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Tag: Trauma Recovery

107. Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) with Diana Rice, LMHC, CIMHP, CTP, QS

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

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Diana Rice, a licensed mental health counselor and certified integrative mental health professional. They delve into the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their relevance to anxiety and OCD.

Episode Highlights:

  • The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on mental health, with a focus on anxiety and OCD.
  • Diana Rice’s personal journey and her path to becoming a counselor.
  • The significance of the ACE study and its ten-question questionnaire for assessing childhood experiences.
  • The distinction between externalizers and internalizers in response to trauma.
  • Strategies for healing, including neuroplasticity and holistic well-being approaches.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 107. I’m Carrie, and today we’re diving into the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on anxiety and OCD with Diana Rice, a licensed mental health counselor from Through the Valley Therapy in South Florida. Diana, whose journey from a peer counselor in middle school to a seasoned mental health professional is inspiring, shares her deep insights into how early childhood experiences shape mental health.

In this episode, Diana explores how her upbringing as an immigrant child and her ACE score of six have profoundly influenced her therapeutic approach. She reflects on how these formative experiences led her to seek an integrative approach to therapy, highlighting the importance of understanding one’s past for effective mental health treatment.

We also discuss the ACE study’s significant findings, revealing the correlation between high ACE scores and increased risks for chronic health issues and mental health disorders. Diana explains how ACEs can contribute to conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and addiction, emphasizing the need to address these early experiences for effective therapy. Diana’s insights into addressing underlying trauma, rather than just symptoms, provide crucial perspectives for managing anxiety and OCD effectively.

Related links and Resources

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 107. For anyone new to our show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. I have with me today on the show a licensed mental health counselor and certified integrative mental health professional, Diana Rice of Through the Valley Therapy in Florida. 

Carrie: Are you in the Miami area? Is that right?

Diana: I’m in South Florida. 

Carrie: Okay. Today, we’re going to talk about adverse childhood experiences. People may have heard them referred to as ACEs. I’m talking about how these things impact us, which is really relevant for conversations surrounding anxiety and OCD.

Diana: I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your personal story in terms of just what led you to be the counselor that you are today.

Diana: Wow, I could say I could blame my middle school, my Broward County middle school that I went to. Honestly, my father’s family kind of kept me here. My mom is an immigrant from another country and my dad is as well.

I’m originally from New York, and when I came to visit one summer, they kept me, so I was in middle school and then I started middle school here. My mom ended up coming back, but at that time, she didn’t know her rights. It turned out for God’s glory, of course, because here I am now. But in seventh grade, I became a peer counselor.

I think that’s where my love of helping others plus, my mother’s only child and I have older siblings, but they’re from my dad’s side. I just wanted to help people. I could see now back in the past like I had to disentangle what was I trying to heal because of my background and what is actually my calling, how my personality is and what the Lord has given me to do in this place we call earth.

That’s where it all started, and in high school, I was a peer counselor. I remember they interviewed me in the yearbook and asked,, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I’m like, “I want to be a psychologist.” That time, I was already doing the wrong thing. I wasn’t a Christian then. I was raised Catholic with Santeria, which is a religion. You guys could look it up, but be aware. It wasn’t as bad as you’ll see if you do look it up, but my grandma was a medium.

Carrie: Oh, okay. Wow, so that’s like two different worlds intermingled there.

Diana: Yes, so I had that kind of spiritual trauma along with other things. I know that we’re talking about ACE, adverse childhood experiences, and my score is a six. I did not know these things when they were happening because most of us when we’re growing up, we think that’s just the norm of what’s happening.  Everybody must be going through that plus our brains aren’t fully developed at that time.

Carrie: Right. I think a lot of people are just like, “Well, that’s just kind of how it was. That was the water we swim in. That’s what maybe all the neighbors were going through as well. Until we get outside of our box or bubble of how we grew up, we don’t really know that things can be different or are different for other children and teenagers out there.

Tell us a little bit about how you got interested in the ACE study because I think when you and I had chatted before, you said you felt like it was kind of a life’s work for you, just really understanding this and applying it in your counseling.

Diana: When I was in college, we have to do our practicum and our internship. I spent a year in a Broward County school that was cognitive-behavioral therapy-based. It is sort of an alternative school, but the students that were there, they were from other schools sort of got kicked out or they needed help and they had to be seeing a psychiatrist. At this school, that was my internship and I was basically for that year, the only intern, but there were like eight other therapists, a psychiatrist, and a couple of psychiatrists.

It was probably one of the best educational times of my life for that year. I learned a lot of what not to do as a therapist, the red tape and the understanding of insurance, sorta there. So basically I was just learning from a lot of different modalities of how people practice back then and that was in 2004. It was almost 20 years ago before social media and it was at school. I was mostly teens. I mean, we had middle school and I think there might have been an area of elementary, but most of my clientele that came to me were teenagers. I realized I was there and I’m not the psychiatrist and I was getting frustrated because it was basically they came to me and a fat file of the student or whatever it is that follows them along the whole system. I’m like, “I don’t want to read it. My supervisor would be like,”Yyou have to read it. That’s your job.  I’m your supervisor.”  I’m like, “I know, but then you’re giving me this.” I’m going in already kind of with a judgment on the student.  I’m from Broward County, so I was a product of the Broward County school system.

 I have that little bit of that sass. Basically though, I was seeing like, why aren’t we listening to these students? I’m seeing these things that are happening and they’re angry and they’re frustrated or they’re not being heard.  I ended up taking what Carl Rogers talks about unconditional positive regard and I was new. I was just new to the game. I just basically started listening and questioning and then I would go home and go to my library and research or go back to my college and ask my professors.  I was just always asking why, why, why would we do this back then? I think the DSM might’ve been three or TR or something like that. I’m like, “Why do you keep telling me this book my Bible?”  That’s what we’re taught in a public secular college when it comes to licensing and everything. And then I would open it up and see all the names and I’m like, no offense. Why are all these white people the ones that are telling me what to do?

Why are we not taking into consideration the cultures? Or the understanding of other people’s backgrounds. I was questioning and questioning. Some of my professors loved, that I was questioning things.

Carrie: And some hated it.

Diana: Oh, some of them were, but I was used to that already because that’s how I’ve learned most of my life, even in high school and stuff. Just like questioning why. That’s just how I still do that to this day.

Carrie: Right, and very valid questions. I think psychology was based off of a bunch of white men at the end of the day. It started, that’s not where it is now, you know, things have progressed, but there’s still a lot of that bias in a lot of the research materials and things of that nature in DSM.

