebody to talk to about this who really got it, who really understood. I spoke about this on a previous episode, but the podcast has really given me the gift to know that I don’t have to be perfect to help people. I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I want you to know that this podcast is far from perfect. Sometimes the audio has been less than stellar.

I’ve tripped over my words, repeated the same words over and over the website is not perfect. The social media is not perfect, pretty much. Nothing’s perfect about this podcast because it’s run by imperfect humans. And the beautiful thing about that is it doesn’t have to be because people are being helped.

People are being encouraged. Our downloads are growing every day. We have now over 5,500 downloads at this recording. It’s just incredible to me. I’ve, I’ve really been blown away by all of you listeners and the people that I’ve heard from that have said the podcast has been helpful. I appreciate you so much.

It leads me to believe that something we’re doing here is working and thank you for allowing me to be imperfect and still listening. Anyway, this is the last, the life lesson, but also one of the most important is that it’s okay to be vulnerable. Well, I knew it was okay to be vulnerable. When I started the podcast, I had this barrier of being a therapist.

I was concerned about sharing personal details, putting them out there for the whole world to hear. But most specifically, I was really concerned about my clients, hearing them to understand that you have to understand that when I was going to school. I was taught not to talk about yourself. It has to be about the client and listening to them, your story at that point, doesn’t really matter.

Unless somehow sharing it is going to benefit the client more than it’s going to benefit you. However, I was always taught to err, on the side of caution, in terms of sharing things about myself in therapy, different therapists have different views on this. And some end up talking about themselves, more in therapy maybe than I would, and that’s not necessarily right or wrong.

That’s more dependent on how the client feels about it. I. When I started the podcast, I had this big worry and fear that somehow my clients were going to look at me differently, treat me differently. Some become sidetracked in their own work, because they wanted to ask me about my own personal experiences and that big fear, like so many of our fears did not become a reality.

Actually, the clients who listened to the podcast may have said a sentence or two about how they appreciated me sharing my story or some aspect of my story that they didn’t know about me. And it didn’t derail our ability to work together. And it didn’t derail us on to them. Trying to ask me a bunch of extra questions and sessions about what I had shared.

I would have been very pleasantly surprised that this podcast has helped me overcome this barrier of being vulnerable as a therapist. When we share personal parts about ourselves, it’s an opportunity for us to be able to connect with other people. Who are going through difficult situations or who have experienced similar things.

There’s this sigh of relief. There’s this understanding like, ah, okay. They really get it. And I think that is so important in the therapeutic relationship often overlooked. I still don’t talk a whole lot about myself in my therapy sessions with clients. I still make it about them. The clients who have never heard this podcast, um, probably know very little about me other than I’m married.

And they see that I have cats because stitch likes to pop in every now and then to say hi to people when I’m on my online session. Having the podcast as an opportunity to talk through some of the struggles that I’ve dealt with in the past, as well as things that I’m still processing in my own life has been a gift of allowing God to take all the experiences, the pain, the hardships that have happened to me and turn them into something good.

I really feel like those sufferings are being used in a positive and healthy way versus just going through it, not talking about it at all and moving on so many times, we want to just forget where we’ve come through from, or we don’t want to talk about it because it stirs up these negative emotions that we have.

What I would say to you is everyone has a story. Your story may be very different from mine. And maybe there’s someone in your life that needs to hear it. Maybe there’s someone that needs that spark of encouragement before Steve and I got married, there was a lady in his church that came to me. Asked to meet with me.

And I thought, oh gosh, what is this about? I don’t, I don’t know. You know, when you’re a therapist, um, obviously sometimes people want things from you and it can get a little uncomfortable. I thought maybe she was like trying to get advice for me. And it was completely the opposite. Actually. She wanted to sit down with me and talk with me about her own marriage, some of the struggles that she went through with her husband, how she stayed, married, how she worked through some difficult things.

