What if the biggest things holding you back from counseling…aren’t even true?

In this honest and hope-filled episode of the Collide Podcast, we sit down with counselor Carrie Cochran MA, LMHC, NCC to talk about the biggest myths that keep women from seeking counseling. From believing therapy is only for “serious problems” to fearing it means you’re weak or lacking faith, Carrie compassionately unpacks the lies that keep so many women stuck.

We talk about what actually happens when we ignore stress and trauma, how the nervous system holds unprocessed pain, and why your body may be signaling that it’s time for support. Carrie explains that therapy isn’t about changing who you are—it’s about uncovering your authentic self, the woman God created you to be before life layered on wounds and stress.

Whether you’re navigating anxiety, burnout, chronic stress, old trauma, or simply feeling “off,” this episode will remind you that you are worthy of healing—and that saying yes to help is an act of courage, not failure.

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Hey, there. Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston. I'm so glad you hopped on here today.

I want to uncover some of the biggest myths around therapy and going to counseling, because I think there's a lot of people who would benefit from more healing in their lives, and they're on the fence and just scared about what they might experience.

And so we invited Carrie Cochran, a licensed mental health counselor who we love and trust, and she's passionate about helping women break through barriers that keep them from getting support. And she hopped on today to answer some of these questions.

So I hope that this encourages you and helps you, and if you're listening to it for someone you love and you think it'll help them, go ahead and share this episode with them and pass it on. Take a listen. Carrie, it's so good to have you on the Collide Podcast today.

It's good to be here.

I believe in the work you do so much. I'm so grateful for the work you do in the world. And I believe that God can use therapy in such incredible ways.

And so I'm so excited to have you on today because I want to have a conversation about the biggest myths about therapy and for women, because there's often these sort of misconceptions where we're curious about therapy or we know we might need some help in our lives or a place to process, but we have these misconceptions that keep us from taking that big step. And so I thought I'd throw some out at you today and have you speak into some of these myths.

That sounds great.

Okay. I love it. So one of them is therapy is only for people with serious problems.

Oh, yeah. Like more serious than me, right?

Yes. Right.

Okay. So do you just want my thoughts on that?

I do. I want all your thoughts.

So I. What I would say about therapy is that there's sort of. There tends to be three categories of reasons people come. Right.

One of them is there's a current issue of some kind. Right. A current trauma, an accident, a circumstance, a medical issue.

Caregiving something in current life is really hard and someone needs extra support. Right. We also have people coming to therapy because they have something from their past, childhood, school issues, whatever that might be for them.

Right. And then we have people coming because their current circumstances trigger one of those past situations.

So then we have all those folks that feel like their current circumstance maybe isn't as big or as hard as other people. Right.

And I think often those tend to be those of us that already minimize our experiences Maybe just a little bit, or maybe have huge hearts and see the pain around us that feels a bit overwhelming. The people that we care about in our pain maybe doesn't seem as big as theirs. Right.

And I think a lot of those folks tend to be helpers, so educators, people that are working in the field somewhere nonprofit. Right. Like faced with darkness and hardship around them.

And so it's easy to think that maybe my wounds are not as big a deal as those, the people that I care about. And so that's where I think that's often coming from.

And then we just also have people that just aren't aware of how their earlier wounds or their current circumstance is impacting them. Right. They just might not realize how deeply something is affecting them in their relationships. I think that happens too.

I have so much I want to ask you about what you just said

and

you mentioned helpers and people who have these big hearts and are compassionate. That's so fascinating to me. And I ring so true to the people I know who are like, you know, there's just people who have it way worse than me.

And I'm so grateful, grateful for my life and how, how God has provided in my life or whatever it is.

I'm curious what you would say, though, to those of us who are like that, who are kind of going, you know, I can tell there's some things going on in me or some anxiety coming out sideways or some old wounds that are sort of layering. What happens if we just keep sort of dismissing the quote, unquote little things and not tending to them?

Well, unfortunately, a lot of things can happen, right. We often see people coming into counseling that have waited way too long to process or deal or heal either old wounds or just a lot of little stuff.

The circumstances, our lives are really stressful these days for all kinds of different reasons. Right.