Back in the 90s, just for anybody who’s not familiar with the ACE study, adverse childhood experiences. Kaiser Permanente, which is an insurance company that’s more on the west coast of the U. S., if you’re not familiar with them, they decided they’re going to do this study and try to figure out, we have these people that have chronic health issues that are obviously taking a lot of money to take care of.

People with addiction issues, people with high blood pressure, diabetes, all of those chronic conditions that we think about. They wanted to figure out what makes some connection points between their physical health and their mental health and what they found through questions. They had, I think, 10 questions on there. 

Diana: I have the questions in front of me and it’s basically simple and people don’t understand what it does. It makes you understand things that you never do. That’s the way I like it in a holistic practice because we really touch on some stuff and it does get utilized in my practice anyway. In a way that’s like, whoa, but they don’t ever see the correlation.

The 10 questions are like this, “Did a parent or another adult in the household often swear at you, insult you, put you down, humiliate you, act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? And then it keeps going. “Did a parent, or other adult in the household often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you ever hit you so hard that you have marks or were injured?”

I don’t know, I know these could be trigger questions right now for your audience. I want to be careful because now I’ve realized like, okay, because I utilize it so much, every client has to fill this out when they come to me. I’m realizing now that I got to be careful because your listener might never have heard these and they’re going to be like, because if we end up saying all 10 questions and they say, “Oh, yeah.I have seven” then what do we do here as therapists?

Carrie: Yes, people can go look them up online and I’ll link them. Even something like the divorce of your parents is on there and that’s pretty common in today’s day and age.

Diana: Or drinking or alcohol. Anybody had a mental illness or was depressed in your household. “Did anybody go to prison?”  It is questions that are basic, but when you put all 10 of them together and you start seeing the scoring, anything higher than a four, I think is cause for a little bit of concern. The higher the score, of course, the more you going to have to be aware. It’s an awareness. It’s not like you’re doomed.

Carrie: Right. It’s just a look at how that connection is, and they found that people who had scores of four or more ACEs were more likely to have these chronic health issues, the high blood pressure, the diabetes, addiction issues, and it was very significant. It was kind of like the graph was small at 1, 2, 3, and then jumped when it got to 4 and above. It’s a very eye-opening, and it’s not a new study, but I think a lot of doctors don’t take these types of things into account. A lot of individuals who have chronic health issues or chronic anxiety or chronic insomnia don’t take these types of issues into consideration because, like we were talking about before, It was just kind of how they grew up.

It was the water they swim in and they don’t always identify with the word trauma or abuse. I think that’s why some of those questions get very specific. Because if you say, did you experience physical abuse in your household? Someone might just think, well, that was discipline, but yet they ended up with marks, or they ended up getting hit in ways that are clearly not disciplinary.

Diana: What I see in my practice for the last 20 years is that It is a cultural thing at times. I also understand because I use a lot of Myers Briggs too. I try to come up with free assessments so we can have a holistic picture. Say you have this young person who is an introvert and is nervous by nature, like, and that’s okay. All of a sudden the father comes home drunk and is yelling. It doesn’t even have to put hands on, but, your nervous system just gets turned on. All these layers of emotional wounds, that’s how I explain it to the teen or the young adult or the adult that’s come to me is that we have emotional wounds.

We all experience these emotional wounds. The intergenerational trauma. A lot of people want to call it intergenerational sin, generational sin or whatever it is that’s happened. But if we don’t deal with them, then this is why symptoms happen.

Carrie: Absolutely. Those types of things that affect our nervous system and get us into that fight, flight, or freeze energy on the regular basis, that’s almost like teaching our brain for that fire alarm to constantly go off when it’s really only meant to go off in high danger, high-stress situations so that we have that energy to fight, flight, or freeze.

When you’re in a chronic situation like that, and like you said before, your brain is still developing. Now we’re affecting kind of how the brain is developing in these processes with children and teens. Similar to you, I started out working with children and teens, not in a school setting, but in a home setting, trying to prevent them from out-of-home placement.

When I first went into it, I thought, what’s going on with these kids? What is the deal here? Why are they acting up so much? Was it something about how they were raised? I didn’t know. Do they just have no structure in their home or no discipline? But then you start to peel back the layers and you start to look at, we had a, oh, I’m trying to think of what the assessment was.

It wasn’t an ACE assessment, but it was a trauma inventory, and it’s got a really long acronym, but we would go through that with every client and ask about, have you ever experienced this, homelessness, times where you didn’t have enough food, all kinds of different experiences. Has anyone ever hit you? And then you find out all kinds of things that have happened – bullying, abuse that they’ve experienced, and then you go,  “Oh, these kids aren’t bad kids. They’re not behavior problems. They have been through an enormous amount, and their nervous system, like, does not know how to process or handle even day-to-day situations.”

Diana: On fire, that’s what I say. That’s inflammation and when we understand the science of the mind and the body all together, it’s places of yourself that are inflamed. If your gut is inflamed, you start feeling it in other places. The same with the brain. If your central nervous system is always protecting, I mean, think about back in the day, a long time ago, thousands of years ago, when you have a sabertooth tiger running after the caveman, that’s the alert.

Your adrenal glands are going squirt, squirt, squirt with chemical and it’s fight or flight or freeze or fawn. If you’re on, but the thing is with the chronic, like you’re saying, if it’s happening every day, your system just learns to stay on. And then people that have a safe environment or healthy foods, or they don’t have to worry about resources or gang life or abusive home settings.

They don’t have that understanding and then they’re judging it now. For us therapists, if you’re a therapist listening to this, this is something that can revolutionize your whole practice, understanding the holistic approach to mental health and especially with the ACE, understanding the neuroplasticity and the science behind that, I mean, the brain and the gut connection, things like that.

“If I did not learn these things, I think I would have been, I was a wreck. I mean, I was smoking pot. I was drinking alcohol all through my teen.”  And that’s why they’re like, they’re just teenagers, but if we get to understand the why, why are they taking it so personal? Why are they popping off? I think we’re going to talk about internalizers and externalizers.

Carrie: Yes, let’s go into that. Your externalizers are the poppin’ off kids.