And she was able to give me a book that had been an encouragement to her. It was just this beautiful thing of how she used difficulties and struggles in her own life. To be able to say, I don’t want to see you go through what I’ve been through. Let me try to help you on the front end so that you don’t have to experience some of the pain and suffering.

That I’ve dealt with. And if you do get to that point in your marriage and you feel like there’s nobody I can talk to you, nobody will really understand what I’m going through. That she gave me her information. Like, please reach out to me. Honestly, that was of all the wedding gifts I got. That was one of the best ones.

Just the gift of someone else’s personal experience. And the time that she took to talk with me about it. So never underestimate your ability to encourage and love on someone else through the use of your own story that God has given you. Usually at the end of every episode, I like to do a story of hope.

So my story of hope today is about this whole thing that we’ve been talking about. It’s about the podcast. I want to share with you my hope for the future, for the podcast. You’ve heard the hope as a result of the things that I’ve learned through this process, initial journey of 40 episodes. And now I want to talk with you about the future.

I know I don’t talk about this enough, but hope for anxiety and OCD exists to reduce shame, increase. And develop healthier connections with God and others. I have a whole host of interviews lined up for people to talk with us about all kinds of different things, everywhere from personal stories of overcoming trauma, working through anxiety, processing that spiritually.

Working through the struggles of why did such and such happened to me in my life. I also have some professionals that are going to come on and talk about the connection between addiction and anxiety, how we can use our breath to tap into the calm down, uh, center of our nervous system. And it’s more than just take a deep.

We’re going to be talking about managing anger and sleep habits. They’re just, the possibilities are endless. And those are just the people that I have booked. I also have other ideas that we’re trying to get people on the podcast to discuss. Of course, you’re always a welcome to be a part of this process.

I had a college students reach out to me on Instagram, wanting to share her story, which is so awesome. If you know of other professionals who might want to be on, or if you have a topic suggestion for us, I’m definitely all ears as more and more of you are finding the podcast. I’m getting more inquiries through my, By the Well Counseling website of people seeking counseling.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to see anyone outside of the state of Tennessee due to my counseling license, being specific for Tennessee. We have hope as therapists that someday those laws may change due to the expansion of talent. There are still so many people in underserved areas in rural communities that don’t have access to adequate mental health treatment, especially for specific things like OCD.

While we are far from having a national counselor license, we are also closer than we’ve ever been. So we’re still holding out hope for that. When I do want to say to those who have reached out, maybe from other states to me, that I’m not able to see is that I am in the process of creating some self-help materials for people who struggle with anxiety and OCD.

Of course, you all will be the first to hear more about that once it’s complete. And once I have things set up and ready to go, I’m recording some audio relaxations as well as teachings that I think are going to be beneficial to many people. The best way to find out when those materials come out is to get on our email at hopeforanxietyandocd.com. I know I have failed miserably at emailing you guys on a regular basis, but I will definitely let you know when these materials come out and also check our social media. If you follow those pages. My hope is that people who don’t have access to counseling services or need something to work on in between sessions.

Maybe that are going to counseling. We’ll have more Christian self-help materials available to them that they feel comfortable, that it’s aligned with their faith and belief system. It’s scary even to put this out on the podcast, right? Because now I really need to follow through with what I’ve said I’m going to do.

And that’s all for today. I’m so thankful for each and every one of you here, listening. I know that there’s a reason that I’m here and there’s a reason that you’re here right now.

Hope for anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling in Smyrna, Tennessee. Our original music is by Brandon Maingrum. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

18. ERP is Not the Only Option for OCD

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Counseling, OCD, Podcast Episode. 7 Comments on 18. ERP is Not the Only Option for OCD

Today I am flying solo to discuss my own experience of learning about Exposure and Response Prevention Prevention and why I ultimately went back to using EMDR to treat OCD. 

