A Christian Perspective on Anxiety

When we're talking about an anxiety disorder, we tend to be talking specifically about a few things, that it tends to be more chronic. When we follow the DSM5, which is our handbook of mental disorders, it's six months or more. It is persistent, and there is an intensity to it, and there's a lot of physiological symptoms, as well, such as, actually mind fog is a huge one. So a lot of people might come in to counseling and they say, "I can't think clearly. I can't do my job clearly. I don't know what's going on." And one thing we'll say is, "It sounds like you might have anxiety." There is tiredness that goes along with it, so there's some very consistent physical symptoms that go along with anxiety, as well.

And so, when something comes along, or we haven't actually experienced something but we think about what it would be like to experience it, but we haven't really tested ourself to show that it's maybe not as anxiety provoking as it needs to be, or that we can actually withstand the anxiety, the thing that we're facing, the threat or the challenge, then we are gonna be more prone to maybe have things like social anxiety.

Social anxiety is … I have found that to be pretty prevalent among my clientele. But I see adults, too, older adults, not just the Millennials. It seems to be more of a gender difference. I think women are more prone to have anxiety disorders than men. But I guess there is maybe something to the generational aspect of it.

I also don't know the reason why, but I do have some theories, personal theories. I haven't actually done research on it. Some of my thoughts are, so I completely agree with Dr. Cheatham that one of the hallmarks of anxiety is avoidance, as wanting to avoid something. So I think there's two main things. I think the rise of the Internet, and how much knowledge there is online, that there's so much more to be afraid of. I think part of just living in this world, and living in this in between stage, between when Jesus is … between the garden of Eden and when Jesus will come back again, is there's a lot of fear and anxiety. But now we have all this knowledge that is so accessible, and these young people who don't know how to deal with that or cope with that. So I think that's part of it.

I think another part of it is that maybe my generation, we didn't really know how to deal with our stress. And so we're not teaching that to our children. And I think that more and more adults are stressed out, and we're bringing that into our families. But we're not teaching our children how to deal with that stress and that anxiety.

But is part of it that none of us really know how to deal with that? I don't know. What do you think?

So anxiety's often about irrational fear. So it's about how do we … with the information we have, what are we doing with it? The more information we have, the more possibilities there are for us to turn them into irrational interpretation.

So there's this connection there, and burnout, yeah, I agree that there's certainly a connection between the … we think of burnout as being more a physiological manifestation, and just a fatigue, and all those kinds of things that people, again, may or may not be associating with their stress and their anxiety. So there's all kinds of preventative things that we can do to avoid burnout. And one thing is to have good boundaries and … probably gonna get to that here in a minute.

So is it a sin? Fear? Like any emotion … I don't believe that any emotion is sin. It's how I respond to that emotion. If we go to God in that emotion, or if we start to just go within ourselves, or hurt ourselves, or hurt other people, those …

So I even think maybe when it's talked about in Scripture, we're talking about more of this chronic anxiety and not just a feeling of anxiety here, and something that's really debilitating, maybe more like an anxiety disorder. This is before the DSM. But it's really, again, not choosing to try to do it on our own and be our own god, and that kind of thing. And that's when it's, I think probably we'd say that's more of a sin. Now we are actually not choosing to trust or obey God's call to go to Him with these things. In Matthew 6, Jesus is talking about how … look what God has … it's more about His providence for us and taking care of us, and why are we worried about these things?

And then, Paul, in Philippians 4, talks about, again, he says not to be anxious for anything. And it's the same idea that, hey, go to the Lord with it. Find peace in Him. So they're almost, these verses I think are more, again, about not so much about not having it, but more about not letting it control you, and facing it, which is the way we've found that, even in the secular world, this is the way we handle anxiety, is to face it with courage and not avoid it, like Jenny said earlier.

Often anxiety can turn into more of a depression. There's a big overlap there. And that's when I think people do get into this, I shouldn't feel this way, I shouldn't … and use these shoulds. I shouldn't be anxious. I shouldn't be afraid. I should trust God more. So what's wrong with me? And I'm … no. And then it turns inward to this depressive state.

So I think we have to guard against that with our clients, and recognize that there's something to be said for accepting challenges and difficulties, and actually looking for the ways that we can grow, the trials and tribulations that Paul talks about in Romans 5 about that, and how we can learn from those things, and not let it be something that we, again, are trying to hide from or deny or avoid, but say, "Okay. This is where we are. But again, that's not the end.”