Diana: Yes, the Poppin off kids. The ones that are  people see and they think that they have a chip on their shoulder, like, “What you lookin at”, or whatever it is. If you take those personal, if you’re working with adolescents, or you have one, and you’re taking it personal constantly and saying, well, they’re just teenagers, they suck, or whatever it is or instead of taking a step back and going, “Why are they poppin off? Why are they punching the teacher in the face?” And those are the students that I worked with. I worked from there, and then I worked in a non profit organization that went into the houses, too, into the inner city homes, so I was seeing things we are the richest country and we’re allowing people to live this way.

I don’t get it. I get it, but I don’t. It’s such a system. I’m not even gonna go there. But you have those that externalize, which they’re fighting. They’re angry. They’re the little kid who might be diagnosed with ADHD. They might be diagnosed with a thousand different things and on five different medications. We don’t realize at home they’re eating Captain Crunch and Mountain Dew for breakfast. We don’t see this whole picture because we have to, I get why in the system, if you’re responsible for thousands of kids in one school, you can’t do what we’re trying to do, individualizing therapy for each, so you have to come up with answers quickly so you could keep the fire down.

Carrie: Yes. Absolutely. 

Diana: Those are the externalizers, the ones that you see that are angry or cussing or upset or wanting to fight and you feel it. The internalizers, they’re usually the cutters. They’ll stay in their room all day long playing video games, or they’re doing other things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re the shy ones, they’re the suicidal ones.

Carrie: Right, they just keep everything inside and bury it as much as possible and even occasionally they may blow up at some point, but it’s usually against themselves, like you were saying.

Diana: Some of them will do both, depending on what’s going on in their own system, like in their own body, their vessel. It depends on how much a human being can take. Each one of us only has a threshold. We only have a certain amount of bandwidth.

Carrie: I’m sure it drove you crazy like it drove me crazy that the trauma wasn’t taken into consideration, so then we were just looking at symptoms. We were trying to match people up with the DSM and trying to match people with medication.

Therefore, there was a turning of students who got diagnosed with ADHD and then bipolar disorder. That’s what we saw all the time. 

Diana: ADHD and bipolar borderline. I’m trying to think there was one more. I mean, when I had anxiety and depression that year. I came and I think I am quite fine, I’m in private practice now. After that, when I was working at the nonprofit, I took a little break because of a certain situation that happened personally in my family, and then I went into a different career. After the Parkland shooting, and the Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018, I had a couple of parents ask, “Hey, are you still a therapist?”, and I’m like, “no, I’m not.” And then little by little, the Lord kept saying, “You’re going back.  I’m like, “no”, but I see now since 2018, everything. I’m like, Okay, I’m just going to be obedient. This is of service for you. It’s a calling. I’m grateful that I do get paid for it and I get to help others learn about it. When I went back, I ended up in a school being the crisis intervention counselor serving about 200 students and I was the only licensed therapist there.

Carrie: Wow, that’s a lot of students to take care of. What hope is there? Because this is hope for anxiety and OCD, what hope is there for individuals who’ve had these types of experiences?

Diana: There’s so much hope. Listen, I am one that had these types of experiences. Like I said before, I have an A score of 6. It’s reframing what has happened and understanding, but getting the help and doing the work. Because some people do the healing process, they get stuck in the victim. And they don’t know how to get out of it because it’s been their life for so long and they might be surrounded by other humans in their family or in their community.

That’s all they know as well, so it’s understanding there is hope and it starts with you understanding you being that curious observer of yourself watching YouTube videos on CPTSD. Reading books like Dr. Gabor Maté’s book, The Myth of Normal, or The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Vessel Van de Kock, or CPTSD, From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.

There’s so much information out there. Or listening to podcasts like this, saying, Hey, no, there’s hope and understanding the science of your brain. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. They’re finding it out there in more and more information on the brain and how rewiring your system you can do it. I have done it.

It took a lot of hard work to grieve my childhood to learn to forgive those that hurt me and it’s not only my home. It’s understanding. We’re all raised in a village.

Carrie: Yes.

Diana: We’re all in a village now. If you’re hearing my voice, you’re part of a system. You’re part of a village, but we were also raised by one.

Some people might hurt you which can cause anxiety and depression, which are symptoms of numerous things. Finding out that you are not anxiety and you are not depression. These are just things you’re wrestling with or struggling with. I like wrestling better because wrestling means that you could get up on top of it.

When I use the word suffer, I don’t like that too much because it’s like, “Oh, I’m suffering. Oh, what was me?” To me,  I had to go through that part. I was grateful for EMDR. There are modalities that can help internal family systems, EMDR. I do cold plunges now. I do sauna work, infrared sauna, acupuncture, and things that have been around for thousands and thousands of years that are Westernized medicine. It doesn’t utilize because it’s either free or they can’t make money off of it.

Carrie: The cold plunge. How does that work?

Diana: I just started honestly last month and you go into like 40-degree water and I’m up in 90 seconds. I started off at 30 and I thought it, but it was the weirdest, craziest, most amazing feeling I ever had.

I do Wim Hof breathing. Wim Hof, you should look up his story. I started with the breathing techniques because these things are not taught in churches. They’re not taught our profession either much, and a lot of people see them as woo woo or new age, but I’m like, “No, the Lord made breath.”

Carrie: There are certain breaths that I know, like from yoga. There are certain ways to breathe where you can warm up your body or cool off your body. So are you trying to warm up your body like in those situations or no, you’re trying to take your temperature down?

Diana: Are you talking about breath work or with a cold plunge?

Carrie: With the cold plunge, are you trying to breathe a certain way while you’re in there?

Diana: It is actually trying to wake up my mitochondria to healing. It’s also understanding your mindset. We have a fixed mindset, many of us, especially if we wrestle with anxiety because I do, I wrestle with anxiety, honestly, like I can’t drink coffee. I have to do the work and I have to be okay. Kind of like an alcoholic shouldn’t be drinking alcohol. 

Carrie: Right, yes.

Diana: Someone like me that has anxiety and wrestles with it. I have to do the work and understand like, “No, I can’t touch that substance because that substance is going to make my anxiety worse or depression or whatever symptoms being exasperated by whatever’s around you. With the cold plunge, I am trying to, first of all, wake up myself and at the same time realize that I have the power in my mind to do this. Tthat is the rewiring of the brain that is creating new neurons to be able to connect.” Whatever fires together wires together.” That’s what Jim Quick says.

Carrie: Right. Yes.

Diana: I love to listen to and it’s true. If I would have stayed like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be a pothead of all my life, or I’m going to be depressed, or I’m never going to be able to be around my family because they trigger me too much. I had to rewire my brain. I have also been diagnosed with SERS, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, but I also know it’s because of how high my ACE score.”