  • The reason ERP is so widely recommended for OCD treatment
  • The problem with psychological studies: People are complex 
  • Problems I saw firsthand with ERP
  • Benefits of using EMDR to treat OCD

Exposure and response prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder: A review and new directions:   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343408/

Studies on EMDR and OCD: https://www.emdria.org/public-resources/emdr-therapy-and-ocd/

One Therapist’s Story of Discovering Her Scrupulosity OCD with Rachel Hammons
Panic Attacks, OCD, and God: A Personal Story with Mitzi VanCleve

Support the show 

See more:

The Power Of EMDR For Anxiety

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Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 18. On today’s show, it’s a solo episode. So you just get me and I want to continue this conversation that I started with Sarah about EMDR as a treatment option for OCD. I’m really excited to share this with you because I feel like when people start talking about OCD, that the very next thing they start talking about is exposure and response prevention (ERP)

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with exposure and response prevention, or as we’re going to call it ERP for this episode. What I am saying is that there are more options than just ERP for treating OCD. ERP has helped a lot of people. And so if it’s helped you then more power to you, that’s awesome.

 I’m so thankful and glad but if you feel like you’ve struggled with ERP or you feel like you want to learn about a potential different option then this show is for you. 

The reason that ERP is so most often recommended for OCD is because this treatment option has been researched more than others treatment options. And let me tell you about psychological studies and how those typically work. When someone is studying a condition such as OCD, they’re typically trying to only study OCD. And a lot of times we’ll rule out people who have what we would call dual diagnosis. They have more than one diagnosis on record. [00:02:10] I had a hospital reach out via email several years ago saying, “Hey, we saw that you see people with OCD and we are trying to do this research study. Would you let people know?” And I emailed them right back. And I said, “well, would my clients be ruled out if they also had PTSD.” And they said, “yes, they absolutely would be rolled out.”

At that point, I realized that whatever they were studying ceased to be relevant to the actual clients that I see in my practice. I often see people who are not only dealing with OCD, but they also have a history of childhood trauma. The other thing I want to bring up about psychological studies is that there’s a lot that we don’t know. Psychology is a relatively young science. While we’ve learned many things over the years about how the brain works and how different methods of therapies work and how some therapies are better for certain diagnosis, there’s still a lot that we don’t know. And the types of people that we see in counseling, they don’t fit. Just say standard one size fits all profile. Something that often happens. Whenever I go to a new training, you will learn about something like, “Oh, we have this really great method,” and they’ll show you the success stories. They may even show you video of it working well with a client that they worked with with permission. Obviously, we don’t just videotape people. We ask for their permission for learning and education purposes. But they may have these great examples. And then inevitably you will take that back and you’ll say, “Hey, can I try this new technique with you that I learned?” And it may work on the first person that you try it with and you may try it with a few other people. [00:04:18] And inevitably it doesn’t matter what the psychological technique is, you will run into someone that it just doesn’t work for that you have to revamp or adapt it differently or use something else entirely. And that’s one of the reasons that I want to expose you listeners on the show to a wide variety of mental health treatment options for anxiety and OCD because I don’t think that there is a one size fits all. And a lot of times when people look at counseling. They lump it as one big thing.  I tried counseling and then, you know, that didn’t really work for me but there are many different types of counseling and I hope this show is kind of helping you and exposing you to some of that.

So let’s talk about my background with ERP that I wanted to share with you. I had an experience where I went to a two-day training on exposure and response prevention. The reason that I sought out that training in the first place was because I was seeing a lot of clients with anxiety that was really starting to become a niche of my practice. [00:05:40] So seeing people with trauma and people with anxiety, And I started to see that when certain clients would have peak levels of stress, they would start to engage in some OCD compulsions. And it made me realize that if I was going to see people with anxiety, I was really going to have to understand more about OCD, how it’s approached and try to figure out how to help these people who were experiencing OCD symptoms in peak stress points.