And then if you add something extra in, like a kid with health issues or an aging parent or so many other things that make already complicated, busy, current life, stressful life, but make it that much harder because of the added issue, whatever that might be. If we wait too long. What we will often see is, and I can speak to this myself, I went through this period as well.

But we often see medical issues coming up, you know, more chronic health, autoimmune type stuff.

And maybe there was already a sensitivity to something before, but when you hold a lot of stress in your body over time, your body is going to ask for help. And so we see that a lot where bodies just start breaking down in Ways that maybe they don't need to or that's too young or whatever. Right.

And our bodies will ask for help. And so that can look like all kinds of different things. Chronic pain, headaches, all of those things that maybe we're looking for medical help for.

And a diagnosis is not super obvious. Right. So the body will actually break down over time. And we know that based on science.

Our nervous system is centrally located in all of our experiences. And so if we don't tend to our body and to our mental health, our nervous system goes a little bit haywire.

Those stress hormones never calm, if that makes sense. Right. The revving that happens in our body when we're under stress continues, and those cortisol levels never decrease.

Our nervous system is meant to activate when we need a little extra help or boost, and then it's meant to calm when that danger has passed. So if we're living in circumstances that are just chronically stressful, our nervous system isn't able to move the way that it's supposed to.

And so that's one of the things that I would say, is that our nervous systems will often. They'll kind of go haywire a little bit asking for help, because they weren't designed to manage chronic stress without the ability to calm down.

Hmm. You mentioned this crazy ability that our body has to almost notify us, like, hey, there's things you need to deal with here.

What are some other indicators that maybe we have some pain or areas of our life that need tending to? What are some indicators besides physical indicators?

Sure. I mean, so many things. Right.

I think often it's just maybe a new baseline of irritation, or for some people, it's more panicky feelings where all of a sudden the things that maybe we were able to manage fairly well. Now that's not the case anymore. Right.

So ruptures in relationships that maybe we're noticing that either wouldn't have been as big a deal, or maybe we're causing them in a situation that wouldn't. Wouldn't have mattered that much. Right. So we're starting to see.

We're starting to see our behaviors and the ways that we're interacting in the world not the way we want them to be. Right. So that's people having issues at their jobs or workplaces or, you know, burnout in their job.

And there's just so many things that can burn out in relationships that can come up if we're not attending to all of those things.

Hmm. So good. Carrie, Myth number two. I want to talk about Counseling is a sign of weakness or failure.

Oh, okay. That's a big one, I think, right? Maybe less so than it used to be, I would say. I think that might be getting a tiny bit better.

I hope so. We've done a lot of work. I'm here to break the stigma of that.

I know to me, I feel like.

And again, obviously, in my role, I'm probably biased, but to me, asking for help in any way, whether it's looking into recovery programs or going in. I don't know. Asking for help from a friend or going to counseling, to me, is one of the bravest things anyone can ever do.

So when I sit with someone in an intake, I am mostly in awe because usually it has taken that person a really long time to get to the place where they feel like they really. They need the help so much that it breaks through that.

That barrier of either their situation is not big a deal, big enough of a deal to seek the help, or that belief that it's a sign of weakness to do so.

And so, to me, asking for help, whether it's that help for a current situation that you're navigating or whether it's help for a past trauma or childhood issue, either one of those things, it takes a lot of courage to do that. And I think we often see that in other people. For some reason, it's a little bit harder to see that for ourselves sometimes.

Okay, here's one. I should be able to handle this on my own.

Oh, yeah, that's a big one. Well, I mean, some things we can handle on our own. Right. And we do that all the time. And then there are things that are just a little bit bigger.

And sometimes I think it's because whatever that is, that circumstances, it would be too big for anybody. Right. So many reasons why people come into counseling. Like, we're sitting and talking about whatever that circumstance is.

And I'm usually in awe that the person has been handling it as long as they have been. For as long as they have been. Right. Because it would have knocked anybody over. And so I just.

Yeah, I think that people come for all different reasons. And whatever the circumstance is, it's super brave to ask for help. Yeah.

So brave.

I love that.

What about faith and therapy don't mix?

Yeah. That's a big one, too. I have a lot to say about that one.

Let's go.

Okay. One of the things that feels really central to me about our identity, our beliefs, who we are in the world, is our nervous system.