It’s an autoimmune, so I have to do the things to keep that fire down because it’s inflammation. And I do the work and it was trying to shrink the inner critic because you grow up in that kind of environment with a high A score. It’s constantly like, I’m not worth it. It’s attachment issues,

Carrie: Putting yourself down a lot from things that you’ve heard from other people and just kind of repeating those things to yourself.

Diana: Because it’s been chronically done constantly, you start believing and that is something I had to realize with my walk with the Lord. To me, guilt and shame, because that’s what most of us who have anxiety, a lot of these diagnoses come and they’re really in guilt and shame. Guilt and shame is from the world. Conviction comes from the Lord.

Carrie: Right. That’s good.

Diana: It’s different. If you’re going against God’s word, then of course you’re going to get convicted.

Carrie: That’s a good thing.

Diana: Yes. If you’re feeling guilt and shame constantly and you’re blaming God and you’re not understanding, like, where is that voice coming from?

Who said those things? And you start recognizing those voices, the inner critic, and then you just sit with it because a lot of people that have anxiety, that I’ve come to find out in this 20 years I’ve been doing this, is they’re storing these emotions in their bodies, so they’re either so depressed and sad about it, and they’re just giving up with no hope, or it is stored so deeply that it’s like when a deer gets hit by a truck, or any animal. 

Carrie: They’re sort of shaking.

Diana: That’s our nervous system, which causes the anxiety, or the OCD. I still struggle with that too, and I have to realize, I got bad news. This is an example that happened lately. My sister was put in hospice.  My husband, because he has done his work with me and understands he or she is starting to clean everything and make everything perfect. She took everything out of the gap because that’s what I did. Then he took me and was just like, “Honey, you’re going to have to go see your therapist. Please calm down. I could tell because it happens.”

Carrie: Fall back into those patterns. I really like what you’re saying on a spiritual sense of that there’s a verse that talks about work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it’s God that works within you and you’re talking about really partnering up with God and the Holy Spirit to do the work, not just kind of sitting back and being a passive observer and say, God, just come over me and just fix all the brain cells, just make them all like wired together the way they’re supposed to and heal up this yuck stuff that happened to me.

You’re like, “No, I’ve actually sought the Lord, but I’ve also gone to counseling and I’ve also done these other healing modalities and read a lot or watched a lot of videos and really absorb the Information because knowledge is really helpful in these types of things and it does help reduce some of the shame so that you’re not thinking why in the world am I responding in this way?

Why in the world am I acting like this? When you understand, you can peel that back and say, “Oh, okay, now I get it. Now that I get it, I can start to take a step towards change.”  If a lot of times we don’t understand what’s going on in the first place, it’s really hard to make changes into it. If we don’t sit with it and go, “Oh yeah, this is what happened to me. This is how it affected me. This is how my relationships have gotten so hijacked for the last 10 years.”

Diana: We have to remember as believers that Satan’s only reason is to steal, kill, and destroy every relationship that you have, including and especially the one with yourself.

When you notice that and you realize, like, this is why I really am a mind, body, spirit connecting therapist here. When people come to me, they understand my position in Christ. I do not force. I’m not a biblical counselo. People argue with me all the time and we all have our journey. To me, what has worked thus far with people. I have quite a few people with a lot of spiritual abuse from church where I have to disentangle because some people don’t understand they grew up and was forced into some kind of say religion or whatever it is. And then they come to me with this hatred towards God and they want to deconstruct. I’m there going, okay, I think you want to disentangle and understand your situation that happened in ACEs is not only in inner cities, I mean, there’s higher scores there because they have fewer resources. It’s just how our system in this society has been for so long. And this is. In the last three or four years, that’s the uprising that we’re feeling and people misunderstanding.

That’s why I encourage those to educate themselves, but it starts within ourselves. Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24, search me, Oh God, and know my anxious thoughts starts with us being responsible for us. Despite anything that has happened to us. That’s the power we have.

Carrie: Towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask every guest to share a story of hope, like a time where you received hope from God or another person.

Diana: Wow. I could actually talk about this morning. I had a client, mostly my clients gave me hope due to them doing the work and seeing the progress. I’m very grateful for that. Just like this morning, I had a client that came to me two months ago and she was in a very, very bad place. When I say very bad place, it was just, I don’t know if I could. It takes energy.   I think the listener needs to understand we’re humans with our struggles and we care about our clients, or we would not be in this. And we care about them, not just for the hour or 90 minutes we have them.

Carrie: True. Very true. 

Diana: We’re trying to find other ways to help them. I’m in a lot of prayer. If you come to see me, I’m praying for you before you come in. We pray together and then when they leave, I pray, “All right, Lord, what do I have to do for the next session? Or what do I do next?” This person came in and I’m just like, I don’t know if I can help them. I can’t after crying out to God for a while.

I’m like by this time, if I can’t help and she came in today and I was just blown away with how much progress it was amazing. It’s like every time I want to quit, I honestly want to retire or go back to the other career I was at because this is heavy work for us.

Carrie: It’s not easy.

Diana: It’s not easy. It is a calling because I’m sure that if you are a therapist listening, you did not get in this for the money. If you got in it for the money, then your heart is not in the right place to be a therapist. If you’re coming in thinking you’re going to make a lot of money, then you’re not seeing your client as the human that we should be seeing them as.

To me, I’m talking to my husband, “Shiver. I’m older now. I’ve done some time already.” The second I think that, a client comes in and boom, something out. I’m like, “All right, Lord. Okay. I hear you. All right.” He reminds me, it’s not about me. It’s not even about the client. All of that price and utilizing our gifts and talents, which each one of us have, and it’s just getting in tune with that. The only way to get in tune with who you are to heal is to sit alone and be still with the Lord.

Carrie: I love your office too. For those that are just listening, she has lots of plants all over her office and natural lighting is a very warm and inviting therapy space. I really like that. I’m still working on my office, I moved into it a few months ago, and it’s just not quite where I want it to be. There are still some tweaks that need to happen, but I’m going to get it settled, and it’s going to be great when it gets done.

Diana: You have to send me a picture of it.

Carrie: Okay, we’ll do. Thanks for being on the show today and sharing your wisdom with us.

Diana: Carrie, thank you for having me.