So I went to this training. It was very professional training, excellent information on OCD, excellent information on exposure and response prevention, how to start utilizing it in your practice. It certainly didn’t make me an expert on it or anything, but it was enough to get me started, to start working with some people that, had a diagnosis of OCD, not just had a few symptoms here or there. That point. I started seeing some people who were coming out of inpatient treatment, where they had received treatment for OCD and they needed some follow-up with their ERP. There were some patterns that I was starting to notice and particular patterns that I wasn’t comfortable with. One pattern I noticed with these individuals was that they seem to be carrying a lot of shame. It was either shame related to past trauma, self-esteem issues or even just having the OCD diagnosis in general and having to deal with that on a day-to-day basis. So that was a level of concern for me because I don’t want people to be stuck in shame. I had to ask myself, is it a win if people stop engaging in compulsion? if they’re still carrying around a baggage of shame. That just didn’t seem to jive with me or, or feel good in my practice. I also worried about whether or not ERP could be contributing to some of that shame because part of the process of ERP at times is to track certain behaviors, such as times where you engaged in a compulsion and times where you didn’t. I noticed these clients also had an untreated trauma history as well, which since I was a trauma therapist, that concerned me.

The main issue I had with ERP though seem to be what I call a glorified whack-a-mole process. Really targeting symptoms instead of getting to the root of the issue. This seemed horribly inefficient because one you would target one theme or one compulsive behavior then another obsessional theme with another compulsion would pop up right behind it.

What I’ve learned from trauma therapy is that you can treat symptoms all day long, but if you don’t treat the issue underneath that’s driving the behavioral symptoms, you’re not going to get very far. It’s going to be a lot harder. It’s going to be a struggle like swimming upstream. 

I had one experience where a very skilled and trained ERP therapist told me that she banned prayer for a client that was dealing with scrupulosity. That bothered me as well because I’m not going to ban a behavior that’s crucial and critical to someone’s faith practice. The idea of exposure and response prevention, which we’ve talked a little bit about in previous episodes is that, ultimately your goal is to have a client be able to sit with the obsession without acting on the compulsion. Doing this inside of session with the therapist, as well as outside of the session for practice, for homework.  And the ideas to be able to sit with that until the anxiety level drops. That can be really challenging and very distressing for clients. If they’re able to get through it, then there is a certain level of success and accomplishment that they feel. But sometimes the difficulty level of ERP contributes to the dropout rate. 

One study that I read that I will put in the show notes for you is that ERP has a 20 to 30% dropout rate and ERP has a 50% success rate in terms of symptom remission. So here we have a lot of people promoting ERP as a treatment option for OCD, and there’s a 50% success rate.

I want you to just think about that for a minute. There’s few things that we would recommend that had a 50% success rate. If you’re dealing with obsessions and compulsions that are wrecking your life, 50% sounds like a pretty good gamble of something to bet on that it may work for you. The problem that I have is hearing from other professionals that this is an automatic go-to treatment and this is what’s been studied and you really shouldn’t look into anything else. Sometimes other treatment options are discouraged and I have a problem with that because I think that we all should remain humble as professionals and recognize that different people need different things or different approaches.

I want to tell you a little bit about what I’ve been able to do with EMDR therapy with clients who have OCD. Ultimately, I decided to go back to what I knew and to adapt EMDR for the treatment of OCD. One of the things that I like about it is that it helps reduce the body level internal distress that people experience. A lot of times what I’ve seen is that individuals with OCD are able to go in their head. They’re able to solve problems. They’re able to kind of mentally escape from emotions and difficult distressing physical sensations. So by utilizing EMDR we’re able to work at a body level on reducing that physiological distress that people experience.

In the initial preparation phases, I’m working with people on things like mindfulness, distress tolerance skills to be able to sit with difficult emotional experiences. And often as they’re able to do that, they start to feel a little bit better. We definitely target the shame piece with education about OCD. Sometimes, that’s the first EMDR target is dealing with that shame versus trying to deal with the OCD. What I’ve found is that if people can release the shame first, then that helps them be able to engage in the next part of therapy, dealing with the obsessions and compulsions. EMDR starts with what’s going on in the present and then looks at what past memories may be contributing to the present experience because it approaches things that way. You’re really able to get down to the root of what’s going on instead of just working on various symptoms. 