Like, I already mentioned it's. Just a piece of everything. But the other pieces are our spirituality, our spirit. Right.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that our nervous system might be part of that. I don't know that they're absolutely, completely separate. Right. Our body sort of speaks to us in a spiritual way a lot of the time.

And so to me, I feel like it might just be finding the right counselor. Right. Somebody who is open to whatever exploration of faith needs to happen, Somebody who can allow that to be in the room.

Somebody that can encourage exploration of faith and healing. From my perspective and personal and professional experience, it's hard to heal without acknowledging the spiritual qualities available.

And it's hard to heal without being able to access the power of God in our lives and also the intimate love that he has for us. And that's been a big part of my personal experience is.

And just knowing that part of our healing is also understanding who we are, how we were created. Those things that are really special about us that have been true and special all along.

Maybe we just lost our way or couldn't see them for a while, or maybe we never knew that they were there. And the type of therapy I do, we call that our authentic self. It's the me that I was created to be.

The problem is we live in this really hard world with a lot of darkness and a lot of things that come at us. And so part of the counseling journey, I think, is a journey of discovery. It's finding out who is that authentic self inside of me. How do I find me?

How do I grow that in me so that I can walk in the world in the way that I was really created to? So to me, that journey is brave, but it can also be fun. It can also be surprising in really special ways.

That's why I love my job so much, because everybody is different. And so helping someone find that core piece of identity of who they were created to be is a really beautiful experience.

And sometimes we have to peel away some of the layers of hard and the trauma that somebody may have. Have experienced in order to get there. But if we know where we're going, it doesn't have to be a scary process.

Yeah, I mean, I just can't seem to shake. And I talk about it all the time.

And obviously, like, I. I wrote a book about it, but when I look at Jesus and we talk about this all the time around here, like, when Jesus collides with people, when I look at Jesus colliding with people, he's constantly inviting them to say yes to healing. Right. And it's, like, so interesting to me to be a person of faith and put off your healing.

Yeah.

And I think. I think. And I have a chapter about this called Todd. I think we've been taught to do that. We've been taught to dismiss our pain.

We've been taught to pull ourself up by the bootstraps. We've been taught to say, oh, just pray about it and be strong, because you have a savior and all of these things.

Put a band aid on it, whatever it is. And yet we have all this unresolved pain. And so therapy is a. Is a way that you can say yes to the healing that God wants to do in your life.

And God can help use that space in that process for you to actually experience some healing in your life. And so it very much, to me, like, therapy and faith are so connected because I think God can use it in such immensely powerful ways.

Right, right. And I think, you know, when we would. We go through a healing process, from my experience, we get a little bit.

Not only do we get a little bit closer to who we were created to be, but I think we also. We also see more clearly. We see more. We see more closely to the eyes of God. Right.

Like, we see other people a little bit more closely to how he sees other people. Right. And we can see. We can see that authentic self in other people.

And I think if we don't go through the healing journey, that intimacy that you're talking about, we don't find it. Right. So it's almost like we're navigating our lives in the world without a full heart, if that makes sense.

Because I do think the healing journey is part of transforming our mind, but it's also transforming our heart. It's becoming closer to Jesus, closer to who he is and how he sees us and how he loves us.

And I think it's hard to love other people if you haven't experienced the love of Christ in yourself. And I think that process happens in healing.

What about therapy changes who I am or tells me what to believe?

Okay, that's a tough one. Again, I would say, you know, find the right counselor.

Counseling should be about you finding your authentic self, healing those wounds that you have. And so many counselors have different tools. There's different avenues to do that. So many are incredibly helpful.

Not every counselor is going to be trained in every single one of them. Right. So finding a counselor that's trained in sort of a model of therapy that fits for you is important.

But also I think is the personality of the counselor. Right. And I think often people are afraid to go to counseling partly because what if I don't connect with that person?

Or what if they don't really understand me? And what I would say to that is, that makes sense. And so try one. And if it's not a good fit for you, that's okay. Right.

Every counselor's had that experience. Right.

And so finding somebody that is a good fit for you, finding somebody that has a good blend of being kind of a cheerleader, encourager for your journey, but also that has some sort of tool that would help you kind of direct your healing journey. Because it isn't about becoming like them. It isn't about becoming anyone else. It's actually becoming more the truer version of yourself.