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Carrie: I loved interviewing Diana because it’s always great to find another therapist with a similar heartbeat about treating trauma and letting people know that is possible for them to have a better life moving forward, even if their background has been kind of rough.

As some of you know, I do EMDR intensives with clients who are looking to process trauma in a short, condensed amount of time, instead of having to spread that over weeks and weeks and open up issues and close them up. If you want more information on that, feel free to check out my counseling website at bythewellcounseling.com. I am also working on longer intensive packages specifically for clients who are dealing with the intersection of trauma, childhood wounding, and OCD. If any of that is of interest to you, definitely contact me and I would love to share more about it with you.

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

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

104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode. No Comments on 104. Being Kinder to Ourselves and Others with Greg Atkinson

Carrie interviews Greg Atkinson, an entrepreneur, speaker and author, about the power of kindness.

Greg shares his personal journey and how forgiveness and kindness have played a pivotal role in his life. The conversation highlights the ripple effect of kindness and its power to make the world a better place.

Episode Highlights.

  • How Greg Atkinson’s life experiences, including anxiety, inspired his commitment to kindness.
  • The importance of forgiveness in fostering a kinder world.
  • The significance of vulnerability and openness in sharing personal stories and breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health.
  • Practical ways to incorporate kindness into your own life and make a positive impact on those around you.
  • Greg’s Book: The Secret Power of Kindness

Episode Summary:

Welcome to the Christian Faith and OCD podcast! I’m Carrie Bock, your host, and today’s episode features Greg Atkinson—an insightful speaker, author, and educator on mental health issues.

Greg recently authored The Secret Power of Kindness, a book that opens with a deeply personal account of his journey through trauma, mental health struggles, and ultimately, forgiveness. Greg shares how his experiences with sexual, verbal, and physical abuse shaped his life, leading to diagnoses of anxiety and bipolar disorder.

The central theme of Greg’s book is forgiveness—a process that has taken years of therapy and personal growth. He emphasizes that holding onto anger and bitterness can prevent us from living a kind and compassionate life.

Greg also discusses the impact of mental health in his life, from the physical symptoms of anxiety to the mental battles of catastrophic thinking. He highlights the importance of understanding mental illness, especially within faith communities, where there can be harmful misconceptions about anxiety and depression being purely spiritual issues.

Through his story, Greg aims to educate and encourage others to approach mental health with kindness, both towards themselves and others. His insights challenge the stigma surrounding mental illness and promote a more compassionate understanding within the church and beyond.

Join me in this episode as we explore Greg Atkinson’s journey of healing, forgiveness, and the power of kindness.

Related links and Resources:

www.gregatkinson.com

The Secret Power of Kindness: 10 Keys to Unlocking Your Capacity to Change the World

Tune in for another inspiring episode:

63. Trauma, Forgiveness, and Emotional Eating Recovery with Coach Jon McLernon
Transcript

Transcript

Welcome to the Hope for Anxiety and OCD podcast. I am your host, Carrie Bock. This is episode 104. We are here with Greg Atkinson, who is a speaker, author, and educator on mental health issues and entrepreneur.

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Carrie: Welcome to the show.

Greg: Thank you for having me.

Carrie: You wrote a book recently called “The Secret Power of Kindness.” In the first part of the book, you talked a little bit about your story. Can you tell us what caused you to want to open up about that or tell us a little bit about how you got to this point?

Greg: I had a desire to write a book that anybody could pick up and read, and my previous books were written to pastors and church leaders, which is a very small niche. I knew that the average or typical reader, if they weren’t in the church pastor world, you may not know who I am. I wanted to open up with here’s who I am, here’s what I’ve been through, here’s why I wrote the book, here’s why I hope you will want to read this book. I had a mentor here in Charlotte who passed away a few years ago, but he told me when he first started mentoring me and he mentors men, he said, “Greg, every man has a father wound and a church wound.” I believe that’s true for women as well, but he was specifically focused on discipling men and mentoring men. I wanted to open the book with a chapter on forgiveness and talk about my father wound and my church wound because I have both and I have found since this book came out. That a lot of people can relate to it and a lot of people have been encouraged by my story.

I talk about issues I went through growing up with sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse. And then I talk about mental health and being diagnosed with anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder. And then I share a situation of even being fired from a job due to disclosing that I had a mental illness. I had no performance issues.

I’d worked there two and a half years, but when I finally felt comfortable enough to tell my boss, then he fired me the purpose of the chapter. The whole focus was forgiveness. It’s that I have forgiven my boss. I’ve forgiven my dad. I have forgiven those that have hurt me. And it’s not a quick and easy thing.

This is a process of years and thousands of hours of therapy and thousands of dollars worth of therapy. Just a lot of individual therapy, group therapy. I talk about in the book going to on site in Tennessee and I have been through everything you could go through to deal with my father when in my church when I just wanted to read her to know that I have wrestled with forgiveness and I found that I was able to forgive those that have hurt me or wrong me, and that as the 1st chapter of 10 keys in the book, 10 keys to unlocking kindness.

This allows me to lead a kinder life because people that struggle with unforgiveness and are hurt and angry and bitter and have anger under the surface, they could snap at people or be rude or gruff and come across as unkind. It’s the opposite of kindness. So I wanted to start with a lot of people have said a very deep chapter, for a first chapter and just share my story and say, here’s what I’ve gone through to be in a place where I could respond with kindness and treat people kindly, but it has been a long journey.

Carrie: We have had a lot of guests talk about forgiveness, and I appreciate the perspective, too, that it’s a process because I think sometimes when we learn about it in church, we think it’s supposed to be just some kind of instantaneous thing, like, “Okay, I forgive this person” but it’s almost like a journey and a lifestyle that you have to adopt between you and the Lord to say like, okay, I’m recognizing when this anger comes up. I’m recognizing when this bitterness comes up and I choose not to go down that path.

Greg: Absolutely. It is a process. And that’s what they say at onsite, trust the process. They have coffee mugs that say, trust the process, but yeah, it is definitely a process and it’s been a lifelong journey with several therapists that are trained in different skills to get to the point where I am now.

Carrie: How long did it take you from when you first started showing symptoms until you got a mental health diagnosis?

Greg: Great question. I think when I look back on my teenage years and my 20s, it was obvious there was something going on, but I actually did not get diagnosed until I was 30 years old. Which is later than a lot of people, but when I got diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and bipolar, I was 30 years old now that I know what they are and what the symptoms are and what things to look for, I can totally see it in my twenties.