Sometimes the root has to do with control, either dealing with things that are outside of one’s control or feeling this need to be in control or be perfect in some way. Sometimes it has to do with vulnerability. There can be all kinds of different things underneath that layer. 

So this is a process. There’s a process of dealing with the shame piece and developing self-compassion. There’s a process in learning some skills to manage day-to-day when the OCD arises. And then there’s this deeper layer of really getting to the root of what experiences contributed to this development in the first place. And what I’ve found is when you’re able to do those things with that process, people feel a lot better about themselves and they may still have some OCD symptoms, but it’s more like, “okay, I’m noticing that that’s there and it’s in the background and I’m a lot better able to ignore it than when I started therapy.” And that’s huge. That’s absolutely huge for people. 

Anytime that you can get to a place where you’re managing the obsessions and compulsions and noticing that they’re there but not getting roped into them, that’s an absolute huge win. And however you get there, whether you use ERP or whether you use some people are using ACT, Acceptance and commitment therapy for OCD, or whether you’re using EMDR or another method, just know that there are different options for you. You don’t have to be locked into one treatment option because of your diagnosis, regardless of what that diagnosis is. I’m going to include some information for you in the show notes about exposure and response prevention and the article that I read regarding that, which was a review of the research and then some studies on EMDR and OCD. And you can look for yourself and evaluate. It’s often helpful to incorporate more than one therapeutic technique together.

I believe this is where people, especially who have complex presentations, are able to see the best results. So you certainly could incorporate EMDR with ERP. I’ve done that for clients before, especially more so in phobia situations where they needed kind of like a gradual way to ease into getting over a certain fear.

Today’s story of hope starts with me crying in a parking lot in Target because I couldn’t build a website in 2017. I was in the process of building my business By The Well Counseling, trying to get everything off the ground. There’s a lot that goes into starting a business and I was running on fumes. I was working full time, seeing clients. And then in the evenings, I would be working on stuff to start the business. One of the things I believed I needed to get going was a website. Someone had recommended a certain site for me to build my own website. And I could not figure it out on my own, hence the crying in the Target parking lot. Everything had just reached a boiling point. I was overwhelmed and in tears and just thought I cannot do this anymore. Fast forward, Now I’ve built several websites. I had a former blog website that I’m not using anymore that I built. I built a completely brand new website for my counseling practice on a different platform about a year ago and I partially built the Hope for Anxiety and OCD website. I did get some help from a professional on that one to make it look more snazzy. But what I learned that I thought I couldn’t do, which was build a website, I could actually do. I just didn’t know it yet. So maybe there’s something in your life right now that you feel like, “I can’t do it. There’s no way,” but you may be looking back a few years later and say, “Wow! That very thing that I thought I couldn’t do, I can do it now.”

That’s my story. Do you want to share your story of hope with me? I would love to hear it. You can contact me through our website anytime at hopeforanxietyandocd.com.

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

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

Welcome to the page

1. Carrie’s Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, OCD, Personal Testimony, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 1. Carrie’s Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD

In episode one of Hope for Anxiety and OCD, Carrie Bock discusses the reason she started a podcast for Christians struggling with anxiety and OCD. She shares her own personal story of loss and how her faith in God got her through it, learning more about His character along the way.

  • Learn the inspiration for Hope for Anxiety and OCD
  • My story of going from a religious person to a spiritual one
  • When life turns out not as you planned it, but somehow better

Resources and links:

By The Well Counseling

For more information on foster care and adoption in the US:

Adopt US Kids

Court Appointed Special Advocates

Wendy’s Wonderful Kids

Listen to more podcast episodes

Transcript of episode 1

Hi, my name is Carrie Bock and I’m the host of Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast. Two of my most defining characteristics are that I’m a Christian and I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor.

