3 Tips for Anxiety
One of the world’s most forgotten truths is that we have power over our thoughts. This power applies to the lurking thoughts that bring us anxiety as well. Now, anxiety can be addressed in both our thought lives and emotional lives.
What does anxiety look like?
Anxiety looks different for each person, and how Scripture teaches us to handle each aspect of anxiety differs. But it’s crucial to understand that anxiety is not an emotion; it's a diagnosis. And we have been too quick to treat it like a feeling.
You get anxiety because fear has actually affected your body. That fear has moved from a thought or feeling to something that has caused your chest to tighten, possibly making you feel like you can't calm your body down. That eventually builds up to a panic attack, which is essentially your body escalating.
It escalates to a point where your body no longer has control. Your breathing picks up and all of a sudden, you feel like you can't breathe. That's what a panic attack feels like, and we all deal with it differently. Some people shake, whereas others rock to try to take back control of their body.
It’s important to understand what anxiety looks like because we sometimes identify everything to do with fear and worry as anxiety.
We're all stressed and feeling fear or worry about several different things in our lives. So, we must make sure we're using the right words to describe what we’re feeling.
We usually feel anxiety physically before we even think about it. I feel anxious at least weekly, and sometimes daily. When I get a panic attack, I get confronted with a feeling in my body first. My chest tightens, my teeth get gritted, and my shoulders or entire body get tense. That's how anxiety expresses itself for me.
If I'm really anxious, I'll get nauseous and feel sick to my stomach. Although these are some of the symptoms I experience, yours may be completely different. When I notice my anxiety symptoms, I always do three things:
#1 Stop and ask yourself: What's wrong? Why do I feel this way?
I don't always know why I feel anxious. My life is moving quickly, and there are a lot of parts to it. So, I sometimes have to take inventory of my people and circumstances to figure out what is triggering my anxiety. Not a day in my life has that list of circumstances and people been perfectly well and right. Sometimes it only takes me a minute to figure out what is stressing me out, and it's not always the obvious thing.
I could have a fire burning in my home and not have that be the thing bothering me. The thing bothering me could be that I was cut out of something I really wanted to be a part of, or I had a sideways conversation with someone, and it's still gnawing at me. Often, this small fire is what actually is causing my anxiety. So, I have to name it.
#2 Put it on trial.
Ask yourself: Is this thing worth my anxiety? This step is extremely important because the thing bothering us is sometimes not even real. So, you can’t just assume that the source of your anxiety gets all your attention and is even real to begin with.
The thing gnawing at you could be bigger in your mind than it is in reality. And this is where assuming the best comes in handy.
If the thing worrying you is a conflict with a friend, assume the best. Unless that person was obviously disappointed in you, assume she's having a bad day or is stressed about work. Don't make something bigger than it is.
This is one of the devil’s greatest plans for getting in our minds. Where he lies is in your head. He plants lies, confusion, and chaos in your mind. And you fight back using the spiritual weapons that God promises us in Second Corinthians. God says we have power to destroy strongholds, that we have authority over our minds, and we take captive every thought.
God has given us authority to fight back against the enemy and the lies we tend to believe. Often, the enemy magnifies small things to get to us. Then, he shrinks the big things. So, putting an anxious thought or fear on trial helps you decide if this is something you need to forget or feel.
#3 Deal with what you’re feeling.
Sometimes, we need to feel our fear, grief, or anger. Most of the anxiety in the world has come from this lie that we can't feel our feelings. When you suppress any feeling, it will come out through anxiety. That shaky, unstable feeling is because there's suppressed anger, fear, or worry, but you haven't said it aloud or let yourself feel it.
Feeling your emotions completely differs from your thought life. In our thought life, we take captive, fight back, and tell the truth. But we shouldn’t attempt to hide or fight back from our emotions.
Scripture shows us a God who feels deeply and people who are given the grace to feel deeply. There's grace to feeling in the Bible, and that grace extends to us.
Because we don't feel that grace in our souls, we don't allow ourselves to express our feelings. But putting that thought and emotion on trial enables you to decide on the validity of your source of anxiety. You’re able to determine if a thought is worthy of time to feel it. And sometimes it is.
Sometimes you need grace to feel that emotion. Other times, you realize that you’ve blown the thought out of proportion. If you realize that the source of your anxiety is real but small, you can still allow yourself to feel whatever feeling comes with it. It's okay to feel afraid, mad, or any other emotion that comes with your experience.
Being a safe space for someone struggling with anxiety?
You may be reading this, not because you feel anxious, but because a person you love is and you want to help them. When the world is spinning for someone, they need a safe place to process. There’s so much power in just processing what you're feeling with someone.
So, if someone you love expresses to you that they’re feeling anxiety or you sense that they're feeling anxious, talk to them. Ask them, “what are you feeling?” Ask them to talk to you about it. Be a safe place for that person, whether it’s your kid, spouse, parent, sibling, friend, or neighbor.
You cannot believe how healing it is to just be with someone in the thing that's making them spin. I can't tell you how many times I have called my husband or a good friend asking if they can listen to me for a minute. This allows me to share and process what I’m feeling. And the safety I feel in those moments is out of this world.
Sharing my thoughts and feelings begins to heal my mind, and my shoulders relax. My breath gets longer, my teeth relax, and I feel at ease again. This all happens because someone is in it with me.
Jennie’s book, ‘Get Out of Your Head’ is a really helpful and transformational resource for those struggling with fear, anxiety, depression, overthinking, or other issues affecting your mental health. You can get your copy right here and everywhere books are sold. There is an entire season of the Made For This podcast based on the book, and you can listen to it here.