Even in my teenage years. I just had no words for it, I was truly ignorant. I thought everything was spiritual and you just pray and it’ll go away and pray more and do a devotional and have a quiet time and you’ll never get depressed and everything will be fine. And I was super ignorant and I did not know anything about mental health or mental illness.

Now, as an advocate and somebody that writes and speaks about mental health. I’m trying to educate those in power and leadership to be careful with their words because they may not realize that you can’t just pray it away and that some people like myself need to take medicine when I speak out and when I talk, I tell people if you need medicine, it’s totally okay.

It’s not anti Bible, anti spiritual. If you need medicine, just like if you had diabetes and you had to take insulin, If you have something going on with the chemistry in your brain, and you need to take a mood stabilizer or something to help with anxiety, whatever your doctor thinks is right for you. I have tried to educate pastors to not shame people for needing medicine or for struggling with anxiety.

I was just flipping through social media 3 days ago. And a pastor had uploaded a reel where he was preaching and he referred to anxiety and depression as sin. And so pastor that I love and respect and know, and I followed him for a reason, but he had talked about going through a season of depression and anxiety, but he referred to it as he had overcome it and he had got the victory. And that kind of made it sound like he was sitting when he was depressed and he was sitting when he was anxious. For somebody like me that has a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, I know that those words from a person on the pulpit can be very dangerous.

Carrie: Yes, and I think unless they’ve experienced mental health disorders or have that self awareness, pastors and ministry leaders, they may not understand what it’s like to deal with anxiety or what it’s like to wake up and not want to get out of bed in the morning. Really giving them these types of personal stories and insights, I think is really helpful and It goes to show you, too, that we’ve come a long way in the church in some ways, but we still have a long way to go, and we still have people that are giving these messages about anxiety is only a spiritual problem instead of it’s a physical, emotional, spiritual problem.

Greg: As s you know, mental illness is often hereditary, and often you have relatives that have that. When I was in my early twenties, I knew that my cousin and my aunt had bipolar. I knew they struggled with depression, but I was ignorant. I was super ignorant. And I remember saying to my wife, if they would just pray more, if they would just have a devotional life and a quiet time, they would be fine. And then when I was 23, right in the prime of my life, and used to be super athletic, I had three ruptured discs and had to have major back surgery, and I was flat on my back in a hospital bed for two months, and I wanted to die for the first time in my life. I experienced true depression. It was the first time ever, but I remember telling my wife, depression is real.

It’s a real thing. I want to die right now. I was 23 years old, laying in a bed for two months. And when I did get up to go to the bathroom, I had to use a walker and I was, all my muscles had atrophied and then I went from a walker to a cane and then I had to go to physical therapy and it was a long journey back and recovery from back surgery, major back surgery.

It was almost like God opened my eyes of depression is real. This is what it feels like. I asked for forgiveness from God for how things I had said about relatives and my perspective of thinking if they would just pray it away, it would be okay. Now, as I have loved ones that struggle with depression, I am very aware that it’s real. And like you said, sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed. Super aware of that now, I don’t struggle as much with depression, but I do struggle with anxiety and take medicine for that. So I’m very aware that you could be fine with God. You could be having a devotional life and praying and worshiping and you and God are great and still you get anxiety or depression. That became real to me at the age of 23.

Carrie: How does anxiety affect you today?

Greg: There’s sometimes physical symptoms like I may be holding a cup or opening something and my wife will say your hands are shaking and I’ll notice there’s like a physical symptom of a tremor or something, which could be a side effect of the medicine, or it could be just how my anxiety manifests.

There’s also a lot of mental games that I go through of thinking worst case scenarios. Thinking about death. I have pain in my back. Is that pain cancer? I have a pain in my head. Is that a brain tumor with my anxiety? I think worst case scenario. I also at the age of 21, as I talked about in the book, my dad died, just dropped out of a massive heart attack.

I experienced a close death very young at 21 years old, and my kids are older than that now. When I was younger than them, I had lost my dad. When I have indigestion or heartburn and I feel my chest hurt, I think worst case scenario, am I having a heart attack like my dad? Am I going to die young like my dad?

When I look back on losing my dad at the age of 21, that’s when my anxiety kicked in, and that’s where my fear of death really came from. I’m sure there’s chemical issues as well and brain issues, but as far as the mental gymnastics that I go through to try to calm myself, everything became more intensified after experiencing a death of someone so close at such a young age.

I will oftentimes feel a symptom or wonder something, and I will think worst case scenario, or my counselor calls it sense of impending doom. You think that you’re going to die, and thank God my wife is a nurse and has talked me out of multiple ER visits of, no, you’re fine, stay home. But I still have those moments where I’ll go to the ER because I’ll think, no, my chest is hurting.

I’m pretty sure this is a heart attack. And I have had numerous EKGs where they say it’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with your heart. It’s just heartburn. Go home. But like I said, I have loved ones that struggle with depression. I really struggle with anxiety and it is exhausting. The medicine can help chill you a little, but the way the mind can race and the way the mind can think of worst case scenarios is exhausting.

My heart goes out to anyone that struggles with anxiety, and I know you addressed that on this podcast. I can very much relate to it. And as I have opened up to others, I’ll hear from people. Oh, my sister has anxiety or my mom has anxiety. I have found that there are so many people that struggle with mental health issues, but we’re just not aware of each other.

One of the tactics of the enemy is isolation, thinking we’re alone and we’re the only one that goes through it. Whereas, on any given Sunday, when a pastor stands up to preach, at least one fourth of the congregation has some type of mental illness. They say 25 percent or more. When they’re standing up to speak, a fourth of the congregation is struggling with something and it could be anxiety. My heart goes out to them.

Carrie: I’ve heard from some pastors too, who have been really vulnerable and I think that makes a huge difference to see a spiritual leader get up there and say, Hey, I’ve been to therapy or I hit a rough patch in the road and I needed to go talk to somebody or I needed to look at medication as an option.

We had a pastor on here not too long ago who talked about how he started having panic attacks and developing anxiety in his process. Of working through that. It’s always helpful for us. We’re scared, I think, sometimes to be vulnerable and share our story, but it blesses other people in the body of Christ when we have the courage to do that and to open up.

I appreciate you sharing your story here and also in your book. Why a book about kindness?