All Truth Belongs To God

It’s been an interesting journey being caught between two worlds, so to speak. If I use anything in addition to the Bible, I’m too secular for some Christians. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Bible. It’s my guide for life. You know, the big stuff like how to be saved, love God and others, find spiritual peace. However, there are many things the Bible never taught me that I had to figure out that was important in life like how to change a tire or pick which college I was going to go to, or how to cook salmon in the oven just right. I’m not going to find these things directly in the Word of God. I have to go elsewhere for that information. That’s okay because all truth belongs to God. Put lemon slices on top of the salmon. Trust me. It’s delicious.

If all truth belongs to God, that includes every psychological study that’s ever been done on how we learn, what motivates people towards positive behavior, how the brain and the body are affected by trauma, [and] the methods of therapy that are effective for different disorders. The list goes on and on. I could totally geek out about all of this, but in certain therapists circles, if you start to mention Christianity, some therapists look at you a little sideways and start talking to you about how many people they have in their caseload who’ve been traumatized by religion. I get it. So now you know, I’m a misfit who doesn’t fit in. I don’t fit in with the Christian counseling community because I’m too secular for them. I don’t fit in with the secular counseling community because I’m too Christian for them. It’s okay. My conscience is clear that I can have all of Jesus and all of the really good therapy techniques too. Enter my clients. Of course, I can’t tell you all about them. That would be a major HIPAA violation.

You Can Have Jesus and Therapy

Let’s just say that I specialize in treating trauma, anxiety, and OCD. My clients aren’t all Christian, but among the ones who are, some have repeated similar statements people have told them about Jesus and therapy. Some are secretly in therapy because it doesn’t feel safe to talk about it in the church. Some are ashamed to be struggling with anxiety or OCD as a Christian wondering if it makes them less spiritual for having these struggles in the first place. They have verses memorized about anxiety. They’ve been told all kinds of things from church leaders about not seeking secular counseling and medication is wrong, and to just pray and read their Bible more. Others are told they’re struggling because they don’t trust God enough.

I’m so sick and tired of these negative, shameful, and non-biblical messages being sent to Christians that I can’t stand it. I can’t stay silent any longer. I want to scream from the rooftops, “You can have Jesus and therapy!”

Anxiety affects people physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Each of these domains must be addressed in order to find healing. How can I love God with all my heart if I am stuck in anger due to past trauma? How can I love God with all my soul if it is dry and thirsty, lacking connection? How can I love God with all my mind if it’s plagued with worry? How can I love God with all my strength if I don’t take care of my physical body?

Hope For Anxiety and OCD Podcast Is For People From All Walks Of Life

It takes time for my clients to unpack these negative messages and evaluate them based on scripture. I guess you could say this podcast is for my clients, but it’s not really. No offense meant to any current or former clients listening here. This podcast is for all the people I may never meet but who need to hear that it’s okay to struggle, and it’s okay to take steps towards greater health and freedom.

Hope for Anxiety and OCD exists to reduce shame, increase hope and develop healthier connections with God and others. I invite you on this journey as I interview pastors, Christian leaders, therapists, and everyday people who found hope in the midst of their mental health struggles. I want you (yes you) to help me out along the way.

What burning questions do you have about the intersection between faith and mental health? Who do you want me to interview? What topics are important to you?

Feel free to reach out anytime via our website: www.hopeforanxietyandocd.com. I’ve already recorded some shows that I am super excited to share with you. We’re going to be talking about unanswered prayer, how to rule out potential physical causes of anxiety, help for parents who have anxious children, [and] different types of therapy techniques that can be helpful for anxiety and OCD.

Hope For Anxiety and OCD Has Something For Everyone.

There’s something for everyone. Every show is unique and special and I pray it’s a blessing for the person that needs to hear it that day.