And that should be, in my opinion, what counseling should be. So it should almost be an unwrapping of yourself rather than becoming someone different.

I love that you give us permission to enter into this journey and find a counselor. Go to a counselor. If it's not a good fit, it's okay. You can go to another one. There's like, kind of a permission there that that's totally normal.

That would be the case for going to a doctor. And if you don't like your doctor's bedside manner, you might go to another doctor in that.

Is there a caveat around, like, give it this many sessions? Because obviously for people who are really tentative about the whole counseling experience, the first time might just feel awkward.

Yeah.

And that doesn't mean it's not a good fit. Right. So how do they know the difference?

I would say awkward is probably normal, at least a little bit awkward. Hopefully the counselor. Hopefully you feel less awkward by the time you leave that first session than you did when you came in.

I would say there should be some movement. Right. It should feel better. And most people will say that. They'll say, I feel a lot better than I did when I came in.

I was really afraid or something like that, I think that's super normal. If it's getting towards the end of that session, and it's really like you just feel in your body that, I don't want to come back.

This is not the place for me. That's what I would say would be different.

So it's figuring out, is it just sort of that awkward feeling that you normally feel anytime you're in a setting with someone new? Right. New coworker, new friend, supervisor? We all feel that way. So is it that normal awkwardness? They don't really know me yet.

But I'm willing to give it some time because I think they could. Right. Or is it, this is just not the right space for me. Kind of like you would go into a job interview and if it's.

You just really realize halfway through, this is not the job for me. Right. If it's that feeling, then I would say it might be worth trying someone different.

Or maybe if you meet with the counselor and they don't seem to have quite the right tool that you need.

Kind of like, you know, if you're going to your doctor for somebody and for something going on in your body and the doctor says, actually, I don't have any training in that, I really think you probably need a specialist that has the training that you need. It's the same thing for counseling.

So if there's something going on in your life that you know, you need specific help for, and the counselor that you're meeting with really doesn't seem to have that, or they tell you that's not their background, it's okay to find somebody that really does specialize in what. In what you need help with. Hmm.

And for people who are really desiring to go to a Christian therapist, how do they. What kind of questions do they ask for them in a way that helps them find that fitness?

Oh, yeah. Like if it's a first meeting or like if you're asking around town or what are you thinking?

I'm thinking if someone, you know is thinking about doing this and they're.

They hopped on here and they're like, I just don't know what to ask to make sure I find someone who actually, you know, values Jesus in the way that I do so that it is a good fit for me. Like, I get that question a lot from women.

Yeah. I'm sure. I would say a couple things. I would say be upfront about your faith in the search if you're comfortable with that.

So when you're asking friends or family or looking at websites like, like click on the button that says faith based or Christian. Right.

And explore those ideas or mention that to your friends or family or whoever you're talking to about trying to find a counselor, say, this is really important to me. I will say, ethically, any counselor should be open to your faith as a client.

Just ethically, that's something that's part of the ethics that we're all bound to. So I do think it's possible to find healing even if the person doesn't share your faith. So you have to decide where you are on that comfort level.

And just because someone shares your faith also doesn't necessarily mean they see it exactly as you do. Right. But they should be bound by the ethics of embracing your faith as you do and allowing that to be part of your process.

So I would say just be upfront about it, and if that's really important, then find a counselor that's equally upfront about it. There are a lot of Christian counselors that they're very careful and more reserved, and they hold their faith a little bit more closely.

That's just their style or how they ethically view their work. It doesn't mean that they don't have an important faith or that they don't understand yours. They just may not be as.

They just may not freely discuss their faith as much. And so you just know that going in.

But I think the bottom line, though, is that you have to feel like your faith will be respected and possibly included to the level that you would like it to be. If that's important to you.

Yeah. And I think that is experienced.

I think, at least in my experience with therapy, you kind of get a sense of how it's going to work when you start spending time in therapy with a person. Right. So you start to see, like, is this a good fit for me?

Do you have.

I asked you about five myths, and I mean, I could ask you a million questions, but I think those are a good starting point. Do you have any myths that you often encounter that you want to speak to that we didn't cover today?