For seminarians in particular, there's the stress and anxiety of, of course, the coursework itself. And often we have students that come in to Counseling Services when they're getting close to the end, actually, usually the beginning and the end. They're adjusting to seminary, and moving here from all over the world, literally, all the adjustment that goes with that, which, anxiety often is related to change and adjustment. And then, this idea of, "Oh, actually I'm gonna graduate now. I’m gonna have to go off and go to … start a church, or join a church, or whatever it might be, or become a counselor,” and the change of that. So that's not dissimilar from someone graduating from another program, or any other kind of degree, for that matter. But that's something I've seen, is that people preparing for ministry, and even though they're excited about it, there's also some fear about, what does this mean? How am I gonna be able to provide for my family, maybe. There's a lot of unknown about that.

I often have clients that'll … they realize after we talk that they're not really sure why they feel the way they do. But then they realize, "I'm not really living the way that I want to or supposed to or need to. Things are out of whack, and how did I get here?" And maybe trying to keep up with the Joneses or trying to compare ourself to other people, those kinds of things, and not really just taking things as they come. So, I don't know, there's something to be said about that, about recognizing that we only have a certain amount of time, resources, energy. We've got to be good stewards of those things, and we've got to keep things in the right order to be who God has called us to be. It's a matter of balance, often. So order, balance … yeah.

And also I think just…. so this isn't even necessarily about if they have a congregation member talking to them, I think even opening it up within the church environment itself, to be more open about anxiety. There's so many passages that we can talk about. What does that look like? And to build an atmosphere in general within a congregation of openness and vulnerability, that this is something that we all deal with. And if you need to, in a sermon, to say what we talked about here, today, if we have these symptoms, there's no shame in going to see a counselor and having those resources available to them. I think even just having that environment, just opens it up, giving them information that they may not get otherwise.

And we have a very neuropsychological way that we deal with danger, and that is by adrenaline pumping into our body, and our body has this reflexive response, and we want to fight or flight. In order to do that … or freeze. In order to do that, it actually, there's this part of our brain called the amygdala. It closes up that pathway from the lower part of the brain to the upper part of the brain. So we can't actually can't access that problem solving, that intelligence, which is why people feel like they're in brain fog when they're in anxiety.

So we have to learn how to calm ourselves down. And one of the very simplest most basic ways to calm ourselves down is to breathe, to take that deep breath, and to use our senses to focus in on a sense for one minute. I teach my clients 30 seconds to 1 minute at a time, just focus on a sense, whether it's sight, look at something around you, or smell. Those are the ways that we can lower anxiety, not by white knuckling through, or trying to think our way through it. So we have to start from something that seems very counterintuitive.

But when people are really having it … some of this may depend on the intensity or the degree of anxiety someone's having, whether it's something they really could or should try to work on on their own, or maybe they really need to think about going to have a counselor step through some of these things with them. I think of it often as more of a panic time or a time of intense, acute anxiety symptoms, and us being able to step in and intervene and do things like progressive relaxation or deep breathing.

But then there's also more preventative things that we could do. Just self-care kind of things, like exercise and things like yoga and mindfulness and these things that really just calm our mind and make us less likely to develop anxiety symptoms. So, but there are definitely some things that we can do, and it's about stepping in, but not trying to just white knuckle it, and not trying to deny it or avoid it, like we mentioned earlier. But just to say, hey, this is the way I'm feeling. And it is physiological. I can't fight it. And the more I try to fight it, the more … the worse it's gonna get.

So those are times when, like Dr. Cheatham said, when it starts interfering with their daily lives, they're not able to do the things that they normally do, it's interfering with their work, that would be times when they should see someone.

And sometimes it's other things that are really there, that really need to be addressed and brought to the front, that's really driving them to push themself. So it's … sometimes it's digging deeper and not just saying, "Well, okay, then just do this. We can do that, too, but we need to … let's talk about this. What's going on here? Because if you're saying that you are pushing yourself and you can't help it, so to speak, why? What else? What is there there?" And then it is, "Well, I'm …" Sometimes there isn't a whole lot more maybe someone can do, I don't know. But then we're talking about coping with it, and some of those are the self-care things we’ve already mentioned.

And to me, one of the best things is sleep. And that's back to the resting. Often the clients just aren't sleeping enough. And that's so important. I don't think there's enough … I think there's more now than there used to be. I don't think there's enough awareness about the importance of sleep. And I'm being totally hypocritical here. But it's so important.

So we do what we can to minimize those and … But it's a, you're not always gonna get it right every day. And you're gonna have a step back once in a while. But we persevere and keep pushing forward, and we don't … it doesn't have to be all or nothing or perfect. We just still … Sometimes it's a trial and error kind of a process. And what works for me doesn't work for you, and vice versa.

So, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a lovely conversation, and I hope that it was helpful for everybody who was listening.