There is also something I want you to know about the guests on this show. It would be easy to assume that every guest on a Christian podcast is automatically a Christian. This show is a little bit unique and different because as I talked about in the beginning, we’re combining two different worlds. Some of the guests are Christian and they are combining the worlds of counseling, psychology, the Bible, Christianity, the church, and it’s so valuable for us to hear that information.

There are other people who have valuable, helpful counseling information that I also wanted to include on the show, or who are friends of mine and don’t follow Christ, the Bible, or Christianity.

The really cool part of that I think that has opened up is an opportunity for us to learn how to talk to people who believe differently than we do and how to ask important spiritual questions. I’m fully prepared for this podcast to probably upset somebody, but that’s okay. Jesus ended up upsetting a lot of people. So as long as I’m doing all that God has called me to do, we’re good.

More About Me

Now that I’ve introduced the podcast, I’d like to tell you some background information about myself, so you can get to know me, the host a little bit better.

I grew up as a shy kid seeking to fade into the background. My dad likes to tell the story about how we went to a new church and everyone knew who my brother was and that my parents had a son, but they had to tell people that they also had a younger daughter. Let’s face it, the kid that got seen also got in trouble more.

Growing up in a conservative family, I was pretty conscientious about things like right and wrong. There were lots of fears about doing the wrong thing and getting in trouble.

I made the decision to follow Jesus and make Him Lord of my life at eight years old, but I put on Jesus, my experience with other adults. If I do wrong, I’m going to get in big trouble and God will be really mad at me. He seemed harsh and mean in some of the Bible stories, and I was scared of Him. What did God want from me? Whatever it was, I knew I was probably going to mess it up.

Being the quiet shy kid also made me the observer. I was keenly aware and had a heightened sensitivity to other people’s emotions, and I didn’t know how to handle them at all. My sensitivity caused me to take everything personally.

It’s a little rough in the making friends’ department when you’re quiet, and you tend to get bullied more. I used to replay social interactions over and over in my head and always felt a little awkward.

How Did I Become A Therapist?

Did I become a therapist because I was the person everyone naturally gravitated towards with their problems? No way. But if I had studied the DSM at the time, I probably could have diagnosed my high school class. All joking aside, it was the opportunity to take psychology in high school that steered me away from the path of becoming a sign language interpreter towards well, I don’t really know, other than I thought psychology was the most interesting thing I’ve ever studied, and I wanted to help people. Mom said helping people is not a career. So you have to narrow that one down a little bit more.

I was a religious person into adulthood, running around, doing the good things, hoping that my works were going to keep me in right standing with God. I believe I was saved by grace but after that, it felt like I was under the law all the time, and God was just waiting for me to mess up. That’s a non-biblical, messed-up theology by the way.

As a religious person, checking boxes of all the things I was supposed to be doing, was exhausting. I completely missed the heart and intimacy of having a relationship with Jesus.

My Experience As A Foster Parent

In 2013, my husband and I had gotten the phone call we’d been waiting for. Department of Children Services or DCS asked us if we would like to take two girls: a five-year-old and an eight-year-old into our home. We were ecstatic. I had a dream previously that I believe to be from God about having two daughters. We were led to believe by DCS that these children would most likely not have an appropriate family placement to go back to.

We gave the girls several different options of things they could call us, and they decided they wanted to call us mom and dad right away. I was not expecting that. We all seem to be enjoying the new normal of our instant family life. I even got asked where babies come from on my first week of parenting.

The girls came during the summer and we helped them get ready to start a new school year, at a new school. There’s something really profound about having two children call you mom, eat at your dinner table and play in your front yard. But at the end of the day, they aren’t your children. My heart didn’t know the difference, and my heart would be completely broken six weeks later when DCS lost in court, and the girls immediately went back to their family. We weren’t even informed there was a court date, so we were in complete shock to find out that we had a few hours to pack up all their stuff and get them to the DCS office.