Yeah. I would say often people will come to counseling for something current. Right.

So they're going through a hard season, like I mentioned earlier, or they've had a traumatic event of some kind. Right. So they'll come to counseling for that. And I think for some people, that's all they need help with. Right.

Their life was going just fine before that happened, and they just need help navigating it, and that's totally fine. But we do have a lot of people who come to counseling for something recent because that's really clear. Right.

Like, all their friends say, hey, you should really get some help for that loss. Or I think of foster parents. Right.

There's just a lot of stress that you're dealing with between what's happening in your home and also working with the system. It's super obvious to everybody. I think that counseling would probably be helpful in that season. Right. Okay.

So they come to counseling, and then what we find is there's often something in the past that really could be healed. And I think so. It's not necessarily maybe preventing. It's not necessarily that somebody's not coming to counseling.

They're coming, but they're really scared to do that deeper, darker, earlier work. I think that happens a lot.

And so what I would say is when you're looking for a counselor for whatever that recent event is, that feels fairly obvious, find somebody that you feel like is also in tune enough and compassionate and brave enough to help you. Should there be something else you decide to work through?

Because in my experience, sometimes, you know, I think about Psalm 23 and the idea of walking through the valley of the shadow of death, right? And I think we often think about that as the dark season that we're going through.

And in my work, what I've noticed is often people have gotten through that season as well as they could, but it didn't. It wasn't healed. Like, they didn't go through it in a healing way. The healing has to come later. And so I think for me, a lot of.

A lot of the opportunity of counseling and healing is to have somebody trained with a big flashlight that can help you go back through that dark valley, right. That you. You might have run through to get through it, to get to the other side.

But there's a lot of work that, if it could be healed, might actually transform your life and where you are moving forward and what you can offer to the people that you care about. And so the healing journey, to me is an opportunity to take the big flashlight and the bravery of your counselor. Right.

And go together through that darkness, because even just a little bit of light casts out the darkness, right? And we start to see things in that valley we didn't see the first time.

People that maybe God placed in our path that were really important for that time that we just forgot about. I see that happen all the time. So going back through that valley, I think, is a big part of counseling, and it's probably my favorite part.

And maybe that sounds really weird, but it's because watching somebody have that healing happen in their.

In their body, like have that lifting off of them the weight that we carry when that valley has been really, really hard to have somebody walk back through that with us and heal it so that we come out of it transformed is just a really beautiful process. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we, you know, reflect. Sometimes there's just really important experiences that happen on that journey.

And to me, that's the beauty of counseling. Right? It's not necessarily just problem solving the current situation that's important.

But that transformative kind of healing is really why I love my job as much as I do.

I love so much that you bring up the flashlight analogy in Psalm 23, and I echo from my own personal experience in therapy that that might be one of the things that scares women into saying yes to come.

But I promise you, friend, if you're listening, you will actually be so grateful for the richness and the depth and the ways you're learning about yourself and about God in those moments that you'll actually like. Hope it's Wednesday again already when.

When you're leaving your counselor's office because you're uncovering so many things that have been holding you back, and you're starting to feel freedom and joy and health and peace in ways that you haven't before.

And so I've actually experienced that where you're like, oh, wow, this thread, this thing I just uncovered that I thought was just in the present, is so connected to something so long ago. And it almost feels like you just have these, like, God epiphanies in the counseling office where you're like, I've needed this for decades.

Thank you, Jesus. So thank you so much for bringing that up.

Carrie, thank you for being on today and answering some of our most frequently asked questions about these misconceptions we have about therapy.

And if you're listening today and you are at all on the fence about whether or not this is a good idea for you, I want to encourage you that you are worthy of healing, that Jesus over and over and over again invites you into healing. And all you have to do is say yes and take a next step.

And if the next step for you today is calling a therapist and you don't know where to start, we will help you know where to start. You can email us info@wecollide.net or you can go to our website at wecollide.net and check out our wholeness and therapy page.

And Carrie, thank you so much for all that you do for people who want to check out who you are and the work you're doing. Do you have a website or something that you can share about?

Yeah, I do. So I'm just at draytonfamilycounseling.com

Awesome. Thank you so much, Carrie.

Thank you so much for having me.