Greg: Well, it’s no secret, we live in a divided world, and there’s a lot of hatred online. There’s a lot of device in this. There’s a lot of anger and tearing people down instead of building people up. And, as you know, kindness is a fruit of the spirit. And I thought if this is what the Bible teaches that Christians should be known for, then we as the church have got to do a better job. I met with my publisher who I’ve known for 20 years. He flew to my house, met with me in person. I had shown him some thoughts I wrote down four years ago. He said, “I love talking about a fruit of the spirit.” He said, “I think you need to go all in on kindness and write about the power of kindness.” I adapted what was a previous book proposal that the subtitle was “The Power of Kindness,” and then we went all in on it and made the title, “The Secret Power of Kindness.” I start the book with a sentence, “Imagine a world where everyone is kind to one another,” and I end the book with that.

That’s kind of my dream of no matter who picks up my book and no matter what faith background they have, if we could treat one another with kindness, what I have found and what I talk about in the book is that kindness is contagious, and kindness unlocks kindness. I’m kind to you, and you’re kind to me, and we’re kind to others. We can change the world.

When I talk about kindness being contagious, I share a story of my youngest daughter when she worked the drive-thru at Dunkin’ Donuts. She had a day where somebody paid for the car behind them, and that went on for 27 cars, like paying it back or forward or whatever it is—they kept paying for the car behind them 27 times. And I have had times where I arrived at Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ Donuts, and I get to the window, and they said, “The person ahead of you paid for yours,” and it made my day. That’s what I talk about in my definition of kindness.

I had written it down at like 1:00 A.M., one night, but in the preface, I wrote, “The secret power of kindness is the self-awareness to know that you have the power to make or break someone else’s day and eventually change the world.” That kindness being contagious when somebody bought my meal, I just lit up and just made my day because it was surprising. And when somebody reacts to us in a harsh way or a critical way or a mean way and we respond with kindness, it surprises them and kind of catches them off guard, and they’re like, “Oh, wow, I thought you would bite my head off.” They don’t expect you to respond with kindness.

What I am proposing is a kindness movement, where kindness is contagious, kindness unlocks kindness, and together we are kind to those that we come into contact with, realizing that we do have the power to make or break someone’s day. And I share personal stories in there of how I’ve done that with servers over the years, waiters and waitresses and people that I’ve come across where I just try to make them smile. I try to make their day.

I was literally having a business meeting with my designer last night at 11:30 PM at Waffle House. And we blessed the waitress there, and she is amazing. And I’m going to go back to see her again because it was the first time I’d been to this particular Waffle House. And then before that, I had another business dinner with a friend at my favorite Mexican restaurant, and my favorite waitress Wendy came over, and she loves when I come in because my goal is to make them smile, to lighten their load. I share real stories of that in the book, of things that I’ve done over the years ever since college to build relationships with people in the community.

But, there are stories that go back 30 years of trying to live a life of kindness. And the first chapter is important because I did not receive kindness from my dad, and I never heard, “I love you,” from my dad when I became an adult and left the house. I decided that I’m going to end the cycle, that this stops with me. And I am going to tell my kids I love them, and I am going to be nice to people. My dad used to make waitresses cry in a restaurant. He was very mean, very harsh, is what one of my friends from high school just recently described him when I told him about my book. He said, “Oh, your dad was a harsh man.” And I remember him making waitresses cry. He was just brutal. I remember family dinners around the kitchen table of crying because he just ruined the whole dinner. And I just, when they decided this ends with me, my kids are not going to grow up in a dysfunctional home. They’re not going to go through this, and I choose kindness.

There’s a lot to it that I dive into the book about abiding with Christ and developing a relationship with Christ so that those fruit of the spirit come out of me naturally and I don’t have to force it. It’s one thing to say, “I’m going to be kind. I’m going to be kind. I’m going to be kind.” It’s another thing to have it come out naturally as a fruit of the spirit. There’s a quote I share in the book of when the toothpaste gets squeezed, whatever is in there is what comes out. The Bible talks about your heart being revealed, out of the overflow of your mouth, the heart speaks.

I want to spend time with God in such a meaningful way that when my toothpaste gets squeezed, what comes out is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. So the fruit of the spirit comes out naturally. And I don’t always get it right. I’m not perfect. I’m not the kindness expert. But I talked about things that I’ve learned. One for me that was very important was learning to forgive so that I would not hold onto anger and bitterness. Another chapter in the book that was super practical that came from my therapist in life was about the importance of sleep and rest.

There’s a whole chapter for me with bipolar and with anxiety disorder. I really wrestle with sleep and my therapist had given me a worksheet on sleep hygiene and how to get a better night’s sleep and things I can do to set myself up to succeed and to win when it comes to getting proper rest. There’s a whole chapter in the book that addresses rest because if we are not well-rested, then we’re going to snap at somebody, and we’ll again come across as the opposite of kind, and our heart may be that we want to be kind. We want to be known for kindness but we’re so tired and exhausted that we’re snapping at people. That’s a very practical chapter right in the middle of the book of this is something you can do to be at your best.

We’ve all seen the examples of the toddlers that are throwing a fit and fussing and whining and having a mental breakdown in the middle of a store. You hear the mom say, “Somebody needs a nap.” A lot of time it just comes back to something as simple as rest and vacation and days off and a sabbatical if needed, but taking the time to be properly rested and sleep is a battle for me. It’s a battle for one of my daughters. I often say sleep eludes me. It is so hard to get good sleep when you have certain types of mental illness. 

I wanted to talk about things that I have learned and tried and do and practice to get a good night’s sleep because I am not at my best if I am short on sleep. As much as I want to be known for kindness, if I had three hours sleep, I am not going to be in a good mood. And I found that that’s pretty universal. Everybody can relate to that. So that’s a little bit about why I wrote about that.

Carrie: That’s really good. We’ve had a couple of episodes on sleep on the show, one from a spiritual perspective and one from a mental perspective and kind of behavioral change perspective. It’s been good conversations about those things. 

You reminded me of a story that I wanted to share with you. I was just about 2015. I was going through a divorce. My husband was up and left, and I was trying to work, and I just couldn’t even think straight really sometimes. I went into this gas station. They had these refillable cups and if you take the cup back, you get a discount or whatever it is. You don’t have to pay the full price for the drink. So I’m in there in the gas station, and I’m struggling with this lid. For some reason, the plastic lid that I had would not fit on there very well. And this guy comes over, and he said, “You know, you can get another lid. It’s okay. Try this other lid.” It was just such a kind moment for me that someone would step in when I couldn’t even think straight and kind of solve what is a relatively simple problem, but I just remember that moment. It’s almost like bookmarked in my mind of that guy really did make my day that day because it was just tough going through that grief process and him being able to do something so simple. He has no idea how much that affected me.