My husband and I came home to two empty rooms, one decorated with Monster High and the other with decals of a boyband. I can’t even remember which one now. A behavior chart was stuck on the door. Whatever we were trying to correct at the time, suddenly didn’t matter anymore. I wasn’t prepared at all for how to handle this and the physical pain of loss was so deep that it sent me to the doctor’s office. I had never felt anything like that before. I now jokingly say that was the day I spent $200 on bloodwork to find out that I was going through grief.

Other foster children came in one over the next year. Meanwhile, several foster parents we were connected with were in the process of adopting their first placements. I was very discouraged. Why wasn’t God allowing me to have the gift of family? I felt like God called us into this foster care and adoption journey but really questioned His plans.

Questioning God

In the fall of 2014, we received another sibling placement; this time, a boy and a girl. It was looking like they might become a part of our forever family, but what happens when you check all the religious boxes, believing you’re doing the right thing, and then something goes terribly wrong? It happened to me on what should have been a normal Sunday in January of 2015.

I threw my cell phone against the wall and swore before bursting into tears. I’d gone in my bathroom in hopes that my foster children wouldn’t hear the phone conversation. My husband of nine years was telling me that he was done and wanted to divorce.

I knew that our marriage wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t see divorce in our future anywhere. That hadn’t even been discussed at all. Wait a minute God. I married a believer. We’re in church every Sunday. We’re in a small group. We pray at every meal. We read Bible stories with our foster children. How in the world did this happen?

My head was spinning. I had so many questions for God and most went unanswered. Why didn’t he answer my prayer to restore my marriage? Then divorce devastated me. Not only did I lose my husband, but my dreams of having a family were gone in an instant.

Overcoming A Divorce

I went from being a household of four to all alone, looking for roommates to pay a mortgage, in survival mode. My thoughts kept me up at night. Where did I go wrong? What should I have done differently? I couldn’t sleep or concentrate at work. I had no energy and felt hopelessly sad, all symptoms of depression.

I made the decision to take an antidepressant for six months and I can confidently say it was one of the most healthy decisions I’ve ever made for myself.

I carried around a lot of shame regarding being a divorced woman in the church. I remember thinking “my life is over now.” I didn’t mean that in the suicidal sense, but I didn’t see any kind of positive future for myself. What godly man is going to be with someone who’s been divorced?

Unpacking Emotional Baggage and Experiencing God In New Ways.

I had a lot of emotional baggage to unpack from childhood and beyond. Sometimes, that meant talking through my thought process, and sometimes that meant reprocessing trauma with EMDR therapy. It was this process of unpacking the baggage that caused me to experience God in new ways. It was as if there were clouds blocking my view of the sun and when they moved, I could see the sun clearly. God hadn’t changed, but my view of Him is less cloudy now. My faith doesn’t just have knowledge and rules. It has heart and understanding of the depth of the love of God, and the promise that He would never leave me.

I found God as a good father who had blessed me in many ways, and some I just couldn’t see yet. I also had a greater understanding of grace that God showed me as I walked through dealing with my own sin and how that impacted my relationship. I could connect with Jesus knowing that He understood suffering and pain that’s both physical and emotional.

I’m thankful for my pastors, divorce care recovery group, therapist, primary care, physician, and close friends. They all played an important role in my recovery process.

Jesus Transformed My Tears into Triumphs

Today, I am thankful for my divorce, not that it happened but how God used that experience to shape my character and view of him. I’m a more thankful, positive, and compassionate person due to what I’ve been through. I want to help Christians recognize that they can have the abundant life Jesus talks about in John 10:10.

I invite you to think through what is holding you back from that abundant life. I’m happy to tell you that five years after my divorce, I met the most amazing man, and we were married in October of 2020. You’ll get to meet him soon on the podcast as he’s graciously agreed to appear with me on an episode about anxiety and dating, more my anxiety than his.

Thank you so much for listening. I pray that this podcast is a blessing to you today, and whatever you’re facing, know that you are loved by God and never alone.

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

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