November 5, 2023
Today we’re going to talk about the most common mental health disorder: anxiety. What is anxiety? It’s when you experience repetitive, useless thoughts or images that interfere with problem solving. These fearful thoughts get you stuck in an anxious state. One out of five Americans has anxiety. Not hopeless if you do! Medicine can be very helpful. There are other helps as well, including faith. We’ll talk about what helps lessen anxiety.
Anxiety is a spiral, at the top of the spiral, it starts with worry. We all worry sometimes. Worry is the first step toward anxiety, and worry is also the first step to depression. From worry, anxiety moves, increasing along the spiral as you imagine the worst! You imagine something that is not at all likely, that an unlikely, terrible thing has or will happen. You can get physical symptoms as anxiety takes hold: a dry mouth, shaking, your heart beating rapidly, etc. Fearful thoughts keep playing over and over in your mind and you are getting more upset. At the bottom of the anxiety spiral is full blown anxiety. It’s important to take steps to stop the spiral of worsening anxiety, because when it gets to a certain point, you almost can’t stop it.
So, anxiety can start say when your spouse is late coming home. And you ask yourself, “Why are they late?” Then, you can worry that they’ve been in a car accident. Then you imagine them dead. Your heart is now beating faster. At this point, let’s hope your spouse walks in the door, looking well, and that lessens your anxiety. They’re not dead after all!
Worry starts the anxiety spiral. Maybe you have a headache. It doesn’t go away with medicine. And you think, “maybe it’s cancer, or a tumor.” Because you know someone who just got diagnosed with a brain tumor, and that’s where you go: down the anxiety spiral.
Or maybe you feel that things need to be perfect. And you prepare so much for something, you overdo it. It was good the first try, but you decided it wasn’t good enough, and it gets worse as you keep trying harder and harder to make it perfect. You think about it all the time and it’s never right. Then you feel you’ve lost control and go down the anxiety spiral.
We all have worries. Everybody has a particular thing they worry about the most. For some people, money is a trigger: other things they can shrug off, no worries. Your trigger worry could be something like worrying about your family, or your health.
Faith belongs here in our discussion of worry and anxiety. Because there’s a myth out there that if you just had more faith, you wouldn’t worry or you wouldn’t have as much anxiety. That’s a myth. It just shames us when we experience anxiety: Wow, since I’m anxious that mean I don’t have enough faith and I’m sinning!
Anxiety is not a sin!! Let’s look at some Scripture and what it tells us about God and our anxiety.
In Philippians 4:6, the apostle Paul begins, “Do not be anxious about anything.” If you stop there, it can sound either inspiring, or like a command. But Paul isn’t shaking his finger at you, saying “Stop it! Stop being anxious!” It would just make me more anxious, if something shook their finger at me and said, “Stop being anxious!” Paul says, in verse 6, pray and bring your requests to God, and give thanks to God. Paul is saying, Praying, asking God for help, and thanking God are a great alternative to repetitive useless thoughts that get you into a tailspin of despair!
In vs. 7 Paul says then the peace of God that passes all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus! If your problem is worried thoughts that cycle over and over in your head, here’s good news! God is going to give you peace and guard your heart and mind from those thoughts. The message from God is I love you and will help you with your anxiety when you pray to him. God offers the gift of peace, peace that comes in the middle of difficulties. We’re always going to have plenty of things to worry about! God offers to help you break the cycle of worry and anxiety, regardless of what is going on in your life.
I love this verse from Isaiah 41:13: “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” God’s message is I’m here to help you! God loves you and cares about your anxious mind. He is here for you!
Here are some ways you can create a new way of thinking, and God can help you calm your anxious thoughts.
First is to evaluate your worry and anxiety. What is your big worry? And when or where do you worry? Is it in bed as you try to fall asleep? You want to catch the spiral of anxiety early, so its important to know what you most often worry about and what can trigger it. Think of what you can do to change the channel on that worry. Say to yourself, after I worry about this for 5 minutes, times up for worrying! I’ll take a walk, or watch something I like on TV, or call a friend. I don’t need to dwell on it.
Second, you guard your mind. Maybe something happens: a friend doesn’t call, and you start worrying that they hate you. That’s the worst-case scenario. But try to think of the best-case scenario: maybe my friend is just waiting to call on my birthday since it’s coming up! Say to yourself a best-case scenario!
Third, with God’s help, face your fears. When you fight against anxiety, that just fuels it. For example, say you’re afraid of driving on the highway, so you stop doing that. That just makes your anxiety about driving worse. You become even more afraid of driving. However, everything you do to face your fears weakens them. So, if you’re afraid of public speaking, it, then stand up in front of people to say something. That weakens your fear of speaking to a crowd. It’s important to face your fear.
Paul says God will guard your heart and mind. What does not help is to command yourself to stop worrying, or tell yourself, everything will be ok. Instead, process your worry with God. Talk to God about how you feel and bring your worries to Him. Tell yourself, I can talk to God about how irrational some of my thoughts are. There’s actually a study where people prayed for 12 minutes a day for 8 weeks, processing, talking with God and praying for help with worries. What the study found was the people who prayed had reduced stress, lower blood pressure, and felt more peace! They understood God was there for them, “Fear not, I will help you!”
The fourth way to calm your anxious thoughts, is to ask for help! Talk to a friend about your worry or anxiety or get a counselor. Going to a psychiatrist for medicine can be helpful too. Find people you trust who can help you face your fears.
My homework for you this week is to take a worry you have or anxiety you experience to God. Talk with Him about how you feel and ask for help.
Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder. We need to be compassionate with ourselves when we experience it, and compassionate to others. It’s not our fault and it’s not a sin. We’re not alone, help is available. God says, “Fear not, I will help you!” We can bring our concerns to him because he cares for us! God will give us His peace! Amen.
Maureen Duffy-Guy's blog 