Greg: That’s where the title came from. You experienced the power of kindness. I went to my barber a few days ago, and she had just opened up a new salon, new suite, and she had a framed picture up that said “The Power of Kindness.” I had already given her a copy of my book and she said, “Look what I got.” And she pointed to this picture that said “The Power of Kindness.” She had read my book, but that is something like you said, that is landmarked in your mind. It made such an impression that you’ve never forgotten it. And that is the secret power of kindness—to make someone’s day and thus change our world.

Carrie: The Bible talks about loving our neighbors as ourselves. And how does being kind to ourselves help us be kind to others? Because I truly believe this and what I’ve seen in my own life and the lives of my clients.

Greg: I write about this in the book. I have a whole chapter on love, which is also a fruit of the spirit. I talk about loving yourself so that you can love others. I talk about being kind to yourself so that you can be kind to others. I talk about forgiving yourself so that you can forgive others, but it all starts with us and self-reflection. I talk about meditation. I talk about journaling. There’s so much that has helped me in a therapeutic way from journaling, and my devotional and anxiety that I wrote came from journaling. It came from writing about what God was showing me in scripture.

I have found that oftentimes, and this was new to me, about a decade ago, I had learned and was taught, and then as a pastor taught, the great commandment poorly. We had bumper stickers at my church that said, “Love God, love people.” And I always taught love God, love others, love God, love people. And it was a two-prong approach. And then the last church I was on staff at, nine years ago, the pastor talked upward, inward, outward, love God, love yourself so that you can love others. It was a three-pronged approach, and that’s exactly what scripture says. Love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I have found that oftentimes when we talk about loving ourselves, we cut ourselves out of the equation. And we exhaust ourselves by saying, “Well, and I know the Bible says to love God and love others. So I’m going to try to do it with all my might.” But if we haven’t stopped to love ourselves, we’re not properly able to love others. We won’t have the strength and the resilience to do it. In this book, I do a deep dive into love and the great commandment. And one of the most beautiful and healthy things that you can do is to love yourself, to forgive yourself, to be kind to yourself. And the byproduct of that is you’ll love others, be kind to others, forgive others. It’s a win-win scenario, but it starts with loving yourself.

Carrie: Right. I think one of the things that we do, especially in trauma work, is people will be very shameful or angry regarding things that they’ve done in the past as a teenager, as a young adult, or just a really low time in their life where they made some bad choices and went down the wrong path. And really helping that person gain empathy for that younger self, like, did they have the knowledge? Did they have the skills to act differently? Did they know how to regulate their emotions? And once you’re able to kind of go through all that, it’s like, “Oh, wow, no, I was completely ill-equipped, and I was acting out of my woundedness.” It didn’t make it right or okay, but I can have compassion towards my younger self, understanding how I got to where I was.

That’s often like just a really breakthrough, beautiful moment for someone that helps them also be compassionate towards other people who are acting out of their own woundedness and their own hurt. I think sometimes when we encounter people that are maybe a little bit prickly, we forget, well, maybe they’re really hurting right now, or maybe they have their own struggles they’re going through that we can’t see or we don’t know about.

Greg: I talk about that in the book. There’s a quote that somebody said that I referenced in the book of when somebody is harsh to you, critical of you, or rude to you, or just comes at you in a hard way, oftentimes we want to respond with, “What’s wrong with you?” instead of “What happened to you?” Everybody’s got a story. Everybody has a background. Maybe they were abused as a child, maybe they just went through a divorce, maybe they had a bad night’s sleep. Instead of responding with “What’s wrong with you?” if we have the approach of, “I wonder what happened to them that led them to this point,” because everybody’s got a story. 

As I mentioned in the book, almost everybody I’ve come across has a father when there are things that have happened in our life and our childhood and our early adult life that bring us to a point where we are not acting like our character is and like we want to be known for.

There are things that people go through that lead them to maybe treat us poorly. And if we can start with compassion and realize that, wow, that person could have been through a whole lot in their life. I’m going to extend grace to them. I’m going to extend mercy to them. And grace is undeserved. It’s unmerited favor. People don’t have to deserve grace. It’s just something we give. It is not only my favorite word, I named my daughter Grace, my first child. 

Grace is unmerited favor. It’s undeserved. It is a gift, and a gift doesn’t have to be earned. It’s just given. When somebody comes at me in an attacking way or a rude or tough way, I can choose to extend grace to them, whether they deserve it or not. And just saying, maybe they’re having an off day today. I’m going to choose to be graceful.

Carrie: If you can go back and tell your younger self something that didn’t have the awareness that you have now about mental health issues or what you were struggling with, what would that be?

Greg: Great question. I think because it’s fresh on my mind, I probably have a new answer now. My oldest daughter, who has now gone off to grad school, she’s getting her Ph.D., and she was at the house visiting before she moved into her new apartment over the summer. And somehow we got to talking about Matt Damon or something. And I said, I know it was before your time, but have you ever heard of Good Will Hunting? And she said, Yeah, I guess I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it. I said, “Well, let’s watch it.” So we watched it and that scene where Robin Williams says to him, “It’s not your fault.” That’s what I would tell my younger self because I was abused, but it wasn’t my fault. I was molested, but it wasn’t my fault. My dad was terrible to me, but it wasn’t my fault. That’s what I would tell my younger self because I grew up with just terrible emotional pain because of all that I’ve been through. 

On-site, they do exercises where you speak to your younger self, and they walk you through all types of therapy where somebody stands in and you speak to another person in the group that is representing your younger self, and you address that person, but I think now, after freshly, after nearly 30 years, rewatching Good Will Hunting, I would just say to Little Greg, “It’s not your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

Carrie: Yes. I feel like we could have this conversation for hours. This has been really great. I hope that people will look into getting your book, “The Secret Power of Kindness.” Thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Greg: Thank you for having me.

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Carrie: I appreciated this episode so much because I know those that struggle with anxiety struggle to be kind to themselves and often can struggle to be kind to others as well. We all have opportunities to practice kindness every day. All the little acts of kindness do add up to make the world a better place and allow us to share Christ’s love with others. In a couple of weeks, Steve will be back to join me on the show as we talk about what we’ve learned in our third year of marriage. Thanks so much for listening. 

Hope for Anxiety and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. 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, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.